by Juliana Gray
She wasn’t sure she’d heard him properly. He had muttered the words into the wood, and they seemed quite unlike him, quite unlike what she expected from him. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“Of course you don’t. Innocent Miss Harewood.”
“That’s nonsense. I’m not innocent at all. I’ve told you all about my kissing adventures, and you don’t know the half of what I get up to when my sister’s not paying attention. I wager on horses, I sneak out for pints down the pub, I read the most shocking literature, I . . .”
He laughed and turned, crossing his arms, leaning against the wall. “Heinous crimes indeed.”
“I dress myself as a boy when I visit the racetrack. I might be arrested for that.”
Wallingford shook his head. “Go home, Miss Harewood. Go home and marry some suitable young chap, some pleasant smooth-cheeked fellow from a decent family. There are dozens of them about. I daresay you’d lead him around by the nose, and he’d never think of straying.”
“If you were as bad as you say, you wouldn’t have such scruples. You’d take me regardless and send me on my way.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Why don’t you, then?”
“Because you are innocent. You’re impossibly innocent, the most innocent woman I’ve ever met. Because I’d like to think . . . the point of all this, you see . . .” He waved his hand, stood away from the wall, took a step or two down the stable aisle. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared into the darkness. “Just go.”
She rubbed Lucifer’s muzzle and wrapped her arm around his contented neck. His head dropped, resting on her shoulder. “What if I don’t want to go?”
Wallingford reached with his long woolen arm and took his lantern from the hook. He didn’t even look at her. “Then I’ll have to be disciplined enough for both of us,” he said. “Which is, I suppose, no more than I deserve.”
* * *
Abigail stood for some time after he left, caressing Lucifer’s motionless head. Her eyes were closed. She was absorbing everything: the whisper of straw as the horses moved about, the creak of wood, the tiny currents of air in the humid chill, the rich horsey smell of Lucifer’s black coat. The tingling at the back of her head, curling the roots of her hair.
“You can come out now,” she said. “I know you’re there.”
The air went still, as if holding its breath.
“Who are you? Giacomo, I suppose? The groundskeeper. Morini told us about you. You’re ghosts, aren’t you?”
The lantern flickered.
“I’m not afraid. Look at Lucifer, here. He’s almost asleep. I know you won’t hurt me, or else you can’t hurt me, because otherwise the horses would be upset.”
Lucifer nodded against her shoulder, lipped her collar.
“You can show yourself. I won’t say anything to the others.” She paused. “Do you speak English?” There was no answer. “Can you tell me why you’re here? What’s going on? Have you brought us all together, here at the castle?”
From some corner of the stable, beyond the reach of the lantern, a horse neighed softly. Abigail waited without moving, almost without breathing, every sense open. It seemed she could feel each particle of air as it touched her skin.
At last she stepped away from Lucifer and gave him a pat. She lifted her lantern from the hook and gave it a last sweep about the space. The horses blinked at her from the cobwebs. Something rustled rapidly through the straw.
“You know I won’t give up,” she said. “I will find out. You’ve met your match, Mr. Giacomo, or whoever you are.”
She walked out through the stable door and closed it carefully behind her. Ahead loomed the castle, black against the charcoal sky, hints of light gleaming distantly from a window or two. At the doorway stood a cloaked figure, dangling a lantern from one hand. The fire crossed his face in harsh streaks and shadows.
He was waiting for her.
Abigail crossed the wet courtyard. The drizzle had let up, leaving behind a clinging mist. Wallingford held open the door and followed her silently into the great hall and up the staircase. On the landing he parted from her, bound for the west wing.
The gentlemen’s wing.
FIVE
April 1890
For a man of known libertine tendencies, the Duke of Wallingford was proving remarkably difficult to seduce.
