by Juliana Gray
Darling Phineas, the letter read, I do desperately hope you are well, for I heard the most shocking things about Italian winters from the Colonel last night, who tells me that the annual mountain thaw . . .
Last night. His mother liked to convey her little facts that way, in clauses and conditions, so as not to embarrass her son with anything so vulgar as an outright admission. It seemed the Colonel was ascendant, at the moment, which was hardly surprising, considering the elegance of the diamond earbobs he’d bestowed on her at Christmas.
He went on, scanning most of it, not really wanting to parse the words for further meaning. As a boy, he’d paid as little attention as possible to the gentlemen progressing, one by one, each in his own pattern of ascent and plateau and inevitable descent, through his mother’s parlor and, presumably, beyond. He hadn’t understood until much later—embarrassingly later, really, for who wanted to think such things about his own mother?—that the parlor itself, and everything in it, and the kitchens and servants and food and clothing and school fees, were all paid for by this succession of gentlemen.
He might, indeed, have continued in this state of studied ignorance, had the unvarnished truth not been presented to his face, as might be expected, by another boy at Eton.
The young heir, as it happened, to the dukedom of Wallingford.
He’d split the boy’s lip, of course, and blackened his eye, and then gone on to become fast friends with him. And Wallingford had never again mentioned the shameful facts of Finn’s case. The two of them were, in the laws of schoolboys, square.
. . . and you know that I love you above everything, my dearest boy, and am so deeply and passionately proud of you. Do take the most scrupulous care of yourself, darling, and return home whole and victorious to your loving mama . . .
Return home. How long had it been since he’d presented himself at his mother’s door? He’d missed his annual Christmas visit this year, his train having been thankfully snowbound in the Alps for a week, and he’d felt so guilty at his relief at the sight of the enormous white drifts covering the tracks ahead that he’d cabled her a particularly affectionate Christmas message: AT SPITTAL FROM 20TH STOP TRAIN BURIED IN SNOW STOP FURTHER STORM EXPECTED TONIGHT MAKING CHRISTMAS ARRIVAL IMPOSSIBLE STOP EXPECT PRESENCE SHALL NOT BE MISSED AMONG YOUR MANY ADMIRERS STOP ALL BEST LOVE AND WISHES FOR HAPPY CHRISTMAS
He’d made arrangements for a mink-lined dressing robe to be wrapped and delivered to her house in Richmond (his first and more practical idea—a patented dry-earth closet for the disposal of bodily waste, far more sanitary than the modern water closet—had been discarded after mature consideration) and it had proven a splendid success. Gifts of discreet luxury were always welcome to Marianne Burke.
They’d met for tea at Fortnum’s in London a few weeks later, which had proceeded exactly as it always did. Marianne had appeared in an elegant rose silk tea dress, with a modest bustle and an equally modest necklace lying atop her unpowdered bosom. Her hair was gathered on her nape in a fiery ginger knot. She had held her teacup in one gloved hand and a cucumber sandwich in another, the last finger of each hand extended in a gentle curl, and had gone on at length about herself and her admirers and their gifts to her, Finn making noises of approval and dismay at the appropriate intervals. A final question about his doings just as he was helping her into her fox-trimmed coat, which he’d answered in the most general terms possible, and then Finn had kissed her moist cheek and gone away with the relieved satisfaction of having discharged his duty.
What would Lady Morley think of Marianne Burke?
Finn straightened from the doorjamb, as if stung by the disloyal thought, by the possibility it suggested. What did it matter? What did it matter what Lady Morley thought about anything? She’d kissed him without thought, after the high drama of the Penhallow menace, out of relief and gratefulness and perhaps a touch of loneliness. But it wouldn’t happen again. She was unlikely to repeat such an unguarded action, unlikely even to visit the cottage again.
When the sun slipped down behind the rounded tips of the mountain to the west, he would return to the castle for dinner. Lady Morley would sit primly in her chair, avoiding his gaze, and he would avoid hers with equal perseverance. They would eat roasted lamb and small white beans and stewed artichokes, served by a pair of stern-faced young maids, and Lady Morley’s sister would discuss the merits of sheep and Socrates, and Wallingford would thunder on about the unsuitability of classical languages for the female mind, and that would be that.
He ran both hands through his hair, until the short, fine strands stood up in shock like an animal’s pelt. With renewed determination he walked back to his worktable and sat down on the chair, the wood hard and unforgiving beneath his legs, and finished reassembling his new battery design.
* * *
But when Finn presented himself at the dining room at the usual hour, neatly scrubbed, having gone to the extraordinary trouble of both combing his hair and changing his shirt, he found it deserted.
“Hullo!” he called out, straightening his collar.
No answer.
Alarm filled Finn’s belly, an easy thing for alarm to do, because the belly in question was otherwise quite empty. He’d had nothing but tea and honey since breakfast. The prospect of now losing dinner quite eclipsed all other concerns, from the reassembly of his automobile to his dread of begging Lady Morley to pass the sex when he really meant to ask for the salt.
He started off immediately in the direction of the kitchens.
