A Lady Never Lies

by Juliana Gray

“Uncle Roland shouldn’t be teaching you such words.”

  “Uncle Roland took me fishing on the lake this morning. Have you ever been fishing on the lake, Cousin Alexandra?”

  “Well, no,” she said. “Not for fish, anyway.”

  A firm kick crossed her shin.

  “You should. It’s rotten fun. I caught heaps of fish, but Uncle Roland made me put most of them back, the damned scoundrel.”

  “Philip!”

  “But I thought he was a damned trump,” Alexandra said.

  “Well, he is generally, but . . .”

  “Look here, Philip,” Lilibet said, “why don’t you finish your dinner like a good boy? Then Mama will take you inside and put you to bed.”

  “Not bloody likely,” Philip said. “Not with all the fun out here.”

  Lilibet bent and whispered in his ear.

  “Oh, all right. But sometimes it just slips out, Mama. I’m only five, after all.” Philip picked up his fork and stuck it squarely into a stuffed olive. “These are rotten good.”

  “I’m partial to them myself,” Alexandra began, when a shadow cast across her plate. She looked up hopefully.

  “Hullo, all,” said Lord Roland, unmistakably Lord Roland, his dark gold hair ruffled about his navy blue mask and his smile spreading wide below it.

  “You’re not supposed to be able to recognize us,” Alexandra said. “I was told the costumes would quite confound you.”

  It was difficult to tell the direction of Lord Roland’s gaze beneath the mask, but Alexandra had the impression it dove straight down the front of Lilibet’s dress. “I’m gobsmacked, I assure you.”

  “I’ve just heard the most horrifying language from Philip’s mouth,” Lilibet said sternly. “It can’t have been yours, can it?”

  Lord Roland looked as stricken as was possible in a masked man. “I’m shocked you should accuse me of such a thing. I pay the most scrupulous heed to my words around the boy.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Lilibet.

  “Look here,” Alexandra said. “I’ve just had the most cracking idea. Penhallow, why don’t you take Philip up to bed, so that Lilibet and I can resume feeding our esteemed guests? I’m sure you have any number of properly edifying bedtime stories for a boy his age.”

  Philip bounced in his seat. “Yes, yes, Uncle Roland! You can read me the one about Persia! The one with the pirates and the harem girls.”

  Lilibet’s wineglass hit the table with a crash.

  A red flush crept downward from the bottom of Lord Roland’s mask and spread across his jowls.

  “Oh yes,” Alexandra said. “That’s perfect. I should like to know myself how that one turns out.”

  * * *

  So. Uncle Roland, is it? How charming.”

  Lilibet nodded across the terrace to where Phineas Burke’s ginger head bobbed obligingly next to his companion. “Tell me, do you mean to marry him?”

  “What’s that?” Alexandra brought her glass to her lips and drank deeply. They had just set down the desserts at last, sweet cakes and almond macaroons and fruits, and the crowd was growing restless and jolly with all the wine.

  “Will you marry him? And don’t for God’s sake begin all this nonsense about not knowing what I mean.”

  Alexandra opened her mouth and found she hadn’t a word to say.

  Lilibet plucked a macaroon from the platter in front of them and placed it on Alexandra’s plate. “I think you should. I think he’s marvelous for you. Look at you. You’re blooming.”

  “I can’t,” Alexandra said. She stared at that distant shock of ginger hair, fiery red gold in the torchlight, and her voice, when it emerged, choked painfully at the base of her throat. “I won’t. Marriage is a bargain, a contract. You know that as well as I do. I won’t take something so beautiful as this and turn it into something sordid. I won’t ruin it.”

  “Is it because of his money?”

  Alexandra picked up the macaroon and placed it in her mouth, where it melted sweetly on her tongue, coating her mouth with the rich taste of almond. “It spoils everything, money.”

  “Do you love him?”

  Alexandra’s throat closed.

  “Because if you do, the money won’t matter.”

