by Juliana Gray
“I beg your pardon. I’ve not the slightest wish of intruding on your work. I only wished to deliver your post.” She thrust the bundle forward.
“My post?” he repeated, staring at her hands.
“Your post. A letter and the Times. Which properly belongs to Wallingford, I believe, but I thought I’d bring it along and let you have the first go.” She paused and smiled. “Aren’t you going to take it?”
“Yes, of course.” He took the papers from her, with care to avoid the brush of her fingers, and scanned them mechanically.
“There’s an item on the front page that might interest you,” she offered, after a second or two. “About a public automobile trial in Paris.”
He looked back at her, feeling rather stupid. “Really? I shall have to take a look. Thank you.”
She nodded at the paper. “A chap named De Dion. Have you heard of him?”
“Yes, yes. I daresay he’ll be in Rome in July, with the others.”
“His ideas seem most revolutionary. What do you think of them?”
He blinked in astonishment. “I beg your pardon?”
“With the boiler mounted on the front. I believe he was clocked at nearly sixty kilometers an hour. Does your vehicle have a steam engine?”
Finn felt his mouth drop open.
“I think steam power holds a great deal of promise, don’t you? Though I should think it more useful for speed trials than for general use. So unreliable, and the danger of explosion, of course.” Her voice went on, perfectly smooth and melodious, as if they were discussing the weather instead of the vanguard of automotive progress. She raised her hand to dismiss the danger of catastrophic boiler explosion with an elegant flick of her fingers.
“Yes, of course,” Finn found himself mumbling. “I prefer an electric motor, myself.”
“An electric motor!” A bright glow came to life in her eyes, which looked past him to rest longingly, almost lovingly, on his automobile. “How perfectly clever of you! I’m an advocate of electric engines, myself. Such a great deal cleaner and more quiet. The trouble’s the power, of course. How fast is yours able to manage?”
“I haven’t . . . quite . . . that is . . .” Finn took in a long steadying breath. “Lady Morley, this is all rather unexpected. I’d no idea you were a student of automotive engines.”
“I suppose you think women incapable of mechanical inclination?”
“No,” he said, having enough wits about him to know the proper answer to that question. “Not incapable at all. Only perhaps . . .”
“Perhaps?”
“Perhaps . . . less inclined to make a study of it.”
She smiled widely. “Oh, I’m fascinated by motor-cars. The wave of the future, I’m sure.” She took a bold step toward the machine and placed her hand upon the smooth metal of the carriage frame. “Tell me about yours.”
“Lady Morley, I really haven’t the time. I’m working on something rather particular, at the moment . . .”
She looked up, with a glance Finn might have called flirtatious. “Oh, be as brief as you like. As I said, I’m fascinated. Every little tidbit is of interest to me.” Her body, supple and feminine, leaned toward the machine. She was wearing a simple pale blue frock, the sort of thing a lady might put on for a summer picnic, fitted tightly at the bodice only to fall in luxurious swags about the ripe curve of her hip. Finn closed his eyes, allowing himself to imagine for just an instant that his hand rested upon that hip, the warm flesh beneath those layers of clothing fitting his palm exactly.
“An electric motor,” he said hoarsely, opening his eyes, “has a great many advantages over steam and internal combustion. I’m convinced I can overcome the problems of speed and reliability. I’ve rather a new take on the matter of the battery . . .”
“Really?” she pressed, when his voice trailed off. “What sort of take?”
“Look, I haven’t the time to explain at the moment. Perhaps we can discuss it at dinner.”
“Ah. But you never discuss anything at dinner, Mr. Burke. Your mouth remains resolutely closed.” She rested her eyes on the mouth in question.
“I’ve a great deal on my mind at dinner.” He made a concerted effort not to rest his eyes on the great deal in question; namely, Lady Morley’s right breast, which was presently and disappointingly clothed with a respectable abundance of blue linen.
