by Juliana Gray
Happy.
He sighed deeply, closing his eyes. For an instant, and for no particular reason, he found himself thinking of Phineas Burke’s face, eyes round with terror, as he’d stalked forward toward that dashed automobile.
A chuckle escaped him, without warning.
Are you, Lady Morley? Are you in love with my friend Burke?
The poor fellow.
Another chuckle, and another. Wallingford’s back began to quiver, his sides began to burn. The laughter built in his chest, exploding at last into the fragrant air, rattling the leaves in hearty gusts. He bent over and braced his hands against his knees, laughing without restraint.
“Signore?”
Wallingford started and looked up, expecting to see Giacomo’s face, compressed with disapproval.
“I beg your pardon. You are English, are you not? The English visitor?”
Wallingford straightened. It was not Giacomo at all. The man was of medium height, dressed in a well-tailored suit of summer flannel, hair neatly trimmed beneath his straw boater, dark eyes grave. His low voice carried hardly any trace of an accent.
“I am indeed,” Wallingford said. His mouth couldn’t seem to stop twitching. “Can I help you at all?”
“I beg your pardon. My name is Delmonico, a colleague of your friend Mr. Burke. I understand his workshop lies this way?” The man’s eyebrows rose in polite inquiry. He carried a small satchel beneath one arm, more of a portfolio, really. He shifted it to the other arm and straightened his hat with a nervous twitch of his hand.
“Why, yes. Yes, it does.” Wallingford turned and made a motion with his arm. A chuckle rose again in his throat; he managed with great effort to restrain it. “Straight down this path, through the clearing. A small building, a sort of old carriage house. You can’t miss it. But Signore Delmonico?”
The man was already tramping down the path. He turned and cocked his head. “Yes?”
“I’d advise you to knock first, my good man. Knock first, and sharply.”
* * *
The priest had just begun to pass his crooked fingers over the eggs in their bowl when Abigail felt Wallingford’s hand on her arm.
She knew it was his, of course. She knew it in the instant before it cupped her elbow, large and warm and light. She had felt him steal up next to her, among the servants and villagers filling the dining room. She had felt the tingling warmth of his body and the electric crackle of energy that seemed always to surround him, that was so essentially Wallingford.
“What’s this?” he asked in her ear.
“It’s the priest,” Abigail whispered. She was conscious of Alexandra, standing nearby on her other side, watching the ceremony with hypnotic fascination. So hypnotic, in fact, Alexandra hadn’t noticed Wallingford’s arrival in the slightest. “He’s blessing the eggs.”
“Blessing the what?”
“Shh. It’s a very solemn ceremony.”
Wallingford had been swimming, Abigail realized. He smelled of dampness, of clean water and fresh air. His hand remained at her elbow, light and respectful. What the devil was it doing there? Had they not parted last night on the iciest of terms?
Next to the table, Don Pietro reached for the holy water, borne on a tray by his server. Maria had been right: The young man was beautiful, golden haired and blue eyed, an archangel sent to earth. He had followed the priest obediently about the castle, keeping the water at the ready as the rooms were sprinkled, hither and yon, without regard to the decidedly Anglican bodies who resided among them. Nearby, Maria interrupted the stillness with a wilting sigh.
The eggs seemed to strain against one another, yearning for Don Pietro’s holy—if rather gnarled—hands. Abigail watched the water trickle from his fingers, to roll in delicate tracks down the fragile white shells. The faint sunshine caught on the droplets, making them glitter.
“Extraordinary,” murmured Wallingford, next to her ear.
“I gathered them myself, just this morning,” Abigail heard herself say, and nearly smacked her forehead with her palm over the inane statement. Inane? Her?
“Blessed indeed.” The hand dropped away from her elbow, leaving it cold, and then he was gone, idling through the small crowd of villagers, his dark hair still damp and shining above them all.
Abigail’s legs wobbled beneath her. What the devil had he meant by that? What the devil was he doing here at all?
