Authors: Juliana Gray
ONE
Thirty miles southeast of Florence
March 1890
T
he boy couldn’t have been more than five years old. He stood square in the doorway of the inn and stared at Lord Roland Penhallow with a peculiar hostile intensity, his brow frowning into his blue eyes and his thumb stuck firmly between his teeth.
“I say, young fellow,” said Roland, with a gentle cough, one foot upon the step, “might I perhaps sidle past?”
The boy removed his thumb. “My father could beat you up.”
Roland felt the rain rattle down from the eaves against the crown of his hat. From there it streamed along the narrow brim and into the collar of his coat, soaking the shirt beneath until it stuck, cold and stiff, against his skin. “I daresay he could, old chap,” he ventured, gathering the ends of his coat collar together with one hand. “But in the meantime, I should like very much to dry myself by that cracking hot fire directly behind you. If you don’t mind, of course.”
“My father,” the boy said, lifting his finger and pointing it at Roland’s nose, “could smash your face and arms and legs and you would cry for
ever
.” The last word was delivered with particular relish.
Roland blinked. He could glimpse, behind the boy’s small figure, the inn’s common room: its long tables lined with people, with plates of steaming food and bottles of local wine. An enormous fire roared away the dank March air, impossibly inviting. “Of course I should cry,” Roland said. “Bitterly, in fact. No doubt about it, no doubt at all. But about that fire . . .”
“Philip! There you are!”
An exhausted female voice called from somewhere behind Roland, somewhere in the middle of that stinking mud-ridden innyard he’d just crossed. An exhausted voice, yes: strained and dry, with a suggestion of incipient hoarseness, but also perfectly familiar.
Roland’s back stiffened with shock. Not here, surely. He must be mistaken. Not in the yard of a rustic Italian inn, tucked into a remote hillside, miles away from the civilized comfort of Florence and ages away from the London conservatory where he’d heard those dulcet tones last.
No, he must be imagining things.
“Philip, you’re not
inconveniencing
this poor gentleman, are you?” The woman spoke in agonized tones, nearer now, coming up rapidly to his right shoulder.
Good God. He couldn’t be imagining her
now
. Could he?
“Sir, I beg your pardon. The boy is dreadfully overtired and . . .”
Roland turned.
“Oh.” She stopped at once, two or three steps away. Her face was nearly hidden by the brim of her hat, but the lips and chin beneath curved exactly as they did in his dreams. Her plaid scarf wrapped around a neck that he knew would be long and sinuous, would melt into the delicate flesh of her chest and shoulders, covered presently and sensibly by a dark wool coat.
“Roland,” she said, in a whisper.
Of course he was dreaming. She couldn’t possibly be real. A mere figment of his weary imagination; the strain of the journey, taking its toll on his wits.
“Lady Somerton,” he said, making a little bow, so the rain dropped from his hat in a single sheet. Since it was a dream, he might as well play his part. “What a charming surprise. I have just been making myself acquainted with your son.”
Son.
The word echoed in his head.
“Lord Roland,” she said, dipping her head. She folded her gloved hands before her. “Indeed, a very great surprise. I should not have . . . Oh, Philip,
really
!”
Roland wheeled around, just in time to watch the tip of the boy’s tongue disappear into his cherubic mouth.
“I’m so terribly sorry.” She swept past him to take Philip’s hand. “He’s normally such a
good
boy. It’s the journey, and his nursemaid was taken ill in Milan, and . . . oh, Philip,
do
be good and apologize to his lordship.”
“You told me to wait where it was dry,” Philip said, looking up earnestly at his mother’s face.
“So I did,” she said, bending next to him, “but I never told you to accost unsuspecting gentlemen in the doorway. Say you’re sorry, Philip, and let his lordship pass. He’s dreadfully wet.”
“Sorry,” Philip said.
“Philip,
really
.”
The boy sighed and turned his face to Roland. “I’m most awfully sorry, your lordship. I shall never do it again.”
Roland bowed solemnly. “Quite all right, old chap. Quite all right. The heat of the moment. I’ve done far worse myself.”
“That’s very good, Philip. Very good,” Lady Somerton said. “Now let his lordship pass.”
Philip moved grudgingly aside.
“Thank you, sir,” Roland said, still solemn, and climbed the steps. He turned in the doorway and removed his hat. “Have you just arrived, madam? I understand they’re quite occupied tonight.”
