But as he stood here in the moonlight with her in his arms on this wedding cake of a bridge, he felt himself tripped by his own amusing snare, and it wasn’t just the fault of all that excellent Italian wine he’d drunk, either. Damnation, if this wasn’t the most romantic place he’d ever seen, with Jane herself the centrepiece.
‘You have pleased me,’ she said softly, ‘by insisting we come here. I’d never have come here by myself, you know. Have you ever seen anything more beautiful in all your days?’
‘Or nights,’ he said. ‘I suspect it’s something better viewed in company, eh?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Especially if the company is so—so agreeable.’
She turned in his arms so she was facing him, her expression becoming oddly solemn as she leaned back into the crook of his arm. With great daring she rested her hands on his chest with her fingers fanned apart.
‘Now,’ she said, her voice a breathy whisper, ‘now I suppose you shall try to kiss me.’
He smiled. ‘Would that please you, too, Jane?’
‘Yes,’ she said slowly, thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I believe it would.’
‘I could kiss you,’ he said, lowering his mouth over hers, the fragrance of her skin mingling with the saltiness of the air around them. ‘I can.’
‘No,’ she said suddenly, ducking her head away at the last moment. ‘No, Richard, please.’
Disappointment welled up within him. ‘If you’re going to bring up some damned nonsense about you having been my daughters’ governess, and therefore can’t—’
‘No!’ She shook her head fiercely, slipping her hands around his shoulders to draw his face down to hers. ‘No nonsense. I only wished to kiss you before you kissed me.’
Instinctively her mouth found his, turning the exact distance for their lips to meet and meld, and for Richard to forget any idea whatsoever of protesting how she’d foxed him. He forgot, and instead realised everything that was fine about kissing her: how eagerly she sighed as her lips parted for him, how warm her mouth could be, how she seemed to melt against him, as if making her body touch his in as many ways as she could, how she tasted and smelled and felt and kissed him in return.
It was as if he were a young man again, stealing away with his first lass. They kissed, and everything in life seemed once again possible, as long as she was there to share it with him. He’d forgotten the magic of kissing a woman, of discovering how sweet and soft and welcoming her mouth could be. He curled his arm around her waist, lifting her up more tightly against him. She seemed small, as light as a will-o’-the-wisp, and as warm to hold as a kitten. With a little moan of startled pleasure, her lips slipped apart for him, and hungrily he deepened the kiss, desire drumming deep in his belly with the taste of her. Her response was rarer for being unexpected and eager, and he could feel the bliss vibrate through them both like a live spark.
He kissed her long and hard, her hands pressed flat against his chest in confused delight. He liked that, for it meant he was the first man to draw this response from her, the first to kiss her with such urgency. He could taste her surprise in the way she fluttered beneath him, yet he could also tell the exact moment when that surprise gave way to eagerness and to pleasure all her own, when her lips began to respond to his, when the resistance in her body lessened and her hands curled round his back, and when, most of all, he realised he’d forgotten everything and everyone else except the woman in his arms.
‘Ah, Jane, Jane,’ he murmured, threading his fingers into her hair to hold her face before him. Lightly he feathered kisses over her cheeks, along the curve of her jaw and throat that he knew would be most sensitive. ‘My own sweet Jane.’
With a shuddering sigh, she gently twisted her face away from his lips, drawing far enough away from him to study his face. Her lips were wet and parted, her breathing rapid, leaving no doubt in his mind that she’d relished their kiss as much as he. Yet in the moonlight her eyes were enormous with uncertainty, their confusion punctuated by the spiky shadows of her lashes falling across her cheeks.
‘What next, Richard?’ she asked softly. ‘What next?’
‘Next?’ he repeated. ‘Why, I suppose we shall go back and rouse the signora’s cook for an early breakfast. Unless, that is, you wish to kiss me again.’
She smiled, her pale face full of a sadness he didn’t understand. ‘The signora’s cook will be happy to oblige you, I am sure. He’ll even brew that dreadful coffee of yours.’
