A Duke Never Yields (11 page)

“Really? You don’t feel it? As if there are ghosts hanging about every corner?”

“Ghosts!” Philip bounced in his seat. “Real live ones?”

“No, darling,” said Abigail. “Ghosts are generally dead. But real
dead
ones, certainly.”

Lilibet sent her a quelling frown. “What nonsense. Ghosts, indeed.”

As she spoke, a parcel of air seemed to brush the back of Abigail’s neck, making it tingle.

She turned to the doorway, where Signorina Morini stood quite still, headscarf like a bright red slash against the shadowed corridor behind her, teapot and toast rack in her hands. She was regarding Lilibet with a pensive expression.

“I have more toast, Signora Somerton, and more of the tea,” she said.

“Thank you, Morini. Are the gentlemen about yet? Lady Morley?” She asked the question with casual indifference, as if it were not common knowledge that the gentlemen and the ladies never breakfasted together, rarely lunched together, and only dined together because of the supreme inconvenience of having dinner at any other hour.

Morini stepped forward into the dining room, sparing not a glance for Abigail. Abigail was not surprised. She’d been trying for weeks to hold a private conversation with the dark-haired housekeeper of the Castel sant’Agata, to no avail. Every time Abigail entered into the kitchen, Morini slipped away on some urgent task, her skirts swishing behind her, the faint scent of baking bread dissolving into the empty air in her wake. Like a wraith, Abigail thought, with just a touch of pique: pique, because surely no one else in the house was better suited to speaking with a wraith—to getting to the bottom of her wraithlike secrets, as it were—than Miss Abigail Harewood.

Even now, Morini was focusing all her solicitous attention on Lilibet. She placed a fresh rack of toast on the table next to the countess’s plate, tilted the teapot above her empty cup, and answered her in a private tone. “Signore Burke, Signore Penhallow, they both had the breakfast, it is an hour ago. Of the duke, I see nothing.”

Abigail set down her fork. Enough was enough.

“Morini,” she said, quite loud, “I wonder if I could have a few words with you on the subject of ghosts.”

Morini’s hands froze in place around the teapot.

“Morini! The tea!” exclaimed Lilibet.

Morini straightened the pot just in time. She stood for a moment, holding the pot with both hands, and glanced at last at Abigail. A short glance only, a tiny stroke of lightning, and then she turned back to Lilibet.

But still, a glance. That was progress.

“Ghosts,” she said. “Of ghosts, there are none.”

Abigail smiled. “Something else, then? Because I think the air’s humming with them.”

“Is nothing, signorina. Only the old stones, the wind rattling the old walls. You are wanting more tea?” She offered the pot, and this time her eyes met Abigail’s with resolution, with intent and dark-eyed meaning.

Abigail tapped her finger against the table and returned the housekeeper’s gaze. Not a muscle moved in Morini’s face, not a flicker. The teapot in her hands, the clothes on her body: everything was still and focused on Abigail.

The tingling began again at the nape of her neck.

“I see,” she said. “Yes, more tea. I like your blend extremely, Morini.”

“But what about the ghosts?” Philip broke in cheerfully, reaching for his mother’s toast.

“Darling, don’t reach. There are no ghosts, Morini says.” Lilibet took the toast from Philip’s fingers, spread it thickly with butter, and returned it to him.

“No ghosts,” said Morini. She shot another glance at Abigail and swept from the room.

Abigail lifted the teacup and rested it against her chin. The shadowed passageway outside the door seemed full of secrets. “She’s lying, of course. Did you see the look she gave me?”

“Nonsense. Philip, for heaven’s sake, don’t lick the butter from your toast. It isn’t considered at all polite.”

Abigail leaned back in her chair and tapped her finger against the rim of her teacup. “Very interesting.”

“I assure you, he doesn’t do it often . . .”

“Not the
butter
, Lilibet. I mean Morini.”

“Why? Surely you don’t think she’s
hiding
something.” Lilibet wiped her hands on her stiff linen napkin.

“Of course I do,” said Abigail. She set down her teacup and rose from the table. “And I mean to find out exactly what it is.”

*   *   *

U
pon his return to the castle, the Duke of Wallingford found himself obliged, for the first time in his life, to unsaddle his own horse.

