A Gentleman Never Tells (17 page)

Is a truth higher than the words writing on the page. Is higher even than the church.

She’d been a coward. She ought to have divorced him long ago. She had justice on her side; she was strong, she was fierce, she was quick-witted. Let him try to take Philip away. Let him try to intimidate her, to hurt those she loved.

Is no longer. Is no true marriage. Signore Penhallow, he is always your love, your true husband
.

She thought of Philip, atop Roland’s shoulders, smiling and reaching for her. She thought of Roland, bending over Philip’s hands to study the grasshopper within.

The way his lips had met hers as if they belonged there; the way his body had bracketed hers, strong and solid.

The child that grew within her, Roland’s child; their child, created in love.

A glimpse flashed before her, a possibility, radiant with hope.

Can you not have the slightest particle of faith in me?
he’d asked.

Her eyes dropped again to the paper before her. She set it aside and drew out a fresh sheet, and with a steady hand she made a clean copy in her copperplate writing. By the time the horizon had sunk into darkness, and Philip’s excited voice rose from the stairway near her door, she had folded it into an envelope and addressed it to Bellwether and Knobbs, Esq., Stonecutter Lane, London.

FIFTEEN

R
oland had anticipated many delights from the evening, and not one of them had involved the long shanks of Phineas Burke gleaming through the moonlight between the peach trees.

Damn it all. What was the old fellow doing here at this hour?

Meeting Lady Morley, probably. As if Burke couldn’t just as easily arrange for assignations within the sheltered comfort of that damned workshop of his. No, he had to go wooing his lady-love with fragrant blossoms and moonlight and whatnot, muscling in on other chaps’ midnight frolics.

Peach bloody orchard. Come to think of it, what had Roland himself been thinking, naming such a place to meet Lilibet? Of all the damned romantic clichés. Probably half the village was lurking about the trees, drunk with springtime passion, ensuring the population of the valley would remain at a healthy replacement level the following year.

Roland set the champagne bottle and glasses on the ground—champagne did such lovely things to feminine scruples—and slid his watch out of his pocket to hold it up to the moonlight. He was quite early. Lilibet wouldn’t be about for another hour.

He glanced again at Burke’s lingering figure. No, really. He shouldn’t. Too wicked of him.

He patted his jacket pocket and found the scrap of paper and pencil stub he usually carried about him, in case of emergency. Then he cast about before him for a crisp old stick and stepped on it. Loudly.

A hasty rustling movement took place up ahead.

“Still, still, still,” he murmured, projecting his voice forward. “Pill? Kill? Oh, God, no. Mill? Hang it all. Shall have to try something else.”

He peered above the top edge of the paper and saw a sliver of tweed jacket along the edge of a tree.

He continued with enthusiasm. “. . . 
the memory is with me still . . .
no,
the memory is with me
yet.
The memory is with me yet
,
there’s the ticket.
The memory is with me yet, and something something . . . shall forget?
Or
regret
?
And never shall my love regret?
Oh yes. Very good.”

The most jolly awful poetry he’d ever composed, in fact. He was quite proud. He arranged himself against the knobbled trunk of an ancient peach tree and gazed up in rapture toward the blossom-crossed midnight sky.

From the corner of his eye, he caught a slight movement, as a splash of ginger hair spilled in and out from behind the tree. Well, he assumed it was ginger, in any case: In the tree-shadowed darkness, even Phineas Burke’s head of bright newpenny copper had dulled to a kind of faintly bronzed gray.

Poor fellow. Though Roland considered himself a far superior companion to the Dowager Marchioness of Morley—certainly a better hand at piquet—he doubted Burke would agree, under the circumstances.

Not that he intended to show any mercy.

“
The memory is with me yet, and never shall my love regret
,” he went on, with a dramatic heave of his chest.

A muffled groan, faint but unmistakable.

Roland made a little start, as if shaking off a lovesick reverie. He looked down at the blank sheet of paper in his hand, cleared his throat, and took a deep breath. “Excellent,” he said, in his most sonorous voice. “From the beginning, then.”

Burke’s despair seemed to reach out through the air like a spread-fingered hand, aiming for Roland’s throat.

Roland went on, constructing line after awful line with deep pleasure, enjoying himself so deeply that he committed that most elementary of errors: He ignored his surroundings. Until . . .

Snap, snap.

At the sound of approaching footsteps, Roland moved by instinct, ducking behind the tree in a single lithe movement. He pressed himself against the rough bark and gathered the sound into his ears.

