A Reckless Desire (3 page)

Her blush deepened. “I am clumsy, my lord,” she said, equally blunt. There was no reason why she shouldn't be, considering it was the truth. “They tried to make me a dancer, but no matter how hard I tried to follow the steps, I could not hear the music.”

“You don't hear the tune?” he asked curiously.

“Not like the others, my lord, no,” she said with long-standing resignation. “I hear the music, but I cannot sense the pattern or the rhythm of it like the others do, or figure out when or where to place my feet. I was the despair of my uncle, and he banished me from his classes, and from the corps.”

His brows rose in skeptical disbelief. “A Di Rossi who cannot dance?”

“Yes, my lord,” she said softly. It was a disgrace she always had with her, an agonizing defect that had kept her from ever being completely accepted into the sweeping embrace of her large family. Her uncle had called her willful, and beaten her with his maestro's baton when she'd stumbled. Her cousins had laughed at her, and called her a waddling goose and worse. Even her own father had been mortified, and when he drank too much he'd wept from the shame of siring such a daughter.

“A Di Rossi who cannot dance,” he said again, marveling. “Who would have thought it possible?”

“But that is why I have come to you, my lord,” she said fervently. “Last night you offered me the first chance I've ever had to change things, a chance to make them all see that I'm more than their chambermaid.”

He leaned back against the chair. “I did?” he asked uneasily. “How in blazes could I have done that?”

Her heart sank. He didn't remember. But now that she'd come this far, she'd no choice but to continue.

“You did, my lord,” she said, taking another step closer as she willed him to remember. “You said you could make me into a great actress who could play queens. You said you could teach me to be better than Madame Adelaide, that you could—”

“Everett's wager,” he said slowly. “You're the girl he wanted me to transform, aren't you?”

Now that he'd remembered, she wished he'd show more enthusiasm.

“Yes, my lord, yes, yes,” she said, eagerness and desperation making her talk too fast. “I would be the best student any teacher ever had. I'd make you so proud of me, my lord. You'd see. I'd make sure you'd win that wager from Lord Everett.”

He sighed. “Do you truly believe I've the power to change you like that?”

“I do, my lord,” she said promptly. “I must. Because if I don't, my lord, all I'll have ahead of me is an entire
life
of being ordered about by Magdalena, and that—oh, I do not think I would survive that.”

“I know I couldn't,” he agreed. “Given time, she'd make a turnip weep and beg for mercy.”

He was obviously considering it, his expression thoughtful.

“Please, my lord.” She pressed her palms together in dramatic supplication. “It might have seemed no more than a gentlemen's wager to you, but to me—to me it was the purest, rarest magic, like a gift from the very heavens.”

He rose abruptly in a great swath of yellow silk and went to stand at one of the windows, his arms folded across his chest and his back toward her.

Was he dismissing her? Had her plea been too much, too impassioned? Even though she had lived in London for most of her life, she still forgot how much more reserved Englishmen were.

“Forgive me if I've spoken too much, my lord,” she said sadly to that imposing back. “But it's only that—”

“Can you read?”

“Yes, I can read,” she said, taken aback that he'd ask that. Just because the Di Rossis danced did not mean they were unlettered fools.

“Not just claptrap and nonsense, either,” he said. “Can you read true English?”

“Of course I can,” she said. “I have even read many of your English playwrights, too, so you needn't ask that.”

He nodded toward the window.
“Ma sei più al tuo agio con la madrelingua, l'italiano di Napoli.”

Because he was still turned from her, she didn't bother to hide her dismay. He'd just declared that she was more at ease in her mother tongue, the Italian of Naples (which wasn't true), and he'd turned it into a self-righteous little statement that was designed more to display his own facility in that language than to test hers—hardly an auspicious sign of a sympathetic teacher. He wasn't alone, of course. Every other Englishman that she'd ever met who'd claimed to speak Italian was much the same. They might know the words, but they hadn't the heart or the passion to speak proper Italian, especially Neapolitan Italian. Living in the shadow of a volcano, as everyone in Naples did, changed everything.

Not that she could tell Lord Rivers that, not at all. She'd learned that much about male pride from observing how deftly Magdalena had managed that fragile article with her various lovers.

“You speak Neapolitan Italian as well as any Englishman,
il mio signore,
” she answered sweetly instead, a bold-faced lie if ever there was one. Then she switched to French.
“Mais ma mère était française, pas Italienne.”

He turned around quickly with surprise, the dressing gown whipping about him. “You speak French, too? Ah, that is,
votre parlez,
ah,
parlent français
?”

“Oui, mon seigneur,”
she answered, and then returned to English, for the sake of sparing him. “My mother danced with the French Opera. I was born in Paris.”

“Er, ah, so you were,” he said uncomfortably, and in English, too. “I can hear it now.”

