A Duke Never Yields

by Juliana Gray

  She stirred; her eyelids flickered. He put his face into his hands.

  “Why are you dressed?” she asked sleepily.

  “I went for a walk.”

  The sheets rustled. “Look at me, Wallingford.”

  He raised his head. She sat in the bed, her lovely body shrouded by a white sheet, watching him with her wise light brown eyes.

  “You’re not certain, either? Whether you can do this. Whether you can be faithful for the rest of your life. That’s why the curse isn’t broken.”

  “Rubbish. I would never stray from you, Abigail. I would never hurt you.”

  “You’re only saying that to reassure me, because you want so much for it to be true. But a rake doesn’t really reform, does he?”

  He rose from the chair and went to the window. “I am not a rake.”

  “Still, you’ve behaved like one, all your life. That’s why you came to Italy to begin with, after all. To prove that you were more than that. To try to get along without women and wine. And then I came along.”

  “Yes, you came along.”

  “So you don’t really know, do you? Whether you can resist all the temptation around you, all the temptation to which the Duke of Wallingford is subject.”

  “I can. I must. I love you too much to fail.”

  The sheets rustled again, and a moment later he felt her hand against his back, and then her smooth cheek. “Listen to me,” she whispered. “I’ve been thinking, thinking a great deal. Wallingford, my love, my husband. Go from here. Spend a year on your own. The year of chastity you set out for yourself, the one I interrupted . . .”

  He turned. “What the devil, Abigail? What are you talking about?”

  “What’s a year, after all?” She put her hands around the back of his head. “There’s no more rush, no curse to be broken. I’ll wait for you. I’ll wait at the castle. Set off on your own, and scratch for your own worms.” She bent her head and kissed his chest. “I’ll keep your tender heart right here, safe between my hands.”

  He was falling, right through some gaping hole in the floorboards, into an abyss below.

  He scratched out, “Leave you? You’re sending me away?”

  “I’ll manage. I’m strong enough; you know I am.”

  “It’s impossible. It’s ridiculous. I could never leave you . . .”

  “Darling, you must.”

  “. . . to say nothing of the estate . . .”

  “On my own, I should certainly bollox it all up, but I know your brother will help me manage things. Roland’s very clever, you know.”

  He bowed his head above her and anchored himself in the soft scent of her hair.

  “Listen, my love,” she said. “I know you, I know you to your bones. I understand everything. I know why you went out walking in the moonlight on your wedding night. I know what weighs on your heart. You need this. You needed it last March, and you still need it. Simply loving me isn’t enough. We proved that today.”

  “Yes, it is. You’re my strength, Abigail.”

  “No, I’m not. You’re your own strength, Wallingford, and you must see that. It’s there, it’s in everything you do, and you simply don’t know it.”

  Wallingford closed his eyes.

  “You are so full of golden promise,” she said.

  He pressed his lips against her hair.

  She went on. “And I need this, too. I need you to suffer a little, to try yourself at ordinary tasks as mortal men do. To learn how to be the true and faithful husband who will share my bed and board, who will father my children.”

  “Abigail, it’s absurd. I can’t leave you.” Was that his voice? He hardly recognized it. A tear left his right eye and rolled down his cheek, disappearing into her hair.

  “You can, Wallingford. You should. A year of chaste living: It’s what you meant to do all along. You knew, you always knew what had to be done.”

  He gathered her hair in his hands, tilted up her face, and kissed her. “Go back to bed, darling. You’re making no sense at all.”

  “I’m not sleepy.”

  “Yes, you are. God knows I am. We’ll both feel better in the morning.”

  He led her back to the bed and stretched himself next to her, with his shoes still on, and in an instant she was asleep on her side, facing him, his slumbering angel. He lay watching her, taking her breath into his lungs. His heart crashed painfully against the crumbled walls of his chest.

