A Duke Never Yields (8 page)

“Really, it’s the wonder of the world you haven’t found a husband yet,” said Alexandra.

“I never wanted one. Come, let’s explore.” She took Philip’s hand and led him across the great hall at a brisk trot, heading for the passageway at the other end.

“Slow! Slow!” said Philip, laughing, struggling to keep up.

“Hurry, hurry!” Abigail urged, and he broke into a run, filling the air with his giggles. From behind them came Lilibet’s voice, begging them to wait, but Abigail, full of delight and anticipation, had no intention of waiting. Her lungs drew in the damp, musty air; her mood lifted and soared into the ancient stone and wood of this extraordinary castle.

“
Abigail!
”

Abigail skidded to a stop and looked up.

A figure hovered before her in the shadows of the passageway, its white apron catching the feeble light from the hall with a preternatural glow.

“Hello there,” said Abigail. She kept Philip’s hand firmly within her own.

“
Buon giorno
,” the woman said, stepping forward. She wore a dress of homespun wool beneath her long apron, and her hair was covered by a plain white headscarf. She had pleasant features, deep-set and regular, and her dark eyes regarded them warily.

Alexandra came up next to Abigail and spoke briskly. “
Buon giorno
. Are you the owner?”

The woman allowed a smile and a modest shake of her head. A warm scent drifted in the air around her, as if she’d been baking bread all day. “No, no. I am the . . . what is the word? I keep the house. You are the English party?”

“Yes,” Alexandra said. “Yes, we are. You’re expecting us?”

Lilibet walked up and quietly took Philip’s hand from Abigail, leading him into the shelter of her arms.

“Oh yes,” said the woman. “We have much pleasure to see you. Though I think you are a day before? We are expecting you tomorrow. You like the castle?” She made a broad motion with her arm, indicating the vast emptiness of the great hall behind them, the hard sweep of the stone staircase to the right. Her face seemed to light with pride, as if a candle had been set aglow beneath her skin.

“Who could resist such an inviting scene?” said Alexandra.

“Is so long when the family is live here,” said the woman, with an expressive Italian shrug. “Is only me to keep the house.”

“Haven’t you any help?” asked Alexandra in horror.

“Oh, the maids, they stay in the village. They are not staying here, when there is no master. Is so lonely. Giacomo, he keeps the . . .” She rubbed her fingers together. “The earth?”

“The grounds,” said Alexandra. “He’s the groundskeeper. Very well. And what is your name, my good woman?”

The woman curtsied. “I am called Signorina Morini.”

Signorina Morini. Something about the words caused a little shiver to spread down the length of Abigail’s spine. Something about the woman herself, with her kind, almost lyric voice, the glow of her skin, the dance of her dark eyes. Something about the way the still, expectant air of the hall seemed to gather and lighten around her.

Here
. The mystery, it was
here
,
all bound up somehow in this woman’s serene presence, shadowed with the faint scent of baking bread.

Abigail burst out. “Oh, what a lovely name. I do so like Italian names. I’m Miss Harewood, signorina, and I think your castle is perfectly magnificent. Could you perhaps show us about?” She waved her hand at the staircase. “Are our rooms upstairs?”

“But yes, they are upstairs.” She frowned and cast her eyes about the great hall behind them. “But . . . the gentlemen? Where are the gentlemen?”

Alexandra went rigid. “The gentlemen? What about them?”

“Do you mean you were expecting us both?” asked Abigail, in excitement. Oh, this was better and better. “Signore Rosseti did it on purpose?”

Signorina Morini lifted her shoulders and spread out her hands, palms upward. “I only know there come three ladies, three gentlemen. They are not your husbands?”

“I should say not!” Alexandra snapped.

“Your brothers?”

Abigail laughed with delight. “Oh no. Not at all.”

Lilibet broke in. “It was all a great mistake. We understood . . . we thought we had taken out a year’s lease, but it appears the three gentlemen made a similar arrangement, and . . . perhaps you can find Signore Rosseti, and he can explain . . .”

