Authors: Juliana Gray
Almost
too
unconscious, Alexandra thought, but then who needed wiles with a face like Lilibet’s? Her cousin straightened and began to unbutton her own coat, and Lord Roland seemed even more transfixed than before.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” someone muttered behind her. Wallingford, from the tone.
“I take it they know each other?” the other—Burke—asked dryly.
It was better than a play.
Alas, just as Lilibet reached the bottom of her coat, and Alexandra held her breath to see what would happen next, Miss Abigail Harewood swept through the door and ruined the scene.
She shook the droplets from her hat like a careless young spaniel and rushed up to her sister. “Alex, darling,” she said, shattering the silence, “you won’t believe what I’ve found in the stables!”
Alexandra heaved a disappointed sigh and wrinkled her nose. “What on earth were you doing in the stables, darling? Oh, do leave off that gesticulating and remove your coat. You’re showering me, for goodness’ sake. Here. Your buttons.” She unfastened Abigail’s wet coat with efficient fingers. “Now come along with me to the fire and warm yourself. We’ve a lovely hot dinner waiting for us at the table next to the fireplace. You can tell me all about what you’ve discovered in the stables.”
She slung the coat over her right arm, grasped Abigail’s hand with her left, and steered a course directly to the massive hearth, where Lilibet hovered, hands outstretched: a sight to enrapture the heart of any English gentleman, and particularly one that had belonged to her for years.
Alexandra would have to keep a close eye indeed on Lord Roland Penhallow tonight.
As she passed the gentlemen, however, those eyes did a vexing and unexpected thing. They observed not Lord Roland’s lovestruck gaze, nor even Wallingford’s thundering scowl.
They lingered, instead, on the way the warm ginger hair of Mr. Phineas Burke kindled into red gold flame in the light from the fire.
TWO
A
lexandra knew she should have left after dinner. The men expected it, expected her to follow Lilibet and Abigail when they went upstairs to put the yawning boy to bed. It was what Englishwomen did, leaving the men to brandy and cigars and politics, even in a rustic crowded hostelry in the middle of Italy.
But tonight she didn’t. She’d always longed to stay and discuss politics, and after all, she
was
a widow now, far away from England’s drawing rooms, grappa at the ready. Even more importantly, halfway through her generous hunk of roasted Tuscan goose, as Abigail leaned toward her and revealed what she’d discovered in the stables, Alexandra had remembered exactly where Mr. Phineas Burke was said to be investing his brilliant mind these days. And, not incidentally, his capital.
Horseless carriages.
As if God had sent him to her, in her hour of need.
So tonight she sat firmly in her place, and when Lilibet’s skirt had disappeared around the upstairs landing she turned to Mr. Phineas Burke and said, with a provocative smile, “Tell me, Mr. Burke, what on earth brings you to this remote wilderness? I can understand Wallingford and Penhallow going in for such eccentricities, but you seem a rational sort of chap.”
He stared at her across the table, with that probing gaze of his, as if peeling back the layers of her mind. “I might perhaps ask the same of you, Lady Morley.”
“Oh no. Not at all. We ladies are allowed our secrets, I’m afraid. It’s the privilege of our sex.” She forced herself to keep her gaze on his, to meet the onslaught of his expression. “You poor fellows, on the other hand, must reveal everything, without reserve. Now do go on. I’m quite panting to hear it. A grand tour? Searching for a lost Renaissance painting? Or has Wallingford perhaps got an Italian contessa with child?”
“I’m insulted,” drawled the duke, “you think me capable of such carelessness.”
Alexandra shifted her eyes to Wallingford with relief. Most women found the duke intimidating, but she’d lost that telltale nervous flutter around his large, laconic figure a long time ago. Once one knew what a man was really made of, he became as ordinary as the earth, and about as appealing.
She now settled back in her chair and fingered the dull pewter base of her cup, which held the last sediment-clouded dregs of the landlord’s stock of wine. It was rough and tannic and fought her palate with tooth and nail, and she meant to make it last as long as she could. “One hears such stories, Wallingford. One hardly knows what to credit.”
“I assure you, Lady Morley, it’s nothing so exciting. A course of study, nothing more.”
She laughed. “A course of study! What rot. I can well believe that of Mr. Burke, but the two of
you
?” She took in Lord Roland with a swift glance. “A course of study in what, Your Grace? Whist, perhaps? Roman orgies?”
“Of course not.” Wallingford brushed at his sleeve. “If we were planning any sort of orgy, Lady Morley, we would certainly have invited you along.”
Alexandra felt a surge of warmth spread across her cheekbones and throughout her face, and she cursed herself. She’d thought herself above blushing, at her age, and at such a crude and unjust swipe.
“For God’s sake, Wallingford,” muttered Mr. Burke, bringing down his wineglass with a little crash.
“Dashed coarse of you, brother,” Lord Roland said, looking up as if from a reverie.
