A Gentleman Never Tells (8 page)

“A note! For me! Splendid news.” Roland paused delicately. “And have you perhaps got this note conveniently about you?”

The groundskeeper pursed his lips, giving the matter some thought. He lifted his cap, ran a grimy hand through the hair beneath, replaced the cap, and then thrust his hand into the pocket of his worn tunic. “Is not making any sense,” he said, extracting a folded piece of paper.

“What, my receiving a note? Seems perfectly sensible to me.” Roland snatched the paper away before the man could entertain second thoughts. A single glance at the seal—brown wax, with a small fox emblem—confirmed his suspicions. He slipped the paper into the inner pocket of his jacket and looked up at the cloudless sky. “Rather warm today, isn’t it?”

“The note. The note is not making any sense.”

“I’m not sure I follow you, er . . . Giacomo, isn’t it?” His eyes slid past the groundskeeper’s scowling face to take a thorough inventory of the road behind him. Standing here near the stable entrance, with the sun shining nearly overhead and the air mountain-clear, he could see every detail of the long drive leading to the main road, until it disappeared around the bend where Lilibet had trotted on ahead of him, three weeks ago. “I say, old chap,” he went on, “I don’t suppose you could tell me who delivered this?”

Giacomo folded his arms. “Is a boy from the village. Why you are having notes with words that are not making meaning?”

For the past few weeks, Roland had kept his brain unnaturally idle. He’d thumbed his way through parts of the library, of course, and endeavored to make some sort of foray into the academic study with which they were, after all, supposed to be engaged. But after so many years of leading a dual life in London, of keeping every sense alert while maintaining the general posture of a half-drunk wastrel, the easy pace of castle life had lulled him into a soporific daze. Or perhaps it was the nearness of Lilibet, whose lavender scent hovered around every corner, and whose image tantalized his every thought. Regardless, his reflexes were not at all what they’d been in the cold haze of London winter.

A second or two passed, therefore, before the cold prickle at Roland’s neck reached the thinking portion of his brain.

Words that are not making meaning.

And just how the devil would the groundskeeper know that?

He spoke with care. “I say, my dear fellow. You’ll forgive me. I had the impression—a quaint sort of custom, really, native to my own humble country—that my private notes were, in fact,
private
.” He put the faintest emphasis on the final word.

Giacomo made a
pfft
ing sound. Evidently he was not impressed with quaint English customs. “Is my duty, to know everything.”

Roland put his fists behind his back, in case they should break discipline and clench. He felt quite appallingly out of practice at this game. “Then perhaps your English isn’t up to the challenge, old fellow.”

“Is not my English. Is the note.”

Roland heard a bird call out behind him, piercing the silence between them with incongruous exuberance. Giving thanks, no doubt, for the annual proliferation of willing avian females. Roland wished he could say the same of the human sort. Instead, he studied the face of Giacomo the groundskeeper, its folds and crags weighed down with suspicion, its small black eyes narrowed almost to slits. The noontime sun cast a straight shadow beneath the short peak of his cap, exactly bisecting his face.

Roland drew the note back out of his pocket. The seal was unbroken. He slipped his finger beneath and loosened the rounded wax with a practiced
pop
, decapitating the fox. The thin paper unfolded easily; the code he recognized at once. “Ah!” he said. “There’s your trouble. It’s from my grandsire, you see. Quite senile, and probably a bit the worse for a bottle or two of brandy, too, eh what?” He folded the paper again and placed it back in his pocket. “I can’t make heads or tails of it, either, to be perfectly honest.”

A ripple of doubt cast across Giacomo’s face. Roland could have fainted with relief.

He smiled instead.

“Well, then, Giacomo. I’m off to the kitchens to see if I can’t persuade them to feed me a spot of lunch. Care to join me?”

The scowl returned to Giacomo’s lips, this time even more pronounced. He
pfft
ed again, with vehemence.

“Ah! I shall convey your regrets to the kitchen. Perhaps . . .”

But Giacomo was already stomping back toward the stable, raising a faint puff of dust at every step.

