Bellissima (2 page)

“Quite right. Quite right,” Grimond said as they reached the lowest level of the house and stepped through into the kitchen. “I don’t know what we’d do without your good sense, Mrs. Rollins.”

Jane glanced back at him, forcing another small smile. “No doubt you could keep the household running smoothly without me, Mr. Grimond.”

The old fool straightened as much as he could and took the accolade with a regal tip of his head.

“Not at all. Not at all,” replied, but the way he surveyed the room, head tilted so he looked down his crooked nose, gave lie to his words. “Lizzie,” he called to one of the kitchen maids. “Have you put the water on to boil in Mrs. Rollins’s room? She’s ready for it.”

“Oh no, Mr. Grimond.” Lizzie looked flustered, and who could blame her? It was a full half an hour before Jane usually retired to her parlor for her afternoon break. “I’ll do it right away.”

“There now.” Grimond turned back to Jane, a smile stretching the thin edges of his measly mouth. “Off you go and put your feet up, Mrs. Rollins. Everything is well in hand here.”

“Thank you, Mr. Grimond.”

There. She would have an additional thirty minutes to herself, sanctioned by the butler himself. Men could be such fools, Jane thought as she walked toward the corridor leading to her little office and sitting room at the front of the house, their favor curried with little more than a touch of fawning sycophancy.

As Lizzie slipped past her, going back to the kitchen, Jane took a moment to touch her arm.

“Thank you for interrupting your work to do that for me, Lizzie.”

The scullery maid smiled, her sweet, young face lighting up, exposing the devilish humor beneath.

“My pleasure, Mrs. Rollins. Enjoy your break.”

Jane was smiling as she continued on her way. Lizzie reminded her of a younger version of herself, a little brash, but clear-eyed and worldly. And there was ambition behind her demure façade, which Jane hoped to be able to help bring to fruition. There were so few opportunities for girls like Lizzie, brought up to be in service yet bright enough to be any other number of things. She made a mental note to suggest Lizzie be promoted to upstairs maid should one of the present two leave. She had a suspicion which one would go first, and probably soon. Young Millie had been sneaking about with one of the footmen, and if she didn’t turn up in the family way soon, Jane would be surprised.

Yes, Lizzie should be encouraged and allowed to advance. If her own situation were not so tenuous, so fraught with danger of discovery, she’d be inclined to share with the younger woman some of the knowledge she’d gleaned over the past years. Although she doubted Lizzie would ever find herself in the same type of situation as Jane, forced to live a lie so as not to end up on the streets, there were certain truths women needed to understand to get along in the world. Jane knew herself lucky to have had a man willing—nay, even eager—to share them. God bless John Preston, wherever the old bastard had ended up, whether heaven or hell. Perhaps others would be horrified by the way her life had started, but Jane had no real regrets.

Especially not at this moment, when soon, very soon, there would be a tap on her door, and her tea with Signor Fontini would begin. Just the thought made her warm all over, and Jane fought to hold back the instinctive reaction of her body, but couldn’t.

He was too beautiful, body and soul, for her not to have this intense, untamed response to knowing she would once more soon be in his company.

Chapter Two

After entering her sitting room, Jane stood for a moment, letting all thought of the Lowell household and its various inhabitants fall from her mind. There was no room in it for anyone else but Sergio Fontini right now.

There was a way he looked at her while they were speaking that made every inch of her skin break out with goose flesh. No doubt it was how he looked at anyone he spoke with, but his concentrated focus, the gleam of his midnight-dark eyes, the way he clearly heard and absorbed every word she said, did terrible, lovely things to her body—and her heart.

It wasn’t the first time, and no doubt wouldn’t be the last, Jane wished for a different life or, at least, a different existence within this life. Yet she knew how truly lucky she was. Yes, she’d only gotten this position through the auspices of John Preston’s recommendation and a great deal of lying, but she was comfortable nonetheless. Unless something happened to expose her perfidy, and she’d make damn sure nothing would, she’d be happily set for the rest of her life. If need be, if things got to the stage where she felt she had to, she could move on to another position one day. With the wealth of experience behind her from working with the Lowells, getting another position would be a snap. Especially in this day and age, where people who had never had money enough before to hire servants suddenly did and were desperate for good ones.

