A Duke Never Yields (23 page)

He was not capable of speech. He muttered something, some endearment, and kissed her forehead. At least that way he was safe from her penetrating eyes, her beseeching eyes.

She whispered, “You know I am untouched, Wallingford. With my whole heart, I want you to be the first man to lie with me. Won’t you give that to me?”

When he could speak at last, his voice was a husk of itself. “Not the first man, Abigail.” He kissed her again. “The only man.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I’ll say whatever I damned well please, Miss Harewood. I haven’t denied myself the pleasure of your bed all these months only to pounce on you at the end of some village bacchanal . . .”

“When, then?”

“On our wedding night, by God!” he thundered.

“Our
what
?” She jumped away.

“Our wedding night! Don’t look so surprised. You can’t tell me it hasn’t crossed your mind.” Even as he said this, a smug little voice at the back of Wallingford’s brain informed him that he had possibly just made the most bloody balls-up of a marriage proposal in the entire history of romantic love.

Wallingford blamed Abigail, of course. The woman could drive the Black bloody Prince to unchivalrous acts.

“Of course it hasn’t crossed my mind! Not for an instant! What the devil are you thinking, Wallingford? I’d make the worst duchess in the world. I’d embarrass you nightly. I’d have the whole damned aristocracy in ruins by Christmas!”

“For God’s sake, Abigail, I’ve just offered you
marriage
!”

“And I’ve offered you my
innocence
!”

“It ought to be the same thing!”

“You mean on
my
side! On yours, the story is very different, isn’t it?”

He threw up his hands. “I thought my debauched carnal history was all to the good, in your calculus! The more experience, the better, you said!”

“It is! I don’t care how many women you’ve slept with. It’s
you
who must marry a virgin, isn’t it? And if it weren’t for my virginity, that tiny bit of membrane that means so deuced much to you fools, you’d never have thought of marriage. You’d have bedded me long ago, and probably quite forgotten me by now.”

A fine spray of fury fogged over Wallingford’s vision, making Abigail’s blazing face, her agonized eyes, blur and fade before him.

“How could I possibly forget you, Abigail,” he said, between his closed teeth, “when you and your bloody women
refuse to go away
?”

A vast silence spilled out between them, like the breaching of a dam. From the vineyards up above them came a faint Italian voice, singing down through the trees. Someone answered, laughing.

“Oh!” Abigail said at last. She stamped her foot and opened her mouth to deliver some scathing retort in the classic Abigailian manner, but nothing came out. “Oh!” she said again, in frustration, and turned to her right and stomped three hard paces down the path toward the castle.

Then she stopped and whipped around. Before his horrified eyes, she stomped back, kicked over the picnic basket, and marched off with her sharp elfin chin leading the way.

*   *   *

H
e is an ass, Morini! A colossal ass, just as I always knew.” Abigail stuck another feather on her mask with a fury usually reserved for defending one’s homeland from attack by barbarian raiders.

“What is this ass, signorina?” asked Morini serenely.

“An ass, Morini. Like a donkey. A burro.”

“Signore Duca is a donkey?” The housekeeper looked astonished.

“In a manner of speaking, yes. I mean, he has behaved like a donkey. A stubborn”—she stuck on another vengeful feather—“witless”—she pounded it in place with her fist—“ill-mannered donkey.”

“He has offended you?”

“
Yes
, he has offended me! He has offered me
marriage
!” Abigail said, as she might say
offered me a rancid cheese
.

Morini clasped her floured hands together, setting the maids to coughing. “But this is wonderful news! Wonderful! We are breaking the curse at last!”

Abigail set the finished mask aside to dry and reached for another. She was sitting at the kitchen table, attempting the impossible task of decorating the rest of the masks before the celebration began at eight o’clock, while Morini and the maids were preparing the food. “We are not breaking the curse,” she said, examining the new mask. Sequins, she thought. She was growing weary of feathers. “As I’ve told you daily, Morini,
daily
, your curses have nothing to do with the . . . the friendship between Wallingford and myself. That is quite separate. We are to concentrate on the others, who mercifully are falling into such appalling extremes of love that even a thousand scoundrelly Englishmen should be redeemed by them. I fancy tonight’s celebration should just about do the trick.”

