A Duke Never Yields (15 page)

But this scheme did not involve crushed breasts and stolen trousers. She and Signorina Morini were merely facilitating the proper course of nature, bringing together ladies and gentlemen who were falling in love already.

Abigail looked across the table at Lord Roland, dear and handsome Lord Roland, his hair picking up gold from the candles and his expressive hazel eyes gazing dreamily into a nearby dish of olives. Why, he was already expiring for Lilibet. He would be
grateful
for the friendly nudge of Abigail’s helping hand.

Wallingford’s fist interrupted her reverie with a brutal plate-rattling crash against the table. “Look here, Burke. Haven’t you heard a word of this?”

Abigail glanced at Phineas Burke. She could hardly blame Alexandra for her fascination with him. Such a handsome fellow, too, with his great height and radiant color and perfect bones, almost an architectural duplicate of . . .

Abigail set down her wineglass and looked back at Lord Roland, and then at Wallingford, and then back at Mr. Burke.

Good God.

“I’m afraid I haven’t,” Mr. Burke was saying. “I’ve a problem with the battery to sort out, and all this ranting of yours isn’t a bit of help. Penhallow, my good man, may I trouble you for the olives?”

Lord Roland gave a little start. “Eh what? Olives, you said?”

“Olives, sir. To your left. Yes, that’s the one. Good chap.”

Wallingford struck the table again with his judicial fist. “Burke, you insufferable sod . . .”

“Really, Your Grace!” said Lilibet, in properly shocked tones.

“. . . I beg your pardon, Lady Somerton, but the man deserves it. It’s his own miserable hide I’m attempting to protect.”

Abigail watched Wallingford drink his wine, watched him shoot a fierce glance in Mr. Burke’s direction. Fierce, and yet protective, too; why hadn’t she noticed that protectiveness before?

“My hide is in no danger whatsoever, I assure you,” Finn said.

Alexandra set down her knife and fork. She was sitting next to Abigail, so her face was invisible, but Abigail could imagine how it looked: skin smooth, eyebrow cocked, eyes gleaming with confidence. She said to Mr. Burke, in her bewitching drawl, “His Grace thinks I mean to seduce you, in order to win this silly wager of yours.”

Abigail cleared her throat and spoke. “But that’s absurd. If you seduced Mr. Burke, successfully I mean, the wager would technically be a draw, wouldn’t it?”

Everyone turned to her, faces stretched in astonishment, as if they’d forgotten she existed, as if she’d said something to explode every known law in the physical world. She looked from one to the other. Had this fact never occurred to any of them? It seemed rather obvious to her.

Mr. Burke spoke at last, in a stunned voice. “Yes. Yes, I believe it would.”

Abigail turned to Wallingford and gave him a smile of particular meaning. “You see? You may put your mind entirely at ease on the subject of seduction, Your Grace. No reasonable person would contemplate such a scheme. Two advertisements in the
Times
! It wouldn’t do.”

Wallingford returned her gaze with unspeakable rage. The color climbed up his face to flood the skin atop those magnificent cheekbones. What would he do, she wondered, if she rose from her chair and walked around the table and clasped those dear burning cheeks between her hands, just as she had that afternoon?

“Dear me, Wallingford,” said Alexandra. “You really must endeavor to calm your nerves. I fear you will bring on an apoplexy. Have you any medical training, Mr. Burke?”

“Only a few rudiments, I regret to say. Hardly enough to loosen his cravat.”

Wallingford regained his power of speech. “I am happy to be the source of such endless amusement. But you”—he stabbed his finger at Mr. Burke’s broad chest—“and you”—ditto Lord Roland—“have no idea at all what these women have in contemplation. From the moment of our arrival last month, they’ve been scheming and harassing us, in order to make our lives here so hellish as to drive us away entirely, and leave them the castle to themselves. Do not, Lady Morley, be so insulting as to deny it.”

“I should be very happy to see the last of you, Wallingford,” said Alexandra. “I make no attempt to hide the fact.”

Wallingford narrowed his eyes. Abigail had the uneasy impression that her sister had walked straight into a chessboard arranged with care by the duke himself. The flush had disappeared from his cheeks, and in its place a film of ice seemed to have frozen his features into severity. “Very well, then, Lady Morley,” he said, in deliberate tones. “I should like to propose an amendment to our wager. To increase the stakes, as it were.”