Don Pietro was stepping away from the table. His assistant held out a stiff white linen cloth; he wiped his hands and handed it back and turned to Alexandra and Abigail. “Ora abbiamo il pranzo,” he said gravely, and turned away to greet the villagers. Wallingford stepped forward and made a brief bow. His face had set into careful formality, the Duke of Wallingford greet-ing an honored guest, dark eyebrows low and sharp on his forehead.
“What did he say?” Alexandra whispered.
For an instant, Abigail thought she meant Wallingford.
She gathered herself. “Oh, he’s just invited himself to lunch, of course!” She patted her hair beneath its modest scarf. “I do hope his assistant stays, too. Do you expect I shall burn in hell for it?”
But the eternal fires remained quite safe from the threat of Abigail Harewood’s occupation. When luncheon was laid, she could not take her eyes from the Duke of Wallingford.
He sat at the head of the table, Don Pietro at his right and the acolyte at his left. The young man, who had looked so golden and radiant as he passed about the house with his delicate pewter pitcher of holy water, seemed to pale into childishness next to the broad shoulders and severe features of the duke. Despite his lack of a valet, Wallingford managed to appear with flawless jacket and crisp collar, with his necktie folded credibly, and all the gravity in the room seemed to sink somewhere into the beating heart of that well-tailored chest. He was every inch the lord of the castle. He was magnificent.
Abigail, for the first time in her life, was unable to say a word.
Not that Wallingford spent the luncheon in stony silence. No, despite his magnificence, he acted the perfect host, chatting with the priest, in Latin of all things, showing himself an absolute master of classical grammar. Abigail had never heard his Latin before, had assumed him to have only the usual schoolboy proficiency, and his fluency astonished and rather humbled her. At one point, he turned to Alexandra, who sat next to the elderly priest, and troubled her for the salt; the seamless shift into English made Abigail start from her chair.
Alexandra laughed her obliging little laugh and said yes, of course, Your Grace, just as if they were not mortal enemies, and handed the salt in his direction. Without a pause, she turned back to the village mayor, who sat on her other side, and resumed her halting half-English, half-Italian conversation with him, using her long, elegant hands to illustrate what their limited common vocabulary could not.
Abigail looked down at her plate, at her broken-nailed fingers holding her knife and fork. She cut her roast lamb into small pieces, and placed each one in her mouth with quiet deliberation. Who was this polished and polite Wallingford? Was this his true character? Or was he simply a good actor, his manners gleaming from years of formal experience?
Did she really know him at all?
“Signorina?”
The whispered word made her start once more. She turned her head over her right shoulder. “Yes, Morini?”
“After the luncheon,” Morini said. “I must see you, after the luncheon. Is very important. We have the plans for tonight.”
“Of course. What plans?” Abigail said listlessly.
Morini put her finger to her lips and drew away.
“I beg your pardon,” said the man next to her, a burgher of some sort from the village. “You are speaking to me?”
The lamb was finished, and the artichoke leaves lay in a neat pile at the edge of her plate. Abigail picked up her wineglass and smiled over the rim. “I was not,” she said, in Italian. “But since we are speaking now, perhaps you can tell me, my dear sir, something of
the history of this castle. The more I learn, it seems, the more questions I have.”
ELEVEN
The blossoming peach orchard glowed silver white in the moonlight, reminding the Duke of Wallingford of nothing so much as a threatening bank of London fog, or else his great-aunt Julia’s feral French poodle.
Not the most romantic fellow, the Duke of Wallingford, as he was the first to admit.
And yet it was not a romantic assignation for which he was bound, he reminded himself sternly, though the note burned in his waistcoat pocket with a distinctly amorous flame. Ten o’clock, the peach orchard, it had read simply, which might mean anything, might come from anyone. Burke, perhaps, wanting to conduct some sort of interview far from the eavesdropping ears that filled the Castel sant’Agata.
Oh, very well. Perhaps that wasn’t the likeliest scenario. But he had no reason to believe the note came from Miss Harewood, either. The writing had borne a distinctly masculine tilt, for one thing, and for another . . .
