A Lady Never Lies

by Juliana Gray

  Without realizing it, she leaned forward against the windowsill, bumping her nose against the mottled glass. For such a tall man, he moved with surprising grace. His long legs ate the ground and his arms swung alongside in perfect cadence, and though she couldn’t see his face from this angle, she knew exactly how it would look: forehead creased in thought, lawn green eyes narrowed, gaze ravaging the ground directly ahead.

  “Molto bello, no?” came a voice at her shoulder.

  Alexandra jumped away from the window and spun around.

  Signorina Morini’s dark eyes sparkled. “You do not think so?” She nodded at the window. “The young English. So tall, so bellissimo. Such eyes, like the young grass, the first green of the spring.”

  “I . . . I really don’t know.” Alexandra folded her arms and glanced outside. “He doesn’t speak to me.”

  Signorina Morini made a broad shrug. “Ah, that is nothing. This gentleman, he says not much. But he feels”—she pressed her fist against her breast—“he feels much.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Gentlemen, I understand. The one who speaks little, feels much.” Her face opened into a smile. “You like him? Signore Burke?”

  “Me? I . . . I hardly know him. He’s a scientist,” Alexandra added, as if that might explain everything.

  “He is very clever, this Signore Burke. He works all the day in the . . . what is the word? The little . . . house? For the carriages? The one near the lake, in the valley.”

  “Does he? How lovely for him.” Alexandra glanced quickly through the window and back again.

  Signorina Morini was still smiling. “You like, perhaps, I tell you where to find this little house?”

  “I haven’t the slightest interest, I assure you.”

  Signorina Morini moved past her to the gap in the wall, in a rush of air that smelled tantalizingly of fresh bread. She stood in the sunshine and pointed her long, sturdy arm down the terraced slope to the valley. “Is down the terraces, so. To the left. You see the trees at the bottom, by the lake. And there is the little house.” She turned back to Alexandra. “Is one time the house of the—oh, these English words—he watches the carriages, the coaches.” Her fingers rubbed helplessly against her thumbs.

  “The coachman?”

  “Yes! The coach man.” She said it slowly, as two separate words, as if her tongue were testing out the sounds.

  “And doesn’t he live there anymore?”

  Signorina Morini flicked her fingers. “Is no coach man now. Is only Giacomo. I come to tell you the post is arrive this morning from the village. You have letter, newspaper.” She nodded at the wooden table, where a small pile of correspondence lay next to Aristophanes.

  Alexandra squinted at the topmost letter. “Thank you.”

  “Is no trouble,” said Signorina Morini. She turned to leave, and then looked back over her shoulder at Alexandra, eyes crinkled with good nature. “There is also letter for Signore Burke, I think. Is a shame the girls are so busy with the cheese and the clean.”

  “A dreadful shame. He shan’t receive his letter until he returns.”

  Signorina Morini nodded to the gap in the wall. “Down the terraces, to the left. The trees, the lake. No one goes there. Is very quiet.”

  “How peaceful for him. Thank you ever so much, signorina.”

  “Is nothing, milady.” The housekeeper winked and disappeared through the doorway, leaving the faint scent of baking bread hanging in the air behind her.

  Alexandra stared for a moment at the small stack of envelopes on the table. In her earlier life, her married life, the ritual of the twice-daily post had brought her much joy. Letters, invitations, newspapers; even the bills from her dressmaker and her milliner gave her a certain amount of satisfaction, since they were easily settled and reminded her of the comforting material abundance that surrounded her.

  No longer.

  Buck up, Morley, she told herself. You might as well look. Bad news won’t improve by ignoring it.

  A breeze floated in from the garden, verdant and delicate, and Alexandra let it carry her toward the table and the envelopes. A newspaper lay beneath, the Times, which Wallingford had instructed his London solicitor to forward weekly. She picked it up first, sliding it out from under the letters, and scanned the headlines. The usual rubbish, Parliament and Ireland and whatnot. The sort of thing she used to care about, when her own world, her personal world, had been properly secure. Oh, the hours she’d spent arguing cabinet appointments and Commons votes with her political friends, in her well-appointed drawing room, with champagne and dainty sandwiches of thinly sliced ham or watercress or Stilton cheese, delivered on polished salvers by a fleet of tall footmen! Her salons had been legendary. She’d been the queen of them all, the darling, her place assured and her future serene.

