by Jane Feather
“What are you two doing?” Constance demanded.
“Nothing, it's just rather cramped and I'm stiff,” Chastity mumbled as somehow Douglas managed to fasten the waistband of her knickers.
“If you don't want to be found, you shouldn't talk,” came Max's voice from the bathroom. He opened the closet and looked in. “Oh, Lord, Farrell, couldn't you have done better than this?”
“Oh, no,” Douglas said. “Absolutely not.”
Chastity gave up and yielded to a peal of laughter. Max looked down at her, then up at his wife. “Am I missing something here?”
“If you come up and share my shelf, we might find out,” Constance said.
“I'll have you know that I'm a Cabinet Minister,” Max declared, clambering with great difficulty onto the shelf. “And this is most undignified for a man in my position.” His voice was muffled, because his head was almost on his chest as he tried to avoid bumping into the shelf above. His legs dangled down into Chastity's lap.
“Who's left?” Chastity wondered. “Prue and Gideon, of course. And Sarah. Mary's not playing, is she?”
“I hope for her sake she's not,” Max grumbled. “And the very next person who comes in here is going to have to hide in the bath.”
The bathroom door opened again and Sarah said, “I found you. You left the closet door open.”
“That's because there's not enough room in here for all us if we shut it,” Chastity explained. “But you're small enough to climb onto the top shelf. Can you do it?”
“Easily,” Sarah said confidently. She scrambled over Max and Constance and curled up on the top shelf. “This is fun.”
“That rather depends on the length of your legs,” Max muttered.
Prudence's arrival a few minutes later was too much for him. “That's it,” he declared. “I'm not waiting for Gideon.”
“You don't have to, he's here,” said Gideon from the doorway. He laughed at the sight of them. “How very inconsiderate of you, Farrell.”
“It is called sardines,” Chastity protested in Douglas's defense. “The whole point is to be crammed in.”
Max jumped down from his shelf, pressing his hands into the small of his back. “Do you have anything for backache in your medical bag of tricks, Farrell?”
“I'd be inclined to prescribe a large whisky,” Douglas advised. He was reluctant to move Chastity off him with everyone around since he had only a hazy idea of how well buttoned they both were.
“Help me down, Max.” Constance reached out her hands to her husband, who half lifted her off the shelf. He reached up to Sarah, giving her his hands to help her jump down.
“Are you two getting out of there?” Prudence inquired of Chastity and Douglas from the edge of the bath, where she was sitting.
“I'm actually quite comfortable,” Chastity said. “Aren't you, Douglas?”
“Oh, yes,” he agreed, lying through his teeth. “Perfectly comfortable.”
Max peered in at them, then cleared his throat. “Well, we'll leave you in peace, then.” He straightened, and made a sweeping gesture towards the door. “Come along, people. Let's go and devise some other devilish game to play.”
“Do you think they guessed?” Chastity asked, as the door closed behind the group.
“I'm assuming that's a rhetorical question,” Douglas replied, easing her off him. “Let me up, for God's sake, before I lose all feeling in my legs.”
“I didn't think it was your legs you were worried about,” Chastity said, crawling out of the cupboard. She stood up, hiking her skirt and petticoat up to her waist so that she could refasten her knickers and check her suspenders.
Douglas groaned and turned his back on the entrancing sight while he adjusted his own clothes. “Ready?”
“Ready.” Chastity checked her appearance in the mirror, licking a fingertip and smoothing her eyebrows. “I'll bet there are going to be winks and smart remarks when we appear.”
“Well, we only have ourselves to blame,” he said cheerfully.
“I beg your pardon, Dr. Farrell, we only have you to blame,” she corrected. “You started it all.”
“Oh, yes, so I did,” he agreed with an amiable smile. “But don't tell me you didn't enjoy it.”
“I wasn't going to,” she said, heading for the door.
