A Gentleman Never Tells (31 page)

“You do realize the sort of ideas a man gets, when a woman visits his room after dark?” He trailed his lips across the divine canyon between her breasts, and suckled on the other.

“It . . . it wasn’t quite dark, after all . . .” Her hands wound into his hair.

“It was decidedly twilight, my dear. The question does not admit doubt.” He eased the dressing gown over her shoulders, exposing the entire tempting reach of her torso to his eager eyes. With one hand he lifted her bottom and slid the rest of the gown away from her body and onto the floor.

She wore nothing underneath.

“Look at you,” he breathed. He ran his hand along her smooth skin, across the rise of her womb, caressing her. He covered the mound with his hands, imagining the tiny miracle that lay beneath, not quite able to believe it. Had they really done this? Created a child together, Roland and Lilibet?

“A fallen woman,” she said, the laughter fading from her voice.

“The most beautiful woman I’ve ever known,” he said, kissing her belly again, and then lifting himself to kiss her lips. “The most honorable. The cleverest. The bravest.”

“I’m not brave at all.”

“Yes, you are. Even to contemplate a future with such a sorry rapscallion as myself . . .”

“Rapscallion?” A giggle burst from her lips. “
Rapscallion?
”

“Rapscallion. Scapegrace.” Another kiss, long and dissolute and, he hoped, representative of rapscallions, which the ladies always loved. “Marry me, Lilibet. You really must.”

She rolled her eyes. “Of
course
I’ll marry you, Roland Penhallow. For heaven’s sake, it’s not as if you’ve left me any choice, half-gone with child. I’m not
that
immune to shame, I hope.”

“My thoughts precisely.” He kissed her again, with an emphatic smack. “And now that
that’s
settled . . .”

She moved so quickly he couldn’t finish, turning him over and swinging her leg over his hips, looking outrageously decadent with the fresh, newly risen moonlight bathing her naked breasts. She leaned in close to his face, letting her hair tumble over her shoulders to enclose them. “Now that
that’s
settled,” she said, “I can ravish you as you deserve. My noble Roland, my beautiful and quite irresistible Roland, composer of poems and savior of drowning passersby.” She kissed him and leaned back, unbuttoning his shirt with nimble fingers. “Passionate lover, daring spy.” She slid the shirt from his body, as, entranced, he lifted each arm with obliging promptness to assist her with the sleeves. “Faithful admirer. And oh, my darling”—she slid her hands up his chest, his throat, until she cupped his face—“the most important, the most wonderful Roland of all. The loving, openhearted father, for whom I can only thank God.” She lowered her face to his and kissed him, deeply and passionately.

The blood roared in his ears. His lips returned her kiss, while his hands went to his hips and shimmied off his trousers, taking particular care not to dislodge his love from her quite satisfactory post above him. At his expert kick, flicking the last of the offending garment from his right foot, her laughter bubbled up from her chest. She lifted her head and grinned at him. “I don’t believe you,” she said.

“What’s that?” he mumbled, his wits not altogether at prime performance.

“That was far too well rehearsed a maneuver for a man of chaste habits.”

He assumed an angelic expression. “My agility is legendary in intelligence circles, madam, and quite up to the challenge of disrobing under pressure.”

“Pressure?” Her eyebrows lifted.

“The most immense and painful pressure.” He ran his hands down her back to cup her round bottom. “For which I humbly beg your most earnest efforts in relief.”

She smiled, a knowing, dreamlike smile, and reached down to caress the tip of his cock. His answering groan nearly rattled the window.

“Hush,” she said. “You’ll wake the house, and then where will we be?”

“For God’s sake, madam,” he ground out, grasping her hips, “do your duty.”

She laughed and went up on her knees, positioning herself just so, and came down hard, impaling herself to the hilt. This time her groan mingled with his, deep and heartfelt: acute physical pleasure amplified by the knowledge of connection, of oneness, of his body plumbing the depths of hers, soldering himself to her.