After a false start down a dark corridor smelling ominously of ripening cheese, Finn glimpsed an open hearth through a doorway and plunged through, though not before smacking his forehead on the wooden frame.
“Bloody hell,” he grunted, rubbing his skull.
“Signore!” A woman straightened up from the hearth, wiping her hands on her apron.
“No, no. As you were.” He glanced at his fingers. No blood, at least. The last thing his forehead needed was another scar from a height-related accident.
She looked at him quizzically. Her hands still worked away at her apron. “Che cosa, signore?”
He switched to Italian. “Your pardon, signorina. The dining room is empty. Am I late for dinner?”
Her pretty young hands went to her cheeks. “Oh, signore! We had the luncheon today, for the priest, for the Easter blessing. It is all finished now. You did not come for the luncheon?”
“No.” His brain swirled with the dull stench of disappointment. That, or he had just concussed himself. “Nobody told me, I fear. Is anything left over?”
“Yes, certainly, signore. We have lamb and bread and other things . . .” She turned to the larder and drew open the door and began pulling objects out from the shelves. “You are very hungry, no?”
“Very hungry.” He dropped himself into an empty chair at the large wooden table in the center of the room.
“Oh, be careful!” she exclaimed, and then checked herself.
“Be careful?”
“The chair, signore.” She set a plate down on the table before him. “It has . . . it has a weak leg.”
He tested it, rocking back and forth. “It seems strong,” he said, “if a little small.”
“The chair is not small, signore.” She flashed him a dimple. “It is you who are so tall, Signore . . . ?” The word trailed expectantly.
“Burke,” he supplied.
“Signore Burke.” She took a knife and began to slice a half loaf of crusty bread. Finn’s eyes followed the movement, watching the tiny flakes of crust fly away from the blade, the soft white bread fall like a pillow to the tabletop. The scent wafted toward him, rich and yeasty. He swallowed.
The knife stopped slicing.
He looked up in agonized bewilderment. She was frowning, as if concentrating her mind on some important matter, her head cocked slightly to one side. “Signore Burke,” she repeated.
“Signorina?” He reached one hand across the table and snatched a slice of bread.
&n
bsp; “Oh, but . . .” she began, and then sighed. “Signore Burke, I remember I have a message for you, from Signora Morley.”
His hand, conveying a large ripped hunk of bread to his mouth, froze on his lips. “From Lady Morley?” he repeated.
“Yes, Signore Burke. She asks . . . will you meet her . . . tonight at ten o’clock . . .” Her lips pursed disapprovingly.
“Go on,” Finn whispered.
“Tonight at ten o’clock in the peach orchard.” She threw up her hands and turned back to the larder. “That is all, do you hear me? All!”
“No, no,” Finn said, still whispering. “That is sufficient. Grazie.” He put the bread back to his mouth and chewed in mechanical movements, watching her bring out the remains of a leg of lamb and fling it onto the table with a distinct air of censure. He swallowed his mouthful of bread and cleared his throat. “It is likely something to do with the automobile,” he said. “Lady Morley is my assistant.”
She looked upward at him through her eyelashes.
Finn cleared his throat and summoned his fragile command of Italian. “Tomorrow we go to perform a delicate operation, to put the engine back together again with her new battery. I think Lady Morley has a few final questions. Ah, is that your lamb? It looks excellent.”
“It is excellent lamb. Tender and new and innocent as Our Lady.” She turned away and marched to the hearth, where two large cauldrons shot steam into the air in a mighty boil. With one sturdy arm she lifted each pot from the fire and attached it to a wooden yoke, which she hoisted onto her shoulders as if it were nothing.
Finn half rose from his chair, astonished. “Can I help you, signorina?”
The look she tossed him was of purest scorn. “Is milady’s bath,” she said, and apparently no further explanation was necessary, because she marched from the room without another word, leaving Finn to his bread and his innocent lamb and his nighttime assignations.
TWELVE
The approaching footsteps startled Finn out of a tantalizing reverie involving Lady Morley’s lace-edged corset.
He’d been trying to focus his mind on his automobile, as he sat there on the damp grass, propped up against the slim trunk of a peach tree laden with blossoms. After all, he had a complicated operation to perform the next morning, reattaching the improved battery to the motor and installing it back in the chassis. If he did it well, he might even be able to fit in a trial before sundown. That, indeed, was something to look forward to. That, indeed, was exciting. A triumph.
His brain, however, was uninterested. His brain kept turning to Alexandra, to her mouth and hair and breasts, to the silken skin of her neck under his lips. To her underclothing, and how he would remove each piece, slowly, revealing first the slope of her bosom, and then the curves of her breasts, and then her . . .
Snap, snap went the footsteps on the fallen twigs, and Finn jumped up, searching through the trees for the sight of a pale dress bobbing against the darkness.
Awfully heavy tread for a woman, he reflected, placing one hand on the rough bark of the trunk.
Then he dove behind it.
“Still, still, still,” said a masculine voice. “Pill? Kill? Oh, God, no. Mill? Hang it all. Shall have to try something else.”
Finn pressed his forehead into the tree trunk, hard, until the ridges bit sharply into his skin.