  At last he rose and found a sheet of paper in the desk. In the light of the moon, he wrote down names and addresses: his solicitor, his banker, his man of business in the village. He took the marriage certificate from his jacket pocket and laid it out beneath a paperweight. He wrote a letter such as he had never written: words of love, of abiding faithfulness; and having used up all his store of sentiment, signed it simply Arthur.

  She would know what it meant.

  He packed nothing with him, not even a razor. He took only a few lire notes from his pocket and left the rest on the desk. Satisfied, he went to the bed and looked down at his wife. He drew the blanket over her; without his body curled around hers, she might be chilled, even in this warm room. With his finger he touched her hair, her cheek, her breast, her belly, marveling at her softness. He longed to touch the turned-up elfin tip of her eye, but he was afraid to wake her.

  At last he turned and left the room, not daring to look back.

  Outside the window, the moon disappeared below the horizon.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Midsummer’s Eve, 1891

  Alexandra Burke leaned back against her husband’s chest and tossed her sister a self-satisfied smirk. “How disappointing you haven’t got any serving outfits that fit me this year.”

  “There’s always next year,” said Mr. Burke, drawing his hand rather suggestively to where his wife’s chest strained the boundaries of both propriety and possibility, to say nothing of the seams of her once-demure yellow gown. His other hand remained atop her belly, which was itself large enough to apply for independent statehood.

  Alexandra patted his fingers. “With luck, you shall put me in this condition every midsummer, just to annoy Abigail and her schemes. Oof!” She grimaced and put her hand on her other side. “On the other hand, perhaps one child is more than sufficient.”

  “I hope for your sake there’s more than one baby in there,” said Abigail, “or else we shall have to send out for a much larger cradle.” She set her tray of stuffed olives on the table. “There you are, sister dear. Shall I bring another platter for your husband?”

  “For my husband? Don’t be ridiculous.” Alexandra reached for an olive and popped it expertly into her mouth. “I’m more than capable of eating two platters of Morini’s stuffed olives without Finn’s assistance. Look here, Penhallow!” She slapped Lord Roland’s hand as it attempted an olive from across the table. “If you want olives, send for your own wife.”

  “But she’s off serving everybody else,” said Lord Roland, with the long face of a man accustomed to having his wife’s ministrations entirely to himself.

  “Shall I find her for you, Papa?” Philip swiped a pair of olives from the tray and squirmed off the bench.

  “Splendid idea!” Roland called after the boy, as he disappeared into the crowd of villagers. “And I recommend you start by taking a running lap or two around the castle itself, just to be certain she’s not off hiding in a corner somewhere.” He turned back to the others. “Helps them go right to sleep,” he explained knowingly.

  “I shall keep that in mind,” said Burke.

  Abigail picked up the empty tray and wove her way back to the kitchen, nearly colliding with Lilibet on her way out. “Philip is looking for you,” she said. “Though he may not find you straightaway. Roland’s sent him running around the castle.”

  “Oh, that boy. If Roland told him to build a ladder to the moon, he’d do it.”

  “I daresay he’s only happy to have a real father at last,” said Abigail.

  Lilib
et’s face softened. “Yes, of course. Oh, Abigail . . .”

  “I must be off. They’re frightfully busy in the kitchen.”

  Abigail swept into the kitchen, where Morini stood smiling, humming to herself as she arranged a plate of antipasti. “Morini,” said Abigail, squinting, “is that a locket about your neck?”

  Morini put her hand to the hollow of her throat and smiled. “Is nothing, Signora Duchessa. Is a trinket.”

  “A trinket from whom?” Abigail leaned in to peer. The locket was small and golden, with some sort of vine motif etched on the case.

  “From nobody, signora.”

  “It’s from Giacomo, isn’t it? I knew it! You’ve mended fences at last, have you? That’s a lovely locket.”

  “Si, signora. Is having much meaning. Is the same locket . . .” Morini stilled her active hands and glanced out the window with a wistful smile.

  “The same locket . . . ?” Abigail prodded.

  Morini drew a deep breath and turned back to Abigail. “Is the same locket Giacomo give me, many years ago. Is the locket I give him back, many years ago, when the sadness come, and he is so much angry. Now he give it back.”