He fought the instinct to close his eyes and simply revel in the sensation of her hot embrace, slick and tight around his cock; he lifted his eyes to her face and found that she was watching him, too, her blue eyes dark and unfocused, her skin flushed and ready. “Move with me,” he whispered, and she began to slide upward, slow and a bit uncertain, examining his face as if for clues how to proceed. He let his hands travel upward, along the soft skin of her waist and belly to her breasts, warm and heavy under his fingers. “Ah, God,” he said, “you’re so beautiful, so damned alluring.” He circled the tips in a languorous pattern, keeping time with the rise and fall of her body along his, holding himself in check as she stretched and arched above him for long exquisite moments, trying him out at every angle until her eyes widened and her breath caught in her throat.

“That’s the spot, is it?” he said, smiling.

“Oh God.”

He moved his hips beneath her, increasing the pace, rolling her nipples gently between his fingers. He could see she wanted it faster, that she’d found the key and wanted to unlock the door, but he wasn’t quite ready to let her go. Instead, he dropped one hand to her bottom, guiding her, helping her find the precise rhythm to keep her shimmering just on the edge of release, to coil the tension like a fine tight spring, higher and higher, until she panted and moaned into the dark air, until her skin glowed with heat and her fingers dug into his chest.

How had he lived without this? How had he survived without her, all these years, so passionate and beautiful, so essentially Lilibet, her keen spirit seething under its layers of serene perfection, like a flame behind a fire screen? Her head tilted back, her breasts danced before his eyes, her skin branded his fingers; he couldn’t hold on any longer, as the intensity of pleasure threatened to kill him. With his hips he urged her on, harder and faster, and it seemed she felt it, too, felt as desperate as he did. In mere seconds her body stiffened and her silken walls rippled with release along his length, and her stifled cry of joy sank like the music of heaven into his ears.

With an answering shout Roland let himself go, let the climax overtake him in long, luxurious pulses. Lilibet collapsed against his damp chest, her hair spreading and tumbling around them, and through the thick and now-familiar treacle in his brain he thought he heard her murmur something rather important.

He stroked her hair and blinked several times. The treacle remained, however, and so he pushed out, with great effort, “I say, darling,
what
was that?”

She stirred comfortably. “What was what?”

“What you just . . . You said something just now . . .”

“Mmm.” She pressed a kiss into the hollow of his throat. “I said I love you.”

He closed his eyes. The mattress gave gently beneath his back; the bedclothes caressed his flushed skin, soft and fragrant with lavender.

Or was that Lilibet?

“I thought so,” he said, and went to sleep.

EPILOGUE

T
he sun burned high and hot in the blue August sky as they made the turn from the main road, past the faded wooden sign that read
CASTEL SANT’AGATA 1 KM
.

Philip, riding a few yards ahead on his new brown pony, shouted back over his shoulder. “I can see it! Just behind the trees! There’s my window! Do you think Norbert misses me?”

Roland cleared his throat. “Well, in the matter of grasshoppers, old boy, it’s entirely likely . . . well, given the length of our absence . . .”

“. . . Norbert may be out playing with his grasshopper friends in the meadow,” Lilibet said quickly. “I’m sure Cousin Abigail wouldn’t have wanted him to be lonely, with you away.”

“Oh.” Philip’s shoulders sagged beneath his rather wrinkled cotton jacket.

“But we’ll head out into the meadow directly after lunch and find him,” Roland said.

“Oh, yes!” Shoulders up again. “I’m sure he’ll come when I call. He’s a jolly nice grasshopper. He’s dom . . . domis . . .”

“Domesticated. Yes, quite,” said Roland. He glanced at Lilibet, his hazel eyes gleaming with humor and his handsome face now tanned from a month of Florentine sunshine, despite the protection of his straw boater. The sun adored her new husband. His skin had only to pick up a few errant rays to mellow into a rich and quite unfashionable glow.