He couldn’t think of another reason.
He didn’t want to think of another reason. In every cell of his hardened and unromantic brain, he admitted, he wanted Abigail Harewood to be waiting for him in the peach orchard with the moonlight gilding her skin, just as he had longed to see her when he returned to the castle after his harrowing experience in Phineas Burke’s workshop this afternoon. He had longed for a deep fresh gulp of Abigail; he had longed to be like Roland and Finn and the blasted Italian squirrels and walk with the object of his desire in the vineyard, or kiss her next to a beaker of battery acid, or chase her up a bloody cypress tree. When he had seen Abigail in the dining room, watching that bowl of eggs with rapt attention, her chestnut hair shining from beneath her modest headscarf, he had hardly been able to stop himself from gathering her up and carrying her upstairs with him. He had savored the simple curve of her elbow into his palm as he had once savored a vintage port.
Of course, such yearnings were both impractical and impossible. Even if Abigail were waiting for him now, she likely meant some sort of trick. Meant to catch him in some incriminating act, or perhaps not to meet him at all. Perhaps she was watching right now from her window upstairs, giggling with delight at the success of her little subterfuge.
I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed winning a wager so much.
A wrenching movement came from some hidden muscle in the center of his chest.
Perhaps he was a fool, after all.
Darkness began to close around him, as the soft glow of lights from the castle windows dissolved into the night. He had reached the meadow now, and strode across the dampening grass with his long and purposeful stride, guided by the moonshine incandescence of the peach blossoms ahead. The wrenching alarmed him. With every step, he placed a brick next to that hidden muscle, shoring it up. He would not hope for Abigail’s appearance. He would not, if she did appear, reveal any chinks in the brickwork, as he had in the dining room. He would be stern, and hold firmly to his vows, and mistrust her every word.
The trees of the peach orchard had been planted conveniently in long rows, almost the entire width of the terrace. Long before Wallingford reached the first brown trunk, the first heavily laden limb, he could smell the blossoms in the clear night air. The scent drew him in, rich and dulcet, until he was surrounded by the hushed rustle of the branches in the air, the delicate touch of the petals as they brushed his cheek. Where in this otherworldly stillness was Abigail?
Wallingford brought himself to a stop. The blossoms absorbed the moonlight; he could see only shadows around him.
“I know you’re there,” he said, booming out the words to make the trees tremble around him. “You may as well come out.”
His voice died away into the evening. From some distant tree came the faint trill of a nightjar.
Too rough. He had spoken too roughly: a fault of his, when he was uncertain of himself. He forced his voice to soften.
“I have your message,” he said. “There’s no need to hide. No need for any more tricks.”
Tricks. There he went again. No chance of coaxing her into the open with words like tricks. Scheming Abigail might be, but she also had a streak of fatal tenderness for him, a genuine desire for him. Not nearly so much, alas, as he had for her; but then he was used to women longing to bed a duke, particularly a duke with a reasonably attractive physical presentation. He knew how to use that desire to his advantage.
He bent his voice still lower, until it rumbled in his chest and rounded out of his mouth. “Now look here. You asked me to meet you tonight. Don’t be afraid, my brave girl.”
Snap, snap.
Wallingford whipped around.
A shadow emerged from the trees, catching the hint of moonlight, crackling the fallen twigs with its footsteps.
His breath caught, suspended like a bubble in his throat.
The shadow took another step, directly into some unexpected gap between the trees, and the moonlight fell upon its modest white headscarf and the face beneath.
Wallingford’s breath left him at last, in a gust of utmost pain. The brickwork in his chest crumbled into dust.
But that was all inward. Outwardly, of course, he remained exactly the same.
“Lady Morley. This is charming indeed.” He maintained perfect control of his voice: not a waver. He folded his arms and swept his gaze up and down the elegant curve of her body, exactly as one expected of the Duke of Wallingford.
What the devil was she doing here? Accident, or design? Had she written the note? Or was her appearance here an extraordinary coincidence?
