by Juliana Gray
“Uncle Roland could lick Father,” Philip said. “He knows a lot of things. And he’s big and strong.”
“Don’t say that,” she whispered. “Don’t say that. We don’t want them to fight.” She gazed into her son’s eyes, into the martial light burning in their depths, and felt a cold helplessness creep over her chest. Because of course they would fight. They were men, and that was what men did. They’d fight, on Somerton’s terms, and Roland—her Roland, her beautiful, clever, huge-hearted Roland—would be no match for Somerton’s cunning, Somerton’s brute strength and bloody-minded ruthlessness.
And it was all her fault.
She glanced at the locked door, at the window. The walls of the high-ceilinged room seemed to loom over her, pressing against her and Philip, like the bars of a prison. In the heat of the afternoon, the air had grown stuffy, heavy with the scents of wood and plaster and paint and sunshine.
How much time did they have? It all depended on Roland, on whether he’d stayed at the castle or not. Somehow she doubted it. Roland would have come after them, the instant he discovered what had happened. He was probably on his way to Florence this very moment, galloping like the wind, his tawny hair curling from the edges of his cap and his hazel eyes fierce with determination. Galloping to save her, galloping straight into Somerton’s well-laid plans.
Hours, then. She had only a few hours to find a way out of the villa with Philip, to escape Somerton and his vengeance.
Only hours in which to save Roland from the trap she’d laid for him herself.
* * *
From the expression on Markham’s face, Roland might have supposed he’d asked for an audience with the Queen herself. No butler’s nose could have tipped any farther upward as he said, thrusting an arm in the direction of a shadowed doorway off the staircase: “Lord Somerton asks that you await him in the study.”
Roland smiled and folded his hands behind his back. “My dear fellow, I’m afraid I must decline the honor.”
Markham gave a visible start. Evidently Somerton’s pronouncements were not usually met with refusal. “What’s that?”
“I must decline,” Roland said, with a regretful shrug of his shoulders. “I shall remain here in the hall. Charming sort of foyer, really,” he went on, pronouncing the word foyer with an exaggerated French accent, “all classically proportioned and whatnot. Fiendishly clever, that fellow Palladio. Should trade this in an instant for the old pile back home.”
Markham stared at him, brown eyes wide with shock. “Sir, the study,” he stammered.
“Very kind, I’m sure,” said Roland, still smiling, “but I much prefer things where I am. Sunshine, clean air, lovely elegant staircase—look how it stretches upward, the clever thing—yes, quite content right here.”
Markham’s eyes narrowed, compressing from amazement into determination. “Sir, I must command you to await his lordship’s arrival in . . . the . . . study.”
Roland blinked. “I beg your pardon, dear fellow. I must have misunderstood you. Some trick of the acoustics, I daresay, made it sound almost as though you used the word command.”
“I did.” Markham’s chin jutted. “I command you to retire to the study and await his lordship.”
Roland chuckled. “Oh, my dear Mr. Markham. How droll you are. Ha-ha. Command, indeed.” He removed his handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his eyes. “You’re a dreadfully amusing fellow. Command, ha-ha. Tell me, what’s Somerton paying you, eh? I’ll double it, just for the enjoyment of hearing you rattle off these comic ideas.”
Markham’s fists clenched into two decidedly unamused knots at his side. He lifted one booted foot and stamped it against the marble tiles. “I am not amusing. I am perfectly serious. You must go to the study at once, sir, or . . . or . . .”
“Or what?” Roland asked gently.
“I will . . . His lordship will . . .” A slow flush spread upward and across the elegant bones of Markham’s face.
“Exactly,” Roland said, in the same soft voice. “So you see, I shall stay exactly where I am, feet planted firmly on the floor, until Lord Somerton does me the honor of a meeting.”
“That’s . . . impossible. He . . . he’ll never meet you like this. He . . . These things must be done properly, must be done in a civilized fashion.” Markham’s voice descended to a low hoarseness, heavy with desperation; his hands plucked at the sides of his jacket. The sunlight from the back window slanted across his face, exaggerating the delicate line of his cheekbone, the reddish glint to his sleeked-back hair. He looked like an angel caught in the very act of falling.
