A Duke Never Yields (39 page)

“I suppose it helps a little. But then I see you with a beautiful marchesa on the cathedral steps, after you’ve been missing for hours; or perhaps, one day, I’ll see a lady in a London drawing room, some lover of yours, and the past isn’t really past, is it? It’s not another life at all. It’s
your
life, and there are living women who have been to bed with you, who know you like this, and I have to find a way to accept that. To accept the possibility that one day, there may be others.”

He held her tightly and rocked her. “Abigail, never.”

“We didn’t break the curse, Wallingford. We’ve failed them.”

“It means nothing.” He said it with all the conviction he could muster.

My dear boy, has the entire conduct of your adult life ever suggested your usefulness for anything else?

The failure was not
theirs
, was it? It was
his
, his alone. His vow was not enough.

She was clinging to him, her head buried in his shoulder, her damp skin stuck to his.

“How many are there, Wallingford? Just so I know. What are my odds, at any given party in London, that you’ve been up someone in the room?”

His chest was wet with her tears. “Abigail,” he said softly, comforting her as best he could, holding her against him.

“I don’t blame you, exactly. It’s simply a fact, a part of you, and I don’t know what to do. I love you so. If I didn’t love you like this, it wouldn’t hurt. I can’t have one and not the other.”

“We could live here in Italy, if you like. Anywhere you want. Whatever you want, Abigail.”

“Run away, you mean.”

“If it makes you happy. I only want your happiness, Abigail.”

She looked up, and her eyes were awash: Abigail, who never cried. “I know you do. I know you do
now
. But tomorrow?”

“Every tomorrow.”

She went on looking at him with her wet eyes, gazing upon his face with such love and sadness he thought he would break apart. Her hand came up and touched his cheek, ran across the emerging stubble on his jaw. “At least I have you now,” she said. “At this moment, in this present minute, there are no others. I have you
now
, don’t I?”

“You have me now.” He eased her into the pillows and drew the sheets over them, and he held her close, because he knew that was all he could do. After a while, he made love to her again, lavished her with every possible pleasure, told her again how he loved her, until her body arched and trembled with the force of her climax, and this time she fell without words into an exhausted slumber, tucked into the circle of his arms.

*   *   *

W
allingford was exhausted, too, but his eyes remained stubbornly open, staring at the moonlit shadows on the ceiling. Somewhere in the room, a clock ticked away in loud scratches, in time with the beat of his heart.

He looked down at Abigail, at her trusting head nestled under his arm. He stroked her hair, her shining chestnut hair that he loved. She was deeply asleep; she didn’t even flinch. Poor Abigail, he hadn’t allowed her much rest in the past thirty-six hours.

He disengaged from her slowly, doing his best not to disturb her, though he suspected an elephant might have wandered across the bed without causing her to wake. Silently he found his clothes, dressed to his waistcoat, and opened the door with a soft click of the latch.

The full moon was low in the sky, nearly dipping behind the rooftops. Wallingford longed for a drink or a smoke, something to do with his fingers, and in the absence of either he stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets and walked across the empty Piazza del Campo, up the hill toward the striped cathedral, around the deserted streets. The air was still languid, still bearing a trace of the midday heat. His eyelids began to grow heavy at last, and he turned back for the hotel.

As he reached the awning, a voice stopped him. “Rather an odd place to find a man on his wedding night.”

Wallingford sighed and turned in his grandfather’s direction. “Afraid I haven’t done my duty for the dukedom, are you? Let me assure you to the contrary.”

Olympia emerged from the shadows, his bare white head catching the moonlight. “As it’s not my dukedom, I don’t really give a damn. Except I have rather a fondness for your new bride, and I should hate her to be disappointed.”

Wallingford leaned against the wall and studied his grandfather. “It was all very neatly done, wasn’t it, Grandfather? Tell me, how long ago did you pick her out?”

“A year or two, I suppose. You must admit I chose well.”

“I won’t deny it.”

“And the others? Roland and Burke?”

Olympia came to rest on a nearby pillar. “In fact, it all started with your brother. I had done a bit of meddling, in earlier days . . .”