Heavy, long strides. Not a woman’s footsteps. Not Lilibet, then, or Lady Morley. Some fellow from the village? One of the stable lads?

Roland ventured his eye to the side of the tree and saw the dark familiar outline of the Duke of Wallingford progress against the shadows.

Bloody hell.

What the devil was going on here? First Burke, now Wallingford.

There is no such thing as coincidence
, repeated Sir Edward in his ear, and his mind darted at once to Lilibet. Had she set him up again? Had he mistaken the passion in her kiss, the anticipation in her eyes?

Wallingford marched on in his straight-backed ducal way, footsteps steady and confident, making no allowances for subterfuge. He passed his brother by a scant yard, so close Roland could have reached out and brushed the tips of his fingers against the light superfine wool of the duke’s evening jacket.

That would have given the old fellow a start.

Wallingford came to a stop not far from the tree behind which Burke was undoubtedly cursing.

“I know you’re there,” he announced, in his booming voice, rattling the branches of the nearby trees. “You may as well come out.”

Roland rolled his eyes. Blasted dukes. What exactly did his brother expect? That everyone would emerge from behind the trees, heads hanging with guilt, limbs shaking in their boots under the irresistible weight of his authority?

Silence seethed around them, broken only by the occasional trill of a nightjar, made uneasy by this invasion of his back garden by a parcel of idiot Englishmen. Wallingford cast about him: stunned, apparently, by the lack of response to his perfectly reasonable request.

He continued in a more conciliatory tone. “I have your message. There’s no need to hide. No need for any more tricks.”

In the distance, from the direction of the castle, the sound of footsteps—yet more footsteps, picking their way through the orchard—caught Roland’s finely tuned ears.

“Now look here,” Wallingford said. “You asked me to meet you tonight. Don’t be afraid, my brave girl.” His voice was lower now, persuasive, so that Roland could hardly distinguish the syllables through the cool, fragrant air. Besides, he was paying attention to the progress of the newcomer.

These were lighter steps than those of Wallingford. Less certain. A woman, probably. He closed his eyes, concentrating his senses on the sound of her, the vibration of the air and the ground she caused, the first possible traces of her scent.

He felt her pause at Wallingford’s voice, and then continue, more boldly, using the sound to guide her.

Snap, snap
went the twigs beneath her feet, and Wallingford arrested. His neck craned upward, searching her out.

Lilies
.

The scent of lilies touched his nose. Roland sagged, ever so slightly, against his tree. Lilies were Burke’s problem. Not his.

Lady Morley walked past him, her skirts swishing about her legs, brushing the ground. She turned her head one way and another, trying to make out the figure before her.

Roland saw the exact moment when she recognized Wallingford. Her back straightened; a little gasp came from her throat. His mind, trained to absorb all the tiny details of behavior that gave away human thought, perceived her instant of panic, her grasp for composure, her recovery.

A thoroughbred, Lady Morley, for all her faults.

Wallingford addressed her first, in his drawling voice. They were too far away for Roland to distinguish the conversation; all he could make out were the tones of their voices.

His eyes shifted to Burke’s tree, from which no movement came. Good old Burke. He was probably gnawing his own feet to stop himself from jumping in to defend Lady Morley. Of course, by the very act of jumping in, he would only incriminate them both.

A pretty scene indeed.

Roland looked down at the champagne bottle nestled in the grass by his feet, at the pair of glasses nicked from the pantry, and swore to himself.

Couldn’t a fellow get five minutes of privacy around here?

*  *  *

T
hree soft knocks sounded on the door.

Lilibet stole a final look at Philip, tucked beneath a striped woolen blanket in his trundle next to her bed. One arm had fought free to rest on the pillow next to his head; his face turned away, toward the rough plaster wall. The blanket moved, slow and regular, with the pulse of his breathing.

She smiled, blew a kiss in his direction, and opened the door.

Signorina Morini stood outside, a look of mischief crinkling the corners of her face. “The peach orchard,” she whispered. “I see him leave, it was almost an hour. He has the champagne.”

“The peach orchard. Thank you, signorina. Thanks ever so much.” Lilibet tucked her shawl about her shoulders and danced into the corridor and down the staircase. Her body hummed with confidence, with purpose, as if in that single act of sealing a plain white envelope she had restored power to her once lifeless limbs.

The peach orchard. Blossoms, moonlight, champagne. What a dear old romantic he was.

*  *  *

S
he moved so silently between the trees, Roland almost missed her.