He found he rather liked the exercise, though he should never have let it become known among his acquaintances at the club.

He liked, for example, the little sigh Lucifer gave as the girth loosened and the saddle and cloth slid from his smooth back.

He liked the way Lucifer’s coat quivered and shone, as he brushed it afterward.

He liked the quiet of the stable, the slow drone of passing flies, the scent of hay as he refilled the net in Lucifer’s stall. He liked leading the horse outside and setting him free again in the paddock, to enjoy the sunshine and the clean, new-washed air, the soft early grass underfoot, the scent of growing things.

“Rather a nice holiday for you, isn’t it, old chap?” he said, latching the gate and setting his elbows atop the edge. Lucifer tossed his head and took off, giving his hind legs a little kick, frolicsome as a colt in the limpid spring morning. His hooves thumped the turf in a reassuring beat. Wallingford felt his lips stretch slowly into a . . . what was it?

A
smile
.

“Signore Duca,” came a petulant voice behind him.

Wallingford heaved a resigned sigh. So much for peace and solitude.

“What is it now, Giacomo?” he asked, without turning. Lucifer had settled himself in the shade of a tree and began to snatch at the tender new grass.

“Is the women, signore.”

“It’s always the women with you, Giacomo. What have you got against the poor creatures?”

Giacomo’s voice slid into an abject whine. “They are trouble, signore. They are always making the trouble. The signorina, the young one, she . . .”

“Stop. I don’t want to hear it.”

“She is spreading the stories, signore. She is saying we are . . . I am not knowing the word . . . the castle, she is saying, has the spirits . . .”

That chill again, tickling the base of Wallingford’s neck. He set his booted foot squarely on the lowest bar of the gate and ignored it.

“Of course there are no spirits,” he said. “We poured out everything in the library, directly we arrived. Except the sherry, of course.”

“Not the spirits for the
drinking
, signore! The spirits, the souls . . . you are not understanding?”

“Oh, as to that, I’ve been told many times I have no soul at all, on good authority.”

“Signore!” Giacomo’s voice was reproachful. “You are making the joke.”

Wallingford sighed and turned at last. “I never joke, Giacomo. I am much too dignified for something so vulgar as humor. I suppose you mean the castle is haunted?”

Giacomo nodded his head vigorously. “
Haunted
. Is the word.”

The damned chill again.

Wallingford folded his arms. The sunshine struck Giacomo’s gnarled body like a bolt of clear gold, illuminating the very fibers of his clothing with eye-watering detail. He stood with his legs planted far apart, as if withstanding a flood, his hands attached to his hips. He was wearing a queer old-fashioned jacket, made of some sort of rough wool, and the same flat cap he always had on his head, obscuring his hair and most of his forehead, leaving only a pair of broad ears that looked as if they meant to lift him off into flight at any moment. He seemed quite solid, quite corporeal. Quite un-ghostly.

“Well, is it?” Wallingford inquired dryly. “Haunted?”

Giacomo swallowed heavily. “Of course the castle is not being haunted! Is a story, an evil story spread by the devil-woman . . .”

“Devil-woman! Look here, Giacomo, Miss Harewood may be a mischievous little sprite, but she’s hardly the spawn of . . .”

“Not the girl! The . . . the kitchen, the house . . . she keeps the house . . .” Giacomo snapped his fingers impatiently.

“The housekeeper? Who the devil’s that?”

“Signorina Morini. You do not see her. She is staying in the kitchen. She tells the stories to the girl, and the girl, she . . . she . . .”

“She what?”

“She tells them to everyone!”

“She hasn’t told
me
.” Wallingford felt a hard nudge at his back: Lucifer, prodding him with his muzzle. Wallingford was surprised he’d left his grazing to come over again. “At least, not since the first night.”

Giacomo frowned. “What is she saying, then?”

“Only that she felt something odd lurking about. Female vapors, nothing more. Look here, old man, you’re making the old mountain out of a molehill, as they say. Simply ignore the women. It’s what I always do.”

Giacomo’s black eyes cast down to the beaten earth. “Is making the trouble.”

Wallingford uncrossed his arms and waved his hand dismissively. “What’s a few ghost stories, after all? Merely a little fun. I daresay nobody takes it seriously. I’ve never believed in ghosts, and I don’t intend to begin now.”

