The Duke's Governess Bride (25 page)

Perhaps Richard had somehow found them, perhaps he’d come to rescue them, to save her…

‘I will not be disturbed,’ di Rossi declared, his face twisted with rage. He swung his arm imperiously at one of the footman. ‘Go below, and tell those wretched fools to be quiet, else they’ll answer to me.’

The servant bowed and fled, clearly relieved to be permitted to leave. Jane saw how the man holding Diana shifted uneasily, glancing at her captor as if he, too, wished to be gone. In return she felt sure the man’s grasp began to ease on her arms. Had soldiers been to this house before? Every Venetian feared answering to the city’s dreaded authorities, and feared Venice’s infamous prison even more. Households ruled by threats and violence were seldom loyal ones, and Jane’s slender hopes rose a fraction higher. Perhaps they would be able to escape, and she’d return to Richard, and—

‘Now you smile,
signorina?
’ di Rossi said furiously, misreading her expression, and raised his hand to strike her. ‘You who have cheated me of what I most desired?’

But his threat was lost in the crash of the heavy door below being broken open. Now the screams of the servants were drowned by the rough voices of the men who’d forced their way inside and the thump of heavy footsteps racing up the stairs. Drawing his sword, di Rossi swung around towards the door to face the intruders. The man holding Jane swore and shoved her away, as did Diana’s captor, and the two of them fled through the narrow door to the chamber’s serving stairs.

‘Stop, you cowards!’ screamed di Rossi after them, his voice quivering with fury. ‘
Madre dio,
stop and defend me!’

Jane could hear the soldiers running down the hall from the staircase, and if she and Diana could reach them, then they’d be safe. It wasn’t far, only a few paces, but di Rossi and his sword still stood between them. If they were quick, they could escape while he was distracted by his traitorous servants.

‘This way, Diana, hurry, hurry!’ Jane cried, seizing Diana’s hand to lead her. A crowd of soldiers in black hats and blue coats with swords and muskets were already filling the doorway, salvation if ever she’d seen it. But then over their heads she saw another face towering over the black hats, and she forgot everything else.

‘Janie!’ Richard roared, pushing past the soldiers to reach for her. ‘Diana, here!’

‘Richard!’ she cried, and with a final effort she darted around di Rossi and flung herself into Richard’s waiting arms.

But as she did, Diana’s hand abruptly jerked away from hers. Jane twisted around, searching desperately for Diana, and to her horror, found her.

She hadn’t been able to escape past di Rossi. Instead he’d caught her and dragged her backwards, pinning her against his chest with the blade of his sword pressed close below her throat. Now she was trapped there against him, her eyes squeezed shut and her hands clasped over her unborn child. One of the soldiers raised his musket to his shoulder, intent on shooting di Rossi, but before he could, Richard shoved the musket’s barrel aside.

‘No,’ he said, the single word full of anguish for his daughter. ‘The risk’s far too great.’

Di Rossi smiled, his eyes bright with a madman’s gleam. ‘You are wiser than I believed, Aston. Sufficiently wise that perhaps we can reach an agreement between us. An arrangement between gentlemen.’

‘I’ll agree to nothing until you release my daughter,’ Richard said. ‘Free her, and we’ll talk.’

‘Now why should I do such a foolish thing as that?’ di Rossi said. ‘The instant I release her, one of these wretched soldiers will murder me. They’re itching for my death, and so are you, Aston. You can hardly deny it.’

‘I won’t,’ Richard said, his voice so sharp with anger that Jane lay her hand gently on his arm. ‘To see you dead and delivered straight to hell would indeed give me the greatest of pleasures.’

‘What I propose is simple enough,’ di Rossi said. ‘A trade that’s more than fair by any standards. Your daughter for the governess, one for the other.’

Jane gasped, stunned. How could Richard ever make such a decision? As much as she loved Richard, she loved Diana, too, and there was also the unborn child to consider. Heartsick, Jane knew such a choice would be impossible for her, and likely for Richard as well, and as if to prove he shared her fear, his arms tightened protectively around her.

‘I told you, di Rossi,’ Richard said, ‘I will not bargain with you.’