“I am shocked to the core.”

“. . . and I decided it was time to put things right. I was simply fortunate in the matter of cousins.”

“Better to be lucky than clever, so they say.”

Olympia tapped his long fingers against his trousers. “You love her, I see.”

“More than I ever imagined. I would die for her.” Wallingford spoke plainly.

“Given up your philandering ways and all that?”

“That is my firm intention.”

Olympia raised a single eyebrow at that. “One couldn’t help noticing, at the conclusion of the ceremony,” he said, “that this so-called curse has apparently not been lifted.”

Wallingford shrugged. “As to that, I can’t say. I meant every word of my vows to her. I would cut off my right arm before I looked at another woman.”

“And still.”

Wallingford said nothing, because to say anything would give voice to the doubt in his chest, the doubt of himself.

“You don’t think yourself capable, do you?” Olympia said at last.

“
You
certainly don’t think me capable. You never have.”

“Then I suppose, for the sake of that inexpressibly dear girl who sleeps upstairs in your bed,” said Olympia, straightening from the pillar, “you had better find a way to prove to yourself that you are.”

*   *   *

F
or some time, Wallingford sat in the armchair, watching her sleep. The rise and fall of her chest mesmerized him. He studied the curve of her cheekbone in the last of the moonlight, the dark pool of her hair on the pillow, the warm white swell of her breasts. He wanted to bury his face in them once more, to taste her skin, but he held himself in check.

She stirred; her eyelids flickered. He put his face into his hands.

“Why are you dressed?” she asked sleepily.

“I went for a walk.”

The sheets rustled. “Look at me, Wallingford.”

He raised his head. She sat in the bed, her lovely body shrouded by a white sheet, watching him with her wise light brown eyes.

“You’re not certain, either? Whether you can do this. Whether you can be faithful for the rest of your life. That’s why the curse isn’t broken.”

“Rubbish. I would never stray from you, Abigail. I would never hurt you.”

“You’re only saying that to reassure me, because you want so much for it to be true. But a rake doesn’t really reform, does he?”

He rose from the chair and went to the window. “I am not a rake.”

“Still, you’ve behaved like one, all your life. That’s why you came to Italy to begin with, after all. To prove that you were more than that. To try to get along without women and wine. And then I came along.”

“Yes, you came along.”

“So you don’t really know, do you? Whether you can resist all the temptation around you, all the temptation to which the Duke of Wallingford is subject.”

“I can. I must. I love you too much to fail.”

The sheets rustled again, and a moment later he felt her hand against his back, and then her smooth cheek. “Listen to me,” she whispered. “I’ve been thinking, thinking a great deal. Wallingford, my love, my husband. Go from here. Spend a year on your own. The year of chastity you set out for yourself, the one I interrupted . . .”

He turned. “What the devil, Abigail? What are you talking about?”

“What’s a year, after all?” She put her hands around the back of his head. “There’s no more rush, no curse to be broken. I’ll wait for you. I’ll wait at the castle. Set off on your own, and scratch for your own worms.” She bent her head and kissed his chest. “I’ll keep your tender heart right here, safe between my hands.”

He was falling, right through some gaping hole in the floorboards, into an abyss below.

He scratched out, “
Leave
you? You’re sending me away?”

“I’ll manage. I’m strong enough; you know I am.”

“It’s impossible. It’s ridiculous. I could never leave you . . .”

“Darling, you must.”

“. . . to say nothing of the estate . . .”

“On my own, I should certainly bollox it all up, but I know your brother will help me manage things. Roland’s very clever, you know.”

He bowed his head above her and anchored himself in the soft scent of her hair.

“Listen, my love,” she said. “I know you, I know you to your bones. I understand everything. I know why you went out walking in the moonlight on your wedding night. I know what weighs on your heart. You need this. You needed it last March, and you still need it. Simply loving me isn’t enough. We proved that today.”

“Yes, it is. You’re my strength, Abigail.”

“No, I’m not.
You’re
your own strength, Wallingford, and you must see that. It’s there, it’s in everything you do, and you simply don’t know it.”

