Otherwise, that night at Greenwich would have resulted in three betrothals. But they had returned, and contrived a tale, prepared to say that the men spent the night at the inn.
As if men could not control their impulses, and women could not fight off a man.
Adam didn’t release her, but kept her by his side as they walked to the table. Only then did he lower his arm, but to pick up a plate. The gold-edged rim proclaimed its cost while the hand-painted flowers garlanding it demonstrated her ladyship’s exquisite taste.
Adam covered the design with morsels of fruit and pastries. From a nearby table where she sat with her husband, Matilda sent her a signal. Delphi obeyed the imperious beckoning and went to join them. Lord Joshua had already sat with them.
Without Adam having to make the order, a footman brought a chair over for him, as he delivered the dainty feast Delphi didn’t much want. They would go in for dinner soon, so this would be by way of a first course al fresco.
She picked at a strawberry. Too late for the fruit to grow naturally, it was probably of the hothouse variety. And it tasted of nothing, though the juice refreshed her.
Glancing up, she caught Adam watching her again. What was wrong with these men? Her lips tingled, and not from the strawberry. The remembrance of their kisses shot through her. It brought the heat of the sun back to her head and the heat of his embrace to every other part of her.
For that matter, what was wrong with her?
Adam had abandoned her in London, and she must not forget that in a hurry. Nor her planned abandonment of him. Retribution, right from the arms of Nemesis herself, and in this case Nemesis was named Delphi. Her feelings seesawed, first melting, then recalling the shabby way he had treated her, firing her anger again.
“Rome is actually bearable again,” Matilda said, using the equivalent of clearing her throat. When stuck, talk about the weather.
“Until all the visitors crowd back,” her husband said glumly.
“Ah, yes, and you are responsible for them.” Adam smiled, leaning back, a glass of wine dropping from his elegant fingers. He held it by the rim, an extremely dangerous position from Delphi’s experience, but he managed it without seeming effort.
Everyone was sitting at the round tables set out for them, and the murmur of conversation buzzed in the air, busier than the bees attending to the flowers. A pleasant hum. Insensibly, Delphi allowed herself to sink into the relaxed atmosphere. She enjoyed seeing Lord Joshua again, and although she would never admit it aloud, having two admirers dancing attendance on her made her feel…
“What are you smiling at? You look like the cat who got the cream.”
Delphi blinked and looked at Lord Joshua. “Oh, the day is fine, the surroundings are lovely and the company delightful.”
“Good enough,” he answered, and touched his glass to hers. “To more of the same.”
She nodded and drank. Wise enough to know these moments of tranquility did not come often, she settled back to enjoy it.
A footman entered the room and murmured to Lady Billingham, who glanced at the group at Delphi’s table, then nodded. She got to her feet and left the room. Delphi felt Adam tense. She didn’t have to look at him to know. While he’d tolerated Lord Joshua’s attentions to her, now he moved closer, leaning towards her protectively.
Delphi looked up as Lady Billingham re-entered the room, two new guests behind her. She moved aside. The room fell silent.
“Your grace, ladies and gentlemen, the Duke and Duchess of Beauchamp have arrived from Paris.”
In this situation, individual formal introductions would have seemed pompous and overdone, but the slight twitch at the corner of the duke’s mouth conveyed his displeasure. The duchess stood like a rock, a particularly elegant one to be sure, so still that her only movement was the slight rise of her fichu as she breathed.
She surveyed the company from under drooping eyelids. Her hand, loosely wrapped around an ornamental, beribboned cane, remained perfectly arranged. She wore a gown of the palest pink silk over a matching petticoat, with the most delicate, spiderweb lace at her elbows. Altogether, the blonde, blue-eyed beauty was the perfect British aristocrat.
Unaware of the tension, or seemingly so, Lady Billingham led the couple forward to the table where Delphi sat. The gentlemen got to their feet and bowed. Several “your graces” followed, but when Lady Billingham would have led them to the next table, Kilsyth drew his chair back and inclined his head. “You will sit, Duchess?”
