Authors: Juliana Gray
“Why,” Mr. Burke said, sounding cross, “does everybody think me incapable of self-restraint, despite a lifetime of evidence to the contrary?”
Wallingford laughed, in his short, bitter way. “Good God, old fellow. Haven’t you seen the look on your face when she’s about?”
“As I am not, in fact, equipped with a mirror, I should expect not. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve had enough assistance from the Penhallow family this morning to set me back a week or more.”
Share my bed.
The words echoed back unexpectedly in Alexandra’s brain.
Share my bed.
His bed, Mr. Burke’s bed, Phineas Burke’s bed, warmed by his body, smelling beautifully of oil and leather and male skin; full of his sturdy limbs, his red gold hair, his lawn green eyes, his rare, luminous smile. She closed her eyes. Lying there, with perhaps half a ton of poorly supported automobile hovering above her, she felt an ache in her chest build and grow. Felt herself revel in the unfamiliar burn of want.
“. . . for your good intentions,” he was saying. “You’d be useless as my assistant, as you very well know.”
Wallingford grunted. “Very well, then. I’ll leave. But do be on your guard, old man. She may have a viper’s tongue, but by God she can kiss like a Parisian opera dancer.”
A tiny pause. “I shall take that under consideration, thank you.”
The duke’s booted feet began moving, at last, to the door, creaking the floorboards in the most beautiful music Alexandra had ever heard. “Right-ho, then. I’m off,” he said. “Shall I see you at . . .”
Wallingford’s sentence arrested in midair, dangling there in the preternatural stillness like a boom about to fall.
“What’s that?” Mr. Burke said.
The duke spoke with dangerous calm.
“Tell me, Burke. Why, exactly, are there
two
teacups on the table behind you?”
TEN
P
hineas Burke had first learned the value of composure in crisis at the tender age of six, when he’d released a jar of toads down the hallway of his godfather’s London mansion just as several white-bearded Cabinet ministers were emerging from a meeting in the study. Instead of breaking down under interrogation, he’d explained the situation in rational terms: “Your Grace, in order to properly determine the relative speed of the toads”—Finn was that sort of nauseatingly precocious youngster who hadn’t said a word until shortly after his fourth birthday, at which time he’d opened his mouth and begun speaking in complete and grammatically correct sentences—“I required a long stretch of uninterrupted territory, and the sudden entrance of your friends into the racecourse was a variable that I could not reasonably be expected to predict.” By the end of this speech, his godfather was working too hard to suppress his laughter to inflict any sort of meaningful corporal punishment on him.
But faced with the thundering accusation in the voice of the Duke of Wallingford, Finn’s ordinarily nimble mind stumbled and fell. “
Two
teacups? How extraordinary. I suppose . . . well, I wanted another cup.”
Wallingford inspected the cups. “Half-full, both of them.” He turned back to Finn, eyes glittering. “You didn’t think simply to refill the first?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, old chap. You’re like a detective from one of those dashed sensational novels.” Finn drew breath, folded his arms against his chest, and stood firm. “I suppose I forgot about the first cup. One tends to get a bit distracted, fiddling with machines all morning.”
Wallingford began walking to the cabinet.
“Look here!” Finn exclaimed, but Wallingford had already thrown open the door with an enthusiastic
Aha!
“You see?” Finn said triumphantly. “Nothing there.”
“Oh, she’s here, all right. I know it. I can feel her, sneering at us.” Wallingford stalked about the room, peering behind the piles of chests, the spare parts, the stack of new state-of-the-art pneumatic tires. He looked up into the rafters, as if expecting to see her ladyship swinging by her marsupial tail.
“Wallingford,” Finn said, as dryly as he could manage, “you’re boring me. Can you not learn to control this . . . this clinical paranoia of yours? Find some other baseless obsession. Resume your goose feather flirtation with young what’s-her-name. Oh,
really
. I assure you, she’s not in the damned
sink
!”
Wallingford spun about, nostrils flaring. His gaze fell upon the automobile on its blocks. “Yes,” he whispered. “Of course.”
“You’re mad.”
Wallingford didn’t reply. In two long strides he swallowed the distance to the automobile. She sat there innocently in the center of the room, wheels removed, seats unbolted, a bare hollow shell of molded metal. Finn had had her made to his own design a few months ago, had shipped her with almost maternal care on her own special railway car, across the Belgian plains and Swiss mountain passes, covered with flannel-lined tarpaulins against the cold and the damp. Even now, raw and unfinished, her beauty still took his breath away, long and lean and unlike anything else yet designed. Finn could almost see the air slipping along her top and sides, could almost hear the rush of speed against his ears. Breathtaking speed, unheard-of speed.
He adored her.
