A Duke Never Yields (3 page)

No. No, of course not. Not even the Duke of Olympia would dare such a thing.

True, he’d hand-selected more than one prime minister in the last half century. And the Queen herself had been known to change one or two of her notoriously firm opinions after an hour of private conversation with His Grace.

And there
was
that time he had traveled to Russia aboard his private steam yacht and told the Tsar in no uncertain terms . . .

Good God.

Wallingford leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, and covered his face with his hands.

There had to be a way out.

He spread his fingers and peered through them. The scent of last night’s tossed champagne still hung in his hair, pressing against his nostrils, making him feel slightly queasy. Champagne. Orchids. His brain sloshed about with the memories of last night: the impulsive coupling, banal and sordid, the work of a mere minute or two, and then the sour distaste as he had wiped himself with his handkerchief and looked at the lady’s flushed face and perspiring bosom and tried to recall her name.

He needed more coffee. He needed . . .

Something caught his eye, in the stack of books atop his bedside table, next to the coffee tray. Something that was not a book at all.

A tickle began at the base of Wallingford’s brain, as if a pair of fingers were nudging him. It felt . . . it felt . . . almost like . . .

An idea.

He rose, paced to the table, and lifted the three topmost volumes.

There it was, beneath the Dickens, atop the Carlyle. A folded newspaper, given to him a month ago, the edges already beginning to yellow under the inexorable poison of oxygen.

Wallingford picked it up and smoothed the page. There, circled in thick black ink, the print as crisp as it had been when Phineas Burke had handed it to him in the breakfast room downstairs, read an advertisement:

English lords and ladies, and gentlemen of discerning taste, may take note of a singular opportunity to lease a most magnificent Castle and Surrounding Estate in the idyllic hills of Tuscany, the Land of Unending Sunshine. The Owner, a man of impeccable lineage, whose ancestors have kept the Castle safe against intrusion since the days of the Medici princes, is called away by urgent business, and offers a year’s lease of this unmatched Property at rates extremely favorable for the discerning traveler. Applicants should enquire through the Owner’s London agent . . .

A year, Burke had proposed. A year of study and contemplation, free from the distractions of modern life and the female sex. Four weeks ago, Wallingford had laughed at the idea, once he had overcome his initial shock that such a notion should even occur to a sane and able-bodied man, in full possession of his youthful animal spirits.

A year, free of the interference of the Duke of Olympia, and his brides and his June weddings. A year—it must be said—free of recriminations from Cecile de la Fontaine and her vindictive French temper.

A year free of temptation, free of ducal trappings. In a remote Italian castle, where nobody knew him, where nobody had even heard of the Duke of Wallingford.

Wallingford slapped the newspaper back down on the books, causing the topmost volumes to tumble to the floor in surprise. He poured himself a cup of coffee, drank it in a single burning gulp, and stretched his arms to the ceiling.

Why, it was just the thing. A change of scene from gray and changeless London. He could use a change. He’d been dogged with a sense of dissatisfaction, of restlessness, long before his outrageous indiscretion last night, long before Olympia’s unwelcome visit this morning.

A year with his brother and his closest friend, both decent chaps who minded their own business. Tuscany, the land of unending sunshine. Wine in abundance, and decent food, and surely a discreet village girl or two if absolutely necessary.

What could possibly go wrong?

ONE

Thirty miles southeast of Florence

March 1890

A
t the age of fifteen, Miss Abigail Harewood had buried her mother and gone to live in London with her older sister, the dazzling young Marchioness of Morley, and her decrepit old husband the marquis.

Within a week, Abigail had decided she would never marry.

“I shall never marry,” she told the stable hand, as she helped him rub down the wet horses with blankets, “but I should like to take a lover. I have just turned twenty-three, after all, and it’s high time, don’t you think?”

The stable hand, who spoke only a rustic Tuscan dialect, shrugged and smiled.

“The trouble is, I can’t find a suitable prospect. You have no idea how difficult it is for an unmarried girl of my station to find a lover. That is, a lover one actually wishes to go to bed with. I daresay Harry Stubbs down the pub would be delighted; but you see, he has no teeth. Real ones, I mean.”