“I daresay. You probably don’t think me worth talking to, do you? A mere frivolous aristocrat. Shallow and vain and all that. And you’re quite right, of course.” She turned to the motor-car and ran her hand along the frame. “It’s beautiful, this machine of yours. You must be immensely proud of it. Of yourself.” Her fingers idled in the seam of the doorframe, long, mobile fingers, the nails short and rounded. She continued, in a murmur: “I’ve always wondered what it must be like to have a brain like yours, so useful and serious. So . . . oh, I don’t know. All encompassing, I suppose.”
Finn’s all-encompassing brain couldn’t seem to produce anything to say to that. A part of him seemed to detach from himself, watching him watching her, a lanky oil-streaked giant transfixed by the play of sunlight in a lady’s chestnut hair, by the way it caught the red brown tendrils that had come loose from her chignon to curl against the creamy skin of her neck. He regarded that lust-wracked man with pitying scorn. Here’s what comes of giving up women, he told the poor speechless fellow, shaking his head. You only end up panting with longing for the first one who crosses your path.
“From whom is your letter?” she was asking, still facing the motor.
“What’s that?”
“Your letter.” She turned at last. “I couldn’t help noticing the handwriting was distinctly feminine. An admirer of yours, I presume?”
He looked down at his hands, which held the newspaper and letter together in a crushing grip. He unwrapped his fingers from around them and straightened the envelope. “From my mother,” he said, running his thumb along the delicate black ink.
“Oh! Your mother!” A laugh drifted up from her throat. She took a step forward, craning her neck at the letter. “Far less thrilling, then. Where does your mother live?”
“In Richmond.”
“How lovely. Do you visit her often?”
“As often as I can.” He tossed the letter and the envelope on the table and folded his arms, not sure what to do with himself, great awkward rutting beast that he was, and desperately afraid she could read his thoughts. She was that sort of woman: altogether too perceptive, altogether too keen.
She made that throaty laughing sound again. “Well! I can see I’ve stayed quite beyond my welcome.”
“Not at all.”
“Oh yes. I can read the signs. You’re wishing most earnestly for me to take my frivolous self out of your workshop.” She moved closer and placed her hand on his arm, looking up into his eyes with searching intensity, the faint scent of lilies drifting from her warm skin to fill his brain. Her voice lowered. “Though I should very much like to stay and watch, for I’m so awfully curious about . . . oh!”
She whirled to the door, just as Finn’s stupefied ears picked up the same warning.
“Burke! Burke! Where are you? Burke, damn you for a reclusive damned . . .” An awestruck pause. “Good God!”
The Duke of Wallingford stood stock-still in the doorway, wearing a thunderous scowl and a fine coating of goose down.
SEVEN
Alexandra stared in wonder as the duke made a gasp like a scandalized matron. “Lady Morley!” he exclaimed, looking back and forth between her and Mr. Burke. Bits of goose down came loose from his hair to waft aimlessly across the shaft of sunlight from the doorway.
“Dear me.” Alexandra concentrated on the progress of one particularly drunken white feather, in an effort to gather her wits. “Did the goose win?”
Wallingford stabbed his right index finger in the direction of Mr. Burke’s broad, oil-spotted chest. “You! I might have expected Penhallow, but you!”
“Cal
m yourself, Wallingford,” said Mr. Burke, his voice reassuringly deep and firm, vibrating the air around them. “Lady Morley was only delivering the post. A letter from my mother.” He extended one long arm to the lamp table and produced the envelope.
“Delivering the post, was she?” Wallingford’s eyes, black and terrible, shifted back to Alexandra. “You always were a damned unprincipled schemer, Lady Morley. Seducing the poor sod in broad daylight!” He waved an illustrative arm to the broad daylight at his back.
“Of course not,” Alexandra snapped, lifting her hand to cover the madly throbbing pulse at her neck. “You and your filthy mind, Wallingford. The maids are all busy with cheese and whatnot . . .”
“Yes, about that cheese . . .” Mr. Burke began.
