Lessons of Desire

by Madeline Hunter

  After all, he was here, wasn’t he? He was calmly waiting for a man to choose dishonor to save his career and livelihood. He was depending on this man to lose his soul. His father’s blood was calculating how it would solve so many problems once Merriweather said the words. In particular, it would remove the need to deal with Phaedra and those memoirs. Who knew where that affair might lead then?

  It was terribly easy to weigh it all and see Merriweather’s lost honor as a small cost. He suspected he knew how Christian would tip the scales. Truth, like reality, was not an absolute for Christian.

  “Who is the publisher?” Merriweather broke the silence, perhaps hoping the devil would be more convincing and add yet more weight to the side of sin.

  Elliot went over to the window. If he was going to tempt a man with such a terrible choice, he should at least do it face-to-face.

  “Drury’s daughter, Phaedra Blair.” He explained how the inheritance had come to her.

  Merriweather closed his eyes. “Dear God. She was in this city earlier this summer.”

  “She still is. You can speak with her privately. There will be no need to commit your statement to paper.”

  “She called on me and I—”

  Phaedra had said nothing about trying to see Merriweather. Not one damned word. She had all but denied it. “Did you receive her?”

  “I—British citizens of all stripes think this is their home. They often make social calls that we cannot—I misunderstood.”

  He had cut Phaedra because she was not of the normal “stripe” that a diplomat bothered with. Not rich enough or titled enough or acceptable enough. Elliot felt a tad less sympathy for Merriweather and his moral dilemma. “When did she call?”

  “A month ago, maybe more. I remember because—well, she is somewhat known in London and I was aware of her and her—”

  “Her fascinating eccentricities?”

  Merriweather smiled weakly. “This is hellish, Rothwell. No doubt you wonder why I deliberate so long.”

  “I think that I comprehend the decision that you debate. I am sorry that circumstances force you to have a witness. I will leave if you like. I also swear that no one will ever learn from me that there was a choice to be made.”

  He seemed grateful for the understanding. “It weighed on me, you see. That death. It seemed wrong to falsify the circumstances. I thought it an extraordinary step. Better to air it all, I said, and let the officer under suspicion clear his name totally. But I was new to my duties and had no real influence. The colonel did not want the taint on his regiment. There was no proof, there was some trouble abroad in the region…” He sighed. “It was a fresh event when I accepted that dinner invitation. Mr. Drury was a convivial fellow and Miss Blair—the mother that is—she had a warmth that—I must have been tired from my voyage—”

  “Your trust in them was not misplaced. Neither spoke of it.”

  “Except that Drury had to go and write his memoirs, didn’t he?” He sighed. “I expect Easterbrook will have my head if I don’t give you what you want, and be a useful patron if I do. He has more influence than people realize.”

  Merriweather had not even needed to hear a bribe to know he would win a payment.

  “Easterbrook, for all his eccentricity, does not like the family name bantered about in idle gossip.”

  “Idle gossip, hell. I know the rumors about your father and that officer’s exile to the Cape Colony.”

  Everyone knew that rumor. That was the problem. Elliot could not promise to stay his brother’s hand if the scales of Merriweather’s conscience tipped an inconvenient way.

  He knew he should be trying to exert his own influence now, for his own sake as well as the family’s. He should point out the ambiguities to Merriweather. The circumstances surrounding that death were suspicious, but no one really knew what had happened.

  Merriweather laughed, bitterly. “When I was a boy my father used to warn that the day could come when honor had a terrible cost. I always thought he meant I might have to fight a duel. I never guessed I might have to fall on my own sword.” He shook his head and sighed deeply several times. He turned and faced Elliot squarely. “I cannot reconcile myself to lying, much as I want to.”

  “You are resolved?”

  “Yes, God help me. The officer died of a bullet wound to the chest, and there was cause to think his fellow officer was responsible. I did confide this to Drury at that dinner. I cannot now say I did not.”

  They exchanged a silent acknowledgment that of course he had a choice. He appeared contented with the one he had made, however, and Elliot understood why.

  Elliot took his leave, but paused at the door. “The other officer—what was his name?”

  “It might be best to let that dog lie, Rothwell.”

  “No doubt. I would still like to know his name.”

  “Wesley Ashcombe.”

  “What became of him?”

  Merriweather hesitated. “He came into a good deal of money soon after. A legacy. He sold out his commission and bought land in Suffolk. I have thought once or twice to look into that legacy, but decided it would do nothing to aid my repose at night. If he escaped justice there is little to be done now to change that. As I said, you should let that dog lie.”

  “Una maritata! You have wounded me worse than Pietro’s pistol with this marriage. I will die!”

  Marsilio’s shock rang through the garden. His handsome face became a mask of sorrow. His lids closed over his black eyes. His hand pressed his heart.

  “I do not believe that it is legitimate. We are not Catholic, you see. However, we will not be able to resolve the matter until we return to England.”

  “England! You leave? Cara, I fought a duel for you. I was so close to death that I hear the angels singing. Now you marry and leave? When?”

