Authors: Juliana Gray
“No, I mean
he
is disappoint. He . . . he has disappointment.”
“Ah.” Alexandra paused respectfully. “Crossed in love, I expect?”
Signorina Morini ducked her head. “Yes.”
“Oh! With
you
?”
The housekeeper looked up again with fierce black eyes. “Is long ago. Is finish! But Giacomo, he . . .” Her hands flailed helplessly.
“He isn’t over it?” Alexandra guessed. “He’s made a vow to harass the kitchen staff for all his days?”
“Yes, yes! All those things. Is terrible, milady. The things I am suffering. And you!” She leaned forward and spoke in a loud confidential whisper. “Is Giacomo who sends the people to Signore Burke, when you are being there. Is Giacomo who sends the great duke to the orchard last night.”
Alexandra took in an outraged gasp. “He didn’t! He wouldn’t!”
“Yes!” Morini nodded briskly. “He hates the lovers. He hates the women. He tries to make you and your friends to leave.”
“Well, I won’t have it!” Alexandra sprang from her chair. “The nerve of the fellow! I shall tell him straightaway exactly . . .”
Morini stepped backward. “No, no! Is not . . . is not possible.”
“And why isn’t it possible, I should like to know?” Alexandra’s veins flooded with anger. Not only had the man abducted the eggs, over which Alexandra felt a certain maternal protectiveness, but he’d set Wallingford on her! On purpose! The act demanded vengeance of the most medieval kind.
“Is not possible.” The housekeeper was emphatic.
“I protest it
is
possible.
I
am the mistress here, after all. I won’t be plotted against by my own servant!” She began to pace across the room. “Have we a dungeon here? Is it sanitary?”
Morini made a nervous adjustment of her headscarf. “Perhaps . . . perhaps it is better if I am speaking to Signorina Abigail.”
“Abigail? Miss Harewood? What on earth?” Alexandra stopped her pacing and turned to face the housekeeper. “She has no sense of authority
whatsoever
.”
“I speak to her. She is . . . she is knowing the men of the stable. She can tell them, we take the cheeses back to the attics. They give the eggs to us. Is all happy again.” Morini turned to the door.
“Now wait just a moment, signorina,” Alexandra said, in her most commanding tone. “You just described this to me as the greatest crime in history, and all of a sudden you’re standing down. That’s not at all cricket.”
Morini’s head swiveled. “Cricket, milady? Like the insect?”
“Fair, I mean. It’s not fair. Because cricket is a sport, an English sport, that requires a sort of strict adherence . . . oh, never mind. The point is, you’ve changed your mind, and I should like to know why.” Alexandra planted her feet firmly on the wooden floor and regarded the housekeeper with unswerving authority.
The woman sighed deeply and sank into the opposite chair. Her face seemed to wilt, to take on a faded translucence, blurred at the edges. “You must understand, signora, we are living here many years. We are fighting; we are loving. The men of the stable and the field, the women of the house and the garden. The English, the visitors, is making things different. Is . . . is . . .” She looked at her palms, spread open in her lap.
“Is upsetting the order?” Alexandra asked.
“Yes! The cheeses, I am maybe a little wrong, putting the cheeses in the stable. The maids, they do not like the climb to the attic, and I am feeling . . . is so good, to have the women in the castle again, just as . . .”
“Just as?”
“Just as in the old days, the long-ago days.”
Alexandra cleared her throat. “Was there a Signora Rosseti, then?”
Morini looked at her sharply. “Yes. But is a very long time ago. I am forgetting . . . I am hoping . . . But is too much, the cheeses. I send Signorina Abigail, she speaks to the men, it is done. We have the eggs again.”
“I am quite capable of undertaking negotiations,” Alexandra began.
“No!” The housekeeper stood up abruptly from her chair. “No, signora. Is better sending Signorina Abigail. The men, they are liking her. She is milking the goats, watching the
pulcini
, the little chickens.”
“Yes, quite. Perhaps you’re right.” Alexandra glanced down at the papers on the table. “I’m rather occupied, at present, in any case. But this Giacomo. I really can’t allow . . .”
“No, signora!” Morini shook her head vigorously. “I am taking care of Giacomo. I know Giacomo. I am speaking without thinking, telling you these things. Is the anger that speaks. Now is nearly dinner. You go to dinner, you see your so-handsome Signore Burke, you go to his room when the moon is rising . . .”
“What! What do you know of that?” Alexandra stared at the woman in full astonishment. Had she been eavesdropping? Had Finn said something to her, asked for her help?
