A Duke Never Yields (13 page)

She had been in a daze since leaving the kitchen; the usual morning session with Lilibet and Alexandra, in what they politely termed the salon, had proved a complete failure, interrupted mercifully by Percival when he stepped through the crumbling wall in search of lunch.

An English lord and his lady, joined in faithful love, before the end of midsummer moon.

Abigail looked down at her dress, which was stained with the contents of Percival’s promiscuous mouth. Her shoes, crusted with stableyard detritus. Her fingernails, worn down, the right index finger even ringed with a trace of dirt.

Is impossible
, Morini had said, shaking her head in the warm castle kitchen.

A movement caught Abigail’s eye, near the peach orchard. A flash of blue, right where the path went down through the terraces toward the lake. She put up her hand above her narrowed eyes and thought, for an instant, she saw the unmistakable profile of her sister outlined against the trees.

Well, perhaps not impossible. Wasn’t Mr. Burke’s workshop hidden down there, amongst the olive trees near the lake?

And Lilibet. Even a blind fool couldn’t miss the lovestruck gazes Lord Roland Penhallow cast her way, nor the flush that burned the lady’s cheeks in reply. Lilibet was free of her dreadful husband now, or nearly so.

But even if Mr. Burke fell in love with Alexandra, even if Lilibet and Lord Roland found their way at last into each other’s arms, it might not break the curse. There was no way of knowing which English lord could redeem the doomed lovers.

Which left only one other English lord at the Castel sant’Agata.

Could she?

Could
he
?

Undying love for
Wallingford
?

Wallingford, faithful lover?

She felt a powerful attraction for him, of course. Not to put too fine a point on it, but she could hardly think of anything else, these days. But physical attraction, once satisfied, was the most fleeting of connections. Everything she’d read, everything she’d observed, everything she’d reasoned through in her sensitive and perceptive brain, supported this conclusion. And even if she
did
love Wallingford, even if this dizzy urge to join her body with his obscured some deeper and more affectionate connection, there were Wallingford’s own inclinations to consider.

Rakes, after all, did not reform.

Abigail pivoted briskly to the castle walls, and there stood Morini in the doorway, shimmering, her head ducked against the sun, tears glittering on her cheeks. At Abigail’s gaze, she turned away and disappeared into the shadows.

The hair prickled at the nape of Abigail’s neck.

She stepped forward, heart lurching, to follow Morini, but another sight arrested her eyes: Francesca the maid, in her blue dress matching the sky, with her white headscarf bobbing against the dun-colored stone of the castle, pushing what appeared to be a great wheel across the yard to the stable.

Abigail blinked.

“What in the name of heaven are you doing, Francesca?” she asked, in Italian, putting one hand on the wheel. It was quite solid, quite cool, and smelled strongly of cheese.

In fact, on close examination, it
was
cheese.

Francesca straightened and pushed at her headscarf. “It is the
pecorino
, signorina. Signorina Morini, she wants to clear the attics, she asks us to move all the cheese to the stables for to ripen there.”

“What a dreadful task. Do you need help?”

“Oh no, signorina. Maria is helping with the cheese. But there is . . .” Francesca paused doubtfully, her black eyes narrowing against the sun.

“Yes? I am happy, more than happy, to help. The studying, it is all done for the morning.”

Francesca gazed back at the castle, its high rooftops lit by the climbing sun. “We were just beginning the filling of the mattress and the pillows. Is only halfway done. We have still the gentlemen to finish.”

“Oh, what fun! Filling them with what?”

“With the new feathers, the goose feathers. Is all upstairs, in the bedrooms.”

The bedrooms. The bedrooms, where once the Monteverdis had slept and kept their secrets. The bedrooms where the Englishmen slept now.

A sense of inquiry and curiosity, a very Abigailish tide of mischief, rose up in her chest.

“The gentlemen’s bedrooms, you say?” She smiled. “I will go at once.”

Francesca bit her lip and knit her brow, the very picture of regret. “No, signorina! Is not your place! Is so messy, so full of the feathers. I should not have said.”

“Francesca,” said Abigail, putting her hand to her heart, “I would not miss these feathers for the world.”