Moving into the room, she stirred the coals beneath the kettle in the tiny fireplace. The water was hot enough, so she took her teapot down from the shelf and poured a bit into it to heat the pot. Then she fetched two tea cups and arranged them on the small table between the two chairs, going back to her dresser to arrange a plate of biscuits and fetch her precious little store of sugar.

Every movement was an everyday one, domestic and nothing outside the normal routine, but, because Sergio would soon join her, the teacups rattled in their saucers and she almost burned herself when she turned to throw the water from the pot into the slop bowl.

“Steady, there,” she whispered to herself. “Steady.”

Getting worked up and excited was a waste of time, and it wasn’t just the knowledge of them coming from different worlds and having different stations in life that told her so.

Jane turned to the small piece of mirror she’d hung on the wall beside the door, which allowed her to check her appearance before leaving the room. The face staring back at her was nothing above the ordinary. In fact, many would say her rounded cheeks, dishwater-pale eyes and pallid lips made her plain. Straight, mouse-brown hair, scraped back into a bun so severe it often made her eyes water in the morning when she pinned it into place, did nothing to improve her looks.

Then she looked down and ran her palms over the plain, gray bombazine dress, which Mrs. Lowell had authorized as being suitable wear. It covered a dumpy, lumpy body, round in the middle but lacking the corresponding swell of breasts at the top. Definitely not a body a man—any man—would look at and lust after. Most certainly not the kind of body Sergio Fontini—himself so beautiful and graceful—would ever want.

Taking herself in hand after that catalogue of her visible deficiencies was a simple thing. It was wonderful to have had the opportunity to meet him, to see and speak to him over these past weeks. In but a few more, the dance lessons would cease, and they would never meet again. Jane lifted her chin and moved with determined steps to measure out the tea. As she poured the now-boiling water into the pot, she could only regret she wasn’t a young, lovely signorina with dark, flashing eyes and the kind of beauty that would call to a man like Sergio. And then reminded herself, in the next thought, that had her life not brought her to this place, they probably would never have met at all.

“Make the most of what you have,”
John used to say,
“for ’tis better than the lot of others.”
She would do well to remind herself of that every day, every hour, and do nothing to jeopardize her current situation.

She had just settled into her usual chair and arranged her skirt and petticoats when the knock came at the door, albeit several minutes earlier than she’d expected. At her quiet permission to enter, it swung open, and she couldn’t stop the jerk of her heart at the sight of the tall, broad-shouldered,
magnificent
Italian filling the portal. But she kept her face under control, and her hands, lying on her lap, remained relaxed.

“Mrs. Rollins.” Sergio’s accent was really quite slight, as would be expected of a man born and raised in England, although he had said his parents spoke only Italian at home. “Good afternoon.”

“And to you, signor.” She loved the way the word rolled off her tongue, as he’d taught her to pronounce it. “Won’t you come in?”

Was it her imagination that made him hesitate for a moment before bowing his head and stepping forward? He turned to close the door, and this time, she knew he took longer to achieve the action than was necessary, for he lingered there, one palm pressed to the wood, his head slightly lifted, as though in contemplation.

“Is there something amiss, signor?”

He turned, and at once the sternness of his expression, the darkness of his gaze made her heart pound.

“That is for you to tell me, Mrs. Rollins.”

Stepping closer until he loomed above her seated form, he held her startled gaze, saying nothing more. A jumble of thoughts flew through Jane’s head. Had he seen her watching him from the minstrels’ gallery and thought she was spying on him? Or had he overheard some chance comment between the other servants and had attributed something they said to her?

“Sergio—” Jane’s face went cold, then hot beneath his scrutiny and the realization she had just called him by his Christian name. “Signor—”

Abruptly he stooped so his face was level with hers, his hands coming to rest on the arms of her chair, hemming her in. “I would know who you truly are, Mrs. Rollins.”