Morini’s brow had furrowed in thought. She tilted her head to one side and pushed at a few strands of black hair that had escaped from her headscarf, looking as if she were attempting to solve a large and complicated puzzle. “I see, I see. Is very strange. The master, he is very careful, very particular. Is very strange mistake.” She straightened and clapped her hands. “But is good! Six English is very good! We have talk, laughter. The castle will be . . . transform.
Buon
. I will find your rooms.”

Morini turned with an air of unshakable purpose and headed for the staircase, homespun skirts swishing against her legs. She lifted her arm and summoned them to follow her.

Abigail leapt after her.

“But, my good woman!” Alexandra called out desperately. “What about servants? Has the place been readied for our arrival? Is there dinner?”

Signorina Morini, striding across the hall at a brisk pace, did not stop to answer. She turned her head and said, over her shoulder, “We are expecting you tomorrow. The servants, they arrive in the morning, from the village.”

“In the morning?” Alexandra demanded. “Do you mean there’s no dinner? Is nothing ready?”

“Where is Rosseti?” added Abigail.

“He is not here. I make all arrange. Come, come. Is growing late!” Morini had reached the staircase and was positively bounding up the stone steps, propelled by purpose.

Not here
, thought Abigail, leaping up after her in a surge of excitement.

Then where the devil
was
Rosseti?

*   *   *

T
he lantern cast a shimmering glow around the stable entrance, causing the very stones to move about in the walls.

Or so it seemed to Abigail.

For the first time, it occurred to her that it might perhaps not have been her cleverest notion, to steal out of a strange castle at midnight and across a courtyard to a building she had never before entered. One, moreover, that she suspected to contain ghosts and specters of all sorts, to say nothing of some eternal mystery that hovered just out of her brain’s perception.

But what else was she to do? She had clearly seen a light wobble across this courtyard from her bedroom window; she had clearly seen it enter the stable. If she meant to discover the source of the mystery, she might as well begin now. The thought of danger hadn’t entered her head. This was not a malevolent sort of mystery, she was sure. Mischievous, perhaps even tragic, but not cruel.

Still, she couldn’t deny the shiver that coursed down her body just now. And her body, Abigail knew, was seldom ever wrong.

She reached out and pushed open the stable door anyway.

She was, after all, Abigail.

“Who’s there?” someone snapped, in a loud and commanding voice.

Abigail felt her shoulders sag in relief. “Oh, it’s only you,” she said. “I might have known you’d be skulking about the stables at midnight.”

“I might have known you’d be doing the same, Miss Harewood.”

Abigail worked her way toward the pool of lantern light at the far corner of the space. Around her, the horses whickered in subdued welcome. “We seem to share the same habits, then. Is he settling in all right?”

“Quite all right.”

His shape was visible now, tall and dark, covered rather romantically by a long cloak. His face turned away from hers, toward the dark shape of Lucifer’s head, with its long white blaze gathering the feeble light.

“He was a very brave fellow tonight, weren’t you, my lad?” she said, stopping just short of them, breathing in the comforting scent of horses and hay. “Bore up like a trooper.”

“What are you doing here, Miss Harewood?” Wallingford asked with a sigh.

“I saw your lantern, heading for the stables. I wasn’t sure what it was.”

“So you decided to investigate? At midnight?” He turned at last. “In your nightgown?”

She shrugged and smiled. “Was I supposed to put on my stays and petticoats?”

“You’re a fool. It might have been anyone.”

“But it was you, after all. You’d never hurt me.”

He breathed steadily, one hand curling around Lucifer’s neck. “How do you know that?”

She shrugged again and hung her lantern on the hook, near his. “My instincts are never wrong. You’re full of bluster, Wallingford, but you have a kind heart.”

“A kind
heart
?” he asked, incredulous.

Abigail stepped forward and placed her hand on the other side of Lucifer’s neck, stroking him gently. “Look at you, here in the stables at midnight, checking on the horses.”

“Horses are one thing. People are another.” His tone was bitter.

She let his words sit there between them in the damp air. The strands of Lucifer’s mane, stiff and wiry, brushed against the back of her hand. She combed them thoughtfully with her fingers. “Do you feel it?” she asked, in a whisper.

“Feel what?”

“Around us.”

He paused. She felt his breath near her ear, warm and spreading, carrying the faint hint of the old wine they’d drunk at dinner. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Abigail couldn’t tell if he spoke the truth or not. There
had
been that pause, after all. “Don’t you think there’s something odd about this place?” she ventured.