Abigail had thought it would be a simple matter to begin her first love affair, once she had chosen her subject. She was ready, she was willing, she was reasonably appealing, at least to the indiscriminate male palate. She had found the perfect spot, a boathouse near the lake, and equipped it with everything necessary for one’s passionate defloration: cushions and a fine wool blanket, stored in the cupboard; wine and glasses, tucked inside the splitting hull of an ancient flat-bottomed dinghy; the best beeswax candles in abundance. She had done it all in stealth, piece by piece, and waited until April had turned (March was far too cold for alfresco assignations, even in Italy, and even with a duke) before donning her most flesh-baring gown and making herself available of an evening.
The trouble was, the duke was making himself distinctly unavailable.
It was all the fault of that silly wager, Abigail thought crossly, dragging the goat across the stableyard to its pen before breakfast one morning. (Like Wallingford, the animal had proven unwilling to go where he was told, but in the matter of stubbornness no goat yet bred could outmatch Abigail Harewood.) What had Alexandra been thinking, heating up the competitive male juices like that? A bet, of all things: The one matter calculated to bring out every medieval masculine tendency toward pride and gamesmanship and bullheaded thick-wittedness.
And who would have thought the Duke of Wallingford—so decidedly, deliciously unchaste—would take the matter all so dashed seriously? Instead of gazing enraptured at the curve of her bosom, he had glowered fiercely. Instead of dragging her into a passionate embrace when he had encountered her in the twilit shadows of the spring-warmed garden, he had turned on his heel and stalked back into the house.
Really, was it something she’d said?
Abigail turned around the corner of the stable, and the wooden pen appeared before them. The goat set its cloven hooves firmly into the pale dust of the stableyard and let out an alarmed maaa-maaa.
“Now look here,” said Abigail, “it’s a fine old pen. You’ve got an olive tree all to yourself, and I shall personally undertake to see that the geese don’t bother you.”
The goat administered a firm knock to her buttocks.
“Well! There’s gratitude for you.” Abigail tugged at the rope. “Come along, then. You know you can’t win. Besides, it’s only for the rest of the morning, while I have breakfast and then help Maria and Francesca with the cleaning. We can’t have you running about while the sheets and things are out to dry.”
Maaa-maaa, said the goat.
Abigail tugged again. “You do realize that we’re cleaning the house for the priest’s Easter blessing tomorrow? Think of the infamy, if nothing is ready. You’ll be damned forever, I’m quite sure, and consigned to some hideous circle of hell with only those bad-tempered geese for company, pecking at you incessantly.”
A breeze drifted through the stableyard, shivering the goat’s beard.
“Don’t look so pathetic, Percival. I haven’t a sympathetic bone in my body for recalcitrant goats who won’t go where they’re told,” said Abigail. She looked up and shaded her eyes against the radiant morning sun. “Oh, look! Clover!”
The goat’s head shot up.
“Right over there! Hurry!”
When at last Percival was secured in the pen, sulking under the olive tree, Abigail allowed herself a moment of triumph, stretched against the fence post, soaking the early warmth into her bones.
The hillside tumbled away before her in walls and terraces, rioting with the growth of spring: long gnarled rows of grapevines, just shooting out their pale green leaves, bordered by the trace of what would soon b
e cornstalks; the peach orchard erupting into bloom to her right; and beyond it, the path down to the lake, surrounded by olive and apple trees. To her left, the laborers plowed long furrows into the vegetable gardens, their white shirts reflecting the watery sun. She could not see the village, nestled at the bottom of the valley, but she felt it there, a warm jumble of sand yellow buildings, red roofs glowing against the green hillside.
She loved them all. She loved everything about the Castel sant’Agata. She had loved watching it all stir into sudden life in the second half of March, in sprouts of pale green against the browns and grays of the wet earth; she loved standing here now, absorbing it all, the scent of the peach blossom and of rich, newly turned dirt, the distant lazy shouts of the laborers.
She loved the sight of the duke, swinging around the corner of the stable as he did every morning (she slipped her watch from her pocket, just to be sure) at exactly seven o’clock.
“Good morning,” she called out cheerfully.
“Good morning,” he said, rather less cheerfully. He did not bother to look in her direction.
