Seduction of an English Beauty
Autorzy
Miranda Jarrett
Lektury
19,4K
Rozdziały
14
Chapter One
Rome, Italy
October, 1784
Rome was a bore.
Lady Diana Farren stood at the parlor window of their lodgings in the Piazza di Spagna, watching the rain flatten the leaves on the trees in the garden below her. Everyone had promised her that Rome would be enchanting, fascinating, the Eternal City among all other cities on the continent. Yet after a week of steamy rain and tedious company, of endless tours of more old churches, old temples, old statues, old paintings and company old enough to be her grandparents, the only thing eternal she’d discovered here was endless, eternal boredom.
Bore, bored, boring.
If her life had gone as she’d hoped and planned, she would have been staying in her family’s town house on Grosvenor Square in London by now. She would already be the prize belle of the new season, with a score of young lords vying for her attention and her hand, each willing to duel one another for the sake of a single dance with her. She was eighteen, and she was beautiful: a fact, not a boast, just as it was a fact that she was worth a fortune of at least £20,000 simply by being the younger daughter of the Duke of Aston.
But those facts hadn’t saved her from Rome. Nothing had. Instead, one evening in June, she’d been caught in her father’s stables with a groom whose face she tried never to recall, and she’d been sent abroad as punishment. She’d been banished, really. There was no other way to look upon Father’s decision, and no chance to appeal it, either. She’d finally, regretfully exhausted Father’s patience.
But matters had only grown worse in France. Through absolutely no fault of her own, she’d been knocked on the head and kidnapped at the orders of the wickedest old libertine in Paris, the Comte de Archambeault. To her great good fortune, the Comte had been mortally ill and unable to do her any harm. But the scandal had been bad enough, and a whole new set of ill-founded rumors and lies had attached to her name.
Now she was doomed to wander about Italy like some hapless gypsy at least until the spring, with her governess Miss Wood to watch her like a sharp-eyed hawk. By the time she finally returned to England, all the best bachelors would be claimed by other girls, or frightened clear away by her tattered reputation. Only the buck-toothed weaklings and spindle-shanked fools would be left. She’d never discover the kind of love her sister had found with her new husband: joyful, passionate and forever. Was it so very much to long for a love of her own? She might not even marry now, but be doomed to empty, loveless spinsterhood, just like Miss Wood.
Diana took a deep breath, trying to keep back her tears. Better to be bored than homesick, but with the gloom of this rain, the homesickness was winning out. She missed her sister and her father and her friends and her cousins. She missed all the young men who’d flirted with her and made her laugh. She missed her corner bedchamber at home in Aston Hall, and the way the sun would stream in the east windows in the morning. She missed England: the words she could understand without a pocket dictionary, the people who laughed at the same things she did, the food and the drink that could comfort her with their familiarity.
She was so lost in her own misery that she didn’t hear the other person join her at the window until it was too late to escape.
“Buongiorno, mia gentildonna bella,” the gentleman began. “Mi scusa, non posso a meno di—”
“Per favore, signore, no,” Diana said without turning, giving her refusal the stern conviction that Miss Wood would expect from her. Please, sir, no. What could be more direct than that? She’d already had practice enough on this journey; Italian men could be persistent, and if Diana ever wished to see London again, she had to be as discouraging as possible. “Grazie, no.”
“Ahh.” The man cleared his throat, perplexed. “No speranza, mia gentildonna?”
Suspicious, Diana frowned. She thought he was asking her if she could offer him any hope or encouragement, but she wasn’t certain. Her Italian was so limited that she had to be very careful. She’d already suffered through one unfortunate (though amusing) experience when she’d thought a servant had been offering her more tea, and instead he’d been begging to kiss her, and quite shamelessly, too.
“Sono spiacente, signore, noi non sono stato introdotto.” I’m sorry, sir, but we’ve not been introduced. That had become her well-practiced answer to all questions. “Grazie, no. No.”
But the man didn’t budge, and Diana sighed wearily. Until now, she’d thought that she and Miss Wood were the only guests at Signor Silvani’s palazzo, and that she’d be left alone here in the common parlor. If this impertinent fellow wouldn’t leave her, then she’d have to leave him, and return to the private suite of rooms she shared with Miss Wood and their servants.