Douglas didn't immediately follow her. Thoughtfully, he turned towards the mirror above the washbasin and examined his reflection. He looked the same as always, but he wasn't the same. In fact, if he thought of how he'd been behaving in the last twenty-four hours, he hardly recognized himself. He wasn't a man who would engage in sex play in a linen cupboard, for God's sake. He was far too serious to indulge in play of any kind . . . far too devoted to his work. His life was well regulated, ran on the tracks he'd carved out for himself many years ago. He didn't give in to passionate impulses, and his instincts for self-preservation were usually sufficiently honed to ensure that he didn't become entangled with utterly unsuitable women. And Chastity Duncan—irreverent, combative, playful, and too clever by half—was about as unsuitable a woman for a man with his needs as any could be. He couldn't afford to be distracted by passion, not in the real world of single-minded devotion to his work, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that Chastity, once admitted, would be impossible to forget for a minute. She would be as vital and distracting a presence in his mind and imagination as in reality.
He told himself all this but it didn't seem to have any impact or to hold any real meaning for him and after a puzzled moment or two he decided that for now they were inhabiting some alternative universe where the usual rules didn't apply. Just the thought of her brought a smile to his lips, filled him with a deep and satisfying pleasure. Whereas the thought of Laura Della Luca brought merely irritation and an amorphous dislike. Not that he was considering the signorina as a prospective bride any longer. He would not have tumbled into bed with Chastity if that were the case. He hadn't articulated it to himself, but it was true.
So, now what? He shook his head. He didn't know the answer and he seized on the comforting reflection that it wasn't necessary to find one now anyway. He wasn't going anywhere for the next few days, so he might as well explore this new and surprising side to his character that had been so suddenly revealed. He realized that he was smiling at himself in the mirror. A fatuous, utterly self-satisfied smile. God in heaven, he really didn't recognize himself.
“We won't get the hunt out in this,” Lord Duncan declared later that evening. He stood looking out of the drawing room window into the swirling darkness, his hands clasped at his back. “Bloody weather. I beg your pardon, Contessa,” he said with an apologetic bow to the lady.
“Don't mention it, Lord Duncan,” the contessa said with a wave from the bridge table. “I've heard a lot worse.”
“Damnable business, though,” his lordship said, turning back to the window. “Boxing Day meet, hunt breakfast, canceling the whole thing . . . damnable.”
“Has the Master sent a message to cancel it?” asked Constance, selecting a card from the hand she held.
“Not yet, but he's bound to. Couldn't run the hounds in this, let alone the horses.” He returned to the bridge table and took up his cards again. “What's that you put down?”
“The ten of diamonds,” his eldest daughter said.
“Oh, you're drawing trumps, are you?” He hemmed and hawed, then with a disgusted sigh threw down the jack of diamonds and watched as his son-in-law laid the queen on top. The contessa discarded a heart.
Constance laughed and gathered up the trick. “Our rubber, I believe, Max.”
The front doorbell chimed at the same time as the great knocker was plied with considerable vigor. “I'll get it,” Chastity said. “It'll probably be a message from Lord Berenger.”
She got to the front door just as Jenkins, looking rather flushed, his customary dapper appearance a little disordered, emerged from the kitchen regions. “It's all right, Jenkins,” she said over her shoulder. “I can
manage. Go back to your party.”
It was a measure of the butler's generous consumption of Christmas good cheer that he merely bowed a little unsteadily and retreated.
Chastity struggled with the lock and pulled open the door, letting in a blast of wind and a flurry of snow. She greeted the visitor with some surprise. “Merry Christmas, Lord Berenger, we were expecting a message from you, but didn't think you'd brave the storm yourself.”
“Oh, just thought I'd pop over with the bad news myself, Chastity. Your father's bound to be disappointed.” His lordship, Master of the Hounds, stepped into the hall, stamping his feet vigorously, his normally rosy cheeks reddened by the cold.
“Well, come into the warm,” Chastity said, reflecting that George Berenger, a middle-aged widower with no children, had probably had a lonely Christmas.
“Ah, George, come in, come in,” Lord Duncan greeted his neighbor with an expansive gesture. “Whisky, cognac . . . name your poison.”
