by Julia Ross
"Her husband knew?"
He sipped wine, still watching her. "He and Ι shared an interest in antiquities. When Ι came home, Ι brought back a collection of Roman sculpture, dug from fields and the foundations of new houses. We became good friends. Of course he knew. We liked each other. He was proud that his wife had taken an English lover."
The cheese was smooth, tangy. She tried to concentrate on the taste of it, close out the enormity of what he was saying. "You make it sound so civilized."
"It was. As long as certain rules are followed, it's a common enough arrangement in Italy, especially when the husband is so much older."
She could imagine them, Romeo and Juliet, nineteen-year-old lovers, and the husband, wise enough to accept it. Insanely, her heart felt like breaking, shattering into tiny pieces.
"Is passion ever civilized?" she asked. "Only the poor wed for love. Society marriages are for property and status-"
"So passion must find its own path." His smile remained soft, almost sweet. Like honey- "Yet there's no reason it cannot be civilized. "
"Of course! It's the way of the world, where rakes seduce married women. So much safer and easier, especially when the husband is compliant." He didn't seem to react to the sharpness in her tone. "Yet it's not so simple for females. Did Maria also love you?"
"Yes." Light flickered over his face, highlighting his severe bones as he leaned forward to refill her wineglass. "Passionately. Madly. Or she was clever enough to let me believe so. Italian women are very good at managing men. They have to be."
"How else should a female protect herself? Even English girls learn how to flirt and tease-"
"Which can be used to control a man, turn his desire against him."
She wanted to press the point. "It’s her only power-"
"But is essentially dishonest."
"Certainly, it comes with a cost-"
"Maria had no regrets. We indulged our passion flagrantly. It went on for six years."
Wine flowed, heady and strong, into her blood. "Yet you came home and became a rake?"
"I was already a rake." It was almost a whisper, soft with smiles.
"What else should Ι do with all those Italian skills? With everything Maria had taught me?"
The darkness breathed intimacy, safety, the hush of night shrouded secrets. Juliet caught a breath and let her next question escape her lips unhindered. "So what did she teach you?"
He leaned back. His features disappeared in the duplicitous shadows, though his eyes glittered. Lantern light glimmered richly on his wineglass and highlighted his fingers.
"How to make a woman tremble with a look, moan with a touch, melt with a kiss. How to take my pleasure from pleasuring her. How to yield to her as she does the same to me. Maria's husband had fifty years of experience. He taught her. She taught me. Now Ι teach others."
Shivers ran up and down her spine, as if her skin wished to melt, to moan, as if her heart trembled. "Love isn't enough?"
"Every plowboy falls in love, but pity the poor maid who's doomed to know only his inexpert fumbling." Light flared across his supple hands. "Physical love is an art - it deserves comprehensive practice."
"With many partners . . ."
He refilled her glass. "Neither Maria nor Ι was faithful, which is how we perfected our skill."
Α white shape flitted through the shadowed flowers. Abednego hunting.
"There's no room in your philosophy for romantic love?"
"A boy fell romantically in love with an Italian girl who had nothing to offer but honey. Α man prefers a keener passion, which he feels for every woman who enthralls, engages, delights him body, mind and spirit. Yet true intensity cannot last, so a passionate man loves many women. From fairness, he does not expect constancy."
She tried to match his lightness, the sophisticated cynicism, though she didn't feel it. "So you learned irresistible techniques for flirtation-"
As he leaned forward his smile interrupted her, a smile carrying intelligent, worldly-wise humor. "I’ faith, it rapidly grows more visceral than that. Flirting and teasing are for children. Adults go to bed together."
It hung between them for a moment. That it had been so lightly said was oddly reassuring. She wondered if this was how men talked with their friends, with this open, unemotional honesty. This is how it is. We all accept it. She felt completely safe.
"With someone else's spouse, of course," she said.
He smiled over his wineglass. "Unless you both agree not to act on what lies between you - usually the lady's decision."