With a slight nod, she accepted, and sat. A footman hurried over with another chair. By now, having to widen their circle, everyone surrounded the small table like the orbit of a minor satellite.
Which gave them an awkward dilemma. Did they leave and join another table, delivering a possible snub to the duchess, or stay there and appear foolish?
Delphi exchanged a glance with Matilda. If they left, the accusation of insulting the new duchess would spread around the community like wildfire. They had no choice but to stay.
Kilsyth stood by Delphi’s chair. When a footman approached with yet another chair, he shook his head. “I had no idea you had planned to come back to Rome, your grace,” he said to the erstwhile Lady Elizabeth.
“We wished to see Rome,” she answered, her cut glass voice, augmented by the tiled floor, echoing around the room. “We traveled in my dear husband’s yacht across the Mediterranean. He had it refurbished for our trip. He cares for me most carefully,” she added, her voice softening, but she sounded less fond than calculated, as if she’d planned that little speech. Delphi wouldn’t have been surprised if she had.
Across the table, Lord Joshua sipped his wine and kept his counsel.
“That is good to hear,” Trensom said. “One should always treasure what one has.”
Matilda smiled.
Delphi knew that smile. It meant Trensom had amused her by referring to a private joke. The joke, in this case, being Beauchamp’s reputation as a curmudgeon.
Beauchamp either did not understand the undertone, or chose to ignore it. “My wife is a treasure.” His voice sounded like wind whistling through the dry sticks of hay left after the thresher had done his work, dry and brittle. He spared Matilda, the daughter of City merchants, a sharp glare. His lip curled in a sneer. “And of the purest blood.”
Trensom smiled. “Since my ancestress had the title bestowed on her husband by her personal service to King Charles the Second, I do not linger too much on the purity of my bloodline. Besides, purity of bloodline did little for the monarchs of Spain.”
“Oh, the Spaniards!” The duke dismissed the comment. Interbreeding had eventually killed the Spanish Bourbons. “My wife is neither my aunt nor my niece. But she is of the finest stock.”
“Like a horse,” Delphi commented.
Her impetuous words fell into the fraught silence. She closed her eyes, willing the floor to open under her.
Matilda spoke. “A subject totally unsuited to this lovely day and our delightful surroundings. I am sure we can find a more interesting topic. Such as the paintings on the tiles. Or are they printed?”
Lady Billingham leaped into the breach and spoke at length about the tiles and the artist who had painted them. Normally, Delphi would have been interested. But after her faux pas, she wanted to do nothing more than disappear.
The Duchess of Beauchamp took the opportunity to study everyone seated in the room as if committing them all to memory. Her bored, aristocratic gaze swept around the company, skimming past Matilda and Delphi as if they offended her senses.
Which they probably did, especially after Delphi’s remark. She hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but out it had come.
The duchess’ attention snagged on the man sitting next to Delphi. Lord Joshua met her regard, and returned it, passing a silent message Delphi couldn’t interpret. As her husband’s heir, he had a vested interest in this marriage, but the exchange of glances seemed to say something else. No enmity lay there. Joshua had said he had no
interest in the marriage. Perhaps he spoke nothing but the truth.
Then the duchess’ gaze skimmed past Lord Joshua, making Delphi wonder if she’d imagined that fraught second of awareness. Then the icy attention of the Duchess of Beauchamp fell on Delphi Dersingham. While Lady Billingham warbled on, the duchess took careful note of Delphi. Her critical study encompassed what she was wearing, how she was sitting, her simple hairstyle and the jaunty tilt of her broad-brimmed, narrow-crowned hat of Roman straw.
She could do this because she was a duchess, the daughter of a duchess and may well become the mother of duchesses.
Her husband, small and wizened inside his shell of fashionable clothing, leaned his chin on his hand and promptly fell asleep.