“Papa, may I ride on ahead? It’s just a little ways.” Philip looked up at Roland from beneath the brim of his hat with a kind of hero worship in his eyes.

“Yes, of course. Keep to the road and mind the rocks.”

“Yes, sir!” Philip nudged his pony into a businesslike trot and headed down the familiar drive toward the castle. She was eager to follow him, eager to throw her arms around her cousins and tell them everything, but Roland had proven unshakable in his insistence that she keep to a sedate pace. She looked down at her hands on the reins, at the ridge beneath her glove where Roland had placed a plain gold band four days ago, and smiled.

“I expect you’re desperate to tell the whole tale to your ladies,” Roland said, as if he could read her thoughts. She turned to him, and her smile broadened.

“They’ll be quite shocked to see me swing off the horse, for one thing. I’ve grown out scandalously these past few weeks.”

“More beautiful every day,” Roland assured her, his gaze traveling down the curve of her body with a look of deep and appreciative sincerity. He moved his horse closer to her, until his leg nearly brushed her skirts.

She laughed. “I’ll be bumping into everything. Anyway, Philip will have told them every detail before we’ve even dismounted. His new baby brother and his new papa.”

“He’ll have the devil of a shock if it’s a girl. I’ve tried to explain . . .”

“Well, at least
you’re
not going to disappoint him.” She reached out and touched his gloved hand, curling her fingers around his, because the love between Roland and Philip made her heart draw breath and expand into every corner of her body.

She and Roland had taken Philip out for a picnic, three weeks after Somerton had returned to England and the day after the telegram arrived, confirming the issuance of the decree absolute of her divorce from the earl. Together, they’d told the boy that he and his mother and Roland and the new baby were going to be a family, and that even his father thought this was a good idea, and would see him during the holidays when he was home from school.

She hadn’t known quite how he would react. He loved Roland, of course. Loved spending time with him, insisted on holding his hand during walks, looked up to him as a kind of god among men. But how would he feel about Roland marrying his mother? How would he feel about his father—unpleasant, unaffectionate, but still his father—being supplanted in his world? She’d held her breath as he looked between the two of them, eyes wide and mouth open with disbelief, not quite able to speak at first.

And then: “Uncle Roland’s going to be my father? And the baby’s father?”

Roland had knelt next to him in the crisp summer grass. “Your father will always be your father, Philip, old boy. But I’d like very much to live with you and your mother, and help her with the baby, and do all the things that a papa would do. If that’s quite all right with you, of course.”

“Oh.” Philip had looked at him uncertainly, brow creased with thought, evidently turning over something of great weight in his head. “But . . . if Father’s still my father, but you’re marrying Mama . . .”

“Yes?”

“Well, what will I
call
you?”

Roland had looked at Lilibet. Lilibet had looked at Philip. Philip had looked between the two of them in deep perplexity.

“You can call me anything you like,” Roland had said at last.

“Hmm.” A pause. “Will the baby call you Papa?”

Roland’s voice had roughened. “Yes, I expect it shall.”

“Then I’ll call you Papa, too,” Philip had said, with an air of settled decision, and he’d flung his arms around Roland’s neck. That night, as Lilibet had tucked him into bed, he’d said, in a small voice, “I’m afraid to go to sleep, Mama. I’m afraid it was a dream, and I’ll wake up and it won’t be true.”

She’d kissed him and reassured him that it
was
true, every bit of it, and a week later he’d held Lilibet’s hand in the small chapel as she said her marriage vows, with Beadle and the Duke of Olympia sitting behind them in a pew, and Roland had lifted him into the carriage afterward for the long ride back to the Palazzo Angelini, where his new pony awaited him in the stables.

That
had more or less won him for life.

Now, as they watched him trot ahead, into the clear, warm Tuscan air, Lilibet saw the familiar turrets of castle appear from behind the trees and wanted to sing with joy.

“What is it?” Roland asked.

