A Duke Never Yields (35 page)

His hand snared her arm. “Calm down, Abigail.”

“I
am
calm!”

“You’re completely overwrought.”

“This is important, Wallingford.”

He kissed her shoulder. “
This
is important. And this.” He kissed her neck.

“You don’t understand,” she said, but she allowed him to draw her backward into the sheets.

“It can wait a half hour, Abigail. The coffee’s on its way. You can’t go anywhere without breakfast, can you? You need your strength.” He was above her now, kissing her ravenously.

“My things . . .”

“I’ll have the maid pack your things. The chap downstairs will arrange the cab and the train.”

“You don’t understand.” Oh, his languorous lips, his caressing fingers. She couldn’t think, could hardly remember what was so important. How did he do that to her?

Something about the note. What had she read, at the end?
Before the . . .
Before the what?

“Be easy, sweetheart. We’ve all the time in the world. Let me into you, let me make love to you again.” He nudged at her, stiff and gentle all at once, making her swollen parts sting and her thoughts swim into delirium. “I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”

She opened her legs and put her arms around his neck. “Five minutes. No more.”

Thirty minutes later

A
bigail.”

She moved her head.

“Abigail, sweetheart. Your coffee.”

“Hmm?” She lifted her head. A curtain of hair fell away from her eyes, revealing Wallingford, who stood by the bed in a dressing robe, holding a steaming cup and grinning ear-to-ear with an unmistakable expression of male satisfaction.

“Oh.” She scrambled up and took the cup. Something nudged at the back of her mind, some important reminder, lost in a frenzy of tangled limbs and Wallingford’s driving body and . . . and the headboard . . .

Oh, God. The headboard.

“I’ve checked with the fellow at the desk,” Wallingford was saying calmly, quite as if he hadn’t just made her scream with ecstasy up against the headboard of a substantial Italian bed, with the morning sunlight streaming through the window and her hands pinned against the wall. “There’s a train leaving in an hour. Someone’s packing up your room right now. You can wash and . . .”

Train. Siena. The note.

“Oh!” She scrabbled around the sheets. “The note! Where is it?”

“Right here. What’s the matter? You’re as jumpy as a hare.”

She snatched the note from his fingers.

. . . ottomobil . . . faithful love . . . Monteverdi . . .

There it was.

She has the instruction for the Signorina Abigail, before the first full moon after the Midsummer.

Morini.

“Good God!” Of course! What had Morini said, that day in the kitchen? Something about a midsummer moon. The end of midsummer. Abigail’s mind stumbled over itself, racing with calculations. How many days since Midsummer’s Eve? How full had the moon been that night?

“What’s the matter?”

“The
moon
! When’s the next full moon?”

He blinked. “The moon?”

“Moon! Glowing orb in the night sky!” She shook the paper.

“Oh, do you mean that odd bit in the note, at the end? I don’t know. Another day or two, I suppose.” He shrugged and picked up the newspaper on the coffee tray.

Abigail’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank heaven. Then we still have time.” She eased her aching limbs out of bed and looked down. “Good God! The sheets!”

Wallingford glanced over from the newspaper and laughed. “That should give the laundry maids something to gossip about.”

“You’re so terribly amusing. You forget I’m an unmarried woman.”

“Well, whose fault is that?” He brushed her cheek and nodded at a door across the room. “There’s a bathroom en suite, if you’d like to wash. Your clothes will be here any moment.”

“Thank you.” She felt suddenly shy, standing there naked, conversing with Wallingford about baths and laundry.

He must have seen her consternation. He leaned over and kissed her head. “Shall I join you?”

“No, thank you. I can manage.”

His thumb brushed her cheek again. “You’re safe from insult, you know. If anyone says a word against you . . .”

She tilted her chin. “It’s my choice, Wallingford. I am quite prepared for the consequences.”

“There’s my girl.”

She kissed him and went to the bathroom. She scrubbed herself thoroughly in the enormous white enamel tub, until the steam rose from her very pores to cover the mirrors, and then she skipped back out into the bedroom, wrapped in a thick Turkish towel.

“Oh, it was divine!” she exclaimed.