"And you would argue that it's better to have such an affair, where the rules are clearly understood-" She was distracted by a sharp rustle in the flower border.
He picked up the wine bottle. Light played over the ruby liquid. "Less damaging than false protestations of undying love, certainly."
Dark marigolds quavered. Abednego appeared for a moment with something in his mouth, then raced away up the path.
"That wasn't what Ι believed when Ι married," she said. "Ι thought Ι was in love. Ι meant every word of my vows. But it was only a child's attraction to something that glittered."
"Like gold?"
Juliet glanced back at him. "More like ice: gleaming in fascinating drapes over a winter pond, but destined to melt into vapor when the sun returns. Gold implies value and permanence. Yet both are cold at the core." She reached up one hand to tip a lantern to dazzle for a moment on his face and hair. "However superficially alluring when gilt gleams in the dark."
Released, the light swung back to illuminate her in her turn. Her hair lay over her shoulder, soft against her cheek, the color intensified to mahogany.
"Ah," he said. "Which is why gold longs for a rare wood, smooth and warm under the palm. Yet you wear gold for love, Juliet."
She glanced down. Her locket hung outside the neckline of her petticoat. The metal gleamed softly. She clutched one fist over it and closed her eyes. "This locket was something Ι shared with the only person, other than my parents, whom Ι truly did love." The words came out in a rush, as if she couldn't stop them. "My baby brother. "
The wine bottle hit the table with a small thud. "Your brother?" Distress twisted wildly as she thrust the locket away. "Don't ask me about him. He is dead."
Immediately she was horrified. She had confided in this man, this stranger, as if she really could trust him. She had broken her own resolution to play lightly, to enjoy the evening as an amusing episode. Α comfortable evening with friends. Now she had shattered everything.
Because of the shifting shadows? Because of the dark night? Juliet dropped her face in her hands.
He rose in a rustle of muslin. His slippers struck softly on the path.
Was he angry that she had introduced such a bane into his beautiful seduction of rosemary and love apples? Or could he turn aside what she'd said, find a way to recover the carefully orchestrated mood? If he did that, she would hate him. Yet for a moment she felt bereft, devastated at the thought that he would simply walk out of her life.
Silence stretched, broken only by the thump of her heart.
"Ι also lost a brother," he said starkly. "Five years older than Ι. He died while Ι was in Italy. There are no words sufficient to comfort such a loss. Nothing ever really heals it. Ι won't ask you, Juliet."
Breathlessness entrapped her, made her frantic. Stunned, Juliet fought for equilibrium, thinking she might need to gulp for air, but the breath still moved in and out of her lungs. The night remained quiet, though her eyes burned with tears.
"Nor Ι you - I am sorry."
"It's all right." His voice gentled. "News of his death finally broke my ties to Italy."
She looked up through a glaze of tears. Scattered with the remains of their supper, the table still glowed. Beyond the halo of lamplight, night wrapped its mystery about the garden. Dark on dark - only his hair gleaming in gilt mockery of the moon - Alden Granville stood with his back to her, gazing at the sky. Α small
breeze stirred his silver-and-black robe, fluttered the inky muslin draped from his broad shoulders like a necromancer's gown.
Perhaps it will bring us a serene breath from the icy moon. Will it waft the spiced scents of history and foreign blooms onto our deeply shaded patio?
She had felt the shimmer of his presence in her body and in her blood, the vital charge sparking between male and female. Now she felt it in her heart - a bond of sympathy, of shared tragedy, of a loss understood. Far more terrifying. All or nothing?
"So you came home? And Maria-?" She bit off the question, hating herself.
"Maria had died of a fever a few months earlier."
The breath congealed into a hard lump in her throat. It hurt as if she'd been struck by a hammer. "I’m sorry. Ι thought-" She forced herself to start again. "Ι don't know what to say. Ι assumed you had abandoned her."
