Главная страница | Современная зарубежная литература | Seduction of an English Beauty

Seduction of an English Beauty
Miranda Jarrett






“It was bella fortuna that sent you to me. Bella fortuna—luck, fate. Or is your London too dry and serious for such notions?”

“I don’t believe in fate,” Diana said. “Fate means you’ve abandoned reason and choice.”

“You’re listening too much to your head,” he said, tapping one finger to his brow. “That is acceptable for London, I suppose, but here in Rome you must rely on your heart. Romans do not think. They feel.”

“How did you know I’d be here?” she said, her voice sounding oddly breathy. “I certainly didn’t tell you.”

He smiled. “You didn’t have to. I knew you’d come. I knew it here, in my heart.”

“That’s enough,” she said. “My head—my English head—makes my decisions for me. I must go now, sir.”

“Ahh, you wound me, my lady! Have you remembered so much and forgotten my name?”

She looked up again, unable not to. One minute more with him. That was all she’d allow herself. Maybe two, three, but certainly no more than that. “I haven’t forgotten.”

“Then say it, my own Diana,” he whispered. “Say it to me from your heart, not your head.”

“Antonio,” she whispered in return, unable to stop herself. There was no one here to help her. But no one to watch and know what she did, either. “Antonio di Randolfo.”


Miranda Jarrett considers herself sublimely fortunate to have a career that combines history and happy endings—even if it’s one that’s also made her family far-too-regular patrons of the local pizzeria. Miranda is the author of over thirty historical romances, and her books are enjoyed by readers the world over. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including two Golden Leaf Awards and two Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Awards, and has three times been a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award finalist for best short historical romance.

Miranda is a graduate of Brown University, with a degree in art history. She loves to hear from readers at PO Box 1102, Paoli, PA 19301-1145, USA, or at MJarrett21@aol.com

Recent novels by the same author:

PRINCESS OF FORTUNE

THE SILVER LORD

THE GOLDEN LORD RAKE’S WAGER*

THE LADY’S HAZARD*

THE DUKE’S GAMBLE*

THE ADVENTUROUS BRIDE†

*A Penny House novel

†Grand Passion on the Grand Tour



Miranda Jarrett’s latest Regency trilogy is filled with

Grand Passion on the Grand Tour

The Duke of Aston’s beautiful daughters

are in Europe with their governess

on the most exciting trip of their lives…

The daring Lady Mary Farren took France by storm in

THE ADVENTUROUS BRIDE

Her scandalous sister Lady Diana

is thrilled by Italian passion in

SEDUCTION OF AN ENGLISH BEAUTY

Coming soon, their calm English governess,

Miss Wood, has her own romantic encounter…

THE ADVENTUROUS BRIDE

‘Jarrett provides readers with a delightful,

charming art mystery set in a colourful palette of the

French countryside, ancient churches and regal Paris.

The interesting backdrop and art history

add that little something different that

many readers are searching for…’

—RomanticTimesBOOKreviews




SEDUCTION OF AN ENGLISH BEAUTY


Miranda Jarrett




www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


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.


Chapter Two






Lord Anthony Randolph tipped the heavy crystal decanter and filled his glass again.

“Summer’s done,” he said sadly, holding the glass up to the window’s light to admire the glow of the deep-red wine. “The English demons are returning to conquer poor Rome again.”

Lucia laughed without turning towards him, her back straight as she sat at her dressing table while her maid wrapped another thick strand of hair around the heated curling iron. “How can you speak so, Antonio, when you are one of the English demons yourself?”

“Don’t be cruel, Lucia,” Anthony said mildly, sipping the wine. “Half my blood’s English, true, but my heart is pure Roman.”

“Which of course entitles you to say whatever you please.” Critically, Lucia touched the still-warm curl as it lay over her shoulder. “Which you would continue to do even if you’d been born on the moon.”

“I would, darling,” he said, dropping into a chair beside the open window and settling a small velvet pillow comfortably behind his head. Anthony was prepared to wait. Though the days when he and Lucia had been lovers were long past, as friends they were far more tolerant of one another’s foibles and flaws. “I cannot help myself. As soon as the days begin to shorten, the whey-faced English descend upon us in heartless droves, complaining because the wine’s too strong, the sun’s too hot and there’s no roasted beef on the menu.”

“I will not complain about the English gentlemen,” she said, holding one eyelid taut as she lined her eye with dark blue. “They are very attentive, and they come to call again and again.”

He raised his glass towards her. “How can they not, my lovely Lucia, when you are the golden prize they all wish to possess?”

“Oh, hush, Antonio,” she scolded. “You could fill the Tiber’s banks with all the idle flattery that spills from your mouth.”

“Exactly the way you wish it to be, Lucia,” he said, his smile lazy. They would be at least an hour late for the party at the studio of the painter Giovanni, but instead of fuming at the delay, he’d long ago learned to relax instead, and enjoy the intimacy of Lucia’s company. “Name another man in this city who knows how to please you better than I.”

She made a noncommittal little huff, concentrating on her reflection as she outlined the rosebud of her lips with cerise. Like every successful courtesan, she knew the value of making a grand entrance, even to a party among friends, and she wouldn’t leave her looking glass until she was certain every last detail of her appearance was perfect. Besides, tonight she’d been asked to sing as part of the entertainment. Her voice was as beautiful as her face, and she knew the power of both. It was a terrible injustice that Pope Innocent XI had banned female singers from the Roman opera nearly seventy years before. In any other city, her voice would have made her a veritable queen, and free to choose more interesting lovers than the fat, jolly wine merchant who currently kept her.

“You do well enough,” she said at last, pouting at herself, “for a whey-faced Englishman.”

He groaned dramatically. It was true that his father had been an English nobleman, heir to an earldom so far to the north that his land had bordered on the bleak chill of Scotland. Yet, on his Grand Tour after Oxford, Father had discovered the sun in Rome, and love in the effervescent charm of his mother, wealthy and noble-born in her own right. Anthony’s two much-older brothers had dutifully returned to England for their education, and remained there after their father’s death, but in his entire twenty-eight years, Anthony had never left Italy, delightfully content to remain in the warmth of that southern sun and his mother’s exuberant family.

“I do not have a whey-colored face, Lucia,” he said patiently, as if they hadn’t had this same discussion countless times before. “Nor am I sanctimonious, or overbearing, or ill-mannered, in the fashion of these traveling English.”

“But who’s to say you won’t end up like that puffed-up fellow we saw on the balcony today, eh?” she teased, hooking long garnet earrings into her ears. “Another year or two, Antonio, and you will look just the same, your waistcoat too tight over your belly and your face pasty and smug.”

At once Anthony knew the man she’d meant. How could he not? He’d been leaning from his lodgings to glower with disapproval as he and Lucia and two of her friends had passed through the Piazza di Spagna on their way to an impromptu picnic in the hills.

“That Englishman’s younger than I,” he said, proudly patting his own flat belly as if that were proof enough. “Lord Edward Warwick. He has been in Rome only a month, yet he believes he knows the city and her secrets better than a mere Roman. I was introduced to him last week in a shop by a friend who should have known better, and I’ve no further wish to meet him ever again.”

“You wouldn’t say the same of the lady standing with him.” Finally ready, Lucia rose from the bench, and smiled coyly. “You cannot deny it, Antonio. I know you too well. I saw how you looked at her, and she at you.”

“I won’t deny it for a moment.” He savored the last of his wine, remembering the girl on the balcony beside Warwick. She’d been English, too, of course. No one else ever lodged in the Piazza di Spagna. Besides, she’d stood at the iron railing in that peculiarly stiff way that always seemed to mark well-bred English ladies, as if they feared the luxury of their own bodies.

But that could be unlearned with the right tutor. The rest of her was worth the effort. In the soft light as the sun broke through the rain clouds, her hair had seemed as bright as burnished gold, her skin a delicious blend of cream and rose without a hint of paint. Too many of his father’s people were pale and wan to his eye, as if they’d been left out-of-doors in their wretched rainy climate to wither and fade away. But this girl managed to be pale without being pallid, delicate without losing that aura of passion, of desire, that he’d seen—no, felt—even at such a distance, and for so short a time before the carriage had turned the corner.

He’d wanted more. He still did.

“Think twice, Antonio, then think again,” Lucia warned. She handed him her merino shawl, then turned with a performer’s calculated grace. “Will she be worth the trouble she’ll bring you?”

He took the shawl, holding it high over her like wings before he settled it over her shoulders. “Who says she’d bring trouble?”

“I do,” Lucia said, turning once again so she was facing him. “I am serious, sweet. She is English. She is a lady. She is most likely a virgin. She will have men around her, a father, a brother, a sweetheart, to watch over that maidenhead. That will be your trouble.”

He smiled and traced his finger along the elegant bump on the bridge of her nose. “You worry too much, my dear.”

She swatted his hand away. “I know you too well.”

“And she doesn’t know me at all, the poor creature.”

“She’ll wish she didn’t by the time you’re through with her,” Lucia said darkly. “No woman escapes unmarked by you.”

His brows rose with mock surprise. “I don’t recall you complaining before this.”

“Don’t put words into my mouth, Antonio,” she said, baring her teeth like a tigress. Lucia might sing like an angel, but she pursued everything else with more inspiration from the devil than the divine. “You know I never complained when I was with you, nor shall I begin now. But for you, love is no more than a game, and that little English virgin may not understand how you play.”