The stable hand smiled again. His own teeth glinted an expectedly bright white in the lantern light.

Abigail cocked her head. “Very nice,” she said, “but I don’t think we should suit. I should like the sort of lover I could keep for at least a month or two, since it’s such trouble to find one, and my sister and I shall depart this fine inn of yours tomorrow, as soon as the rain lets up.”

The stable hand gave the horse a last pat and reached up to hang the blanket to dry on a rafter. She could have spoken to him in Italian, of course, though his dialect did not quite match the classical version in which she was fluent, but then it was so much easier to speak to people when they couldn’t understand one.

The man settled the blanket on the rafter, arms flexing beneath his woolen shirt. Rather a strapping fellow, in fact. And his hair: such a shining extravagant coal black, a little too long and curling just so. Exactly what one wished for in a rustic Italian chap. Abigail’s hands stilled on her own blanket, considering.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, “may I trouble you for a kiss?”

He dropped his arms and blinked at her. “
Che cosa, signorina?
”

“You see, when I made the decision, on my twenty-third birthday, that I would find myself a lover before the end of the year, I determined to make the search as scientific as possible. One can’t be too selective for one’s first lover, after all.” Abigail gave him an affectionate smile, a smile of shared understanding. “I canvassed the maids and the housekeeper—only the women, you see, for obvious reasons—and they were quite unanimous that the kiss should be the determining factor.”

The stable hand’s brow furrowed like a field under the plow. “
Che cosa?
” he asked again.

“The kiss, you understand, as a sort of test of each prospect’s skill. Tenderness, patience, subtlety, sensitivity to one’s partner: All these things, according to my friends, can be divined from the very first kiss. And do you know?” She leaned forward.

“
Signorina?
”

“They were right!” Abigail slid the blanket down the horse’s hindquarters and handed it to him. “I kissed two of the footmen, and young Patrick in the stables, and the differences in style and technique were astonishing! Moreover, the manner of kiss, in every case, exactly matched what I might have guessed, judging from their characters.”

The stable hand took the blanket from her with a bemused air.

“So you see, I thought perhaps you might be so obliging as to kiss me as well, in order to round out my experience more thoroughly. Would you mind terribly?”

“
Signorina?
” He stood there, with the blanket in his hand, looking wary. A lantern swung near his head, making his thick black hair glint alluringly. Next to her, the horse gave an impatient stamp and snorted profoundly.

“A kiss,” she said. “
Un bacio
.”

His face cleared. “
Un bacio! Si, si, signorina
.”

He tossed Abigail’s blanket over the rafter, next to his own, and took her by the shoulders and kissed her.

A tremendous kiss, really. Full of raw enthusiasm, a thorough sort of embrace, his thick lips devouring hers as if he hadn’t kissed a girl in months. He smelled of straw and horseflesh, lovely warm stable smells, and his breath tasted surprisingly of sweet bread.

What luck.

Abigail felt his tongue brush hers and, as if it were a signal, she pulled away. His eyes shone down on hers, dark with urgency.

“Thank you,” Abigail said. “That was very nice indeed. I suspect you’re the ravishing sort, aren’t you?”

“
Che cosa?
”

She slipped out of his arms and gave his elbow an affectionate pat. “What a darling fellow you are,” she said. “I assure you, I shall remember this forever. Every time I recall our year in Italy, I shall think of you, and this enchanting, er, stableyard. Such a splendid start to an adventure, if rather a wet one.”

“
Signorina . . .”

Abigail switched into Italian. “Now, the other horse, named Angelica, she is a fine mare, but you must watch her for the biting, and make sure she has enough of the oats.”

“Oats?” He seemed relieved by the appearance of Abigail’s Italian, however flawed.

Abigail picked up her shawl and placed it back over her shoulders. The rain drummed loudly against the roof of the stable, nearly overcoming her words. “I can stay no longer, what desolation. My sister and cousin have been waiting for half an hour, and Alexandra makes objection when I smell too strongly of the stables. She is a very fine lady, my sister.”

