A Gentleman Never Tells (9 page)

“It
is
my concern!” His eyes blazed at her; his other hand came up to grip her. He loomed before her, not so immense and forbidding as Somerton, but broad and lithe and vibrating with strength, his checked wool jacket straining along the width of his shoulders.

“Stop it! Someone will see us!”

“I don’t give a bloody damn! Just tell me this:
Did he hurt you?
”

The passion in his voice froze her in place. “Not . . . not in that way. Please let go. If we’re seen, if your brother and his wager . . . He’s determined to win, his pride’s at stake, and Abigail goads him so . . .”

He pulled her behind the slender trunk of the apple tree. The heady scent of blossom enclosed them; a heavy-laden branch brushed at her hat. “Why the devil are you so loyal to that man? I’d protect you; I’d fight for you; I’d do anything for you. The damned beast. Why honor your marriage vows, when they mean nothing to him?”

Her throat hurt, looking at him. His beautiful face lit with rage and love and need, nothing like the laughing Roland of summer garden parties and London ballrooms. She dropped her eyes and saw that he’d loosened his necktie, unbuttoned the top of his collar. The skin at the hollow of his throat beckoned her irresistibly.

But she
could
resist; she had to resist. She looked back up, into the hard warmth of his hazel eyes. “If you have to ask that,” she said, past the steady ache of grief in her throat, “you really don’t know me at all, do you?”

His gaze searched hers. “You’re wrong. I know you better than you know yourself, Lilibet.” He brushed his fingers against her cheek, as gentle as a hummingbird’s wings. “I know that you can’t possibly go on living as you have, married to a man like that. The Lilibet I know would tell London’s dragons to go hang themselves, rather than stay married to a drunken whoremonger like Somerton.”

At the words
drunken whoremonger
, something snapped inside her. She shrugged away from his grasp and hissed, “And do what? Marry you instead, and spend the next six years at home with another baby, while you swive your way through all the beds in London you haven’t visited already?”

He started backward, eyes wide with outrage so palpable it stung her face. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

“Oh, you’d be far more charming about it, I’m sure. Lord Roland Penhallow always did have a talent for keeping the ladies starry-eyed.” She pointed her finger into his chest. “But underneath you’re all the same. You’ve no more notion of fidelity than a rutting bull. Once you’ve got what you want, you’re on to the next pretty face. The next conquest, the next bit of fun.”

He stared at her, shocked. “That’s absurd! I’d never . . .” He checked himself.

Her face burned. “Do you think I’m an idiot?” she demanded. “Do you think I don’t know? When news of your latest damned escapade was delivered to me in detail by one friend or another every week, for the last several years? Always with the same smug smile, always with the greatest relish.
Oh, my dear, you’ll never guess what I’ve just heard; the most delicious tidbit about our naughty friend
.”

His eyes closed. “I’m not like Somerton, Lilibet. I stand by my promises.”

“Oh yes. Just as you stood by me that last summer?”

“That’s not fair! That was different. That was . . .” His words trailed off, trapped somewhere in his heaving chest. He searched her face with pleading eyes, and went on, more softly: “I was a boy, then, Lilibet. A sulking, resentful boy, who’d never before had something he loved taken away. I like to think . . . I’d like to
prove
to you . . . that I’ve grown up a bit, since then.”

He looked so humble, so contrite, so vulnerable, as if he were holding out his heart toward her, cradled between his two broad hands. At the sight of his earnest face, the pain inside her grew until it vibrated, ready to snap.

She put her hand up, palm outward. “Enough, Roland. Just leave me be. I have troubles enough already.”

She turned and strode up the hill to where Philip stood waiting with his arms full of peach blossoms, an impatient expression on his face.

EIGHT

R
oland would rather have torn up the paper in his pocket than read it. Burned it, spat on it, damned its author to a living hell. Preferably with a bevy of large-breasted women dancing eternally naked just beyond his reach. That would be fitting. That would be justice, by God.

He’d never been in such an invidious position in his life. Lilibet casting up his promiscuous reputation in his face, and he unable to defend himself! Couldn’t deny it, couldn’t explain it, couldn’t laugh it away.

Couldn’t tell her the truth.