He wouldn’t disagree. He had always enjoyed women, and he’d been careful to make sure that they found pleasure with him as well. Because of that, and because he was rich, he never lacked for lovers. But although he was nobly born, he preferred the company of the city’s more celebrated courtesans and a few married ladies with scandalous reputations, women who understood that love was no more than a passing amusement. Respectable young ladies bored him, and besides, their mothers kept them from his path. He didn’t care, either. He’d no need to marry for money, position or an heir. Lucia was right: for him, love was a game, and he intended to play it as long as he could.

He smiled at Lucia, hoping to coax her into a better humor. “Since when have you become so kind, darling? That girl is nothing to you.”

“And what is she to you, eh? Another of your English demons, ready for your scorn?”

“She’s only a pretty little creature I spied on a balcony, Lucia,” he said evenly. “Be reasonable, pet. You’ve no right or reason to be jealous.”

“Oh!” she gasped, her eyes wide with righteous fury. “Oh, how dare you say such a thing to me?”

She shoved her hands hard into his chest, and spun away from him. “Why are you so stubborn—so stubborn that you won’t give me the truthful answer I deserve? Your oldest friend, your dear Lucia! You are impossible, Antonio! Impossible!”

She tossed her head, sending the elaborate construction of ribbons, sugar-stiffened curls, powder and false hair quivering. With her skirts gathered to one side, she swept from the room and down the stairs.

Anthony sighed. Everything with Lucia was a scene, to be performed grandioso for the greatest effect. He was fond of her, very fond, but she was also wearying. Surely that lovely English girl would be different. Innocent. Peaceful. Not so eager to bite. A pleasing change, a relief, really, like a still pond in a country meadow after a raging storm at sea.

He slipped on his coat and reached for his hat, letting his mind happily consider the different ways he could steal this delightful blond girl away from the charmless Lord Edward. He paused before Lucia’s glass to set his hat at a suitably rakish angle.

He wasn’t handsome by English standards. His more fair brothers had always been quick to tease him about his darker skin and black curling hair, his strongly prominent nose and jaw, all inherited from his mother’s family. But from his father had come his pale-gray eyes and easy smile, and more than enough wit and confidence to make women forget his craggy, swarthy face. The English girl was sure to be no exception. He winked at his reflection and headed down the stairs, figuring by now it should be safe enough to join Lucia in the carriage. She should have had plenty of time to calm herself.

Or perhaps not.

“Impossible,” she muttered, her face turned away from him as he climbed into the carriage. “You are impossible.”

He stopped in the carriage’s door. “I don’t have to go with you tonight, Lucia. If I’m so damned impossible, it might be better for you to go to Giovanni’s fete by yourself. Beside you, no one notices me, anyway.”

Her head whipped around, her dark eyes wounded even in the half light of the carriage. “Of course they notice you, Antonio. You know as well as I that you are never overlooked or forgotten. That is the kind of man you are.”

He dropped onto the leather seat beside her and sighed. “There are so many ways for me to take that, Lucia.”

But Lucia didn’t answer, turning again to face the open window, and for the next quarter hour they rode in a silence that felt more like an uneasy truce.

“She will be easy for you to find, your little yellow-haired virgin,” she said at last. “Your English consul can tell you her name. There are not so many like her in Rome, especially not this early in the autumn.”

“I haven’t said I was interested in her, have I?”

“You needn’t speak the words aloud for it to be understood, Antonio,” she said, touching a handkerchief deeply bordered in lace to the corner of her eye. “Not by me.”

“Lucia, enough,” Anthony said firmly. “Isn’t your darling Signor Lorenzo the love of your life? The only man in Rome with devotion enough to tolerate your tantrums, and gold enough to keep you in the luxury you demand?”

“We’re not speaking of Lorenzo.” Impatiently she flicked her handkerchief towards Anthony. “We’re speaking of you, Antonio, and this English girl that you are plotting to seduce. What if you’re the loser in your little game this time? You’re already beguiled with her—no, bewitched! What if she steals you from us, and carries you back to England as her prize, eh? What if you abandon all of us for her?”

Amused, Anthony leaned his head back against the leather squabs and chuckled. “It won’t happen, Lucia. It can’t.”

“No?” Her eyes glittered, challenging. “You are very confident.”

“I’m confident because I’m right,” he said easily. He took her hand and kissed the back of it, right above her ruby ring. “No woman in this world could claim that kind of lasting power over me. You should know, Lucia.”

She sniffed, and pulled her hand free, curling it into a loose fist against her breasts. “I tired of you first, Antonio. Don’t let your male pride remember otherwise.”

He glanced at her, so obviously skeptical that she hurried on.

“I should just let you marry the underfed little creature,” she said. “You could coax her into bearing your weakling children, in the passionless English manner.”

“You won’t change my mind, darling. I’m not marrying her, or anyone else.”

Her fingers opened, fluttering over her décolletage so the half light danced over her ruby ring. “Do you believe yourself safe enough that you’ll stake a small wager upon it?”

He smiled. “Small enough that Lorenzo won’t question it, but sufficiently large to hold my interest?”

“Exactly.” She leaned towards him. “I’ll wager that before Advent begins, you will become so obsessed—so lost!—pursuing this English virgin that you will need to be rescued by your friends and saved from marrying her.”

“Marrying her!” Anthony laughed aloud at the sheer preposterous idiocy of such a notion. Him with a wife, a Lady Anthony to dog him to his grave! This girl might be a delicious change, but hardly enough that he’d give up his cheerfully self-indulgent life here in Rome for the sake of her hand. “I’ll take your wager, Lucia, and I’ll set your stake for you, too. I’ll win. I’ll seduce the girl, I’ll enjoy her as much as she will me, but she’ll never be my wife. I’ve no doubt of that. And when I win, I’ll expect you to sing an entire aria on the Spanish Steps.”

She frowned, not understanding, nor wishing to. “Overlooking the Piazza? Before all of Rome?”

“For free, my darling,” he said easily. Short of standing on the papal balcony of St. Peter’s, he couldn’t imagine a more public place. The Spanish Steps had been built earlier in the century, a grand, flamboyant flow of marble cascading down the hillside from the French church of Trinita dei Monti to the Piazza di Spagna centered by one of the city’s more celebrated fountains, the Fontana della Barcaccia. The piazza was not only a favorite idling place for Romans, but a prime attraction for foreign visitors, too. Lucia would be guaranteed an enormous audience on the natural stage formed by the steps, and the fact that her performance would be within view of the English girl’s lodgings would serve as an extra fillip of amusement to their wager.

Anthony smiled, savoring the possibility. “A small gift of your voice to all of Rome. Nothing that will be missed from Randolfo’s pockets, yes?”

“For free!” Lucia sputtered, outraged. “I never sing for—for nothing!”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s my stake. If you choose not to accept it, why, then the wager is—”

“Then if you lose, you must sing instead!” she said quickly. “You, Antonio, who bray like a donkey! If this girl ruins you, as is sure to happen, then you must sing to her yourself on the same steps!”

“Agreed.” He did sing like a donkey, and even then only after a sufficient amount of very strong drink, but he was confident that the wager would never come to proving it. How could it, really?

“And—and a hundred Venetian gold pieces!”

“Venetian it is,” he said, amused. Only Lucia would be so specifically greedy. “Prepare your favorite aria, darling. You’ll want to sing your best for the people of Rome.”

“I promise I’ll rehearse and rehearse, Antonio.” Her smile indulgent, she reached out and patted his cheek. “For your wedding, eh? For your wedding.”

“That, ladies is the great Coliseum.” Reverend Lord Patterson paused for solemn effect, pointing his walking stick out the carriage window. “Where pagan warriors battled for the amusement of the Caesars, and where countless victims were slaughtered at the whim of a ruthless dictator’s down-turned thumb. Within those very walls, ladies!”

“Gracious,” murmured Miss Wood, mightily impressed. “To think that all that happened inside those very walls! Lady Diana, you recall reading of the gladiators in the Coliseum, don’t you?”

Diana glanced dolefully out the window at the huge stone ruin looming beside them. She’d been trying hard these last three days to be enthusiastic for Edward’s sake, and interested in what interested him. That was what her sister Mary had done with Lord John Fitzgerald. It had worked, too, because he’d fallen so deeply in love with Mary that he’d eloped with her in the most romantic fashion imaginable.

But it wasn’t easy for Diana, not when Edward found ancient Rome the most interesting topic imaginable. She leaned forward on the seat, trying to see if there was more to see that she was missing, but still the great Coliseum looked suspiciously like yet another tedious pile of ancient stone.

And Edward, bless him, realized it, too.

“Come now, Uncle, be reasonable,” he said, taking advantage of the darkened carriage to slip his fingers into Diana’s. “You can hardly expect a lady as gently bred as Lady Diana to share your bloodthirsty fascination with pagan warriors slaughtering one another a thousand years ago.”

“But his grace the duke expects his daughters to have a certain degree of education about the past, my lord,” Miss Wood said firmly. “Not so much as if they were boys, of course, but sufficient for them to separate themselves from common women, and to make their conversation pleasing to his grace, and other gentlemen.”

“Then I’ll speak as a gentleman, Miss Wood,” Edward said, raising Diana’s hand to kiss the air above in tribute. “I’d prefer Lady Diana kept her innocence about the barbaric, debauched practices of the Caesars, even at the expense of her so-called education. Better she appreciate the beauty of the place, than dwell on the villainy it once harbored.”

