by Juliana Gray
Morini shook her head, still smiling. “I am knowing, that is all. Signora, I help you. I watch over the young signore tonight. You go to meet your love. He is making you feel better, making you happy.”
“He is not.” Her voice broke. “He’s making me miserable. I can’t . . . I shouldn’t . . . I have a husband already, signorina! Philip’s father.”
Morini laid her hand flat on the table and spoke sharply. “A bad man. He is not your husband.”
“Neither is Lord Roland. And I don’t mean him to be, signorina. I don’t mean to marry him. That’s the trouble, you see. I want him . . . oh, I want him so much . . . and I can’t have him.” She choked back a sob.
“Shh. Shh. Povera donna. Drink your tea. Is foolish, this not marrying him. He is a good man, such a handsome man. He is loving you so much.”
Lilibet gulped at her tea, taking pleasure in the way it scalded the back of her throat. “For now. But after a year, two years . . .”
“I am not thinking so. The way he is looking at you. The way he is learning your boy.” Morini folded her hands together and smiled wisely. “Go to him, signora.”
“I can’t resist him. I can’t. I’m so weak, signorina. It’s bad enough when things are normal, but when . . . when I’m expecting . . . I can’t bear it. It’s as if I’m going to burst from my skin. I want him so much, the way he smells and the way he feels . . .” Her face burned; she tried to stop her words, but they kept flowing from her, like a river in full flood.
“Of course you do, signora. It is the way of nature. You were like this before, no? With the young signore?”
“Yes.” She whispered the word. “I didn’t even like my husband, and still I wanted . . . I couldn’t help it . . . I stared at the door between our rooms, desperate and ashamed and . . . I’m beyond hope, aren’t I? Why do I feel these things? I want so badly to be good. I do, signorina. And this lust, this animal urge, it fills me up until I can’t think.” No use holding back the sobs, now. She could only muffle them against her handkerchief, undignified, a common slut filled with emotion instead of reason and virtue.
“Shh, signora. Oh, mia povera signora. You are young; you are a woman. When you are having a baby, it is like this. Your body is wanting a man, wanting him close. Is nature. Is the way of life.” Morini’s hand reached across the table, the slender toughened fingers not quite touching hers. “Is not this shame. Is beautiful.”
“It’s horrible.” Lilibet sniffed, choked back another sob, lifted her cup, and put it down again. She took in a deep breath and forced her voice into calm. “I’m trying to make a rational decision, to decide what’s best for my son and for me.”
“And the baby. The signore’s baby.”
She didn’t bother to deny it. “I tell myself I’ll be stronger, that I’ll resist him next time. And then I see him, and these urges, this carnal lust, I can’t help myself.”
“The body, the heart is knowing what the mind does not accept.”
“I can’t accept it. I can’t marry Roland. Even if I were free, I couldn’t. Somerton . . . if he knew, my God! He’d kill Roland. He’d take Philip. You don’t know his wrath, signorina. You don’t know what he’s capable of.” She spoke coldly, dully, the knot of fear tightening in her belly.
“I am thinking Signore Penhallow is knowing how to fight.”
Lilibet shot her a condescending look. “Oh, I’m sure he does. In the boxing ring or the fencing studio, all civilized and formal. But Somerton . . . he’s . . . professional.” She drank another large sip of tea and closed her eyes. “He fights to win.”
“Perhaps you are not knowing Signore Penhallow as well as you think.”
Lilibet flashed her eyes open. “What do you mean?”
Morini shrugged. “I am not meaning anything. I say only, go to your love tonight. Do not throw aside this thing, this beautiful love. The future, it is taking care of itself. This love you are holding inside, this desire for Signore Penhallow, it is a thing of God. Is a gift. You must not keep holding it inside; you must give it back. You are growing his love; you are growing his baby. Is not wrong. Is not shame. Is your glory.” She stood with unnerving abruptness. “I am calling the maids, starting the dinner. Tonight, I come to your room, I knock three times, very soft. I watch the young signore for you.”
