by Juliana Gray
“You’d have been surprised,” she said. “I’d have been delighted to know your thoughts. Girls have desires, after all, even if we don’t know exactly what we’re longing for.”
“You were thinking the same things, then?” He wasn’t flirting now. He could barely mouth the words.
She didn’t answer at first. She studied him, turning something over in her mind, until finally she said, “Not exactly, I suppose. You were, I’m sure, much less innocent than I was.”
He hesitated. “True.”
She sighed, her bosom rising and falling beneath the neat, high-cut violet bodice of her gown. “It isn’t fair, is it? If you had spoken first, if we had married, I’d have come to you an innocent, as pure as a lily, while you . . .” She let the suggestion hang there and reached for a boiled egg.
He looked at his hands. “I swear to you, Lilibet, from the moment I met you, I had no thought of any other woman. Only you, all that summer. And if we had married, I’d never have . . . there’d have been no ghosts in our bed, no question of others, never.”
She nibbled at the edge of the egg and set it back down on her napkin. She spoke with dripping sarcasm. “Oh, these things you men say. These promises of eternal fidelity. Somerton said something rather like that, before we married. I recall being surprised it needed to be said. After all, I would never have dishonored him. I simply assumed it would never occur to him, either.”
“Ah.”
A flush began to spread over her cheeks, faint and becoming. “I tried very hard. I tried to love him. I allowed him . . . whenever he wanted . . .”
Roland’s hand fisted in the grass beside him. He picked up another piece of cheese and turned to stare out at the lake. It didn’t help: the image of her body, lithe and naked, entwined in his imagination with Somerton’s broad bulk amid the sun-splashed waters before him. Had she enjoyed it at all? Had Somerton excited her, pleasured her? Had she lain there passively, or had she urged him on, ridden atop him, used her mouth on him?
Her voice conveyed only facts. “I . . . I became with child straightaway, however, and after that first month he seemed to think . . . I suppose he didn’t want to risk anything, once the doctor had confirmed things. He wanted an heir most acutely.” She was firm, matter-of-fact. A breeze drifted across her forehead, riffling a lock of her hair loose from its pins. She brushed it absently behind her ear. “Fool that I was, I thought he was making a great sacrifice for my sake. After all, he . . . I knew his appetites were . . .” She cleared her throat. “He was discreet, at first. It wasn’t until after Philip was born that I realized the truth. The scale of it.”
Damn it all. Which was worse: imagining her in bed with Somerton, or imagining her shame at his philandering? “I’m sorry,” he whispered. The gentle words belied the rage billowing inside him. He wanted to fight Somerton: not with guns or swords or anything so gentlemanly, but with his fists. He wanted to feel the man’s jaw pop, feel his nose crush into jelly.
Lilibet went on. “I threw it in his face. We had a dreadful row. I was told, in no uncertain terms, what I should expect from my marriage, and from then on . . . What is it, dear?”
Roland looked up to see Philip scampering in from the lakeshore, eyes huge with excitement.
“Mama!” He waved a rock in her face. “I’ve struck gold!”
“Oh, let me see!” She rose from the ground in a graceful motion and took the rock from Philip. “Look at that! Astonishing! See how it sparkles!”
“Is it real gold, Mama? Is it? Like those chaps found in California?”
She looked at the rock closely, and then held it up to the sunlight, turning it this way and that. Her brow knit with deep concentration. “Why, yes, Philip,” she said. “I believe it is. I can’t think what else it would be. A great vein of it, too! You’ve made our fortunes!”
His face shone. He turned to Roland. “Look, your lordship! Gold!”
Lilibet smiled and handed him the rock. “See?”
Roland took the rock and turned it about. A seam of sparkling pyrite ran through the center and along one side. He looked up at Philip’s eager face, at his dark eyes, the same shape and shade as Somerton’s. Not an especially handsome fellow, Somerton: rough-hewn bones, olive skin, dark features. Philip favored his mother, for the most part, but those eyes were unmistakable. They reminded Roland of the last time he’d seen Somerton, at his club. The earl tended to keep to a few cronies, as hard-drinking and hard-whoring as he was, who would have been blackballed if they hadn’t been peers. As it was, they were pariahs, gambling together in a private room long into the night, invisible to most members, and then disappearing to whatever low den would take them in.