Diana smiled, touched by his defense of her innocence. True, what he was defending seemed to her more ignorance than innocence, but she’d let that detail pass for the sake of sentiment. She’d never had a champion like this, and she liked it.

But Miss Wood wasn’t ready to give in just yet. “I’ll agree that his grace desires his daughter’s innocence preserved, my lord. But he also wishes her to acquire some sense and appreciation for the greater world of the continent, including the Coliseum.”

“I’ve a notion, Miss Wood.” Reverend Lord Patterson leaned forward, eager to make peace. “Have my nephew escort Lady Diana inside for a moment or two so that she might see the Coliseum for herself. Surely the moonlight will banish the harsher realities of the place from her ladyship’s memory, yet help her retain a suitable awe for its history.”

“What a perfect idea!” Diana exclaimed, ready to jump from the carriage at once. They had been so thoroughly watched together these last days that the chance to be alone with Edward was irresistible. “That is, if Lord Edward is willing to—”

“I’ll be honored, my lady.” Edward reached for the latch to open the door, his eagerness a match for Diana’s. “What better way to view the Coliseum than by moonlight?”

“What better, indeed?” Miss Wood said, rising from her seat. “I should like very much to see that myself.”

Edward’s face fell. “That’s not necessary, Miss Wood. That is, I don’t believe that—”

“You don’t have to come with us, Miss Wood,” Diana begged. “Please, please! You can trust us this little bit.”

But Miss Wood shook her head, her mouth inflexibly set. She still faulted herself for Mary’s elopement in Paris, and since then she’d been determined not to let Diana have the same opportunity as her sister. “It’s not a question of trust, my lady, but of respectability. I needn’t remind you of—”

“I am respectable, Miss Wood,” Diana said quickly. She’d been able to make a fresh start here in Rome with Edward. With the city still so empty of foreign visitors, there was no whispered gossip to trail along after her, and sully her attempt to rebuild her reputation. The last thing she needed now was for her governess to dredge up old tales and scandals before him and his uncle. “And there couldn’t be a more respectable gentleman than Lord Edward.”

“Oh, let them go, Miss Wood,” Reverend Lord Patterson said indulgently. “I’ll vouch for my nephew’s honor, and besides, they’ll scarcely be alone. There will be more visitors inside now than there are by day, along with the constant crowd of priests and biscuit-vendors and trinket-sellers that clog the Coliseum day and night.”

Edward pressed his hand over his heart. “You have my word, Miss Wood. I shall guard her ladyship’s honor with my life.”

Miss Wood hesitated, then sighed with resignation. “Very well, my lady. I will trust you, and his lordship as well. You may go view the ruin together. But mind you, you must return here within half an hour’s time, or I shall come hunting for you.”

“Then let us go, Lord Edward,” Diana said, seizing his hand. “We haven’t a moment to squander.”

“I’d never squander a moment with you.” He was always doing that, taking her words and turning them around into a romantic echo. He slipped his hand free, and tucked hers into the crook of his arm. “The entrance is down this way.”

“We could just walk around and around outside for all I care, my lord,” she said, feeling almost giddy to be finally alone in his company. “All I truly wanted was to be with you.”

He chuckled, patting her hand as he led her towards the small canvas awning that marked the ruin’s entrance. “Your governess is wise to guard you. A lady’s reputation is an irreplaceable treasure.”

“It can be an intolerable burden as well,” she said wryly. “Sometimes I wish that I were only ordinary, without all the fuss of being the daughter of the almighty Duke of Aston.”

“You couldn’t ever be called ordinary, my lady,” he said gallantly, misinterpreting her complaint. “Nor could his grace your father.”

“Father’s ordinary enough, especially for a peer,” she said. “That rubbish from Miss Wood about how he wanted to discuss history and art with me—all he’s really expected from me or my sister is that we’re able to exclaim and marvel at the proper moments during his hunting stories.”

“I should rather like to meet his grace one day,” he said, so clearly taken with the idea that he gave an extra little nod to reinforce it. “I’ve heard he is a man of great vision. I hope I have the honor of his acquaintance.”

“I can’t fathom why,” Diana said, amused. The only vision she’d grant her father was his ability to stare up at the clouds and predict if they were carrying sufficient rain within to cancel the day’s hunt. “Unless you wish to be bored to tears by how high a gate he can jump on his favorite hunter.”

“We’d find other matters to discuss,” he said, and nodded again. “You, my lady, for one.”

She glanced up at him again, startled into speechlessness. There was only one reason a gentleman wished to address a lady’s father to discuss her, and that was to ask for her hand. Of all the men she’d met in her short life, none had dared venture such a desire. It was early days with Edward, true, and much could go amiss between them before the banns were cried. But for him to hint at such a possibility so soon—ah, that delighted her and stunned her at the same time. He was courting her.

Was he falling in love with her, she wondered, to make such a suggestion?

“Is that notion so appalling to you, my lady?” he asked lightly, making her realize how long she’d been silent. “That I sing your praises to your father? Is that what you were thinking?”

“Magic, my lord.” She smiled up at him, hugging his arm. “That’s what I was thinking. How everything you say and do feels that way to me.”

But instead of agreeing with her, or sharing a similar confession, he only smiled pleasantly, as if he didn’t understand at all.

“I enjoy your company, too, my lady,” he said, stopping to search through his pockets for the entrance fee. He gave the coins to the bored-looking man sitting on a tall stool beneath the awning, and handed Diana through the gate. “Always a garnish, eh? These infernal Romans would bleed a gentleman dry, then try to figure a way to make a profit from his blood.”

“It must cost a great deal to keep a place like this,” Diana said. Despite the lanterns hung sporadically along the walls, the arched passageway ahead was dark and forbidding, and she hung close to Edward’s side. “It’s larger than any building in London. Imagine how many charwomen must be employed in sweeping it out!”

“Imagine, yes, because it never happens,” Edward declared, not bothering to hide his disapproval. “You can see for yourself how shabby the Romans have let things become. They haven’t a care for their heritage. Once this city had a system for water and sewers that would shame London today, and look at it now, so foul a fellow can hardly bear to breathe. It’s almost impossible to believe that these scruffy latter-day Romans actually descended from Caesar’s mighty pagan breed.”

But Diana didn’t care any more about Caesar tonight than she had the previous two days. What she cared most about was Edward. More specifically, what she cared most about was hearing more about how Edward cared for her.

“I hope we’ll see the moon again soon,” she said, trying to steer the conversation back to more interesting topics. She liked moonlight better than these murky passages lit with foul-smelling tallow candles. Moonlight was bright and romantic and flattering to the complexion. Besides, moonlight generally made men want to kiss her, and for all that it was a delightful change to be respected, she thought it was high time for Edward to try to kiss at least her cheek. After what he’d said earlier, he deserved a kiss, but he’d have to be the one to claim it. “It’s nearly full tonight, you know. Didn’t you see? It’s like an enormous silver coin in the sky.”

“Isn’t that like you, my lady, to notice the moon!” She could see the curve of his white teeth as he smiled indulgently at her, as if she’d said something remarkable for its foolishness rather than making perfect sense. “I have to admit my thoughts were elsewhere than dangling up in the sky.”

“The moon doesn’t ‘dangle’ in the sky, my lord.” She gave a little toss to her head and lifted her chin, willing him to kiss her. For a gentleman who was so learned about ancient history, Edward could be remarkably thick about what was happening in the present. “The moon rises and sets quite purposefully each night, just like the sun does by day.”

“Well, yes, I suppose it does.” With a small flourish—but no kiss—he led her around another corner and into the open. “There now! That’s what you’ve come to Rome to see!”

Dutifully Diana looked. The Coliseum seemed far larger from inside than she’d imagined outside from the carriage, an enormous stone ring made ragged and tattered over time. Half of the wall with its rows of arches had been broken away like a shattered teacup, and the flat rows that once had been benches or seats now sprouted tufts of grass and wildflowers. Other tourists and their guides wandered about the different levels with lanterns bobbing in their hands, their figures like aimless ghosts in the gray half light. Diana was disappointed. If the Coliseum by moonlight was the most romantic place in Rome, the way all the guidebooks claimed, then the guidebook writers had far different notions of romance from hers.

“Where did they stage the fights and shows?” she asked, peering downward. The ground floor in the center was crisscrossed with a labyrinth of open corridors that bore no resemblance to the engravings in her old history book. “That looks more like a marketplace with farmers’ stalls than an arena for warriors.”

“That’s because what we see now were once tunnels for bringing in the gladiators and the wild beasts.” Edward’s voice rose with relish. “Once there was a plank decking laid across the top as a kind of stage, covered with sand to soak up the spilled blood of the dying. Oh, imagine the spectacle of it all, my lady! Sixty thousand strong, cheering for the mortal combat from these very stands!”

“I’d rather not.” Diana sighed. This masculine blood-lust of Edward’s seemed awfully similar to her father’s boundless enthusiasm for slaughtering stags, pheasants and foxes at Aston Hall, and on an even grander scale. “What’s that curious little house down there, my lord? Do they offer refreshments? I’m rather thirsty.”

“That’s a papist chapel, my lady,” he said, making his disregard for the chapel plain. “You know how the Romans are, throwing up a church anywhere they can.”

“But in the middle of such a pagan place?” Her earlier travels through France and the great Catholic cathedrals built there had given her a much healthier appreciation for the powers of that faith. “They must have had a reason, a saint they wished to commemorate or some such.”

