“Of course,” she said, slipping her arms around his waist. “There’s never been anyone else.”
He intended only a light kiss, given the observers nearby, but the moment he tasted her, he was lost. His arms pulled her tight to his chest while his lips and tongue attempted to brand her in a way that no man would ever dare take her away. He would have made love to her right there by the stream if not for the cheering and yelling nearby. He broke the kiss and leaned his forehead on hers. “Is that a yes?”
“Did you think I’d answer in code?” She nibbled on his lower lip. “Yes,” she breathed. “Yes. A thousand times, yes. I love you.”
While he suspected that he had her heart, her spoken words nearly caused him to sink to his knees in gratitude. He kissed her lightly. “I love you too.”
He sought her hand and slipped the REGARD ring on her finger, so named for the first letters of the gemstones on the band, before she found another man who couldn’t resist her sweet charm. “This should keep everyone else at bay until I place a wedding band on your finger.”
She studied the six jewels. “Ashton, it’s too much. We’ll need to be frugal now that a baby is on the way.” She took his hand in hers. “I was so sorry to see that someone else stole your idea about the rifle scope. That would have been perfect—”
He laughed. “No one stole the idea.”
A furrow settled between her brows, calling for him to kiss it. “But the paper said C.B. Manufacturing—”
“I’m C.B. Manufacturing,” he said, slipping his finger beneath the ivory of her necklace. “It’s code for Cherry Blossom Manufacturing. I’ve been scarce these past weeks because I’ve been—”
He never got to finish. Her lips pressed against his. While he was aware of a great deal of cheering and soft pats on his back, he was focused entirely on the woman in his arms. The woman who had turned his life around, the woman who’d healed his relationship with his father, the woman who made it worth surviving a bullet. He’d come back to London after his time with the Rifles looking for purpose, and she’d given him so much more. Who would have thought a little code breaker could break open the gates of his heart?
• • •
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• Prologue •
THE DUKE OF WALLINGFORD WAS NOT AT HOME, said the butler, with an upward tilt of his chin.
“Nonsense,” said Finn. “We both know very well he’s at home. I left him here last night, in the sort of condition that would render impossible his departure by”—he flipped open the case of his battered gold pocket watch—“eight o’clock the following morning. Except, I suppose, in a coffin.”
The butler cleared his throat. “The Duke of Wallingford is not receiving.”
“Ah, that’s better. We deal so much better, Wallis, when we speak the truth to each other. Where might I find the old chap, then?” Finn looked past the butler’s head to the wide, high-ceilinged entrance hall beyond, with its floor of checkerboard marble and its profusion of acanthus-leaf plasterwork. Just the sort of entrance a duke’s London town house ought to sport, Finn supposed, which made him jolly well grateful (and not for the first time) that he wasn’t in line to a dukedom.
“Mr. Burke.” The butler straightened to his full height, which was not great in the best of circumstances, and certainly not when interposed against the tall, loose-limbed figure of Mr. Phineas Fitzwilliam Burke, R.S. “I am deeply aggrieved to discover that I have not, perhaps, quite made myself clear. His Grace, sir, is not receiving.”
“Oh, rot,” Finn said amiably. “He’ll receive me. Besides, we’ve a breakfast appointment, or hadn’t you been told? If you’ll excuse me . . .” He executed a cunning side step, agile, really, except that it ended in his chest bumping Wallis’s well-oiled forelock and his foot landing squarely on the butler’s equally well-oiled shoe.
To his credit, Wallis didn’t even wince. “I fear I have been misunderstood once more,” he said, voice quavering into the ceiling. His ancient breast strained outward against its natural concavity. “His Grace”—heave, gasp—“the Duke”—heave, gasp—“is not receiving.”
“Now look here, my good man,” Finn protested, attempting another dodge. “I realize breakfast appointments aren’t the usual thing in this house, but I assure you . . .”
“Bloody hell, Wallis!” The Duke of Wallingford’s voice roared down the profligate curve of the main staircase. “Let the poor fellow in the breakfast room, for God’s sake. I’ll be down in five minutes.”
