by Juliana Gray
He stared at her shadow among the blossoms. “No. It appears I cannot.”
Lady Morley turned and dissolved into the night.
Wallingford stood still, listening to the tiny sounds around him, the movements of animals and the soft rush of the wind among the trees. The temperature was falling; already the air chilled his burning cheeks, penetrating the wool of his jacket and waistcoat.
He ran a hand through his hair. He ought to have worn a hat, he supposed.
At last he turned and walked through the trees, down the terraces, past the apple trees and the vineyard. As he walked, he took the folded note from his waistcoat, ripped it into neat tiny squares, and let them flutter from his fingers into the breeze.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, when the coast was finally clear, Abigail Harewood slipped down, branch by branch, from her post among the blossoms, not six feet away from where the Duke of Wallingford had run his fingers through his sleek dark hair.
Her limbs were trembling, and not just from the effort of perching motionless in a peach tree for well over half an hour, hardly daring to breathe, as the air grew damp and chilly and the inhabitants of Castel sant’Agata came, one by one, to hide among the trees and rendezvous with one another.
You must go to the orchard! Morini had told her frantically, when Abigail finally found her that evening, so confused and addled by her preoccupation with Wallingford that she had entirely forgotten the housekeeper’s whispered message at luncheon. It is all a great mess! They will all do the bumping in the night together! Signore Penhallow, he is leaving too early, and that rascal Giacomo, that sneaking scoundrel, he has . . .
Say no more, Abigail had told Morini, and off she went, spirits restored by the notion of a secret assignation in the peach orchard.
But no sooner had she scaled the branches and settled herself into her blossom-scented arbor, when Phineas Burke had settled himself against the very trunk of the tree into which she’d climbed.
She was trapped, trapped like a . . . well, like a cat in a tree.
Then Lord Roland had come along, muttering poetry, apparently waiting for Lilibet. Then everyone had run into hiding as Wallingford crashed through the branches with his glorious, heedless stride.
And then Alexandra had appeared.
Wallingford had left in the downhill direction, away from the castle. He might, of course, be going anywhere, but Abigail knew as she knew her own bones that the duke had gone to swim in the lake.
The moon was not full, but what surface it offered shone clear and bright over the terraces of the hillside. Abigail made her way down each one, finding the steps in the walls by moonlight and instinct, until she reached the fringe of olive and cypress that surrounded the lake like a bristling belt. Through the branches, she heard the faint sound of splashing water, mingling with the calls of the night birds.
She settled herself on a boulder to wait for him, near the neat pile of his clothing on the rocks, not far from the boathouse, while over and over her mind saw again the little jolt of Wallingford’s body at Alexandra’s words.
Mr. Burke is twenty times the man you’ll ever be, Your Grace.
Abigail doubted Alexandra had noticed. It was only a small jolt, really, hardly more than a flinch. But to Abigail it had the same effect as an earthquake.
Wallingford, vulnerable. Wallingford, in pain.
Abigail clenched her fists in her lap at the memory.
She had remained in her tree, unmoving, biting her own arm with the effort to keep still. Her skin had grown wet with her tears, and then she had been afraid lest one should fall down and give her away.
Oh, where was he? Was he going to swim all night?
Abigail tucked up her knees under her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. Beneath her bottom, the boulder cast a numbing chill that spread up her back and into her legs. The evening was already cool, and the breeze from the lake was even colder. He would catch his death if he weren’t careful.
A single cloud passed before the moon, like a wraith.
The splashing grew louder and more distinct. Regular, like a metronome. It must be Wallingford.
She couldn’t stifle the gust of relief that left her body as he rose from the water. He didn’t see her at first. The moonlight caressed the planes of his body, turned him to silver, even his dark wet hair, which he wrung out in swift motions of his hands.
He was so beautiful, made in such exquisite proportion, lean and strong, glittering with water, his shoulders flexing and his quadriceps curving in tight arcs into the tendons of his knees. He reached for his shirt, gleaming white under the moon, and rubbed himself dry with it; he slid his drawers up his legs and tied the string at his waist, his body set in magnificent profile to hers, perhaps twenty feet away.