"If you like." His robe moved as if caught in a dark flood tide. "The passion died first - by only six months, but it had died - for both of us. Alas, Ι found Ι wanted more than a flower, however sweet, and she had found a new interest. She and her husband had a child by then. Ι mourned my friend's loss and their child's loss, but she did not break my heart, nor Ι hers. In the end, Ι wasn't so important."
"After six years?"
He nodded. "What else would you like to know?"
"Nothing, nothing," she said desperately. "Ι did not ask for this relationship, these strange games that seem to spiral into something else. Ι don't wish to feel too safe with you. Ι don't think we should exchange such personal confidences. Ι am sorry."
"The apology is mine, ma'am," he said formally. "Ι will ask no more questions and tell no more secrets. Ι am not a man of much principle. Ι am indeed a rake. It was never my intention to do more than amuse you."
"Tomorrow is Friday," she said. "The sun will burn away all of this false intimacy and the next day you'll be gone-"
He turned. "Yet Ι like you, Juliet, very much."
She suppressed a sob. "You don't even know me! Perhaps Ι am a shrew."
He walked silently back to her. He took her fingers, then bent to kiss them. It was done with a light, gallant humor, though something else, something deadly serious, lurked beneath.
"And what's wrong with a shrew?" his voice teased. "A private, beneficial creature, otherwise known in various localities as the nursrow, shrove mouse, nostral, rannie mouse, skrew mouse, thraw mouse, rone mouse, or herdishrew. You have read your Historie of Four-footed Beastes far too carefully, ma'am. Alas, it's full of lies."
She tried to smile. "What?"
He folded her fingers into her palm and returned her hand to her. "Topsell's Four-footed Beastes is every schoolboy's favorite text. Far more amusing than all that Latin and Greek. Allow me to quote: 'The shrew is a ravening beast, feigning itself gentle and tame, but, being touched, it biteth deep and poysoneth deadly. It beareth a cruel minde, desiring to hurt anything, neither is there any creature that it loveth, or, it loveth him, because it is feared by all.' "
"But none of that's true!"
"Just foolish country tales. We are bedeviled by them. The shrew is no more poisonous than the apple of love - and neither are you."
Juliet gazed up into the mysterious, intelligent smile. "Then what am Ι?"
His smile widened. "A sad lady in need of diversion." He sat down. "Let us play chess, ma'am. It's your turn to win."
Yet she knew she would lose before they began. In spite of his charm, he was deeply disturbed and he couldn't quite hide it. She had shredded the magic atmosphere and let it spiral away into smoke. She knew he only wanted to leave and would do so as quickly as possible.
She was right. Ruthlessly taking her pieces and destroying her strategies, he ravished the board like a miniature battlefield, scattering her defenses. As if it mattered! There was only one more day.
"What do you claim for your forfeit this time, sir?" she asked at last.
He looked up at her with something close to desperation in his eyes, but he laughed.
"That we play chess somewhere else tomorrow. We have played once in the kitchen and thrice in the grape arbor. Why not a fresh location?"
"Very well," she said.
"And my chore for the day?"
She pushed away from the table and stood up. "Ι think you have already fulfilled it, sir. You brought supper."
Juliet spun out of the arbor and hurried away up the path.
ALDEN WATCHED HER GO. THE ITALIAN ROBE FLOWED out behind her like wings.
Tomorrow. He must bed her tomorrow at Marion Hall. Failure was out of the question. Ruin was simply too great a punishment for one night's mad gaming: for himself, his servants, his mother - and above all little Sherry, who wouldn't even understand enough to condemn him for it.
Yet he didn't seem able to play the game as he generally played it. Because so bloody much depended on the outcome? Or because Juliet had touched so much deeper than usual? She had lost a little brother. She had married for love.
He had followed the first three stages of any seduction: shown her his flattering interest; created a physical awareness in her; begun to dispose of her objections so she would feel secure in his company. Juliet was almost ready, surely, for the fourth stage: his clever hands and more clever mouth.
Why had he told her about Maria? Of course, it was a simple enough truth. While little more than a boy, he had loved. He had stayed away from England because of it. His Italian mistress and her fatherly husband had helped form his life and his expectations. Yet the thought of Maria no longer moved him. When it was over, it had not broken his heart. Perhaps he had no such vital organ? .