“Civilized fashion? Egad, that’s rich,” said Roland. “Frightfully civilized, kidnapping a young boy from his room in the dead of night, in order to exact one’s medieval revenge on his mother. Done properly, there’s the ticket.”
“You twist everything around,” said Markham. “You make it sound as if you’re just an innocent man, minding his business, instead of . . . of . . .”
“At a loss for words again, my boy? Yes, you’ve got yourself into quite a muddle, swearing fealty to Somerton and all that.” Roland folded his arm across his chest and allowed his head a sympathetic tilt. “Look here, why don’t you leave off all this philosophizing—tiresome stuff, that; I avoid it above all things, myself—and do something useful and revolutionary. Such as telling your sainted master I’ve arrived.”
“I can’t do that. You’ll disappear, the instant I’m gone.”
“I say, that’s a brilliant idea! You trot off after Somerton, and I’ll dash around all the rooms and rescue Lady Somerton and his little lordship. Solves everything, really: You’re pulled away from the moral chasm yawning at your feet, and her ladyship continues in the independent and dignified life to which, I believe, as a subject of the British Empire, she’s properly entitled.” Roland spread his hands and smiled. “You see? Brilliant!”
A slow thunderous clapping cracked down from above.
“Very good,” boomed the voice of Lord Somerton, his broad shoulders blocking out entirely the light from the window on the first landing. He leaned forward and placed his hands on the iron railing. “Very well played indeed, Penhallow. You’ve almost convinced me yourself.”
“Ah! If it isn’t the villain of our story,” Roland said cheerfully. “Good afternoon, Somerton. Kicked any puppies yet today?”
A slight narrowing of the black eyes, and Somerton straightened from the railing. He turned to the final flight of stairs, stretching down in stately procession to the entrance hall, and descended each step with a deliberate ceremony. “Yes, well played. You have, however, left out one crucial element in this elegant calculus of yours.”
“Really? How frightfully careless of me.”
Somerton reached the bottom of the stairs and walked up to Roland, his booted heels clacking on the marble like the tick of some monstrously demented clock. He stopped, mere inches away, and bored his charcoal eyes straight into Roland’s. “The most crucial element of all, really.”
Roland raised his eyebrows. “Hmm. What’s that?”
“Me.”
TWENTY-THREE
Roland snapped his fingers.
“You! Of course! How muddleheaded of me.” He gave his chin a thoughtful tap. Lord Somerton stood unnaturally close, and a slight trace of lavender seemed to drift, for just an instant, from his burly person. The scent shot straight to Roland’s heart, made it pound in a desperate rhythm, made him fight to keep his voice confined within the Penhallow drawl. “Lord Somerton . . . let me think . . . oh, that’s right. You, I believe, are meant to return to England and devote yourself to good works for the rest of your unlamented existence, in hopes of perhaps earning your way into some higher circle of hell than the one currently reserved in your name.” His eyes slid to Markham’s white face. “I daresay your secretary would be delighted to assi
st you in the endeavor.”
A flash of something—anger? fear?—crossed Somerton’s expression, so quickly that a less observant man than Roland might have missed it entirely. “Mr. Markham,” the earl said, in a silky voice, “is a man of high standards and unimpeachable loyalty. Unlike, for example, my wife.”
“Oh, unimpeachable loyalty, without question,” said Roland, “though I must beg respectfully to differ on the matter of his high standards, eh what?”
“Look here,” burst out Markham.
Somerton half turned in the secretary’s direction and quelled him with a single look: not fierceness, not anger, but some sort of fleeting tenderness, an exchange of mutual understanding. Markham’s eyes cast down, and he took a half step backward. “What an arrogant little coxcomb you are,” the earl said, turning to Roland.
Roland shrugged. “One does what one’s feeble wits permit.”
“Hmm.” Somerton stepped away and glanced up the staircase. “And are you not the least bit curious as to the whereabouts and good health of your stolen whore?”