Because of bloody Sir Edward and his bloody secrets and the whole damned rotten intelligence service, blast it all to hell and back again.

Roland burst through the door of the kitchen and dropped the picnic basket on the large center table with a vengeful thud. A large tureen of beans rattled at the far end, as if surprised from a nap.

“Signore!”

Roland jumped and turned. A maid stood in the doorway, her eyebrows arched high and anxious into her forehead.

“What the devil!” he exclaimed. Bloody hell. Had his skills grown rusty so quickly out here in the wilderness? Or was it Lilibet, addling his wits? Many had tried to sneak up on Lord Roland Penhallow in the past few years, but none had succeeded.

Now a simple Italian kitchen maid could nearly empty his bladder with a single ill-timed
Signore
.

Her mouth flailed helplessly. “Signore . . . is basket . . . is Signora Somerton . . .” She looked at the basket, and at him, and the pitcher dropped from her hands to shatter on the floor. “Oh,
Dio
!” she cried. She bent to the ground, face as red as poppies, and gathered the pieces into her apron amid a flood of distressed Italian syllables.

Roland melted. He dropped to his knees next to the poor girl. “There, there. Here, I’ll do it. A bit of crockery, that’s all.” He pushed her hands aside, collected the broken pieces, piled them on the table, and took his handkerchief from his pocket. “See? No bother at all, my dear. Broken any number of plates myself.” He gave her the handkerchief, into which she promptly blew her nose with abandon. “Yes. Quite. Er, keep it, if you will. No returno.” He motioned with his hand.

She looked up at him and smiled through her tears. A pretty girl, he supposed, all shiny black hair and round rosy cheeks. He smiled back. “You see? All better.
Buon
, I believe.”

Her watery dark eyes took on a dreamy sheen. “
Grazie
, Signore Penhallow.” She said it charmingly, with a lyric Italian lilt.

“Think nothing of it, signorina . . . er . . .”

Her smile deepened, revealing a well-placed dimple next to her plump mouth. “Francesca, signore.
Mi chiamano
Francesca.”

“Francesca! Fine name. My mother was called Frances, rest her soul. Same sort of handle, I believe. Only English.” He patted his pockets. The paper crackled beneath his hands. He glanced at the picnic basket on the table. “In any case, I’m off. Just returning the basket. Charming lunch. The cheese was excellent. Er . . .” He looked back at Francesca, whose face had grown even rosier, head tilted slightly to one side, eyes blinking in slow strokes. He cleared his throat. “Er, yes. Well. I’m off.”

He sidled out the door and made his escape.

*  *  *

O
n the first evening of Roland’s arrival at the Castel sant’Agata, despite the rain and the confusion and the mind-warping knowledge that Lilibet Harewood (he tried, whenever possible, to banish the word
Somerton
from her name) would be sleeping beneath the same roof for the foreseeable future, he’d still found a moment to manufacture a false back to the third drawer in his ancient Italian dresser.

Into the small space this created, he’d hidden a few essential items: the list of contacts with which Sir Edward had confided him; a rectangular wooden box of gold coins, signed out in triplicate from Sir Edward’s meticulous accounts and suitable for bribery as needed; and his code-book.

Such a nuisance, codebooks. Roland usually memorized each new one as it came out; his talent for mathematics was legendary among the small circle of people who knew about it. But it had been a busy few months since that fateful meeting in Sir Edward’s library, and he’d had no communication at all from his colleagues since paying a brief visit to Beadle in the Florence office, and one glance at the paper told him it employed a code both recent and complex.

He closed his door, set a chair against the lock, and went to the dresser.

The drawer opened easily, its mellow old wood worn into comfortable grooves and long accustomed to the vicissitudes of heat and damp. Roland reached inside, slid open the false back, and pulled the slim paperbound volume from its resting place.

CAHIER DE MATHEMATIQUES
, proclaimed the plain pale blue cover, in a tenuous attempt at disguise, though any counteragent worth his salt would know exactly what it contained if he bothered to look inside. Roland removed the note from his pocket and consulted the wax seal for the proper code. A FOX type, of course; he peered at the animal’s right ear until he discovered the number 6 imprinted at the tip, and flipped through the codebook until the pages opened to FOX 6.

