The Bride Wore Scarlet
Page 35
Mr. MacLachlan escorted her down the front steps as if she were a fragile flower, and tucked her carefully into a barouche so elegant half the denizens of the square seemed to be leaning out their windows to gawk at it. Then Mr. MacLachlan waved good-bye, climbed inside, and ordered his coachman to set off.
Anaïs stood on the top step, her hand in Geoff’s, as his parents circled the square.
“Geoff,” she said quietly, as the barouche disappeared, “where were you born?”
“Rome,” he said, following her in and closing the door. “Or near it. A place called Lazio. Do you know it?”
Anaïs stared up at him, her brow furrowed. “Yes, but Lazio is a province, Geoff,” she said. “It is quite large.”
“And beautiful, I’m told, though I don’t remember it,” he said, strolling back into the withdrawing room, to the wine they had scarcely had time to drink. “The next year, I believe, we were off to Campania. And from there to Greece. As I said, Bessett was a scholar of ancient civilizations. But when I was born, he was in Lazio digging up ruins near some lake north of Rome. I forget the name.”
Anaïs took the glass he pressed into her hand. “Etruscan ruins, by any chance?”
He shrugged. “It’s quite likely,” he answered. “But I never really shared his passion for old civilizations. Bessett was undeniably a brilliant man, but I wasn’t surprised, frankly, when I learned he was not my father.”
“Geoff,” she said excitedly, “which village?”
He looked up from the glass he was refilling at the sideboard. “Which village what?”
“Which village were you born in?”
He set down the wine bottle with a thunk! and furrowed his brow. “Let me think,” he muttered. “It had a charming name . . . Piggly-Wiggly-something, Mamma called it.”
“Pitigliano?” she said breathlessly, sitting down on the sofa.
Clarity dawned over his handsome face. “Yes, that’s it.” He joined her, settling sideways beside her. “Pitigliano. A small place, but some midwives had come from Rome—nuns, I think—to train a couple of local women. It wasn’t far from Bessett’s lake, Mamma said, so he took a house there for her confinement.”
“Dio mio!” Anaïs whispered, setting her glass down a little awkwardly on the tea table.
Geoff leaned into her and kissed the tip of her nose. “What? Does it matter? I told you I spent my childhood abroad.”
She turned to face him, eyes wide. “But Geoff, this is amazing!”
“Amazing?” He crooked his head to better look at her. “In what way?”
“Well, Lord Bessett might have dug up the whole of Lazio for all I know,” she answered. “But I do know this—Pitigliano is in Tuscany.”
He looked at her curiously. “Are you quite sure?”
“Well . . . yes.” Anaïs put one hand over her heart. “It is near the border, but so far as I know, it has always been a part of the Duchy of Tuscany.”
“Well, there you go.” Geoff flashed his familiar sardonic grin, and raised his glass. “Yet another interesting tidbit about me that even I did not know—albeit a trifle less shocking than my paternity.”
But Anaïs had fallen back against the sofa, speechless. Her gaze had fallen to his red waistcoat, where a little white dot of apple blossom still clung tenaciously to the silk.
He set his glass away, and pulled her close against him. “Anaïs, what?”
“Le Re di Dischi,” she muttered to herself, “in a coat of scarlet. Geoff, you will never, ever believe this . . .”
He slid his warm, long-fingered hand—his beautiful artist’s hand—around the turn of her face, heating Anaïs all the way through to the pit of stomach. “No, I won’t believe it, my love,” he whispered, his gaze fixed to hers, “especially if you don’t finish the sentence. Honestly, you’ve gone a little pale. Have I said something wrong?”
She lifted her gaze from his waistcoat. “No, no, it’s just that you are The One,” she said. “All along . . . you have been The One.”
At that, Geoff threw back his head and laughed, his blue eyes alight with merriment. “Oh, Anaïs, I have always known that,” he said to her for the second time. “I just wasn’t sure you did.”
And so she kissed him, her handsome Tuscan prince.
Her handsome, bronze-haired, blue-eyed Tuscan prince . . .
Coming Soon
The Bride Wore Pearls
The next book in
Liz Carlyle’s fantastic series
Available 2012
From Avon Books
About the Author
A lifelong Anglophile, LIZ CARLYLE cut her teeth reading gothic novels under the bedcovers by flashlight. She is the author of seventeen historical romances, including several New York Times bestsellers. Liz travels incessantly, ever in search of the perfect setting for her next book. Along with her genuine romance-hero husband and four very fine felines, she makes her home in North Carolina.
You can contact her via her website at www.lizcarlyle.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
By Liz Carlyle
The Bride Wore Scarlet
One Touch of Scandal
Coming Soon
The Bride Wore Pearls
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE BRIDE WORE SCARLET. Copyright © 2011 by Susan Woodhouse. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780062079190
FIRST EDITION
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (P.O. Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au/ebooks
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com