  “But it will,” Alexandra whispered. “Money always does. What if . . . what if it is the money? And if I marry him, I’ll never know. I’ll be comfortable and luxurious, and never know if it was just the money, after all. If I wasn’t just deceiving myself about the rest of it.” Oh God, what was she saying? The wine, the stupid wine, making the thoughts tumble unchecked from her mouth.

  “Rubbish. I’ve never heard anything so absurd. Listen to me, Alexandra, you little fool,” Lilibet hissed. “If you love him, hold him. Don’t even think about anything else. Don’t condemn yourself to misery, for God’s sake.”

  “As you did.”

  Lilibet hesitated. “As I did.”

  The musicians struck up suddenly behind them, lilting and jovial. A ripple of laughter cast through the throng. People began rising, clasping hands, hurrying to the open center of the terrace.

  “Find him,” Lilibet said, next to her ear. “Don’t let him go.”

  Alexandra rose without speaking. Men and women thronged about her, feathered masks sailed past her face, reds and golds and purples, mouths beneath open with laughter. She had to push against the tide, to sidle her way around them all. A table corner bumped bruisingly against her thigh, though she hardly noticed the pain. Step-by-step, she made her way to the corner where Finn had sat, deep in conversation with an Italian woman in a crimson mask, eating his dinner.

  When she arrived at last, he was gone.

  TWENTY

  The dancing went on and on. Alexandra held back at first, watching the kaleidoscope of dancers shift beneath the flickering golden light of the torches. She’d always thought of the Tuscans as rather a somber lot, given to serious works like cheese-making and vineyard-pruning and bean-sorting, or perhaps a bit of egg thievery in their wilder moments. But now, under the influence of wine and masks, all that had changed. They threw back their heads in laughter, turned this way and that with the merry dance of the violins, swished their homespun skirts, and stomped their feet. She recognized Maria’s dark curling hair, Francesca’s rosebud mouth.

  It was Abigail who took her hand and drew her into the throng. She moved reluctantly, her limbs weighed down with longing for Finn, but Abigail had no respect at all for the bittersweet torment of a mad passion, and she forced her to move about, to join in the lines of dancers. She didn’t know the steps, of course, and she’d never heard the music before. But somehow she made it down the line, guided by strange hands, by the inexorable oom-pah of the grandfatherly tuba.

  Eventually she lost sight of Abigail, lost sight of anything else but the immediate present, dance and music and fire and the wine now singing in her blood.

  She stepped out at last, breathless and laughing. “Here,” said someone at her elbow, “drink this, mia donna.”

  It was Signorina Morini, holding a tiny glass filled with clear liquid. Her eyes danced gold in the torchlight.

  “What is it?”

  “It is a little drink I am making. It is a little of the limoncello, a little of other things. Is traditional, on the feast of the midsummer.”

  “How delightful.” Alexandra took the glass and tossed down the contents. It burned a pleasant lemony track down the length of her throat, filling her brain with its fumes. She handed the glass back in wonder. “Oh, that’s very nice. May I have another?”

  The housekeeper leaned closer. “He is at the lake, near the boathouse. He will be wanting one of the drink.”

  Something cool slipped into Alexandra’s hand. She looked down and saw another glass, exactly the same. “Thanks ever so much,” she said, and started it to her lips.

  Signorina Morini caught hold of her wrist. “No, signora. This one, it is for Signore Burke. You must be giving it to him now.”

 
“Why, yes,” Alexandra said. “So I must.”

  As she turned to leave, she caught the corner of Signorina Morini’s smile, wide with approval as she stepped from the flagstones, outside the circle of torchlight. She made her way down the terraced fields, each one burgeoning with the endless ripening bounty of summer.

  * * *

  The gibbous moon loomed large and heavy between the stars, tracking her progress between the rows of vines and the cornstalks and the fruit trees. Her feet knew the way, of course. She could have skipped down the terraces blindfolded by now. Still, she kept her steps measured, careful. There was something odd in the air, something watchful and vibrant just outside the periphery of her senses. Which were not terribly acute at the moment, she had to admit. Not so long ago, in her London days, a few glasses of wine meant nothing to her.

  Now, she was stumbling on every root.