He bent to the rocks and reached for his trousers.
And froze.
A little gust of wind brushed Abigail’s skin, making her shiver.
“Miss Harewood,” Wallingford said, in a low voice, “is that you?”
She cleared her throat. “Well, yes.”
“Ah.” He put one leg in his trousers, and then the other. “And I suppose you’ve been sitting there for some time?”
“Quite some time, in fact.”
He drew up the trousers and buttoned them, neither slowly nor hastily, his eyes fixed on the rocks before him. “You followed me down from the orchard?”
“Not quite.” She cleared her throat again. “Burke was there, you see, and Penhallow turned up . . .”
“Penhallow!”
“Yes, it was all rather . . . rather like a comedy . . .” She choked. “I came down when I could. I knew you would be here.”
“How did you know that?” He put his wet shirt over his gleaming shoulders and began to button it.
“I’ve seen you swimming here before.”
“Of course you have. I should have expected nothing less.” He tucked the shirt into the waistband of his trousers and picked up his waistcoat. He seemed impervious to the chilling effect of wet cloth on a breezy night. “I suppose you realize this must constitute a violation of the wager. I could demand the ladies’ forfeit this instant.”
“You could,” she said. “But that was the flaw in the wager all along, wasn’t it? We never actually laid out the rules. What was permissible contact, and what was not.”
“Watching a man dress himself is permissible, in your notion?”
“I closed my eyes at the crucial moment,” she lied.
He had his jacket on now; he was straightening his sleeves. He turned to her.
The tears welled up in her eyes again. Even in the darkness, she could pick out the severe arrangement of his features, could see how cold and hard he was.
She blurted out, “You’re beautiful.”
“You’re mad.”
“Please, Wallingford.” She rose from the boulder, limbs stiff, and held out her hands. “I never meant to hurt you. I hope I haven’t.”
“Hurt me? I beg your pardon?”
Oh, he was so cold. She stepped down from the boulder and tottered toward him.
“Are you all right?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes, only stiff.”
“How long have you been sitting there?”
“Not that long, but the tree . . .”
“The tree?”
She smiled and stopped, a few feet away from him. She counted it a victory that he had held his ground. “The tree above you, in the orchard.”
A strange expression crossed his face: a softening, a relaxing of the muscles about his jaw and his eyes. “Then it was you who sent the note?”
The note? What note?
No one could ever accuse Abigail Harewood of slow wits. She hesitated only an instant before she answered, “Yes. Yes, I sent you the note,” and held out her hands.
Wallingford snatched them with his own. “Thank God,” he said, looking at her fingers.
“I wanted to meet you, away from the o
thers,” she went on, hoping to God she was getting it right, “but then everybody began turning up, and I didn’t want to embarrass you . . .”
“Oh, God, Abigail.” He took one hand and pressed it to his lips. “I thought . . . I thought it was all a trick . . .”
“It was never a trick. Please believe that of me. Please, Wallingford. Look at my face.”
“No, I can’t.”
“But you do believe me. Say you do.”
He sighed. “I don’t know. I think I do. My God, your hands are frozen.”
“I’m quite all right.”
“You’re shivering. You’ve brought no shawl with you, foolish child, nothing at all.” He released her hands and took off his jacket. “We must get you back.”
“No! No, not yet.” The jacket settled around her shoulders, warm and heavy, dwarfing her. She was shivering, from cold and from excitement. Wallingford’s hands lingered at the collar of the jacket, drawing her a step closer, and another step.
His breath was fanning across the top of her head now. His chin touched her hairline. Her face hovered in the warm nook beneath his jaw, where the skin of his neck lay so close to her nose and lips, so damp and alive, smelling of nothing but sweet fresh water.
Abigail lifted her arms and laid them against his waistcoat, from elbow to fingertip. “If I ask you a personal question, a very impertinent question, will you answer me truly?”