The duke shrugged. “My apologies.”
Alexandra gathered herself. “You won’t convince me it’s some sort of academic endeavor. Why, the tales I heard, only a few weeks ago . . .”
“True, I’m sure. All true.”
She leaned forward. “Do you expect me to believe that you’ve shrugged off the accumulated dissipation of some ten or twelve years, in order to pursue philosophical study? In Italy?”
“Improbable, of course,” Wallingford said, “but true.”
Mr. Burke’s voice was low and sure. “We have devised a rigorous schedule of study and exercise, free from the vices of metropolitan life.”
Alexandra looked back and forth between him and the duke. How different they looked, the one so dark and cynical, the other so subtle and many colored. “I suppose it has something to do with this engine exhibition in Rome this summer, hasn’t it? Your particular field of inquiry, Mr. Burke.”
He made a startled movement, lawn green eyes widening at last. “What on earth do you know about it?”
She shrugged. “An idle interest of mine. And you, Wallingford? Will you be assisting in Mr. Burke’s workshop?”
“God, no,” said the duke, looking horrified. “I shall be undertaking far more cerebral activity, I assure you.”
“Oh really?” She smiled kindly. “Are you planning to purchase a cerebrum outright, or simply lease it month-to-month?”
“Very amusing, your ladyship.”
“Or perhaps you plan to economize and share one between you and Penhallow.”
Lord Roland looked up and twinkled at her. “Perish the thought. Awkward, beastly things, brains. Look what it’s done to my poor old friend Burke, here.”
She laughed. “Indeed. He’s only the most worthy man among you.”
As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she wished them back. All three of them arrested movement and stared at her: Mr. Burke with his wineglass glued to his lips, Wallingford with his eyebrows arching into his hairline.
Oh, brilliant. Now what the devil had made her say that?
She cleared her throat. “But don’t give up hope, Penhallow. Perhaps Wallingford can be persuaded to let you borrow the organ on alternate Thursdays, in exchange for your charm and good humor, of which he stands in even deeper need. Tell me, how long a period have you established for your little sabbatical?”
“A year,” barked Wallingford.
A year.
She stiffened in her chair. “A year, did you say?”
“I did.”
She looked from one face to another; all wore masks of perfect sincerity. A chill feeling gathered at the top of her spine; she tried to ignore it. “Oh, well played,” she said brightly. “You nearly had me convinced.”
“My dear Lady Morley, I wasn’t trying to be funny. I haven’t any humor, after all, as you yourself pointed out.”
“Ha. Did you speak with Miss Harewood? Lady Somerton?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” Wallingford said, in a bored voice.
Her pulse throbbed in her throat, like a warning signal. It couldn’t be coincidence. Could it? Had someone told Wallingford of their plans? Who? Who else could possibly know?
With effort, she kept her voice even. “A year, you said. A year of philosophical study. Jolly odd.”
“Odd?” asked Lord Roland. “Why
odd
? I agree that the whole scheme’s quite mad. Half-lunatic, in my opinion; really, I’m only along to see for myself how spectacularly it will crash. But
odd
?”
Alexandra picked up her spoon and toyed with her marscapone. How much should she tell them? “As it happens, Penhallow, the reason I find your excursion so
odd
is that my companions and I find ourselves embarked on a similar one. I beg your pardon; does anyone quite understand what this . . . this pudding is, before us?”
“Forgive me,” said the duke. “I don’t quite understand you.”
“This. This bowl of . . . Dear me, I don’t know how to describe it . . .”
“Not the damned pudding. This project of yours.”
“Oh, of course. I mean,” she said, leaning forward and fixing him with a frigid smile, “that we—Lady Somerton and Miss Harewood and I—have traveled to Italy on a sort of scholarly retreat of our own.”
Wallingford stared at her, incredulous, as if unable to tell if she were mocking or serious. “A scholarly retreat? To study . . . what?”
“We have prepared an extensive list of subjects.”
“No doubt. With a change of dress for each one, I’m sure.”
She shot him a murderous glare. “We are quite serious about this, Wallingford.”
“Oh, come. What about Lord Somerton? Does he look kindly on his wife’s absence? And your poor sister, languishing away in study when she should be finding a husband.” Wallingford crossed his tweed arms and grinned. “It’s madness.”
Her blood began to rise. As if her duty to Lilibet and Abigail weren’t what brought her here in the first place! “No more so than
your
plan.”
“I’ll wager you don’t last out a month.”
“I’ll wager you’ve packed your trunks within a week, Wallingford. You, without a skirt to chase? Penhallow, bending his brain to Greek philosophers?” She tilted her head in Mr. Burke’s direction, not daring to look him full in the face. “Poor Mr. Burke will be left quite to himself, though I daresay it will suit him very well.”