  Abigail raised one eyebrow. Undoubtedly there was rather more to the story than that. “I shall have it all out of you, you know,” she said, hoisting a tray.

  Morini laughed and returned to her antipasti. “I am expecting you, signora.”

  Abigail made her way back into the courtyard. The musicians were tuning up already, the moon was rising. For a moment, the strength left Abigail’s body. She leaned against the wall, holding her tray, looking out across the courtyard to where the terraces dropped away down the hillside. A gentle blue light filled the air, the arrival of dusk. Someone was lighting the torches, and the faint scent of smoke drifted to her nose.

  The crowd parted, and there under the torches sat Alexandra and Finn. His arm was still wrapped around her, and the flames lit his ginger hair into gold. He said something in Alexandra’s ear, and she laughed and looked up at him with adoration.

  Across the table from them, Lilibet had paused near her husband, stretching one shapely arm to snatch a drink from his glass of wine. Roland caught her wrist in mock outrage, and she bent down and kissed him on the lips, distracting him just enough to free her hand and dart away, laughing, with the wine. He rose to run after her, and Abigail lost them among the throng.

  I am so happy for them, Abigail told herself, deep in her aching throat.

  So happy.

  She straightened from the wall and turned her head to wipe her eyes on her shoulder. There was no use in self-pity. She herself had proposed this purgatory; she must bear it without flinching.

  She had endured eleven months without Wallingford, eleven months without his dry laugh and his warm body, his bluster and his humor, his rigid strength and his unexpected tenderness. While the others had laughed and loved, throughout the cold Tuscan winter and the blossoming spring, she had waited and prayed. She could endure one more month, four little weeks. He would come back to her then. Surely, in the heat of July, he would return.

  She must keep her faith and trust. She must believe in him.

  She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. A torch flickered behind her, and in the next instant, a pair of arms reached around hers and plucked the tray from her hands.

  “This looks altogether too heavy for such a delicate little fairy as Your Grace, the Duchess of Wallingford.”

  Abigail’s legs gave way. She closed her eyes.

  “Good God! You’re back!” someone said, and the tray was lifted away, and the arms wrapped around her so tightly she couldn’t breathe.

  “He’s back!” It was Philip’s voice, raised with excitement, running past her legs. “He’s back, everybody! I helped him put his horse in the stable.”

  “You’re back,” she whispered, eyes still closed. Her back rested against his chest, his solid, impervious Wallingford chest.

  “I’m back.”

  “There you are, old chap! Thought you were still tramping about Outer Mongolia,” said Finn, and a shudder went through them both as Wallingford’s back was delivered a hearty slap.

  “So I was,” said Wallingford, in a rumble against her spine. “But I got fed up, decided enough was enough, and came home to make love to my wife.”

  “Very sensible,” said Alexandra, and Abigail opened her eyes at last.

  “Good God!” exclaimed Wallingford. “Look at you, Alexandra! How the devil do you get her upstairs at night, Burke?”

  Roland’s voice: “Look here, my prodigal brother, I don’t mean to point out the obvious, but have you perhaps noticed your wife is turning rather blue?”

  Instantly Wallingford’s arms loosened, and everybody began talking and laughing at once. Abigail found herself half dragged, half carried to one of the trestle tables, and settled on a bench in the crook of Wallingford’s arm. Lord Roland swept up the tray of food. “I’ll play serving maid tonight,” he said gallantly.

  Wallingford was plied with food and drink, which he ate with one hand, keeping the other arm firmly around Abigail while he answered a volley of rapid-fire questions from young Philip, who had popped up on the opposite knee. Yes, he had drunk the fermented mare’s milk; no, it had not made him sick. Yes, he had helped with the Ukrainian harvest, and yes, he had ridden Lucifer most of the way, except when offered rides in friendly hay carts. No, he had not climbed the Himalaya Mountains, but he had seen a tiger.

  “A real tiger?” Philip asked in awe.