*   *   *

A
bigail began with Mr. Burke’s room, in order to get the proper hang of things. Practice makes perfect, her mother had told her, seated before the long-ago old piano in the study, shortly before dying in childbirth (at which, ironically, she’d had a great deal of practice indeed, though Abigail and Alexandra were the only survivors).

As it turned out, stuffing containers with goose down required a certain specialized set of skills, in company with vast amounts of fortitude. Abigail, lacking any skill whatsoever, relied solely on her fortitude, and the result was a downy white mess of apocalyptic proportions, covering all of the plane surfaces of Mr. Burke’s room, as well as a number of the irregular ones.

But at least the pillows were stuffed.

She cleaned up every last feather and moved on to Lord Roland’s room, where she stuffed the bedding with somewhat more speed, though an equally profligate excess of feathers. She snooped efficiently as she went along, noting the presence of a travelers’ lap desk in the chest and a false back in one of the drawers, filled with books with titles like
Cahier de Mathematiques
, apparently written in code and with no resemblance to any mathematics Abigail had yet encountered.

Interesting, Abigail thought, but hardly useful.

In any case, Abigail’s primary interest lay elsewhere. She tidied up the feathers and marched down the hall, sack in hand, to the chamber occupied by the Duke of Wallingford.

It was locked, of course, but Francesca had given her the master key. A beautiful thing, that master key, done properly in some ancient bronze alloy, engraved and curlicued within an inch of its life. She lifted the chain over her neck and fitted the scarred end into the lock.

Abigail half expected the duke to be sitting inside, thunder-faced, demanding to know what the devil she thought she was doing. To which, of course, she could have no proper answer other than a cheerful, “Snooping, Your Grace! Do step aside whilst I open these drawers.”

But the room was quite empty, quite anticlimactic. Also disappointingly un-ducal, with its rustic furnishings and austere gray bedspread. Wallingford’s two chests sat side by side under the window with brass locks gleaming in the diagonal slash of late-morning sunlight; a few books sat stacked on the chest of drawers, and a closed shaving kit rested against the bowl on the dressing stand. How humbling, how decidedly human of the duke, to shave himself every morning without the help of a valet.

Though she had searched Roland’s room without compunction, and fully intended to do the same here, Abigail felt a curious reluctance seize her hand as she reached for the handle of the chest of drawers. She ignored it, of course. In this state of war, which was all Wallingford’s fault and none of her doing, everything was fair.

The left-hand drawer contained neckties and collars, starched into undreamt-of heights of stiffness by the industrious Francesca, as well as a great many plain white handkerchiefs embroidered with the ducal crest. Abigail picked one up and sniffed it. Laundry soap, and perhaps a trace of something else, the ancient wood of the chest itself. She tucked the handkerchief in her pocket and opened the right-hand compartment, which contained the ducal undergarments and which she promptly closed again.

There were limits, after all.

Clean white shirts, breeches, stockings: Really, did the duke conceal nothing interesting among his laundry? No, she was quite certain Wallingford was hiding something, somewhere. The entire notion of the Duke of Wallingford traveling to Italy for a year of academic study—an entire year without his accustomed comfort and privileges—beggared belief.

Besides, a man with nothing to hide must be very dull indeed, and hardly worth the trouble of seducing, let alone sacrificing oneself in undying love for the sake of some mysterious and unproven curse.

The very thought caused a pang of emotion in the region of her belly. Or perhaps it was merely a lingering indigestion from Morini’s copious breakfast.

She moved on to the chests, and found them filled with books: scholarly sorts of books, Greeks and Romans, philosophical tracts, most of which Abigail had already studied with the tutor Alexandra had so expensively hired to keep her occupied during her London days.

Wallingford’s wardrobe contained the usual complement of an English gentleman, with morning tweeds next to neat wool suits next to smooth black dinner jackets. Abigail slipped her hands into the usual pockets, and found no signs of billets-doux, no clandestine correspondence of any kind. Another little pang: disappointment, or relief?

She stood in the center of the room and turned in a circle, frowning.

Surely she had missed something.

If she inhabited this room and had something to hide, some secret passion, something worth traveling across Europe to keep concealed, where would she put it?

Abigail ran her eyes over the floor, the windows, the furniture. The thick solid walls, made of stone, covering with crumbling old plaster. She stepped to one side and ran her fingers lightly over the rough surface.