‘No more, Jane,’ he said gruffly. ‘It was only a kiss, a single kiss. If you never wish to kiss me again, well, then, you needn’t. But considering how there’s only two weeks before—’
‘Don’t plan, I beg you!’ she cried plaintively. ‘All my life I’ve planned, and prepared, and arranged, trying to make a tidy order of everything. For now, for this once, I wished to live upon my impulse, my whims, alone, without any arrangements or planning. For once, here in Venice where there’d be no consequences, I wanted to be free.’
‘Oh, Jane,’ he said softly, stroking her cheek with thumb. ‘There are always consequences in life, even in Venice.’
‘As soon as I kissed you, I realised that,’ she said. ‘I wanted to kiss you as if it didn’t matter, but it did. It does.’
She pulled free of him and turned towards the rail of the bridge. The hood of her cloak had fallen back and she’d lost her customary linen cap, leaving her hair loose and beguilingly unruly. He wondered if she’d turned to hide a tear from him. He’d understand if she had. He knew all too well the melancholy of loneliness.
‘Moonlight changes everything, doesn’t it?’ She gazed out over the water as if seeing everything for the first time. ‘Everything’s different. Nothing’s the same.’
He came to stand behind her, his hands on her shoulders. The moon was setting and the stars disappearing with it, and to the east the first glow of dawn was beginning to show in the fading night sky.
‘The world never does stand still, Jane, whether we wish it to or not,’ he said, his voice more poignant than he’d intended. ‘Sometimes that can be for the best.’
He’d not intended to think of Anne now, of all times, but he had. Yet it wasn’t with the old grief, the old sorrow. Instead he had the oddest sensation of letting go, not of Anne’s memory, but of the hard grief that had kept his heart a prisoner for so long.
Could a single kiss have done that? he marveled. Could Jane truly have worked such a miracle without even realising it?
Now Jane nodded without looking back at him, then tipped her head to one side to rub her cheek against the back of his hand.
‘Everything does change,’ she said softly. ‘We’ll have at least a fortnight here before the young ladies and their husbands join us.’
‘Two weeks.’ He kissed her cheek, whispering close to her ear. ‘I’ll treasure every minute, Jane, and squander not a single one.’
She touched her fingers to where he’d kissed her cheek, as if to hold the kiss there.
‘Every minute, one by one by one,’ she said softly, and at last turned back to face Richard. ‘For truth to tell, what else do we have?’
She stretched up on her toes and kissed his cheek as he had kissed hers, then brushed her lips across his, sweetly, in a way that made Richard long for more. He was relieved to see that if there had been an unshed tear or two glistening in her eyes, they were gone now.
But instead of another kiss, a Venetian rooster in some nearby courtyard seized the silent opportunity to crow and announce the coming day. Jane laughed, and Richard couldn’t help but laugh with her.
‘I promise to cherish even that moment,’ she said, ‘and that particular cock’s crow, however inopportune they may be.’
‘Then we’ll agree together on that,’ he said, his spirits rising again. He took her hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. ‘Now come. I do believe that rooster was calling us to breakfast, eh?’
Chapter Twelve
By moonlight, it had all made perfect,
even logical, sense. But by the time the first rays of the morning sun were creeping into Jane’s bedchamber—and Jane herself finally creeping into her bed—all sense of logic was gone, let alone perfection.
Her conscience in turmoil, Jane could not begin to sleep, no matter how exhausted she was. Instead she lay curled in her bed beneath the feather-filled coverlet, watching the dappled reflections of the water dance across the ceiling overhead and trying to determine exactly what had happened last night with Richard.
Richard. How easy it had been to slip into addressing him with such familiarity! A week ago she’d been living in dread of the almighty Duke of Aston, and his judgement of her and her actions. Now, after one night and two glasses of wine, she was not only calling him by his given name, but kissing him. Kissing him! Oh, preserve her, what folly and foolishness had she committed in that siren moonlight!
She groaned, and pressed her face into the pillow. Nothing good would come of this—this flirtation last night. Nothing. She’d resolved to be less reserved while she was here in Venice, and to try to enjoy herself more fully. Not wanton, of course, but a bit more adventurous. Where would be the harm in that?
