The Duke's Governess Bride (4 page)

Because what he’d learned the most from them this night was exactly what Miss Wood had predicted: that his darling girls had somehow changed into women in love, blissful, heavenly love, with the men they’d chosen as their mates for life.

And he, their father, had been left behind.

Chapter Four

G
iovanni Rinaldini di Rossi stood close by his bedchamber window, watching. It was early for the Englishwoman to come calling on him, impossibly early by Venetian standards, yet there was Miss Wood, hurrying across the bridge towards his house. She walked briskly, with the determination and purpose with which she seemed to pursue everything, her plain dark skirts rippling around her legs. He knew ancient, widowed matriarchs who dressed with less solemnity than this little English wren did. Almost like a nun, she was, and the thought made him smile. No wonder he found her so desirable.

Without shifting his gaze, he idly touched one fingertip to the chocolate powder floating on the foamy top of his cappuccino and tapped it lightly on the tip of his tongue to taste the sweetness. Like so many of the windows in Venice, this one was designed for seeing without being seen, for mystery rather than clarity. The glass was not set in flat panes, as was done in other places, but in small round bull’s-eyes framed in iron. Miss Wood would have no idea he was standing here, or that he’d been watching her ever since he’d glimpsed her in the gondola. A pretty deception, like everything else that made life interesting.

He shifted to one side so he could watch her as she waited at his door. She’d pushed back the hood of her cloak, and now he could see how the chilly early morning air had pinked her cheeks and the tip of her nose.

There were never any of the usual female artifices of powder or paint with her, none of the little false ways of hiding from a man. She was always as she seemed, fresh as new cream. Despite her age, he’d stake a thousand gold sequins that she was a virgin. He could sense it. She’d be as untouched as any young postulant, really, and he’d always a weakness for debauching convent flesh.

It was this utter lack of guile that had tempted di Rossi from the moment Miss Wood had appeared one morning in his drawing room, her letter of introduction in her gloved hands. Seduction, corruption, ruin or simply a worldly education in pleasure—it would all amount to the same thing for him. She was a governess of no social standing or family, a foreigner, in truth no more significant than any other servant. He could do whatever he pleased with her without consequences.

Now he watched as she entered his house, the door closing after her, then he smiled, and considered the delicious possibilities she presented like a gourmet before a rich feast. Though clearly she’d the body of a woman beneath that grim, shapeless gown, in her heart she still had that innocent’s trust in the goodness of men. Teaching her otherwise was proving to be the greatest diversion he’d had in years.

Jane perched on the very edge of the chair. No matter how she tried, she could never quite relax on the delicate gilded chairs here in Signor di Rossi’s drawing room. The red-silk damask cushions seemed too elegant to sit upon and the artfully carved legs in the shape of a griffin’s clawed feet seemed too delicate to support any grown person. She was certain, too, that the chairs were very old and very valuable, like everything else in the
signor’
s house, and she would hate to repay his hospitality by being the clumsy Englishwoman who broke a chair.

Once again she drew her watch from her pocket to check the time. She realised that calling here so early in the day could be interpreted as an affront, especially by the
signor,
who had the most refined manners she had ever encountered in a gentleman. But the hour could not be helped, not if she wished to offer both her thanks and farewell. As much as she’d enjoyed his company these last weeks, her time for the idle pleasures of art and conversation were done.

Restlessly she smoothed her skirts over her knees. She’d already accomplished much this morning, making her plans for life beyond the Farren family. She had decided to stay here in Venice rather than return to England, where her likely lack of references from the duke would be an impossible handicap. With the assistance of the English ambassador here, she had already found new lodgings with a Scottish widow that were both respectable and inexpensive. The ambassador had also promised to help her find a new place with a family with children here, either English or Italian. Failing that, she could be a companion to a widow or other elderly lady. She couldn’t afford to be particular. She’d little money of her own, certainly not enough for the costly passage back to England. No wonder her situation was a complicated one, and vulnerable, too. Given his Grace’s fury last night, she could return to the Ca’ Battista and find all her belongings bobbing in the canal outside by his orders.