She smiled, trying to be encouraging. He might be unnecessarily vain of his Italian, but at least he realized that his French was abysmal.

“I will learn in whichever language you care to teach, my lord,” she said. “Though I should prefer English, for it is the English stage I wish to conquer.”

“You must obey me in everything,” he said, clearly relieved to once again be in unquestionable charge, “no matter how foolish it may seem to you. I will devise a plan of lessons that must be studied and followed. You will not be permitted to disagree.”

“I won't, my lord,” she said promptly.

He nodded. “If we are to do this properly, you must resign your position at the Royal, and devote yourself entirely to your studies with me.”

Her eyes widened. “But I'll have no earnings, my lord. How shall I support myself if I cannot work?”

“You won't need earnings,” he said, standing there like some great, golden, pagan god who could order the world to his liking. “Not while you're with me.”

That made her uneasy. “I cannot simply disappear from the company, my lord. Who would take my place? Who would do my tasks?”

“I should think any maidservant from the street could do them,” he said. “But I'll speak to Magdalena, and arrange to pay for another girl who'll take your place while—”

“No!” she cried, and instantly retreated. “That is, my lord, I should rather that my cousin and the others not know of this…experiment until it is complete.”

“But they must know something,” he reasoned, “because you'll no longer be in their midst. For you to make the most progress, I'll want you to stay here with me. If I am to devote all my waking hours to you, I expect you to do the same.”

She ducked her chin, her cheeks hot. “Forgive me, my lord, but I…I cannot do that. I wish to be an actress, yes, but I don't want to share your bed.”

He smiled, bemused. “You truly aren't a dancer, are you? You don't have the necessary wantonness, or the predatory heart that goes with it, either.”

Her flush deepened. “No, my lord.”

“I don't expect you to be my mistress,” he said, smiling still. “You'll have a bed of your own in a room of your own, with a latch on the door if that makes you feel safer. I shall expect you to attend me throughout the day, and I should like it if you dined with me, but you have my word that your virtue shall be safe.
Entirely
safe.”

“Thank you, my lord,” she said softly. There couldn't be a better arrangement, and she was fortunate he felt this way. Yet even so, a small, perverse part of her wished he didn't find her so unbearably plain and undesirable that the very notion of it made him smile.

“I'll send word to Magdalena that you'll be in my care,” he said, striding across the room to his desk. “I'll write it now, so you may deliver it to her yourself.”

She shook her head swiftly. “If you please, my lord, she must not know anything. Truly. You heard her last night. She won't permit it.”

“She will if I tell her to,” he said, reaching for a fresh sheet of a paper. “She won't be able to argue if I assume responsibility for you.”

“Please, my lord,” she begged. How could she explain to him that it wasn't well-meant concern for her welfare that would make her cousin object, but reluctance to part with a drudge that she could keep without wages? “I would rather tell Magdalena and my uncle myself that I'm leaving, and I'll contrive some sort of nonsense by way of explanation, too. They do not deserve the truth. I would rather amaze them than suffer the weight of their scorn.”

He paused, perplexed, his pen in his hand.

“Scorn?” he repeated. “You wish to better yourself. What the devil could they scorn?”

“Me, my lord,” she said succinctly. “They will not believe I can do this.”

“Well, a pox on them,” he said. “
I
believe you can. You wouldn't be permitted to fail, you know. You'll have no choice but to succeed.”

“Truly, my lord?” she said, stunned that he'd finally agreed. “You…you mean that?”

“Of course,” he said, regarding her curiously. “Why would I say anything that I did not mean?”

Yet she still couldn't quite believe it. “You believe in me, my lord? You meant that part, too?”

“I believe in you, yes,” he repeated with satisfying clarity, “and even more, I believe in myself to teach you. There is no conceivable way that I intend to lose to Everett, not this wager.”

That wasn't quite as good as having him believe in her abilities alone, but she'd accept it. In time she'd prove to him she could do it, just as she meant to prove it to so many others.

And if Lord Rivers did not intend to lose, well, then, he'd learn soon enough that neither did she.

“What wager
,
Fitzroy?” Lord Everett said. He was comfortably ensconced in a large old wing chair near the front window of the club, a cheroot in one hand and a racing newspaper in the other. He was so comfortably ensconced that he had the perfect air of a gentleman who did not wish to be troubled except in the most dire of circumstance, and the faintly displeased expression on his face showed that he didn't believe Rivers's interruption could possibly fall into that category of extremity. “What in blazes are you talking about?”

“The wager over the girl,” Rivers said, dropping into the empty chair beside Everett's. “Last night. Early in the evening. Come, you must remember it.”

Everett screwed up his face with the exertion of thought, his cheeks hollowing as he drew deeply on the cheroot.

