A Lady Never Lies (7 page)

To their credit, the brothers Penhallow had pitched in without much complaint. They’d unloaded chests and carried machinery like a pair of overdressed drovers, cursing with cheerful specificity and offering a catalogue of incisive remarks on topics as far ranging as the excellence of Italian spring weather and the probable nature of Signore Rosseti’s parentage.

In fact, they were decidedly more talkative than Finn himself, whose mood grew blacker and blacker as he envisioned what was likely taking place in the Castel sant’Agata while he and his friends labored away in the stableyard—barricades going up, no doubt, and the entrances blocked. At the very least, the women would have claimed all the best bedrooms, leaving the men to shiver through the night on bare pallets down some wretched hallway until they crawled, defeated, out the door and down the mountain.

Ruthless creatures, ladies.

“I daresay they’re all abed by now,” said Wallingford, planting his feet on the flagstones and taking in the darkened hall. The baggage lay in a scrambled heap at the bottom of the staircase, almost indistinguishable in the shadows, and Finn contemplated with misery the prospect of hauling it all up to their quarters. Wherever those might be.

“D’you suppose there’s any dinner to be had?” asked Lord Roland, with unconscionable cheerfulness. “I don’t mean to raise any false hopes, but I believe I caught a whiff of something, an instant ago. Something edible,” he added quickly, since the scents they’d encountered during the past few hours had been of the sort to put one off one’s dinner entirely.

Wallingford started off down the opposite end of the hall, away from the courtyard entrance. “Kitchen’s likely at the back, though I expect the ladies have eaten anything lying about by now. Licked the damned crumbs off the floor, too, by God.”

Lord Roland set off after him, but Finn, after a few steps, paused and looked back at the chests. “Go along,” he called. “I’ll catch up in a moment.”

“Don’t be too long,” Wallingford tossed over his shoulder. “I shan’t be saving anything for you.”

Lord Roland’s voice echoed amicably from the end of the hall, “You’re an ass, Wallingford . . .”

Finn shook his head and turned to the chests. The very thought of food made his belly howl in desperation; his last meal had consisted of a hard lump of Parma cheese and an even harder husk of bread, wolfed down in haste along the rainy trek up the hillside. But he’d seen the cavalier way in which the baggage men had tossed the chests and trunks about, and if any of his instruments and gadgets had been broken, it might mean weeks of wasted work, waiting for replacements to arrive from London, or else finding a suitable machinist nearby.

No, he had to satisfy himself before dinner, before bed, or else he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

In the settling dark, he could hardly distinguish one box from another; they had been stacked against one another in reckless disorder, reeking of mildew and damp air. He stumbled about, running his hands along the various textures of leather and metal and canvas, searching for the familiar shapes of his own custom-made chests, designed to absorb the shocks of travel and weather and careless foreign drovers.

He found them at the back of the pile, larger and plainer than the rest. They’d been battered about, the leather a bit scuffed. Probably stained with rain, too, though the light was too dim to tell. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a little ring of keys, and felt through them until his fingers encountered the shape he sought.

With a twist of his wrist, he slipped the key into the lock of the first chest. The tumblers clicked into place with a satisfyingly efficient clink, undamaged by the damp, and Finn opened the lid. The familiar mingled smell of metal and leather and oil rose up to greet him like an old friend, faithful and unchanged, endless blissful memories of tinkering and experimentation distilled into this clean musky scent he’d known since childhood. He ran his fingers over the bumps and ridges within. All tight and snug, the close-fitting felt wrappers undisturbed, the delicate bits of engine and instrumentation safe and sound at last.

A deep sigh of relief heaved under his ribs.

“Is that you, Mr. Burke?”

Finn jumped and whirled. His knee knocked over the chest and spilled the contents onto the floor with a god-awful metallic crash, followed by an equally catastrophic secondary crash, followed by a few solid clinks and then the lonely ring of a single machine part revolving to infinity on the stone floor.

“Oh dear,” Lady Morley said faintly. “I’m so terribly sorry.”

Ordinarily Phineas Burke was a solid man in a crisis. Kept his wits, reacted with cool efficiency, started putting things to rights almost before the disaster had finished unfolding. And in fact, as soon as the chest had struck the flagstones, Finn’s brain told him he ought to be dropping to his knees, attempting to recover the lost machinery and assess the damage.