The little room had no desk. Roland went to his trunk, got out his travel secretary, and opened the lid. The sweet smell of cedar filled the air. He selected a fine-tipped fountain pen, closed the lid again, and sat down on an old wooden chair, secretary in his lap, long legs propped atop the bottom edge of the bed frame.

Nothing like cold numbers to take a man’s mind off his women troubles. The fountain pen scratched comfortably against the paper, a fragrant breeze caressed Roland’s cheek from the window, and his brain sank gratefully into the complex puzzle before him. After a moment, the book became unnecessary, and he tossed it onto the bed. The numbers rose up around him like a three-dimensional model, until he could see the solution, the decoded message, in its architecture.

His pen dropped to the floor. “Good God,” he said.

Thump thump thump
, went the door.

Roland jumped from the chair, just saving the secretary before it crashed at his feet. “Who is it?” he called.

“Your brother, damn it! Open up, for God’s sake!”

Roland exhaled. Bloody Wallingford. He chucked the secretary back in the trunk and closed the heavy wooden lid.

“Why the devil have you got your door locked?” demanded Wallingford, by way of greeting. He strode into the room with his usual air of unassailable command, booted heels cracking on the old wooden boards. His handsome face wore an especially thunderous expression, as if he’d just been told his Mayfair town house had been invaded and occupied by a band of cigarette-smoking anarchist squatters in his absence.

“Good afternoon, Brother. Yes, I’m quite well. And you?” Roland ducked behind his brother’s large frame and closed the door with a firm thrust.

Wallingford’s voice came dark and alarmed at his back. “Why the bolted door? You don’t think they’ve taken to
spying
on us, do you?”

Roland whirled. “What’s that?”

“The women.” Wallingford struck his palm with a closed ducal fist. He looked as though he’d just had a bath of extraordinary vigor: His hair hung dark and damp above his collar, and his cheeks shone with the same fresh-scrubbed pinkness as young Philip’s. “Bloody hell! I expect you’re right! Spying, of course! How else would . . .”

Roland tilted back his chin and laughed. “Spying on us? The women? For God’s sake, Wallingford. Been at the opium, have you?”

Wallingford’s stern face tightened into a scowl. “Don’t be naive, Penhallow. I wouldn’t put it past them. Crafty harpies. Do you know, I caught Lady Morley at Burke’s workshop this morning?”

Roland gasped and put his hand to his heart. “No!”

Wallingford raised a finger and stabbed it toward Roland’s chest. “Damned impertinent cub. Don’t you know they’re determined to make us break first? That they’re determined not just to win the damned wager, but to drive us out of here entirely, before that fellow Rosseti can be found to set things right for us? There was Lady Morley, all but seducing poor Burke before my eyes, and do you know what her ladyship gave me as an excuse?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“That she was delivering Burke’s post. His
post
, by God!” Another smack of the fist.

“The wicked strumpet!”

“Exactly! I told . . .” Wallingford stopped and frowned. “Are you being sarcastic again, you mongrel?”

Roland leaned forward and peered at the hair above his brother’s left ear. “I say. Is that a
feather
in your mane, old boy?”

Wallingford clapped his hand to the side of his head. “Where?”

“Just there. Under your hand. Charming little downy white . . .”

“Never mind that!” The duke raked at his black locks with vicious fingers and turned to stride to the window. “The point is, we’ve got to outsmart them. Beat them to the punch, chase them out ourselves. Before poor old Burke succumbs to Lady Morley’s charms and we’re hoisted by our own petards.”

“Sorry, old man. Don’t quite follow you.” A flash of blue caught the corner of Roland’s eye. He glanced at the bed, where the
Cahier de Mathematiques
lay in bold relief against the faded yellow bedspread.

Hell
.

“The
bet
, man! The wager!” Wallingford turned to skewer him with an intense black gaze. “If Lady Morley succeeds, we’ve got to concede. An advertisement in the
Times
, Penhallow! And once
that
happens . . .” His voice trailed off, as if the consequences of a
Times
advertisement were too appalling for words.

“Once that happens . . . ?” Roland prodded.