‘Ah, Miss Wood,
buon giorno, buon giorno!
’ Signor di Rossi entered the room with the easy self-assurance that generations of aristocratic di Rossis had bred into his blood. ‘You cannot know how a visit from you pleases me.’

He was too dark, too exotic by English standards, but here in Venice Jane thought he was the very model of an Italian gentleman. He was perhaps thirty, even thirty-five. Over his shirt and black breeches he wore a long, loose dressing gown of quilted red-and-gold silk. With the pale winter sunlight glinting on the gold threads, the extravagant garment floated around him as he walked, more like a king’s ceremonial robes than a gentleman’s morning undress while at home. By contrast, his olive-skinned face seemed almost ascetic, his cheekbones and nose sharply defined. His black hair was sleeked back into a simple queue, and his dark eyes were full of welcome as he reached out to take her hand, and lift her up from her curtsy.

‘You are most kind,
signor.
’ Jane smiled, flushing with embarrassment as he held her fingers a moment longer than was proper in England. ‘Most kind. You always have been that way to me.’

‘But that is hardly a challenge, Miss Wood,’ he said, motioning for her to sit. ‘Not between friends such as we, surely?’

Purposefully she didn’t sit, determined to keep the visit short, as she’d intended. ‘I am honoured that a gentleman so grand as yourself would consider me as such,
signor.
’

‘Please, Miss Wood, no more.’ He waved his hand gracefully through the air, the wide sleeve of his banyan slipping back over his arm. ‘You speak as an Englishwoman who has had the misfortune to have spent her life in the thrall of your English king. Venice is a republic, her air free for all her citizens to breathe. If I wish to call a gondolier, or a fisherman, or an English governess my friend, then I may.’

As experienced as Jane was at masking her feelings, she couldn’t keep back a forlorn small sigh at that. She’d miss her time with Signore di Rossi, discussing the beautiful paintings that his family had collected over the centuries. She’d met him soon after she’d arrived in Venice, through a letter of introduction meant for the duke’s daughters. This was the customary way that well-bred English visitors could view private collections on the Continent, a day or two walking the halls of palaces and country houses with a watchful housekeeper as a guide. But to Jane’s surprise, the
signor
had shown her his pictures himself, and invited her to return the following day, and every day after that.

And the
signor
was speaking the truth. He
had
treated her as a friend, almost as an equal. He had respected her observations about art so much that he’d sought her opinions as if they had actual merit. No other gentleman had listened to Jane like that before. Was it any wonder, then, that her visits here to him had become the most anticipated part of her day?

And now—now they must be done.

‘Let me send for refreshment for you,’ the
signor
continued as he stepped to the bell to summon a servant. ‘It’s early, yes, but not so early that I cannot play the good host to my favourite guest. A plate of biscotti, a cappuccino, a dish of chocolate, or perhaps your English tea?’

‘Thank you, no,
signor
,’ Jane said, though sorely tempted. She’d come to adore Venetian chocolate in her time here, and it would be one of the things she’d miss most when she returned to England. ‘You are most generous, most kind, but I cannot stay.’

He turned on his heel and stopped, one black brow raised with surprise. ‘How do you mean this, Miss Wood? How can you come, and yet not intend to stay?’

‘Exactly that,
signor.
I’ve come only to thank you, and to—to say farewell.’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I shall not permit it. I’ve something special and rare to show you today, a manuscript book, drawn by hand four hundred years ago in a Byzantine monastery. The artistry will steal your breath, Miss Wood, with each parchment page brought to life with ground lapis and gold leaf and—’

‘Forgive me,
signor,
but I cannot stay,’ she repeated. She had to tell him the truth; putting it off like this was not making her task any easier. ‘My master, his Grace the Duke of Aston, unexpectedly arrived in Venice last evening, and he—he is most displeased with me. I have given my notice to resign my place in his service, and must find another directly.’

