A Duke Never Yields (30 page)

His words trailed away. Outside the window, the geese honked indignantly, and an instant later Giacomo’s voice let loose a string of lyric Italian curses.

“The thing is, I love her. I love her so much, I can’t think, I can’t sleep. And you know how she is: She’s like a sprite, impossible to catch, and yet I must try, I
must
, because there’s no living without her.” He took a breath, and went on, more calmly, “If you know where she’s gone, Morini, whoever you are, you must tell me. Find a way to tell me. I’ll keep her safe, I swear it. I’ll devote my life to making her happy, because . . .”

The breeze gusted in, stronger now, making the teakettle swing above the embers of the fire with a little rhythmic squeak.

“Because she’s my last hope.”

His words bounced lightly from the walls. The scent of the cooling bread tantalized his hungry belly, reminding him that it was an hour past luncheon, and he was talking sentimental rubbish to an empty room, like a madman.

He turned on his heel and walked out the door, down the stone hallway, to where a lunch was laid out on the massive dining room table, set for one.

*   *   *

W
allingford had just finished an excellent artichoke tart and a glass of wine when the door opened and a maid slipped into the room, straightening her headscarf nervously and not quite meeting his gaze.

“Maria, isn’t it?” he said, grateful for even a trace of human contact.

“
Si
, Signore Duca.” She made a little curtsy and held out her hand. “A note, signore.”

His heart crashed against his ribs. “Thank you, Maria.”

He unfolded the note with care, because he didn’t want his shaking fingers to be noticed by Maria, who stood still by the doorway as if waiting for a reply.

He read the note with care, because the handwriting was difficult to decipher, and the words themselves had an odd syntax, as if the writer were not a native speaker of the English tongue.

He refolded the note with care, because he knew he would have need of its details again, and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.

“Thank you, Maria.” He folded his napkin and rose from the table. “It appears I shall be leaving the castle within the hour. Would you please send a message to the stables, that my horse should be saddled and ready. And Maria?”

“
Si
, signore?” The maid looked a little panicked, as if she hadn’t quite understood his every word.

“Give Signorina Morini my best compliments, and assure her that the Duke of Wallingford will endeavor not to disappoint her.”

SEVENTEEN

Borghese Gardens, Rome

A
bigail handed her sister the wide leather-trimmed goggles and helped her to ease them around her head, atop her billowing white scarf. “This is so thrilling,” she said, tightening the buckle. “I want you to know, I’ve laid twenty lire on you with the chap running the book at the hotel café.”

“Where the devil did you find twenty lire? Really, Finn,” Alexandra said, to the man hovering over the bonnet of the automobile, “that’s quite enough. These men are really most frightfully competent. You should see to your own machine.”

Mr. Burke straightened. He looked terribly dashing, Abigail thought, so very tall, with his long duster coat swirling about his legs and his peaked driving cap shadowing his creased forehead. His own goggles hung about his neck, and a light sheen of perspiration shone on his temples. From the heat, no doubt, which hung like a sticky wool blanket against the skin, but also from worry: Mr. Burke, Abigail gathered, was not particularly happy to see his beloved Alexandra competing in a motor-race against him and his beloved automobile.

Abigail glanced at William Hartley, the owner of their own machine and a nephew of the late Lord Morley. He lounged against the side, his belly resting comfortably against the gleaming metal, a foot shorter and a foot rounder than his ginger-haired rival.

Really, there was no comparison.

“You’re certain of the course?” Mr. Burke asked, in a disapproving growl that reminded Abigail exactly of his nephew.

“Perfectly,” said Alexandra. “Around the gardens, down to the Colosseum, back up to the gardens. I tracked it yesterday. And it’s marked.”

Mr. Burke stared at her a second or two longer, and Abigail thought she could feel the very air throb between the two of them.

“Be safe,” he said.

“And you,” whispered Alexandra.

He turned and walked to his motor-car, circling it with attentive care. Abigail watched him tenderly for a moment, thinking how his stern profile reminded her of Wallingford, and so great was her sense of Wallingford’s essence that the sound of his familiar voice did not, for a fraction of an instant, surprise her.

“Lady Morley.”

A shadow loomed on the gleaming metal of Alexandra’s steam automobile.

Abigail whipped around. “Good God! Wallingford!”

