A Duke Never Yields (7 page)

An unfamiliar sensation invaded Abigail’s chest. She couldn’t name it. It crept across her heart, cold and hollow and lonely, and yet as heavy as a blacksmith’s anvil. It seemed to weigh her very footsteps, to suck against her boots like the mud itself. Could it be . . . no, it could
not
, this was not at all in Abigail’s nature, she
never
succumbed to such things and wouldn’t start now. Yet there was no other word but . . .

Melancholy.

Oh, God. Perhaps even . . .

Despair
.

Buck up, Harewood
, she told herself. A solution would be found. She just had to think, to discover a plan, to break free from this ungodly and wholly unnecessary sense of inertia, of . . .

“Bollocks,” said Alexandra, next to her elbow, yanking her boot free from an unexpected hollow of mud.

Abigail jumped. “Oh! It’s you!”

“Good heavens, my dear. Who else would it be?” Alexandra looked sadly at her ruined boot and carried on walking.

“I beg your pardon. I was lost in thought.”

“Evidently. I’m rather out of sorts this morning myself. I’ve a dreadful headache, for one thing.” Alexandra drew a massive sigh and glanced over her shoulder at the cart, in which Lilibet and Philip sat among the trunks, playing some sort of a game with a string. “Lilibet had us up at such a shocking hour. Quite exceptionally uncivilized, though I suppose it was for the best. The earlier we reach the castle, the better. If only we could have taken the coach.”

“It would have been stuck in the mud at the first turn,” said Abigail. “And we couldn’t take such a chance. Coaches are so easily traced.”

“Instead it’s our own feet that will be stuck in the mud. Heigh-ho. It might be worse. We might be forced back into the insufferable company of Wallingford’s party.”

“I thought they were rather nice,” ventured Abigail, jumping over a puddle.

“
You
weren’t there over dessert.” Alexandra’s voice went dark. They were climbing a short rise; the mud had diminished, replaced by small sharp rocks. She kicked at one of them, sending it skidding and leaping across the road. “
You
retired with Lilibet and Philip.”

“What happened at dessert?” Abigail asked.

“Nothing in particular.” Another kick. “Well, Wallingford was an ass, of course, and poor Penhallow sat there in a daze of love for our cousin.”

“And Mr. Burke?”

“Oh, the ginger? I hardly noticed him at all.” Alexandra looped her arm through Abigail’s. “Dear sister. Do you know, that wretched Wallingford and his friends are embarked on the very same mission as we are? A year of academic retreat, for the betterment of their souls. If they had any to speak of, that is.”

Abigail tightened her arm around Alexandra’s thick wool-coated elbow. “What’s that?”

“Oh yes.” Alexandra nodded vigorously. “It’s true. They’ve got their own secluded villa somewhere about. Wallingford even had the temerity to suggest that we weren’t up to the challenge. That we should be running back home to England by Easter.”

“Did he?” Abigail tried to quash the excitement that rose up from her belly, lifting the black anvil of despair and tossing it effortlessly overboard, into the muddy track beneath her boots.

“Quite. The cheek. I put him in his place at once, of course. I insisted we’d outlast their party with ease.” Alexandra made a little cough. “I . . . well, that is, I even accepted a wager on the matter.”

“Alexandra! You
bet
him?”

“Of course not. Ladies never
bet
, my dear,” Alexandra said, pronouncing the word
bet
with distaste, as if referring to some unmentionable function of the body that ladies never committed, either.

Abigail laughed. “But how marvelous! You darling, Alexandra! I could kiss you. What are the stakes? A hundred pounds? A thousand?”

“Heavens, no.” An injured air. “Nothing so crass as money, my dear. I’m amazed you would even think such a thing. Where do you get such ideas? No, no, the thought of money never once crossed my mind.” She smoothed her coat with one hand and clenched Abigail’s forearm with the other.

“What, then?”

“Oh, Mr. Burke suggested something. A newspaper advertisement of some sort, I believe, conceding the superiority of the other sex. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that we made our point.”

“What point?”

“Why, that women are equally as capable as men in academic endeavors, if not more.”