Signorina Morini raised one finger to her lips and smiled beneath it. “I know everything, signora. I am giving you a little of wine, a little of bread, a
torta
of almond. I am making sure the hall is empty. You are never worrying. You are only . . . loving.”
Alexandra bit her lip. “Look here, Morini. That’s not at all necessary. Really, I’ve no idea at all what you mean.” But the confidence of authority was missing from her voice.
Signorina Morini tucked her headscarf securely and winked. “You are never worrying. In this castle, signora, I am the mistress.” She turned to leave.
“Wait, signorina! One more thing.”
The housekeeper turned her head, one hand on the door.
“Abigail said something to me yesterday about a curse. A curse on the castle.”
Morini’s expression turned to stone. “The curse, signora?”
“Yes. Dastardly Englishman and so on. The thing is, Abigail’s quite young and impressionable, and I’d appreciate it . . .” She cleared her throat. “Well, it might be best if you didn’t tell her such stories, in the future.”
One of Morini’s hands smoothed her apron. “No, signora. Of course not.”
“It
is
all a story, isn’t it, Morini?”
The housekeeper regarded her for a second or two, and lowered her eyes. “A story, signora. Nothing more.”
She turned once more and left the room.
SIXTEEN
T
he basket had appeared inside her door, as if by magic, while Alexandra was bathing after dinner, and it weighed down her arm as she stole her way down the narrow back hallway. It was covered with a blue-checked cloth and filled with all the bounty of Signorina Morini’s larder. Including the almond cake, which Alexandra knew to be ravishing.
Moonlight spilled through the ancient windows, illuminating the worn stone staircase at the end of the hall. In the pale glow, it might have been centuries ago, and she some ruthless Medici princess, off to meet her lover on the stroke of midnight. Such a convenient little staircase. How many other women had traveled this same route, for this same purpose? Had slipped up these stairs in stocking feet, hearts pounding, veins pulsing with decadent anticipation?
Perhaps even the young lady Abigail had been talking about yesterday. The one who’d been cursed.
Not that she believed in curses.
In a moment, in an instant, she would be in Finn’s arms. His kiss would cover her lips. She would see him at last, know him at last, every contour of his body.
Dinner had been torture. She’d walked into the dining room to find Finn, and only Finn, standing there with a glass of grappa in one hand and a letter in the other.
They’d stared at each other in horror.
Hello there
, she’d said, and
Good evening, Lady Morley
, he’d replied, with a slight bow, and then the kitchen maids had arrived with platters of roast lamb and Wallingford had stormed in with lurid tales of the cheese wars (Abigail had apparently employed infamous methods to secure a sweeping victory for the women of the household staff against the men of the stable) and they were able to sink into their seats without being noticed.
She’d done her best to keep up appearances (
I daresay, Your Grace, if you should take a turn with Miss Harewood’s goats, you might find them equally as agreeable as the geese
) but Finn had sat there in absent silence, not a word escaping his mouth except to trouble Lord Roland for the pepper, which only made her want him more. Made her envy the wineglass as his lips parted to drink from it. Made her want to leap across the table and into his lap, from where she would feed him bits of airy
panettone
with her own hand and lick the crumbs from his skin.
When the final dish had been cleared, he’d risen at once from the table and bid them all a good evening with such arctic formality he’d nearly frozen the potent dessert coffee in its cups. Only the split-second lingering of his eyes on her own had stopped her from impaling him on a sugar spoon.
The memory made her hand clench around the handle of the basket.
A few steps from the top, she paused, listening. Signorina Morini had promised her an empty hallway, but she was hardly about to stake her all on the ability of an Italian housekeeper to keep the Duke of Wallingford from crashing around the corner just as she raised her hand to knock on Phineas Burke’s bedroom door.
Silence met her, so profound she could hear the pulse of blood in her own ears. From some distant corner came a muffled scraping; the maids, probably, putting the kitchen to bed. Alexandra drew in a fortifying breath and climbed the final steps.
She nearly faltered as she raised her hand to tap the old impassive wood of his bedroom door. The act reminded her of last night’s disappointment. What if he’d changed his mind, decided she wasn’t worth the risk? What if he were back down in his workshop, fiddling with his beloved machine?
The door moved beneath her fingers, and a large, blunt-tipped hand emerged to draw her inside the room.