“Darling!” he whispered, as loudly as he dared. “Over here!”

She stopped, turned, hesitated. A stray piece of moonlight, finding its way between the peach blossoms, touched the top of her shawl-covered head.

The breath left his chest. He’d spent the last ten minutes in a panic that he’d missed her, that she’d heard the voices in the trees and fled back to the castle. The heated exchange between Wallingford and Lady Morley hadn’t lasted long, but Wallingford had stood staring after her for a long while afterward, his tall body blending into the shadows until he was hardly distinguishable from one of the trees around him, except perhaps less knobby and sweet smelling. At last, with an angry oath, he’d turned around and marched away, and Burke had emerged from behind his tree, shaking his head in a dazed motion.

Poor old fellow. Devil of a disappointment, having one’s rendezvous interrupted by a bad-tempered duke.

Burke had gone off in another direction, presumably toward his workshop, and Roland had slumped against his tree trunk to recover, inhaling the cool, rich air in an attempt to clear his head.

Devil take them all. Arranging a moonlight assignation with one’s ladylove ought to have been child’s play for a man of his experience with clandestine appointments. Instead he’d been thwarted at every turn, and by his own side, at that.

Now, with Lilibet’s shadowed figure finally before him, he was ready to burst from the lust dammed up inside him. He’d consider himself lucky if he didn’t disgrace himself like a schoolboy.

He closed his eyes for an instant, gathering his composure. Patience. Every movement counted. If he were to win Lilibet, he had to have his every wit at his disposal. He had to put on the greatest performance of his life. He needed to drunken her with passion, drench her with pleasure, blind her with love. Nothing else would overcome her inflexible virtue.

He flexed his fingers.

“Darling,” he whispered again, and strode out from behind the tree, arms outstretched.

She murmured something unintelligible and took a few tottering steps forward to clasp his hands. She’d wrapped her shawl snugly about her head and shoulders, against the growing chill of the evening. “Sweetheart,” he said. “At last.”

He drew his fingers along her darkened cheek and bent to capture her lips in an eager kiss.

Recognition flashed across his brain an instant too late.

Not Lilibet.

*  *  *

I
n the light of the waxing moon, Lilibet found the steps cut into the terrace wall without any trouble. She tripped down them, her feet hardly touching the stone. The cool air flew past her cheeks as she hurried along the flat meadow, filled with the scents of evening: the breeze blowing off the mountains, the green things pushing up from the earth, the flowers exploding from the trees and shrubs. Ahead, the whiteness of the peach blossoms glowed like a bank of fog smudged against the darkness.

She quickened her steps, until she reached the first of the peach trees, and the heady scent of blossom enfolded her. She paused and peered ahead, into the shadows. Where would he be? Not far, surely. Waiting for her near the edge of the orchard, with his champagne and his kisses.

She had just started forward, her heart beating in her throat, when the sound of voices froze her foot in the air.

*  *  *

R
oland tore his lips away. “Good God!” he said, forgetting to whisper.

“Signore!”

He reached over her head and pulled down her scarf. The moonlight disappeared into a pool of black hair; her arms clutched his. “Signore!” she said again.

“You’re the . . . what the devil . . .”

“Signore?”

“Francesca?”

“
Si
, signore.” A little sob broke from her throat. “You ask . . . you . . . letter . . .”

“Letter?”

Her hand disappeared from his arm and made some movement at her skirts. His brain spun around in dizzy circles. The letter. The letter for Sir Edward. He’d given it to Francesca to post in the village.

Hadn’t he?

A piece of paper entered his hand. He looked down. It was heavy, folded over twice. He opened it with numb fingers. In the shadows, he couldn’t make out the words, but he recognized the shape and size of the lines, could even read it to himself from memory.

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

Francesca’s voice crept into his ears, pleading. “Maria . . . she know the
inglese
, she say . . .”

“Oh God.” He crushed his fist against his skull.

“Signore . . . you no . . .” Her voice dissolved into another sob, more desperate this time. Her shoulders bent forward beneath her shawl.

“Oh, damn. Poor girl.” He straightened her shawl back over her head and tucked it in. “I’m sorry. It’s the devil of a . . . a mistake, you understand? Mistake.” He bent forward and placed a kiss on her forehead. “You’re a lovely girl, Francesca. But I . . .”

Sobs wracked her shoulders. From her mouth came a series of hiccups and Italian phrases: none of which, he suspected, were particularly complimentary to himself.