Abigail leaned against the fence and let the faint spring sun absorb into her hat. The duke was standing quite still, about twenty feet away, and the clear light seemed to dust him with gold. He wore his well-tailored tweeds, his riding boots, his flat wool cap, and he gazed with penetrating ferocity at the fence ahead of him, as if blind and deaf to the beauty of his surroundings.
“Is there something wrong?” she asked politely.
He turned at last. “My horse,” he said. “Where the devil is my horse?”
“In the pasture, I believe.”
“In the pasture?” Wallingford said, as he might say, In the starting line at Epsom? “Why the devil?”
“The Devil, the Devil. You keep saying that. I assure you, the Devil has nothing to do with Lucifer grazing calmly at his leisure. Quite the opposite. Oh, ha-ha!”
He looked at her as if she were mad. “What exactly is so amusing?”
“The Devil. Lucifer. You’ve rather an affection for the old scratch, haven’t you? A sort of occupational affinity?”
Wallingford slapped his riding crop against his boot. “My horse is supposed to be saddled, bridled, and waiting for me at seven o’clock each morning, in this very spot. I don’t suppose you have any idea why today should be any different?”
Abigail shaded her eyes and looked out across the fields. “I suspect it’s because they’ve starting sowing this morning at dawn.”
“Sowing?”
“The fields, you know. Food for our tables and all that. It’s spring, or hadn’t you noticed?”
“And why should this affect the readiness of my horse for a morning ride?”
She turned back to him and smiled. “I suspect that’s because the stable hands are needed for the plowing.”
“For the plowing?” Wallingford looked at the fields, at the antlike industry of the distant laborers, with palpable astonishment.
“Look, I don’t mean to cast aspersions,” said Abigail, “but are you certain you’ve had your coffee this morning?”
He cast her a dark look. “As it happens, I have. I am in every way prepared to meet a pending appointment in the village, except that I have . . . no . . . horse!” He said the last words with deliberate force, which ought to have sent a dozen ducal retainers flying to do his bidding.
Except that no ducal retainers existed, here in the Tuscan hills.
Abigail smiled again. “Then I expect you’ll have to saddle Lucifer yourself.”
“Saddle him myself?”
She lifted herself away from the fence. “You appear flummoxed, Your Grace. Fortunately, you have me at your service, quite happy to extend my hand in assistance. Fetch your horse, and I shall burrow into the tack room and find your saddle.”
“Fetch?” Wallingford roared, but Abigail had already skipped off across the stableyard.
The tack room was at the back of the building, shadowed and smelling strongly of leather. Abigail had been there often for one errand or another, and she knew exactly where Wallingford’s equipment was kept. She hoisted the bridle over one shoulder, hooked her arm under the saddle and pad, and snatched the wooden box with the brushes.
At the door, she paused in contemplation. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” she said to herself, and she set the box back down and jerked her bodice a little lower.
* * *
Lucifer regarded his master with a bemused dark eye, his jaws working away at a mouthful of tender spring grass.
“I hate to interrupt your idyll, old boy,” said Wallingford, “but I require your assistance on the road to the village.”
Lucifer stretched down his neck for another bite.
“Damned cheeky brute.” Wallingford grasped the horse’s worn rope halter and urged him into motion.
He should have been on his guard from the beginning, of course. The groundskeeper had even warned him. “The girl, she is waiting for you again,” Giacomo had said, shaking his head, leaning against the stable wall. “She is trouble, that one.”
Wallingford quite agreed, but he wasn’t about to let Giacomo tell him so. “There’s nothing troublesome about her,” he’d said, slapping his crop impatiently against his boots. “She’s simply a girl, going about her business. I daresay she’s watching the goats, isn’t she?”
“She pretend to watch the goats. She is watching for you.”
“Rubbish. Good day, Giacomo.” And he had stridden arrogantly into the stableyard and Abigail Harewood’s cheerful tidings.
Point to Giacomo.