“. . . and so I took it upon myself to deliver the letter. I thought I was being neighborly.” With effort, she schooled her voice into the proper mixture of confidence and affront. In truth, she was badly rattled. She’d planned out the encounter with Burke with great care, as she descended one by one through the vine-tangled terraces on the way to the cottage. She would be calm, and a bit flirtatious. She would open the door for future visits. Nothing to be gained dishonorably, of course. No trickery, no seduction; she would only take what he might be encouraged to offer.
And then he’d looked at her from his great height, with his arms crossed atop his oily mechanic’s smock and his green eyes enveloping her with such terrible scrutiny, and her knees had gone so wobbly she’d had to lean against his machine to support herself. She’d felt stained, and venal, and yearning for some nameless and tantalizing thing that lay quite beyond her reach. The yearning stayed with her still, a sharp ache at the back of her throat.
Wallingford removed a feather from his tongue with great dignity. “Very well. You’ve delivered your damned post. Now off you go.”
“Look here, Wallingford,” Mr. Burke said sharply. “That’s quite enough. Lady Morley’s intentions were entirely honorable.”
“And yours, man?” Wallingford looked as outraged as a man covered in goose down could possibly manage.
As Alexandra watched, a smile crept about the corners of Mr. Burke’s mouth, lighting the whole of his face, and somehow the ache began to recede, and the first bubbles of laughter began to replace her bemusement.
“From the looks of it, old man, my intentions were far more honorable than yours,” said Mr. Burke. “Poor old goose. I do hope you were gentle.”
Wallingford’s face turned a livid red beneath the down, a sight Alexandra viewed with the deepest pleasure. “Yes, Your Grace. Do tell us about the goose. Unless the tale is too sordid for mixed company, in which case I shall be happy to eavesdrop from the other side of the door.”
“There was no goose involved, Lady Morley,” Wallingford growled. He raked a hand through his hair to loosen the feathers, and then watched with shock at the volume of goose down erupting into the air. His eyes snapped back to Alexandra. “It’s that damned sister of yours! Again!”
“What’s that? You’ve debauched my sister?”
“And again, you say?” added Mr. Burke. “Really, Wallingford, this is most irregular.”
The duke’s mouth opened and closed. “To hell with the pair of you!” he shouted, and wheeled about to stalk out of the workshop.
“Wait!” Alexandra called, laughing, running after him. “Wait! I demand to know the details!”
“The details are none of your bloody business!”
“Such language, Wallingford!”
He stopped and spun about and stabbed his finger at her. “Your sister is nothing more than a common hoyden, a damned mischievous . . .” He groped for a word.
“Sprite? Imp?” Alexandra supplied.
“Pixie?” suggested Mr. Burke.
“Shrew!” The word exploded from the duke’s chest with a fine shower of indignant goose down. His mouth worked furiously, attempting to form some additional epithet, but without success.
“Shall I ask poor Abigail about it, then?” said Alexandra kindly.
Wallingford’s face seemed almost to collapse on itself. “Do that,” he said, and turned around and stomped through the olive trees, away from the vineyards and the castle, toward the beckoning sparkle of the lake.
“I expect he’s headed for a bath,” Mr. Burke observed, his tall body close enough to brush Alexandra’s elbow.
“I should hope so.” She faced him. He was still smiling, and it was astonishing how that smile opened his face, illuminated his entire expression, illuminated the very air around them. If a genie were to descend upon them at that very moment and offer her a single wish, she thought wildly, she would wish to keep that smile on his lips forever.
But no genie descended, and a second or two later his face turned to hers and the smile began to fade. “I suppose we’ll hear all the details at dinner,” he said.
“I’ll have it all out of Abigail. I’m legendary at that.”
“Yes, I expect you are.” His arm moved, his hand lifted, and for a reckless instant she thought he might cup her face and kiss her. But he only brushed a stray white feather from her shoulder with his blunt-tipped fingers, and then stepped back to a more formal distance. The sunlight, cutting through the trees, turned his hair a fiery red gold.
“Mr. Burke,” she said, “I was quite serious, back in your workshop. I have an immense curiosity for machines such as yours. I hope . . . I don’t mean to intrude . . . I thought perhaps I might stop by, from time to time, and help you in your work.”