“I was just thinking how miserable and apprehensive I was, riding up this same road in March, with you by my side. How empty and forbidding it all was, how mysterious. And Morini, appearing like a ghost in the hallway, frightening us to death.” She laughed.

“Ah yes. The fabled Morini. Everyone goes on and on about that dashed housekeeper, and I’ve never even met her. Only poor old Francesca.”

“That dreadful first night! Cold and rainy and lonely. And now it will be full of love and laughter. They’ll be so happy to see us. I expect Mr. Burke and Alexandra will be engaged by now, and . . . do you think your brother . . . ?”

He laughed. “What, with Abigail? I hope not. She’s far too good for him.”

“The grapes will be ripening, I think. They’ll be picking them by the end of the month. And the apples and peaches. Oh, Roland, how I love it here! Let’s go swimming in the lake tonight. Let’s never leave. Let’s see if we can find the owner—what was his name?—Rosseti. Let’s see if we can renew the lease. Do you think we could?”

Roland shifted in his saddle and lifted one gloved hand to rub his upper lip. “Well,” he said, “I believe that could be arranged, without much difficulty.”

Something in the tone of his voice caught her attention. She tilted her head and peered at him, at the evasive look in his eye. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Didn’t I tell you? I thought I must have said something. Rather busy few weeks, I suppose. Perhaps I said something about it to Beadle, and assumed . . .”

“Roland.” She invested the word with as much doom as its two brief syllables would allow.

“Hmm. Yes. Well, it’s a funny old story. Odd, really. A sort of coincidence, you might say. The day before we left, Midsummer’s Eve, as you no doubt recall, that marvelous party with all the masks and whatnot, and then of course . . . well, afterward was lovely, too, the loveliest night of my life really, except perhaps our wedding night, which will live forever in my memory as . . .”

“Roland!”

“Yes. All right. So there I was, going through the estate documents with Philip, as a sort of research project, and it turns out . . . quite funny, really, how you’ll laugh . . . you’ll never guess who . . . well, at any rate, he
seems
to be the actual owner, according to the deed . . .”

“The
actual
owner? You mean it’s not Rosseti?”

He looked down at his hands, fingering the reins. “Yes, rather funny, that. Rosseti’s name was never on the deed. The castle was built by the Marquis di Monteverdi. But it was transferred, quite some time ago, to another man entirely.”

“
Who
, Roland?”

“Oh, look! Is that Giacomo up there? Ha-ha. He doesn’t look at all pleased about the pony.”

“I don’t see anyone. Who, Roland?”

“What, you don’t see Giacomo? He’s right there, darling! Got his hand on the bridle, scolding Philip . . .”

“Enough of your
jokes
, Roland. Who owns the castle?”

He cleared his throat and stopped his horse. His voice lost all hint of laughter. “The property was transferred in 1591 to the Earl of Copperbridge.”

“Are you certain? An Englishman? The Earl of Copperbridge?” She stopped her horse beside his and knit her brow, trying to remember where she’d heard that name. “But that’s . . . isn’t that the courtesy title of . . . ?”

“It was my uncle’s title, before he died. It’s the family title used by the heirs of the Dukes of Olympia.”

She knew she was staring like a wide-eyed idiot, but she couldn’t seem to adjust her face from its shocked expression. “Then your grandfather . . .”

“. . . owns the castle. Apparently.”

She sat still in her saddle, absorbing this. A breeze went by, warm and fragrant with the scents of summer, rustling in the nearby cypress. “The old bastard,” she whispered. “I knew he was playing deep, but this!”

“Yes, the old . . .
What
did you just call him?”

“Never mind.” She nudged her horse forward. “Let’s find the others. I’ve an idea Abigail might find this information even more interesting than I do.”

She pushed the horse into a trot, raising puffs of dust at every hoofbeat, despite Roland’s pleas—escalating into orders, which she ignored—that she take care, for heaven’s sake, and think of the baby. She dismounted in the courtyard, handed the reins to an emerging stable hand, and waited only just long enough for Roland to swing himself to the ground before she hurried on to the door.