Her heart stopped, then lurched back to life so abruptly she felt sick from the motion. “I don’t know what you mean.” How faint her voice sounded. How lost. She raised her chin and repeated the words, gathering what power she could and putting it behind them. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Sergio Fontini shook his head slowly, just a faint back-and-forth movement, and his eyes never left hers. “Obviously you have fooled everyone else, Jane Rollins, but you cannot fool me. I know women. I know how they move, how they breathe, how they carry themselves.” Without warning, his hand shifted, coming to rest against her side, fingers squeezing so even through her corset and the padding beneath, she felt his power and strength. “Women of the size you pretend to be have their own grace, their own beauty, but the way you move gives lie to this padding.” He squeezed again, and Jane realized his hand had risen, was now cupped around where her breast would be, if it weren’t bound tight against her chest. “Tell me the truth. Who are you? What are you hiding?”

Sergio watched the emotions flicker and flow behind Jane’s eyes—shock, fear, disbelief—but, although he regretted frightening her, he could not relent. Finding the answers he sought had become his obsession, the question that kept him awake at night, the need compelling him to press her now.

He was not stupid. Sergio knew all too well how the members of the Lowell household viewed him—an outsider, a foreigner, neither truly a gentleman nor someone they could trust. It was the same almost everywhere. The English thought only their own kind could be any good, ignoring the fact he was, by birth, English too, albeit of Italian parents. All except Jane Rollins. When she looked at him, it was as a woman looks at a man she admires. When she spoke to him, he knew she saw him, Sergio Fontini, not an Italian, not a dance master, not a suspect stranger who may be capable of any manner of atrocities.

Just a man.

That had been what first made him look forward to their brief afternoon encounters, which were such a relief after Jemima’s heavy-handed flirting, her little sister’s shrieks and tantrums, Mrs. Moorecroft’s suspicious glares. How relaxing to sit across from the calm, charming Mrs. Rollins, to let her soft, warm tones soothe the frayed edges of his nerves and watch her capable hands, with their surprisingly delicious fingers, manipulate teapot and cups.

He had started out thinking of her as an old woman, for that was his perception of what a housekeeper should be, and, at first, her demeanor did nothing to dispel his misconception. But by his third afternoon of taking tea with her, he realized his mistake. He would be surprised should she be even as old as his own twenty-nine years. In fact, if he were a wagering man, he would guess she was closer to twenty-five or -six, at the most. Very young, he would guess, to hold such a responsible position.

It made him look at her in a different light. If she wasn’t as old as she tried to appear, what else was she hiding? Seeing her rise and cross the room, watching the way she got to her feet, the motion as she walked, brought another revelation. There was something wrong with the shape and movement of her body, a lack of cohesion between the two.

He studied her, just as he had studied the stances and movements of dance, growing more intrigued with each visit, so obsessed he began to wonder what lay beneath her enveloping and deceptive clothing. Began to imagine that the glint in her eyes when she looked at him, the sweet curving of her lips when she smiled were the lowering of her mask—and just for him.

His time at the Lowell house was drawing to a close. Now was the time to discover whatever it was she hid.

“Signor Fontini.” Her voice was low and steady, but he could see the frantic beat of her pulse just where her collar closed around her throat. “I believe you’re suffering under a misapprehension.”

Sergio had let his hand remain where it lay, upon what should be her breast, but now moved it again, this time to her shoulder. There was no mistaking the heat of flesh under the stuff of her gown, the tiny tremor that chased through her body.

“I am not fooled by these sleeves.” He’d long determined slim appendages, not heavy, lay beneath the stiffened and oversize sleeves. Now he proved it to himself, and to her, by gripping one, closing his fingers slowly over the fabric until, finally, his fingers tightened around a delicate arm. “How am I the only one to notice your disguise?”

Jane shook her head, eyes wide, frightened. Her lips parted as though she were about to speak, then closed again without a sound passing through them. Sergio surveyed her carefully, hearing the rush of her breath, feeling the way she shook beneath his hand. It wrung his heart, and he instinctively clasped her other arm, let his fingers rub in gentle circles.