  “Soon.” Very soon, she suspected. But not too soon. “I wanted to see you before I departed, to make sure you had recovered from that duel.”

  Marsilio calmed himself after a long display of melodrama. At her encouragement he played out the great event. He strode and postured through the garden, showing her how it had all taken place.

  He was a very handsome boy, dressed fashionably and with sartorial bits of flair and color to mark himself as an artist. He wore his dark, wavy hair longer than most men and sported a full mustache that did not add the years to his face that he hoped.

  She fanned herself while he performed. When he got to the part about being shot he sat beside her again so she could sympathize.

  “It is better,” he reassured her. “But, at times, eh—” He twisted his torso and grimaced, to indicate he would carry the memory of her forever.

  His smile warmed. His gaze swept her and lingered on her head. “Your hair. Why do you twist it and pin it now? Does he force this on you?”

  “It is less hot this way.”

  His finger poked at the roll. “It is sad. Take it down, cara. I will help you.”

  She slapped his hand away. “No, Marsilio, you will not.”

  “Then you do it. Let it flow and fly again as free as your spirit. You will do it for me, no?”

  “The hell she will.”

  Phaedra froze at the terse, masculine interruption. Marsilio did too. His gaze slid right and left as he attempted to judge from where this unfriendly voice came.

  Right behind him, as it happened. Poor Marsilio could not see Elliot standing ten feet away. Just as well, because Phaedra could. She trusted Elliot would look less dangerous before Marsilio turned around.

  It was not to be. Elliot walked over to join them. Marsilio eased away, putting distance between him and her by slow fractions of inches.

  Elliot smiled down. It was not a smile that improved the situation. Marsilio tried to look confident and innocent but failed miserably.

  “Elliot, I am so glad you are finally returned. This is Marsilio. I told you about him, remember?”

  His smile did not soften. The steely glints got colder. “
I am always happy to meet one of your friends, my dear.”

  Marsilio misunderstood. He smiled with relief and began talking faster than his English could accommodate. “Si, an old amico. Solomente un’amico, si? Your signora is a dear friend and I come—have come to say arrivederci and hope someday to see her again so we can once more be such good friends.” He shot to his feet. He bobbed a quick bow at Phaedra. “I will go now.”

  “I will see you out,” Elliot said.

  “Grazie, but I do not—”

  “I insist.”

  It took some time for Elliot to return. She waited in the garden. If they were going to have a row perhaps the villa’s servants might not hear them out here.

  Finally Elliot rejoined her. She watched him walk down the broad stone path between crisply trimmed hedges. He was not all that much older than Marsilio, but in the ways that mattered there was no comparison between them to be made.

  That hardness still played at his eyes and mouth.

  “What did you say to him?” she asked.

  “I told him that if I ever find him alone with you again that I will call him out and that he will not be so fortunate with the results of his second duel. How did he find you? We have only been back a day.”

  “I sent him a note this morning.”

  She had not seen Elliot truly angry for some time. He did not express it overtly, but the garden seemed to tremble around him.

  “Is this your way of reminding me that you are free and independent, Phaedra? Because it only makes me wish that those vows are real so that I can make sure that I never have to tolerate your friends again.”

  “Vows ensure nothing of the kind, Elliot.”

  “The hell they don’t.” It was the response of a man who knew a man’s power all too well. It erupted like both a declaration and a curse.

  She waited while he controlled the primitive soul that had been unleashed.

  “Why did you invite him here while I was gone?”

  “I expected you to return sooner. I thought you would be here when he arrived, if he did come.”

  “Why did you invite him here at all? You must know that I could not want to meet him.”

  “He fought a duel because of me. It was a stupid duel, but I owed him the courtesy to acknowledge it, and to make sure he had recovered. Also, when I was in this city the last time, spurned and cut and ignored by my countrymen, he was a friend to me.”

  “A friend. Damnation, but I am coming to hate the word.”

  There was much she could say to soothe him, but this conversation only made it painfully clear that he would never be the kind of friend that she had secretly hoped. Elliot Rothwell was no Richard Drury.

  The temptation to capitulate completely, to give him rights no matter what the cost, spilled out of her heart the way it did so often now. The power of the emotion frightened her.

  She sensed anger loosening its hold on him. All the warmth of their intimacies entered his gaze. So did the perception that came from all of the intrusions she had carelessly allowed. Does that knowing ever go away once it is acquired? She was not sure whether she wanted to believe it did or did not.

  “Marsilio will tell Sansoni that you are back,” he said. The rational mind had gained control again, and it was calculating.

  “I expect that he might.”

  “Sansoni will not be pleased to learn that Marsilio came here.”

  “Probably not.”

  He took her hand and pulled her to her feet and into his arms. “I was late returning because I visited the docks. I booked passage to England. I will remove you from this city soon.”

  Soon. But not too soon.

  His kiss held remnants of the jealousy he had just conquered. He commanded and took with his mouth and his hands. She felt her dress loosening, dropping. He stripped her naked in the quiet garden while bees buzzed and hovered around the riot of summer blooms.