“Philip!” she called.

“I expect he’s gone in through the kitchen entrance,” Roland said. He tugged open the door and followed her along the short passage into the inner courtyard, with its dry fountain, and through the entrance to the main hall.

“Philip!” she called again. “Abigail! Alexandra!”

Her voice echoed about the room, loud and clear in the vast stone-lined emptiness. She turned to Roland and put her hand on his arm. “Where is everybody?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Didn’t you send a telegram?”

“Yes, a few days ago. I told them we were returning. I didn’t say anything else; I wanted to surprise them.”

His hand slipped into hers, solid and reassuring. “Perhaps they’re finishing luncheon. Or perhaps they’re out.”

“Let’s try the kitchen. Morini will be there, I’m sure.” She started off in that direction, leading Roland by the hand, but before she’d gone more than a few steps, Philip ran into the room, hatless, his jacket unbuttoned and covered with crumbs.

“Mama!” he said, jumping in her arms to spread his crumbs all over her new black riding habit from the Florentine tailor. “Morini gave me a slice of
panettone
, and you’ll never guess!”

“Guess what, darling?”

“Nobody’s here!”

She set him down on the floor. “What’s this? What do you mean?”

“They’ve all gone away! Our cousins and the duke and Mr. Burke. She doesn’t know when they’ll be back, either. Would you like a bite of my
panettone
?” He held the remainder out to her.

“I . . . No, thank you, dear.” She wiped absently at the crumbs and glanced uneasily about the room. Despite the warmth of the day, a chill seemed to have invaded the air.

“Well, that’s odd,” said Roland. “Jolly odd indeed. But at least we’ll have the old pile to ourselves for a bit, eh what? Like a honeymoon, really, except for Norbert the grasshopper.”

“Will you be sleeping in our room?” Philip stuffed the remaining
panettone
in his mouth with a notable lack of elegance.

Roland scratched his forehead. “Well, as to that, old boy, there may be some adjustments in order, in the matter of sleeping arrangements. You did have your own room in the palazzo, didn’t you? Because you’re such an awfully big boy now?”

“Roland,” Lilibet said, in a low voice, “may I have a word with you?”

“Oh no,” said Philip. “You’d better watch out, Papa. That’s what she says to me when I’m in trouble.” He turned and trotted back in the direction of Morini’s
panettone
.

“Now look here, Philip. Leaving the field of battle, are you? There’s a word for that sort of thing in the army, and it isn’t a nice one . . .” He turned from Philip’s disappearing figure and smiled at her. His warm smile, laden with the Penhallow charm, which never failed to settle her world on its proper axis. “What’s wrong, darling?” he asked, taking her hands. “Aren’t you happy to be here?”

All at once her fears slid away. Curses, really! Mere superstition. The others were probably off sightseeing, bored of the summer routine in the remote castle. Didn’t Mr. Burke have some sort of automobile exposition in Rome? Likely they were enjoying themselves too much to leave. Or perhaps they’d gone on to see Pompeii, or Capri.

As for the involvement of the Earl of Copperbridge, it could only be a coincidence, surely. The duke had said nothing about the Castel sant’Agata, in all the time she’d spent with him during the past month.

She brought Roland’s hands to her lips and kissed them. She leaned forward and kissed his lips, warm and dry after the long morning’s ride from the inn, where they’d spent the previous night in the landlord’s best bedroom and taken a midnight stroll through the stables. “Nothing’s wrong,” she said. “Nothing at all. We’re home, that’s all.”

He grinned. “Are we? In that case . . .”

Before she could do more than gasp, he’d bent down and swung her up into his arms and carried her back through the courtyard and out into the brilliant Italian afternoon, where the sun caught his eyes in a hazel glow. “What are you doing?” she demanded, clutching at his shoulders.