“Miss Harewood, when have you ever asked me anything else?”
She laughed into his neck. They were not quite embracing; Wallingford’s hands remained at the collar of the jacket, bracketing her between his arms but not altogether enfolding her. Still, she felt deliciously secure in this intimate space between their two bodies; almost a part of him. His heartbeat crashed beneath her hands; his breath warmed her hair. She felt as if she could say anything, do whatever she wanted; she was his prisoner, and yet more free than she had ever been in her life.
“You and Mr. Burke. You’re related, aren’t you?”
“Hmm.”
“I noticed it at dinner last night. I don’t know why I never saw it before. Your coloring’s quite different, of course, but you’re both tall and lean . . .”
“I’m not quite so tall and lean as Burke.”
“No.” She laughed. “It’s as if he’s taken your body and stretched it longer. And your faces, they’re built alike, Penhallow’s, too, those same cheekbones and jaw, and the way your brows meet your eyes . . .”
“You were studying the matter a great deal.”
She gave him a nudge with one hand. “Tell me the truth.”
Her arms rose and fell with the depth of his sigh. “Burke’s natural father is the Duke of Olympia, my mother’s father.”
“Oh,” Abigail breathed out. The information was shocking, of course, but even more shocking was that he had told her this fact at all. Perhaps it was common knowledge among a certain set, acknowledged wordlessly in aristocratic hallways, but it remained a delicate family secret, a matter of trust. “Then he’s . . . he’s your . . .”
“My uncle, yes.” His tone was dry, and just faintly amused.
She laughed into his throat, almost a giggle. “Your uncle!” She laughed again, bubbling over, until her back was shaking and Wallingford’s hands slid around her shoulders at last and held her, cradled her against his big body. “Your uncle,” she said again, and this time he laughed, too, vibrating under her hands.
She laid her head against his chest. “But it must have been rather hard for you.”
“Not at all. He’s a fine chap, Burke. I’m proud to own him. Every family needs a genius, and . . . well, he’s an absolute legend, as you know. A colossus in his field.”
Abigail thought of the little jolt of Wallingford’s body, back in the peach orchard. “He’s a darling fellow, of course. But I believe I like you best.”
Was she mistaken, or did his arms tighten around her, a fraction of a degree? He bent his head to press his cheek against her hair. “Then you’ve no sense at all, as I suspected,” he said.
“I have much more sense than anyone gives me credit for.”
“And what about my charming Adonis of a brother? You haven’t considered him?”
“He’s a darling as well, I quite adore Penhallow, but . . . well . . . there’s something missing . . .”
“A dukedom, perhaps?”
She snapped her fingers. “Oh yes, of course! That’s it.” The buttons of his waistcoat lay beneath her hand, smooth and covered with cloth. She touched one gently, circled it with her finger. “Besides, my cousin Lilibet owns him, body and soul.”
“I fear you’re right.”
The water lapped against the nearby shore. Outside the circle of their arms, the breeze was picking up, chilled and restless. It was late, midnight at least, but Abigail didn’t want to move, did not want to budge a fraction of an inch away from this spot and this man.
She inhaled deeply.
“Wallingford, I want you to call off the wager.”
He didn’t move. She held her breath, waiting.
“Hmm,” he said at last.
She drew back and tried to look up at his face, but his arms wouldn’t loosen around her, and she only bumped her nose against the bottom of his jaw. “I mean it. It’s pointless, can’t you see? Nobody wants to leave the castle, there’s room for everyone. And what possible harm does it do, letting people fall in love with one another, as they were meant to do?”
The instant she said the words, a flush began to spread up from her heart and into her face, until her cheeks absolutely burned with self-consciousness. Say something, she thought frantically, while the word love dangled like a pendulum between them, in rhythm with the slow, deliberate beat of Wallingford’s heart beneath her hands.
“I suppose,” he said, like a magistrate delivering a verdict, “if we were to let the matter drop, without saying anything . . .”