“I can’t. I shouldn’t.”
“You must, signora. For the signore, for the baby. He is a good man. He is making a good husband.”
“I have a husband already.”
Morini shook her head firmly and smoothed her hands on her apron. “Not before God, signora. No longer before God. Is a truth higher than the words writing on the page. Is higher even than the church. Signore Somerton, he is breaking his vows, mocking at his vows. This marriage between you, is like this.” She snapped her fingers. “Is no longer.”
“You can’t mean that. You’re Catholic.”
Morini snapped her fingers again. Her dark eyes flashed with authority. “Is no longer. Is no true marriage. Signore Penhallow, he is always your love, your true husband. Now let him be as God is wanting.”
Lilibet curled her fingers around her empty cup and stared up at Morini. The woman had taken on a glow, an unearthly glow, her certainty so intense it crackled around her. “How do you know so well what God is wanting?” she whispered.
Morini’s eyes narrowed slightly, even as a smile tipped the corners of her mouth. “You trust me,” she said. “I am knowing.”
* * *
Roland saved Lilibet’s note for last, because he deserved the reward after the long labor of composing a suitable note to Sir Edward in a code that his lust-befuddled brain had difficulty dissecting.
He got it out at last: LS resides here with son. Earl of S unaware. Highest confidentiality.
Brevity was his friend, in this case.
But the note to Lilibet was another matter. No doubt she’d be having second thoughts about now, her scruples getting the better of her; she had little faith in him to begin with. He had to convince her of his steadfastness, bowl her over with his passion.
He propped his feet on the bed and stared out the window at the weightless blue sky.
My darling love, I am seized with rapture at the . . .
Er, no.
Sweet Lilibet, I await the touch of your ruby lips with . . .
God, no.
He chewed on the end on his pen, shook the ink loose, let it dry on the nib. He looked down at the new sheet of paper, blank and neutral.
Eleven o’clock in the peach orchard. My heart is yours.
There. After all, she wanted deeds, not words.
And by God, he’d show her deeds tonight.
* * *
The letter that lay before Lilibet on the writing desk was not a new one.
She’d written it over five years ago, after discovering her husband engaged in sexual intercourse with a tenant’s wife during her charity rounds about the Somerton estate in Northumbria, a few months after Philip’s birth. He hadn’t even noticed she’d entered the cottage. She’d simply stood there in shocked paralysis for a full minute or two. The woman had been naked, though Somerton had merely removed his coat and adjusted his trousers; they’d been sitting in a chair, the woman on top, at such an angle that Lilibet could actually see her husband’s organ slide in and out between the woman’s flour-white thighs, exercising its droit du seigneur with vigorous application. An infant, not much older than Philip, had been squalling fretfully from a wooden cradle near the window; perhaps that was why they hadn’t heard her enter the room. Or perhaps it had been the frantic noises issuing from the woman’s throat as she pumped herself up and down on his lordship’s well-muscled lap.
At the earl’s grunt of release, Lilibet had dropped her basket of food and knitted baby clothes on the table with a thump. She’d
gone back to the nursery in the great house, held tiny Philip in her arms, and cried into his silken fuzz of hair. His milky baby scent had surrounded them both in a halo of comfort.
Shock, then grief, then anger. After a half hour or so, she’d gone to her study and taken out a few sheets of writing paper and begun a letter to her father’s solicitors, the ones who’d represented the Harewood interests in her marriage settlements.
Dear Sirs,
I regret to inform you that, owing to the infamous behavior of my husband, it has become necessary for me to instruct your firm to initiate a Suit of Divorce on my behalf, in order to dissolve a Union that has become intolerable. Firstly, I have discovered him in criminal conversation with . . .