  “Yes, a real one,” said Wallingford, “though thankfully an elderly one, who was quite as happy to let me go about my business as I was to let him.”

  “You should have written to let me know you were coming,” Abigail said quietly, near his ear, when Philip at last slipped off his knee. She still couldn’t look at his face.

  “I couldn’t stop to write. I had to see you, to speak to you, not to write words on a page. Look at me, Abigail.”

  “I can’t. I shall lose control altogether.”

  “Now then,” he said gently, taking her chin in his fingers, “that’s not the Abigail I know.”

  He turned her face toward him, and there he was: hair a little shorter, navy eyes glowing in the torchlight, stubble dusting his square jaw, thick eyebrows narrowed in concentration. He smelled of dust and horses, of smoke and perspiration. She wanted to lie against his bare skin and drink him in.

  “Come upstairs,” she said.

  “With all my heart.” He stood up and held out his hand. “For one thing, I believe I hear that blasted tuba starting up.”

  She threaded him back through the crowd. The door stood ajar, allowing a draft from the kitchen, fragrant with baking cakes. Wallingford’s hand curled warm and invincible around hers.

  The corridor was empty. They turned the corner into the great hall, where Wallingford pressed her up against the wall and kissed her without mercy.

  “Oh,” she said, gasping for air, “oh, God, I’ve missed you so! Every minute you were gone. Every second.” She took his face in her hands and stroked it with her thumbs. “Is it you? Is it really you?”

  “Of course it’s me, dash it. I hope you haven’t taken to kissing dark-haired strangers in hallways as a matter of habit.”

  She laughed. “It is you.”

  “It is me.” He kissed her again, his hands at her waist. “Your faithful husband, Abigail, in thought and deed. I swear it.”

  “I never doubted you.”

  “Liar.”

  She laughed. She could not stop stroking him, could not stop running her thumbs along the high arc of his cheekbones, rubbing the short silk of his hair at the back of his neck. He was real. He was here. “Though I wasn’t expecting you for another month.”

  “Well, I was going to stay the full year, just to prove I could. And then I thought, why the devil? I’d done what I meant to do. Why spend another month away from you?”

  “I’m glad you came back.�
�� She slid her hands down his arms and grasped his fingers. “Come. I’ve something to show you.”

  “The sooner the better,” he growled.

  Abigail led him up the great staircase, past the women’s rooms, through the passage into the west wing.

  “We’re going to my room?” he asked.

  “Yes. Only it’s not your room any longer.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  She pushed open the door and led him in.

  “Oh, God.”

  Wallingford went still, his feet rooted to the floor. Abigail stood next to him, holding his hand, letting him take it all in: the soft furnishings, the clothes laid out on the drying rack, the two cradles sitting side by side.

  The waves of noise radiating outward from one of them.

  A woman rose up from the corner. “You are in the perfect time. Someone is hungry.”

  Abigail gave Wallingford’s stricken hand a tug. When he didn’t budge, she went forward by herself. “Look, I’ve brought Papa,” she said.

  “Two of them?” he gasped out. He put his hand on the wall.

  “Don’t worry. Only one of them is yours.”

  “What?”

  “No, no. I mean Lilibet and Roland had a baby, too. A little girl. Poor Philip, he was so hoping for a brother.”

  Wallingford took a step forward, and another, until he stood next to her, looking over the cradles: at the cherubic infant fast asleep in one, golden curls catching the light in a halo; and the squalling little black-haired baby occupying the other, hands fisted and legs kicking.

  Wallingford looked back and forth, and a deep sigh heaved from his chest. “Let me guess which one is ours.”

  Abigail lifted out the crying child, clucking and soothing. “He’s only hungry. And he’s four months younger, which makes a difference. There, now, my love.” She put him up against her shoulder and turned her head to inhale the sweet baby scent of his hair.

  “He?” Wallingford whispered.

  “I named him Arthur.”

  “Why the devil did you do that?”

  “Would you stop scowling at him, please? He’s your son. He’s very sensitive.”