“Was it? You
look
divine, all pink and clean. My turn, then.” He kissed her, tossed the newspaper on the bed, and strode for the bathroom door, from which a thin vapor of steam still escaped. Just before his hand reached the knob, he turned his head over his shoulder. “Oh, and I was mistaken about the moon.”

She choked on her coffee. “What’s that?”

“I checked in the paper. The full moon’s tonight.”

TWENTY

T
he dun stone walls of the Convento di San Giusto glowed gold in the late afternoon sun, crowned with familiar crumbling red tile. It looked no different from its neighbors, all of them clustered cheek by dusty jowl in a narrow street near the cathedral.

“You’re certain this is the place?” Wallingford asked the driver.

“
Che cosa?
” asked the man, addressing Abigail. She translated quickly, and he nodded with vigor. “
Si, si. Il convento, signorina
.”

“He says this is it.” She looked at Wallingford. His face was damp and slightly flushed beneath his straw hat; the July sun beat down without mercy on the black roof of the cab they’d hired from the train station. Both windows were open, but the breeze drifted through them like the draft from an oven. “You’ll wait outside for me, won’t you?”

“The devil I will. I’m going in with you.”

She made a little snort of laughter. “Wallingford, my dear, it’s a convent. They’re not going to
let
you inside. Foxes and henhouses and all that.”

“We’ll see about that.” He prepared to rise. “I’m not going to allow you behind some locked cloister gate to cavort with bloody
ghosts
, Abigail. Not without some sort of protection.”

“Have you ever met a nun, Wallingford?”

He paused. “Not a real one.”

“Then you’ve no idea. Your vicious despot is nothing compared to an abbess defending her flock. You might be the Emperor of Wallingford, and it would make no difference at all. They won’t let you in. Besides,” she added, rising from her seat, “there’s eternal damnation to consider.”

He grumbled something about eternal damnation and his arse, and jumped up to help her out of the cab. “I’ll be waiting right here,” he said.

“I won’t be long. I only need to speak with her.”

“I don’t see why. I don’t see how some woman of three hundred years ago has anything to do with you, or us, or my damned ancestor. It all sounds like an elaborate hoax.” He folded his arms and stared down at her, willing her to challenge him.

Should she have told him the story, after all? But what choice did she have? On the train to Siena, before she had fallen into a dramatic and exhausted sleep on Wallingford’s shoulder, he had demanded to know what errand could possibly be important enough to roust them both out of a perfectly satisfactory bed of sin. There was no resisting him. She had sketched out the history of the castle and the curse of the long-ago Monteverdi family. At the mention of the English lord, he had turned pale.
Next you’re going to tell me his name was Copperbridge
, he’d blurted out, and Abigail had searched her memory and said
Copperbridge! That’s it exactly!

He had told her, with reluctance, about his grandfather owning the castle, and the revelation had flashed in her brain like an illuminating light.

Is destiny
, Morini had said.

The cathedral bell tolled the quarter hour with a slow and dignified clang. Abigail looked up at Wallingford’s grim face. “Think about Giacomo and Morini. Think about your grandfather owning the castle.”

“Some natural explanation, I’m sure. Some trick of Olympia’s, the old scoundrel, God knows why. To marry me off somehow.”

She put her hand on his arm. “Don’t try to talk me out of this. Just let me see if she’s there, if it’s really her. What’s the harm?”

“All sorts of possibilities come to mind,” he said darkly.

“They’re not going to recruit me, if that’s what has you worried.” Abigail went up on her toes and kissed his cheek. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“Oh, right-ho. My worries have flown.”

“I promise to be back in an hour. Will that suffice?”

“At least let me see you to the gates.” He took her arm in a proprietary gesture.

They walked to the thick wooden door, which interrupted the flow of stone like the portal of a medieval fortress, topped by a grille of old iron. Wallingford lifted the knocker and let it fall with a crash.

“Salubrious sort of place, isn’t it?” he observed, peering through the grille.

There was no sound from within. Wallingford crashed the knocker again, three good knocks this time. “Hello!” he called through the door. “
Buon giorno!
”

“Anything?” Abigail asked, rising on her toes to look through the grille. She could not quite get enough height.