Wallis narrowed his eyes and issued a faint sniff from his sharpened nose. “As you wish, Your Grace,” he said, and stepped to one side.
Finn removed each glove in a single decisive tug. “The trouble with you, Wallis, is that you’re a dreadful snob. We can’t all be lords, you see. The trade wouldn’t bear it.”
“Don’t harass my butler, Burke,” called the Duke.
Finn cast an eye up the stairs and then looked back down, not without sympathy, at Wallis’s defeated shoulders. He handed over his hat and gloves in a kind of conciliatory gesture. “I’ll show myself in, shall I?” he said, and strode across the entrance hall toward the breakfast room at the back of the house.
“Damned sodding ginger-haired scientist,” the butler muttered, just loudly enough for Finn to overhear. “No sodding respect.”
The Duke of Wallingford’s breakfast room was a remarkably pleasant spot, for a house without a presiding female. Spacious, south-facing, it overlooked the high-walled back garden at such an angle as to block the sight of the neighboring houses and create the misleading impression of having been transported to the countryside, or at least as far as Hampstead. The room’s only flaw was its unmistakable air of disuse. The Duke and his brother seldom arose before noon, the natural consequence of seldom retiring before dawn.
Not the case today, however, Finn observed, as he crossed the stately threshold. The sideboard overflowed with all the necessary elements of a proper English breakfast—kidneys, bacon, kippers, toast, eggs without number—and on the chair at the end of the table lay the shipwreck of Lord Roland Penhallow, the Duke’s younger brother.
“Good God, Penhallow,” Finn said, tossing his newspaper on a nearby chair. “To what do we owe the honor?”
“Haven’t a clue,” Lord Roland mumbled. “Told to make myself ready by eight sharp, or I should have my estates foreclosed. Though now that I recollect”—he rubbed his forehead meditatively—“I paid off those mortgages years ago.”
Finn moved to the sideboard and claimed a plate of bone china, so fine it was almost translucent. “Shabby of Wallingford. Still, it’s your own jolly fault, drinking yourself insensible. I’ve explained to the two of you on any number of occasions . . .”
“Sod yourself, you damned saint,” Lord Roland said. “You workaday scientists have no notion of what’s expected of idle aristocrats. I’m scarcely keeping up as it is.” He hid his beautiful face behind a cup of thick black coffee and drank in gulps.
“Then your luck rides high this morning, old man. I’ve brought the solution to your dilemma into this very room.” Finn folded his long frame into a shield-backed Hepplewhite chair, acquired in a fit of modernization several decades earlier by the present duke’s grandmother, and pointed his fork at yesterday’s evening edition of the Times on the cushion next to him. “Your salvation, m’lord, and your brother’s.”
Lord Roland stabbed at his kidneys. “And if I prefer damnation?”
“No one asked your preference,” barked the Duke of Wallingford, entering the room in a ruckus of booted hee
ls. “Nobody asked mine, to be perfectly honest. But here I am, Burke, your obedient servant. I trust you’re enjoying your breakfast?”
“Very well, thank you. I find a brisk morning walk sets one up perfectly for a substantial breakfast like this. Your kitchen is to be commended.”
“Sod yourself, Burke,” said Wallingford. He made his way to the sideboard, an impressive figure in his morning tweeds, tall and broad-shouldered, his hair unfashionably long and his chin unfashionably clean-shaven. Only the most familiar observer would detect the signs of last night’s revelry on his face: the trace of puffiness in his eyelids, the slackening about the corners of his mouth.
“You raise an interesting point,” said Finn, “and, in a roundabout way, sodding oneself may have some bearing on the proposal I bring to you this morning.”
Wallingford heaped an odd dozen or so kippers onto his plate and dropped the serving fork back into its dish with a significant crash. “I’m panting to hear it.”
“I’m damned if I don’t detect a note of sarcasm in your words, Your Grace. And yet you were more than curious last night. Curious enough, I’m compelled to point out, to arrange this morning meeting, at vast inconvenience to yourself and”—a glance at Lord Roland’s bowed head—“your suffering brother.”