  Once.

  She let the newspaper fall from her fingertips and reached for the topmost letter. She recognized the stationery at once, even the handwriting in which her name and address had been neatly inscribed. She slipped her finger beneath the seal, opened the envelope, and pulled out the paper within.

  The bank presented its compliments, and requested a further deposit of funds before additional payments could be honored. It respectfully referred her attention to the size of the overdraft, and remained her obedient servant.

  She folded the paper with trembling fingers, tucked it back inside the envelope, and picked up the next letter.

  This one was longer and less personal, addressed to the shareholders of the Manchester Machine Works Company, Limited, and describing in woeful detail the Company’s inability to produce a workable prototype this quarter due to an unexpected failure of its patented propulsion device and lack of capital at reasonable rates. The Company enjoined the patience of shareholders, as the Board, headed by its chairman, Mr. William Hartley, had a number of proposals in which it was actively engaged, and high hopes that an investor might be found to fund further development.

  The Company thanked her for her faith in the future of mechanized personal transportation, and remained her obedient servant.

  This time Alexandra stuffed the paper back in its envelope with considerably more venom. Oh, no doubt William Hartley had any amount of high hopes. He always had, the little fool, her husband’s well-meaning and deeply impractical nephew. How on earth had she been persuaded to allow him trusteeship over the investment of her jointure? She must have been mad!

  She slapped the envelope back down on the table. Well, not mad, of course. Simply young and unseasoned and newly engaged to a wealthy man, without a thought in the world that invested money might actually disappear if one weren’t careful. If one paid no attention to business letters and allowed one’s well-intentioned step-nephew to invest almost the entirety of one’s jointure in his newly formed limited liability corporation. The Manchester Machine Works Company! It sounded so stable, so reliable, the sort of enterprise that turned out practical items like sewing machines and . . . and that sort of thing.

  Not horseless carriages.

  Now she had nothing, or nearly nothing. No more salons, no more elegant house in town, no endless stream of friends who worshipped her every word. She had her title and her twenty-odd thousand useless Manchester Machine Works shares; she had a sister entirely dependent on her, for upkeep and for dowry; she had debts and shame and perhaps fifty more years of life ahead of her, with no idea how to live them.

  She had to get her old life back. Because if she wasn’t Lady Morley, leader of London society, then who the devil was she?

  And who would give Abigail the future she deserved?

  Alexandra turned her head toward the window, to the bright patch of sky hanging above the valley and the lake in the trees below the terraced vineyard. She reached down for the envelopes on the table and sorted through them until her blurred and stinging eyes identified the name of Mr. Phineas Fitzwilliam Burke, R.S.

  Horseless carriages. What did she know about damned horse
less carriages?

  Evidently, she would have to learn.

  Taking up the letter in her hand, with the newspaper tucked beneath her arm, she slipped through the gap in the wall and headed down the hillside.

  SIX

  Finn couldn’t make out the precise nature of Giacomo’s complaints, what with his own head stuck beneath the automobile’s rear axle, but he gathered it had something to do with the women. With Giacomo, it always did.

  Cheese . . . something something . . . smell . . . something . . . stables . . . something something . . . devil-woman . . .

  “I say, there,” Finn called out, “could you perhaps tilt the lamp in this direction? I’d be much obliged.”

  A pause. “Che cosa?”

  “Never mind,” sighed Finn. “Carry on.” He struggled out from beneath the machine and reached for the kerosene lamp on a nearby table. Hardly what he was used to, of course—his workshop in England was equipped with electricity and hot running water and central heat and a telephone—but he’d adjusted quickly. The Castel sant’Agata’s distressing lack of modern conveniences was the least of his misery.

  Giacomo’s constant interruptions, for example, ranked considerably higher.