  He sat on the stone bench against the tree and pulled her into his lap. Kisses bit her neck and his tongue teased her breasts. His caresses stroked over her body. Every touch was intended to devastate.

  He smoothed his fingertips over her nipples until she squirmed. “Take down your hair. You did not do it at the boy’s request, but you will do it now for me.”

  She raised her arms and plucked at the pins. It was a small victory that she gave him. A little symbol of submission to salve his pride.

  His touch titillated her the whole time, promising ecstasy, luring her into the familiar abandon. She relinquished control as she always did now. She let him position her on his lap so her bare legs circled him and hung down the back of the bench.

  He arched her nakedness so he could kiss her body while they rocked together in rhythm to his thrusts. She clung onto what she could in the dappled shade under the tree, taking and giving everything that they still shared.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  Rain came that night, and with it a respite from the terrible heat. Elliot woke to air cleansed and fresh, billowing the drapery at the window. The dawn light still held a silvery cast that muted the forms in his chamber.

  He rose and pulled on a robe. He went to the writing table and flipped through some papers there. Last night in a fit of inspiration he had written for hours. Now he barely remembered what words he had used. He read several pages quickly, impressed that they were not half bad.

  He looked to the bed. Phaedra had been here when he sat down to write. When had she left? He could not remember. That was not like him. He did not suffer from the curse of losing hold on the world when he retreated into his mind.

  Except that last night he had. In doing so he had wasted one of the last truly free nights with Phaedra. He would make sure they found some privacy on the ship home, but the need for discretion would be clumsy and awkward. Here in Naples no one worried about such things.

  He let himself onto the terrace and walked down to the door that opened to her apartment. Their proximity was much like that in Positano, only much larger and more luxurious.

  No bedclothes covered Phaedra. She wore only a simple chemise that ended at her thighs. Her hair fanned around her, glistening in the soft light entering the room. A high pile of pillows propped up her body, as if she had fallen asleep unexpectedly. One arm lay stretched awkwardly where it had fallen when drowsiness claimed her. Palm up, her hand remained half-closed on something.

  He moved closer. Light glinted in tiny sparks off the object in her hand. He gently pried it free of her grasp. A cameo. This was no doubt the one she spoke of her mother owning.

  It was of good size, with impressive craftsmanship on the carved figures. An ancient gem of this quality would be very valuable. He carried it to the doorway to examine it more closely.

  He sensed her attention on him. He looked over to see her watching him. She appeared so beautiful there, all shades of white and gold, surrounded by the luxurious silks and satins of those pillows. She awed him sometimes. Too often.

  “You left,” he said, referring to her absence from his chamber.

  “No, you did,” she said, reminding him of the distraction he had not controlled. “Alexia told me how your brother leaves the world that same way, so I understand how it can be with the Rothwell men.”

  He joined her on the bed. “I regret that I did.”

  “It is who you are. The sun might make you forget for a few days or a few weeks, but you would not be whole if you forsook that world forever because of me.”

  He did not care for the warning implied in her words. She was not talking about only him and his world and his wholeness.

  He set the cameo on the valley between her breasts. “It is lovely.”

  “It is, isn’t it? I would have it set as a brooch except for what it stands for.”

  “It is no less beautiful for being a forgery. The value is much reduced, but not the artistry.”

  “I do not care about its value.”

  He could see her face clearly now. She appear
ed tired and drawn. Perhaps she had not slept much last night either, as she reclaimed her own wholeness.

  She picked up the cameo and gazed at it. “I faced the truth last night. I imagined it all too easily. The discreet sales, the promise of confidentiality, the glee of collectors obtaining rarities more cheaply if no one learned the source. It was a very clever scheme. If buyers were told the gems came from Pompeii they would want them all the more but be secretive because they were buying stolen goods.”

  “You do not know for certain there was a scheme.”

  “My father said there was. The interloper was at the heart of a scheme that is both brilliant and nefarious. That is how he tells it. He refers to a valuable item of suspect provenance, and others like it that will be discovered.”

  Her reference to those memoirs brought a shadow to his mood. Yesterday’s meeting with Merriweather had been blissfully forgotten during the retreat into his work. There had been no terrible choices in his head for those hours. No hard truths and harping questions about the past. No ruthless calculations either.

  “How convenient for a man selling such things to insinuate himself into my mother’s confidence and her life, and selling her this was the least of it,” Phaedra mused bitterly. “He only seduced her so he could meet the kind of people who would pay well for the forgeries that he sold. Her introduction would be like a license from the crown.”

  He wished he could demolish her interpretation with a few careful words. Her deductions were too good, too plausible.

  “Why does it matter to you so much, darling?”

  She sat abruptly, pulling her body away and looking down at him. She was angry. Furious. Not with him.

  “My father said that man was responsible for her death. I think she learned what he was doing, how he was using her. I did not understand that before but last night I suddenly did. She believed there was more with him, you see. More than she had known with my father. That is the only explanation for what she did.”

  Her face tightened. Her eyes glistened. She glared down at the cameo like it was an object of loathing. With the light’s growing strength he could see the signs of weeping on her face.