‘I say you will,’ the Venetian answered evenly. He’d regained his customary demeanour, as if they were discussing no more than a dish of chocolate, but Jane knew this was only one more mask to hide behind. Tension locked his smile in place, and the drops of nervous sweat that clustered across his forehead and soaked his dark hair betrayed the truth. ‘Consider your stakes for bargaining. A humbly born governess, a servant in your house, a woman past her first youth, of no fortune, family, or remarkable beauty, a woman you’ve already bedded—’

‘Enough, di Rossi,’ Richard said sharply. ‘Let my daughter go free.’

‘Your daughter, your daughter,’ di Rossi mused. ‘She’s my stake, yes? She is an English lady, your daughter, a noble lady wed to a nobleman. That alone should make her of more value than that chit of a governess. Your daughter also carries your grandchild in her belly, the grandchild of an English duke! How can you hesitate, Aston? How do you dare?’

Before Richard answered, di Rossi swept his sword away from Diana’s throat, flipped aside her cloak, and pressed the blade instead across the swell of her unborn child. Diana whimpered, her fingers spreading as she vainly tried to protect the babe within her. She wept quietly, the tears trickling down her face, and it was only then that Jane realised she was crying with her.

She could end this herself, and spare Richard the agony of deciding. She had that power. To think of two lives hanging on the whim of a madman’s blade, one that had scarcely begun before it was so brutally ended…

Behind her Richard swore, a vehement mixture of anger, frustration and despair.

‘Surely that cannot be your answer, Aston,’ di Rossi said, smiling with triumph. ‘Consider well. One choice for eternity, for ever on your conscience. The other only until I weary of the lady. A month, a half-year. I doubt she’ll hold my interest beyond that, and then you’re welcome to what’s—’

‘May God curse you for ever for this,’ Richard said vehemently, ‘and may the devil himself claim you for—’

‘Take me,’ Jane said softly as she slipped free of Richard’s embrace. ‘Let the lady go free, and take me instead.’

‘For God’s sake, Jane, no!’ Richard exclaimed, but she’d already begun walking away. Jane was counting on him not following from fear of startling di Rossi, and he didn’t, nor did she look back, no matter how desperately she longed to. If she did, she knew she’d never be able to do this, no matter that it was the most honourable sacrifice she could ever make for love. For
love:
for Diana, her child, but most of all for Richard.

‘If you please,
signor,
’ she said, her hands clasped resolutely at her waist and the calm in her voice surprising even herself. ‘Pray release the lady, so that I might join you.’

Di Rossi’s careful mask dropped away, and he gazed at Jane now with a raw hunger that terrified her.

‘Cara mia colomba,’
he crooned, his dark eyes glittering with lust as he held one hand out to her. ‘My own little dove. At last you recognise your true master!’

Intent on Jane, he let his sword slide away from Diana’s body, and with a desperate little cry, Diana scrambled away from him.

The pistol’s shot exploded in the room, echoing so loudly that Jane gasped from the shock of it. The noise, and the acrid cloud of burnt powder, and the men’s voices all speaking at once, and blood, so much blood, as di Rossi’s now-lifeless body toppled to the floor. She saw the spent pistol drop from Anthony’s hand as he reached Diana and held her, burying his face in her hair so none would see that he, too, wept.

‘Janie,’ Richard said as he gathered her up into his arms as if he’d never let her go again. ‘My own brave, dear Janie! It’s done now, love, it’s done.’

She smiled up at his impossibly dear face, or tried to. She was so weak with relief, with happiness, with the complete contentment of love, that if he’d not held her, she was certain she’d collapse on the floor before him.

‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Richard, how I love you!’

And fainted away in his arms.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Aston Hall, Kent—December 1785

‘T
here you are, your Grace, everything fit to please his Grace.’ Jane’s lady’s maid Polly gave Jane’s elegantly dressed hair one final pat. ‘You’ll outshine the rest o’ the ladies tonight, that’s for certain.’

‘Oh, I doubt that.’ Jane smiled at her reflection in the glass, more as a compliment to the maid than from delight in her own appearance. She and Richard had married in Venice, in the front room of the English consulate with only a handful of guests. Mary and Diana had served as both witnesses and bride’s maids, and their combined blessings had added an extra measure of joy to the wedding.