“Is true, signore?” Giacomo looked up at him anxiously. “You are not believing?”

“Of course not. Silly feminine twaddle.” Lucifer pushed right between his shoulder blades, with such force Wallingford nearly stumbled forward. “Look here, old chap,” he said, turning back to the horse.

“You are not listening to the stories, signore?” Giacomo asked, behind him.

Wallingford rubbed between Lucifer’s eyes, right in the center of the white lightning strike. “God, no. I never listen to women, as a matter of policy.”

Giacomo sighed deeply. “Is good. You are wise, Signore Duca. Is no wonder you are duke. Very wise, very good, very . . . very
wise
man.”

Wallingford closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against Lucifer’s long nose. The warmth, the solid clunk of bone soothed the tingling along his spine.

“Yes,” he said. “So I’ve been told.”

Then he straightened and turned to dismiss the groundskeeper, but the man had already disappeared.

*   *   *

I
f you leave this room, signorina, I shall tell everybody my suspicions.
Everybody
. I shall tell them the place is haunted, inside and out.”

Signorina Morini, in the very act of swishing her skirts through the doorway at the opposite end of the kitchen, halted herself in mid-swish. “
Che cosa?
”

“You know exactly what I mean. You understand English perfectly well.” Abigail had no idea how one ought to interact with ghosts, but she imagined it was best to speak with self-command. After all,
she
was the one made of good, solid, respectable living flesh.

Though that flesh was quivering rather disgracefully, at the moment.

Morini turned, and Abigail experienced an instant of doubt. The housekeeper was so full of color, her red headscarf burning against the shadows, the few escaping tendrils of her hair gleaming black against her pale skin. “Your suspicions. What are these . . . suspicions?”

“Why, that you’re a ghost, of course. If that’s the word.”

Morini shook her head. “I am not a ghost, signorina.”

“You’re not a regular person. Not a . . . a mortal person.”

Morini’s shoulders moved, a kind of flinch. She turned her face away, looking at the great hearth with its low-simmering fire, its fire irons in place nearby, its black long-handled utensils hung with care alongside.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to describe any of this. I’ve never made much study into the occult. Now, Tom Thomason, down the pub, he’s a regular expert, sees spirits everywhere, even in the lavatory, which is quite unnerving when you think . . .”

“Why you are saying these things, signorina?”

“. . . and more than a little unsanitary, though I suppose if one belongs to the spirit world one’s quite above worries about germs and . . .”

“You are not making sense, signorina.”

“Yes, I am.” Abigail took a step forward. “Please, Morini. Tell me what’s going on. I know there’s something, I can sense it; I’ve sensed it from the beginning. There’s some mystery, I know it.”

Morini stood there across the room, her arms still crossed above the neat homespun of her dress, the white linen of her apron. Beneath the loose material of her sleeves, her chest rose and fell in a slight but rapid rhythm.

Did ghosts actually breathe? Or was this movement simply some mimicry of human activity, some half-remembered reflex?

Was the woman alive, or not?

Something gave way in Morini’s face. Her black eyes softened, in sympathy or perhaps defeat. She sighed, lifting her arms up and down on her chest, and stepped toward the fire. “Signorina, you are perhaps wanting some tea?” she asked, over her shoulder.

Abigail let loose a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, and tottered forward to sink herself into a chair at the rough-hewn table in the center of the room. “Yes, signorina. I believe I should like some tea very much.”

*   *   *

I
s many years ago,” said Morini, bustling about the fire with the black teakettle.

“It always is. Once upon a time and all that.” Abigail propped her elbow on the table and leaned her cheek into her palm. Morini’s slender body wove before her in practiced movements, as if she’d been making English tea for English visitors for . . . well, for how long? “
How
long ago?” she asked.

Morini sighed and glanced back at her. “You are not believing me, if I say.”

“Oh, I’ll believe whatever you say. My mind is quite open, I assure you. Amaze me.”

“Is . . .” Morini paused and looked up at the ceiling, as if the years were marked on the heavy wooden beams above. “Is three hundred years.”

Abigail’s elbow gave way, nearly crashing her head into the table. “Three
hundred
years
!”