  “Is impossible!” The man threw his hands in the air and looked heavenward, though his view to the Almighty was presently obstructed by a series of cobwebs and roof beams, and quite possibly a barn owl, though as the creature kept nocturnal habits Finn couldn’t quite be sure. He’d meant to take a sample of the droppings back to the castle with him and consult an ornithological book in the library, but it kept slipping his mind.

  For some damned reason.

  “What is impossible?” Finn inquired, because it seemed the polite thing to do.

  “The cheeses! In the stables!”

  “What cheeses?”

  “You no listening! Not a word! Nome di Dio!” Aloft went the arms again, and the imploring gaze followed them upward to the deity in question. “I begin again.”

  Finn gave the lampshade a last adjustment, frowned at it critically, and then set the device on the floor. “I’d rather you didn’t, frankly.”

  “Is the women. All the day, they make the cheese, the pecorino, in the . . . what is the word?”

  “The kitchen?” Finn hazarded.

  “Yes! The kitchen! And in all the great big castle, they say they find no room, no room for the cheese to . . . what is the word? To put the cheese to become old.”

  “Ripen, I believe.” Finn settled himself back on the floor and began to wriggle gratefully out of range.

  “Wait, signore! You must listen! The duke, he does not care, and his brother . . .” Giacomo rolled his eyes and circled his finger about his ear.

  “Mad as a hatter, at the moment. I quite agree. But you see, my good man . . .”

  “Is that woman!” Giacomo spat earnestly. “The devil-woman, who keeps the house . . .”

  “I haven’t the least idea who you mean. The housekeeper? I can’t tell them apart.” Finn tried to shrug from his position on the floor, half submerged beneath the axle.

  “Tell the ladies, the English! Tell them about the cheese! She will stop, if the English say to her, stop!”

  “Look here, old chap. You really must endeavor to make yourself clearer.”

  “Che cosa?”

  “I don’t understand you. See? No comprendo.”

  Giacomo’s body slumped into a sigh. “The cheeses, signore. The so-great wheels of the cheese, the pecorino.” His hands shaped the air before him into a circle of impressive dimensions. “They put them—to ripe—in the stables!” He drew a large breath and hissed out the word again. “The stables, signore!”

  Finn gave his lower lip a thoughtful chew. “And the horses object?”

  “Not the horses, signore! I object! I, Giacomo!” Giacomo beat his chest with a gnarled rebellious fist against the tyranny of cheese-wielding housekeepers. “La Morini, she has all the attics of the castel for her pecorino, and she sends the cheeses to the stables! Is an insult! To me!”

  “And the smell, of course,” Finn said, not without sympathy.

  “And the smell! Si! You see, you understand!” Giacomo’s mouth bent out a smile. “Is good. You speak to the ladies. I am happy. I say to you, good day and good luck.” He turned to go.

  “Now look here! I can’t speak to the women!”

  Giacomo looked back over his shoulder. “What is this?”

  “Can’t speak to them.” Finn picked up his discarded wrench and pointed it at the man’s chest for emphasis. “It’s an oath.”

  Giacomo’s eyes rounded in respect. “An oath! Signore! An oath . . . against the ladies?”

  “Of a sort.” Finn cleared his throat. “Well, not precisely. But we’ve sworn to have nothing to do with them, a brother-to-brother sort of understanding, if you will. Except at meals, which necessitate . . . a sort of what the French call détente . . .” He swallowed. “Well, it’s bloody awkward, that’s all.”

  Giacomo’s hands swept upward before him, palms out. “Is understand. Is understand perfectly. The ladies, no speak. Wise, very wise, signore. Is only trouble, you speak to the ladies.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Finn said, smiling with relief. “So you see, it’s quite impossible . . .”

  “A note,” interrupted Giacomo, “a note, she is enough.” He ducked his head in a little bow. “I go now.”

  “Look here!” protested Finn, but Giacomo had already crossed the floor with miraculous speed, had flung open the door and disappeared into the explosion of sunlight.