“But you and the duke, signorina! Is so romantic. He love you so.” Morini kneaded the bread, eyes closed in romantic contemplation.

“I assure you, Morini, as I believe I’ve assured you before, Wallingford is the last man in the world to rely upon for faithful love. I’m terribly fond of him, of course, and wish to God he would renounce this ridiculous vow of chastity for
one
night at least . . .”

A sigh came from Francesca, and Abigail cast a sharp look at her. Evidently the young woman’s command of English was growing.

“. . . and I do believe he has a great deal of good in him, good intentions in any case, but I . . .” Abigail’s voice trailed off. The sequins blurred in a glittering collage before her eyes. Again, that magical night intruded in her mind, that night of the peach orchard, when she had seen him at last, had caught a glimpse of his precious soul. They had been so perfectly close in those hours on the lakeshore, wrapped together in blankets and moonlight, and while they had spent every afternoon together since, and often mornings as well, talking and studying and laughing, they had never quite replaced that sense of physical connection, that melting together of two bodies into a single and beautiful whole. And oh, God! How she longed for it! She lay awake longing in her bed every night, and every night the tears started from her eyes with the force of her desire for him. Not just the act of sexual union, which was still rather vague and unreal in her imagination, but the closeness to him, the oneness. He would never be her faithful lover. He wasn’t made for it, any more than a stallion was made for faithful love, but she could at least have that moment of flawless union once more.

If only Wallingford would allow it.

“He love you so,” Morini said again, pounding at her dough.

Abigail stood up. “These are far too many masks for me to manage by myself,” she said. “I believe I shall find the others and ask them to help.”

Morini’s voice called after her. “Signorina! You are not forgetting the plans for tonight?”

“I assure you, Morini,” said Abigail, hand on the kitchen door, “I shall remain your loyal accomplice. For the others, mind you, and not myself.”

“Of course, signorina.” Morini turned back to her dough. “For the others.”

THIRTEEN

H
e was an ass.

“I am an ass, Lucifer,” Wallingford said aloud.

To the horse’s credit, he didn’t snort in agreement. Instead he radiated a sort of man-to-man understanding as he ambled down the road to the village, as if to say,
Don’t worry, mate, we’re all asses when it comes to women
.

Or perhaps that was only Wallingford’s imagination. The horse
had
had his stones removed at the tender age of thirteen months, after all.

For a brief mad instant, Wallingford almost envied him.

“But for God’s sake! She
did
react rather unreasonably. I
did
offer her marriage. Duchess of Wallingford, by God! A duchess of Great Britain, which is rather more substantial than your empty European titles, godless chaps who haven’t any notion of primogeniture, princes and dukes littering the streets like shopkeepers.”

A man came ambling up the road, leading a goat, footsteps sounding crisply on the beaten dirt. Wallingford squared his shoulders, as befitted a duke of Great Britain, and nodded gravely at man and beast. “
Buon giorno
,” he added, at the last instant.

“
Buon giorno, Signore Duca
,” said the man, tipping his hat.

Maa
, said the goat.

“I suppose I shall have to apologize, and that rubbish,” Wallingford went on, when the fellow was safely out of earshot. “Women expect that sort of thing, or so I’m told. By God! Do you know, Lucifer, I don’t believe I’ve ever apologized to a woman before, except for the odd bit of language, which don’t signify. Perhaps that’s been my trouble all along.”

Wallingford knew, of course, that this was only the tip of the iceberg of his trouble: an entire mountain of arrogance and entitlement at which to chip away, piece by piece, until he became a decent human being. “Which is why I can’t afford to chase her off,” he said aloud. “She’s the only one willing to arm herself with the necessary pickax to do the job properly.”