His body did not obey, however. He stood frozen, contemplating the figure before him, wrapped in a dazed sense of déjà vu, as if the events of the previous night had returned like a recurring nightmare. This time she was holding a candle, and the light wavered between them, turning her skin to gold. “Lady Morley,” he said stupidly, “what the devil are you doing here?”

“Your . . . your things . . .” she said, equally dazed. “Let me . . . let me help you . . .” She sank to the floor and set her candle next to the dark pool of her skirts.

“No . . . quite all right . . . it’s nothing,” he said, and dropped down next to her to run his hands along the cold stone. “You’ve done enough already.” The words fell from his lips before he could think.

She straightened, still on her knees, and her voice turned hard. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Burke. I shouldn’t have startled you like that. I only came to tell you about the arrangements.”

“The arrangements.”

“For the . . .” She rose and made a motion with her arm. “For all this.”

He felt himself stiffening for battle. Damn it all, where was Wallingford? Finn hadn’t the faintest idea how to deal with women like this, imperious women who carried all before them. Always taking offense, always saying one thing and meaning another, always looking at one as if one’s nose were protruding through a garden hedge. “Yes, of course. And what do you propose?”

“The housekeeper tells me that the castle is divided rather neatly into . . .”

“The housekeeper?” Finn asked witlessly, because he had just discovered that at some point in the past few hours, Lady Morley had removed her jacket, and she stood now before him in her plain white shirtwaist, unbuttoned at the neck.

“Yes, a woman named Morini; she appeared directly after you left for the stables. She showed us about, and it seems that, for the time being, that is to say until Signore Rosseti can be found to set things right, our respective parties can take up residence in the castle’s two wings with very little . . . I say, Mr. Burke, are you attending me?”

“Yes, quite.”

“As I said, then, very little need for interaction between our two parties. Except at mealtimes, as I regret to say there is only one room suitable for dining.”

He realized she’d stopped talking. “Very well. I suppose that will do.”

“How generous of you,” she said. “I expect you’ll be equally grateful to hear we’ve been slaving like charwomen for hours, setting up the beds and finding your dinner.”

He cast about for something to say. “Are there no other servants, then?” he asked finally, trying not to let his eyes stray farther downward, to discover just how far the unbuttoning of her shirtwaist had progressed.

“What astonishing powers of deduction you have, Mr. Burke. I can well imagine how you lay those chaps at the Royal Society absolutely flat with your logic.”

He opened his mouth to form some suitably cutting riposte (
When faced with a roomful of reasonable men, Lady Morley, instead of a single housekeeping shrew . . .
), but then his eyes broke discipline at last and caught fatally in the center of her chest.

It was worse than he’d dreamed. The unbuttoning continued unabated down her bosom, forming a daring gap in the white starched fabric, and her skin glowed lusciously beneath in the flickering candlelight. Worse, one panel—probably in the midst of her bed-making exertions, God help him—had pulled aside to reveal the curve of a gloriously generous breast, etched by the delicate lace of her snug-fitting corset.

Finn’s eyes shot back to Lady Morley’s face. “I . . . that is . . .”
My dear Lady Morley, I beg to inform you that your left breast is quite nearly hanging out of your shirtwaist . . .

“Oh yes,” she said scornfully. “Most impressive.”

. . . That is to say, your
right
breast, since it is adjacent to my left hand, and we are naturally facing each other . . .

“Have you nothing to say at all, Mr. Burke?”

. . . You’re welcome, of course, to tuck your splendid mammary back in its rightful place, or else I should be more than happy to assist you with the adjustment . . .

She shifted the candle to her other hand, and as the light passed before her face he saw the drawn paleness of her skin, the violet smudges beneath her eyes.

“Well then,” she said, into his silence, “since your grateful thanks don’t appear to be forthcoming, I’ll lead the way into the dining room, such as it is.” She turned with a broad sweep of her skirts. “I do hope I don’t step on any of your things, Mr. Burke. If I detect any crunching beneath my feet, I’ll be sure to inform you at once.”

“You’re too kind, Lady Morley,” he choked out, following the bouncing motion of the candle as if it were a beacon. “And Lady Morley,” he ventured, as they passed from the great hall toward the mirthful sounds of a well-attended dinner table, “may I suggest that you attend to . . . that is . . . a very slight stain upon the fabric of your collar.”