She folded the ivory blades of her fan into her palm, and turned away from him to leave. “Arrivederci, signore.”
“Don’t go, please, oh, hang it, that is—Parla inglese, mia gentildonna?”
Surprised, she paused, but didn’t look back. He didn’t sound Italian, but he sounded young and charming, and rather handsome, too, if sound alone could be trusted.
“Of course I speak English, sir,” she said cautiously. “What else would an Englishwoman speak?”
“Then we’ve that much in common,” he said, “because I’m English, too.”
“Are you, sir?” She would have to turn to face him now. What was necessarily discouraging to a forward foreign gentleman would be unforgivably ill-mannered to a gentleman who was English, like herself.
And so she set her face into a polite smile, and turned. The gentleman was not only English, but handsome, with curling blond hair streaked with gold, a smile full of charm and blue eyes that seemed bright enough to light even this gray day. Though not tall, he had the manly sturdiness of an English country gentleman, with a broad chest beneath his well-tailored waistcoat. He was young, too, of an interesting age not much older than her own. Her smile grew and became genuine. How could it not?
“Good day to you, sir.” She didn’t curtsey, guessing his rank to be below hers, but her smile remained, warm and interested. She let her gaze slide past him, looking for Miss Wood to be their chaperone. The parlor was empty except for the two of them and the dreary sound of the rain echoing up into the room’s high coved ceiling. Diana could predict Miss Wood’s lecture: to be alone with a gentleman, English or not, was not acceptable, especially not without a proper introduction.
Diana knew the rest, too. Loneliness didn’t matter. She shouldn’t speak another word to him. She should put aside her smile behind frosty indignation and reserve. She should return at once to her own rooms. If she wanted her banishment from London to end, she mustn’t falter now.
And yet how would a few minutes in this gentleman’s company hurt? From his accent, his manner, and his bearing, she was certain he was a gentleman, just as he must realize she was a lady. And if he were another guest in this particular palazzo, then he must also have impeccable references and a well-lined pocketbook, for these lodgings were the most exclusive in a neighborhood that already catered to aristocratic British travelers.
Surely, then, he’d understand the value of honor, both hers and his own. Surely he could be trusted, especially with a smile like that.
And surely, too, he must understand the little shiver of excitement she felt at doing something that she’d been so expressly forbidden to do.
“I’ve frightened you, haven’t I?” he asked, misreading her silence. “Coming up behind you like that, taking you by surprise. Ah, forgive me, my lady!”
“I’m not so tender as that,” she said. “It takes far more to frighten me. And how did you know I was a lady?”
“I guessed,” he confessed, his smile becoming a grin. “I was right, too, wasn’t I, my lady?”
“You were.” She turned her wrist and tapped him on the arm with her fan, not hard, not really, but enough to make it clear that she still held the advantage. Oh, this was a hundred times more enjoyable than all the musty old galleries in Rome combined—a thousand times! “Just as I will guess, and guess correctly, that you are a gentleman.”
He cocked his head to one side. “A gentleman, but no lord?”
“Perhaps,” she said, narrowing her eyes to appraise him teasingly. “Your tailor would say so, and so would your tutor at school. And if you’re staying here, with Signor Silvani’s blessing, then most likely you are what you claim.”
“But I’m not,” he said. “Staying here, I mean. My rooms are down the street a ways. I’m only visiting my uncle.”
“Your uncle.” Blade by blade, she opened her fan, holding it just below her chin as she smiled over the painted arc. “And now, you see, you’re visiting me.”
“Lady Diana?” Miss Wood’s voice echoed faintly down the hallway from their rooms. “Where are you, my lady?”
Diana snapped her fan shut. “That’s my governess,” she said, her eyes round with urgency. “I can’t let her find you here with me. Hurry, hurry, you must hide!”
“Hide?” The gentleman smiled indulgently. “There’s no need for that, my lady.”
“Oh, yes, there is.” Swiftly, Diana glanced around the room, searching for a hiding place, and grabbed his arm. “There, behind those curtains. I’ll send her on her way as soon as I can.”
