скачать книгу бесплатно
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!”
