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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.