But he didn’t move, only patting her hand as it clung to his sleeve. “I’m not ashamed to be here with you, my lady.”
“That is not the point, sir, not when—ah, Miss Wood, you’ve found me!” Diana smiled brightly, and pulled her hand free of the gentleman’s. “I was just coming to answer your call when this gentleman stopped me.”
With her hands clasped at the waist of her plain gray gown, Miss Wood didn’t answer at first, taking her time to judge the situation for herself. Such silence was hardly new to Diana, and she knew that the longer it continued, the less likely her governess was to decide in Diana’s favor. While Miss Wood herself was still a young woman, not yet thirty, in Diana’s eyes she would forever be a model spinster-governess: small, drab, inclined to stoutness, severity and suspicion. If Father had sent her away with the head gaoler of Newgate Prison, he couldn’t have watched her more closely than Miss Wood.
Even now the governess was studying the gentleman, from the silver buckles on his shoes to the top of his gold-colored head, with the same shrewdness that a farmer’s wife used to gauge the worth of vegetables on market day. Finally, she gave a quick little nod, her way of prefacing disagreeable tasks.
“Good day, sir,” she said, her voice as chill as ice as she dropped a perfunctory curtsey. “Forgive me for speaking plainly, sir, but I do not believe you have been properly introduced to her ladyship. My lady, come with me.”
Diana sighed with frustration. All she’d wanted was a few moments’ conversation, a small diversion from this wretched trip’s tedium. She’d meant no harm nor scandal, nor had she intended to do anything to put her return to England and London and her season in jeopardy.
But there’d be no use in arguing with Miss Wood, because, as usual, Miss Wood had truth on her side. Diana hadn’t been properly introduced to the gentleman; she didn’t even know his name. Besides, if he was like all the others, now he’d make as hasty a retreat as he possibly could, the cowards. No man, gentle or otherwise, liked to be reminded of the fearsome prospect of her father’s displeasure, even though Father was hundreds of miles away in England.
She swallowed back her unhappiness and raised her chin, prepared to follow Miss Wood back into discretion, gentility and exquisite, undeniable boredom.
But to her surprise, the gentleman spoke first.
“Hold a moment, Miss Wood,” he said, his voice strong and sure and not the least cowardly. “If all that’s lacking between this lady and myself is an introduction, then introduce us properly, and set everything to rights.”
Diana gasped, startled that a gentleman had dared challenge Miss Wood’s authority or her father’s wrath. None of the other men that she’d known in the past would have. But this one was already proving himself to be a superior gentleman—quite superior.
But Miss Wood remained unconvinced. She stopped abruptly, drawing herself up as tall as she could before him. “How could I possibly introduce you to her ladyship, sir, when no one has introduced you to me?”
“Then I shall.” He bowed, more towards Diana than her governess. “Miss Wood, I am Lord Edward Warwick, and my father is the Marquess of Calvert, and if you choose not to believe me, you need only ask my uncle, who is also a guest of this house.”
“My lord, I am delighted to make your acquaintance,” Diana said cheerfully, flickering her fingers as she held her hand out to him. True, an heir to a title would have been preferable to a younger son, but after her sister had gone and married a questionable Irishman for love alone, Father would consider the second son of a marquess as a genuine prize. “Not even Miss Wood could object to you!”
But Miss Wood could, and now she stepped between them. “If you please, might I ask your uncle’s name?”
Lord Edward smiled past Miss Wood to Diana. “My uncle is Reverend Lord Henry Patterson, the elderly gentleman residing in the rooms across the hall. He is so occupied with his studies and his writings that he keeps to himself, but there is no more honorable Englishman to be found here in Rome.”
“Oh, Miss Wood, not even you could find fault with a recommendation like that,” Diana said, her gaze fixed entirely on Lord Edward’s charming face. It must have been months since an English gentleman had looked at her with such open admiration.
Perhaps she’d been pining after the season for no reason at all. Lord Edward wouldn’t have heard of her misadventure with the groom at Aston Hall, or her flirtation with the guard in Chantilly, or even that last dramatic little affair in Paris when she’d been kidnapped for a brief time. All Lord Edward would know of her was what he saw and what she told him. With a little discretion, anything—anything!—could be possible.