He frowned, perplexed. “My knowledge is limited to the glorious ancients, my lady, not their ignoble descendants.”

“Perhaps it’s in honor of the fallen gladiators,” she suggested. “Miss Wood said that early Christians were martyred here, and so—”

“My lady, I wouldn’t know,” he said, clearly weary of the topic. He smiled, and swept his hat from his head. “But I’d guess that the keepers might still be persuaded to prepare a glass of orange-water for you. Would it please you, my lady, if I asked them?”

“Oh, thank you, yes, Lord Edward!” She opened her fan and smiled over the top. She wasn’t really that thirsty, but she’d drink a barrel of orange-water if it made Edward forget his glorious ancients and think more of her. “You’re too kind.”

He crooked his arm and offered it to her. “Then come join me, my lady.”

“Down there?” Dubious, she looked from him to the delicate pointed toe of her slipper, raising her hem a fraction to better demonstrate her reason, and to keep his interest as well. “I’m sorry, my lord, but I’m not shod like a mountain goat. I didn’t know we’d leave the carriage tonight. I’ll wait here while you go inquire.”

“Leave you here?” he asked with surprise. “I can hardly abandon you like that, my lady!”

“Of course you can.” She smiled happily. Sending him off on an errand at her bidding wasn’t quite as satisfying as a kiss, but it was close. “What could befall me with so many others around? I’ll be waiting here where you can see me the entire time.”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s proper, my lady.”

“It is, my lord,” she said, sweetening her smile, “because I’m growing more thirsty by the moment.”

“I can’t permit that, my lady, can I?” He jammed his hat back on his head. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”

She watched him as he made his way down among the broken seats, picking a path towards the lowest level. The Coliseum was a good deal larger than Diana had first thought, and now she realized Edward would be gone longer than she’d first guessed. He stopped once to turn and wave, and she almost—almost—considered calling him back before she waved in return. Better to have him wandering about this old ruin than to let him call her indecisive, and besides, all that talk of orange-water had only served to make her thirst genuine.

But now she must wait here for however long it took Edward to return. She’d looked up at the row of broken arches along the Coliseum’s skyline, then down to where the stage had been, and finally once again across to the little chapel, snugged into the side of the ruin. What was left, really?

She fidgeted with the cuffs of her gloves, and glanced back into the murky corridor that they’d come through, half expecting to see Miss Wood charging up after her. How much time had passed since they’d left the carriage?

“Buona sera, bella mia.” The words came in a deep, rumbling whisper from the shadows behind her. “The moon is like molten silver tonight, is it not?”

Diana whipped about, peering into the shadows. “Who’s there?” she called sharply. “Who speaks? Show yourself, sir!”

“Ah, but you show yourself too much,” the man said. “Come beneath these arches with me, and see what a pleasurable difference a bit of shadow can make.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” she declared, folding her arms over her chest. “If you’ve come here seeking the use of a—a harlot, then you have made a most grievous mistake.”

“I think not,” the man said with an easy confidence. “I came here seeking you, lovely lady of the moon, and I’ve succeeded, haven’t I?”

Diana gasped indignantly. She didn’t like how he seemed to have all the advantages, hiding there in the dark where she couldn’t see him. It was worse than not fair; it was cowardly. “How dare you say you sought me, when you don’t even know who I am?”

“But I do know you, cara.” His laugh was as rich and dark as the shadows that hid him, a masculine laugh that, under other circumstances, would have struck her as infinitely appealing: no wonder he was so irritating to her now. “One glimpse was enough to know our souls were meant for one another.”

“That’s rubbish,” she said tartly. “You mean nothing to me. This city is overrun with conceited Italian men like you.”

“How barbarously wrong you are, sweet,” he said easily, as if he’d expected no less from her. “I assure you, I’m quite unique.”

“And I’m just as sure you’re not,” she insisted. “You’re only another preening cockerel who believes he can seduce any woman he spies.”

Determined that that would be her final word, she turned away, giving her skirts an extra disdainful flick. The man in the shadows didn’t deserve more. Clambering after Edward would be preferable to listening further to this nonsense.

But the man wasn’t done. “Not any woman, my Lady Diana Farren. I prefer only the rare birds, like you.”

She stopped abruptly, stunned that he’d called her by name, and he laughed softly.

“You see, I do know you,” he continued. “I spoke to you in your own language, didn’t I? I know that pasty-faced mooncalf’s unworthy to spread your…fan for you. And I know how much you delight in the silver glow of the moon’s own fair goddess. Oh, yes, I know you, cara.”

How had she not noticed that he’d addressed her in English? How had he known her name, her title? How could he make every word he spoke sound so wicked?

“You were eavesdropping on me with Lord Edward, weren’t you?” she demanded, turning back to confront him. “You were spying! He’s ten times the gentleman you’ll ever be—no, a hundred times! You followed us, and listened to our conversation, and—”

He laughed again, infuriating her all the more. “Do you truly believe that I care what another man says to you?”

“I know that I do not care what you say!”

“How cruel,” he said mildly, and took a step towards her. One step, but exactly enough to carry him from the shadows and into the moonlight.

He was dressed in plain black, his broad shoulders relaxed, his weight on one leg, his elbow bent where he’d hooked his thumb into the pocket of his waistcoat. The muted light sharpened the strong planes of his face and accentuated his jaw and a nose that, from the bumps and bends across the bridge, must have been broken at least once. His long black hair was shoved back with careless nonchalance, a single loose lock falling across his broad brow.

But what Diana noticed first were his eyes, pewter pale against so much somber black. She’d always recollect eyes like those, but the unabashed male interest in her that now lit his gaze was so blatant that she felt her cheeks grow hot.

“You were in the carriage with your mistresses,” she said slowly. “I saw you from the balcony.”

“I knew you wouldn’t forget, cara.” His smile came slow and warm and seductive, and she recalled that from the balcony, too. “Not you, not me. Not ever.”


Chapter Three






So she was brave, Anthony decided with satisfaction. He’d guessed as much from that first glimpse of her on the balcony in the Piazza di Spagna, and how she’d held his gaze without flinching.

Now he had the proof. When he’d stepped from the shadows like the villain in a bad opera, she hadn’t shrieked, or run away, or worst of all, fainted in a white-linen heap at his feet. Instead Lady Diana Farren had stood her ground, and spoken up for herself in a way that was both unladylike and un-English. Bravery like that was a rare quality in a woman, and one that would be altogether necessary for the little game they were about to play together.

No, the game they’d already begun. She just didn’t know it yet.

“How ridiculously arrogant you are!” she exclaimed, her blue eyes round with her outrage. “To think that I would ever remember you longer than—than this!”

She raised her hand and snapped her fingers, and though the effect was muted by her gloves, the look of indignant triumph on her lovely face more than made up for it.

“Longer, indeed,” he said easily. “As long as it took you to remember seeing me from your balcony. And you were mistaken about my companions in the carriage. They were my friends, not my mistresses.”

“They’re of no importance to me either way. I remembered because you reminded me,” she said, so promptly that he nearly laughed. Brave and quick, and unperturbed by possible rivals: a most unusual combination. His life was so filled with beautiful women that a new one needed to be extraordinary to catch his interest. And wager or no, this one was extraordinary.

“The only reminder I gave you, cara, was to stand before you,” he reasoned. “If that was enough, why, then I must already have been in your thoughts, and in your—”

“I don’t even know you,” she said imperiously, every inch the peer’s daughter with her aristocratic nose in the air. “Who are you? What is your name? Answer me, sir, answer me at once.”

He smiled, and took his time with his reply, knowing that nothing would vex her more. “Orders, orders, like a petticoat general,” he scolded mildly. “It’s hardly becoming to you, miasignora di bella luna.”

She glared at him, her uncertainty so transparent that he spared her and translated.

“‘My beautiful lady of the moon.’ Diana was the Roman goddess of that luminous orb over our heads, you see.”

“I know that,” she protested sharply. “I’m hardly so ignorant that I wouldn’t recognize my own namesake.”

“Ignorant, no,” he said. “Ill-mannered, perhaps.”

“You are the one who’s ill-mannered, sir. What kind of gentleman withholds his name from a lady?”

He brushed an invisible speck from his sleeve. “Who said I was a gentleman?”

“You did,” she insisted, seemingly unaware of how she was inching closer to him, her hands clenched into tight fists at her sides. “That is, you pretend to be, by addressing me with such—such familiarity, as if we were equals.”

He made a mock bow, waving his hand through the air. “I’m honored, my lady, to have my nobility confirmed simply because I dared to speak to you.”

“That’s not what I meant at all.” She was almost quivering with indignation now, such furious spark and fire that he half expected her to burst into flame when he finally touched her. “I meant that by your speech and manner—”

“You meant that?” He leaned back against the arch, folding his arms over his chest with a nonchalance that he was certain she found maddening. “My ill manners, instead of yours?”

“No, no, no!” she cried, stopping just short of stamping her well-bred foot at not being obeyed. “I meant that your English speech is that of a gentleman, but that no true gentleman would behave towards me in this barbarous fashion. Refusing to tell me your name! It’s not fair, sir, not fair in the least.”

“What’s not fair, cara, is seeing you squander yourself on a man like Warwick.” Anthony made sure to keep his judgment no more than a stingingly idle observation. “My lady of the moon deserves far better than that pompous yellow-haired sciocco.”

“Sciocco?”

“A fool,” he explained, happy to do so. “A dolt. A popinjay. A fellow not worth your notice.”