“Yes. Damned odd. Starting with the fact that the three of you are here with us.”

“It’s fate, obviously. We’re meant to do something extraordinary together.”

“
Together
is out of the question.”

She turned and smiled. “You’re not still thinking about that silly wager, are you? Vows of monastic seclusion and all that? We’re civilized beings, after all. We can rub along quite well with one another. We sorted everything out so agreeably over dinner, after all.”

“That agreement is not meant to be permanent, Miss Harewood,” said the duke. “Only until Rosseti can be found, and our rights asserted.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Women in the east wing, men in the west. Why shouldn’t it go on all year, if we mind our language and manage to keep our laundry separate?”

He sputtered. “Because it’s impossible. Because three ladies and three gentlemen cannot go on in close proximity without . . .”

“Without what?”

“Without driving one another mad!” he burst out, stepping back and turning away.

“Oh! Are you talking about carnal urges? Because I do think . . .”

“Miss Harewood,” Wallingford said, into the stable floor, “I assure you, I don’t wish to hear your thoughts on the subject of carnal urges, at the moment.” He lifted his woolen hat, brushed his dark hair, and replaced the cap in an angry jerk.

“But why should it bother you? Why is it so necessary that we resist our natural inclinations?” Abigail asked. “Are you really so desperate to win your silly wager? I assure you, I don’t care two hoots . . .”

“Damn the wager! Damn the whole silly project! I must have been mad.” Wallingford leaned his forehead against the stable wall.

Lucifer gave a sympathetic whicker.

“Then why don’t you simply turn about and go home?”

“Can’t,” came Wallingford’s voice, from the stable wall. “Too late.”

“Too late for what?” Abigail scratched Lucifer’s forelock and gazed at the duke’s dark form against the wall, at the curious way his head bowed, as if in despair, exposing a sliver of his nape to the damp air of the stable. When he made no reply, she went on gently: “Why are
you
here, Wallingford? The last place in the world anyone would look for you. No comforts, no ceremony. Not even your valet.”

He said nothing.

Abigail said softly, “What are you hiding from, Your Grace?”

His hand formed a fist against the wall.

“My grandfather,” he said, very low. “Myself.”

She wasn’t sure she’d heard him properly. He had muttered the words into the wood, and they seemed quite unlike him, quite unlike what she expected from him. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“Of course you don’t. Innocent Miss Harewood.”

“That’s nonsense. I’m not innocent at all. I’ve told you all about my kissing adventures, and you don’t know the half of what I get up to when my sister’s not paying attention. I wager on horses, I sneak out for pints down the pub, I read the most shocking literature, I . . .”

He laughed and turned, crossing his arms, leaning against the wall. “Heinous crimes indeed.”

“I dress myself as a boy when I visit the racetrack. I might be arrested for that.”

Wallingford shook his head. “Go home, Miss Harewood. Go home and marry some suitable young chap, some pleasant smooth-cheeked fellow from a decent family. There are dozens of them about. I daresay you’d lead him around by the nose, and he’d never think of straying.”

“If you were as bad as you say, you wouldn’t have such scruples. You’d take me regardless and send me on my way.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“Why don’t you, then?”

“Because you
are
innocent. You’re impossibly innocent, the most innocent woman I’ve ever met. Because I’d like to think . . . the point of all this, you see . . .” He waved his hand, stood away from the wall, took a step or two down the stable aisle. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared into the darkness. “Just go.”

She rubbed Lucifer’s muzzle and wrapped her arm around his contented neck. His head dropped, resting on her shoulder. “What if I don’t want to go?”

Wallingford reached with his long woolen arm and took his lantern from the hook. He didn’t even look at her. “Then I’ll have to be disciplined enough for both of us,” he said. “Which is, I suppose, no more than I deserve.”

*   *   *

A
bigail stood for some time after he left, caressing Lucifer’s motionless head. Her eyes were closed. She was absorbing everything: the whisper of straw as the horses moved about, the creak of wood, the tiny currents of air in the humid chill, the rich horsey smell of Lucifer’s black coat. The tingling at the back of her head, curling the roots of her hair.