“Yes, just now,” she said, glancing upward, so the full force of her blue eyes struck him like a most un-dreamlike blow to the noggin. “But I’m sure we shall find a room. Lady Morley is speaking to the landlord this instant, and . . . well, you know Lady Morley.”
“Lady Morley, by Gad!” He smiled. “Are the two of you taking a tour? Dashed beastly time of year for it.”
She straightened, her hand still clutching Philip’s. She didn’t return his smile. “I suppose you could call it that. And you, Lord Roland? Are you on your way to Florence, perhaps?”
“No, no. Just left it, in fact. I’m here with my brother and . . . and another fellow. We’re . . .”
We’re off to spend a year in a drafty Italian castle, devoting ourselves like monks to algebra and Plato and God knows what else. Smashing time.
Her eyebrows lifted expectantly.
Roland gathered himself. “Well, never mind that. I do hope . . . That is, if I can be of any service . . .”
“No, no.” Her eyes dropped. “We’re quite all right.”
“Are you going in just now?”
“No, I’m . . . I’m waiting for someone.”
He peered into the darkness behind her. “Can’t you wait inside? It’s frightfully wet.”
“She’ll only be a minute.” Her voice was quiet and resolute, just as he remembered it. Rather irritating, that: If he were taking the trouble to dream about her, mightn’t she do something more dramatic? More fantastical? Tear off her dress, perhaps, and leap into his arms, and engage him in sexual congress against the wall of the inn, with the rain streaming down her body?
Oh yes.
That
would be a worthwhile dream indeed.
“Very well, then.” He made a little bow. “I expect I shall see you shortly.”
“Yes, I expect so.” As if the prospect were about as appealing as an appointment with the tooth-drawer.
From the innyard a voice shrieked, “Lilibet, you’ll never guess what I’ve found in the stables!” and little Philip shouted back, “Cousin Abigail, come look, the strangest fellow!”
The dream was taking a most unwanted turn.
Roland walked swiftly through the doorway and into the busy warmth of the common room, leaving Lady Elizabeth Somerton and her son under the portico.
* * *
F
or God’s sake, Penhallow. We’ve been waiting for hours,” drawled the Duke of Wallingford, setting down his cup. His eyebrows shot upward at the sight of Roland’s face. “What’s this, then? Seen a ghost?”
“I believe I have,” Roland said. He tossed his hat on the table and swung his coat from his shoulders in a shower of droplets. “You’ll never guess the apparition I perceived outside, here of all the bloody godforsaken innyards of the world. Is that wine?”
“The local swill,” the duke said, pouring from the pitcher into an empty cup. “I don’t make guesses, as a rule, but I’d venture your ghost has something to do with Lady Alexandra Morley. Am I right?”
Roland slumped atop the chair opposite, his bones sinking gratefully into the sturdy frame. “Seen her, have you?”
“Heard her. We were endeavoring to remain unnoticed.” Wallingford pushed the cup toward his brother. “Have a drink, old man. Food should be arriving shortly, God willing.”
Phineas Burke leaned forward from his seat next to Wallingford. “She’s been arguing with the landlord this past quarter hour,” he said. “The most infernal din. They’ve gone upstairs to see the room.”
“Mark my words,” Wallingford said, “we’ll be tossed out on our ears and forced to sleep in the commons.”
“Surely not,” Roland said, drinking deep. “You’re the damned Duke of Wallingford. What the jolly use is it, being a duke, if you can’t keep a room at an inn?”
“Mark my words,” Wallingford repeated darkly.
Burke pressed his index finger into the worn wood before him. “For one thing, they’re women,” he said, “and for another, it’s Lady Morley. Carries all before her, the old dragon.”
“Hardly old,” said Roland charitably. “I daresay she hasn’t seen thirty yet. Hullo, is that our dinner?”
A girl wobbled toward them, homespun skirts twisting about her legs, bearing a large pewter tray filled with meat and thick country bread. A pretty girl, Roland thought idly, slanting her an assessing look. She caught his look and set down the tray with an awkward crash, just as the voice of Alexandra, Lady Morley erupted from the stairs, cutting through the buzzing din of the other travelers. “It isn’t at all acceptable,
non possiblo
, do you hear me? We are English,
anglese
. We can’t possibly . . . Oh! Your Grace!”
“Mark my words,” muttered Wallingford. He threw down his napkin and rose. “Lady Morley,” he said. “Good evening. I trust you’re well.”