Roland burned to read the note. The code came from Sir Edward himself—a recent one, and fairly complex. The message must therefore be vital. He turned toward the mellow yellow gray stones of the castle’s east wing, where the kitchens were located, and walked toward the side entrance with long and purposeful strides.

Well, two or three of them, in any case, before he was brought up short by the sight of Elizabeth, Lady Somerton, with a commodious picnic basket in one hand and his little lordship’s hand in the other. She was wearing a deep violet frock that billowed toward him in a gust of fresh breeze from the valley.

She hadn’t seen him yet. Her face pointed south, down the long line of terraces, thinking probably of picnic spots.

Roland’s mind hovered for a moment, watching her, balancing the two possibilities. On the one hand, Sir Edward’s note and his duty to Queen and country, to say nothing of his curiosity. On the other hand, Lilibet.

It was no contest, really.

Sir Edward could go hang himself.

*  *  *

W
hy
can’t we go to the lake for a picnic?
Why
, Mama?” Philip’s voice veered dangerously close to a whine.

Because I looked out the window an hour ago and saw Lord Roland Penhallow walking in that direction.
“Because the water’s still too cold, my dear. We’re much better off in the peach orchard.”

“It isn’t either! It isn’t cold at all! It’s
April
, Mama! Not
winter
!” This time he did whine, a solid respectable whinge, of which any five-year-old child might rightly be proud.

“All the same.”

Philip went silent, preparing a new line of attack. “But we don’t have to swim, just because it’s a lake,” he said at last.

“Philip, my dear, I know what little boys are capable of. If we picnic near the lake, you’ll wind up in the water at some point. And I’ve no linens, no change of . . .”

“Lady Somerton! What a delightful surprise!”

Lilibet jumped and turned in the same movement. “Lord Roland! Good God! You . . . what the devil . . .” Her head spun. He was supposed to be at the lake; she’d been sure of it. She’d been safe, secure.

But there he stood before her, broad shouldered and smiling, hatless, the sun spinning gold in his hair. The source—dear God!—of the growing life within her. “Going for a picnic?” he asked.

“Yes, we are, but . . .”

“Let me take your basket. It looks fearfully heavy.”

She relinquished the basket, too shocked to protest. Her serene afternoon had crumbled to bits around her. “But you . . . but you can’t . . .”

“Can’t I? Oh, come, Lady Somerton. You wouldn’t turn me away from a picnic, would you?”

“But . . .” She thought of something. “But Wallingford. The wager. We’re not allowed to mingle with the opposite . . .”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. My brother and his wagers. I’ll tell him I kidnapped the two of you, and take the forfeit myself. Shall compose the advertisement in the
Times
myself, the most abject apology.” He grinned at her, the sunlight dancing in his hazel eyes. “Let me join you. I’ll be perfectly well behaved.”

That damned smile of his. Those crinkles at the corners of his eyes. “I suppose so,” she heard herself say. “If you promise not to eat everything yourself.”

He gave the basket a little heft. “From the feel of it, there’s plenty.”

“Are you coming with us, your lordship?” asked Philip. He darted ahead and called back over his shoulder: “We’re going down to the lake!”

“To the lake! Splendid!”

“We are
not
going to the lake! We’re going to the . . .” Lilibet scrambled forward to catch up.

“Why ever not? It’s charming there. Clear mountain water, waves lapping against the shore, and all that. A fine choice.”

“But . . .” There didn’t seem any point protesting. After all, her one objection to the lake—namely, Roland’s presence there—had been made more or less redundant. “I suppose so, then,” she finished weakly.

“Excellent. Steady on, Philip!” Roland bounded on ahead after the boy, his tall body shimmering with grace and energy.

She followed the two of them down the terraced vineyards, one by one; across the tender new grass in the sheep meadow; past the apple and peach trees, heavy with rich-scented blossoms. The delicate spring air rushed against her cheek, smelling of newly turned earth, and the thread of anxiety in her belly began to mellow and ripen into something much nicer.

Something closer to anticipation.

SEVEN

W
as it fair play to win a lady’s favor by complimenting her offspring? Roland pondered the matter briefly, and then concluded as he usually did when faced with questions of delicate ethics: Ignore them.