The road began to curve, tracking back along the hillside, and a pair of rabbits made a flustered run for cover as Lucifer trotted into view. Beneath Wallingford’s hat, a trickle of sweat ran toward his ear, emerging just at the point of his jaw. “I shall have to learn to control my tongue better, among other things,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. God knows, if they
had
left, if I didn’t wake up every morning knowing she was near, I’d . . . I’d . . . well, I wouldn’t be the same man. She takes my breath away, old boy. I don’t mind saying it to
you
. Takes my breath away at times, with that innocence, my God. And I don’t mean her physical innocence; it’s the way she sees the world. The way she sees
me
.” He paused and added, in an almost embarrassed mutter, “The trueness of her.”

He heard his own words fade away in the air, and gave his head a rueful shake. What banal sentiment, and from him! The Duke of Wallingford! Well, but there it was. He supposed it served him right, after all the women he’d made miserable over the years. Comeuppance, that was the word.

When he reached the village, he made straight for the house of his man of business, the only retainer he had allowed to follow him to Italy. In the early days of his occupation, Wallingford had gone here nearly every day; all his business correspondence was forwarded here, and he preferred, even in his absence, to keep a close watch on the estate he had worked so hard to recover from the excesses and mismanagement of his father’s tenure. Now, as he strode through the door, he was struck by the expression of surprise on his agent’s face.

“Your Grace!” he exclaimed, rising from his desk.

“No need,” said Wallingford, waving him down. “I’m only here for a short while, as it happens. Anything critical needing my review?”

“Why, no, Your Grace. All is in order. I received the papers you sent back yesterday. Have you any further instructions for me?”

“As it happens, Beveridge, I do.” Wallingford removed his hat and set it upon a corner of the desk, together with his gloves. “I have asked a young lady to marry me, and I should like all the necessary contracts to be drawn up, pro forma, to forward the happy event as expeditiously as possible, should I prove so fortunate as to receive the honor of her acceptance.”

The agent’s jaw swung into his necktie. “Straightaway, Your Grace.”

An hour later, having mastered a solid grasp of the fundamentals of British and Italian marriage law, and feeling an immense self-satisfaction at the size of the settlements he, in his unbounded generosity, was prepared to provide his heedless elf, Wallingford was on his way home, and rounding the first switchback almost directly into the path of Lord Roland Penhallow.

“What ho!” said his brother, sheering his horse to the right.

“Good God!” exclaimed Wallingford, sheering left.

The horses, who had better sense, managed to disentangle themselves without injury. Wallingford, however, was rather cross. “You ought to have turned to your left,” he said.

“I say, old man, we
are
on the Continent now, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“One doesn’t need to adopt vulgar customs, simply because one finds oneself in an uncivilized corner of the globe.”

“I daresay not, unless one’s keen to avoid collisions on the road, in which case it’s rather dismally essential.” Lord Roland flicked at an insect with his riding crop.

“Only if one happens to encounter one’s harebrained brother along the road in question. Which brings me conveniently to the point: What the devil are you doing here? Business in the village?”

Lord Roland tilted his head to the sky, as if considering the weather. He had gathered the reins in one hand, and the other lay gloved upon his thigh while the horse danced underneath him. “You’ll never believe this, old man, but I came out after you.”

“After me?” A jolt of alarm hit Wallingford’s gut. “Nothing’s happened, has it?”

“Happened? At the Castel sant’Agata? You must have the wrong century, brother.” Roland laughed his easy laugh and turned the horse around, back up the road. “I’ll ride along with you, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

The sun beat against Wallingford’s hat as they traveled, making his hair simmer underneath the woven straw. Not a single thread of wind made its way along the hillside, as if the entire broad valley were holding its breath, waiting for the exact instant of the solstice. Wallingford glanced up at the sky, just as Roland had, and laughed.

“Something amuses you?”

“I was only thinking,” said Wallingford.

“Egad, old man. You had me frightened. For an instant, I thought you said
thinking
.” Roland swatted at another insect, perilously near Wallingford’s left hand.

“Ass. What I meant to say was this: The last time we were riding along like this, it was March, and we were making our way to the damned castle with the drizzle and the mud and the wretched ladies underfoot, and now look.” Wallingford gave a sweeping nod of his head to indicate the changed state of affairs, from weather to landscape to ladies underfoot.