“A popinjay!” she exclaimed. “How can you call Lord Edward a popinjay? He’s worth ten of you—no, a hundred! He treats me with respect and regard as does no other man. Why, do you know where he is this very moment? He has gone to fetch me orange-water, just because he was thoughtful enough to anticipate my thirst!”

“Admirable qualities in a lackey or footman, true,” Anthony said with a shrug of indifference, “but not in a lover, not for such a passionate woman who—”

“How dare you!” she cried furiously, and jerked up her hand to slap him.

But Anthony was larger, stronger and all too accustomed to such female outbursts. He easily caught her wrist before she could strike him, holding her hand away from his face.

“A passionate woman, yes,” he said, his voice low as she struggled to break free. “You prove it yourself. Not a lady, but a woman first, eh, cara?”

“And you’re—you’re no gentleman, but a vile, low, ill-behaved beast!” she cried, practically spitting the words. “Let me free at once!”

“If that is what you truly wish,” he said easily, “then I will.”

“What I wish!” she sputtered. “What I wish!”

“What you wish as a woman.” He liked how her temper had shattered that aristocratic shell of propriety. In his experience, temper and passion were the closest of cousins, and it never took much to introduce one after the other. “If you wish me to release you so you can flee to Warwick, then all you must do is ask.”

Instantly she stopped struggling, her wrist still in his fingers.

“Why wouldn’t I wish to go back to Lord Edward?” she asked suspiciously. She was watching him closely, the moonlight casting long curving shadows from her lashes over her cheeks. “He is a gentleman, and you are not. What other reason could I possibly have for fleeing from you back to his safekeeping?”

“You know that better than I,” Anthony said. It was clear that she already had her own doubts about Warwick; it wouldn’t take much to tip her to his own side. “If you’re the lady you claim to be, and he is the gentleman, that is.”

“I am a lady,” she said quickly, and he noted how this time she didn’t defend Warwick. Poor bastard, his days basking in her favor must be numbered.

“I never said you weren’t.” He lowered his face nearer to hers. He liked her scent, lilacs with a hint of spice. “But while you’re here in Rome, you should let yourself be a woman first.”

“I’ll ignore that.” She raised her chin, just a fraction, but enough to challenge him. Lady or not, she must have felt the tension swirling between them. “And you’re still a beast.”

“I never said I wasn’t.” He retained his hold on her wrist, but the fight had gone from her hand and her fisted fingers had begun to unfurl. Yet he could also feel how her pulse raced, her heartbeat quick there beneath his fingers. “Perhaps I feel an affinity for all the poor beasts killed within these walls.”

From the look in her eyes, he knew he’d caught her interest now. That was good. He knew he couldn’t have much more time before Warwick would come bumbling back with whatever it was she’d sent him to fetch.

“The ones killed by the gladiators?” she asked. “The wild beasts from the jungles and forests?”

“The same,” he said quietly. Slowly he lowered her captured wrist, his grip on it so light now that they might be dancing partners instead of adversaries. “But I like to think the wild beasts killed a few of those butchering gladiators in return, too.”

For the first time she smiled. “You sound as if you sympathize with the lions and tigers.”

“I do.” He drew her a fraction closer, and she leaned into him another fraction more. He liked how her body was fuller, more rounded, than he’d realized from the balcony, and he liked how near that body was to touching his. “How could I not? Their spirit, their savagery, their magnificence. Most of all, their refusal to be tamed into submission.”

“Indeed.” She tipped her head to one side, her glance slanting up at him from under her lashes: hardly the sort of glance most young English ladies had in their arsenal, and he liked that, too. “Then you consider yourself untamed as well?”

“Oh, completely.” He rested his free hand on the back of her waist, lightly, as if by accident. “I’m as wild as any lion.”

She eased herself away from his hand. She didn’t fuss or squawk in a maidenly scene. She simply moved, silently establishing her boundaries, and his estimation of her rose another notch.

“Not so vastly wild,” she said, still smiling. “I’d wager that would change if only you’d meet the proper lion-tamer.”

“I wouldn’t offer that wager, cara,” he said, spreading his fingers along her back with just enough pressure to feel the bones of her stays and her body beneath. “I devour lion-tamers for breakfast.”

She chuckled, a throaty sound that delighted him. “Do you eat them with jam and butter?”

“This is Rome, not barbarous London,” he said. “I prefer a splash of olive oil and sweet basil to taste.”

She chuckled again. “Pity the poor lion-tamers, to meet such an end!”

“Pity me, for having to make such a dish of the wretched beings.” He sighed dramatically, even as he reached out to touch her cheek. “I suspect the real problem is that I’ve yet to meet the right golden lioness.”

“Ahh.” She went still, but didn’t pull away from him. “You must recall that I’m here with Lord Edward.”

“I remember,” he said, lowering his face to hers, “though I’m determined to make you forget he was ever born.”

He kissed her then, exactly as he’d planned from the moment he’d followed her here. He swept her from her feet before she could stop him, leaned her back into the crook of his arm, and kissed her as she deserved to be kissed, with skill and passion, admiration and desire, and as the first, inevitable step to seduction.

He kissed her, and Diana stiffened with surprise. It wasn’t that she was surprised that he’d kissed her. She knew when men were contemplating her with that in mind, and she’d been expecting this man to kiss her ever since he’d grabbed her by the wrist.

But she’d never anticipated how he’d kiss her. It wasn’t like any other kiss she’d ever experienced. He didn’t slobber, or grunt, or press too hard, or bump his teeth against hers. He didn’t taste like his pipe, or the onions he’d eaten earlier. What she’d always liked best about kissing came afterwards, when the man was so grateful and devoted because he wished to do it again. That was the only reason she ever permitted it.

But the way that this man kissed stunned her with its intimacy. She couldn’t begin to fathom it. He kissed her, and made her lips tingle and grow warm, her head spin and her heart quicken. He coaxed her, teased her and yet there was never any doubt that he was the untamed lion he claimed to be. His mouth tasted inexplicably male, just as kissing him made her feel not like a schoolgirl burdened with her governess, but a woman. It didn’t matter that he was a stranger to her. She sensed that he could teach her mysterious things she didn’t yet know existed, things her body ached to know, and eagerly she parted her lips to let him deepen the kiss.

To her dismay, he didn’t answer, but drew back, into the darkest shadows.

“I must go, bellissima,” he whispered, brushing his fingertips lightly across her cheek. “Buona sera.”

“No!” she cried in a breathless whisper as he turned away from her. “I don’t even know your name!”

“You don’t need to,” he said, backing away. “You have Warwick.”

Lord Edward. Oh, how had she forgotten him so easily? She took a single step towards the stranger, wishing she could follow.

“Don’t go,” she said softly. “I beg you, please!”

He didn’t stop. Yet as he walked away, he turned back to smile one last time at her over his shoulder. He touched his fingers to his lips and swept his hand towards her, the same salute he’d made to her when she’d stood on the balcony. Then he turned through an arch and vanished into the night.

Diana pressed her fingers to her mouth, wishing she could magically keep the sensual memory of the kiss alive though its giver was gone. Her lips felt ripe, sensitized in a way that was new to her, almost as if they were no longer her own.

How could the stranger have done this to her and disappeared without even telling her his name? How could he have changed everything she thought a kiss could be and then be gone from her life? She’d wanted adventure to break this tedious journey, she’d longed for a romantic intrigue, but now that she’d been tantalized with both this night, all she could do was wish for more.

“Lady Diana!”

She turned away from the shadows and into the moonlight. Edward was coming towards her with a small glass clutched in his hand, puffing from his climb up the steps.

“I couldn’t see you, my lady,” he said as he reached her. “When I looked up from the floor of the Coliseum, you were quite lost in the shadows. I worried, you know.”

“There was no need, my lord,” she said, praying that the shadows would hide her a bit longer, and mask the guilty confusion she felt sure must show on her face. “I was well enough where you’d left me. It must have been some oddity of the moonlight that hid me from your sight.”

He nodded, and held the little tumbler out to her. “Your orange-water, my lady,” he said, striving to be gallant even as he wiped the rivulets of sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief. “It was chilled when I bought it, but that was a devilish hard jaunt back up here, and I fear it may have grown warm.”

She smiled automatically, though the curve of her mouth felt as stiff as if it had been carved from wood.

If she’d truly been the honorable lady she’d been trying so hard to be these last days, she would have rebuffed the dark-clad man. She would not have let him kiss her, nor kissed him in return, nor begged him to stay….

“Thank you, my lord.” She took the glass tumbler from him, and sipped at the orange-water. It was sickly sweet, almost a syrup, so thick with sugar that she could scarcely make herself swallow it.

Yet how easy it had been to let that other man’s lips caress hers, to open her mouth to take his—

“Are you ill, my lady?” Edward was peering at her face with a frown of concern, his handkerchief clutched in a knot in his hand. “Has the closeness of this place affected you? Forgive me for speaking plain, my lady, but you don’t appear well.”

She let her gaze sweep around the great curving ruin. Likely she’d never see the black-clad man again. He was really no better than the crude rascals who tried to pinch women’s bottoms in the market, and the sooner she forgot how he’d taken advantage of her to kiss her, the better.

At least that was what her poor beleaguered conscience told her.

Her wicked body whispered otherwise.

“It’s not so much the closeness of the place, my lord,” she said with careful truth, “but the—the mystery of it that has left me rather—rather breathless.”