Only Gregory's death had ever really mattered, and there was no one - not even his mother - to whom he could talk about his beloved older brother. Lady Gracechurch simply behaved as if she'd never had another son, as if Alden had always been expected to inherit.
Had he thought he must warn her? Tell Juliet in so many words that he was faithless, superficial? Why had he allowed the evening to slip from his careful design, let the mood change, slide away from his sensual onslaught? Created the moment when she had told him about the locket and he had felt forced to mention Gregory? He had wanted to win her confidence, make her feel safe with him, but he hadn't wanted to delve so deeply into the personal.
He struck one fist into the palm of the other hand. Was he doomed to bring pain to a woman he liked? For he truly did like her.
Abednego appeared at his feet, purring. The white cat dropped a small creature from its mouth. Alden bent to look at it. Not a shrew. Only a mouse. Quite dead. He moved it with his slipper. Abednego pounced on the carcass and raced away with it.
This locket was something Ι shared with the only person, other than my parents, whom Ι truly did love. My little brother… Don't ask me about him. He is dead.
Her words felt like a curse. Yet by tomorrow he must deliver her locket to Lord Edward Vane, or see his world go up in flames.
Alden had no doubt that he would find it in himself to do it.
JULIET AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING TO THE SOUND OF hammering at the front door. Sunlight flooded her bedroom. She had asked Kate not to wake her. Throwing on a wrap, she leaned from her window. The sky already blazed blue above her head, the air thick. Another hot, oppressive day filled with dust.
Jemmy Brambey stood on the brick path in front of the house and was squinting up at her.
"Message from the Three Tuns, Mistress Seton!" The boy waved a scrap of paper in one dirty hand.
Cats scattered as Juliet hurried down the stairs. Tilly had already thrown open the door. Jemmy exchanged a few words with his sister before he ran off with a farthing in his pocket.
Carrying the note, Juliet walked into her parlor. The paper was sealed with red wax, impressed with his crest. She stared at her name on the front, while her heart thumped uncomfortably in her breast. For several minutes she sat perfectly still, holding the note as if it had come from beyond the grave. She could n
ot afford a repetition of what had happened last night, that dangerous slide toward real intimacy. Yet she wanted something out of this odd encounter, something to remember-
She opened the sheet and rapidly scanned the few lines, then read them again. Suddenly she laughed.
It had been five years since she had done such a thing! Α whole day away from her house. Α whole day to rub in the knowledge that she would never have another chance at a man's love, the past squandered, the future destroyed.
Yet, of course, she could not go. It was too dangerous. She would have to find some excuse. For the note read:
My dear Mistress Seton: If Ι might beg your kind indulgence, our chess match today will take place in α folly, α few hours' drive from Manston Mingate. The distance will necessitate a picnic lunch, kindly provided by mine host of the Three Tuns. Ι trust these arrangements will cause you no great inconvenience. It is impossible to describe the pleasure with which Ι anticipate such an outing in your company.
Ι shall arrive with a carriage and pair at ten o'clock.
We may, of course, expect another checkmate.
Whether yours or mine remains to be discovered.
Ι remain, dear madam, your most obedient, humble servant - G.
Humble servant, indeed! He obeyed only his own whim. Yet when had she last traveled in a private carriage? Taken a day's outing? Α drive, a picnic, a visit to an interesting and beautiful place, and a chess game.
Their last day.
She had given her word to fulfill his forfeits whenever she lost a chess match.
Yet she could not go.
What if she were seen by someone who remembered her? Someone who could convey the information to George? Her husband lived. She knew it in her bones and that soul-deep knowledge was backed, every once in a while, by a scrap of news. George Hardcastle was making a name for himself, running his timber trade. He was gone often to Russia, but he also spent time in London - only thirty miles away.
Juliet stood and walked to the door. She opened it and called to Kate.