A Lady Never Lies

by Juliana Gray

  * * *

  For God’s sake, Penhallow. We’ve been waiting for hours,” drawled the Duke of Wallingford, setting down his cup. His eyebrows shot upward at the sight of Roland’s face. “What’s this, then? Seen a ghost?”

  “I believe I have,” Roland said. He tossed his hat on the table and swung his coat from his shoulders in a shower of droplets. “You’ll never guess the apparition I perceived outside, here of all the bloody godforsaken innyards of the world. Is that wine?”

  “The local swill,” the duke said, pouring from the pitcher into an empty cup. “I don’t make guesses, as a rule, but I’d venture your ghost has something to do with Lady Alexandra Morley. Am I right?”

  Roland slumped atop the chair opposite, his bones sinking gratefully into the sturdy frame. “Seen her, have you?”

  “Heard her. We were endeavoring to remain unnoticed.” Wallingford pushed the cup toward his brother. “Have a drink, old man. Food should be arriving shortly, God willing.”

  Phineas Burke leaned forward from his seat next to Wallingford. “She’s been arguing with the landlord this past quarter hour,” he said. “The most infernal din. They’ve gone upstairs to see the room.”

  “Mark my words,” Wallingford said, “we’ll be tossed out on our ears and forced to sleep in the commons.”

  “Surely not,” Roland said, drinking deep. “You’re the damned Duke of Wallingford. What the jolly use is it, being a duke, if you can’t keep a room at an inn?”

  “Mark my words,” Wallingford repeated darkly.

  Burke pressed his index finger into the worn wood before him. “For one thing, they’re women,” he said, “and for another, it’s Lady Morley. Carries all before her, the old dragon.”

  “Hardly old,” said Roland charitably. “I daresay she hasn’t seen thirty yet. Hullo, is that our dinner?”

  A girl wobbled toward them, homespun skirts twisting about her legs, bearing a large pewter tray filled with meat and thick country bread. A pretty girl, Roland thought idly, slanting her an assessing look. She caught his look and set down the tray with an awkward crash, just as the voice of Alexandra, Lady Morley erupted from the stairs, cutting through the buzzing din of the other travelers. “It isn’t at all acceptable, non possiblo, do you hear me? We are English, anglese. We can’t possibly . . . Oh! Your Grace!”

  “Mark my words,” muttered Wallingford. He threw down his napkin and rose. “Lady Morley,” he said. “Good evening. I trust you’re well.”

  Her ladyship stood on the stairs, tall and imperious, her chestnut hair pulled with unnatural neatness into a smart chignon at the nape of her neck. She’d been a handsome girl several years ago, before her marriage to the Marquess of Morley, and was now an even handsomer woman, all cheekbones and glittering brown eyes. She wasn’t exactly to Roland’s taste, with her strong, bold-featured face, but he could appreciate her, rather as one appreciated the classical statuary in one’s formal gardens, without precisely wanting to embrace it.

  “Darling Wallingford,” she said, continuing down the stairs toward them, her voice shifting effortlessly from commanding to cajoling, “you’re just the man I was hoping for. I can’t seem to make these Italian fellows understand that English ladies, however sturdy and liberal minded, simply cannot be expected to sleep in a room with strangers. Male strangers. Foreign male strangers. Don’t you agree, Your Grace?” She stopped in front of them.

  “Are there no rooms available upstairs, madam?”

  She shrugged beautifully, her tailored black shoulder making a practiced little arc through the air. “A small room, a very small room. Hardly large enough for Lady Somerton’s boy to sleep in, let alone the three of us.” Her gaze shifted to Roland and she started visibly, her entire body snapping backward. “Lord Roland!” she exclaimed. “I’d no idea! Have you . . . my cousin . . . Lady Somerton . . . good God!”

  Roland bowed affably. Why not? It seemed the thing to do. “I had the great honor of meeting her ladyship outside on the . . . the portico, a moment ago. And her charming son, of course.”

  A choking noise emerged from Lady Morley’s trim throat, as if a laugh were suppressing itself. “Charming! Yes, quite.” Her mouth opened and closed. She cleared her throat.

  Roland, watching her, felt his own shock begin to slide away, numbness replaced by awareness. You could not deny the reality of Lady Morley. She crackled with reality. And if Lady Morley were real, then . . .

  His nerves took up a strange and inauspicious tingling.

  It was true. He hadn’t dreamt it. Lilibet was here.

  Stop that, he told his nerves sternly, but it only made things worse. Only made things more real, only made Lilibet’s presence—the actual existence of her living body not ten yards away—more real. He had the disturbing premonition that he was about to do something rash.

  Lady Morley wrung her hands and looked back at the duke beseechingly. “Look here, Wallingford, I really must throw myself on your mercy. Surely you see our little dilemma. Your rooms are ever so much larger, palatial, really, and two of them! You can’t possibly, in all conscience . . .” Her voice drifted, turned upward. She returned to Roland. “My dear Penhallow. Think of poor Lilibet, sleeping in . . . in a chair, quite possibly . . . with all these strangers.”