“Why, we shall be humiliated before them all! We’d be forced to leave; our lives would be made miserable. More miserable, I say, than they are already.”

Roland shrugged. “I’m not miserable at all. I think it’s rather charming, having a spot of female company to liven things up.”

Wallingford’s face, already pink, turned the color of an angry tomato. “Oh, all very well for you, isn’t it? You and that damned Lady Somerton.”

A sudden gust of wind took hold of the window, flinging it against the wall with a loud bang and ruffling open the pages of the
Cahier de Mathematiques
. Roland took a single step forward. “Do not,” he said, with icy precision, “ever say those words again.”

Wallingford’s mouth opened briefly, and then his eyes dropped. “Sorry, old boy. Quite in the wrong. She’s . . . well, she’s a woman of virtue . . .”

“She’s the finest woman who ever lived.” Roland went to the dresser, placed his fingers against the edge, and leaned backward. Wallingford turned to face him, with his back to the bed.

“Yes, of course.” The duke’s brow darkened. “You, on the other hand, you weak-willed dog of a fellow. Stay away from her. I’d trust her honor above any of the others, but your damned twitchy co—”

Roland held up his hand. “Watch yourself, Brother.”

“All right.” The duke sighed. “Shall we say, your propensity for seduction may prove our downfall. Our very
public
downfall. To say nothing of poor Lady Somerton’s.”

Roland folded his arms. Lilibet’s words in the orchard echoed in his ears, her genuine fear of discovery by Lord Somerton. His brain, preoccupied by Sir Edward’s note, began to shake itself off and consider what his brother was saying. “Look here, Wallingford. You’re not to say a word about her presence here, do you understand? That beast of a husband of hers . . .”

“What the devil do you mean by that?” Wallingford’s head jerked to attention.

“Just that he’s a damned wretch, and I understand she’d be quite happy if he never got wind of her whereabouts, for the time being.”

The duke’s eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to tell me we’re harboring a runaway wife? Because that’s hardly . . .”

Roland leaned forward and spoke in a voice of harsh intensity. “I wouldn’t put a dog in Somerton’s care, Wallingford, and neither would you! Be compassionate, for once in your misspent life.”

Wallingford blinked at the onslaught. “You don’t suppose . . .”

“Suppose what?”

“Well, that it’s the reason they want us gone? They’re afraid Somerton will hear about it?”

Roland let his eyes drop to the floorboard before him. “It’s possible.”

“Hmm.” Silence, and then: “Well, regardless, I shan’t comply. Any number of unoccupied castles lying about the area, I’m sure, and the women can damned well find another.” His voice blazed.

Roland sighed, still staring at the floor. “Tell me, Wallingford. Why the devil does it matter to you so much? Can’t we simply call off the wager and live amicably together?”

“You’re joking. Live amicably with the harpy sisters? Oh, I say, Penhallow.
Mathematics
?”

Roland’s head shot up.

The duke reached out one long wool-covered arm to the bed and picked up the pale blue codebook. “What the devil? What sort of mathematics is this?”

Roland made a long and ungraceful leap forward to snatch the
Cahier de Mathematiques
from his brother’s hands. “Nothing! Just a . . . a pamphlet I picked up in France. A new mathematics. Fascinating stuff. Quite beyond your level, I’m afraid.”

Wallingford made a futile swipe at recovering the book. “Look here! I’ve a decent brain for maths, and that . . . Now, look here . . .”

Roland stuck the book in the top drawer of his dresser and pushed it shut. “Never mind. It’s nothing. The point is this . . .”

Wallingford stepped closer. His voice dropped to a silky growl. “Hold a moment, Brother. Tell me more about this mathematics of yours.”

“It’s nothing. For God’s sake. A few numbers on the page. I . . .”

“But it’s important, isn’t it?” Wallingford leaned his head forward, as if sniffing the air. Perhaps he was, the crafty dog. “You just took the greatest pains to hide it from me.”

Roland’s heart made an unnatural thud behind his ribs.
Be sensible
, he told himself.
He knows nothing. Remember yourself.
He took in a calming breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them an instant later, he’d schooled his expression into its most charming and empty-headed arrangement.