“Rubbish,” said Wallingford. “Ladies have their virtues; indeed, no one admires the sex more than I do, I assure you. But the ability to conduct protracted philosophical study, away from the charms of social life, is not, I’m afraid, among them.”
“Quite the opposite,” Alexandra said. “Men, as your own life amply demonstrates, cannot easily control their baser impulses. Women would make far better scholars, if allowed the opportunity.”
Wallingford leaned toward her. “Name your stakes, then.”
“My stakes?”
“You mentioned a wager, Lady Morley.”
“Are you quite serious?” she demanded.
Lord Roland broke in. “Oh, I say. Hardly cricket, old man, wagering with a lady.”
She made a brushing movement with her hand. “Don’t bother, my dear. We’ve left all that civilized rubbish back in England, haven’t we? No, I like Wallingford’s proposal immensely. It makes things matter.”
“My sentiments exactly,” said Wallingford. “As I said, what are your stakes?”
Alexandra ran her thumb along the length of her spoon. She had the sudden and deeply vexing impression that she’d been baited, and expertly. “To the party that remains at study the longest: a forfeit”—she hesitated—“to be determined later.”
“A lady’s trick.” The duke rolled his black eyes. “Naming the forfeit after the wager’s won. It should
mean
something, Lady Morley.”
Oh, damn. What had she done? Wagers had a fatal habit of becoming public knowledge, and public knowledge was the last thing she needed just now. She’d gone to great lengths to keep their departure from England, and their destination, a secret. “You don’t think pride’s a sufficient motivation?” she asked, trying to edge herself back from the brink. “Must there be money involved?”
Mr. Burke’s voice intruded, with quiet authority, hardly more than a whisper. “Nobody said anything about money, Lady Morley.”
Her heart gave a thud. She fixed him with her gaze. “What’s that, Mr. Burke? Do you have a
personal
interest in this disagreement? Do you, too, feel men to be superior scholars to women?”
He shrugged. “It seems to me to be a scientific question, which can be settled in a scientific manner. We have three members of each sex, attempting roughly the same project. A rather well-designed experiment, I should think.”
“And you think your side will win, of course.”
He made a little bow of his head. “I’m a scientist, Lady Morley. I’m only interested in outcomes. But since the issue has been raised, I don’t see the harm in allowing a forfeit of some sort to the winner.”
“And what,” she said, leaning forward, letting a feline smile curl the edges of her mouth, because she really couldn’t resist the challenge in his eyes, “do you propose?”
He leaned back in his chair and reached for the dish of walnuts at the end of the table. “I’ve always believed that the results of important scientific studies are of essential interest to humanity at large,” he said, placing a walnut between his thumb and forefinger. “I see, therefore, no reason why the loser should not publish in the
Times
an advertisement of no less than, say, a half sheet, acknowledging the superiority of the winning side.”
He cracked the walnut solidly, straight down the middle, and picked out the flesh with an expert curl of his finger.
A silence settled in the middle of the table, intruded upon only by the tuneless roar of an inebriated man by the fire, attempting the drinking chorus of
Otello
.
“You,” Alexandra said at last, “are a vastly overconfident man. I look very much forward to proving you wrong.”
Mr. Burke rose and tossed down the last of his wine. A bright flush stained the skin beneath his freckles. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, eyes glittering, and strode from the room.
* * *
T
he trouble with rustic Italian inns, thought Phineas Burke, much later, hurrying through the rain-soaked midnight toward the inn’s ramshackle stableyard, was not the lack of general creature comforts, of which he took little notice. He’d lived in student rooms at Cambridge and hide tents in the Siberian steppes and his godfather’s mansion on Park Lane, and all were more or less equal to his abstemious taste.
No, the real trouble was the lack of space. From childhood, he’d made a habit of securing himself a retreat, wherever he was: an unused cupboard, a hollow tree, a shed. A place to flee, when the pressure of company became too much, or when an idea flashed into his brain and took over all his conscious thought.
Or when a talkative and damnably alluring woman invited herself to dinner.
Well, to be fair, she hadn’t quite invited herself. A precise observer would have to admit that Lord Roland, the lovesick puppy, had actually issued the fatal request. And perhaps it would have been, according to the rules of so-called polite behavior, rather rude to ignore the ladies when they sat at the adjacent table, not three feet away in a room crowded with foreigners.
But Lady Morley had accepted with far too much eagerness. She had fairly dragged her companions into their company, when it was obvious even to Finn—no expert on feminine behavior—that the beautiful Lady Somerton, for one, had no wish to join them.
To make matters worse, she had gone on in that lilting, self-assured voice of hers, practically forcing everybody to converse, raising daring subjects and flashing witty remarks; asking questions he should have thought impertinent, except that Lady Morley had the irritating trick of making it all seem clever and confidential and sophisticated instead. Even Wallingford had been moved to laugh, once or twice. It was intolerable. Hadn’t the three of them left England
expressly
to avoid such distractions?