Her ladyship stood on the stairs, tall and imperious, her chestnut hair pulled with unnatural neatness into a smart chignon at the nape of her neck. She’d been a handsome girl several years ago, before her marriage to the Marquess of Morley, and was now an even handsomer woman, all cheekbones and glittering brown eyes. She wasn’t exactly to Roland’s taste, with her strong, bold-featured face, but he could appreciate her, rather as one appreciated the classical statuary in one’s formal gardens, without precisely wanting to embrace it.
“Darling Wallingford,” she said, continuing down the stairs toward them, her voice shifting effortlessly from commanding to cajoling, “you’re just the man I was hoping for. I can’t seem to make these Italian fellows understand that English ladies, however sturdy and liberal minded, simply
cannot
be expected to sleep in a room with strangers.
Male
strangers.
Foreign
male strangers. Don’t you agree, Your Grace?” She stopped in front of them.
“Are there no rooms available upstairs, madam?”
She shrugged beautifully, her tailored black shoulder making a practiced little arc through the air. “A small room, a very small room. Hardly large enough for Lady Somerton’s boy to sleep in, let alone the three of us.” Her gaze shifted to Roland and she started visibly, her entire body snapping backward. “Lord Roland!” she exclaimed. “I’d no idea! Have you . . . my cousin . . . Lady Somerton . . . good God!”
Roland bowed affably. Why not? It seemed the thing to do. “I had the great honor of meeting her ladyship outside on the . . . the portico, a moment ago. And her charming son, of course.”
A choking noise emerged from Lady Morley’s trim throat, as if a laugh were suppressing itself. “Charming! Yes, quite.” Her mouth opened and closed. She cleared her throat.
Roland, watching her, felt his own shock begin to slide away, numbness replaced by awareness. You could not deny the reality of Lady Morley. She crackled with reality. And if Lady Morley were real, then . . .
His nerves took up a strange and inauspicious tingling.
It was true. He hadn’t dreamt it. Lilibet was here.
Stop that
, he told his nerves sternly, but it only made things worse. Only made things more real, only made Lilibet’s presence—the actual existence of her living body not ten yards away—more real. He had the disturbing premonition that he was about to do something rash.
Lady Morley wrung her hands and looked back at the duke beseechingly. “Look here, Wallingford, I really must throw myself on your mercy. Surely you see our little dilemma. Your rooms are ever so much larger, palatial, really, and
two
of them! You can’t possibly, in all conscience . . .” Her voice drifted, turned upward. She returned to Roland. “My dear Penhallow. Think of poor Lilibet, sleeping in . . . in a
chair
, quite possibly . . . with all these strangers.”
Burke, standing next to Roland with all the good cheer of a lion disturbed from his nap, cleared his throat with an ominous rumble. “Did it not, perhaps, occur to you, Lady Morley, to reserve rooms in advance?”
Roland winced. Damn the fellow. Old scientific Burke was hardly the sort of man to endure arrogant young marchionesses with patience.
Lady Morley’s cat-shaped eyes fastened on him in the famous Morley glare. “As a matter of fact, it did, Mr. . . .” She raised her eyebrows expressively. “I’m so terribly sorry, sir. I don’t
quite
believe I caught your name.”
“I beg your pardon, Lady Morley,” said the Duke of Wallingford. “How remiss of me. I have the great honor to present to you—perhaps you may have come across his name, in your philosophical studies—Mr. Phineas Fitzwilliam Burke, of the Royal Society.”
“Your servant, madam,” Mr. Burke said, with a slight inclination of his head.
“Burke,” she said, and then her eyes widened an instant. “Phineas Burke. Of course. The Royal Society. Yes, of course. Everybody knows of Mr. Burke. I found . . . the
Times
, last month . . . your remarks on electrical . . . that new sort of . . .” She drew in a fortifying breath, and then smiled, warmly even. “That is to say, of course we reserved rooms. I sent the wire days ago, if memory serves. But we were delayed in Milan. The boy’s nursemaid took ill, you see, and I expect our message did not reach our host in time.” She sent a hard look in the landlord’s direction.
“Look here.” Roland heard his own voice with horror. Here it was. The rash thing, unstoppable as one of Great-Aunt Julia’s obscene anecdotes at the dinner table. “Enough of this rubbish. We shouldn’t dream of causing any inconvenience to you and your friends, Lady Morley. Not for an instant. Should we, Wallingford?”