“Last night I was blazing drunk.” Wallingford dropped himself into a chair at the head of the table. “This morning I’m in my proper senses.”
“Shall I cut to the point, then?”
“Do.” The single syllable echoed through the room.
Finn reached for his newspaper. “Gentlemen, have either of you two been to Italy?”
“Italy!” Wallingford barked out a laugh. “My good man, I daresay I bedded half the women in Venice whilst you were fiddling around with those damned gadgets in that laboratory of yours, making your sordid millions. What of it?”
Lord Roland raised his head into a shaft of morning sunlight. “Rot. You had that lovely little mistress, the Marquesa Whatsit. Charming gel, jealous as the devil. I should think less than half a dozen genuine notches in the old bedpost, and those only when the little bird was in her confinement.”
“Not mine,” the Duke said swiftly.
Lord Roland squinted one eye and touched his fingers, one by one, against his thumb. The sunlight formed an incongruous halo about his golden-brown head. “No. No, you’re right. Couldn’t have been yours. All the same,” he went on, looking at Finn, “he isn’t half such a devil as he makes out.”
“I should hope not,” said Finn. “God save us from an Italy populated by miniature Wallingfords. In any case, the Italy I have in mind for us lies at a far remove, a far remove indeed, from the sort of Italy with which I suspect you’re familiar.” He unfolded the pages of the newspaper, one by one, until he came to the item of interest. “Here,” he said, thrusting it toward Wallingford. “See what you make of that.”
Wallingford raised one heavy black eyebrow. “My good man. One of my most inflexible rules is the avoidance of all reading before luncheon.”
“Again, rot,” Lord Roland said, his spirits visibly reviving. He began cutting into his sausage. “Let’s have it, then, Burke. You’ve quite awakened my interest.”
Finn sighed deeply and cleared his throat. “An advertisement. English lords and ladies, and gentlemen of discerning taste—I expect that’s why you missed it, Wallingford—may take note of a singular opportunity to lease a most magnificent Castle and Surrounding Estate in the idyllic hills of Tuscany, the Land of Unending Sunshine.”
“Dear me,” said the Duke, “does the earth’s rotation fail to affect the fair fields of Tuscany? I am amazed.”
Lord Roland pointed his knife at the newspaper. “Not much chance of a proper sleep, without at least a few hours of darkness.”
“The Land of Unending Sunshine,” Finn continued, in a loud voice. “The Owner, a man of impeccable lineage, whose ancestors have kept the Castle safe against intrusion since the days of the Medici princes . . .”
“Look here,” Lord Roland said, with a thoughtful frown, “I thought all your Tuscan fortifications were in the nature of city-states, eh what? A single castle by itself . . .”
“It’s not meant to be a damned geography course,” Finn said in exasperation. “It’s an advertisement. Oh, blast. Now you’ve lost me. Impeccable lineage . . . Medici princes . . . Here we are. The Owner, et cetera, et cetera, is called away by urgent business, and offers a year’s lease of this unmatched Property at rates extremely favorable for the discerning traveler. Again, Wallingford, I shall undertake negotiations myself, so he won’t smoke you out, ha-ha. Applicants should inquire through the Owner’s London agent . . . I say, Wallingford, are you quite all right?”
Wallingford, sputtering into his coffee, had been overtaken by a fit of violent coughing.
“I daresay he’s a trifle flummoxed.” Lord Roland shrugged.
“By what?”
“Presumably by the suggestion that you’re taking out a year’s lease on an Italian castle, on his behalf.”
“Oh no. No, indeed. You’ve quite misunderstood me. Only a dash of humor, you see.” Finn put the newspaper to one side and set to work on his eggs.
Wallingford, coughs subsiding, dabbed at his watering eyes. “Humor?” he gasped out, clearing his throat with a rough hack. “You call that humor, Burke? My God, you might have killed me.”