He was going to murder Rosseti, he decided. If the man ever bothered to show up.

FIVE

A
lexandra, about to launch a discussion of Aristophanes, found herself interrupted by a goat.

“Oh, I’m awfully sorry!” exclaimed Abigail, jumping from her chair to snatch at the scruffy beast’s leather collar. “No, no, dear. Not the
curtain
, if you please.”

“Most unappetizing,” sighed Alexandra.

Abigail looked up with an apologetic expression. “It’s milking time, you see. You’ve come to find me, haven’t you, you clever thing? Ouch,” she added, as the goat butted its granite head against her chin.

“Abigail, my dear.” Alexandra placed her finger in the crease of her book and closed the pages together. “I don’t mean to dampen your enthusiasm, but we did
not
travel a thousand miles to this . . . to this delightfully rustic outpost in order for you to milk goats. We came to study, to elevate our minds.”

“But the poor thing needs milking. Don’t you, darling? Yes? Oh, look, I say, that’s my
petticoat . . .”

“I’m sure there are any number of . . . of goat . . . people . . . to perform the task. Or at least one or two.” Alexandra frowned at her sister, who circled about the goat in an awkward pas de deux, attempting to recover her petticoat from the creature’s surly jaws.

“But there aren’t, really. The men are all out sowing the vegetable fields, and poor Morini’s got her hands full with the cheese-making, and Maria and Francesca are turning the rooms out before the priest arrives tomorrow for the Easter blessing . . .”

Alexandra held up her hand. “Enough! I fail to see why . . .”

“Besides,” Abigail went on, freeing her petticoat at last and grasping the goat’s collar with authority, “I like milking goats.”

“But Aristophanes . . .”

“I’ve read the man already. Twice,” Abigail said, over her shoulder. “In the original Greek.”

Alexandra rose to her feet and called after her. “In which case you can perhaps lead our discussion . . .”

But Abigail was already gone, through the gap in the plastered wall by which the goat had exited a moment ago. A fresh gust of breeze filled the room in her wake, smelling of damp new grass and tilled earth, and Alexandra dropped to her seat with a sigh. “
You
weren’t much help,” she said, turning to where Lady Somerton occupied a rush-seated chair, her book lying open and forgotten in her lap.

“What’s that?” Her cousin raised her dark head.

Alexandra’s eyes rolled upward. “Exactly. Why is it,” she asked nobody in particular, “I’m the only one of us who takes this endeavor at all seriously?”

“I beg your pardon,” Lilibet said, rearranging her book. “I take it all very seriously. Where were we? Why, where’s Abigail gone?”

“Abigail’s busy with her damned goats and cheeses and whatnot, and
you’re
mooning over Penhallow, and . . .”

“Mooning! Over Penhallow!”

“. . . and we’re reduced to this . . . this ramshackle little room for our discussions . . .” Alexandra waved her hand to encompass the groaning wooden beams, the yellowed plaster crumbling from the walls, the tendril of wisteria curling luxuriously downward from a wide crack in the ceiling.

“It’s a lovely room,” said Lilibet. “It catches all the daytime sun.”

“That’s because there are
holes
in the roof!” Alexandra thrust a finger in the direction of one particularly offensive example. “And the walls!”

“The holes hardly matter, now that the weather’s turned.”

“That’s not the point!”

Lilibet shrugged her white cotton shoulders. “Would you rather we meet in the hall? Or the dining room?”

Alexandra tossed her book atop the small wooden table next to her chair. “I don’t see why the men were allowed the library. There are no holes in the library walls.”

“But it’s dark and faces north. And it’s in their wing.” Lilibet closed her book, with a little too much eagerness. “That was your idea, don’t you recall? Separate wings.”

“I thought they’d be gone in a fortnight.” She rose from her chair and strode to the entirely superfluous window. The hillside rolled away before her, ancient terraced fields shooting up with the eager new green of cornstalks and grapevines, down to the red-roofed village nestled in the valley below. To her left, she could see the local men in the vegetable gardens, bending and straightening as they tucked the seeds into the newly turned soil; to her right loomed the opposite wing of the castle, where Wallingford and Penhallow and Burke had entrenched their belongings in the few habitable rooms, stubbornly refusing to admit defeat.