Lady Billingham’s monologue finished. She had done the work needed to stop her party from becoming a disaster. Delphi owed her thanks and an apology. She would receive them.
A mixture of anger, helplessness and upset made her grit her back teeth and endure. What had promised to be a delightful day had transformed into her worst nightmare. But she would be damned if she’d let it show.
“Do you intend to overwinter in Rome?” The question had come from sheer desperation, but it worked.
The Duchess of Beauchamp colored up and looked away, her gaze moving to the man sitting by Delphi’s side. “Perhaps,” she murmured. “And you, Kilsyth? I had not thought to see you here in Rome.”
“Yet, I’m here,” he answered, his tone neutral.
“You seem in very good form,” she said. “I am surprised, since I heard otherwise.”
“Oh?” Adam easily matched her in aristocratic hauteur. After all, both had been born to it. “What did you hear?”
“That you had fled here in disgrace, although nobody in London appears to know what that disgrace consisted of.”
That could mean anything, from gambling debts to displeasure at the Court of St. James. The vagueness of the statement invited a defensive response.
Adam merely smiled. “Rumor is unreliable at best, downright lies at most. I’m surprised you deign to listen. Your new status demands the highest standards. Do you not agree, Duchess?” A criticism framed as a question.
Delphi didn’t feel qualified to join in. Nor had she any intention of doing so. She unfurled her fan, only to have Adam take it from her and waft it gently before her face. He turned his attention to her. “Maybe we should take advantage of the breeze outside. I cannot bear your discomfort, my lady.”
Any discomfort she felt had nothing to do with the weather. But a few people were drifting outside, and she took the opportunity he offered. There would be no danger of solitary trysts now.
Once strolling along the paths, well in view of the back of the house, she breathed a long sigh of relief. “She can’t hurt you,” Adam said.
His concern touched her. “I know. But she did once. And she still resents us for losing her several husbands. That’s the way she sees it.”
He shook his head. “That makes me sad. When she made her debut, she stormed society. Charming, if a little hard, and supremely beautiful. Everyone assumed she’d be married by the end of her first season. She accepted the son of the Earl of Carbrooke, but nobody noted any special preference. A few wondered why, because she could have had a duke.”
“You?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps once.” He gave her a look of burning intensity. “How fortunate that duke was not me.”
Chapter Eight
Adam could offer Delphi nothing the way matters stood with him, so he had to keep his distance. But when she looked so appealing, he found it increasingly difficult. Unfortunately, his attention to her that afternoon would be noticed, but he refused to abandon her to the Duchess of Beauchamp. Clearly, the lady’s marriage had not made any difference to her desire to grind the Dersinghams into dust under her dainty foot.
Adam would ensure she did no such thing.
Walking with Delphi reminded him of similar times in London. Simpler times when he’d made up his mind to court her properly and marry her, if she’d have him. Before Frederick had disappeared. Before he’d chased his brother over half of Europe.
“I had thought you would be married by now,” he said, without thinking. But it was the truth.
“Did you have anyone in mind for me?” She stared straight ahead, speaking coolly.
Yes, he did, but he could hardly tell her it was him. “Surely London isn’t entirely devoid of men who can see your true worth.”
She took a couple of steps before she answered him. “Thank you, I think.”
They came to rest before a large statue of some god or other. No doubt, she could tell him who it was. She didn’t disappoint him. “Apollo,” she said. “His lyre is tucked around the side, at his feet. I believe this could be an original Roman structure. Or as original as Roman statues get. Most were copies of bronze originals, you know, but bronze is too valuable to keep intact for long. Marble, well, you can’t do anything with it once it’s been carved into shape. So they survived.”
“Perhaps there’s a lesson there for us all.”
“What, that mediocre survives better than valuable and original?” Scorn poured through her voice. “Or that marble is more durable than bronze?”