But this particular night, not long after the New Year, most of the club’s members had been buried at their country estates, and Roland had been sitting in the leather-scented gloom of the library, tucked behind a newspaper, sherry at the ready, waiting for a colleague to meet him for a confidential chat. He’d felt a looming presence before him and unfolded the newspaper to find Somerton glaring down at him with those cold midnight eyes. Can I help you, old man? Roland had inquired politely, and Somerton had looked him over. No, he’d said, and set himself into a wing chair at the other end of the room with a neatly ironed copy of the Times, malevolence crackling the air around him. MacDougal had appeared soon after, and Roland had managed to exchange his information with the necessary discretion, but the unsettling weight of Somerton’s black eyes had lurked in the background throughout, until the man had risen and left a quarter hour later.
“Sir?”
Philip’s voice pierced Roland’s reverie. He blinked a few times, attempting to dispel Somerton’s image from his head, while the boy’s uncanny eyes fastened on his face. “Yes, lad?”
“The rock, sir! What do you think?”
Roland glanced down at the object in his hand and spoke without thinking. “Afraid it’s pyrite, old fellow. But keep looking. Persistence, that’s the ticket.”
Philip’s eager face drooped before him. Lilibet’s gasp came from his left.
“I see, sir. Thank you.” Philip turned and trudged back to the lakeshore.
Oh hell.
He glanced at Lilibet and wished he hadn’t. The blue flame in her eyes could have melted down the stone in his hand, pyrite and all. She whirled around without a word and went after Philip.
Roland threw himself back in the grass and stared up at the blue Tuscan sky. If his aching loins could speak, they’d have moaned with despair.
No luck tonight, that was certain.
* * *
When Lilibet returned to the picnic at last, pockets full of promising pyrite-streaked rocks and Philip’s equilibrium restored, she found it had all been tidied up. The food and utensils were packed away in the basket, and the white cloth lay folded atop. Roland stood leaning against an olive tree, arms crossed against his solid chest, watching them both.
“Thank you for cleaning up,” she said, reaching for the basket.
He took it from her before she could lift it. “Heading back to the castle?”
She bent to retrieve her hat and placed it back on her head. “Yes,” she said, sticking in the pin, grateful for the physical movement to disguise her nervousness. She hadn’t meant to be so candid earlier; something about the warm weather and the pleasure of the simple food had wrought an ease in the air between them. A dangerous ease, the kind she’d sought so hard to avoid until now. Where might it have led, if Philip hadn’t been there?
She couldn’t trust herself.
She went on briskly. “We’ve a busy afternoon. Philip has his lessons with Abigail, and I’m badly behind on Aristophanes.”
“Oh, Mama, do I have to do lessons? It’s such a smashing day outside.”
“Yes, you do. And you like Abigail, so no more complaining. Or else I
’ll give you your lessons, which isn’t nearly as nice.”
Roland led them away from the lake, picking his way between the olive trees to where the terraces began climbing the hillside. The vines had just begun to sprout their leaves, pale new green under the warming sun, and a few men wandered among them, clipping away shoots and strengthening the new growth with long willow branches. Philip clung to her hand, unwilling to take the lead as he had before.
Roland glanced back and saw them, several yards behind. He stopped until they caught up. “Awfully sorry,” he said. “Lost in thought.”
“It’s no trouble. Go on ahead if you like. We shouldn’t be seen like this, after all.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. Let Wallingford do his worst.”
Lilibet glanced down. “Philip, do you think you can run ahead a moment and find a peach blossom for Mama from the trees at the end of the terrace?”
Philip plunged ahead, white sailor’s jacket flashing in the sunlight.
“I must apologize,” Roland said. “I’m no use at all around children, it seems.”
She sighed. “These things seem so obvious to me, but then my whole world is wrapped up in him. I don’t suppose you’ve spoken with a child in years.”