  Burke, standing next to Roland with all the good cheer of a lion disturbed from his nap, cleared his throat with an ominous rumble. “Did it not, perhaps, occur to you, Lady Morley, to reserve rooms in advance?”

  Roland winced. Damn the fellow. Old scientific Burke was hardly the sort of man to endure arrogant young marchionesses with patience.

  Lady Morley’s cat-shaped eyes fastened on him in the famous Morley glare. “As a matter of fact, it did, Mr. . . .” She raised her eyebrows expressively. “I’m so terribly sorry, sir. I don’t quite believe I caught your name.”

  “I beg your pardon, Lady Morley,” said the Duke of Wallingford. “How remiss of me. I have the great honor to present to you—perhaps you may have come across his name, in your philosophical studies—Mr. Phineas Fitzwilliam Burke, of the Royal Society.”

  “Your servant, madam,” Mr. Burke said, with a slight inclination of his head.

  “Burke,” she said, and then her eyes widened an instant. “Phineas Burke. Of course. The Royal Society. Yes, of course. Everybody knows of Mr. Burke. I found . . . the Times, last month . . . your remarks on electrical . . . that new sort of . . .” She drew in a fortifying breath, and then smiled, warmly even. “That is to say, of course we reserved rooms. I sent the wire days ago, if memory serves. But we were delayed in Milan. The boy’s nursemaid took ill, you see, and I expect our message did not reach our host in time.” She sent a hard look in the landlord’s direction.

  “Look here.” Roland heard his own voice with horror. Here it was. The rash thing, unstoppable as one of Great-Aunt Julia’s obscene anecdotes at the dinner table. “Enough of this rubbish. We shouldn’t dream of causing any inconvenience to you and your friends, Lady Morley. Not for an instant. Should we, Wallingford?”

  “No, damn it,” the duke grunted, folding his arms.

  “Burke?”

  “Bloody hell,” muttered Burke, under his breath.

  “You see, Lady Morley? All quite willing and happy and so on. I daresay Burke can take the little room upstairs, as he’s such a tiresome, misanthropic old chap, and my brother and I shall be quite happy to . . .”—he swept his arm to take in the dark depths of the common room—“make ourselves comfortable downstairs. Will that suit?”

  Lady Morley clasped her elegant gloved hands together. “Darling Penhallow. I knew you’d oblige us. Thanks so awfully, my dear; you can’t imagine how thankful I am for your generosity.” She turned to the landlord. “Do you understand? Comprendo? You may remove His Grace’s luggage from the rooms upstairs and bring up our trunks at once. Ah! Cousin Lilibet! There you are at last. Have you sorted out the trunks?”

  Roland couldn’t help himself. He swiveled to the doorway, des
perate to see her, now that he’d recovered his wits; desperate for even a glimpse of her, without all the rain and darkness and bloody damned hats in the way. He wanted to know everything. Had she changed? Grown cynical and world-weary? Had her fresh-faced beauty faded under the blight of marriage to the legendarily dissolute Earl of Somerton?

  Did he wish that it had?

  She was kneeling by the door, unbuttoning her son’s coat. Typical of her, that she would make the boy comfortable first, the little martyr. She turned her head to answer her cousin, her voice as even and well-modulated as ever, despite the raspy edge Roland had noticed before. “Yes, they’ve all been unloaded. The fellow’s coming in the back.” She straightened and handed the boy his coat and began unbuttoning her own.

  Roland held his breath. Her gloved fingers found the buttons expertly and slid them through the holes, exposing inch after inch of a practical dark blue traveling suit with a high white collar, pristine and ladylike, her bosom (fuller now, or was that his imagination?) curving tidily beneath the perfect tailoring of her jacket.

  He felt a sharp poke in his ribs. “Keep your tongue in your mouth, you dog,” hissed his brother.

  The landlord hurried down the steps to assist her. She had that effect, Roland thought crossly. “I take the coat, milady,” he said, dipping obsequiously, folding the wet wool over his arm as if it were cloth of gold. “And the hat. The hat. Ah, mia donna, it is so wet. You come to the fire, you dry. Mia povera donna.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Grazie.” She allowed herself to be drawn to the fire, smoothing her dark hair with one hand, pulling young Philip with the other. The light gleamed gold against her pale skin, casting shadows beneath her cheekbones. She looked tired, Roland thought, taking an involuntary step in her direction before he remembered himself. Concern! For Lady Somerton! As if she couldn’t take perfectly good care of herself without him. She’d proven that well enough.

  Roland looked around and found that both Burke and Wallingford had resumed their seats, and he was standing there like the village idiot, staring after her ladyship’s decorously clothed backside.