Quite old. No sign of having been disturbed or of hasty replastering. In any case, what did the Duke of Wallingford know about such things?

At last, Abigail turned to the dresser, a dark old-fashioned hulk near the window, and with one finger drew aside the opening of Wallingford’s shaving kit.

Bergamot.

Oh, heaven.

Abigail sank into the chair next to the dresser, sighing. His shaving soap. That was it. She leaned over, inhaled again, slumped back again, sighed again. In her mind, she had flown instantly back to the stable at the inn, with the rain thundering on the tile roof above, and Wallingford’s velvet mouth covering hers, and the stone wall pressed against her back, and—oh, another sniff, oh, delight—and the duke’s stone chest pressed against her breasts, and . . .

“What the
devil
are you doing in my room?”

Abigail’s half-lidded eyes flew open.

He filled the entrance, her Duke of Wallingford. His arms lay crossed over his chest, and his broad tweed-swathed shoulders nearly touched the sides of the doorway. He was wearing his riding clothes, and his shining boots lifted him to unspeakable authority. In her bergamot-drugged mind, he seemed as handsome as a god, his cheekbones jutting proudly over mortal man and his dark hair curling in a darling question mark upon his forehead. His eyes blazed at her, lit by the sunlight from the window, and for the first time Abigail realized that they weren’t black at all, but rather a deep midnight blue. She had never been close enough in full daylight to see it before.

“What a question,” Abigail said, rising, fighting the urge to fling herself into his arms or else lie down on the floor with her legs spread, “when it’s perfectly obvious I’m only changing the feathers in your bed.”

She waved a demonstrative hand at the burlap sacks in the middle of the floor, and the trail of down surrounding them.

Wallingford looked at the feathers, and at Abigail, and back at the feathers. His arms remained crossed. He spoke slowly, as he might to a person of known idiot capacities. “Changing . . . the feathers . . . on my bed?” he inquired in a measured voice, eyebrows raised.

“It’s very hard work, though I don’t suppose you have any idea,” said Abigail. The scent of bergamot began at last to clear from her head in the gust of fresh air from the doorway, though oddly enough she still wanted to fling herself into his arms. Instead, she picked up a sack of goose down. “I was only taking a moment’s rest in your chair.”

Wallingford stepped forward and cast a suspicious glance around the room. “Aren’t there servants for that sort of thing?”

“They’re busy with the cheeses, of course.”

“The cheeses?”

“It’s a very long and domestic story, I’m afraid, and you don’t strike me as the sort of fellow who takes much interest in domestic stories. Would you mind helping me with this mattress?” Abigail pulled off the blankets and sheets in a relentless tug.

“What the devil are you doing?” exclaimed the duke.

“Changing your feathers, of course.”

“My feathers don’t need changing, and certainly not by you.”

His hand closed around her arm. An enormous hand, she thought, quite surrounding her with room to spare. She wanted to lean back in his shoulder, but it hardly seemed appropriate when they were arguing like this. “Of course your feathers need changing,” she said. “I daresay these ones date from the last papal visit, which is to say centuries ago.”

“Your presence in my bedroom is a direct violation of the terms of the wager.”

“It is not. I’m on a housekeeping errand, quite innocent. You’re the one with your hand around my arm, which strikes me as decidedly more seductive in intent.”

Wallingford’s hand dropped away. “I must ask you to leave.”

“I must ask you to stand aside while I complete the re-feathering of your bed.”

“You’re the sister of a marchioness. It isn’t your business to be re-feathering beds, or feeding goats and chickens, for that matter.”

Abigail turned. “What the devil does that mean? What business is it of yours? I think a great many marchionesses would be improved by feeding goats on occasion. Dukes, too, come to think of it.”

Wallingford glowered down at her. “You’ve no sense of propriety at all, do you?”

“No, I haven’t.” She stared up at him, as fiercely as she could, feeling suddenly small and frail next to the wide heft of Wallingford’s shoulders, the unending length and breadth of him. She’d known large men before, of course, but this was different. Beneath those well-cut tweeds lay a fine latent energy, a seething will. She could sense it roiling inside him, ready to flood all that civilized bone and muscle with the warmongering energy of his ancestors, the ones who had first earned those titles that now trailed after his name and made him so irresistible to women.