His brow descended. “Help me?”
“Surely you’ve need of an assistant, on occasion?” She swallowed heavily, awaiting his reply.
“I’ve always Giacomo to call on, I suppose. You needn’t bother.”
“It’s no bother, really. Or perhaps”—she raised a challenging eyebrow—“perhaps you’re concerned about our wager, and all that. I promise you I won’t consider it a breach. I’m quite honorable about such things. You can think of me as a fellow scholar. As a kind of female eunuch.”
He smiled, though not the same smile as before—a stiff smile, almost acerbic. “Oh, quite. A female eunuch. I don’t foresee any difficulties at all.”
“You needn’t be sarcastic. I was only offering to help.”
“It doesn’t matter if you call yourself a fellow scholar or a female eunuch. Our friends will be convinced otherwise, and I’ll be forced to pay the forfeit. Rather humiliating, you see, as I was the one who suggested it.” His smile seemed to grow a little more rueful, and Alexandra found herself beginning to smile back.
“I’ll be discreet,” she told him. “And if anyone discovers me, I’ll tell them it was my fault. That I was drawn irresistibly to you, and you were too much a gentleman to refuse me.”
He watched her with his rueful smile, and the birds began to speak into the silence, chattering through the small silver-green leaves of the olive trees. Alexandra felt her skin grow warm; whether it was from the noontime sun or the thoroughness of his expression, she did not know. When he spoke at last, his voice was cool and distant, and he was already turning to walk back to the cottage. “They’ll never believe that, of course,” he threw over his shoulder.
“Does that mean you’ll let me help you?” she called after him.
“I don’t suppose I can bloody well stop you,” he called back.
* * *
She found Abigail in the kitchen, sitting next to Signorina Morini and an enormous pile of small, pale beans.
“What the devil have you been doing to poor Wallingford?” she demanded, dropping into the empty chair across from them.
“Have you come to help us with the beans? That’s awfully sporting. You can put the discards in this pile.” Abigail pointed to a small hill of unpromising specimens, tiny and spotted and miserable next to their plump white cousins.
Alexandra folded her arms. “Abigail, darling. I’ve seen the fellow, and while I don’t particularly care how you managed to cover him in go
ose down, I do most passionately care about the retaliation he’s sure to bring down about our heads.”
Signorina Morini, her hands moving in a practiced blur amongst the beans, looked upward with a wise eye. “Tell me, signora, where it is you see the duke, with all his fine feathers?”
“He stopped by the . . .” Alexandra narrowed her eyes at the housekeeper and plucked a bean from the mountain before her. “At Mr. Burke’s workshop, whilst I delivered the post.”
Abigail clapped a hand over her mouth. “You were with Mr. Burke?”
“Only delivering the post.” Alexandra rolled the bean up and down the hard dark wood with her finger.
Abigail’s face turned back down to the beans, but not before Alexandra glimpsed a smug smile creasing her mouth. “And when exactly did you become Mr. Burke’s postman?”
“Only today.” Alexandra flicked the bean back into the pile. “You know I’m curious about his work. I wanted to have a look.”
“Oh, his work. Of course.”
“Look here,” Alexandra snapped, “I can’t conceive why everybody thinks a man and a woman can’t work sensibly together without the question of sexual interest. It’s . . . it’s barbarian. We are civilized people, quite able to deal with one another on a purely intellectual level . . .”
Signorina Morini began to hum to herself, a little smile playing about her lips.
“In any case,” Alexandra said, “we were talking about Wallingford and his goose down. At least I assume it’s goose down.”
“Oh, it’s goose down, right enough.” Abigail turned to Signorina Morini and addressed her in Italian, something that sounded like a question. The housekeeper shrugged her shoulders and replied, in rapid-fire syllables Alexandra could hardly distinguish.
“Stop that at once,” she said crossly. “What on earth are you talking about?”
Abigail turned to her sister, those delicately wrought features arranged into something like amusement. “Nothing at all. Only goose down. Look here, I’d love to tell you about my adventures this morning, but it’s a much more tedious tale than you think.”