“You know exactly what to say to reassure us, my lord,” she continued happily. “What better reference for character could there be than the Church of England?”
“None, my lady,” Miss Wood said darkly. “But let me please remind you that we must take care, after—”
“Come with me.” Lord Edward took Diana’s hand—seized it, really, as if he’d every right—and led her from the room and across the hallway. “You can meet the old fellow yourself, and he can set things formally between us.”
“This is not proper, my lord,” Miss Wood protested, scurrying after them. “This is not right. Because her ladyship’s rank is higher than yours, you must be introduced to her, not the other way about.”
But Lord Edward was already opening the door to the other rooms.
“Uncle, it’s Edward again,” he called as he entered, not bothering to wait for the footman that came rushing towards them, still buttoning his livery coat. “I’ve discovered the English ladies staying beneath your roof, and brought them to you for approval.”
In a large room that must serve as parlor, study and dining room sat an elderly gentleman, his armchair drawn close to a large table before the open window. Although rain splattered on the stone sill and curled the papers on the edge of the table, the man himself was oblivious, too absorbed in his work to notice.
Wisps of his white hair poked out from beneath a black velvet beret such as painters wore, and though his black linen waistcoat and breeches were ordinary enough, his bare feet were thrust into outlandish needlepoint slippers embroidered with red roses. Scowling with concentration, he held a large magnifying glass in one hand and a fragment of ancient pottery in the other, while puffing furiously on a long-stemmed white clay pipe.
Lord Edward cleared his throat with noisy emphasis. “Uncle, if you please,” he said. “The ladies, Uncle.”
“Ehh?” Startled, the Reverend Lord Henry Patterson jerked his head around to face them, his scowl at once dissolving into a beatific smile. He put down his pipe and his fragment, and rose from his chair, sweeping the velvet cap from his head so that the silk tassel swung from the crown. “Why, yes, Edward. The ladies! How do you do, my dears? A damp day in old Rome, isn’t it?”
“It is indeed.” Diana smiled and stepped forward, determined to put an end to Miss Wood’s foolishness about a proper introduction before the governess could start it up again. “I am Lady Diana Farren and this is my governess Miss Wood, and we are delighted to make the acquaintance of two English gentlemen in this foreign place.”
The clergyman’s expression was so dazzled and doting it was almost foolish. Diana smiled cheerfully, accustomed to the effect her beauty had on men. It wasn’t anything she did: it just happened.
“There now,” Lord Edward said heartily. “I told you I’d discovered true ladies, uncle. Lady Diana, you may be delighted, but I—I am enchanted, and honored, too.”
“Her ladyship is the youngest daughter of His Grace the Duke of Aston, my lords,” Miss Wood announced sternly, ever vigilant, and Diana could almost feel her reprimand hanging in the damp air. “Her ladyship is not interested in intrigues, my lord. She is traveling through Italy in thoughtful pursuit of knowledge and learning.”
“Then you must be her guide in such education, Miss Wood,” said Reverend Lord Patterson, slapping his velvet cap back onto his head so he could hold his hand out to Miss Wood. “What a paragon of learning you must be yourself, Miss Wood, if his grace has entrusted his daughter’s education and welfare to your hands.”
To Diana’s amazement, a flush of pink flooded Miss Wood’s pale cheeks as the minister shook her hand.
“You are too kind, reverend my lord,” her governess said. “But I can think of no more noble calling than to guide his grace’s daughter, and to strive to improve her mind and character, as well as my own.”
“Of course, of course.” Reverend Lord Patterson nodded eagerly. “Might I show you my latest acquisition, Miss Wood? Surely a woman of your scholarly inclinations will appreciate the workmanship of this, from a painted amphora that was already ancient in the times of the Caesars.”
“Thank you very kindly, reverend my lord,” Miss Wood said, already heading to the table with more eagerness than Diana could ever recall witnessing. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure.”
Diana turned back to Lord Edward, looking up at him wryly from beneath her lashes. “You arranged that quite tidily, didn’t you?”