Increase the stakes
. Now this was interesting. Abigail leaned forward a fraction of a degree: Would this plan of Wallingford’s disrupt her own carefully wrought schemes this evening?

“Oh, good God,” said Mr. Burke. “Haven’t you a better use of your time, Wallingford? Reading some of that vast collection in the library, perhaps? It
is
what we’re here for, after all.”

Alexandra ran her finger around the rim of her wineglass. “He’s welcome to join our literary discussion in the salon. We should be pleased to hear an additional perspective, although I would suggest bringing an umbrella, in case of inclement weather.”

“No, damn it all! I beg your pardon, Lady Somerton.”

Lilibet sighed, so quietly Abigail could scarcely hear her. “Not at all, Your Grace.”

Wallingford straightened forward, gaining another inch or two of authority in his robust shoulders. His voice took on an absurd degree of resonance. “My proposal is this: that the forfeit, in addition to Burke’s excellent suggestion of an advertisement in the
Times
, should include an immediate removal of the offending party from the castle.” He sat back again, with a look of immense satisfaction.

Silence yawned among them, until Abigail thought she could hear the very flicker of the candles.

Lord Roland whistled. “Hard terms, old man. Are you quite sure? What if it’s
us
that’s given the old heave-ho?”

Wallingford gave him a superior smile. “You are, I admit, the weakest link in the chain, but I believe I may rely upon Lady Somerton’s honor, if nothing else.”

“Really, Your Grace,” said Lilibet, in a faint whisper.

“This is beyond absurd, Wallingford,” Alexandra said sharply. “All this talk of conspiracies and whatnot. I assure you, I haven’t the slightest intention of seducing poor Burke, and I daresay he has even less desire to be seduced. This is all about this business of the feathers this morning, isn’t it? You’re trying to have your revenge on us . . .”

“If I’m wrong, Lady Morley, you should have no reason at all to object to the increased stakes.” Wallingford reached for the nearby bottle and poured himself half a glass. “Isn’t that so?” He drank, watching Alexandra from above the rim.

Next to Abigail, Alexandra seemed to vibrate. Abigail wanted to tell her not to worry, that everything would work out, that nobody would be rousted out of the castle, that this was all nothing more than the friction of their six unruly bodies as they found their proper places with one another. But what could she say? Alexandra—and though her sister had never spoken a word of it, Abigail made it her business to know these things—lay just now on her beam ends, after financial disaster had visited the jointure left her by Lord Morley; she had nowhere to go from here, no other home except this leaking Italian castle. And Lilibet! Even worse for Lilibet, were she to be forced from this remote seclusion: Brutal Lord Somerton awaited her in London, and was probably even now flooding Europe with his emissaries, searching for his absconded wife and son.

No wonder Alexandra hesitated at Wallingford’s offer. The men might leave the Castel sant’Agata with no more injury than a badly bruised pride; for the ladies, the stakes (as Wallingford put it) were altogether higher.

But he’d backed them so neatly into a corner. Alexandra could hardly refuse, could she? Abigail stole another glance at Wallingford, who sat straight-shouldered at the head of the table, looking quite smug and handsome and pleased with himself.

“Of course I shouldn’t object,” Alexandra said at last, clenching her fingers around the stem of her empty wineglass. “Other than a sense of . . . of the absurdity of it all.”

Mr. Burke cleared his throat and came to his lady’s rescue. “Really, Wallingford. It’s hardly necessary. I don’t see any reason why we can’t continue to muddle on as we are. A tuft of goose down, here and there, doesn’t much signify. And I’m fairly confident I can resist Lady Morley’s charms, however determined her attempts on my virtue.”

Wallingford leaned back and cast his eyes around the table. “None of you, then, not one of you has the fortitude to meet my offer? Lady Morley? Your competitive spirit can’t be tempted?”

“You always were an ass, Wallingford.” Alexandra shook her head.

Oh, the hell with it, thought Abigail. Someone had to speak up and settle things, or dinner would never end, and her plans would be spoilt.

“Why not?” she said, into the silence.

Once more, all eyes turned to her in shock. Really, it was good fun, stunning the table with her pronouncements like this. She turned to Wallingford and gave him the full force of her gaze. “Why not? I can’t speak for your side, Your Grace, but we three are simply going about our business, studying and learning just as we intended. If it amuses you to turn this into a game, to raise the stakes, consider the wager accepted.” She gave her shoulders an insouciant shrug and turned to Alexandra. “It means nothing to us, after all. Does it, Alex?”