“He’s a fine boy,” Roland said, watching Philip arrange the stones on the lakeshore. He paused, searched his brain, and added: “Clever lad.”

“Too clever at times,” she answered, in a quiet voice. She sat with her back against the sturdy trunk of an olive tree, her gaze pinioned to her son’s every move. “Don’t go too close to the water, Philip!” she called out.

The boy pretended not to hear. Roland could tell, having utilized the technique on a regular basis as a child. Well, he still did, to be perfectly honest. He leaned back on one elbow and considered Lilibet from the corner of his eye.

She’d been friendly enough. Too friendly, perhaps: the sort of shallow familiarity she’d shown when she first walked into the stables three weeks ago, pretending nothing existed between them. He reached for another piece of cheese from his napkin and let the pungent flavor fill his mouth.

Time to stir things up, he decided.

“Tell me,” he said, turning over to face her, “what was your husband like?”

“Is,” she said. “He still exists. He’s still my husband.”

“What
is
he like, then?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.” She gave him a direct look. “I suppose you know him as well as I do, after all. You move in the same circles.”

“Not really. I know him by reputation.”

She shrugged. “Well, there you are. Reputations are seldom wrong in the essentials.” She reached behind her head and pulled out a single long hatpin. “But I suppose you were really asking what sort of lover he was. That’s what you really want to know, isn’t it?”

He choked and sat up. “Good God.”

She smiled and lifted her hat from her head, setting it on the ground beside her. “You think I can’t be daring? That I’m still the same girl I was six years ago?”

“Of course not. And I adore you even more for it.”

This time she laughed. “Well, it’s no more than you deserve, prying like that. I ought to tell you, just to make you think twice before you ask such things again.”

She was just far enough away that he couldn’t touch her. He longed to reach out his hand, to make some sort of contact, but her hat sat on the grass between them like a prim, long-brimmed chaperone. Had he really experienced carnal knowledge of that body? Felt those eager hips surge against his?

“Only say what you want,” he said.

She returned her gaze to Philip. “What’s there to say? I had to put you from my head. I had to. I owed it to Lord Somerton, to the idea of marriage itself. I thought . . . well, I knew his reputation, of course. But I was naive; I didn’t know what it meant. What one really did in bed with someone, what that entailed.”

“Oh, surely not!” he exclaimed. “You can’t have been that ignorant.”

She slanted him an enigmatic look. “I knew the essential mechanics. But not everything else.”

“The best parts, you mean. God knows I imagined them with you.”

“Did you?”

Was that a note of flirtation in her tone? Roland’s nerves jumped to attention.
This
he knew how to handle. This was his territory. “My dear Lilibet,” he drawled, “if you’d known the sort of lascivious thoughts in my head as I spun you around those blasted ballrooms, you’d have tossed your lemonade in my face.”

She didn’t laugh, didn’t arch her eyebrow, didn’t play along. Her eyes made a lightning check on Philip, before returning to Roland. Something in her expression made him lean forward, trying to read the soft blue of her eyes. Nostalgia? Desire?

“You’d have been surprised,” she said. “I’d have been delighted to know your thoughts. Girls have desires, after all, even if we don’t know exactly what we’re longing for.”

“You were thinking the same things, then?” He wasn’t flirting now. He could barely mouth the words.

She didn’t answer at first. She studied him, turning something over in her mind, until finally she said, “Not exactly, I suppose. You were, I’m sure, much less innocent than I was.”

He hesitated. “True.”

She sighed, her bosom rising and falling beneath the neat, high-cut violet bodice of her gown. “It isn’t fair, is it? If you
had
spoken first, if we
had
married, I’d have come to you an innocent, as pure as a lily, while you . . .” She let the suggestion hang there and reached for a boiled egg.

He looked at his hands. “I swear to you, Lilibet, from the moment I met you, I had no thought of any other woman. Only you, all that summer. And if we
had
married, I’d never have . . . there’d have been no ghosts in our bed, no question of others, never.”