At which point the door had opened with a bang, and Somerton had plowed into the room in a gust of saddle leather and wet wool. She’d folded the letter with shaking hands and hidden it in her drawer; over the ensuing years, as the incidents had accumulated in number and flagrance, she’d taken out the paper, reread it, made additions and substitutions, refined the language.
But she had never posted it. At the last instant, her courage had always failed her. Divorce: The word was so ugly, so final, so immense with consequences. Who would stand by her against the might of the Earl of Somerton? She’d face ostracism, reduced circumstances, the loss of her son. The sordid details would be dragged through the popular press, ruining her good name, even though the crimes themselves had all been committed by Somerton.
Until that night at the inn, of course.
Adulteress.
Outside her window, afternoon was settling into evening; the faint glow of sunset echoed in a thin line above the mountains to the east. The cooling air rushed into the room, making her skin pucker beneath the thin linen of her dress. By nighttime it would be quite chilly. She’d have to wear her shawl of India cashmere, or perhaps even her coat, when she went to meet Roland.
She thought of him as he’d looked this afternoon, leaning against the boulder by the lake as if he were Atlas, holding it up. Could he really stand up to the Earl of Somerton? Would his family support him in such a scandalous act?
Did it really matter?
Somerton would find them, anyway, before long. She’d already left him, already disgraced him. The consequences were already in motion.
Is a truth higher than the words writing on the page. Is higher even than the church.
She’d been a coward. She ought to have divorced him long ago. She had justice on her side; she was strong, she was fierce, she was quick-witted. Let him try to take Philip away. Let him try to intimidate her, to hurt those she loved.
Is no longer. Is no true marriage. Signore Penhallow, he is always your love, your true husband.
She thought of Philip, atop Roland’s shoulders, smiling and reaching for her. She thought of Roland, bending over Philip’s hands to study the grasshopper within.
The way his lips had met hers as if they belonged there; the way his body had bracketed hers, strong and solid.
The child that grew within her, Roland’s child; their child, created in love.
A glimpse flashed before her, a possibility, radiant with hope.
Can you not have the slightest particle of faith in me? he’d asked.
Her eyes dropped again to the paper before her. She set it aside and drew out a fresh sheet, and with a steady hand she made a clean copy in her copperplate writing. By the time the horizon had sunk into darkness, and Philip’s excited voice rose from the stairway near her door, she had folded it into an envelope and addressed it to Bellwether and Knobbs, Esq., Stonecutter Lane, London.
FIFTEEN
Roland had anticipated many delights from the evening, and not one of them had involved the long shanks of Phineas Burke gleaming through the moonlight between the peach trees.
Damn it all. What was the old fellow doing here at this hour?
Meeting Lady Morley, probably. As if Burke couldn’t just as easily arrange for assignations within the sheltered comfort of that damned workshop of his. No, he had to go wooing his lady-love with fragrant blossoms and moonlight and whatnot, muscling in on other chaps’ midnight frolics.
Peach bloody orchard. Come to think of it, what had Roland himself been thinking, naming such a place to meet Lilibet? Of all the damned romantic clichés. Probably half the village was lurking about the trees, drunk with springtime passion, ensuring the population of the valley would remain at a healthy replacement level the following year.
Roland set the champagne bottle and glasses on the ground—champagne did such lovely things to feminine scruples—and slid his watch out of his pocket to hold it up to the moonlight. He was quite early. Lilibet wouldn’t be about for another hour.
He glanced again at Burke’s lingering figure. No, really. He shouldn’t. Too wicked of him.
He patted his jacket pocket and found the scrap of paper and pencil stub he usually carried about him, in case of emergency. Then he cast about before him for a crisp old stick and stepped on it. Loudly.
A hasty rustling movement took place up ahead.
“Still, still, still,” he murmured, projecting his voice forward. “Pill? Kill? Oh, God, no. Mill? Hang it all. Shall have to try something else.”
He peered above the top edge of the paper and saw a sliver of tweed jacket along the edge of a tree.