“Really, Wallingford. I should never take out a lease on your behalf. I’ve well enough sordid millions of my own, as you yourself observed.” Finn cast a benevolent smile across the table and reached for his toast. “No, the lease will be entirely in my name. You two shall be my guests, nothing more. Penhallow, the marmalade, if you will.”
Lord Roland passed him the pot of marmalade as if in a dream.
Really, it was all proving even more amusing than Finn had imagined. The look of dazed confusion on Penhallow’s face. The slow purpling of the Duke’s expression, the whitening of knuckles clenched about two-hundred-year-old silver cutlery.
Who would speak first?
Wallingford, of course. “I’m certain, my dear Burke,” he said, biting out the dear Burke in discrete chunks, “I must have misheard you.”
“I assure you, you haven’t.” Finn spread his marmalade over his toast with neat precision. “My dear fellows, I shall lay my cards upon the table, as they say. I’ve been concerned about the two of you for some time.”
Wallingford’s expression grew even blacker. “I can’t imagine why. Our poverty, perhaps? Our lack of female companionship?”
“There it is! There’s your trouble, right there. You don’t even recognize how frivolous your lives have become. You’ve no purpose, no driving force. You drink yourselves into oblivion, night after night . . .”
Lord Roland set down his fork with a clink. “Now look here. As if I haven’t seen you positively legless on more than one occasion.”
Finn flicked that away with a brusque movement of his hand. “Once or twice, of course. One’s allowed a bit of high spirits, now and again. But you’ve made a career of it, you two. Wine, women, and song, as the saying goes.”
“I object to that. There’s been very little song at all,” said Lord Roland.
“And that of very poor quality indeed,” Wallingford added. “Hardly worth noting.”
Finn leaned forward and placed his elbows squarely on each side of his plate. “Three days ago,” he said, in a quiet voice, “I came across an old acquaintance of ours, from Cambridge days. Callahan. You’ll remember him?”
“Callahan, of course. Jolly chap. A bit thick, but good company on a lark.” Lord Roland’s brow puckered inward. “What of him?”
“He was dead. Choked on his own vomit in his mistress’s parlor in Camden.”
In the silence that followed, Finn fancied he could detect the t
iny scratches of the ancient ormolu clock above the mantel, counting out the passing of each second into eternity.
“Good God,” said Wallingford at last.
“Camden,” muttered Lord Roland, as he might mutter Antarctica.
Finn removed his elbows and picked up his fork and knife. “I came across his funeral procession, you see. They’d taken his body back to the old family place, in Manchester, not far from a machine works of which I’ve been contemplating purchase. An only son, did you know? His mother looked quite destroyed.”
“There, you see?” Wallingford shrugged. “Our mother’s been gone these ten years. Nothing at all to worry about.”
Finn went on. “I’m told the body was unviewable. The mistress discovered him in the morning and fled with her cookmaid. Poor fellow wasn’t found for a week.”
Wallingford sat back in his chair and regarded Finn with a speculative expression. He crossed two solid arms against his chest. “Very well, Burke. A fine point. The dissipated life ends in ignoble tragedy and whatnot. Women are not to be trusted. Forewarned is forearmed. I shall retire instantly to the country, call for my steward, and endeavor to live a life of sobriety and virtue.”
Finn had expected resistance, of course. One didn’t go about telling dukes to mend their ways without anticipating a certain bristling of the old hackles, after all. He smiled kindly and said: “I have a proposition for you.”
“I daresay you do. I daresay it has something to do with castles in Italy.”
“I have been corresponding for some time with a man near Rome, who’s approaching the same project as I am, only with rather a different plan.”
“Do you mean these damned horseless carriages of yours?” the Duke asked.
“Damned rubbishy machines,” put in Lord Roland.
Finn’s gaze rose to the ceiling. “Luddites, the pair of you. In any case, a few weeks ago, my colleague in Rome, Delmonico’s his name, proposed to me the idea of holding a . . . well, I suppose you might call it a competition, a contest, in which the best examples of the machines might be displayed and judged. If enough working engines are brought to the exhibition, he expects to hold a race.”
The Casanova Code Page 30