“Whisky, Arthur, thank you.” He allowed Chastity to take his coat and scarf and came to the fire, rubbing his cold hands. He took the whisky his host proffered and bowed as introductions were made to the strangers in the company. “Don't let me interrupt your bridge.” He gestured to the card table.
“Oh, Max and I have just won the rubber, Lord Berenger,” Constance said with ill-disguised complacency. “I doubt Father and the contessa will be eager for another defeat this evening.”
“You'll overreach yourself one of these days, mark my words,” Lord Duncan declared, shaking a finger at his daughter. He turned back to the visitor. “So, the meet's canceled, eh?”
“Afraid so,” Berenger agreed with a sigh.
“Well, never mind.” Lord Duncan sounded surprisingly sanguine. “Sit down, dear fellow.” He gestured to the sofa where Laura sat, still occupied with her book. Lord Duncan himself sat opposite, next to the contessa, to whom he said, “You weren't going to hunt tomorrow anyway, were you, my dear?”
“No, it's not a sport I particularly enjoy,” the contessa said with a smile.
The Duncan sisters exchanged a significant look. It seemed that the contessa's lack of participation in the hunt explained their father's swift recovery from his disappointment.
“Ah, I see you're reading Dante, Miss Della Luca,” Lord Berenger said, leaning over to look at the book Laura held. “And in the Italian. I've always considered works lose much of their essential meaning in translation.”
“Indeed.” Laura looked at him with a somewhat startled interest. “Are you a lover of Italy, my lord?”
“I lived there for three years,” he said. “In Florence. I studied at the university there.”
Laura's eyes widened. “Firenze,” she said. “My home.” She laid a hand on her meager breast. “It is a city that lives in the heart once one knows it, don't you agree? You speak Italian, of course.”
He responded with a fluent stream of Italian that had Laura nodding and smiling with clear gratification. She interrupted him in the same language, waving her hands about as if she was conducting a full orchestra. Who would have thought George Berenger, a bluff and seemingly unsophisticated country squire, could have such hidden depths, Chastity reflected. Was this a situation that could be turned to the Go-Between's advantage? She glanced at Prudence, wondering if the same thought had occurred to her. Prudence raised her eyebrows and rose from the backgammon board where she'd been playing with Sarah and wandered casually over to the pianoforte.
“Are you going to play, Prue?” Constance asked, following her. “Shall we try a duet?”
“I'll turn the music for you,” Chastity said, going to join her sisters. “What do you think?” she whispered, rustling sheets of music as if she was selecting a particular piece.
“How do we get him to London?” Constance murmured, as she too examined the pile of music.
“If we can throw them together over the next couple of days, he might take care of that himself,” Prudence whispered.
“We could invite him to spend tomorrow with us, now that the hunt's canceled,” Chastity said. “He must be so lonely, snowbound with no friends or family. We can sit them together at luncheon.”
“What are you three whispering about?”
They jumped guiltily as Douglas suddenly came up behind them. “Music,” said Chastity. “Just trying to find a particular piece of music. We seem to have mislaid it.” She turned back to the room, asking hastily, “Laura, do you sing at all . . . in Italian, perhaps?”
“But of course,” Laura said. “All the great music is Italian. Think of the opera . . . only the Italians can write opera. Do you not agree, Lord Berenger?” She turned her intense pale gaze upon him.
“It is the language of the opera,” he agreed, and to the immense astonishment of the company, rose to his feet and launched into an aria from Don Giovanni.
Laura gazed at him with rapt attention, her hands clasped to her breast, and when he ceased, looking somewhat astonished himself at his impulsive performance, she applauded with a cry of “Bravo! Bravo, signore.”
“Good God, man,” Lord Duncan said faintly. “Didn't know you had it in you.”
“Oh, I studied the opera—took singing lessons—in Florence,” George Berenger confessed with clear embarrassment. “Of course, never touched it after m'father died, you understand. Had to return to England, take up the reins of the estate. No time for such indulgence.” He sat down again and wiped his brow with a large checkered handkerchief.