But she’d never meant to behave so foolishly in Richard’s company. She’d acted boldly, without shame, announcing she’d kiss him and then doing so, like any practised harlot. Worst of all, she’d enjoyed doing it, more than she’d enjoyed herself in—oh, in her entire life, if she were honest. She’d enjoyed his company, his conversation, their dinner, and then she’d enjoyed walking out in the moonlight with him, and his embrace, and every word of the sweet nonsense he’d told her.
She groaned again at the memory. What demon had possessed her and urged her to act in such a brazen fashion? It was entirely her fault, of course. She’d no doubt of that. How could it be otherwise, when the Duke of Aston was such a paragon?
In all her days at Aston Hall, the duke had never so much as pinched the bottom of a parlour maid. There was a certain bewilderment among the staff that their duke had kept so faithful to the duchess’s memory and hadn’t remarried, or even been tempted beyond a dance or two at a county ball. The footmen and grooms in particular couldn’t believe that a gentleman as fine and rich as their master didn’t keep a mistress in London, the way other peers did. Wilson assured them he didn’t, and Wilson would know.
But now she had come along and somehow bewitched their saintly duke into kissing her beneath the Venetian moon. He had drunk considerably more of the signora’s Valpolicella than she, which might account for how susceptible he’d been to the lure of the moonlight. Yes, that must have been it, the wine and the moonlight besides. She wasn’t so foolish as to believe it had been her dubious charms that had lured him to misbehave with her. He had been in his cups, and she had been willing.
Was he now feeling the same remorse? Was he also tossing and turning with shame over this dreadful misstep, wishing with all his heart that it could be undone? Surely dallying with a woman from his household must be a dreadful burden to a man who behaved as honourably as the duke.
And how would he treat her when they met again? Would he pretend nothing had happened? Would he apologise? Or would he dismiss her as a loathsome wanton, and finally cast her out in this foreign city as she’d been expecting him to do ever since he’d arrived?
Yet as tormented as Jane felt herself to be, she still had stayed awake for the entire night and more, and even the most guilty conscience needed rest. Finally she had fallen asleep, and so deeply that it took Signora della Batista’s determined thumping on her bedchamber door to finally rouse her.
‘Miss, miss, miss!’ the signora was calling on the other side of the panelled door. ‘Hurry, miss, and waken! Make haste, if you please. His Grace grows weary of waiting!’
‘His Grace!’ cried Jane, her voice thick with sleep. ‘One moment, signora, one moment.’
At once she rolled from her bed, dragging the coverlet with her, and tried to hurry across the long room to answer. With fumbling fingers, Jane unlatched the door, and the signora herself swept inside, bearing a tray with a steaming teapot and a plate of biscuits.
‘It is late, Miss Wood,’ she scolded, setting the tray on the table by the window. ‘Only the infirm and the debauched are abed at this hour.’
‘I am sorry, signora,’ Jane said, yawning as she stood at the door with the coverlet as a makeshift cloak around her shoulders. She knew she should be rushing to dress and not keeping the duke waiting, but she was having a dreadful time waking. ‘I was very late coming to bed.’
The signora clicked her tongue with contempt. ‘Very late,’ she muttered in Italian. She touched her fingers to the handle of the teapot, judged it too hot to lift, and bunched her skirts in her hand to protect her fingers. ‘Very late, or very early, and with the man you said was your master. My cook could tell the hour you went to bed.’
‘His Grace was my master, signora,’ Jane said. ‘Because his daughters have wed, I am no longer in his service.’
‘As you say, miss,’ the signora said, pouring the fragrant tea and arching one of her neatly plucked brows to signal her scepticism. ‘As you say.’
Jane noticed that she had brought not one, but two cups with the teapot, and was briskly filling them both. ‘Only one cup, please, signora. There’s no need for—’
‘Good day, my dear Jane, and good morning,’ declared Richard, suddenly appearing to push his way past the door. ‘Or perhaps I should be saying “good afternoon”, given that it’s almost mid-day. Rouse yourself, sweet, else our entire day will be lost.’