  Finn blinked after him. “Bloody hell,” he said aloud, fingering the cool metal of his wrench. Light now tumbled through the doorway, the full throb of the midmorning sun, shining directly on the rear half of his machine. He set down the wrench and reached out one long hand to the now-redundant lamp and put it out.

  What on earth was wrong with these people? Couldn’t Giacomo simply talk to the damned housekeeper himself? Finn picked up his wrench again and swung himself under the axle. Protocol, probably. Or separation of the sexes, or some other obscure custom, hardly to be unexpected among a people living in the same remote mountainous valley as their great-grandfathers before them. He’d traveled extensively. He knew what sort of taboos might grow up around isolated communities. He knew how necessary and how indestructible they could be.

  Which left Finn the task of informing the ladies of the Great Cheese Insurrection.

  He didn’t have to speak to Lady Morley, he reminded himself. A word in the ear of Lady Somerton would do just as well, or else the sister, what the devil was her name, nice enough girl. He hadn’t addressed a word to Lady Morley since that first evening—an impressive feat, considering they’d sat down to dinner opposite each other every night for the past three weeks—because every time the most perfunctory of mealtime greetings began to form in his brain, the image of Lady Morley’s right breast appeared next to it, large and round and succulent, nearly bursting from its corsetry like an overripe fig might burst from . . .

  He was doing it again.

  Focus. Focus on the task at hand. He needed his wits just now, clear and sharp and undistorted by lust. He had forsworn the company of women for that very reason. He was already behind in his rigorous schedule, with several unforeseen problems in the development of his electric engine and that damned nuisance Delmonico down in Rome announcing success after success, rot him. Lady Morley’s breasts, however enticing, had nothing to do with engines. Except, perhaps, in a metaphorical sense, which . . .

  Focus.

  He slid with resolution back underneath the gleaming metal of his prototype and concentrated his thought on the axle before his eyes. The crankshaft still hadn’t been connected properly, and there was no point returning to the engine until . . .

  “Mr. Burke? Is that you?”

  Ignore it. Focus.

  The voice broke in again, so very much like Lady Morley’s it seemed almost as though it were real,
rather than a hallucination: “Mr. Burke? Am I intruding?”

  It’s all in your head, Burke old man. Axle rods. Crankshaft.

  Something touched his hair. “Mr. Burke? Are you quite all right?”

  Bloody hell.

  Finn jerked in shock, slamming his forehead against the axle with a metallic clang. “Damn it all!” he groaned.

  “Mr. Burke! Are you hurt?”

  Finn placed one hand on his brow and rubbed ferociously. “Not at all, Lady Morley. Not at all.” He paused a moment, collecting his wits, and then edged out from beneath his machine, inch by resigned inch.

  There she stood, framed by the sun, her features shadowed and the light casting an electric glow about the outline of her hair and the hourglass curve of her waist. “I’m so terribly sorry,” she said. “That was a dreadful clang. Was it your head?”

  He sat up. The downward flow of blood made his brow throb with a distinct and excruciating pain. “No. That was the axle. My head rather absorbed the sound, I believe, than originated it.”

  Her mouth, what he could see of it, made a little round O. “I’m so terribly sorry.”

  “A trifle, Lady Morley. Think nothing of it.” Finn rose to his feet and brushed at his trousers. “I presume Giacomo sent you to me?”

  She shook her head. “No, no. I . . . I came on my own initiative. I hope”—she offered a smile—“I hope it doesn’t violate any oaths and wagers and so on. It’s a purely businesslike errand.”

  Finn felt a twinge of something like disappointment. “Of course. May I . . .” He cleared his throat. “May I offer you a seat?”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary.” She seemed to lose herself for an instant or two, staring curiously at his face, her fingers clutching at a small rectangular bundle she held next to her abdomen. She’d moved slightly, tilted her head, so that the sunlight struck her face at an angle, curving around the line of her cheekbone and illuminating her brown eyes into gold.

  Finn crossed his arms. “Lady Morley, I should hate to be impolite, but I’m rather engaged at the moment. If you’ll come to the point?”