Lord Roland’s voice came louder, drifting between the trees. “. . . the memory is with me still . . . no, the memory is with me yet. The memory is with me yet, there’s the ticket. The memory is with me yet, and something something . . . shall forget? Or regret? And never shall my love regret? Oh yes. Very good.”
Very good? Was he mad?
Finn peered cautiously around the tree. Though the moon was nearly full, the profusion of leaves and peach blossoms swallowed its light, and he could only just make out the dark-coated figure of Lord Roland Penhallow as he settled himself against a tree trunk ten or twelve yards away, paper in hand, face turned dreamily into the blossoms above.
“The memory is with me yet, and never shall my love regret,” murmured his lordship.
Finn had never gone in much for poetry as a youth. Still less as an adult, come to think of it. But he recalled hearing, at some point, amid the ale-soaked midnight conversations of his Cambridge years, that young Penhallow was reckoned a dab hand at a verse. Colossal promise, it was said. Perhaps another Byron, or that mad chap with the sister.
This was not Byron. This was some of the most appalling rot Phineas Burke had ever encountered.
Would Lady Morley hear him? Would it stop her in time? Finn slid his pocket watch free and squinted at the face, tilted it this way and that, trying to catch the meager light. Five minutes past ten, it looked like. Where was she? Perhaps he could sneak away and warn her, without alerting Penhallow. A risky move, though.
Lord Roland glanced back down at his paper and straightened. “Excellent. From the beginning, then.”
Finn turned his forehead back into the tree and began to pound, softly, in time with the meter of the poem. Was it a sonnet? Only fourteen lines in a sonnet. Five little iambs per line, five strikes of the old forehead against the tree. No, no. Wait. Something was quite wrong. Penhallow had only four iambs per line, which meant . . .
Snap, snap.
Finn bolted to attention. So did Lord Roland. He stuffed the paper inside his coat and scrambled behind the nearest tree.
The footsteps drew closer, slow and deliberate, striking firm earth and crisp twigs. A nightjar called out a warning through the darkness, low and trilling.
Hell and damnation. What was he to do? Reveal himself and expose their meeting to Lord Roland? Or allow her to walk away, thinking he’d played her false?
The footsteps stopped. Heavy footsteps again, Finn realized in shock. Which could only mean . . .
“I know you’re there,” growled the deep, impressive voice of the Duke of Wallingford, carrying through the orchard with enough force to make the tender young blossoms vibrate in fear. “You may as well come out.”
Not on your bloody life, Wallingford, Finn thought grimly. Not a chance in the world he’d confirm Wallingford’s suspicions, not until the last second, not until it was too late and Lady Morley had actually walked into full view and confessed. He concentrated every nerve on the effort to remain still, to let not one movement of his body catch the duke’s attention.
“I have your message,” Wallingford went on, his tone turning pleasant. “There’s no need to hide. No need for any more tricks.”
Finn’s mind raced. Message? What message? Had Lady Morley left him a note?
Or was it Penhallow’s note? Had Penhallow actually managed to defeat the inflexible virtue of Lady Somerton and arrange a tryst in the orchard?
He didn’t dare risk looking across at Lord Roland, hidden behind his own tree. He could only stand there, frozen, and pray that Lady Morley had been unavoidably detained by her sister’s account of the goat milking that evening.
“Now look here.” The duke’s voice gentled further, until it seemed almost coaxing. “You asked me to meet you tonight. Don’t be afraid, my brave girl.”
Brave girl.
Finn’s breath caught in his throat.
Unless, of course, the maid had made a mistake. Unless Lady Morley hadn’t intended to meet Phineas Burke in the orchard at ten o’clock at all.
Unless she’d set her sights on a duchy instead.
Snap, snap.
* * *
Alexandra stared, stupefied, at the Duke of Wallingford. The words what the devil? rose in her throat, but her vocal cords seemed unable to activate them.
“Lady Morley.” The duke ran his eyes down her pale figure and back up again to her face. He lingered on the headscarf, which still clung modestly to her hair. “This is charming indeed.”
She didn’t panic long. She never had, after all. A few seconds’ indulgence was all she ever allowed herself before practicality took over. Options flitted through her brain
, one by one, and in the end—that is, after a split second’s consideration—she decided to brazen it out. “Your Grace,” she said. “You’re looking well. Courting the moonlit shades for your studies, perhaps? Or a dalliance with a village girl?”
His face was deeply shadowed, the eyes mere black pits above the dark blur of his nose and mouth. “I might ask the same of you, Lady Morley,” he said, in a silky voice.
“Village girls are not in my preferred style.”
“Ah, more’s the pity.” The duke exhaled with regret. “You’re a lover of nature, then?”
She took a deep breath, filling her senses with the heady scent of peach blossom. “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.”
“Now why do I have trouble believing this charming tale?”
“Because you’ve a fiendish mind, I suppose,” she replied, tilting her chin. “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?”
“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.”
She made herself laugh. “That won’t do at all. 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,” she said, smiling into the darkness, “I should never be so indelicate as to call into question a man’s command of the truth . . .”
“I should very much hope not.” His tone was deadly.
“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?”