“It often has that effect on those who visit for the first time, my lady,” Edward said, tucking his handkerchief back into his waistcoat pocket. “It’s not surprising, really. Consider how many wicked, heathen souls must haunt this place!”

Wicked, heathen…and untamed.

She set the tumbler with the barely touched orange-water onto a nearby ledge, the heavy glass clicking against the stone. “Forgive me, Lord Edward, but I should like to return to the others now.”

“Of course.” He held his arm out to her, and when she took the crook of it, he laid his hand protectively over hers. “Whatever you wish, my lady.”

But what she wished for most was not in Lord Edward’s power to give.

“Wake up, Edward.” Reverend Lord Henry Patterson yanked the bed curtains open, the brass rings jangling mercilessly across the rod as the late-morning sun burst across Edward’s face. “We must talk.”

But Edward didn’t want to talk. He didn’t even want to open his eyes. He wanted to slip back into blissful unconsciousness, where he could forget the queasiness in his belly and the thickness of his tongue and the way that blasted sunlight seemed to pierce right into his blasted aching skull to find whatever poison remained of that blasted Roman wine.

“Edward, enough.” Impatiently his uncle smacked Edward’s leg with his newspaper. “The day is half gone, and you’ve yet to drag your drunken carcass from this bed.”

“I’m not drunk, Uncle,” Edward protested weakly, burrowing against his pillow to defend himself from the sunlight. “I’d be much happier if I were.”

“Now that’s a proper attitude for a Warwick man, isn’t it?” Uncle Henry’s disgust was as sharp as that sunlight. “No wonder my sister despairs so, cursed with a worthless son like you.”

Edward groaned against the pillow. He could make an excellent argument for his being cursed with a shrill, meddlesome mother, too, but not right at this moment.

“Get up, Edward!”

The water that splashed over Edward’s face seemed enough to drown him, and he jerked upright, sputtering and gasping for air to save himself.

“Oh, quit your complaining, Nephew,” his uncle ordered, the empty pitcher from the washstand still in his hands. “What do you think Lady Diana would say if she could see you now?”

“She’d say you were a damned wicked old bastard to treat me so.” Edward squinted at his uncle as he blotted the water from his face with the sheet. “She’d be right, too.”

“What she’d say is that you’re a lazy sluggard with no respect for your elders.” Uncle Henry pulled a chair close to the bed, flipped the tails of his coat to one side, and perched on the edge of the seat. “While you’ve been snoring away your wine, I’ve been to the consulate this morning. I’ve made a few inquiries, and on your behalf, too. Lady Diana Farren is indeed Aston’s daughter, exactly as she and the governess have claimed. They’d letters of introduction so grand that there was no doubt of it. But of greater interest to you, however, is that she’ll bring £20,000 a year to whichever lucky gentleman claims her hand.”

“Twenty thousand?” That was enough to clear anyone’s head. Edward swung his legs over the side of the bed, ready to hear more. “A pretty penny by any reckoning.”

His uncle nodded, patting his pockets until he found his pipe, and the tinderbox with it. “You’ll never have a sweeter plum drop into your undeserving lap, Edward. And you’ll have none of the competition here in Rome that you would back in London.”

“That’s precious hard.” Edward scowled, his pride wounded by the unfortunate truth. “You’ve seen how Lady Diana looks at me. I’d venture she’s rather fond of me already.”

“Perhaps.” His skepticism obvious, Uncle Henry thrust the stem of his pipe into his mouth. “Though you haven’t had much luck with ladies before this, have you?”

“I haven’t been trying, that’s all,” Edward said defensively, running his fingers back through his bed-flattened hair. This was a difficult enough conversation without having to conduct it in his nightshirt, rank with last night’s excesses. “Those smug overbred London bitches—they’re not easy on a man, you know. They’ll cut you off at the knees as soon as look at you.”

“Don’t try to bluff me, Edward,” Uncle Henry said sternly as he concentrated on lighting his pipe, puffing furiously until the tobacco finally sparked. “I know your situation, and why your poor widowed mother put you into my safekeeping here in Italy, away from the bailiff’s reach. You’ve squandered what little inheritance you had on kickshaw schemes.”

“They were legitimate investments in inventions with great promise.” There’d been a sure-fire method for converting wood into coal, a proposal for a wagon-tunnel from Dover to Calais, a way to turn brass into true gold: all that had been wanting had been a cagey investor, capable of the vision to see the potential. How he loved to listen to the scientific gentlemen explain their genius, and how, after a suitable investment, they’d all become rich as Croesus without a day of ungentlemanly toil on his part!

“Such ventures offer enormous opportunity for those clever enough to see it, Uncle,” he continued. “It’s hardly my fault that my funds weren’t sufficient to see the projects through to fruition and profit.”

“Tossing good money after bad into the ocean is more the case,” his uncle said with contempt. “You’ve scarce a farthing left to your name, Edward. You might as well have lost it all at cards or dice for the good it’s done you. There’s only one venture left open for you now. You must marry soon, and marry well. Otherwise you’ll be doomed to keeping yourself by the gaming tables in Calais, or saddling yourself with some thick-ankled coal heiress from the north.”

“I know, Uncle, I know,” Edward said with frustration. Blast, but he was still a young man, and as such he’d hoped to sow a few more wild oats here in Italy before he had to play the docile husband. This was his mother’s idea, of course. She might be three countries away, but he could feel her tentacles reaching out to control him through his uncle, just as she had in London.

But twenty thousand a year would change everything. Twenty thousand, and marrying into the exalted family of the Duke of Aston. Of course he’d have to bow to the traces in the beginning, but once he could pack Diana off to the country to breed like every other noble wife, then he could begin living his life the way a gentleman should. He’d finally have the funds to back his favorite ventures, and see them made real. Let the others invest in old-fashioned plans like fur-trading in Canada, or tea from the Indies. He’d make more than the rest combined, and be lauded as a visionary, too.

And Diana Farren wasn’t some coarsely bred heiress, either. She would make a first-rate wife, the kind of filly that other men would envy. Delighted by such a glorious prospect, he reached for the wine bottle—ah, Virgil’s own inspiration!—that he’d left beside his bed last night.

“No more of that,” his uncle snapped, reaching out to rap Edward across the wrist. “Tell me instead how far you’ve proceeded with the lady.”

“I’ve treated her as her rank deserved,” Edward declared. He’d planned to kiss Lady Diana last night at the Coliseum, but by the time he’d brought her that blasted orange-water, she’d turned odd towards him, and he’d lost his nerve. Beautiful women did that to him, and Lady Diana was very, very beautiful. “You can’t fault me there. I’ve done nothing but blow her the usual puffery about admiration and respect.”

“Then perhaps it’s time you did a bit more,” his uncle advised. “She’s a lady, yes, but she’s also a woman. Women like having a man behave as the master, so long as it is decently done.”

“Uncle, I’ve known her less than a week!”

“Twenty thousand pounds are at stake, nephew, twenty thousand that you could sorely use,” Uncle Henry said through the wreaths of pipe smoke drifting about his face. “You can’t expect to live out your life on my generosity, you know. My regard for your poor mother will go only so far.”

Now that was true enough, thought Edward, his resentment bubbling beneath the conversation. Uncle Henry had more money than Croesus to squander on bits of broken ancient crockery, yet still he made Edward grovel and beg for every favor. But with twenty thousand a year, Edward would never have to ask for anything again, either from his uncle or his mother. He’d be his own man. Why, Mother would even have to bow down to his wife because she’d be a higher rank. Hah, how he’d like to see that!

He rubbed his hand across his mouth, imagining every detail. His wife, Lady Diana Warwick. His children, with a duke for a grandfather. His pockets, filled with guineas. How could he ask for more?

“God helps those who help themselves, Edward,” Uncle Henry was droning on, as pompously as if he were standing in his pulpit. “Remember that, and how you must always take whatever—”

“Consider it done, Uncle,” Edward said with more determination than he’d ever felt in his life. “By the time we leave Rome, I assure you, Lady Diana Farren will be my wife.”

“Is that how you wish the curl to fall, my lady?” Diana’s maid Deborah stepped back, comb in hand, to let Diana study her reflection in the looking glass at her dressing table. “Because you must wear your hat with the widest brim against the sun, my lady, very little of your hair shall show beyond that single curl.”

Diana sighed unhappily, touching the silvery-blond lovelock that hung across her shoulder. Deborah was right. Traipsing through yet another pile of ruins offered little inspiration for dressing with elegance. It was more important to dress sensibly, to hide one’s skin from the burning Roman sun while still keeping as cool as was possible in the wicked heat.

But in Diana’s eyes, the sensible dress was ugly and uncomfortable. And how was she supposed to beguile Lord Edward while bundled up in scarves, hat and gloves from her head to the tip of her dreadful, sturdy walking shoe? Swaddled away like this, how could she possibly inspire him to be more romantic, more passionate, more able to make her forget the stranger she’d kissed last night?

“It’s well enough, Deborah,” she finally said, reaching for her wide-brimmed leghorn hat from the dressing table. “I don’t even know if his lordship will notice.”

“Oh, my lady, what a thing to say!” Deborah clucked her tongue, taking the hat from Diana’s hand and pinning it into place on her piled hair. “’Course his lordship notices you. Any gentleman worth his salt notices as soon as he sets his eyes upon you, my lady, and that’s the good Lord’s honest truth.”