She stared at him, stunned into silence. While she felt grey, dishevelled and raspy with lack of sleep, he seemed so fresh as to almost be spritely, his cheeks ruddy and newly shaved, his eyes cheerfully bright, and his linen immaculate. Painfully aware of her own sorry state, she clutched the coverlet more tightly around her shoulders.
‘Come, come, Jane, enough of this lolling about abed,’ he said in the same booming voice he used when riding to hounds. ‘I asked the good signora here to fetch you tea, the same as at home. That’s sure to fortify you better than that sweetling chocolate. Drink up and make ready for the day’s adventures, or what’s left of the day, at any rate.’
‘Forgive me, your Grace, but I’d believed you’d no further interest in seeing Venice’s sites,’ she said, crossing the floor with the coverlet trailing behind her like a train. ‘I’d not expected you to wish to go about so soon after retiring.’
‘Hah, you believe I must still be drunk from last night,’ he said almost gleefully as he popped one of the biscuits into his mouth. ‘I’m as sober as a curate on the Sabbath, my dear. It will take more than that Italian grape to set me back.’
The signora snorted, not hiding her disgust as she made a perfunctory curtsy. ‘If you do not need me any further, your Grace.’
‘Thank you, signora, you may leave us.’ He nodded as the signora left, not quite waiting for permission. He helped himself to one of the two cups of tea and sat in an overstuffed armchair. ‘Fah, this is a strange brew! I had the signora offer up tea, figuring it would be a comfort for you, but this is no proper English tea.’
‘There is no such thing as “proper English tea”, your Grace,’ Jane said tartly, ‘because tea doesn’t come from England, but from China. Nor can I conceive of why I should be in need of “comforting”, whether from tea or otherwise.’
He spread his hands, unperturbed. ‘You have always been a creature of predictable habit, Jane, a most admirable quality. You did not come down to breakfast at your usual hour. The signora said you were still in your bed. What else was I to think, but that you were indisposed?’
‘You might have thought the truth, your Grace,’ she said, coming to stand beside his chair. ‘That I was very late in going to bed, and thus I would be equally late in rising from it.’
‘Oh, Jane, enough.’ He set the dish of tea down on the table, and gently prised her hand free from the coverlet, taking her fingers in his own.
‘No more of these practised school-room recitals, I beg you.’
That was wounding. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, but I do not understand.’
‘You should,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Last night we agreed to take each day as it came in turn, without worry or concern. To my mind, looking back over one’s shoulder to try to re-order the days that are done does not seem to be in the spirit of that agreement. Where’s the use in it, I ask you?’
‘I wasn’t attempting to re-order the past.’ She tried to pull her hand free, but he held it firm, leaving her to feel embarrassed and foolish. She was all too aware of his gaze upon her, and how her feet were bare and her body covered only by her night shift and the coverlet, and anywhere in England this would have been the most scandalous situation imaginable. ‘Not at all, your Grace. Rather I was merely—’
‘No more of that, either,’ he said gently. ‘I want you to call me by my name, not my title.’
‘I thought that was a folly from last night,’ she said, choosing her words with care.
‘A folly?’ he repeated with patent disbelief. ‘A folly?’
‘Yes,’ she said as firmly as she could. ‘A folly seems as appropriate a term as any.’
Now that the moonlight had been replaced with the harsher reality of the mid-day sun, she’d let him change his mind if he wished it. Really, she expected it. All she asked in return was to be permitted to save her own pride—and her heart—in the process.
Which was, of course, most difficult while he was holding her hand and gazing up at her with such a show of good humour and, yes, of affection, too.
She made herself look slightly to the left of his face and away from his eyes, his lovely, lovely eyes, so full of kindness.
‘I will not hold you accountable for things said or done last night, your Grace,’ she said, purposefully keeping her manner formal. ‘I understand that it was a jest. I know you meant to prove to me how sentimental a place Venice can be, and that you did not intend to—’
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