“Egad, old man. I don’t quite follow your logic. This dashed old bean of mine. I don’t suppose you can possibly refer to that angel, Lady Somerton, whose honor I would defend to my death?”
“The very same.”
Roland tapped his forehead and took a few thoughtful steps in the opposite direction, head bent at a pensive angle. “But that means . . . well, my good man, it don’t add up. For if the countess, who calls only one fortunate man her beloved, and that only after she’s decided to end her travesty of a marriage . . . if she can be called a whore . . .” He let the sentence dangle.
“Yes, Penhallow?”
Roland straightened and turned back to Somerton, with his most open and innocent expression. “I beg your pardon, but what does that make you?”
“Me?” Somerton thundered, incredulous.
“Why, yes. You. Do you deny you’ve had carnal knowledge of any number of other females, throughout the course of your marriage?” A quick glance at Markham. “Or, as the case directs, persons?”
Somerton’s right fist crashed into his left palm. “What are you implying, sir? You damned whelp! Say that again!”
Roland spread his hands before him. “Come, now. Common knowledge. I daresay the count must be in the hundreds. Dashed loose behavior, if you ask me.”
Somerton stared at him, fist still clenched in his hand, eyes narrowed into slits. The air between them vibrated with tension. Markham took a step forward, hesitated, then took another step.
Something eased in Somerton’s face. The flush left his cheeks by gradual degrees, and the hard line of his mouth settled into something that might be called a smile, at least in puppy-kicking circles. “Surely, Penhallow, we’re both men of the world. A bit of the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?”
“What’s that? I beg your pardon. I don’t quite follow.”
Somerton’s hands went behind his back. He ambled in Roland’s direction, eyes gleaming. “How many wanton beds have you visited in the past few years, eh, Penhallow? Dozens? Hundreds?”
“Oh, that’s easy enough.” Roland grinned broadly. “None.”
The earl threw back his head and laughed. “None! The great Penhallow, debaucher of London’s women! Ha-ha. None, indeed.”
Roland shrugged. “Awfully sorry to disappoint you, old fellow, but I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree. From the day I met Lady Somerton until now, I’ve known no other woman except her.”
The earl’s laughter withered into nothing. His eyes searched Roland’s face, as if desperate to find something to contradict the ring of sincerity in his words. “Impossible,” Somerton said at last in a dry voice.
“No, no. Solid fact, I’m afraid. Tried, a few times, but . . . well, things weren’t quite the same as before. Couldn’t keep her face out of my mind long enough to perform the deed. Oh, I suppose I might eventually have managed it. Drunk up a bottle or two of brandy, found myself a willing widow.” He smiled at Somerton’s horror. “But my luck was in, I expect. Her ladyship collided with me on the doorstep of an Italian inn, and even my thick old wits grasped that I’d been given another chance.”
“Impossible,” Somerton said, without conviction.
“Impossible!” spat out Markham. “We know your reputation. You’ve paraded your conquests all over London, you damned cur!”
Roland looked past Somerton’s shoulder and nodded at the secretary. “Well, I didn’t want word getting around, did I? Kept up appearances, that sort of thing. In the end, though—droll, isn’t it?—it seems I was truer to Lilibet than you were.” He drew close to Somerton, close enough to see the tick of the earl’s pulse at his throat, hard and swift. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s what they call irony, old chap.”
Somerton wet his lips. “For more than six years?”
“Over seven, really, since the day I met her. Seven long, bloody years. A most painful period of penitence. Of which the only good thing I can observe”—he gave Somerton a gentle chuck under the chin—“is to thank God it’s finally over.”
In the next instant, he was flying across the floor, propelled by the hard crunch of Somerton’s fist against his jaw.