“Of course it was an excellent idea,” Lilibet said. “Reasonable and equitable, and saves us the awkwardness of meeting them, except at mealtimes.”

Alexandra turned from the window with a little smile. “Oh, terribly awkward, isn’t it? Terribly awkward that poor old Penhallow is as desperately in love with you as before.”

A blush rose up in Lilibet’s elegant cheeks. “That’s not true. He hardly speaks to me at all.”

“Could there be more damning proof than that? Oh, come now.” Alexandra crossed her arms, enjoying the sight of Lilibet’s confusion. “Don’t be maidenly.”

Lilibet rose to her feet, book clutched between her fingers. “You shouldn’t speak of such things. You shouldn’t accuse me like that.”

“Accuse you?” Alexandra started. “Accuse you of what?”

“He’s nothing to me. I’d never . . . I have a
husband
, Alex!”

“Good God! Darling, of course I didn’t mean . . .” Alexandra stepped forward and took Lilibet’s shoulders. “I only meant that he admires you. Of course he does. You’re frightfully admirable.”

“I am not.” Lilibet returned Alexandra’s gaze with serene blue eyes. “I am not admirable. If I were admirable, I’d have stayed in England.”

“He’s a beast, Lilibet. A beast.”

Lilibet spoke quietly. “Yes, he is. But he’s also the father of my child.”

She stepped away, the book still clasped in her hands, and left the room.

Alexandra made a movement to follow her, but then some force seemed to press against her limbs, stilling the impulse. She turned again to the window.

A cloud, scudding past the sun, cast the broad panorama in shadow. The men in the garden had stopped work and were passing around a large brown jug, from which each took a long and thirsty draw. Alexandra watched them idly, their easy movements and familiar gestures, and it occurred to her that they’d probably known one another since childhood. Had tilled these fields as their fathers had, and their grandfathers. Had eked existence from this dramatic patch of landscape all their lives, with hard work and simple reward, knowing nothing of rates of return and company shares and the bitter shock of retrenchment.

A movement caught her eye, from the other side of the scene before her: a figure striking forth across the crest of the vineyard terrace with giant, purposeful strides. She knew who it was, of course, even before the sun, slipping at last from behind the covering cloud, lit his bare head in an explosion of burnished red gold.

Without realizing it, she leaned forward against the windowsill, bumping her nose against the mottled glass. For such a tall man, he moved with surprising grace. His long legs ate the ground and his arms swung alongside in perfect cadence, and though she couldn’t see his face from this angle, she knew exactly how it would look: forehead creased in thought, lawn green eyes narrowed, gaze ravaging the ground directly ahead.

“
Molto bello
, no?” came a voice at her shoulder.

Alexandra jumped away from the window and spun around.

Signorina Morini’s dark eyes sparkled. “You do not think so?” She nodded at the window. “The young English. So tall, so
bellissimo
. Such eyes, like the young grass, the first green of the spring.”

“I . . . I really don’t know.” Alexandra folded her arms and glanced outside. “He doesn’t speak to me.”

Signorina Morini made a broad shrug. “Ah, that is nothing. This gentleman, he says not much. But he feels”—she pressed her fist against her breast—“he feels much.”

“How do you know that?”

“Gentlemen, I understand. The one who speaks little, feels much.” Her face opened into a smile. “You like him? Signore Burke?”

“Me? I . . . I hardly know him. He’s a scientist,” Alexandra added, as if that might explain everything.

“He is very clever, this Signore Burke. He works all the day in the . . . what is the word? The little . . . house? For the carriages? The one near the lake, in the valley.”

“Does he? How lovely for him.” Alexandra glanced quickly through the window and back again.

Signorina Morini was still smiling. “You like, perhaps, I tell you where to find this little house?”

“I haven’t the slightest interest, I assure you.”

Signorina Morini moved past her to the gap in the wall, in a rush of air that smelled tantalizingly of fresh bread. She stood in the sunshine and pointed her long, sturdy arm down the terraced slope to the valley. “Is down the terraces, so. To the left. You see the trees at the bottom, by the lake. And there is the little house.” She turned back to Alexandra. “Is one time the house of the—oh, these English words—he watches the carriages, the coaches.” Her fingers rubbed helplessly against her thumbs.

