A Gentleman Never Tells (16 page)

FOURTEEN

G
uilt. Shame.

Her ears rang with it; her pulse throbbed in her neck, her wrists, her chest.

“Mama, do I have to study with Abigail this afternoon? I think building a cage is enough learning for one day, don’t you?”

Trollop. Adulteress. No better than you should be
.

“I suppose it depends on how long the cage takes,” she said, “and how busy your cousin Abigail is this afternoon.”

Abigail was delighted to build a cage for the grasshopper. No, it wasn’t too much trouble. They’d pick up their writing and sums again tomorrow. Certainly, she had some chicken wire. Only perhaps the loops were too large to hold in a grasshopper, even one of so magnificent a size as Norbert? Well, they’d find something. Come along.

A kiss on Philip’s forehead, a wave good-bye. The hallway alive with some fragrant draft from outdoors, the stones cool beneath her back as she slumped against the wall, her womb hot beneath her hand as she clutched it.

Weak. Wicked. Filled with unnatural lust.

She wanted him so much. What torture it had been to walk next to him, to feel the heat radiate from his body, and not make a single movement toward him. Her skin had flushed, had burned with the desire to tumble with him on the grass, to press his beautiful flesh against hers, naked in the sunshine.

Her eyes screwed shut. His kiss, oh God, his marvelous mouth on hers. The yearning streaking down her limbs, melting between her legs. She would burn in hell; she would die of shame. She’d given in, again,
again
. She’d kissed him back regardless, and cradled his arousal between her hips.

She’d agreed to meet him tonight and complete her ruin.

“Signora Somerton? You are not well?”

The warm scent of baking bread drifted across Lilibet’s nostrils, at the same instant as the gentle voice reached her ear.

She started upward. “Oh! Signorina Morini! No, no. Quite well. It’s just . . . such a warm day . . .”

The housekeeper stood near, quite near, her face creased with sympathy. “You need perhaps a cup of the tea? I am making very good tea, now. Signorina Abigail is doing the teaching.”

Refusal hovered at the tip of Lilibet’s tongue. What she said, however, was: “A cup of tea would be lovely, signora. Thank you.”

She followed the slender white-shirted back of Signorina Morini down the hallway and into the kitchen, where the fire had been banked low and the loaves of bread stood cooling on the table. Next to them, a teapot and a cup waited expectantly.

Lilibet picked up the pot and poured into the cup. Steam drifted upward in fragrant spirals; she buried her nose in them and dropped into a chair with a sigh.

“You see?” Morini eased herself into the chair at the head of the table. “Is better now, yes?”

“Very nice. It’s kind of you, to adapt to our English ways. The breakfast, and tea.”

The housekeeper smiled and shrugged. “Not so many things. The lunch, the dinner, they are all very much of Toscana, of the hills and the valleys. The things we are growing here, from the earth.”

“It’s delicious. In England everything is either roasted or boiled within an inch of its life. I never knew artichokes had such flavor.”

Another shrug. “You are leaving behind many unpleasant things in England, I think.”

Lilibet looked into her cup. “Yes.”

“Signora, you have still the tear in your eye. You are not happy. Why is this? You have the beautiful child, the love of the kind signore. You have soon his baby. God is smiling on you.”

Lilibet jerked her head up. “Signorina!”

Morini was smiling, her face eased into kind lines. “Is true. I am knowing these things. You meet him tonight, yes?”

“How did you . . . who . . .” Lilibet’s mouth stumbled around the words, unable to form a logical connection with her brain.
Ghosts
: The word echoed unexpectedly between her ears, in Abigail’s eager voice. She pushed it away.

Morini shook her head, still smiling. “I am knowing, that is all. Signora, I help you. I watch over the young signore tonight. You go to meet your love. He is making you feel better, making you happy.”

“He is not.” Her voice broke. “He’s making me miserable. I can’t . . . I shouldn’t . . . I have a husband already, signorina! Philip’s father.”

Morini laid her hand flat on the table and spoke sharply. “A bad man. He is not your husband.”

“Neither is Lord Roland. And I don’t mean him to be, signorina. I don’t mean to marry him. That’s the trouble, you see. I want him . . . oh, I want him so much . . . and I can’t have him.” She choked back a sob.

