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‘Livelihood!’ The signora made a sharp click of disdain. ‘What manner of life can there be with an intemperate male creature such as this one?’
Swiftly Jane shook her head, appalled by such disrespect. She was most fortunate that the duke was proud, as only an English peer could be, of speaking no other language than English, and hadn’t understood the other woman’s comments. Hurriedly she shifted back to English herself.
‘Your Grace,’ she began, ‘if you please, may I present Signora Isabella della Battista, the owner of this fine house? Signora, his Grace the Duke of Aston.’
To Jane’s dismay, the signora’s nod of acknowledgement was also calcuated at the precise angle to signify exactly where a parvenu English duke of only two or three hundred years’ nobility stood in relationship to her, a member of one of the most ancient families of the Republic of Venice who was at present so unfortunately impoverished that she was in need of rich travelling foreigners as lodgers.
‘Madam,’ the duke said curtly to the signora, too caught up in his own anger to perceive her slight. ‘Damnation, Miss Wood, come down here where I can see you properly.’
Jane grabbed her skirts to one side so she wouldn’t trip, and hurried down to stand before him.
Or, rather, beneath him. In the half-year since she’d last seen him at Aston Hall, she’d forgotten how much taller he was than she, and how much larger, too. The duke had a presence that few men could match, a physical energy that seemed to vibrate from him like the rays from the sun. While most men of his rank and age masked their emotions behind a show of genteel boredom, he let them run galloping free. The results could make him either the very best of men, a paragon of charming good nature and generous spirit, or the very worst of devils, when his temper triumphed. Everyone acquainted with the duke knew this to be so, from his daughters to his servants, his neighbours, even his pack of hunting dogs.
As, of course, did Jane. And there was absolutely no doubt as to which side of the duke now held sway.
‘Explain, Miss Wood,’ he ordered curtly. ‘Now.’
‘Yes, your Grace.’ She took another deep breath, and forced herself to meet his gaze. ‘Your daughters have both wed most excellent gentlemen, your Grace, gentlemen of whom I dare to believe you yourself will approve upon acquaintance.’
‘Then why the devil didn’t they wait to ask me properly?’ the duke demanded. ‘Gentlemen, hah. Only the lowest rascal steals away a lady from her family like that.’
‘In ordinary circumstances, they would have, your Grace,’ Jane agreed, blushing at what she must next say. ‘But once your daughters had…ah…become their lovers, it seemed best that they wed at once before—’
‘My girls were ruined?’ the duke asked, sputtering with horror.
‘Not ruined, your Grace,’ Jane said. ‘They were—they are—in love, and love will not be denied.’
‘It would have if I’d been here,’ he said grimly. ‘Their names, Miss Wood, their names.’
‘Lady Mary wed Lord John Fitzgerald in Paris—’
‘An Irishman? My Mary let herself be seduced and wed to an Irishman?’
‘A gentleman of Irish birth, your Grace,’ Jane said firmly, determined to defend the choices that both her charges had made. ‘His lordship is a younger son, true, but his brother is a marquis.’
‘An Irish peerage is as worthless as muck in a stable!’ the duke cried with disgust. ‘At least if the thing was done in Paris with a Romish priest, then I can have it dissolved as—’
‘Forgive me, your Grace, but they were wed properly, before an Anglican cleric,’ Jane said. ‘Lady Mary herself was most conscious of that.’
Pained, the duke closed his eyes. ‘If Mary’s thrown herself away on an Irishman, then what kind of scoundrel has ruined Diana?’
‘Lady Diana’s husband is Lord Anthony Randolph, your Grace, brother to the Earl of Markham.’
‘Another younger son, when with her beauty and breeding, she could have had a prince!’ He shook his head with despair. ‘At least he’s an Englishmen, yes?’
‘His father was, yes. His mother was from an ancient Roman family of great nobility, which is why his lordship has resided in that city all his life.’
‘A Roman by birth, and by blood,’ he said, bitterness welling over his words. ‘An Italian, draped with an English title. An Italian, and an Irishman. My God.’
‘I beg you, your Grace,’ Jane said softly. She loved his daughters, and because of that love, she owed it to them to try to make their father understand. ‘These are good and honourable gentlemen, worthy of—’
‘Miss Wood.’ He cut her off as surely as if the words had been wrought of the steel. ‘I trusted you with my dearest possessions on this earth, and you—you have carelessly let them slip away.’
‘But, your Grace, if I might explain—’
‘No.’ Pointedly he turned away from her. ‘Signora, pray show me to my rooms. I will dine there, alone, as soon as your kitchen can arrange it.’
Signora della Battista knew when to put aside her animosity, especially towards the gentleman who had leased her entire house in the winter, a season of few travellers. The Venetian republic was famous for its mercenaries, and the signora was no different.
‘This house is honoured beyond measure, most excellent sir,’ she said in English. ‘My finest chamber shall be at your disposal, and my cook will prepare his very best to tempt you. This way, if you please.’
As Jane watched the duke follow the signora up the stairs, she saw how his usually squared shoulders sagged with weariness and discouragement, how the jagged white salt-stains from the sea worn into his once-elegant dark cloak seemed to illustrate just how long and arduous his journey here had been. She deeply regretted disappointing him, and though she knew better, she impulsively hurried up the stairs after him.
‘Your Grace, if you please,’ she said softly. ‘If I might speak to you further, to explain and—’
‘You’ve explained more than enough for tonight, Miss Wood,’ he said, brushing her away. ‘If you’ve any sense left at all, you should prefer to wait until tomorrow to hear what else I shall say to you.’