“That one . . . the great lady . . . she is your sister?”

“Yes. I, too, am astonished. She is a marchioness, though her husband the marquis died two years ago, God forever rest his soul. And you have perhaps seen my cousin Lilibet, who is a countess, very beautiful and virtuous, traveling with her little boy.
She
wouldn’t kiss a gentleman in a stable; no, never. But I must be away.”

“Signorina . . . I will not see you again?” His voice wavered.

“Tragically, no. But you must be accustomed to such heartbreak, working at an inn, isn’t it so?” Abigail’s gaze fell upon the corner, where an enormous lumpy pile stood covered by a series of thick wool blankets. “Why, what the devil’s this?” she asked, in English.

“This?” he replied, in despondent Italian. “Why, it is only the machine left by the English gentleman.”

“English gentleman? Here?”

“Why, yes. They arrived not an hour before your party, three of them, great English lords, and left this . . . this . . .” Words failed him. He gestured extravagantly. “Signorina, you will not stay?” he pleaded.

“No, no.” She took a few paces toward the pile. “What is it, do you think?”

“This? What does it matter, next to my poor heart?”

“Your heart will recover with great promise, I am certain. The season for foreign travelers has hardly begun.” Abigail took hold of the corner of one blanket and lifted it.

A sob wracked the air behind her.

“Well, well,” she breathed, in English. “What have we here?”

*   *   *

T
he Duke of Wallingford’s temper, never the docile sort, began to growl about his ears like an awakened terrier. No, no, not a terrier. Like a dragon, a fine fire-breathing dragon, a much more suitable beast for a duke.

Bad enough that the train from Paris to Milan should have no accommodation for his private car, forcing the three of them to travel in a common first-class carriage with decidedly coarse company and execrable sherry. Bad enough that the hotel in Florence should have sprung a leak in its old roof, requiring them to change suites in the middle of the night, to a floor altogether too close to the milling streets below. Bad enough that the final leg of the journey from Florence to the Castel sant’Agata should be awash with rain, the bridge ahead swimming, so they should be forced to put up in this . . . this inn of the worst rustic sort, filled with stinking travelers and flat ale and—the final insult, which no merciful God should dare deliver—the forever-damned Dowager Marchioness of Morley and her suite of assorted relatives.

Demanding his own private rooms for
her
party, no less.

The Marchioness of Morley. Wallingford had kissed her once, he remembered, on a long-ago London balcony, when she was a debutante and ought to have known better than to find herself in a shaded corner with a notorious duke. Or perhaps she
had
known better. She had certainly looked up at him with a rather knowing eye for a nineteen-year-old.

She was looking up at him now, with those same warm brown eyes, turned up at the ends like those of a particularly smug cat, doing her best to look beseeching. Her hands wrung away in front of her immaculate waist. “Look here, Wallingford, I really must throw myself on your mercy. Surely you see our little dilemma. Your rooms are ever so much larger, palatial, really, and
two
of them! You can’t possibly, in all conscience . . .” She paused and cast a speculative glance at Wallingford’s brother. “My dear Penhallow. Think of poor Lilibet, sleeping in . . . in a
chair
, quite possibly . . . with all these strangers . . .”

Just like Lady Morley, to play on poor Roland’s schoolboy affection for her cousin Elizabeth, now the Countess of Somerton: that peach-cheeked beauty, that siren of sirens. The devil’s own luck, that Lord Roland Penhallow’s long-lost love should lurk in this godforsaken Italian innyard, waiting to launch herself back into his tender heart.

If indeed it
was
mere luck.

Next to Wallingford, Burke seemed to sense the threat. He cleared his throat with an ominous rumble before Roland could answer. “Did it not, perhaps, occur to you, Lady Morley, to reserve rooms in advance?”

Lady Morley turned to him with the full force of her cat-eyed glare. She had to look upward, and upward, until at last she found his face. “As a matter of fact, it did, Mr. . . .” She made a terrifying rise of those eyebrows, which could lay waste to all fashionable London. “I’m so terribly sorry, sir. I don’t
quite
believe I caught your name.”