* * *
He’d expected it, of course, but the expectation hardly softened the blow. He lay on the marble tiles for a moment, adjusting to the shock, rubbing his jaw. Not broken, at least. He studied the octagonal pattern in the ceiling, elegant plaster scrollwork, looking as if it had recently been repainted, and counted the repeats. “Well, now,” he said at last. “I’m frightfully glad that’s out of the way.” He raised himself on his elbows and flashed a smile in Somerton’s glowering direction. “Now that the tiresome formalities have been completed, we can get down to business, as the Americans are fond of saying.”
Somerton’s lip curled into a snarl. “The only business between the two of us, you mongrel, is that which I plan to administer to you. You shall not, I’m afraid, depart this house alive.”
Roland sprang to his feet and laughed. “Oh, brilliantly said! I think I heard that in a play, once. Have you perhaps considered a career on the stage?”
Markham’s voice, low and worried, emerged from behind Somerton’s heaving chest. “Sir, I don’t think . . . Surely you don’t mean . . .”
Roland spread his arms wide. “There, you see? Have a go at me. Pistols, what? Or perhaps your taste runs to sabers. You’ve a jolly dramatic streak to you, after all.”
“Don’t be an ass, Penhallow.”
“You wish to kill me? I won’t stop you from trying.”
“You admit you’re in the wrong, then,” the earl flashed back.
“Not at all,” Roland replied. He let his hands drop to his sides. “But I’m not going to fight you, old man.”
A contemptuous look settled into Somerton’s austere features. “A coward, then. Just as I thought. You don’t even love her well enough to fight for her.”
“Oh, I do. If it were only her, you’d be dead already. But there’s someone else to consider, you see.”
Somerton’s brow furrowed. “Someone else?”
“Young Philip. Your son, if you’ll recall,” said Roland, quite softly.
“You’ll not speak to me of my son!” Somerton’s fist swung again in reckless fury; Roland dodged it with ease.
“A fine boy, young Philip,” Roland went on. “Clever, curious. Rather fancies stories about pirates.” He sidestepped another blow. “And the thing is, regardless of the whole sorry wreck of your approach to parenthood”—he skipped away just in time to avoid a vicious cut to his left eye—“I can’t quite face the prospect of explaining to Philip how I’ve managed to kill his father.”
Somerton stopped, chest heaving, eyes glittering. “You won’t have the chance, by God. You’ll ne
ver lay eyes on the boy again.”
Roland shook his head slowly. “No, no. You’ve got it all wrong. If you think I’m going to leave Philip in your tender care for the rest of his childhood, your poor old noggin must be in even more desperate straits than your fists.”
“You dare to . . .”
“Here’s how it works, Somerton.” Roland slid his right hand to his hip, near his waistcoat pocket. “You’re going to give Lilibet her divorce, and I’m going to marry her, and you’re going to leave us alone to raise that son of yours into the sort of man who’ll recover all the honor the title’s lost through you.”
Somerton began to laugh, a harsh guttural sound, unlike any other laughter Roland had ever heard. “Oh, splendid! Fascinating! I always knew you were an arrogant young fool, Penhallow, but now I begin to wonder how you managed so long, even with that pack of idiots at the Bureau!”
“Oh, dumb luck, I expect.” Roland fingered the edge of the waistcoat pocket in an idle gesture.
“And you suppose—you really suppose—I’ll simply bow to your commands? When Lady Somerton and my son remain firmly within my power? When you yourself lack the courage even to raise your fist against me?” Somerton shook his head and laughed again. “Give up, Penhallow. You’ll never take me, and you’ll never have my wife unless you do.” He leaned forward with a skull-like grin. “Checkmate.”
Roland smiled and shrugged and sidled away. “But there it is, old chap. I don’t have to take the king, in this little match. I only have to take”—he sprang toward Markham, secured the man against his chest, and drew the slender knife from his waistcoat pocket, all in the same fluid motion—“your knight.”
From the panic in Somerton’s face, from the unguarded lunge he took in their direction, Roland knew he’d chosen his target wisely. He pressed the tip of the knife into Markham’s collar and dragged him backward. “Not so close, Somerton. You’ve led me the devil of a dance, and I should hate to lose my wits and cause one of those messy sorts of accidents, so common in our profession.”