A Gentleman Never Tells (33 page)

Wallingford, in the very act of lifting the cup to his lips, let it slip instead with a thump to the rug below. Such was his astonishment, he did not bother to retrieve it. “
You
have found
me
a bride?” he repeated, in shocked tones, clutching the saucer as if to a life buoy.

“I have. Charming girl. You’ll adore her, I assure you.”

“I beg your pardon. Have I gone to sleep and woken up two hundred years ago?”

Olympia patted his coat pocket and withdrew a slim leather diary. “No,” he said, examining a few pages. “No, it remains February of 1890. Thank goodness, as I’ve an immense number of appointments to make today, and I should hate to have to wait so long to complete them. If this is all agreeable to you, Wallingford, I shall invite the girl and her family around at the end of March, when they return to town. A private dinner would be best, I think. Allow the two of you to get to know each other.” He turned a few more pages in his diary. “A wedding around midsummer would be ideal, don’t you think? Roses in bloom and all that?”

“Are you mad?”

“Sound as a nut. I must be off, however. I’ll send in Shelmerstone on my way out. No doubt he stands ready at the keyhole. And Wallingford?”

“Yes?” He was too stunned to say anything else.

“Do contrive not to embroil yourself in any further scandal before then, eh? The Queen doesn’t like it, not a bit. Oh yes! And orchids.”

“Orchids?”

“Orchids to Madame de la Fontaine. It seems they’re her favored blooms.”

Olympia left in a flash of tweed coat and silver hair, and Wallingford stared at the door as if it were the gate to Hell itself.

What the devil had come over the old man? He’d never so much as mentioned the word
marriage
before, and all at once it was brides this and weddings that and bloody
roses
, if you will! He looked down at his hand, holding the blue and white porcelain saucer, and saw it was shaking.

The door slid open in a faint rush of well-oiled hinges. “Your shave is ready, sir,” said Shelmerstone. He took in the faintest of breaths at the sight of the pool of coffee settling into the priceless rug, surrounded by long ambitious streaks of brown and, at their tips, the final tiny droplets, still winking atop the rug’s tight woolen weave. Without a pause, he snatched the linen napkin from the coffee tray and fell to his knees, blotting, going so far as to murmur a reproachful
Sir!
in the depths of his distress.

Wallingford set down the saucer. “I beg your pardon, Shelmerstone. His Grace has delivered me the devil of a shock.”

“What was that, sir?” Shelmerstone asked, covering a sob.

“Marriage,” Wallingford said. He then added, for clarification, “Mine.”

A dreadful pause. “Sir.”

“Yes. Most distressing. He’s picked out the bride, the date, the damned flowers. I daresay he’s chosen her a dress already, and embroidered the pearls himself, God rot him.”

Shelmerstone cleared his throat. His face was white, either from the coffee or the bride or some combination of the two. A funereal gravity darkened his voice. “Her name, sir?”

Wallingford squinted his eyes. “It was . . . something like . . . By God. Do you know, Shelmerstone, I don’t think he even saw fit to tell me.”

“Sir.”

“Not that it matters, of course. I shan’t do it. I shall tell my grandfather exactly where he can stash his arranged brides.” His words sounded hollow in the great cavern of a bedroom, and he knew it. He could hear Shelmerstone’s thoughts, as he bent over the coffee stain.

Ha. Like to see him try. No going against His Damned Bloody Grace Olympia, when he has one of them ideas in his noggin.

“I believe I shall fetch the bicarbonate,” Shelmerstone said faintly, and rose to his feet.

Wallingford fell into the armchair, staring blankly at the room around him. His familiar room, grand and yet with a certain worn comfort, bare of unnecessary decoration, not a flower in sight, his favorite books piled on the nightstand, his aged single-malt Scotch whiskey at the ready. The very notion of a woman inhabiting this sanctum made his mind vibrate with dissonance.

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 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 inquire 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 scenery 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?

Berkley Sensation titles by Juliana Gray

A LADY NEVER LIES

A GENTLEMAN NEVER TELLS