The Dangerous Viscount
Page 29
Her beloved husband laughed as though he hadn’t a care in the world. “I can’t wait to find out.”
Epilogue
What with one thing and another they didn’t get to Italy until the following year. Diana sat on the loggia of the villa outside Palermo, sharing an indolent morning with the Contessa Montecitta. Half dozing, she absorbed the dry September heat, the song of cicadas, the scent of salt and thyme on the mild Mediterranean breeze. Although she had come to love the bleaker beauty of the North Sea, Italy was everything she’d ever dreamed of.
“Ma-ma-ma.” Her eyes flew open as she responded instinctively to her child who, at the age of only fourteen months, spoke in recognizable words. However much her husband might scoff at the notion, he was just as proud of their son as she was.
She arose and leaned over the stone railing. “Aldus!” she called back. He stood below in his muslin skirts, holding out his arms, a bunch of inky grapes clutched in each hand.
Sebastian picked up his small son. Fruit was crushed against their chests as they ascended the steps to the loggia. “We’ve been in the vineyard,” he said unnecessarily. It was their favorite place.
Aldus gravely offered part of his harvest to Diana.
“Thank you, sweeting,” she said. “Just one or I’ll spoil my dinner.”
Sebastian resisted the boy’s struggles to reach his mother’s arms. “Not until Maria has cleaned you up. Mama and your grandmother will not appreciate those grapey fingers on their dresses.” He blew Diana a kiss. “I’ll be back soon.”
“I can’t believe I have a grandchild at my age,” the contessa said as Diana returned to her chair. “He reminds me of Sebastian but without the clumsiness.”
“As far as we can tell, he isn’t shortsighted.”
“Funny that we never thought of his eyes when he kept running into things.”
Not funny at all, in Diana’s opinion. “Aldus is so adorable I can’t stop looking at him. I don’t know how you could bear it when you had to leave Sebastian behind in England.” She tried very hard not to sound vinegary, but she needn’t have worried. The contessa was impervious to criticism.
“It was sad,” she replied placidly, “and I cried for days, but Iverley was his guardian and wouldn’t let him leave the country. I had to go to Sicily with my darling Ugo.”
“How tragic that the political situation stopped you from coming home to visit him, though I would have supposed after Trafalgar the journey by sea was safe enough.”
“I hate traveling. Lord Iverley said Sebastian was doing well without me. Obviously he didn’t miss me. He never wrote.”
Diana bit her tongue and closed her eyes, resolving once again to follow Sebastian’s example and accept the fact that Lady Corinna never had been, and never would be, the world’s most affectionate mother. It was enough that neither was she the least.
The contessa was in the mood to reminisce. “I was ridiculously young to be a bride when I married Iverley.” About ten years old, by her idiosyncratic arithmetic. “He was a handsome devil, very wild. Sebastian seems quite staid in comparison.”
If by staid she meant trustworthy, reliable, and unlikely to fall out of a window while drunk, Diana thanked Providence. Not that her husband was without his wild streak, but she wasn’t about to discuss that with his mother. She kept her eyes shut and refused to comment until Sebastian returned wearing a clean shirt.
“Time for your walk,” he said.
“I don’t understand why you need to be so vigorous just because you are increasing again,” the contessa said. “Truthfully I find it surprising. No Iverley has had more than one child in generations. And no girls in a hundred years.”
“I hope that’s another tradition we will break.”
Diana stood up and smiled. “Sebastian is determined we shall have a daughter this time. I confess I’m a little worried if we have to keep on naming our children after his favorite printers. I had to fight to get Aldus Manutius instead of Wynkyn de Worde or Caxton. It would be very hard for a young lady to bear a name like Baskerville.”
“For girls,” her husband said, tucking her arm in his and gazing down at her, the love in his eyes visible even through his lenses, “we follow Montrose tradition. Every woman a goddess.”
Author’s Note
A couple of years ago, when I was helping my father move out of my childhood home, he asked me to go through a box of old family papers. Along with my grandfather’s World War I diaries, I discovered a curious volume listing family members and friends and their weights. Investigation revealed that for seventy years, beginning in 1850, there had been a weighing scale in the hall of the family house in Norfolk, England. After reeling with gratitude that the practice of weighing visitors had ceased long before my time, I decided I needed to put this piece of lunacy in a book.
So if anyone reads about Diana’s father and his weighing machine and thinks “that couldn’t happen,” all I can say is “it could and it did.”
I’m nervous of listing acknowledgements, because I receive help from so many people and I’d hate to forget anyone. Thanks first of all to the ladies of the Beau Monde loop who always come up with a quick answer, or a suggestion for further research. Thanks to Janet Mullany, Nancy Mayer, Caroline Linden, and Allison Lane for specific help with this book. Thanks to Bradford Mudge of the University of Colorado for helping me find eighteenth-century pornography and to Paul Quarrie of Maggs Bros. for ideas and advice on rare books. Any errors are all my own.
I am ever grateful to my agent, Meredith Bernstein, my editor, Esi Sogah, and to Kathy, Sophia, Susan, and Jill for their constant encouragement and advice.
Finally, apologies to Count Leo Tolstoy. I borrowed Pierre’s bet in War and Peace for the death of Sebastian’s father.
Miranda
“You are beautiful.”
“How can you tell without glasses?”
“I don’t need them to see up close,” he said softly, moving nearer until there were but inches between them. She looked into his eyes, deep, gray, intense, and felt she was gazing into his soul.
“I love your mouth,” he murmured. He removed his glove and his skin was firm and a little rough as he traced the bow of her upper lip with his forefinger. “So perfectly shaped here. And smooth and rounded like a ripe fruit here.” The edge of his thumb stroked the length of her lower lip.
The wind and chill receded and it might have been summer. His breath felt warm on her cheek. Her lips parted in anticipation.
He was going to kiss her again.
Romances by Miranda Neville
THE DANGEROUS VISCOUNT
THE WILD MARQUIS
NEVER RESIST TEMPTATION
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
AVON BOOKS
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
East 53rd Street
New York, New York 10022-5299
Copyright © 2010 by Miranda Neville
ISBN 978-0-06-180872-2
www.avonromance.com
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-01386-6
First Avon Books paperback printing: October 2010
Avon Trademark Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. and in Other Countries, Marca Re
gistrada, Hecho en U.S.A.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1 Auckland,
New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com