“The coachman?”

“Yes! The
coach man
.” She said it slowly, as two separate words, as if her tongue were testing out the sounds.

“And doesn’t he live there anymore?”

Signorina Morini flicked her fingers. “Is no
coach man
now. Is only Giacomo. I come to tell you the post is arrive this morning from the village. You have letter, newspaper.” She nodded at the wooden table, where a small pile of correspondence lay next to Aristophanes.

Alexandra squinted at the topmost letter. “Thank you.”

“Is no trouble,” said Signorina Morini. She turned to leave, and then looked back over her shoulder at Alexandra, eyes crinkled with good nature. “There is also letter for Signore Burke, I think. Is a shame the girls are so busy with the cheese and the clean.”

“A dreadful shame. He shan’t receive his letter until he returns.”

Signorina Morini nodded to the gap in the wall. “Down the terraces, to the left. The trees, the lake. No one goes there. Is very quiet.”

“How peaceful for him. Thank you ever so much, signorina.”

“Is nothing, milady.” The housekeeper winked and disappeared through the doorway, leaving the faint scent of baking bread hanging in the air behind her.

Alexandra stared for a moment at the small stack of envelopes on the table. In her earlier life, her married life, the ritual of the twice-daily post had brought her much joy. Letters, invitations, newspapers; even the bills from her dressmaker and her milliner gave her a certain amount of satisfaction, since they were easily settled and reminded her of the comforting material abundance that surrounded her.

No longer.

Buck up, Morley, she told herself. You might as well look. Bad news won’t improve by ignoring it.

A breeze floated in from the garden, verdant and delicate, and Alexandra let it carry her toward the table and the envelopes. A newspaper lay beneath, the
Times
, which Wallingford had instructed his London solicitor to forward weekly. She picked it up first, sliding it out from under the letters, and scanned the headlines. The usual rubbish, Parliament and Ireland and whatnot. The sort of thing she used to care about, when her own world, her personal world, had been properly secure. Oh, the hours she’d spent arguing cabinet appointments and Commons votes with her political friends, in her well-appointed drawing room, with champagne and dainty sandwiches of thinly sliced ham or watercress or Stilton cheese, delivered on polished salvers by a fleet of tall footmen! Her salons had been legendary. She’d been the queen of them all, the darling, her place assured and her future serene.

Once.

She let the newspaper fall from her fingertips and reached for the topmost letter. She recognized the stationery at once, even the handwriting in which her name and address had been neatly inscribed. She slipped her finger beneath the seal, opened the envelope, and pulled out the paper within.

The bank presented its compliments, and requested a further deposit of funds before additional payments could be honored. It respectfully referred her attention to the size of the overdraft, and remained her obedient servant.

She folded the paper with trembling fingers, tucked it back inside the envelope, and picked up the next letter.

This one was longer and less personal, addressed to the shareholders of the Manchester Machine Works Company, Limited, and describing in woeful detail the Company’s inability to produce a workable prototype this quarter due to an unexpected failure of its patented propulsion device and lack of capital at reasonable rates. The Company enjoined the patience of shareholders, as the Board, headed by its chairman, Mr. William Hartley, had a number of proposals in which it was actively engaged, and high hopes that an investor might be found to fund further development.

The Company thanked her for her faith in the future of mechanized personal transportation, and remained her obedient servant.

This time Alexandra stuffed the paper back in its envelope with considerably more venom. Oh, no doubt William Hartley had any amount of high hopes. He always had, the little fool, her husband’s well-meaning and deeply impractical nephew. How on earth had she been persuaded to allow him trusteeship over the investment of her jointure? She must have been mad!

She slapped the envelope back down on the table. Well, not mad, of course. Simply young and unseasoned and newly engaged to a wealthy man, without a thought in the world that invested money might actually disappear if one weren’t careful. If one paid no attention to business letters and allowed one’s well-intentioned step-nephew to invest almost the entirety of one’s jointure in his newly formed limited liability corporation. The Manchester Machine Works Company! It sounded so stable, so reliable, the sort of enterprise that turned out practical items like sewing machines and . . . and that sort of thing.

Not horseless carriages.