“You’re splendid at it, on the other hand. How the devil do you learn these things?” He spoke lightly, quizzically. As if it didn’t really matter.
“Look,” she said, “we really mustn’t be seen. I hope . . .” She paused. “I hope I may rely on your discretion. My name . . . If it’s known that I’m here, if Somerton finds out, if he knows that you’re here, too . . .”
“Good God!” he burst out. “You don’t think I’d breathe a word, do you?”
Tears started in her eyes, to her frustration. She squeezed them back with ferocity. “He can’t know where I am. Please understand. He can’t. We’ve already run the most appalling risk.”
Roland’s voice dripped with scorn. “Come now. How the devil could Somerton find out? Too drunk to see past his own nose, most nights . . .”
“You fool.” She shook her head and stared down at the endless blades of grass passing beneath her feet. How could she explain? “Think of it. The wager, the stakes. An advertisement in the Times. Even if the names are disguised, he’ll find out. He finds out everything. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
He stopped under the shade of an apple tree and turned to her, grasping her arm. “Did he hurt you? By God, if he harmed you . . .”
“Stop. It’s not your concern.”
“It is my concern!” His eyes blazed at her; his other hand came up to grip her. He loomed before her, not so immense and forbidding as Somerton, but broad and lithe and vibrating with strength, his checked wool jacket straining along the width of his shoulders.
“Stop it! Someone will see us!”
“I don’t give a bloody damn! Just tell me this: Did he hurt you?”
The passion in his voice froze her in place. “Not . . . not in that way. Please let go. If we’re seen, if your brother and his wager . . . He’s determined to win, his pride’s at stake, and Abigail goads him so . . .”
He pulled her behind the slender trunk of the apple tree. The heady scent of blossom enclosed them; a heavy-laden branch brushed at her hat. “Why the devil are you so loyal to that man? I’d protect you; I’d fight for you; I’d do anything for you. The damned beast. Why honor your marriage vows, when they mean nothing to him?”
Her throat hurt, looking at him. His beautiful face lit with rage and love and need, nothing like the laughing Roland of summer garden parties and London ballrooms. She dropped her eyes and saw that he’d loosened his necktie, unbuttoned the top of his collar. The skin at the hollow of his throat beckoned her irresistibly.
But she could resist; she had to resist. She looked back up, into the hard warmth of his hazel eyes. “If you have to ask that,” she said, past the steady ache of grief in her throat, “you really don’t know me at all, do you?”
His gaze searched hers. “You’re wrong. I know you better than you know yourself, Lilibet.” He brushed his fingers against her cheek, as gentle as a hummingbird’s wings. “I know that you can’t possibly go on living as you have, married to a man like that. The Lilibet I know would tell London’s dragons to go hang themselves, rather than stay married to a drunken whoremonger like Somerton.”
At the words drunken whoremonger, something snapped inside her. She shrugged away from his grasp and hissed, “And do what? Marry you instead, and spend the next six years at home with another baby, while you swive your way through all the beds in London you haven’t visited already?”
He started backward, eyes wide with outrage so palpable it stung her face. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
“Oh, you’d be far more charming about it, I’m sure. Lord Roland Penhallow always did have a talent for keeping the ladies starry-eyed.” She pointed her finger into his chest. “But underneath you’re all the same. You’ve no more notion of fidelity than a rutting bull. Once you’ve got what you want, you’re on to the next pretty face. The next conquest, the next bit of fun.”
He stared at her, shocked. “That’s absurd! I’d never . . .” He checked himself.
Her face burned. “Do you think I’m an idiot?” she demanded. “Do you think I don’t know? When news of your latest damned escapade was delivered to me in detail by one friend or another every week, for the last several years? Always with the same smug smile, always with the greatest relish. Oh, my dear, you’ll never guess what I’ve just heard; the most delicious tidbit about our naughty friend.”
His eyes closed. “I’m not like Somerton, Lilibet. I stand by my promises.”
“Oh yes. Just as you stood by me that last summer?”