“Wallingford!” Alexandra exclaimed. “What on earth?”

He stood there glowering at her from his magnificent height: Wallingford, unmistakably Wallingford, right here next to her in the middle of the hot Roman morning, wearing a light gray suit and straw boater. The sunlight flashed in his dark eyes, revealing the blue in them. Abigail’s heart soared straight upward, as if some invisible weight had lifted away from her chest. She opened her mouth and couldn’t speak.

“You might have told me where you were going, you silly fools,” he said.

“And why is that, exactly?” demanded Alexandra.

He glanced at her. “Because I woke up four days ago to find myself the only damned resident in the castle, and the entire pile gone silent, without a word of news from anyone, and . . .”

Abigail found her voice at last. “I’m so terribly sorry. How were the goats?”

Wallingford returned his gaze to her and spoke between his clenched lips. “I don’t give a damn about the goats.”

“Such language, Your Grace!” said Alexandra. “In front of Miss Harewood! I’m shocked. Shocked and appalled. Moreover, I’ve a race that begins in”—Alexandra consulted her watch—“five minutes, and I beg leave to point out that you’re a most unwelcome obstruction.”

Wallingford started. “You’re
driving
?
In the
race
?”

“Certainly I am.”

He turned to Abigail. His eyes were wide with shock. “But you can’t simply leave your sister alone in a crowd of . . . of
Italians
!”

“Of course not. Mr. Hartley will protect her from any insult.”

Abigail looked again at William Hartley. He stood now a few diffident yards away, hat in hand, scratching his ear, mechanics idling at his side. He seemed to hear his name, for he looked over at them, replaced his hat, and worked his jowls.

Wallingford stared, too. He turned back to Alexandra. “You’re not serious.”

“Well, watch her yourself, then. Though I’d be more concerned for the poor Roman fellow who dared to accost her. Mr. Hartley!”

He straightened. “Yes, your ladyship?”

“I believe it’s time. Is the steam up?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said one of the mechanics. “Full steam. She’s ready to go.”

As he spoke, a loud noise like a pistol shot cracked through the air, and Abigail found herself flung to the grass, with Wallingford’s heavy body covering her own.

*   *   *

O
h!” said Abigail faintly. “Has the Prime Minister been assassinated?”

Wallingford’s cheek lay against hers. He wanted to keep it there, but lifted his head instead. He saw first the hard rubber of the automobile tire near his nose, and then, farther up, the inquisitive face of Lady Morley.

“No,” her ladyship said cheerfully. “Only a bit of an explosion, it seems. These dashed petrol engines.”

Abigail lay quite still beneath Wallingford. He looked down at her squashed hat and her chestnut hair, covering her face.

“Are you all right?” he asked desperately.

She stirred, and he gave way with an odd reluctance. Even with a few thousand people in attendance, and the threat of further catastrophic engine explosions, he had rather enjoyed the feel of her warm body beneath him once more. “An explosion, you say? Where?”

“Over there, I suspect,” said Alexandra, pointing. “The one with the blood all over the bonnet. The poor fellow.”

Wallingford followed Alexandra’s pointing finger. He considered himself a man of strong stomach, of sound British phlegm, but this sight before him—swarming already with doctors and stretchers and bandage rolls—made his belly go strangely sickish. He put his hand on one side of Alexandra’s automobile and studied his fingers as the sweating minutes ticked away. Was it his imagination, or had his skin gone rather green?

“Oh, right-ho! Jolly lurid,” Abigail was saying. “Is that his arm?”

“Damned hand cranks on these petrol engines,” Alexandra said, with a knowing shake of her head. “Those petrol automobiles. Nuisances, the lot of them.”

Burke wandered over, his hair showing in a bright ginger line underneath his cap. “Everyone all right?” He saw Wallingford and started. “What the devil are you doing here, old man?”

“The same as you, I expect.” Wallingford nodded at the sisters, whose crisp white dresses nearly blinded the eye in the Roman sunshine. “Are you certain this is quite all right?”

“Wallingford, old fellow,” Burke said, “if you can find a way to stop them, you’re a better man than I am.”

The doctors arrived with a stretcher, and with surprising efficiency they had bandaged up the compound fracture and the dislocated jaw, and mopped up the blood from the bonnet. Wallingford tried to maneuver himself next to Abigail, but she and Alexandra had their heads together, chattering in that altogether intimidating feminine way, and Burke drew him aside to discuss the cause of the explosion, and the superiority of the electric engine in safety and performance and overall smell.