She nibbled at the edge of the egg and set it back down on her napkin. She spoke with dripping sarcasm. “Oh, these things you men say. These promises of eternal fidelity. Somerton said something rather like that, before we married. I recall being surprised it needed to be said. After all, I would never have dishonored him. I simply assumed it would never occur to him, either.”

“Ah.”

A flush began to spread over her cheeks, faint and becoming. “I tried very hard. I tried to love him. I allowed him . . . whenever he wanted . . .”

Roland’s hand fisted in the grass beside him. He picked up another piece of cheese and turned to stare out at the lake. It didn’t help: the image of her body, lithe and naked, entwined in his imagination with Somerton’s broad bulk amid the sun-splashed waters before him. Had she enjoyed it at all? Had Somerton excited her, pleasured her? Had she lain there passively, or had she urged him on, ridden atop him, used her mouth on him?

Her voice conveyed only facts. “I . . . I became with child straightaway, however, and after that first month he seemed to think . . . I suppose he didn’t want to risk anything, once the doctor had confirmed things. He wanted an heir most acutely.” She was firm, matter-of-fact. A breeze drifted across her forehead, riffling a lock of her hair loose from its pins. She brushed it absently behind her ear. “Fool that I was, I thought he was making a great sacrifice for my sake. After all, he . . . I knew his appetites were . . .” She cleared her throat. “He was discreet, at first. It wasn’t until after Philip was born that I realized the truth. The scale of it.”

Damn it all. Which was worse: imagining her in bed with Somerton, or imagining her shame at his philandering? “I’m sorry,” he whispered. The gentle words belied the rage billowing inside him. He wanted to fight Somerton: not with guns or swords or anything so gentlemanly, but with his fists. He wanted to feel the man’s jaw pop, feel his nose crush into jelly.

Lilibet went on. “I threw it in his face. We had a dreadful row. I was told, in no uncertain terms, what I should expect from my marriage, and from then on . . . What is it, dear?”

Roland looked up to see Philip scampering in from the lakeshore, eyes huge with excitement.

“Mama!” He waved a rock in her face. “I’ve struck gold!”

“Oh, let me see!” She rose from the ground in a graceful motion and took the rock from Philip. “Look at that! Astonishing! See how it sparkles!”

“Is it real gold, Mama? Is it? Like those chaps found in California?”

She looked at the rock closely, and then held it up to the sunlight, turning it this way and that. Her brow knit with deep concentration. “Why, yes, Philip,” she said. “I believe it is. I can’t think what else it would be. A great vein of it, too! You’ve made our fortunes!”

His face shone. He turned to Roland. “Look, your lordship! Gold!”

Lilibet smiled and handed him the rock. “See?”

Roland took the rock and turned it about. A seam of sparkling pyrite ran through the center and along one side. He looked up at Philip’s eager face, at his dark eyes, the same shape and shade as Somerton’s. Not an especially handsome fellow, Somerton: rough-hewn bones, olive skin, dark features. Philip favored his mother, for the most part, but those eyes were unmistakable. They reminded Roland of the last time he’d seen Somerton, at his club. The earl tended to keep to a few cronies, as hard-drinking and hard-whoring as he was, who would have been blackballed if they hadn’t been peers. As it was, they were pariahs, gambling together in a private room long into the night, invisible to most members, and then disappearing to whatever low den would take them in.

But this particular night, not long after the New Year, most of the club’s members had been buried at their country estates, and Roland had been sitting in the leather-scented gloom of the library, tucked behind a newspaper, sherry at the ready, waiting for a colleague to meet him for a confidential chat. He’d felt a looming presence before him and unfolded the newspaper to find Somerton glaring down at him with those cold midnight eyes.
Can I help you, old man?
Roland had inquired politely, and Somerton had looked him over.
No
, he’d said, and set himself into a wing chair at the other end of the room with a neatly ironed copy of the
Times
, malevolence crackling the air around him. MacDougal had appeared soon after, and Roland had managed to exchange his information with the necessary discretion, but the unsettling weight of Somerton’s black eyes had lurked in the background throughout, until the man had risen and left a quarter hour later.

“Sir?”

Philip’s voice pierced Roland’s reverie. He blinked a few times, attempting to dispel Somerton’s image from his head, while the boy’s uncanny eyes fastened on his face. “Yes, lad?”