Wallingford’s large hands gripped the edge of the doorframe, exactly where Lady Morley had run her fingers not twenty-four hours before, and peered inside. The tips of his shoes protruded slightly under the chassis, no more than a foot away, Finn judged, from her ladyship’s elegant ear. Outside the open doorway, the squirrels were chattering again, oblivious to the knife-edge silence within the cottage.
Wallingford made a growling sound from the bottom of his throat. “Empty.” He turned around to face Finn. His eyes had narrowed into slits. “Where is she, then?”
Finn spread his hands before him, trying desperately not to smile. “Haven’t the slightest. Back in the castle, perhaps?”
The duke’s eyes slid to the old carriage doors at the back, closed and innocuous. “She slipped out, didn’t she? When Penhallow arrived.” He stomped toward the portal and flung it open on one side, allowing a bright beam of noontime sunshine to burst into the room, illuminating the high shine of the automobile’s metal frame. “The question is,” he continued, turning his head one way and then the other, “whether she’s gone back to the castle or lingered about, waiting for us to leave.”
Finn shrugged. “Search away.”
“My guess is that she’s still about. She’s a persistent woman, after all. Tenacious.” He glanced back at Finn. “Come along. I’d like to keep an eye on you.”
Finn sighed. “You bloody dukes. You don’t understand the first thing about actual work. How, for example, it requires hours of uninterrupted concentration . . .”
“Humor me.”
Finn threw his hands in the air. “Bloody hell, Wallingford.” He stomped after the duke into the warm spring air, mild and silken against his cheek, laden with the rich scent of apple blossoms from the orchard above. Next to the olive tree he stopped and crossed his arms. “I’ll wait here,” he said.
The duke walked the perimeter with excruciating care, as if he were stalking a particularly canny stag through the autumnal mists of his Scottish estate. At each tree, he looked up and searched the branches, rotating his head this way and that, all but sniffing the air.
No, check that, Finn observed in amazement: He
was
sniffing the air, damn him. Trying to detect that telltale hint of lilies, perhaps? Finn’s fists curled into balls against his ribs. It offended him, somehow, that Wallingford knew her scent.
“There, you see?” he called across the grass. “She’s not here. Now would you mind taking yourself off?”
The duke kept walking, until he’d arrived back at the door. He swiveled his head in Finn’s direction. “Well done, Burke. Admirably played. But next time, I assure you, I’ll be ready.”
“Whose blasted side are you on?”
“Yours, though you may not believe it.” He put his hand on the latch.
Horror flooded through Finn’s veins. What if she’d thought the alarm was over and broken cover? “Look here, man. You’ve already searched the damned cottage!”
“Only retrieving my hat, for God’s sake,” Wallingford said, disappearing into the doorway.
Finn ran up behind him. “I’ll retrieve your hat!”
But it was too late; they were already inside. Finn glanced around the room and closed the door discreetly behind him. No sign of her, thank God. She’d kept her composure, remained in hiding until he came back to sound the all clear.
“For God’s sake,” Wallingford began impatiently, and then he turned around and took in Finn’s expression.
“Aha,” he said, quite soft. “She’s still here, isn’t she?”
“She was never here. You and your damned imagination.”
Wallingford ignored him. He rotated slowly about, eyes sliding along the rough stone walls. “Now,” he said conversationally, “if I were a lady, caught in flagrante . . .”
“In flagrante, my arse.”
“. . . where would I scurry to hide my shame? A slender lady, mind you. And one with plenty of nerve. None of your missish airs about Lady Morley, I’ll say that.”
His gaze landed once more on the automobile, and then slid to the ground. “By God,” he said. “You damned clever thing.”
“Wallingford, you’re mad.”
“Do you know, Burke,” said the duke, walking with slow deliberation to the automobile, as if savoring the moment, “I almost admire this Lady Morley of yours. It takes a certain amount of fortitude, not to say cheek, to lie beneath an automobile for such a considerable period of time. I do wonder whether she’s sincerely in love with you after all.” He stopped a few feet away and spoke in a soft voice. “Are you, Lady Morley? Are you in love with my friend Burke?”
Finn stood frozen, willing himself to remain calm, to give nothing away until the final instant, when he would . . . what? Leap to her defense? Spirit her away? What, really, was the proper etiquette?
The duke eased downward. “Although,” he continued, bracing one hand on the floor, “I daresay she wouldn’t recognize the emotion if it slapped her on her pert little . . .” He stopped. “Bloody hell,” he hissed, and struck the floor with his fist. “She’s gone!”
With every atom of his self-control, Finn resisted the urge to bend down and see for himself. “Let me repeat: She was never there.”
Wallingford straightened at last and turned to Finn. His face, hard with suspicion, gradually softened into something like sheepishness.
Finn allowed a smile to curl the corner of his mouth. “Can’t a man make himself a second cup of tea without having his workshop ransacked, after all?”