He placed his hand over his heart. “I should rather believe it was fate, my lady, bringing me closer to you.”
“I don’t believe a word of that,” she scoffed, “and neither do you.”
His brows rose, his open hand still planted firmly upon his chest. “You don’t believe in fate?”
“Not like that, no,” she said. She took a single step away from him, taking care to make her white muslin skirts drift gracefully around her legs. “Rather I believe that we control our own lives and destinies, with the free will that God gave us. Otherwise we’d be no better than rudderless skiffs, tossed about on a river’s current. That’s what I believe. As, I suspect, do you.”
He sighed, and at last let his hand drop from his chest. “You suspect me already, my lady?”
She smiled, letting him think whatever he pleased. “What I suspect, Lord Edward, isn’t you in general, but your actions.”
“My actions?” he asked, his blue eyes wide with disbelief. “Why, I’ve only known you for half an hour!”
“More than enough time, however noble your motives may be.” She spread her fan, fluttering it languidly beneath her chin as she walked slowly towards the far window. She hadn’t enjoyed herself this much since she’d left England. “I suspect that you are as bored as I here in Rome, with all the best people still away at their villas for the summer.”
“Not at all!” he exclaimed. “Why, I’ve only—”
“Please, my lord, I’m not yet done,” she said softly, making him listen even harder. “I suspect that you came to the common room across the hall with full intention of meeting me. And I suspect you somehow contrived for your uncle to entertain Miss Wood and thus leave us together, as we are now. Those are my suspicions regarding you, my lord.”
“I see.” He clasped his hands behind his waist and frowned, thinking, as he followed her. “Yet now you’ll fault me because I did not wait for fate to toss you into my path, but bravely bent circumstance to my own will?”
“Oh, I never said I faulted you, my lord,” she said, her smile blithe. “I said first that I suspected you did not believe in fate any more than I, and then I offered my other suspicions to prove it.”
He raised his chin a fraction, the line of his jaw strong in the muted light. “Then I find favor with you, my lady, and not fault?”
“Not yet,” she said, as he came to stand beside her in the window’s alcove. “But I must say, it’s unusual for a gentleman to be so forthright in his attentions.”
“I’ve no desire to be your rudderless boat, my lady,” he said. “Consider me the river’s current instead, ready to carry you along with me wherever you please.”
She laughed softly, intrigued. Most gentlemen were too awed by the combination of her beauty and her father’s power to speak so decisively. She liked that; she liked him. What would he be like as a husband? she wondered, the face she’d wake to see each morning for the rest of her life? “And where exactly do you propose to carry me, Lord Edward?”
He made a gallant half bow. “Wherever you please, my lady.”
“But where do you please, Lord Edward?” she asked. “Or should I ask you how?”
“How I please?” He chuckled. “There are some things I’d prefer to demonstrate rather than merely to explain, Lady Diana.”
“You forget yourself, my lord.” She laughed behind her fan, taking the sting from her reprimand, and pointedly glanced past him to her governess and his uncle, their heads bent close over the broken crockery. “This is neither the place nor the time.”
He grinned, not in the least contrite, and leaned back against one side of the alcove with his arms folded over his chest. “We’ll speak of Rome instead. That’s safe enough, isn’t it?”
She shrugged and leaned back against the other side of the window opposite him, leaving him to decide what was safe and what wasn’t. The rain had dwindled to a steamy mist, the sun brightening behind the clouds.
“There are so many attractions in Rome, my lady, both ancient and modern,” he continued. “It’s why we English make this journey, isn’t it? Our choices are boundless.”
She wrinkled her nose, and turned away from him to gaze out at the red-tiled rooftops and dripping cypress trees. “No tedious museums or dusty old churches, I beg you. I’ve enough of that with Miss Wood, traipsing across France and Italy with her lecturing me at every step.”
“But this is Rome,” he said, “and I promise I can make even the dustiest old ruin interesting.”
“I’m no bluestocking, Lord Edward,” she warned. “Broken-down buildings are never interesting.”
“With me, they would be.”
She shrugged, feigning indifference. In truth she couldn’t imagine anything better than to trade Miss Wood’s tours for his. She’d be sure to be ready in the morning, and keep him waiting only a quarter hour or so. “I already have a governess, my lord. I don’t need a governor to match.”