‘No!’ He rushed back to her, the scarlet silk billowing after him. ‘What manner of man is this duke, to be displeased with you?’

‘He is a very great man in England,
signor.
’ Jane sighed, thinking of how different the gruff, broad-shouldered duke was from the man before her, like comparing a great shaggy roaring lion to a sleekly self-possessed jaguar. How could she fairly describe the hearty, noble
Englishness
of his Grace to a gentleman as elegantly refined as Signore di Rossi? ‘I still believe that I did what was best for his daughters, but because His Grace was expecting to find them here in Venice with me, he was…distraught.’

‘For that he has cast you out?’ the
signor
asked. ‘For doing your duty as best you could?’

‘I did not wait for him to dismiss me,’ Jane said with care. To fault the duke felt disloyal; besides, when she remembered how shocked he’d been, she could almost excuse him. ‘But because I felt it was inevitable, given the degree of his unhappiness, I chose to give notice first.’

Di Rossi stared at her, openly aghast. ‘Yet from your telling, the daughters love you as if you shared the same blood.’

‘They did love me,’ she said sadly, for that, too, was true. Mary and Diana did love her, and she them, but their father loved them, too, and she thought again of the sorrow and pain she’d seen on his face last night. ‘They
do.
But it is their father, not they, who decides my fate, and I’d rather not wait to hear his judgement.’

The
signor
frowned and shook his head. ‘That is barbarously unfair, Miss Wood. To punish you for the sins of the daughters!’

‘Daughters in my safe-keeping. I was their governess. I was to watch over them, and keep them from harm.’

‘Love is not harm.’

‘Love without a father’s consent is,’ she countered wistfully. ‘At least it is if the father is an English peer of the realm.’

He shook his head. ‘This puts me in mind of an ancient tale, of a Roman messenger put to death for bringing ill news of a battle to his emperor.’

‘Forgive me, but it was a Spartan messenger.’ She smiled sadly. ‘You see how it is with me,
signor.
I cannot help myself. I am a governess bred to the marrow of my bones.’

‘Ah,
cara mia,
’ he said. ‘You were a woman before you ever were a governess.’

Cara mia:
my dear. Jane’s cheeks warmed, even as she drew herself up straighter into her customary propriety. She’d learned early in her trip that gentlemen on the Continent tossed about endearments much more freely than Englishmen, yet this—this felt different.

‘These last weeks have been most enjoyable,
signor,
that is true,’ she said, as briskly as she could, ‘but it is past time I put aside my idleness, and found another place where I can be useful.’

‘To fill your eyes and feed your soul with the beauty of great paintings, the works of the finest masters—that is not idleness,’ he countered. ‘That is useful, Miss Wood, more useful than recalling the lesson of the Spartan messenger.’

‘A well-fed eye does nothing for an empty stomach,
signor,
’ Jane said, her sadness and regret rising by the second. The end would always have come in time, of course. Even if Mary and Diana had remained with her, they would have been bound to sail for home at the end of February; their passages home had been booked for months along with the rest of their itinerary. But this way, with so little warning, somehow seemed infinitely more wrenching.

‘I must work to support myself,’ she began again. ‘I’ve no choice in the matter. Being a governess is not so very bad, you know.’

‘Yet a governess is not a slave, chained to his oar in the galleys,’ he reasoned. ‘Even an English governess. No matter who employs you next, you’ll have a day to yourself each week, yes? Even the lowest scullery maid has that. A day you can come here to me?’

‘But a governess is expected to set a certain tone of propriety and behaviour,
signor,
’ she said. ‘Calling on gentlemen would not be considered as either.’

‘Then don’t call,’ he said with maddening logic. ‘I shall meet you elsewhere in the city by agreement. A hooded cloak, a mask, and the thing is done. No one shall ever know which is the governess, which the great lady. Venice is the best city in the world for assignations, you know.’