Wallingford closed his eyes.

“You are so
full
of golden promise,” she said.

He pressed his lips against her hair.

She went on. “And I need this, too. I need you to suffer a little, to try yourself at ordinary tasks as mortal men do. To learn how to be the true and faithful husband who will share my bed and board, who will father my children.”

“Abigail, it’s absurd. I can’t leave you.” Was that his voice? He hardly recognized it. A tear left his right eye and rolled down his cheek, disappearing into her hair.

“You can, Wallingford. You should. A year of chaste living: It’s what you meant to do all along. You knew, you always knew what had to be done.”

He gathered her hair in his hands, tilted up her face, and kissed her. “Go back to bed, darling. You’re making no sense at all.”

“I’m not sleepy.”

“Yes, you are. God knows I am. We’ll both feel better in the morning.”

He led her back to the bed and stretched himself next to her, with his shoes still on, and in an instant she was asleep on her side, facing him, his slumbering angel. He lay watching her, taking her breath into his lungs. His heart crashed painfully against the crumbled walls of his chest.

At last he rose and found a sheet of paper in the desk. In the light of the moon, he wrote down names and addresses: his solicitor, his banker, his man of business in the village. He took the marriage certificate from his jacket pocket and laid it out beneath a paperweight. He wrote a letter such as he had never written: words of love, of abiding faithfulness; and having used up all his store of sentiment, signed it simply
Arthur
.

She would know what it meant.

He packed nothing with him, not even a razor. He took only a few lire notes from his pocket and left the rest on the desk. Satisfied, he went to the bed and looked down at his wife. He drew the blanket over her; without his body curled around hers, she might be chilled, even in this warm room. With his finger he touched her hair, her cheek, her breast, her belly, marveling at her softness. He longed to touch the turned-up elfin tip of her eye, but he was afraid to wake her.

At last he turned and left the room, not daring to look back.

Outside the window, the moon disappeared below the horizon.

TWENTY-THREE

Midsummer’s Eve, 1891

A
lexandra Burke leaned back against her husband’s chest and tossed her sister a self-satisfied smirk. “How disappointing you haven’t got any serving outfits that fit me this year.”

“There’s always next year,” said Mr. Burke, drawing his hand rather suggestively to where his wife’s chest strained the boundaries of both propriety and possibility, to say nothing of the seams of her once-demure yellow gown. His other hand remained atop her belly, which was itself large enough to apply for independent statehood.

Alexandra patted his fingers. “With luck, you shall put me in this condition every midsummer, just to annoy Abigail and her schemes. Oof!” She grimaced and put her hand on her other side. “On the other hand, perhaps one child is more than sufficient.”

“I hope for
your
sake there’s more than one baby in there,” said Abigail, “or else we shall have to send out for a much larger cradle.” She set her tray of stuffed olives on the table. “There you are, sister dear. Shall I bring another platter for your husband?”

“For my husband? Don’t be ridiculous.” Alexandra reached for an olive and popped it expertly into her mouth. “I’m more than capable of eating two platters of Morini’s stuffed olives without Finn’s assistance. Look here, Penhallow!” She slapped Lord Roland’s hand as it attempted an olive from across the table. “If you want olives, send for your own wife.”

“But she’s off serving everybody else,” said Lord Roland, with the long face of a man accustomed to having his wife’s ministrations entirely to himself.

“Shall I find her for you, Papa?” Philip swiped a pair of olives from the tray and squirmed off the bench.

“Splendid idea!” Roland called after the boy, as he disappeared into the crowd of villagers. “And I recommend you start by taking a running lap or two around the castle itself, just to be certain she’s not off hiding in a corner somewhere.” He turned back to the others. “Helps them go right to sleep,” he explained knowingly.

“I shall keep that in mind,” said Burke.

Abigail picked up the empty tray and wove her way back to the kitchen, nearly colliding with Lilibet on her way out. “Philip is looking for you,” she said. “Though he may not find you straightaway. Roland’s sent him running around the castle.”