Any gentleman worth his salt. The stranger had noticed her from a distance, and for only a handful of moments, yet that had been enough that he’d followed her for the chance of seeing her again and then—

No. She closed her eyes, her conscience at war with her memory. She must not think of that man; not with interest, regret, longing or even curiosity. She must purge him from her thoughts forever, and forget how his kiss, his touch, his—

“Ah, my lady, look what just arrived for you!”

Diana opened her eyes just as Miss Wood handed her a bouquet of flowers. Late red roses, some kind of wild daisies, mixed with curling grasses and other local flowers she didn’t recognize, framed with lace and tied up with an extravagant bow of black and white ribbons. There was an effortless art to how the bouquet had been gathered, the costly roses combined with weedy wildflowers into a beautiful design that was unlike any bouquet she’d ever received before.

“Oh, Miss Wood, how lovely!” she cried, cradling the flowers in her hands. “Who sent them?”

Miss Wood was smiling so broadly that her eyes were nearly hidden by her round cheeks. “I should venture after last night that it was Lord Edward, my lady.”

“But there’s no card or note,” Diana said, searching through the leaves. “Did the servant tell you nothing?”

“They were brought not by a proper servant, but by a scruffy small beggar-boy, doubtless in the employ of the flower-seller,” Miss Wood said. “But they must be from Lord Edward. Who else could it be here in Rome?”

Diana didn’t answer, holding the flowers close to her face to hide her confusion. Who else, indeed? But how could a man who’d spoken so disparagingly of the “dangling moon” be inventive—and romantic—enough to combine these flowers in this way?

What if the stranger had sent them to her? She wouldn’t even have recognized his name. But as she breathed deeply of the bouquet’s scent, fresh and wild and still redolent of the fields outside the city, she knew—she knew—that the flowers had come from him.

“There now, my lady, didn’t I tell you?” Deborah asked, thrusting one final pin into the crown of her straw hat. “And you thought his lordship hadn’t noticed you!”

“Of course he noticed, Deborah,” Miss Wood said. “Now that you’re done here, would you fetch a pitcher or vase to put the flowers in?”

The maid dipped her curtsey, and, as she left, Miss Wood settled herself in the chair across from Diana. She was already dressed for going out, in the same practical gray linsey-woolsey gown and jacket and flat-brimmed hat that she would have worn whether striding about the grounds of Aston Hall or the Forum here in Rome. If anyone exemplified Sensible, it was Miss Wood.

She folded her gloved hands in her lap and beamed at Diana. “It would seem you’ve made a genuine conquest, my lady. Ah, the look in Lord Edward’s eyes when you returned to the carriage last night! He is besotted, Lady Diana, completely besotted.”

“Yes, Miss Wood.” Diana tried to smile in return. She and Edward had barely spoken on the walk back to the carriage, each of them lost in their own thoughts. She’d no experience beyond this with a gentleman who might wish to ask for her hand, but if in fact Edward were besotted with her, then he’d a mighty peculiar way of showing it. “He is a fine gentleman.”

“He is more than merely fine, Lady Diana,” Miss Wood said. “Last night while you and Lord Edward were inside the Coliseum, Reverend Lord Patterson told me a great deal about his nephew. Lord Edward is a younger son, which is unfortunate, his brother having already inherited the family’s title. But he does have a small income through his mother, the Dowager Marchioness of Calvert, and Reverend Patterson says Lord Edward is very devoted to her—a model son. It was her notion that Lord Edward come with his uncle here to Rome to continue his education. He’d never dreamed he would meet a lady such as yourself.”

“No, I don’t believe he did.” Diana looked down at the flowers, tracing the petals of one daisy with her finger and remembering how vastly more interesting the stranger’s conversation had been than Lord Edward’s. One had spoken with too much relish of the violence that had once filled the Coliseum, while the other had expressed a rare empathy for the same wild beasts who’d lost their lives entertaining the Caesars. “In fact I rather doubt Lord Edward has the imagination to dream at all.”

“Oh, that cannot be true, my lady!” Miss Brown exclaimed. “Whatever gave you such an idea?”

“He did himself,” Diana said promptly. “He perceives everything in Rome to be inferior to what he judges it should be. He seems incapable of accepting that there might be another way of doing or seeing things besides his own.”

“And you in turn should not be so quick to judge him, my lady,” scolded Miss Wood gently. “Come, come, Lady Diana! He is an educated gentleman, and his opinions are informed by deeper studies than you, my lady, shall ever be inclined to make.”

Diana sighed, and glanced up at her over the flowers in her lap. “You rather sound as if you’re taking Lord Edward’s side over mine.”

“Not at all, my lady, not at all.” The governess leaned forward and smiled, resting her hand fondly on Diana’s arm. “It’s only that I wish you to be as happy in love as your sister Lady Mary is. Of all the men who have attended you, Lord Edward strikes me as the first one who has shown you the respect and admiration that you deserve, the kind that can grow into lasting love.”

“Love,” repeated Diana with more sadness than she’d intended. “I cannot even tell if Lord Edward so much as likes me!”

“I believe he does, my lady,” Miss Wood said gently. “To be sure, I cannot see all the secrets of Lord Edward’s heart, and I would never suggest that you entertain the overtures of any gentleman you found odious. But I believe that the quiet regard his lordship can offer would be worth far more to you than the idle, empty flirtations that have been your indulgence in the past.”

Once again Diana looked down at the flowers cradled in the crook of her arm. Miss Wood was right: she had had more than her share of “idle, empty flirtations” that had led to nothing. It was past time she changed her life. What kind of lasting love could she ever hope to find with a man who wouldn’t so much as tell her his name?

Deliberately she set the flowers down on her dressing table. “Deborah can see to those,” she said, rising. “The gentlemen must be with the carriage below, Miss Wood. We shouldn’t keep them waiting.”

She followed Miss Wood down the stairs and into the bright afternoon sunlight. Edward had suggested that because of the late-summer heat, they restrict their sightseeing to the end of the day, though Diana secretly suspected this was also because Edward and his uncle had fallen into the Italian habit of rising late, then drowsily napping through the midday.

Waiting at the door was their hired carriage—not decked with ribbons and bows like the one Diana had seen that night from the balcony, but still the same high-wheeled open carriage that was the standard here in this city, with the broad seats cushioned with loose pillows and a canvas awning rigged for shade. The driver sat nodding beneath the awning, his cocked straw hat pulled low to hide his doubtless closed eyes, while the young groom stood beside the horses, shouting oaths at the cluster of laughing beggar-children if they came too near.

Reverend Lord Patterson greeted them in the hall, dressed in a plain, unlined linen suit that made Diana wish that ladies were permitted the same kind of cooler undress. Already her gloves felt glued to her hands, and beneath her shift and stays she could feel the rivulets of perspiration trickling down the hollow of her back and between her breasts.

“Good day, ladies,” he said, touching his hat to them. “My nephew should be down directly.”

“Oh, we’ll forgive his lordship,” Miss Wood said cheerfully, squinting as they stepped out into the sunny plaza. “Gentlemen can’t be rushed.”

But Reverend Lord Patterson was too busy glowering at the beggars to worry about Edward. “Away with you, you vile creatures! Andare via, andare via! Shiftless, dirty creatures! Why, they’re like a flock of magpies waiting to steal anything their grasping claws can reach! Don’t encourage them, my lady, else they’ll never leave us alone.”

“They’re children, reverend my lord,” Diana protested as she and Miss Wood each tossed a handful of coins into the little crowd. “They can’t help it if their parents don’t feed them. That’s all we have, children. Quello e tutto, bambini! No more!”

She held up her open palms as proof, and the children shuffled away.

“Magpies, my lady. Small thieving papists.” The minister sniffed with a disgust that seemed to her misplaced for a Christian gentleman, but unfortunately close to his nephew’s opinions. “Before they summon their fellows, I suggest we situate ourselves in the carriage.”

“We do take situating, reverend my lord, don’t we?” Miss Wood said as she climbed up first over the high wheel and into the carriage. For all her practical nature, Miss Wood loved the fuss of embarkations, the same fussing that drove Diana to distraction. She sighed, and followed her governess. With Miss Wood, it always seemed to take double the time necessary to settle their petticoats around their legs, open their parasols, and arrange the basket with the refreshments, and even then her governess was never quite done.

Now she began patting her pockets, a look of chagrined surprise on her face. “Forgive me, my lady, but I appear to have forgotten my little traveling journal.”

“Then you can write in it when we return, Miss Wood,” Diana said. “It’s likely sitting on the desk where you left it.”

“But my observations will have lost their freshness, my lady,” Miss Wood said, rising swiftly enough to set the carriage to rocking. “I’ll run upstairs for it, and be back before you know I’ve gone.”

“I shall join you, Miss Wood,” Reverend Lord Patterson declared, clambering after her. “I must see what’s detaining my nephew. You will excuse me, Lady Diana?”

“I wouldn’t dream of keeping either of you.” Diana sighed again, stuffing a pillow behind her. They hadn’t even ventured near a single ruin, yet the day seemed to stretch endlessly before her, and already she had a headache. With a grumble of discontent, she leaned back against the pillow and closed her eyes, willing the headache to go away.

“Ah, carissima,” the man said softly behind her. “And here I thought my flowers would bring you pleasure!”


Chapter Four






“You!” Diana twisted around in the seat. The man was standing behind the carriage, his face level with hers. He looked different in the daylight—less mysterious, less the wild beast with his jaw cleanly shaven and his black hair combed more neatly, dressed in light blue-gray instead of black—yet still she’d know him anywhere. “What are you doing here?”