The only dark part of their days in Venice had come from the investigation of Signor di Rossi’s death. With so many having seen his last moments, however, there’d been no question of any charges of murder against Anthony. Though the
signor
and the wickedness he represented were gone for ever, Jane could not recall that day without trembling, and thinking of how a gentleman she’d first thought a friend had proved himself so thoroughly the opposite. And yet, ever the governess, she still could find a lesson in it—if she’d not come so perilously close to losing everything, would she have been able to treasure quite so dearly her life and the love she shared with Richard?

From Venice they’d travelled back to Rome with Diana and Anthony, lingering there long enough to see the birth of their child, a beautiful, golden girl named Marianna, honouring both her mother and her doting aunt. By the time that Jane and Richard had finally sailed for England, Jane herself was with child as well. This was a miracle that had made Richard crow like a proud rooster one moment, and then fuss like a broody hen the next, treating Jane with such infinite tenderness that she could only love him all the more for it.

She had been wary of her welcome at Aston Hall, dreading how the staff would respond to her being raised so unexpectedly high. A few had given notice, unable to bring themselves to take orders from a former governess, but the majority had rejoiced for her good fortune and the happiness that she’d brought to their master. Richard had gladly turned the household affairs over to her, and considering how much she’d already been in the habit of doing with Mary, her transformation into the Hall’s mistress had proved remarkably easy.

Becoming a duchess, however, was far more of a challenge. She’d never considered herself a beauty, and a lifetime of quiet, serviceable dresses had been a difficult habit to shake. She’d been overwhelmed by the dressmakers and milliners who’d eagerly sought her patronage, each of them infinitely more fashionable than she ever would be herself. The lavish collection of family jewels that Richard had presented to her had felt more like a burden than an honour, and the more he’d tried to spoil her with finery, the more she’d panicked, and feared she’d never be the great lady Richard deserved. Finally, after one particularly teary afternoon that had had as much to do with her pregnancy as with a certain emerald necklace, they’d reached an understanding that satisfied them both: he agreed to show his affection for her by way of flowers, pictures and books, while she agreed to let him order her gowns when an occasion demanded it for the Duchess of Aston.

Yet these had been minor quibbles, easily resolved with love to ease the way. And when on the first snowy day in late November Jane had presented Richard with the much-desired son and heir, their joy and happiness as new parents had been boundless.

‘A single plume in your hair, your Grace?’ coaxed Polly. ‘Here, to curl winningly over your temple?’

‘I’d prefer a rose,’ Jane said, plucking one of the velvety red blooms from the silver vase beside her. Each month, on the anniversary date of their wedding, Richard would bring her an enormous bouquet of roses from the Hall’s greenhouses, roses that he’d had specially forced to bloom on that day for her. To Jane it was both impossibly romantic and impossibly perfect, and if the duke and duchess always remained alone together in the duchess’s bedchamber for the remainder of those ‘rose days’, as the staff called them, then that was quite perfect as well.

‘Tuck the rose into the curls, Polly, if you please,’ Jane said. ‘You know best how—’

‘Where’s my Janie?’ boomed Richard, throwing open the door to her dressing room. Against his broad shoulder was the tiny Marquis of Brecon, wide-eyed and open-mouthed at sharing his father’s towering height, while his nursery maid hovered anxiously behind.

‘Your men are here to see you, Janie,’ Richard continued, ‘and to learn what has kept you dawdling here so long. It’s our first supper since your lying-in, you know, and I thought you’d be eager for company.’

‘I’m dressing, not dawdling,’ Jane protested, rising from the bench as both Polly and the nursery maid curtsied. ‘Have a care with Brecon, Richard. He’s not even a month old.’

‘Twenty days on this earth, and already master of it,’ Richard said happily, cradling his son’s small, bonneted head with his palm. ‘Isn’t that so, little rogue?’

Jane sighed, though in truth there was no finer sight to her eyes than her husband with their son. Unlike most men, Richard was completely at ease with a baby in his arms, nor could he keep the unbridled joy that the child brought him from his face.