“Hardly indulgence, my lord,” Laura said. “The finest music in the world. And you have such a wonderful voice. How sad that with such delicate sensibilities you were obliged to return to such a mundane existence.” She waved an all-encompassing hand at the unpoetic evidence of their bucolic surroundings. “To stifle such a talent . . .” She gave a heavily dramatic sigh. “Tragic.”
“Well, I would hardly call it tragic, Miss Della Luca,” he demurred.
“Oh, don't deny yourself—and, please, I would be honored if you would call me Laura.” She took his hand between both of hers.
“Looks like Il Dottore has lost the ascendancy,” murmured Chastity, forgetting that Douglas was still standing beside the piano.
“What was that?” he demanded.
“Oh, nothing,” Chastity said, trying to stifle a laugh. “Nothing at all.”
Douglas continued to look at her suspiciously. Prudence sat down at the piano and struck a chord. “Any requests?” she announced.
Chapter 16
Just what was that smart remark about Il Dottore?” Douglas asked later that night. He was lying on Chastity's bed, clad in a dressing gown, arms linked behind his head, lazily watching her undress. “And don't say ‘Nothing' again in that airy fashion either.”
Chastity glanced at him over her shoulder as she unbuttoned her petticoat. “It wasn't anything important,” she said. “Just a private joke.”
“Well, if it concerned me, I don't consider it to be private,” he said.
“Now, what makes you think it concerned you?” She pushed the opened petticoat off her shoulders.
“As far as I know I'm the only Dottore around here at present.” His eyes roamed the smooth line of her back, eagerly anticipating the moment when she'd take off her knickers. She was unfastening her suspenders, peeling off her stockings, and his breathing had quickened.
Chastity turned slowly towards him, the nipples peaking on her bare breasts. Her eyes narrowed as she slowly unbuttoned the waistband of her knickers, then slipped them off her hips and kicked them free of her ankles. She smiled, placing her hands on her hips, offering herself to his now hungry gaze.
“Closer,” he said, crooking a beckoning finger. She stepped to the edge of the bed. He put a hand on her hip.
And that, Chastity thought with satisfaction, was the end of that dangerously awkward conversation. But she was wrong. He pulled her down to the bed, his hands moving over her with wicked precision. “Tell me what you and your sisters
are up to, Miss Duncan.”
Chastity groaned. “Not now,” she said, her thighs parting under the insistent pressure of his hands.
“Yes, now. Your brothers-in-law told me that you and your sisters never do or say anything without purpose. So, just what are you up to?” His hand cupped the moistening mound of her sex, his busy fingers bringing her ever closer to the edge.
“We're not up to anything,” she denied. “Max and Gideon must have been teasing you.”
“I don't think so,” he said, lifting his hand from her.
“Douglas, don't stop,” she begged. “Not now.”
“Then answer my question.”
“You are so cruel.”
“No, but I will have an answer.” He stroked her belly, then moved his hand down, his fingers playing a tantalizing little tune.
Chastity groaned again. “We're trying to marry off our father,” she said, and was rewarded with a more purposeful caress.
“To the contessa?”
“Mmm.” She closed her eyes, losing herself in sensation.
“So, where does Il Dottore come into this little scheme?” He lifted his hand again.
“He doesn't . . . you don't,” she said desperately. Her heart was beating fast. How in the devil's name was she to get out of this? He mustn't suspect that the Duncan sisters had ever intended to match him up with Laura. He'd put two and two together in no time.
“It was just a little joke,” she said again. “Because she seemed to like you, and was paying so much attention to you . . . what with all that decorating business. And then she seemed to have switched her attentions to George Berenger. We were just laughing about it. That was all.”
“Was it indeed,” he murmured. Everything she said was perfectly plausible, but something didn't ring quite true.
“Please go back to what you were doing,” Chastity pleaded.
He didn't immediately comply. “Why do I think there's something you're not telling me?”