“Shh. Shh.
Povera donna
. Drink your tea. Is foolish, this not marrying him. He is a good man, such a handsome man. He is loving you so much.”

Lilibet gulped at her tea, taking pleasure in the way it scalded the back of her throat. “For now. But after a year, two years . . .”

“I am not thinking so. The way he is looking at you. The way he is learning your boy.” Morini folded her hands together and smiled wisely. “Go to him, signora.”

“I can’t resist him. I can’t. I’m so weak, signorina. It’s bad enough when things are normal, but when . . . when I’m expecting . . . I can’t bear it. It’s as if I’m going to burst from my skin. I want him so much, the way he smells and the way he feels . . .” Her face burned; she tried to stop her words, but they kept flowing from her, like a river in full flood.

“Of course you do, signora. It is the way of nature. You were like this before, no? With the young signore?”

“Yes.” She whispered the word. “I didn’t even
like
my husband, and still I wanted . . . I couldn’t help it . . . I stared at the door between our rooms, desperate and ashamed and . . . I’m beyond hope, aren’t I? Why do I feel these things? I want so badly to be good. I do, signorina. And this lust, this animal urge, it fills me up until I can’t think.” No use holding back the sobs, now. She could only muffle them against her handkerchief, undignified, a common slut filled with emotion instead of reason and virtue.

“Shh, signora. Oh,
mia povera signora
. You are young; you are a woman. When you are having a baby, it is like this. Your body is wanting a man, wanting him close. Is nature. Is the way of life.” Morini’s hand reached across the table, the slender toughened fingers not quite touching hers. “Is not this shame. Is beautiful.”

“It’s horrible.” Lilibet sniffed, choked back another sob, lifted her cup, and put it down again. She took in a deep breath and forced her voice into calm. “I’m trying to make a rational decision, to decide what’s best for my son and for me.”

“And the baby. The signore’s baby.”

She didn’t bother to deny it. “I tell myself I’ll be stronger, that I’ll resist him next time. And then I see him, and these urges, this carnal lust, I can’t help myself.”

“The body, the heart is knowing what the mind does not accept.”

“I can’t accept it. I can’t marry Roland. Even if I were free, I couldn’t. Somerton . . . if he knew, my God! He’d kill Roland. He’d take Philip. You don’t know his wrath, signorina. You don’t know what he’s capable of.” She spoke coldly, dully, the knot of fear tightening in her belly.

“I am thinking Signore Penhallow is knowing how to fight.”

Lilibet shot her a condescending look. “Oh, I’m sure he does. In the boxing ring or the fencing studio, all civilized and formal. But Somerton . . . he’s . . . professional.” She drank another large sip of tea and closed her eyes. “He fights to win.”

“Perhaps you are not knowing Signore Penhallow as well as you think.”

Lilibet flashed her eyes open. “What do you mean?”

Morini shrugged. “I am not meaning anything. I say only, go to your love tonight. Do not throw aside this thing, this beautiful love. The future, it is taking care of itself. This love you are holding inside, this desire for Signore Penhallow, it is a thing of God. Is a gift. You must not keep holding it inside; you must give it back. You are growing his love; you are growing his baby. Is not wrong. Is not shame. Is your glory.” She stood with unnerving abruptness. “I am calling the maids, starting the dinner. Tonight, I come to your room, I knock three times, very soft. I watch the young signore for you.”

“I can’t. I shouldn’t.”

“You must, signora. For the signore, for the baby. He is a good man. He is making a good husband.”

“I have a husband already.”

Morini shook her head firmly and smoothed her hands on her apron. “Not before God, signora. No longer before God. Is a truth higher than the words writing on the page. Is higher even than the church. Signore Somerton, he is breaking his vows, mocking at his vows. This marriage between you, is like this.” She snapped her fingers. “Is no longer.”

“You can’t mean that. You’re Catholic.”

Morini snapped her fingers again. Her dark eyes flashed with authority. “Is no longer. Is no true marriage. Signore Penhallow, he is always your love, your true husband. Now let him be as God is wanting.”

Lilibet curled her fingers around her empty cup and stared up at Morini. The woman had taken on a glow, an unearthly glow, her certainty so intense it crackled around her. “How do you know so well what God is wanting?” she whispered.