She flung her arms around his neck. “Oh, thank you! Thank you. Just think what fun it will be, without this dreadful sentence hanging over us. What friends we will all be.”
Wallingford reached back, caught her hands, and brought them between his chest and hers. “Friends, Abigail?” He was looking at her now, his expression soft and serious, the moonlight glinting against the tiny droplets that still clung to his eyelashes.
Abigail was glad for the darkness, because it hid her blushes. Blushes! Her! Abigail had scarcely blushed in her life, and now here she stood, flushing and trembling like some silly debutante in a London ballroom, exactly the sort of girl she’d sworn never to become. And yet, the sensation was not altogether unpleasant. She felt rather . . . thrilled. As if one of her long shots, galloping along hopelessly at the rear of the pack, had turned for home and put on a dazzling kick of speed, hurtling past all the others, with the finish pole beckoning ahead.
That sort of dizzy elation, only better. As if she were the horse herself.
“Yes, friends,” she warbled. “Men and women can be friends. We can study together, every afternoon. You’re an expert in Latin; I heard you at lunch. We’ll work our way through . . .”
“Abigail.” He stopped her mouth with the gentlest of kisses. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s a very long distance from embracing passionately in a stable to becoming friends.”
Her eyes rounded with astonishment. Wallingford looked down at her, perfectly serious, almost stern, except for a minute fleck of muscle at the corner of his mouth.
“Oh!” she gasped. “Oh! How I adore you!” She flung her hands back around his neck, laughing, feeling with ecstasy the shaking of his chest as he laughed, too. He lifted her from the ground, and something pressed against her hair, and she knew he was kissing her.
“Listen to me,” he said at last, “we must get you back. It’s late and you’re chilled, and everyone will wonder . . .”
“No one will wonder. They’ll think I’m in my room.”
“Abigail.” He brushed a stray
lock of hair from her face. “We’re not going to do this, do you understand me? I may be a brute and a scoundrel, but I’m not in the habit of seducing virgins, even one for whom I . . .”
“Yes?”
He kissed her forehead. “Never mind. Come along.”
He made no move to disengage, and neither did she.
“I don’t want to go,” she said. “Please. Just a little longer. I don’t want to let it go.”
He hesitated. “You’ll be chilled.”
His voice was impossibly gentle, an entirely different Wallingford, some true and hidden Wallingford. She wanted to capture it somehow, the way Mr. Burke might capture a sample of air in his scientific beakers.
Abigail drew back. “Wait here a moment,” she said, and hurried across the damp rocks to the boathouse.
When she returned, arms laden with blankets, he was still standing there on the rocks, barefoot, arms crossed. “What the devil?” he asked, eyebrows high.
“I keep them in the boathouse, in case of picnics,” Abigail said breezily. She laid a blanket about his shoulders and wrapped the other around hers.
“Picnics.” He pulled her against him. “You mad girl.” He kissed her hair. “My mad girl.”
She drew him against a boulder and sank to the ground. “Just for a few minutes.” His hand remained in hers, doubtful; she gave it a little shake. “Come along. I’m sure your reputation can withstand the scandal.”
“It looks dashed uncomfortable down there.”
“You can rest your head on my lap.”
“God help us.” He settled down next to her with a resigned sigh of theatrical proportions. Almost gingerly he put his arm around her and urged her head into the blanketed nook of his shoulder. “You’re warm enough?”
“Mmm.” She closed her eyes. “You’re not a brute, nor a scoundrel, Wallingford. Why do you pretend to be?”
His hand drew long lines up and down her arm. “It’s not a pretense. It’s a part of me. It’s you who insist on pretending otherwise.”
“That’s rot. Of course we all have baser urges. I daresay even Lilibet has them, from time to time.”
“Yes, but I give in to them, far too often. My grandfather has often remarked on it. He believes it’s because I’ve lived a life of unbridled privilege, denied nothing from the instant of my birth.”