A pit of mud lay before them. Without a pause, Abigail dragged her sister around its rim, her mind racing, melancholy quite banished, ideas and possibilities and
hope—
oh
,
blessed hope—making her very sinews vibrate with delight. A wager with Wallingford! Of course! Here it was, the intervention of fate, bringing them together again as inevitably as the dice collided on a gaming table. Or perhaps that was not quite the right metaphor. In any case: “But I thought the academic superiority of women was quite self-evident. Why else would men require entire universities to further their studies, whereas we have always made do with a room and a few books?”

“You should have seen the look on his face,” said Alexandra.

“I’m sure His Grace was positively thunderous.” Abigail sighed longingly.

“Not Wallingford,” said Alexandra. “Mr. Burke. He was silent about it, of course, but I could tell he was enraged at the idea. He left the table in an absolute
state
.”

“And Wallingford? What did he say?”

“Oh, the duke? I don’t recall. I left myself, directly after.”

Abigail laughed aloud.

“What is it?” Alexandra said crossly.

“I was only thinking. Wouldn’t it be jolly fun if the gentlemen were bound for the same castle as we are? All unknowing?”

“That’s quite impossible. I have the lease right here in my pocket.” Alexandra patted the breast of her coat with satisfaction. “All signed and sealed and airtight. I shan’t allow so much as Mr. Burke’s right toe upon the property, I assure you. Besides,” she added, “there must be dozens of other castles about. The odds of such a coincidence are therefore . . . something like . . . er . . .”

“Yes?” Abigail said eagerly.

Alexandra patted her pocket again. “Incalculable.”

Several hours later

T
he Duke of Wallingford stood in the middle of the drizzle and stared at the two papers in his hands. He looked back and forth. His heels dug into the stony earth, seeking further security; his back stiffened into iron.

In the course of his duties as head of one of Britain’s most august families, Wallingford was often called upon to adjudicate disputes of one kind or another. He found the ritual more bemusing than anything else. The faces trained upon him, eager and anxious. The weight of respectful silence, suffusing the air with expectancy. The universal belief that he, Arthur Penhallow, had somehow been endowed by nature with a greater share of wisdom than the ordinary run of mankind, simply by virtue of having been born the eldest son of a man who happened, by that same lucky accident of birth, to hold the title of duke.

He took the responsibility seriously, of course. Whether sitting in judgment of some fellow peer in the House of Lords or deciding the rightful ownership of a peripatetic village sow, he understood the gravity of the charge he’d been given by his Creator. He endeavored to be impartial. He endeavored to consider all sides of the matter, every piece of evidence. He endeavored to give his full attention, the full weight of intellect at his disposal, to delivering a just decision.

But
this
? This was quite outside the realm of his experience.

He hadn’t seen the lease agreement until now. Burke had taken care of all that, all the legal arrangements for the yearlong rental of the Castel sant’Agata. Burke was a clever fellow, a genius, with plenty of money and lawyers at his disposal. Wallingford hadn’t given the matter a second thought. It had never occurred to him that he might, on the very day of their arrival, with the Castel sant’Agata rising nearby from the wet hillside in a jumble of yellowing walls and red-roofed turrets, hold not one but
two
copies of the lease agreement in his hands, exactly and word-by-word identical to each other, signed and notarized in perfect order.

Identical, except for the names of the leaseholders.

One agreement let the castle to Mr. Phineas Fitzwilliam Burke, R.S., and the other named, in plain black ink, one Alexandra, Dowager Marchioness of Morley.

The wind blew cold against his cheek, ruffling the papers. He wasn’t looking at the words now; he knew precisely the nature of the problem before him. He was wet and cold and cross, having walked ten miles along the muddy Tuscan road while the ladies, curse them, had ridden in comfort atop his horses; he had found the fortitude to keep marching only from the knowledge that this would soon be over, that they would reach the castle and the women would be on their way, and he would no longer have to bear the siren call of Miss Harewood’s floating laughter, the heartbreaking image of her graceful, straight-shouldered outline against the gray rock and brown winter grass.

And then they had arrived at the castle itself, and the horrible truth—the truth he had half suspected, perhaps unconsciously expected, from the moment he had first spotted the ladies at the inn—had at last been understood.

One castle. Two legal leaseholders.