Morini’s eyes narrowed slightly, even as a smile tipped the corners of her mouth. “You trust me,” she said. “I am knowing.”

*  *  *

R
oland saved Lilibet’s note for last, because he deserved the reward after the long labor of composing a suitable note to Sir Edward in a code that his lust-befuddled brain had difficulty dissecting.

He got it out at last:
LS resides here with son. Earl of S unaware. Highest confidentiality.

Brevity was his friend, in this case.

But the note to Lilibet was another matter. No doubt she’d be having second thoughts about now, her scruples getting the better of her; she had little faith in him to begin with. He had to convince her of his steadfastness, bowl her over with his passion.

He propped his feet on the bed and stared out the window at the weightless blue sky.

My darling love, I am seized with rapture at the . . .

Er, no.

Sweet Lilibet, I await the touch of your ruby lips with . . .

God, no.

He chewed on the end on his pen, shook the ink loose, let it dry on the nib. He looked down at the new sheet of paper, blank and neutral.

Eleven o’clock in the peach orchard. My heart is yours.

There. After all, she wanted deeds, not words.

And by God, he’d show her deeds tonight.

*  *  *

T
he letter that lay before Lilibet on the writing desk was not a new one.

She’d written it over five years ago, after discovering her husband engaged in sexual intercourse with a tenant’s wife during her charity rounds about the Somerton estate in Northumbria, a few months after Philip’s birth. He hadn’t even noticed she’d entered the cottage. She’d simply stood there in shocked paralysis for a full minute or two. The woman had been naked, though Somerton had merely removed his coat and adjusted his trousers; they’d been sitting in a chair, the woman on top, at such an angle that Lilibet could actually see her husband’s organ slide in and out between the woman’s flour-white thighs, exercising its droit du seigneur with vigorous application. An infant, not much older than Philip, had been squalling fretfully from a wooden cradle near the window; perhaps that was why they hadn’t heard her enter the room. Or perhaps it had been the frantic noises issuing from the woman’s throat as she pumped herself up and down on his lordship’s well-muscled lap.

At the earl’s grunt of release, Lilibet had dropped her basket of food and knitted baby clothes on the table with a thump. She’d gone back to the nursery in the great house, held tiny Philip in her arms, and cried into his silken fuzz of hair. His milky baby scent had surrounded them both in a halo of comfort.

Shock, then grief, then anger. After a half hour or so, she’d gone to her study and taken out a few sheets of writing paper and begun a letter to her father’s solicitors, the ones who’d represented the Harewood interests in her marriage settlements.

Dear Sirs,

I regret to inform you that, owing to the infamous behavior of my husband, it has become necessary for me to instruct your firm to initiate a Suit of Divorce on my behalf, in order to dissolve a Union that has become intolerable. Firstly, I have discovered him in criminal conversation with . . .

At which point the door had opened with a bang, and Somerton had plowed into the room in a gust of saddle leather and wet wool. She’d folded the letter with shaking hands and hidden it in her drawer; over the ensuing years, as the incidents had accumulated in number and flagrance, she’d taken out the paper, reread it, made additions and substitutions, refined the language.

But she had never posted it. At the last instant, her courage had always failed her.
Divorce
: The word was so ugly, so final, so immense with consequences. Who would stand by her against the might of the Earl of Somerton? She’d face ostracism, reduced circumstances, the loss of her son. The sordid details would be dragged through the popular press, ruining her good name, even though the crimes themselves had all been committed by Somerton.

Until that night at the inn, of course.

Adulteress
.

Outside her window, afternoon was settling into evening; the faint glow of sunset echoed in a thin line above the mountains to the east. The cooling air rushed into the room, making her skin pucker beneath the thin linen of her dress. By nighttime it would be quite chilly. She’d have to wear her shawl of India cashmere, or perhaps even her coat, when she went to meet Roland.

She thought of him as he’d looked this afternoon, leaning against the boulder by the lake as if he were Atlas, holding it up. Could he really stand up to the Earl of Somerton? Would his family support him in such a scandalous act?

Did it really matter?

Somerton would find them, anyway, before long. She’d already left him, already disgraced him. The consequences were already in motion.