“Here?” He spread his arms wide, encompassing the entire crowded piazza. “‘Here’ is my home, my lady. I was born in Rome, and I’ve never lived anywhere else, nor wished to.”

“No, I meant here,” she said, jabbing her finger at the paving stones at his feet. “You must stop following me!”

He smiled, that lazy smile that revealed its charm slowly, a smile she’d come to recognize all too well.

“No, I mean what I say,” she said indignantly. The last thing she wished was to have Edward come out and see this man lurking behind her as if there were some sort of—of acquaintance between them. “You must leave at once, or I’ll have the driver send you away!”

His smile widened, and he made a nonchalant little sweep of his hand, a dare if ever there was one.

She jerked around in her seat and leaned towards the driver. “Driver, this man is bothering me.”

The man didn’t move, wheezing—or snoring—gently beneath his lowered hat.

With the ivory handle of her parasol, Diana tapped him on the shoulder. “Driver, please make this man leave me alone. Driveri, drivero—oh, how must I say it in Italian to make him understand?”

“Questo uomo mi da fastidio. Farlo andare via,” the man behind the carriage helpfully supplied. “That should do it.”

Diana whipped around to face him once again, the parasol clutched tightly in her hands. “What did you just tell him?”

“‘This man is bothering me. Make him go away.’ That’s what you wished me to say, isn’t it?” He leaned his arm on the back of the carriage seat, as comfortable as if it were a chair in his own parlor. “But I doubt the fellow is going to pay you any heed.”

“And why not?” Diana asked imperiously, though she’d wondered, too, why the driver was ignoring her. She was a duke’s daughter; she was accustomed to being obeyed. “He must do as I say. He’s in my employ.”

“Yes, my lady, but you see the last coin he took was mine, so I expect he’ll do as I ask instead,” the man said. “Which is to turn both a blind eye and a deaf ear to whatever protests you make about me.”

Diana frowned, restlessly tapping the handle of her parasol against her knee. She’d been in Italy long enough to understand the truth in what he said: there was almost no loyalty to be found in this country except to whomever waved the brightest coin last.

But that didn’t mean she was going to let him stand there like a grinning, handsome signboard. “This piazza is full of people, including English people. If you don’t leave directly, I shall shout and scream and make a general racket until others come to see that you do.”

“Will you now?” He lowered his voice a fraction, forcing her to lean closer to him so she could make out his words. “But then, dear, dear Lord Edward will understand if you turn into a shrieking banshee in the middle of the Piazza di Spagna. Even the daintiest of English ladies is permitted to draw a crowd on occasion.”

But Edward wouldn’t understand. He believed her to be refined and demure, a model English lady. Edward would be mortified if she created a scene, and blast this man for knowing it as well as she did herself.

She glanced over her shoulder, back to the doorway of their lodgings. “You must go now,” she said, her voice taut with urgency. “I don’t want you here, and I don’t want to see you.”

“But you do, cara,” he said softly, and it was the warmth in his gray-blue eyes that could convince her even if his words didn’t. “When you took my flowers into your arms and held them close, you thought of me, and how much you’d like to see me again. And I obliged.”

Her cheeks flushed with confusion. “You—you don’t know what I did. You can’t know.”

“But I do, my lady,” he said, and the way he smiled proved it. “You cannot deny it, can you? I chose every flower, every ribbon, knowing how they’d make you long to see me.”

Her back straight, she turned away from him, away from his eyes and his smile and his certainty. “You know nothing of me.”

“I know you wanted to see me, and now that you have, you’ll want to see me again, and again after that,” he said, his whispered voice so low and seductive behind her that it would almost have been better to have remained facing him. “I know that you don’t belong in this stuffy little carriage, with its stuffy little passengers, bella mia.”

“You don’t know anything about—”

“Hush, hush and listen,” he interrupted. “I know you belong with me, riding along the Palatine Hill and among the ruined palaces of the Augustans at sunset. With the kestrel’s cry overhead, we would laugh as the stars first showed themselves over the river and the dome of St. Peter’s. And I would kiss you, my wild lady, because that is what you want most of all from me. I would kiss you, and you me, there beneath the stars.”

She squeezed her eyes shut as if that were enough to close her ears as well. God forgive her, but she could imagine it all. Yet how had he known she’d prefer to see Rome on horseback instead of in this clumsy carriage? How had he understood that she was at heart a country girl who missed riding?

How had he known she would want him to kiss her again?

“You’re guessing,” she said defensively. “That’s all your prattle is. You can’t possibly know me as well as you pretend.”

“But I do, cara,” he reasoned, “because I know myself, and thus I—”

“Then why won’t you tell me your name?” she demanded. “You continue to insist upon this—this false connection between us, yet you can’t even bring yourself to tell me so much as that.”

“Antonio di Randolfo,” he said softly, surprising her. “My name is Antonio.”

“You mean Anthony,” she repeated with triumph, as if getting him to surrender his name was a great victory. “Like the Mark Anthony who murdered his Caesar? You were named for a traitor?”

He didn’t answer, and her triumph grew. At last she’d said something he couldn’t answer, and she turned around again to confront him, eager to see the confusion that must surely be marking his face.

But to her chagrin, he’d vanished. She looked across the piazza, to the left and the right, yet there was no sign of him. How could so large a man disappear so suddenly, and so completely?

“Anthony?” she called crossly, holding the back of the seat to peer down beneath the carriage. It would be entirely like him to hide underneath so he could suddenly pop up like a jack-in-the-box. “Anthony, where have you gone?”

“Lady Diana, what are you doing?” asked Miss Wood, her disapproval clear. “Hanging upside down like that! Come, sit properly, so Lord Edward and Reverend Lord Patterson might see your face instead of your—your other side.”

At once Diana spun around and dropped into her seat. “Good day, Lord Edward,” she said, concentrating on opening her parasol so she didn’t have to meet his gaze just yet. What if they’d actually seen her speaking to Anthony, with him leering over the seat? “I hope you slept well?”

“It was the wretched beggars again, wasn’t it?” Reverend Lord Patterson glared over the back of the carriage. “I’ve never seen such packs of the audacious rascals as here in Rome. I’m sorry, my lady, for leaving you to their depredation.”

“No better than thieves,” Edward agreed, dropping heavily into the seat across from Diana. “You should have come inside with Miss Wood, my lady, instead of having put yourself at risk alone. These Italian drivers and servants wouldn’t lift a pinkie in your defense. I say, it is warm today, isn’t it?”

“Thank you, my lords, but there was no harm done.” Diana smiled at Edward, whose own smile seemed somewhat sickly. His face was pale, too, with greenish undertones that made Diana suspect overindulgence in the local red wine after he’d left her last night. But she wouldn’t tempt fate. She’d say nothing. If they hadn’t noticed her talking to Anthony, then she wouldn’t notice Edward’s bleariness.

But Edward had other ideas. “You shouldn’t have insisted on sitting out here alone, my lady,” he said. “It’s not proper. You’ve no notion of the liberties these Roman men will take if you let them.”

“I told you, my lord, that I was quite well enough on my own,” Diana said, her displeasure simmering. She wished to make a favorable impression on Edward, true, but they certainly hadn’t reached the point where he was entitled to lecture her. “Do you see any Roman men within twenty feet of me at present? I may have no notion of their liberties, but I doubt they can take them at such a distance.”

He raised his chin like a bulldog, showing the softness beneath his jaw. “You shouldn’t underestimate them, Lady Diana. They are rough and daring, and all too willing to take advantage of an innocent lady.”

“Indeed, my lord.” She should have been comforted by his insistence on her innocence, and that she protect herself. But instead of his concern, she found herself hearing only the overbearing authority in his words, and thinking of how vastly more agreeable she’d found the stranger’s velvety, bemused tone instead. Nothing the stranger had said came close to being as vexing as Edward insisting she was a helpless imbecile.

No, he wasn’t a stranger any longer. His name was Anthony. Antonio di Randolfo. The name of a handsome, charming rascal, for whom pursuing her had become some sort of ridiculous game.

Antonio….

The driver turned the carriage about, the scraping of the metal-bound wheels against the paving stones a match for the discord in Diana’s mood.

“That was a beautiful bouquet you sent to her ladyship, my lord,” Miss Wood began, obviously trying to ease the strain within their little party. “A very unusual collection of blossoms.”

“Flowers, Edward?” His uncle beamed, turning towards him. “I didn’t know you’d sent her ladyship flowers!”

“Yes, my lord. I cannot thank you enough.” Diana smiled at Edward, waiting. He could confess the flowers weren’t his, or he could accept Anthony’s gift as his own. The difficult truth, or a comfortable, self-serving lie.

He smiled in return, and to her disappointment, she understood at once which path he’d take.

“I’m glad you liked the bouquet, my lady,” he said, touching his forehead. “Though the beauty of the flowers falls far short of your own, nor can they begin to express the admiration you inspire.”

She nodded in acknowledgement of his compliment, then looked away to the shops and houses they were passing. How could he so easily claim what wasn’t his? To take credit for flowers he hadn’t the imagination to gather, let alone the thoughtfulness to send to her—it made her both sad and resentful that he’d do such a base thing. Edward had seemed so honorable, so respectable. She’d wanted to trust him, even to love him, but after this she was inclined to do neither.




Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.


Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/miranda-jarrett/seduction-of-an-english-beauty-39870496/) на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.