Alexandra blinked and took a deep breath. “No. No, of course not. Very well. We accept your stakes, Wallingford. Though it hardly matters, as your suspicions are entirely wrongheaded. In fact, your head
itself
seemed to be wrongheaded at the moment, and I suggest you turn away from your wild speculations and put it firmly to work as you intended in the first place. We’re on Aristophanes ourselves, just now, and my dear Abigail has already reviewed it twice in the original Greek. I’m certain she would have some useful insights for you. Perhaps she can assist you with your alphas and omegas.”

Oh, what a trump she was! Abigail stretched her hand beneath the table and gave Alexandra’s wrist a little squeeze of support.

“My alphas and omegas are quite in order, I assure you, Lady Morley.” Wallingford dabbed his lips with his napkin and dropped it by his plate. He rose, with a graceful motion of his lean body, and made the briefest of bows. “And now, ladies, if you’ll pardon the unpardonable. I must excuse myself, and leave you to the far more appealing company of my fellow scholars.”

Off he went, leaving the silence to settle in the echo of the shutting door.

And now
, Abigail thought, folding her own napkin atop the ancient linen tablecloth,
let the games begin
.

*   *   *

G
iven the cavernous size of the great hall of the Castel sant’Agata, the Duke of Wallingford, crossing it with energy and conviction, hardly expected to collide with Abigail Harewood’s breasts.

Strictly speaking, of course, he had collided with her right shoulder, but when he threw out his hand to steady them both, it had landed—whether by accident or with the reflexive instinct of a homing pigeon—directly into the plush cushion in the center of her silk-covered chest.

“Why, Wallingford!” she exclaimed, not backing an inch. “What on earth are you doing here, at this hour?”

He couldn’t remember. Something to do with a book. The kitchen. A large bronze key floated rather confusingly in the air before his eyes.

“What the devil are
you
doing here at this hour?” he growled instead, stalling for time. He couldn’t even see her properly, with only a thin shaft of moonlight angling its way through the distant windows, but of course it was Miss Harewood. No mistaking that cheerful voice, that delicate scent of sweet floral soap, of lemons and blossoms. That curving flesh, fitting his broad palm to overflowing . . .

He dropped his hand, as if from a scalding teapot.

“I was just coming downstairs from putting Philip to bed,” she said, without a trace of self-consciousness. “He made me read several stories from a great book on warhorses, which he’d purloined from the library, quite unsuitable for bedtime of course, but what can one do when a little boy takes an idea into his head, especially when . . .”

The library.

Wallingford’s head cleared.

“Never mind all that,” he said. “Do you know where I can find this housekeeper of yours? The kitchen, I presume? The door to the library is locked.” He paused. “I suppose that boy of yours did it accidentally, on his way out. Left the light on, too; most dangerous.”

“Strictly speaking, he’s Lilibet’s boy.”

“Regardless. I require the key at once.”

A little pool of silence opened up between them. Wallingford had the sense of fidgeting, there in the darkness where she stood.

“Well,” she said slowly, “in that case, I shall go and look for Morini. But I’ve little hope of success. I quite expect she’s abed by now.”

“It’s only eight thirty.”

“She keeps country hours.”

Wallingford shifted his feet impatiently. “Then you must wake her up. We can’t leave the lamps burning in the library all night. It’s dangerous, for one thing; and for another, I require a book.”

“What book? I’ll find it for you.”

“Miss Harewood,” he said, with deliberate scorn, “I need hardly remind you that the library remains in the territory of the gentlemen’s side of the house. It is not your business to be fetching books for me from its shelves.”

“I daresay you’re used to having books fetched for you,” she said. “I daresay you haven’t fetched your own books since you were a boy, and probably not even then.”

“Then you’d be mistaken. I’m quite capable of finding my own books. I . . .” Wallingford paused. In the silver gilt darkness of the hall, surrounded by cool stones and still air and the faint warmth of Abigail’s invisible body a few feet away, he felt once more a sense of fidgeting nervousness, a dangling of Abigail’s spirit. “Are you trying to distract me, Miss Harewood?” he said quietly.