Roland coughed gently, next to his elbow. The horses began to move about, hooves cracking restlessly against the pebbles of the track. Wallingford cleared his throat and looked up. To his right, Miss Harewood looked down at him from her lofty perch atop Burke’s handsome chestnut; he could feel her gaze upon his face, her whole attitude bursting with eagerness.

To his left rose the castle itself, a distant shadow against the clouds. An odd frisson touched the back of his neck, a sense of otherworldliness.

“Well,” he said. “Rather awkward. It appears Signore Rosseti is either a senile fool or . . . well, or a scoundrel.”

Another gust of wind battered against his back. Lucifer, carrying Lady Somerton and her boy in the saddle, gave a vigorous nod of his head, jingling the metal rings of his bridle.

Wallingford held up both papers before him and went on, in his best judicial boom. “The letters are nearly identical, except that the ladies appear to have negotiated a better price for the year’s lease than you have, Burke.”

Burke scowled. “I was told there was no room for negotiation.”

“Oh, rubbish, Mr. Burke,” said Lady Morley, with a little laugh. “Merely tactics, as anyone knows.”

“We have paid for a year’s lease on the castle, and we intend to take it,” Burke shot back, crossing his arms against his chest.

Wallingford frowned at them both. The day was growing late, the light already fading against the gloomy landscape. He thought for an instant of Miss Abigail Harewood trudging through the night, seeking shelter, chilled and hungry, and a shaft of pure instinctive horror bolted through his heart.

A solution would have to be found, and straightaway. Was there some alternative housing nearby? A village of some sort? Surely the castle oversaw a village; that was in the very nature of castles. The people there would know where this Rosseti might be found, and the matter could be cleared up. If necessary, the gentlemen could leave the ladies in possession of this particular castle and find something else. Something—he cast a glance at the ancient building, the unkempt row of cypress wavering precariously in the bitter wind—something perhaps a trifle more welcoming.

He was a fair man, after all. As long as his opponent played by the rules, he could do the generous thing. Perhaps it was all for the best.

He opened his mouth to speak, but in the same instant, Lady Morley made an impatient noise, a little grunt of decision, and wheeled her horse about.

“What the devil,” he began, but his words were lost in the thunder of her departing hoof beats, galloping down the drive toward the castle.

Everyone stood frozen, even the horses, staring at the departing hindquarters of Penhallow’s borrowed horse, which grew smaller and grayer in the mist, until both steed and rider faded into a shadow.

“Good God!” shouted Burke, breaking the spell. “Come back here!”

“What the devil,” Wallingford said again, in an awed whisper. He looked at Miss Harewood, whose face was lit with amusement, her elfin eyes round and large in her pale face. “What the devil does she think she’s doing?” he demanded.

Miss Harewood glanced down at him and smiled. She gathered the reins in her hands and nudged her horse with her heels. “Taking possession, I expect,” she said, over her shoulder, as Burke’s chestnut moved her down the track at a merry canter.

FOUR

A
bigail knew something was afoot the instant the great hall opened up around her.

She had felt it already. When the smudged outline of the Castel sant’Agata had at last emerged from the drizzle, she had thought it seemed to shimmer, to waver against the clouds like some unearthly creation. She had sensed some mystery stirring in the air in the courtyard, in the abandoned lichen-crusted fountain and iron gates. A sort of expectancy, a holding of some invisible breath.

She let her gaze travel slowly about the bare stone walls, the great staircase curving up to the gallery, the mighty timbers crossing the roof above them. Not a stick of furniture obstructed her view; not a rug covered the flagstones beneath her boots. Abigail’s imagination expanded with a whoosh, taking in the stark splendor around them and filling it with history. With life.

She crossed the room to the casement window, protected by a set of long and mildewed curtains. With one hand she pushed aside the fabric and peered out. “What a splendid adventure. Such delicious grime! I daresay it hasn’t been washed in years. Do you suppose there’s ghosts?”

“Of course not,” Alexandra said sharply. “The very idea.”

“I expect there’s dozens of them. An old pile like this. And Italians! Always poisoning one another and so on. I shall be very much disappointed if I don’t discover a ghost in every corridor.” Abigail turned from the window to find Philip standing in front of her, gazing owlishly about the room. Lilibet wandered about behind, settling her woolen scarf more closely about her neck, her fair brow deeply creased.