“Or that beauty prevails, whatever material it is made of. That statue is damaged, and the surface roughened by time, but it still has a core of beauty that will never die. Superficial beauty, now that disappears.”
She folded her arms and studied the statue. “You’re right, of course,” she said. “The substance remains. Apollo was a beautiful god, and he created music that made people do his bidding, or they would weep from the emotion he created.” She did not look at him.
Did she understand what he was saying, or was she oblivious to his meaning?
“The Duchess of Beauchamp is beautiful. Everybody says so,” she said.
Ah. Yes, she did understand. “But with little substance beneath the beauty. She never attracted me.”
“She didn’t attract my brother, but he tolerated her, for, he thought, our sake. My sisters and me.”
“The Dersingham triplets. Remarkable, though you never made your relationship a feature of your appearance, as others might have done.”
“Hmm.” She paused. “We never liked that. Our birth caused our mother’s death, you see. Our father mourned her so deeply that he forgot he had children. He continued to forget. He died when Gerald was eighteen, and we moved to London to live with him. In many ways, that was when our real lives began. I miss the simple life we shared sometimes.”
She sounded so wistful that she made him want to hold her and comfort her. But he did not have that right. However, he understood why the three women refused to exploit their accident of birth. Others would have taken another tack and made themselves into a sensation. Triplets were rare, a spectacle, even though the Dersingham sisters were not identical. They would have had to work hard to avoid the notoriety, had they been so.
He knew something of their lives before they entered society. Living in Bunhill Row, a respectable but not fashionable part of London, four miles from Mayfair, had given them an outlook some found quaint, others offensive, and yet others, fascinating. Their lives had made them what they were; unashamedly intelligent, with interests that went further than housekeeping and embroidery. And careless of what society felt or demanded. They went their own ways, and followed their interests.
Hence, Delphi came to Rome. “Do you intend to remain here?”
“Oh, no,” she answered at once. “I want to go to Greece. When Matilda and Trensom go home, I might continue. I have some money of my own, and if I find a large enough entourage I’ll be safe enough.”
He imagined her sailing through Europe, and perhaps Asia, too, with a train of followers, enchanting everyone without realizing it. Engrossed in her studies, too concentrated on what she was doing to notice. She had not noticed before. One of her sisters had pointed out that he was more than interested in
her. After a whole night of conversation, and one kiss, he’d made her recognize it, too.
If not for that stay in Greenwich, he’d have had to work a lot harder to make her notice him as more than her sister’s husband’s friend. Then he’d thrown all that hard work away.
“Where after Greece?” he asked, wondering what she had worked out next.
“Well, Spain, perhaps, to see some of the remains there, and then to Carthage.”
“Africa.”
Of course. And the pirates who still sailed the coast in those parts. They’d love a pale-skinned girl to sell on the slave markets.
“You might find a few difficulties in that.”
“Oh, well.” She shrugged. “Once I have an account of my finances, I’ll know how far they’ll take me.”
“And you’re determined on this?” Perhaps he would go with her. If she let him. He might be better making himself scarce from London for a while.
“I was.” A note of doubt entered her voice. “But I think most places will be a disappointment after Rome. Imagine finding something as precious as this set out as garden statuary!” She waved at the image before them. “Rome has plenty of imitations and forgeries for sale, but I’m convinced this is the real thing.”
“The true strength and power shows through,” he said, not looking at the statue, but at her. “You’re remarkably informed.”
“For a woman,” she finished dryly.
“For anyone.”
Adam’s compliment annoyed Delphi, though it should not have done so. Very few people gave her the benefit of her years of study, and admitted her mind was the equal of anyone, man or woman. She should be pleased. But she wasn’t, and she didn’t know why. And that annoyed her even more.
“Why did you leave me in London?”
He blinked at her. “I beg your pardon?”
Aware she had committed some kind of social solecism, but caring nothing for that, Delphi plowed on. “No letter, no word. Why would you do that?”
A Whisper of Treason Page 9