“The rock, sir! What do you think?”

Roland glanced down at the object in his hand and spoke without thinking. “Afraid it’s pyrite, old fellow. But keep looking. Persistence, that’s the ticket.”

Philip’s eager face drooped before him. Lilibet’s gasp came from his left.

“I see, sir. Thank you.” Philip turned and trudged back to the lakeshore.

Oh hell.

He glanced at Lilibet and wished he hadn’t. The blue flame in her eyes could have melted down the stone in his hand, pyrite and all. She whirled around without a word and went after Philip.

Roland threw himself back in the grass and stared up at the blue Tuscan sky. If his aching loins could speak, they’d have moaned with despair.

No luck tonight, that was certain.

*  *  *

W
hen Lilibet returned to the picnic at last, pockets full of promising pyrite-streaked rocks and Philip’s equilibrium restored, she found it had all been tidied up. The food and utensils were packed away in the basket, and the white cloth lay folded atop. Roland stood leaning against an olive tree, arms crossed against his solid chest, watching them both.

“Thank you for cleaning up,” she said, reaching for the basket.

He took it from her before she could lift it. “Heading back to the castle?”

She bent to retrieve her hat and placed it back on her head. “Yes,” she said, sticking in the pin, grateful for the physical movement to disguise her nervousness. She hadn’t meant to be so candid earlier; something about the warm weather and the pleasure of the simple food had wrought an ease in the air between them. A dangerous ease, the kind she’d sought so hard to avoid until now. Where might it have led, if Philip hadn’t been there?

She couldn’t trust herself.

She went on briskly. “We’ve a busy afternoon. Philip has his lessons with Abigail, and I’m badly behind on Aristophanes.”

“Oh, Mama, do I
have
to do lessons? It’s such a smashing day outside.”

“Yes, you do. And you like Abigail, so no more complaining. Or else
I’ll
give you your lessons, which isn’t nearly as nice.”

Roland led them away from the lake, picking his way between the olive trees to where the terraces began climbing the hillside. The vines had just begun to sprout their leaves, pale new green under the warming sun, and a few men wandered among them, clipping away shoots and strengthening the new growth with long willow branches. Philip clung to her hand, unwilling to take the lead as he had before.

Roland glanced back and saw them, several yards behind. He stopped until they caught up. “Awfully sorry,” he said. “Lost in thought.”

“It’s no trouble. Go on ahead if you like. We shouldn’t be seen like this, after all.”

“Oh, I don’t mind. Let Wallingford do his worst.”

Lilibet glanced down. “Philip, do you think you can run ahead a moment and find a peach blossom for Mama from the trees at the end of the terrace?”

Philip plunged ahead, white sailor’s jacket flashing in the sunlight.

“I must apologize,” Roland said. “I’m no use at all around children, it seems.”

She sighed. “These things seem so obvious to me, but then my whole world is wrapped up in him. I don’t suppose you’ve spoken with a child in years.”

“You’re splendid at it, on the other hand. How the devil do you learn these things?” He spoke lightly, quizzically. As if it didn’t really matter.

“Look,” she said, “we really mustn’t be seen. I hope . . .” She paused. “I hope I may rely on your discretion. My name . . . If it’s known that I’m here, if Somerton finds out, if he knows that
you’re
here, too . . .”

“Good God!” he burst out. “You don’t think I’d breathe a word, do you?”

Tears started in her eyes, to her frustration. She squeezed them back with ferocity. “He can’t know where I am. Please understand. He can’t. We’ve already run the most appalling risk.”

Roland’s voice dripped with scorn. “Come now. How the devil could Somerton find out? Too drunk to see past his own nose, most nights . . .”

“You fool.” She shook her head and stared down at the endless blades of grass passing beneath her feet. How could she explain? “Think of it. The wager, the stakes. An advertisement in the
Times
. Even if the names are disguised, he’ll find out. He finds out everything. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”

He stopped under the shade of an apple tree and turned to her, grasping her arm. “Did he hurt you? By God, if he harmed you . . .”

“Stop. It’s not your concern.”