‘It’s not so much that I fear for Brecon,’ she said, ‘as I do for your coat. You’re already dressed for our guests, and if he spits upon your shoulder—’

‘Then I shall shift my coat for another,’ he declared, turning so that the baby could peer over his shoulder at Jane. ‘Isn’t that so, my Lord Brecon? Now come with us, Janie. While you’ve been about up here, your Christmas present has arrived.’

‘Mine?’ Jane asked, frowning. She’d been working a needlepoint wallet for Richard, flame stitch in wools with his monogram stitched in the centre, but because she’d wanted to surprise him, her progress had been slow. ‘But it’s not Christmas yet, Richard, and besides, my gift for you isn’t quite ready.’

‘But mine is,’ he said grandly, offering her the crook of his arm. ‘Ready and waiting for you in the dining hall. Come now, I’d like you to see it before our guests appear.’

‘In the dining hall,’ she mused as the three of them made their way down the stairs. ‘Does that mean you’re giving me a glazed ham, or perhaps a dressed goose for Christmas?’

‘Or a great festive pudding, full of fruit and brandy,’ he suggested, teasing her in return. ‘You like those, too. But I fear it’s something to admire, not to eat.’

A footman held the door open for them to enter the dining room, and then closed it gently behind them. From habit Jane made a quick, critical survey of the long table, the snowy linen cloth already laid and the sterling set out for the guests who would be joining them tonight. The fires in the twin hearths were dancing merrily as well, warming the large room for later, and though the chandeliers and the candelabras on the table were still dark, Richard had ordered the sconces at the far end of the room lit. There stood an easel with something long and framed resting upon it, draped and covered by a cloth.

‘What is it, Richard?’ Jane asked curiously, standing before the easel with her hands at her waist. ‘What are you hiding?’

‘I thought you said you wanted to wait,’ he teased. ‘I thought you—’

‘Hush,’ she said sternly. ‘Show me.’

‘Very well, your Grace.’ He handed Brecon to her, and the babe made a contented cooing as he settled against her. Just like Richard, she’d risk every silk gown in her wardrobe for that happy little sound.

With a conjurer’s flourish, Richard tweaked the corner of the cloth to build her suspense. Then, at last, he swept the cloth aside, and stood back to watch her reaction.

And Jane reacted. How could she help it? Her eyes filled with tears, and she bit her lower lip to keep them from spilling over. He’d known exactly what would delight her, the one thing she’d never realised herself that she wanted the most.

The painting was a beautifully detailed scene of Venice, similar to the ones that a great many English gentlemen brought home as souvenirs of their Grand Tour. But this one was different. This one showed the corner of Venice where she and Richard had fallen in love, and captured that magical place exactly as she wished to remember it.

There was the Ca’ Battista, with its balconies as lacy as spun sugar. There were the windows with the pointed arches that had belonged to Richard’s bedchamber, and the filmy red curtains that had filtered the sunlight as they’d lain together in his bed. There was the narrow arched bridge where Richard had first kissed her in the moonlight, and there in the distance was San Marco’s square tower, whose tolling bells had called the hours of their day. Even the sky was the same, the bright enamel blue that had marked the Venetian winter when they’d been there, with the gondoliers and others on the water and at the windows all bundled in bright hats and coats exactly as Jane remembered.

‘Love, love,’ she said softly in wonder, unable to look away from the painting. ‘How did you know?’

‘I knew, Janie, because it was what I wanted, too.’ He came to stand beside her, looping his arms fondly around both her and Brecon, who’d fallen peacefully asleep against Jane’s shoulder. ‘But here, sweet. You’ve missed the best part. Look down in this corner, directly in front of the Ca’ Battista.’

Jane leaned forwards to study the part of the painting he was pointing to. A black gondola with two passengers sitting closely together, a small, dark-haired woman tucked beneath a fur coverlet, holding hands with a broad-shouldered blond gentleman, his hat pulled low over his brow against the cold.

‘Oh, Richard, it’s us,’ Jane whispered. ‘The way we were. It’s
us,
there in Venice, for ever and ever.’

‘The way we’ll always be, Janie,’ he said, bending over their now-sleeping son to kiss her. ‘In love, for ever and ever.’

* * * * *