  Near the last terrace, with Finn’s workshop a black mass off to her right, her foot caught a fallen branch.

  She staggered forward, grasping Signorina Morini’s glass with both hands, as if it were a Fabergé egg. One step, another, the ground rushing up to meet her, and then her third step caught her hurtling body. A few drops of the limoncello splashed onto her skin, cool and tingling.

  A man’s figure hurried across the shadowed path before her.

  “Who’s there?” she snapped.

  He stopped and stared at her, startled. For an instant, the moonlight caught his face: dark hair, thick mustache, skin so pale he seemed like a ghost. She couldn’t quite distinguish his features, but as the seconds stretched between them, she saw his eyes narrow from astonishment to something like malevolence. He clutched at his jacket pocket. One of the villagers, probably, returning from the castle.

  “Hello there!” she called. “Can I help you?”

  He turned and bolted onward. She stared after him, but it was as if the night had swallowed him up. Even the breeze was still. The trees poised motionless in the hot air, leaves and branches disappearing into the shadows.

  “I’m not afraid,” she said aloud. The drink still glowed warm in her belly, radiating outward into her heart and limbs and brain. She began to walk again, a bit more swiftly, peering ahead for the silver flash of the lake between the olive trees.

  Just before she emerged at the shore, she caught its scent: cool and clear and fresh as it cut through the drugging fruit-laden warmth of the vineyards and orchards. Moonlight trailed across the glassy water, gilded the planes and angles of the boathouse nearby and the tall figure of a man standing next to it, leaning his broad shoulder into the wall.

  “Hello there,” she called softly.

  He turned to her deliberately, as if he’d already sensed her presence. He was still wearing his mask, and she could only just see the flicker of his eyes through the holes. They enveloped her, all of her, taking in every inch, every nick, every flaw. “Lady Morley,” he said.

  At the sight of him, at the feel of his eyes upon her skin, the lemony burn of Signorina Morini’s drink seemed to pulse throughout her body, reaching the outermost point of every tingling nerve, making her heart sing out and her brain dance.

  I love you.

  “Lady Morley, is it? You must be cross with me.” She walked toward him, as if he’d hooked her with a string and pulled her in. “I’ve brought you a glass of limoncello. You must drink it. I’m told it’s traditional.” She came to a stop mere inches from his chest and held the glass to his lips.

  He lifted his hand and took the glass from her and drank.

  “Delicious, isn’t it? Signorina Morini gave it to me.”

  “Signorina Morini?” His voice was thick.

  “The housekeeper.”

  He was looking at her intensely, examining her, his face cleansed of all color by the pale moonlight. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, hard and rapid, making the blood spin past her ears. “You left before the dancing started. I was looking for you.”

  He shook his head dazedly. “I thought I’d take another look in the workshop before I leave for Rome.”

  “But you’re not leaving until next week!” The words burst from her throat. Something about his tone, his face, sent a thread of fear unspooling around all the fuzzy warmth in her middle.

  He pressed the empty glass into her hand and folded her fingers around it. “I changed my mind. I thought perhaps it might be better to leave sooner, rather than later. To familiarize myself with the grounds, find local help.”

  “It sounds as if I’m not going.”

  “You didn’t want to go to Rome,” he said. “You insisted you wouldn’t, that we shouldn’t be seen together.”

  He stood so close to her, his breath caressing her face. In the whiteness of the moon he loomed even larger than she remembered: taller, broader, longer. She searched his face, trying to read his expression beneath the black mask. “Perhaps I’ve changed my mind,” she whispered. She raised her hand to his cheek and rasped her thumb against the sandpaper ends of his beard.

  “Have you?”

  “Finn. Darling, what’s wrong? Have I done something?”

  “No,” he said, voice cracking, “it’s just . . . I thought it would be simple, leaving tomorrow, and I find . . . I have only to look at you and . . . God, I can’t help it . . . I’m caught, aren’t I?” His hands came up to cradle her face. “I’m yours. I . . .” He shook his head and bent down to kiss her with hard, unforgiving lips.

  The empty glass dropped from her fingers.