“That’s not fair! That was different. That was . . .” His words trailed off, trapped somewhere in his heaving chest. He searched her face with pleading eyes, and went on, more softly: “I was a boy, then, Lilibet. A sulking, resentful boy, who’d never before had something he loved taken away. I like to think . . . I’d like to prove to you . . . that I’ve grown up a bit, since then.”
He looked so humble, so contrite, so vulnerable, as if he were holding out his heart toward her, cradled between his two broad hands. At the sight of his earnest face, the pain inside her grew until it vibrated, ready to snap.
She put her hand up, palm outward. “Enough, Roland. Just leave me be. I have troubles enough already.”
She turned and strode up the hill to where Philip stood waiting with his arms full of peach blossoms, an impatient expression on his face.
EIGHT
Roland would rather have torn up the paper in his pocket than read it. Burned it, spat on it, damned its author to a living hell. Preferably with a bevy of large-breasted women dancing eternally naked just beyond his reach. That would be fitting. That would be justice, by God.
He’d never been in such an invidious position in his life. Lilibet casting up his promiscuous reputation in his face, and he unable to defend himself! Couldn’t deny it, couldn’t explain it, couldn’t laugh it away.
Couldn’t tell her the truth.
Because of bloody Sir Edward and his bloody secrets and the whole damned rotten intelligence service, blast it all to hell and back again.
Roland burst through the door of the kitchen and dropped the picnic basket on the large center table with a vengeful thud. A large tureen of beans rattled at the far end, as if surprised from a nap.
“Signore!”
Roland jumped and turned. A maid stood in the doorway, her eyebrows arched high and anxious into her forehead.
“What the devil!” he exclaimed. Bloody hell. Had his skills grown rusty so quickly out here in the wilderness? Or was it Lilibet, addling his wits? Many had tried to sneak up on Lord Roland Penhallow in the past few years, but non
e had succeeded.
Now a simple Italian kitchen maid could nearly empty his bladder with a single ill-timed Signore.
Her mouth flailed helplessly. “Signore . . . is basket . . . is Signora Somerton . . .” She looked at the basket, and at him, and the pitcher dropped from her hands to shatter on the floor. “Oh, Dio!” she cried. She bent to the ground, face as red as poppies, and gathered the pieces into her apron amid a flood of distressed Italian syllables.
Roland melted. He dropped to his knees next to the poor girl. “There, there. Here, I’ll do it. A bit of crockery, that’s all.” He pushed her hands aside, collected the broken pieces, piled them on the table, and took his handkerchief from his pocket. “See? No bother at all, my dear. Broken any number of plates myself.” He gave her the handkerchief, into which she promptly blew her nose with abandon. “Yes. Quite. Er, keep it, if you will. No returno.” He motioned with his hand.
She looked up at him and smiled through her tears. A pretty girl, he supposed, all shiny black hair and round rosy cheeks. He smiled back. “You see? All better. Buon, I believe.”
Her watery dark eyes took on a dreamy sheen. “Grazie, Signore Penhallow.” She said it charmingly, with a lyric Italian lilt.
“Think nothing of it, signorina . . . er . . .”
Her smile deepened, revealing a well-placed dimple next to her plump mouth. “Francesca, signore. Mi chiamano Francesca.”
“Francesca! Fine name. My mother was called Frances, rest her soul. Same sort of handle, I believe. Only English.” He patted his pockets. The paper crackled beneath his hands. He glanced at the picnic basket on the table. “In any case, I’m off. Just returning the basket. Charming lunch. The cheese was excellent. Er . . .” He looked back at Francesca, whose face had grown even rosier, head tilted slightly to one side, eyes blinking in slow strokes. He cleared his throat. “Er, yes. Well. I’m off.”
He sidled out the door and made his escape.
* * *
On the first evening of Roland’s arrival at the Castel sant’Agata, despite the rain and the confusion and the mind-warping knowledge that Lilibet Harewood (he tried, whenever possible, to banish the word Somerton from her name) would be sleeping beneath the same roof for the foreseeable future, he’d still found a moment to manufacture a false back to the third drawer in his ancient Italian dresser.