The Passion of the Purple Plumeria (32 page)

The formal parterres had been cleverly arranged to provide the sense of an endless vista, but, as was always the case with the Vaughns, the sense of spaciousness was an illusion; it was a London garden, and Sally was at the end of it in moments.

There was no wall separating Lord Vaughn’s property from that of the Duke of Belliston, only a series of Cyprus trees. Their spindly shapes lent a funereal aspect to the scene, but they had one major benefit: there was plenty of space between them for one slender woman.

At the Cyprus border, Sally checked slightly. For all her bravado, there was something more than a little dodgy about willfully trespassing on someone else’s property. It had been quite another thing to slip down to Miss Climpson’s sitting room in the dead of night; the students did that so often, it was practically an official extracurricular exercise.

On the other hand, despite herself, she was just a little, tiny bit curious. And it really couldn’t do any harm just to creep up to the house and back. Admittedly, a white gown wasn’t the best attire for creeping, but, if spotted, she could always raise her hands above her head and pretend to be a statue.

Which was, Sally realized, a plan worthy of her brother, Turnip.

With a shrug, she plunged through the Cyprus border. And came up short as a candle flame flared in front of her face.

For a moment, she had only a confused image of a dark form silhouetted against the fronds of a weeping willow. Childhood memories of ghost stories surged through her mind, the horrible tales Nanny used to tell her of faceless ghouls and headless horsemen and phantom monks in their transparent habits.

“Who is it?” she demanded, her voice high with—not fear. Just lack of breath. “Show yourself.”

A man swept aside the fronds of a weeping willow tree. Sally saw behind it a cracked marble bench. The bench sat hard by the empty basin of an ornamental pool, surmounted by a particularly impish-looking satyr overgrown with moss and cracked with time. A folly. And a man. Just a man. She felt her breathing begin to return to normal.

“Show myself?” The man’s voice was well-bred and distinctly incredulous. “I should ask the same of you.”

His hair had been allowed to grow down over his collar, curling slightly at the edges, the darkness of it contrasting with the pallor of his skin. He was even fairer than she was, which Sally took as a personal affront. She was accustomed to being the fairest of them all.

“What are you doing in my garden?” he asked sharply, holding the candle high.

The sudden shock of light made Sally wince. Also, he was holding it on her bad side.

“What are
you
doing—” Sally was stuck. She couldn’t very well ask him what he was doing in his own garden. She made a quick recovery. She drew herself up to her full height, letting the moonlight play off the rich gold of the cameo parure that adorned her neck, ears, and brow. “What are you doing, addressing me when we haven’t been introduced?”

The Duke of Belliston—or, at least, Sally assumed it must be the Duke of Belliston—lowered his candle. “I would say,” he said drily, “that trespass was a good substitute for a formal introduction.”

He stepped forward, the moonlight silvering his hair, making him look simultaneously younger and older. Sally had thought, initially, that he was about her own age. Now she wasn’t so sure. The moonlight played tricks with her, casting shadows that might have been lines, creating strange contrasts between the pallor of his skin and the dark stuff of his coat.

“I am not trespassing,” Sally said haughtily. “I was simply admiring your foliage.”

The Duke of Belliston raised one thin brow. “Has anyone warned you that strange plants might have thorns?”

If she had wanted a lesson in horticulture, she would have consulted a gardener. “Has anyone ever told you that it is exceedingly annoying to speak in aphorisms?”