“This is madness,” Finn said. “You shouldn’t have come.” His hand remained in hers, warm and firm. She’d forgotten his height; he seemed to tower above her, the leaf green color of his eyes softened by the candlelight and his ginger hair sticking in odd directions, as if he’d been thrusting his fingers through it. He was in his shirtsleeves, the cuffs rolled halfway up his forearms, the white cotton emphasizing the sturdy breadth of his shoulders.
She let the basket slip from her fingers and placed her hands on his chest. All around them flickered the golden light of Signorina Morini’s best candles, thick white beeswax tapers, a dozen of them at least. “Were you hoping I wouldn’t?” she asked. Her voice prickled in her chest.
With one hand he touched her hair then cupped the side of her face. “No. I was praying you would, God help me. You’ve no idea how much.”
“Really? You seemed so indifferent at dinner.”
“Alexandra.” His voice was low, intimate, reproachful. “You must know better than that, by now. You must know what it means when I’m quiet.”
She gazed up at him and met the penetrating intensity of his eyes, this time without flinching. “Yes, of course I do. You’re no more indifferent than I am.” His chest glowed with heat beneath her fingers. She wanted to sink herself into it, to surround herself with him.
He didn’t reply, only lifted his other hand to capture her face and brought his mouth down to hers. An eager kiss, an impatient kiss. The rhythm of his lips went straight through her body in long licks of flame, melting her core, melting her wits, until all she had left was sensation: the taste of sweet wine in his mouth, the hard shock of his body against hers, the scent of his soap and the faint lingering traces of leather and oil. She heard a dark, satisfied growl and realized it came from her own throat.
Her hands reached higher to grip his shoulders, his neck, anything to secure herself to him, and all at once she was swinging upward in his arms, his mouth still plundering hers, and he was carrying her across the room to lay her on the bed.
She had no chance to regain her wits, no chance even to take in her surroundings. He followed her, planting his knees on either side of her calves and his hands on either side of her head, like a beast of prey, and kissed her again, on and on, as if he meant to spend the rest of his life like this, his lips and his tongue mingling with hers.
She ran her fingers up his neck and around the firm line of his jaw and up to his cheeks. His skin felt smooth, sleek, newly shaved. “You’re so beautiful,” she whispered, “so marvelous. Let me see you, Finn. I want to see you. I want to know you.”
He smiled a little and drew back, allowing her to prop her head up against the pillows. His long arms still bracketed her, and though his features, backlit by the candles, were shadowed and inscrutable, she felt she had never seen him so clearly. “Yes, beautiful,” she said softly, and moved one hand to his collar to unbutton his shirt.
His eyes rolled. “Blinded by passion, I see,” he said, and kissed the tip of her nose.
She didn’t answer. She was concentrating on the buttons, on the skin of his chest appearing before her, inch by inch. She’d never really seen a living man’s chest; Lord Morley had always worn his decorous nightshirt, and her only glimpses of true masculine architecture had been through pictures and statues. Of course, these were idealized models, works of art. She didn’t really expect Phineas Burke’s chest to look as if it belonged to a Greek god. She didn’t need it to. She was already mad for him.
But still. A lady could hope.
His skin was pale beneath the shirt, beneath the spreading V, and nearly hairless. Her fingers brushed against the light scattering of red gold along his breastbone, pulled impatiently at the fine white cotton of his shirt, and freed it from his trousers. She worked quickly now, with both her hands, nearly ripping the last button free, and with a sigh of relief she drew the shirt over his shoulders.
He was perfectly made, in lean, precise proportion, his muscles flat and hard and spare and his skin pale gold in the candlelight. Her hands traveled in wonder across the width of his chest, around the curve of his shoulders, up the angled cords of his neck. He dipped his head to press a kiss against her palm, his eyes never leaving hers, and she felt weightless, boneless, floating atop the soft cushion of the mattress in some dizzy haze of bemusement. Was she really here? Was she, Alexandra Morley, really lying on this bed, running her bold hands across Phineas Burke’s bare skin?
What on earth had she done to deserve him?
He bent his head and kissed her again, gently this time, and she felt his hand moving across her chest, cupping her breast through the material of her dress. She’d worn a loose gown, free of all the tight lacing and decoration of her formal evening attire, and his lips hardened as he realized how little lay between his hand and her flesh. “You’re a seductress, aren’t you, darling,” he murmured, and his hand slipped around her back to her buttons, fumbling impatiently against the bedclothes.
Giddy laughter bubbled up inside her. “Stop. You’ll never get them like that.” She struggled upward against the pillows and turned around. Her hair had come loose from its pins, and she lifted the heavy mass from her shoulders as his fingers grasped at the fastenings of her dress.