“I'm afraid I don't recall any wagers involving girls,” he admitted. “Not last night anyway. What was the chit's name? Have I had her?”

“She's a Di Rossi,” said Rivers, pulling his chair closer to Everett's. “And no, I can guarantee you haven't had her in your bed. You'd better remember the wager, because I'm going to accept your terms.”

That earned Everett's attention, and he straightened in the chair. “One of those delightfully slatternly Di Rossis? You should have said so in the beginning, you rogue.”

“Not one of those,” Rivers said with a wave of his hand, banishing all the slatterns in a single, dismissive sweep. “Her name is Lucia. Lucia di Rossi.”

Everett frowned, considering. “Is she new to the litter?”

Rivers sighed impatiently. “You remember her, Everett. Fifty blessed guineas.”

The other man's face lit with recognition. “The one you swore you could make over into the next Anne Bracegirdle! I recall her well enough now. A small, dreary, pinched creature. You say she's a Di Rossi, too?”

“So she swears.” Rivers thought Everett's estimation was a little harsh. True, he himself had scarcely taken any notice of the girl in the past, but this morning, when she'd stood before him in his parlor and he'd had more time to study her properly, he'd been struck by her…her presence.

Yes, that's what it had been. Presence. It was all she had, really. She wasn't beautiful the way the rest of her family was, but there was a quickness, a lightness, to her that had made it impossible for him to look away. He was certain that with his guidance, education, and better clothes, audiences could be persuaded to feel the same about her, too. If Magdalena was the sun, blindingly brilliant and alluring, then her cousin Lucia was like a small, silvery star with a brilliance that was all her own.

Not, of course, that he'd ever dare speak such poetical gibberish to Everett.

“Another Di Rossi,” Everett marveled. “She must dance, then. They all do. Yet I don't recall seeing her on the stage.”

“She doesn't dance,” Rivers said. “Which is why I intend to transform her into an actress. Or I will if you'll agree to our wager.”

“The fifty blessed guineas?”

“No retreat, Everett,” Rivers said firmly. “You increased the stake to a hundred, and that's what it shall be. One hundred guineas says I'll have that girl in a leading role on a stage in London by the end of the summer.”

“That's three months,” Everett protested. “You could make a horse recite Shakespeare in three months. I say you perform your miracle within six weeks, or there's no wager.”

Rivers lowered his chin and frowned. If three months appeared an eternity to Everett, six weeks seemed the merest blink of an eye to Rivers for the task before him. It wasn't his own abilities as a teacher that he doubted. Far from it. While his friends and family might tease him about his scholarly habits, he'd always found that most anything really was possible through study and application. True, he'd never taught anyone else anything, but he was confident he would be successful, the same as he'd been with whatever he'd attempted, from learning ancient languages to jumping the stone walls at Breconridge Hall on horseback.

No, it was the girl herself that concerned him. Lucia di Rossi had impressed him with her eagerness to learn, but he still had no notion about how quickly she could shed her old self and adopt the new habits that would be necessary for her to succeed. If she truly wanted to play grand ladies, she was going to have to change nearly everything about herself, from the way she spoke to how she stood and walked. He would need to summon mantua-makers and hairdressers and every other kind of female-improver to help make her small, slight self palatable to an audience quick to criticize a lack of beauty. He didn't even know if she possessed the prodigious memory required to become a decent actress.

But because he did like a challenge, and perhaps because he'd had just enough to drink to believe that anything—anything!—was possible through application, he accepted.

“It shall be done,” he declared, seizing his friend's hand to seal the wager. “Six weeks it is.”

“How willingly you embrace the impossible!” Everett said, delighted. He held out his empty glass to a passing servant. “But no cheating, now. You must rely on your own genius to teach the girl. No bringing in Garrick or any of his professional ilk to help.”

Rivers nodded. “I've a few terms of my own, Everett. You are not to see the girl again until she appears on the stage. I want no meddling from you, no interference. Nor do I wish you to speak of this to anyone else in town.”

Everett's smile was smug as he settled back in the chair.

“Why should I?” he asked. “I wouldn't dare risk lessening the exquisite surprise of seeing your plain little protégée make a fool of herself, and of you, too, my friend. I've never been more certain of a wager falling in my favor. You might as well give me the hundred guineas now and spare yourself the humiliation.”

“What, and sacrifice the pleasure of seeing you humbled into submission by the divine Lucia di Rossi?” Rivers said, bravado making his confidence grow by the second. “You'll see in six weeks. I'll triumph, because she will.”

Yet as certain as Rivers felt with Everett, he still saw no value in sharing the details about the bet when he visited his older brother's house later that afternoon.

“I'm going to the country for several weeks, Harry,” he announced as they stood together in the library, waiting for the rest of the company to appear before they went in to dine. “Perhaps longer. I'm finding London quite tedious at present, and besides, I have a special new project in mind.”