“Nothing. That’s that, then. Shall we head off to the piazza and find ices? Dashed warm day.” He turned away and took her arm.

“Don’t be silly. All this way and all this trouble for nothing?” She nudged him aside and slammed the knocker against its plate, sending the echo of outraged metal down the street and into the courtyards beyond. “
Buon giorno!
” she called, with equal strength.

“
Si, si!
” came a voice from beyond the grille.

“Someone’s coming!” Abigail hissed at Wallingford.

He glowered at the door. “Evidently.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” said a peevish voice, making the iron bars of the grille bend with its shrillness.

“You speak English!” Abigail said in astonishment.

“
Si, si
, I speak the English.” A pair of bright black eyes appeared with unnerving abruptness in the center of the grille. “We have no visitor.”

“Oh, we’re not visitors,” said Abigail.

“We’re not?” said Wallingford.

She stuck her elbow firmly in his ribs. “We’re pilgrims, of a sort. We have come to . . . to pay our respects to the . . . the holy Signorina Monteverdi.”

“Suor Leonora!”

Hope burst to life in Abigail’s breast. She was here! “Yes! Suor Leonora. We have . . .”—her mind raced—“. . . we have heard of her . . . her holy goodness. We wish to . . . to pray with her.” Abigail cast down her eyes with what she hoped was a look of piety.

“Quite,” said Wallingford. His six feet two inches of muscled limbs and black hair looked anything but pious.

“This, you cannot. Suor Leonora, she is in seclusion. Good day.” The eyes disappeared.

“Wait! We have traveled very far!” called Abigail.

“The Lord God will remember you for it.”

“We have a message for her!”

“You write her a letter.” The voice grew fainter.

“It’s urgent! It’s . . . it’s from Lord Copperbridge!” Abigail said desperately.

No answer.

Abigail rose up and strained against the grille. A faint sound of tinkling water seemed to drift in the air.

Wallingford put his hand to her back and spoke softly. “I suppose that’s it, then.”

The door jerked open without warning.

“Oh!” Abigail staggered forward.

A woman stood before her in a loose black habit, her face creased and sharp. The air whooshed through the doorway around her with welcome coolness. “You come inside.”

“Oh, thank you,
sorella!”
Abigail said. Wallingford’s arm closed protectively around hers.

The woman pointed a bony finger in the center of the duke’s broad chest. “You stay.”

“This lady is my wife. I will not leave her side.” Wallingford’s voice rang with the full force of ducal authority.

The woman’s finger did not budge. “She is not your wife. You stay.”

Wallingford looked down at the finger, and then at Abigail’s face. She shrugged. “I
did
warn you. Now you’ll have to do penance, of course.”

“For what?”

“For lying to a nun.”

She swept past him and followed the woman into the courtyard.

*   *   *

T
he corridor was so dark, Abigail could scarcely see the nun as she followed her down the flagstones. Only the thin white line of her wimple bounced in the blackness.

Had the full moon risen yet? Surely not. Didn’t full moons rise around sunset? Several hours away, at least. And perhaps it wasn’t even moonrise at all. Perhaps they had until the full moon set to . . .

To do what?

The floor was hard and cold beneath the thin soles of Abigail’s shoes. The nun turned a corner before her, disappearing for an instant, and Abigail rushed to follow. A faint glow appeared at the end of the new hallway: an open door, perhaps? A rush of warmth brushed her cheek, like the air outside.

Abigail’s heart beat furiously in her chest, making her blood feel light and unsteady in her veins. Be sensible, she thought. Be patient. There was no danger, no crisis. Whatever this instruction from Signorina Monteverdi—if indeed this
was
that unfortunate lady, by some occult miracle—they would not be struck down by some avenging bolt of lightning, surely, if Abigail failed to carry it out. If Leonora chose to ask the impossible. If they were already too late for whatever she asked.

The curse, if it really existed, was three hundred years old. Why should she, of all people, be chosen to break it? The idea was ludicrous. Only curiosity drove her now.

But why, then, did this feeling of unease shadow her pounding heart?