“I suppose not.” Wallingford returned the smile, albeit grudgingly. “All right, then, old man. My apologies. I’ll just take my hat and be on my way.” He turned and picked up his peaked cap from the worktable, next to the white porcelain cups with their fatal tea still rippling inside. With a lithe motion he settled the cap on his head. “But do remember what I said, eh?”
“I shall.”
“And if you find yourself in dire straits, well, there are solutions
to hand
, as you yourself pointed out. Been driven to it myself more than once lately, ha-ha!”
“Delighted to hear it,” mumbled Finn, wondering just how far away Lady Morley had hidden herself.
“Daresay you’re a regular expert, with all your monkish notions about a quick . . .”
“Wallingford.
Go.
”
“Until dinner, then!” Wallingford slipped through the front door at last and closed it with a decisive slam.
Finn closed his eyes and began counting off seconds, quite slowly. When he reached twenty, he called out, in a low voice, eyes still closed, “Lady Morley?”
From his left came the sound of a door opening. He turned and opened his eyes to see her, face smudged, dress disheveled, emerging from the cabinet.
“Is the coast clear?” She wore the barest hint of a rueful smile.
“Yes. Are you all right?”
“Yes.” She stood there, hesitating, smoothing her dress with both hands in long, mechanical strokes, then moving on to pat her hair, which straggled from her chignon in untidy waves.
Finn realized he was trembling. “Can I . . . I suppose your tea is cold . . .”
“Oh, the damned tea . . .” She brushed a strand of hair from her cheek.
“Do sit down,” he said, more decisively. “You must be done in. I’ll make more tea.”
“Why?” she said, shaking her head. “Why did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Hide me like that. And it would be so much easier if Penhallow or Wallingford assisted you, instead of me. Why did you chase them off?” Her eyes were bright, gleaming, watching him with peculiar intensity.
“It was the honorable thing to do.” He wanted to shrug, to demonstrate a certain amount of nonchalance, but his shoulders wouldn’t obey him. “I let you stay, after all. You were under my protection. You had a right to expect it.”
Her eyes fell away at last, down to study the tips of his toes. “Thank you.”
Silence gathered between them, thick and full and expectant. The sun had shifted and was now pouring through the south window, warming the air, striking the back of Finn’s neck in a hot beam and turning the skin of Lady Morley’s face into gold. He turned and strode to the long table against the wall, where he’d made the tea less than an hour ago, a lifetime ago. His hands began to fiddle with the objects there, arranging them, gathering up the tea things to put back in the cabinet, forgetting entirely that he’d promised her another cup.
She cleared her throat behind him. “Rather fascinating, hearing you gentlemen talk with one another. You’re all quite frank, I see.”
“Just the usual sort of rubbish.”
“I couldn’t help wondering, of course, just what you meant by it all.”
Wallingford, may God damn you and your descendants to the darkest pit of Hell.
“Oh. Yes. That. Hands and . . . and whatnot. Haven’t a clue, in fact. Your guess as good as mine.”
“No, not that. I mean before. What was rubbish, as you say, and what was sincere.” Her voice was clear and plain, not at all like her usual voice, as if all the layers of artifice had been stripped away.
“Oh, I daresay . . . that is, I don’t remember much of it.” He looked down at his fingers, which were shaking. He pressed them hard against the tabletop.
“Wallingford said . . .” She hesitated, and went on. “I suppose you were wondering what Wallingford meant, about . . .”
“About?”
“About . . . kissing.”
Finn squeezed his eyes shut. The sound of her voice, floating behind him in the warm, still air, was almost unbearable. “Yes. That. I seem to recall he’d mentioned it before.”
“I want you to know . . . I want you to know that it only happened once. A very long time ago.” Her voice slid downward, soft and low. “I was so young, you see. I’d just come out. I thought”—a little choke—“I had all these romantic notions, as girls do. I thought I had only to fall in love with the highest in the land, and he would love me, and it would be all rainbows and sunshine and . . . Well, anyway, he kissed me, there on the terrace at Lady Pembroke’s ball, and it was lovely, sunshine and rainbows, just as I’d hoped. So
ardent
. You can’t imagine . . . a girl of nineteen . . . I was so silly. I thought it meant he loved me. The way he looked at me . . .” She stopped.
He wanted to go to her, to take her in his arms, to tell her . . . what? He’d no name, no birth, no standing, nothing at all that Lady Morley sought. His mother was a fallen woman, living in Richmond in a house bought for her by a man who was not her husband.
“Very silly indeed,” she said, more brusquely. “For you see, I went off to find him afterward, and at last came upon him in the library . . .”
Finn drew in a sharp hiss of air.
“Ah yes! I see you’ve heard the tale. So there I stood—oh, all very tragic and pathetic, his kiss still burning on my lips and all that—and there
he
stood, heaving away, his trousers about his ankles, a woman bent over the desk before him. Rather a clean break with one’s girlhood illusions, I daresay. I accepted Lord Morley’s offer a week or so later and have laughed at the notion of
love
ever since.”