His brother regarded Rivers curiously. Harry was the Earl of Hargreave, and heir to the family dukedom. In Rivers's opinion, Harry had always been as fine an older brother as could be imagined, as had Geoffrey, the middle brother. He'd no complaints. Oh, there had been the usual older-brother torments inflicted when they'd been boys, to which Rivers had always countered with his own brand of youngest-brother aggravation. But on the whole they had always been quite loyal to one another, and together had had their share of scrapes and adventures, especially on their Grand Tour.

Or at least they had until first Harry and then Geoffrey had fallen in love and married and fathered children. In Rivers's eyes, his brothers had become far too staid for their own good since then, and had ceased to be the raucous boon companions that he remembered so fondly, ones who could always drag him from his scholarly shell. They'd become
responsible.

Which was exactly why he chose not to tell Harry about the bet, or the nature of his visit to the country, either. Harry would not have understood. He would have cautioned Rivers against rash wagers, against entanglements with Italian dance troupes, against devoting himself to a foolish experiment instead of finding a well-bred wife of his own.

“It's early in the season for you to leave town,” Harry said, fortunately unable to read Rivers's thoughts. “I'm sure there will be many young ladies who will be unhappy to see you go so soon.”

Rivers shrugged. “More likely their mothers will be the unhappy ones,” he said. “Although I imagine both will find other more suitable quarry than I soon enough.”

“You're suitable,” Harry said, restlessly tapping his walking stick against the floor. A riding accident several years earlier had left him lame in one leg, and while in public he'd learned through sheer will to walk well enough with the aid of specially designed shoes and boots, at home and with family, he let himself rely upon the extra assistance of a walking stick. “Damned suitable. You need only ask Father. He'll explain it all to you.”

Rivers sighed. “I've no more wish to hear that particular explanation than you do yourself.”

“Then you know the remedy as well,” Harry said, the sharpness in his voice unmistakable. “Marry, and give Father his heart's desire.”

“Don't begin,” Rivers said wearily. He'd always considered it his personal good fortune to be the third son of the Duke of Breconridge, free of the dutiful obligations of being his father's heir and permitted to do whatever else he desired. But his two brothers and their wives had thus far produced only daughters, five little girls who, despite their beauty and winsome charms, could never inherit the dukedom. Father's impatience with this lamentable situation had grown after each birth, and he'd lately begun to pressure Rivers to find a bride and attempt to sire a son himself. Rivers was only twenty-six, without the slightest inclination to wed just yet, as he'd told his father again and again. It did not make for pleasing family gatherings.

“Father's not coming here tonight, is he?” Rivers asked, glancing uneasily around the room.

“No, he is not,” Harry said, glowering at the thought. “Fortunately he and Celia were expected elsewhere. But you are right. Let's not spoil the evening with any more of that particular subject, especially if you shall be leaving us for a while. Tell me instead of this new experiment of yours.”

Rivers smiled again, relieved. It would be much easier to evade his brother's questions than to be forced to answer his father. Though Father was their father, he'd been a duke first, and he did not like to be denied in anything.

“The project's at such an early stage at present that I cannot tell you much,” he said easily. “Once I'm in the country without distractions, I'll be better able to sort out my plan.”

“You're not meddling with lightning again, are you?” Harry asked seriously. “I haven't forgotten the last time, you know. Standing on the Lodge's roof with the storm crashing around you, practically begging to be struck dead where you stood.”

“I survived, with no harm done to me,” Rivers said patiently. “I was merely attempting to replicate Monsieur Dalibard's 1752 experiment at Marly-la-Ville, wherein the electrical force of lightning would be transmitted through conductive rods into a Leyden jar. I'm sure I would have had true success, too, if only the storm had lasted another quarter hour.”

“And for what purpose?” Harry asked, raising his voice so that the other guests at the far end of the room turned to look their way. “So that you might be roasted to a cinder? You're a gentleman, Rivers, not some fiendish philosopher determined to make his mark before the Royal Society.”

“I'm a gentleman who likes to learn more of this world with the head that God gave me,” Rivers said firmly. “There is no harm to that, and possibly a great deal of good to be gained.”

Harry grumbled, unconvinced. “The harm could have come if you'd burned down the Lodge.”

“I would never do that,” Rivers said, “and you know it.”

He meant it, too, for he loved the Lodge far too dearly to put it at risk. Breconridge Park Lodge, known within the family more simply as the Lodge, had first been built as a modest hunting box over a century and a half before. The dukes of Breconridge had absorbed the land on which it stood into their holdings, and over the years had improved the once-humble lodge with sufficient modern amenities and Palladian touches to make it comfortably livable for much more than hunting.