Wallingford looked again at the gory scene, at the ten or more automobiles lined up at the start, at Lady Morley in her goggles and her white scarf, and finally at Phineas Burke. “Look here. You’ll be all right, won’t you? It seems to me like a dashed dangerous business.”

“I’ll be all right.” Burke glanced at Lady Morley. “But I’ll tell you, Wallingford, I rather wish the next hour or so were over with.”

“Hmm.”

Burke checked his watch and began to circle around his own machine. “Looks as if they’ve got things cleaned up, anyway. We’ll be starting soon.”

Wallingford followed him and leaned against the doorframe as he climbed into the seat. “Anything I can do for you, old man?”

“Just keep an eye out, won’t you? If something happens, if she finds herself in trouble . . .” Burke looked down at the steering tiller, as if checking the mechanism.

“Done,” said Wallingford. A cheer rippled across the assembled crowd, as the stretcher was hoisted up and the injured man carried off. “You mean to marry her, don’t you?” he asked quietly.

“If she’ll have me.” Burke gazed forward, both hands on the tiller, leather gloves glowing dully in the sunshine. “And what about you?”

“If she’ll have me.”

Burke laughed and shook his head. “By God, that’s the last time I’ll answer a newspaper advertisement.”

The drivers were once more climbing into their seats, the petrol engines cranking to life. Wallingford stepped away. “Good luck, old man.”

“And you, by God. And you.”

Wallingford went around the back of Burke’s machine and grasped Abigail firmly around the arm. She looked up in surprise.

“
You
, Miss Harewood,” he said, in the commanding voice he knew she loved, “are coming with me.”

“Oh! Where?” Her eyes sparkled, as if she expected him to say
to my room
, or
to a nearby bawdy-house
.

“Out of harm’s way,” he growled.

She stepped back with him willingly enough, into the crowd of spectators. The sultry smell of petrol exhaust drifted through the air. All the hundreds of throats had ceased moving; all eyes were on the starter, who stood at the end of the line, consulting his watch, his pistol raised.

“That’s a jolly fine pistol,” Abigail whispered in his ear. “Do you suppose it’s actually loaded?”

The starter looked up and down the line. The very air had gone utterly still. Not a sound, except for the roar of the engines; not a movement, except for the starter swiveling his head, watching the automobiles with his keen eyes. Inches away, Abigail’s body seethed beneath its layers of ladylike white chiffon. Her gloved hand slipped into his.

A puff of smoke came from the end of the pistol, and an instant later a bang shattered the air.

Alexandra’s car lunged ahead, matched Burke for a second or two, and then passed him. The ends of her white scarf fluttered in the backdraft, and the last Wallingford saw of her was the wide smile splitting her face in two.

“She’s ahead!” Abigail squeezed his hand like a nutcracker. “She’s ahead! Oh, hold me up, so I can see!”

What else could he do? He put his hands around her trim rib cage and hoisted her upward. “There they go! She’s ahead, she’s going around the corner, there’s Mr. Burke chasing her, and oh!
Oh!
”

“What is it?” Wallingford could see nothing but white chiffon.

“Some chap’s lost his tiller! Good God! Oh, watch out!” She gave a delicious shudder and slid down in his arms. “Directly into a fruit stand. Bananas, I believe.”

Bananas
. Wallingford closed his eyes and inhaled her, sweet, living Abigail, just before she stepped away with a laugh.

“Well, that’s that, I suppose! When are they expected at the finish line?”

Wallingford consulted his watch, as if that would give him the answer. “Burke said something about an hour.” He felt a little dizzy, not quite himself. The old Abigail had returned, lighthearted and charming, inserting herself willingly between his two hands, as if the night in the boathouse had never occurred. It couldn’t possibly be this easy.

Could it?

He took her by the shoulder and turned her toward him. “Abigail, I . . .”

“There you are, Miss Harewood!” A portly gentleman appeared next to them, standing a good deal too close: the same gentleman who had been hanging about Lady Morley’s automobile before the start. He stuck his thumbs cheerfully into his waistcoat pockets. “Lady Morley asked me to keep a bit of an eye on you, during the race.”