Lucifer, quite unlike himself, would not be moved from a leisurely stroll, and by the time the two of them achieved the pasture gate, Abigail was already standing there, bright and shining and full-bosomed, the sun gleaming gloriously in her chestnut hair and her slender arms groaning with equestrian equipment.
“Perhaps I should have chosen to walk instead,” Wallingford muttered.
Abigail beamed at him. “Ah, excellent. I see you’ve gotten into the spirit of things directly.”
“Just give me the saddle, Miss Harewood, and let us be done with it.”
Abigail set down the box and tossed the saddle atop the fence rail. “Oh no, Your Grace. We must brush him first.”
“Brush him. Of course.”
She selected a brush from the box. “If we each take a side, we shall finish ever so much faster. I hope I need hardly tell you to brush in the direction of the hair growth.”
“I believe I understand the mechanics.” He snatched the brush from her hand and started to work.
“I don’t understand why you’re so cross. I think it’s good for you, to escape all your ducal trappings and whatnot. Saddling your own horse is a fine start.”
“I have not traveled all the way to Italy to learn how to saddle my own horse. I might have done that quite comfortably back at home.”
“But you wouldn’t have, though, would you? I daresay all that London nonsense, all the drinking and women and so on, has eaten into your soul. Hasn’t it, Wallingford?”
“Rubbish.” He worked his way across the line of Lucifer’s girth, brushing with intense concentration, observing with a certain grudging pleasure the way the sun came to life upon the sleek dark hair. In the upper periphery of his vision, Abigail’s hair bobbed alluringly above Lucifer’s hindquarters. He was glad she couldn’t see him. He felt bare, stripped to the bone by her matter-of-fact words.
“You needn’t be so circumspect,” she said, in that same unflappable tone. “I’ve been observing you, you know, since we first arrived at that wretched inn. I suspect we’re more alike than you realize, except that I have rather a clearer view of things. Not having been thoroughly spoilt by unlimited power and riches, you see.”
“I am not spoilt.” He concentrated on the steady stroke of the brush, on the way the physical rhythm of the task restored his equilibrium.
“Here’s the saddlecloth,” said Abigail, pop
ping up from under Lucifer’s neck. She handed it to him. “You spread it . . . no, the other way . . . yes, very good. Now flatten out the creases, or he’ll be annoyed. No, I’m quite in agreement with you, about wanting to flee all the nonsense of social expectation back in England. I have an aversion to marriage and that sort of thing myself.”
Wallingford smoothed away at the saddlecloth, arranging it just so. “Indeed. So you told me, that first evening at the inn.”
“But you never asked me why.”
“I daresay I didn’t wish to pry into your private affairs. You, of course, have no such scruples. I daresay half London knows your views on marriage.” He glanced over the top of Lucifer’s back, where she stood quietly, both hands on the saddlecloth, smoothing her side.
“That’s not true at all. I believe you’re the first person I’ve spoken to on the matter, except that dear stableboy at the inn. And he didn’t speak any English, so it doesn’t signify.” Abigail went to the fence, where the saddle straddled the top rail. He couldn’t see her face; it almost seemed she was hiding it from him. She paused, drawing her hand along the saddle seat. “I’ll tell you why. You see, I never wanted to marry. I promised myself I wouldn’t. When I moved to London, and saw Alexandra’s life, saw how my carefree and mischievous sister had transformed into this . . . this very amusing but rather . . . unadventurous wife of a great man, I told myself I should rather die than let that happen to me.”
Wallingford stared at her helplessly. An absurd sensation invaded his chest: hollow and warm, all at once.
She lifted the saddle, and instead of handing it to Wallingford, placed it on Lucifer’s back herself. She went on, in a subdued voice. “Her life had no purpose; it was all salons and parties, talking and flirting and never doing anything, only inventing more amusements. Oh, the occasional charity junket, of course; she’s not so shallow as that. But I don’t think she was happy, either, not really. She was restless and bored, though she pretended to have the time of her life. And Lilibet! Well, I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about Somerton. Her marriage was nothing but the blackest misery.”