“Then come with me tomorrow, and I’ll show you Rome as you’ve not yet seen it,” he urged. “I’ll have a carriage waiting after breakfast. You’ll see. I’ll change your mind.”
“Perhaps,” she said, not wanting to seem over-eager. “Look, my lord, there. Can you see the rainbow?”
With colors that were gauzy pale, the rainbow arched over the city, spilling from the low-hanging gray clouds to end in a haze above the Tiber. Diana stepped out onto the narrow balcony, her fingertips trailing lightly along the wet iron railing.
“I can’t recall the last time I saw a rainbow,” Lord Edward marveled, joining her. “I’d say that’s a sign, my lady. I meet you, and the clouds roll away. You smile at me, and a rainbow fills the sky.”
But now Diana was leaning over the railing to watch an open carriage passing in the street below. The passengers must have trusted in the promise of that rainbow, too, to carry no more than emerald-colored parasols for cover: three beautiful, laughing women, their glossy black hair dressed high with elaborate leghorn straw hats pinned on top and their gowns cut low and laced tightly to display their lush breasts. The carriage seemed filled with their skirts, yards and yards of gathered bright silks, and as the red-painted wheels rolled past, the tassels on their parasols and the ribbons on their hats waved gaily in the breeze.
“Now that’s a sorry display for a lady like you to have to see,” Lord Edward said with righteous disapproval. “A covey of painted filles de l’opera!”
“That’s French.” Diana knew perfectly well what he meant—that the women were harlots—but she wanted to hear him say so. “Those women are Italian.”
“Well, yes,” Lord Edward admitted grudgingly. “Suffice to say that they are low women from the stage.”
“But isn’t it true that women of any kind are prohibited from appearing on the Roman stage?” she asked, repeating what she’d heard from their landlord. “That all the female parts in plays or operas are taken by men?”
“True, true, true,” Lord Edward said, clearing his throat gruffly at having been caught out. “You force me to be blunt, my lady. Those women are likely the mistresses of rich men, and as such beneath your notice.”
But it wasn’t the women that had caught Diana’s eye, so much as the man sprawled so insolently in the midst of all those petticoats and ribbons. Could he keep all three women as his mistresses, she wondered with interest, like a sultan with his harem?
He sat in the middle of the carriage seat, his arms thrown carelessly around the shoulders of two of the women and his long legs crossed and propped up on the opposite seat. He was handsome and dark like the three women, his smile brilliantly white as he laughed and jested with them, and his long, dark hair tied carelessly back into a queue with a red silk ribbon that could have been filched from one of their hats. But then everything about this man struck Diana as careless and easy, even reckless, and thoroughly, thoroughly not English.
“Will you bring a carriage like that one tomorrow, Lord Edward?” she asked, bending slightly over the rail to watch as the carriage passed beneath them. “One with red wheels and bells, and ribbons and flowers braided into the horses’ manes?”
“Only if I hire one from some carnival fair, my lady.” Lord Edward shook his head, his expression disapproving. “I respect you far too much for that.”
“Do you,” she said slowly. “And here I’d thought it looked rather like fun.”
“Like scandal, with that lot.” He took her by the elbow, ready to guide her from the unsavory sight. “Come away, Lady Diana. Don’t sully yourself by paying them any further attention.”
He turned away to return to the others, while Diana hung back for a final glimpse of the gaily decorated carriage. As she did, the flutter of her skirts must have caught the eye of the dark-haired man, and he turned to look up at her. For only a second, her gaze met his, his eyes startlingly pale beneath his dark brows and lashes. He pressed his first two fingers to his lips, then swept his hand up towards her on the balcony, a gesture at once elegant and seductive. He didn’t smile. He didn’t need to. That wind-blown kiss was enough.
“Lady Diana?” Lord Edward’s fingers pressed impatiently into her arm. “Shall we join the others?”
“Oh, yes.” Her heart racing inexplicably, she smiled at Lord Edward. “The rainbow’s gone now anyway.”
And when she stole one more glance back over her shoulder, the carriage and the man were gone, too.