  She opened her mouth and took him in, met him stroke for stroke, kissed and nibbled and caressed him. With shocking force, lust flooded her veins: lust for him, for his body and his spirit, for every last beautiful particle of him. She wanted to absorb him through her skin, to somehow fuse herself into him. She wanted the beat of his heart, the dazzling impulses of his brain, everything that was and would be Finn.

  He kissed her urgently, as if struck by the same compulsion racing through her own body. His tongue roamed deep, tasting of lemons and wine, hot and silken against hers; she felt his hands at the back of her head, tugging at her mask.

  She drew back and grasped his wrists. “No,” she said, smiling. “No.”

  “No?”

  She kissed each hand with her open mouth. “You do so much for me, darling. You laugh with me, love me, pleasure me until I’m blind and helpless. I give you nothing.”

  His eyes closed. “You give me everything. You give me life.”

  “Let me give you something, Finn.” She leaned into his chest and pulled aside his collar and kissed the salty hollow of his throat, licking little circles around it. Her hands slipped down under his thin wool jacket to his waist, to the fastening of his trousers, already tented with arousal. “I want to taste you, darling,” she whispered, into his warm skin. “I want to drink you in, to fill myself up with you.”

  His breath sang out in a sigh. She heard it as agreement.

  Somehow she fumbled his buttons free and knelt into the pebbles of the lakeshore, pressing kisses through his shirt as she went, down his lean chest and his flat, corded belly, urging him back against the side of the boathouse. Her hands slid around his thighs to cup his buttocks, to hold him in place as she nuzzled his straining shaft through the thin cotton of his drawers, taking in the richness of his scent, the silken hardness of his flesh. She felt his fingers creep into her hair, clutching rhythmically, and she smiled.

  Oh, how she wanted this. She wanted the taste of him, the essence of him. She’d have all of him at last.

  She slid his drawers downward and his cock sprang free into her mouth, swollen and eager and beautiful. She circled it with her tongue, exploring the hard, thick circumference, the smooth head emerging from within its velvety fold of skin, the bead of liquid welling at the tip. She lapped it up eagerly, tasted the electric tanginess of him. She’d never imagined such temptation.

  “Is that all right?” she breathed.

  “Yes . . . good God . . . no . . . mo
re . . .”

  He groaned as she took him inside her mouth, as far as she could, encompassing his great length to the back of her throat. She didn’t know what to do; it was probably all wrong, but she didn’t care: She wanted to draw him into her, to devour him, to torment him the way he did to her, to give him exactly the same shattering consummation he gave to her.

  She slid one hand underneath to caress his ballocks, round and tight and snug against his body, and her own flesh seemed to vibrate with desire. She pictured how she must look to him, with her white feather-edged mask covering her eyes and forehead, and his cock sliding in and out of her pink mouth as she sucked and pulled and stroked. His pleasure was her own; his building tension seemed to melt through her body and pool between her legs; his groans sank like music into her ears.

  His hands gripped her hair in fistfuls. Through her lips and fingers she sensed his muscles coil, approaching the peak, and in that instant he jerked away with a guttural cry. “No,” she said, and took him back in, absorbed the final thrust of his hips, heard her name tear hoarsely from his throat. She took the hot pulse of him inside her, stroked release from behind his sac with featherlight fingers.

  Gradually the throbs of his body subsided, and his muscles relaxed into a blissful quiescence against the side of the boathouse. She pressed her forehead into his belly, gathering her wits, savoring the taste of him where it lingered in her mouth. His hands traveled through her hair, gentle now. From somewhere quite distant, quite outside the small circle of their intimacy, came the sound of water slapping restlessly against the rocky lakeshore.

  She staggered upward, knees aching, and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  His chest vibrated beneath her ear. “Christ Almighty, Alexandra,” he gasped. “You’re thanking me?”

  “It was beautiful.”

  “Oh, God. Oh, God.” His arms swept around her, tightening like a vise, holding her against the shaking laughter in his chest. “Alexandra, you mad creature. Oh, God. Forgive me.” His hand went back to her hair and stroked it relentlessly.

  “Forgive you for what?”