He continued with enthusiasm. “. . . the memory is with me still . . . no, the memory is with me yet. The memory is with me yet, there’s the ticket. The memory is with me yet, and something something . . . shall forget? Or regret? And never shall my love regret? Oh yes. Very good.”
The most jolly awful poetry he’d ever composed, in fact. He was quite proud. He arranged himself against the knobbled trunk of an ancient peach tree and gazed up in rapture toward the blossom-crossed midnight sky.
From the corner of his eye, he caught a slight movement, as a splash of ginger hair spilled in and out from behind the tree. Well, he assumed it was ginger, in any case: In the tree-shadowed darkness, even Phineas Burke’s head of bright newpenny copper had dulled to a kind of faintly bronzed gray.
Poor fellow. Though Roland considered himself a far superior companion to the Dowager Marchioness of Morley—certainly a better hand at piquet—he doubted Burke would agree, under the circumstances.
Not that he intended to show any mercy.
“The memory is with me yet, and never shall my love regret,” he went on, with a dramatic heave of his chest.
A muffled groan, faint but unmistakable.
Roland made a little start, as if shaking off a lovesick reverie. He looked down at the blank sheet of paper in his hand, cleared his throat, and took a deep breath. “Excellent,” he said, in his most sonorous voice. “From the beginning, then.”
Burke’s despair seemed to reach out through the air like a spread-fingered hand, aiming for Roland’s throat.
Roland went on, constructing line after awful line with deep pleasure, enjoying himself so deeply that he committed that most elementary of errors: He ignored his surroundings. Until . . .
Snap, snap.
At the sound of approaching footsteps, Roland moved by instinct, ducking behind the tree in a single lithe movement. He pressed himself against the rough bark and gathered the sound into his ears.
Heavy, long strides. Not a woman’s footsteps. Not Lilibet, then, or Lady Morley. Some fellow from the village? One of the stable lads?
Roland ventured his eye to the side of the tree and saw the dark familiar outline of the Duke of Wallingford progress against the shadows.
Bloody hell.
What the devil was going on here? First Burke, now Wallingford.
There is no such thing as coincidence, repeated Sir Edward in his ear, and his mind darted at once to Lilibet. Had she set him up again? Had he mista
ken the passion in her kiss, the anticipation in her eyes?
Wallingford marched on in his straight-backed ducal way, footsteps steady and confident, making no allowances for subterfuge. He passed his brother by a scant yard, so close Roland could have reached out and brushed the tips of his fingers against the light superfine wool of the duke’s evening jacket.
That would have given the old fellow a start.
Wallingford came to a stop not far from the tree behind which Burke was undoubtedly cursing.
“I know you’re there,” he announced, in his booming voice, rattling the branches of the nearby trees. “You may as well come out.”
Roland rolled his eyes. Blasted dukes. What exactly did his brother expect? That everyone would emerge from behind the trees, heads hanging with guilt, limbs shaking in their boots under the irresistible weight of his authority?
Silence seethed around them, broken only by the occasional trill of a nightjar, made uneasy by this invasion of his back garden by a parcel of idiot Englishmen. Wallingford cast about him: stunned, apparently, by the lack of response to his perfectly reasonable request.
He continued in a more conciliatory tone. “I have your message. There’s no need to hide. No need for any more tricks.”
In the distance, from the direction of the castle, the sound of footsteps—yet more footsteps, picking their way through the orchard—caught Roland’s finely tuned ears.
“Now look here,” Wallingford said. “You asked me to meet you tonight. Don’t be afraid, my brave girl.” His voice was lower now, persuasive, so that Roland could hardly distinguish the syllables through the cool, fragrant air. Besides, he was paying attention to the progress of the newcomer.
These were lighter steps than those of Wallingford. Less certain. A woman, probably. He closed his eyes, concentrating his senses on the sound of her, the vibration of the air and the ground she caused, the first possible traces of her scent.