“Why on earth couldn’t you have worn a dressing gown?” he muttered. His hands were heavy and impatient, almost tearing the buttons from their holes. All signs of scientific detachment had fled him.
“Because if I’d been caught in the hallway in my dressing gown, I’d have had a devil of a time trying to explain it.” The bodice loosened and brushed against her sensitized skin, sending shivers down her body.
“You’re shaking again,” he said, more softly, and his hands slowed. She closed her eyes and felt his breath stir her hair, his fingers graze her spine.
“I can’t help it,” she whispered, and it was true. Desire and fear and anticipation coiled together in her belly, indistinguishable from one another. She’d never been so nervous, not even on her wedding night. That had been formal and sanctioned and proper, no more strange than the experience of standing before the altar, and Lord Morley had been nothing like the man in bed with her now. She’d been clothed, and he’d been clothed, and it had all been quite safe. A ritual.
This was something else. This was unknown and thrilling and illicit; this man was young and brilliant and handsome. He wanted to give her pleasure,
would
give her pleasure, by some mysterious means she hardly knew how to imagine. She would be naked, bare, exposed; so would he. They would lie together as man and wife, except that they weren’t; he would clasp her afterward in his arms and hold her while she slept. All these things would happen in the next few hours. By daybreak she would know them all.
He seemed to sense her mood. He worked carefully now, his fingers trailing down her spine as he went, and when at last the final button parted and the bodice sagged away from her, he drew his large hands around her waist and upward to cup her breasts, reverently, as if holding a nest of baby birds. “Ah, God, darling,” he said in her ear, his voice catching. “You’re beautiful, so full and round and perfect.” His thumbs brushed against her hardened nipples, and a shudder went through her. She reached her arms upward, behind her, to enclose his head, to spear her fingers through his thick hair.
“I want you, Alexandra,” he murmured. “I want to know every inch of you, to sink myself inside you.”
She turned then, and pressed her naked chest against his, thrilling in the sensation of his skin on hers. “I want you, too. I want . . .”
I want to be part of you. I want your body inside mine. Your strength, your life, everything. I want you.
She stroked her hands down his body. “Now.
Now.
I don’t want to wait any longer.” He brushed her fingers away as they tangled in the fastening of his trousers, removing them himself, in rough, impatient jerks, taking off his drawers at the same time, until he returned to her fully naked, his shaft jutting proudly from his body, his long, heavy limbs pressing her backward into the bed. She felt his hand at her hip, struggling with her dress, and she arched her back and closed her eyes as he removed the last of her clothing, laying her body bare before him.
He went still.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” His voice was hoarse. He lowered his head to her breast and drew his tongue over the nipple. Pleasure coursed through her, down to the tips of her fingers and toes, pooling hot and liquid between her legs. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “This, and this”—his mouth went to her other nipple and sucked, hard, so her entire body lifted from the bed and her gasp filled the room—“and the curve of your waist . . .” His lips trailed down her belly, and his hand, so large it seemed to cover her, settled along her hip, his thumb brushing at her curls, parting her flesh with such exquisite gentleness she couldn’t breathe. His breath fanned hot across her skin.
She was shaking, burning. She clutched his head between her hands and drew him up to her mouth. “Now. Please.
Please
, Finn. I need you. I can’t . . . I can’t bear it . . .”
His cock pressed against her, heavy and urgent. She reached down with unthinking freedom to clasp him in her hand, to discover this last frontier of his body: forbidden and masculine and mysterious, and yet so essentially Finn. He let out a low groan when her fingers found him, when she circled his broad length, relishing the contrast between silken skin and cast-iron flesh beneath. He seemed enormous, but then what did she have to compare him to? She’d never touched her husband’s organ like this. She couldn’t say for certain she’d even seen it properly.
Finn’s eyelids dropped. His body stilled above her, except for a faint tremor across his shoulders. In the candlelight, his skin seemed lit from within, glowing with controlled power as she learned his shape and texture. He waited in patience for her, offering himself up to her. She brushed the tip of him against her inner lips, testing the sensation, the luxurious feel of his strength against her slickness.
For an instant he dipped his head, as if gathering himself, and then he looked up again, found her gaze with fierce eyes, and thrust forward.
She nearly shrieked, so great was the shock of pleasure, of force perfectly rendered, of fullness after famine. He rocked against her for a moment, finding equilibrium, working himself deeper, looking into her eyes with such intensity she thought she might break apart.