Lady Morley gave no sign. Her voice was perfectly clear, perfectly smooth. “Your Grace. You’re looking well. Courting the moonlit shades for your studies, perhaps? Or a dalliance with a village girl?”
“I might ask the same of you, Lady Morley.”
She made a shallow laugh. “Village girls are not in my preferred style.”
“Ah, more’s the pity. You’re a lover of nature, then?”
“I walk here every evening,” she said. “The cool air braces one wonderfully before bed. Dare I hope you’re picking up the same habit? You’ll find it puts you to sleep directly.”
God, the cheek of her.
“Now why do I have trouble believing this charming tale?” he said.
“Because you’ve a fiendish mind, I suppose.” She spoke without a hint of censure, as if fiendishness were a trait to be admired, or at least expected in a man of his rank. “You’re a devious fellow, and you can’t imagine that everyone else isn’t scheming just as you are. I expect you think I’m meeting Mr. Burke here tonight, don’t you?”
The thought had not yet crossed Wallingford’s mind, despite all his speculation. Immediately the hackles of suspicion lifted at the back of his neck. “Since you asked, yes. I do.”
“Then tell me, Wallingford, whom you’re meeting here tonight.”
He lifted one hand and examined his fingernails. “Perhaps I came to catch you out.”
“That won’t do at all,” she said, with another shallow laugh. “Even if I were meeting Mr. Burke tonight, I shouldn’t be so careless as to let anybody else know of it. No, the shoe is quite on the other foot. I’ve caught you out. The question, of course, is whom.”
“There is no question. I’ve no meeting at all.”
“Your Grace, I should never be so indelicate as to call into question a man’s command of the truth . . .”
His voice darkened. “I should very much hope not.”
“Though of course, in affairs of the heart, one’s allowed a bit of rope. After all, it would be far more shabby to expose one’s sweetheart to disgrace than to insist on an exact adherence to the facts. Wouldn’t it?”
Of all his reasons for coming to the orchard tonight, crossing verbal swords with Lady Morley ranked dead last on the list. It was time to end this interview. Wallingford drew a deep breath and said, “We have strayed, Lady Morley, rather far from the point at hand. Are you meeting Burke
here tonight?”
“I’m not under any sort of obligation to answer your question. Why don’t you ask him?”
“He’s not here, at present.”
“Isn’t he?” She looked about. “But I thought you said I was meeting him! Dear me. What a dreadful muddle. Perhaps I got my times mixed up. Or perhaps it was the seventh tree, twelfth row instead of the twelfth tree, seventh row. I burnt his note, you see, in the fireplace.”
Wallingford gazed at her shadowed face, at the pale and dark of her in the moonlight, impossible to read. “Well played, madam. I commend you. My friend Burke, I must concede, is an exceptionally lucky man.”
“Mr. Burke is twenty times the man you’ll ever be, Your Grace.”
The words hit him in the chest. He opened his mouth, but there was no air with which to make a sound. He could almost hear his own grandfather’s scorn-soaked voice, could almost hear the Duke of Olympia repeating those very words.
Has the conduct of your entire adult life ever suggested your usefulness for anything else?
The nightjar trilled again, sharp and lonely in the rustling dusk.
“So I perceive,” he said at last. “What now, then, Lady Morley? We seem to be at an impasse. Do we await his arrival together?”
“Do as you like, Wallingford. I shall continue with my walk.” She started forward.
He could not say what devil made him reach out his hand and snare her arm, just as she brushed past. He looked down at the moonlit curves of her face, this face now beloved by the worthy and honorable Phineas Burke, his grandfather’s natural son. “A shame, Lady Morley, to waste this lovely evening,” he said softly, not really wanting her, not even liking her at the moment, and certainly not liking himself.
She shrugged off his hand. “I don’t intend to, Your Grace. Good evening.” She walked on a pace or two, and then stopped and turned back to him. “Tell me, Wallingford. Why does it mean so damned much to you? Can you not simply let people do as they please? Can you not simply look to your own affairs for happiness?”