This time, Jane did not follow. Instead she remained behind, alone on the staircase, listening as the voices and footsteps of the duke and the signora grew fainter before they finally faded away.
It couldn’t have gone any worse with his Grace, short of him tossing her into the Grand Canal. Perhaps, Jane thought with growing despair, his Grace was saving that for tomorrow. In any event, she should prepare herself for the worst. Lady Mary and Lady Diana had assured her that their father would understand, and that he couldn’t possibly blame Jane for their choices. Yet already she’d seen that he could, and he would.
She had failed in her duty, failed in a way that in her entire life she’d never failed before. She had put the wishes of her charges ahead of their parent, an unforgivable sin in any governess. Yet still she believed she’d acted in the interests of both sisters. Wasn’t that the first order of her responsibilities? To put the welfare of her charges before everything else? But because of it, she was sure she’d now be turned out here in a foreign country, without references, or worse, with damning ones from the duke.
Slowly she climbed the rest of the stairs and headed down the long hallway to her room. She’d already dined earlier with the signora; there was nothing left for her to do this evening beyond preparing for her seemingly inevitable departure in the morning.
Like all the lesser rooms in grand Venetian houses, hers lay between the elegant bedchambers that were to have been occupied by the duke’s two daughters. One of these faced the front of the house, with tall windows and a balcony that overlooked the Grand Canal, while the other faced the house’s rear courtyard and private garden. Although comfortable enough, Jane’s chamber was undeniably intended for a servant, with a lesser view of the Rio della Madonnetta. Depending on the hour and the cast of the sun, candles were necessary, and the tiny stove for heat did little to relieve the winter damp either.
Always frugal, Jane lit only the single candlestick beside the small bed. She set her two trunks on the coverlet, and briskly set about emptying the clothes-press and chest of her belongings. Given the humble nature of her wardrobe, packing her clothes into the trunks took no time at all, and only her letters now remained to be sorted. She changed from her gown into her nightshift, brushed out her hair from its customary tightly pinned knot and wrapped an oversized wool shawl around her shoulders against the chill. Then, with fresh determination, she scooped the bundled papers into her arms and headed for the front bedchamber.
Once Signora della Battista had understood that Jane had arrived alone, without the English ladies who had been expected, she’d given the governess leave to use the other two bedchambers as well. It was of no concern to the signora who occupied them; she’d already been handsomely paid in advance long ago by the duke’s agents.
But for Jane, the luxurious bedchambers had only added to the dream-like quality of her visit to Venice. Each room had exuberant carved and gilded panelling and swirling paintings of frolicking ancient goddesses and cupids. Huge looking-glasses reflected the view of the canal and the garden, and magnified the dappled light off the water as well.
Jane hadn’t gone so far as to sleep in either of the huge bedsteads—each more like a royal barge than a mere bed—but she had permitted herself to spend time in the rooms, and she’d taken to writing letters at the delicate lady’s desk overlooking the Grand Canal.
Now she set her papers on the desk’s leather top, and settled in the gilded armchair. First she turned to the journal that had accompanied her ever since they’d left Aston Hall late last summer. This tour of the Continent had been planned to put the final finishing on the educations of Lady Mary and Lady Diana before they returned to London society and, most likely, suitable husbands and marriages. The trip was also meant to restore the reputation of Lady Diana, singed as it had been by a minor scandal. Her father had decided that a half-year abroad would serve to make people forget Diana’s misstep, and Jane had guided the girls with the mixed purpose of education, edification and whitewashing.
To Jane it had been a glorious challenge. She’d begun by recording her impressions each day in her journal in precise short entries, from their crossing to Calais, the carriage across the French countryside to Paris and then on to Italy, to Florence and Rome and finally here to Venice.
But those initial brief entries had soon blossomed into longer and longer writings as Jane had succumbed to the magic of travel, and the journal bristled with loose sheets of unruly scribbled notes and sketches that she’d hurriedly tucked inside. But that wasn’t all. Pressed into the journal were all kinds of small mementos, from tickets and playbills to wildflowers. Jane smiled as she rediscovered each one, remembering everything again. Not even his Grace could take such memories away from her, and with special care she tied the journal as tightly closed as she could.
Yet there’d been far more to her journey than medieval cathedrals, and this was to be found in the letters she’d received from Lady Mary and Lady Diana since their marriages. These were filled with rare joy and the happiness that each of them felt with their new husbands, and so much love that Jane’s eyes filled with tears.
How she missed her ladies, her girls! Jane had thought she’d been prepared for their inevitable parting, the lot of all governesses; shejusthadn’t expected it to come so soon. As much as she’d enjoyed Venice, she would have much preferred it in their company, the way it was originally planned. But love, and those two excellent young gentlemen, had intervened, and though Jane would never wish otherwise for Mary and Diana, there were times when her loneliness without them felt like the greatest burden in the world. The two newlywed couples planned to meet here in Venice for Carnivale later in the month, and at their urging, she’d decided not to risk the hazardous winter voyage back to England, but remained here instead to see them once again. They’d convinced her that, since everything had been long paid for, she might as well make use of the lodgings, and she’d hesitantly agreed. But now, everything had changed.
She’d never expected the duke to surprise her like this, or to make so perilous a journey on what seemed like a whim. Yet as soon as she’d seen his face, she’d understood—he’d missed his daughters just as she missed them now, and he would have travelled ten times as far to see them again. She’d been stunned by the raw emotion in his face, the swift transition from anticipation to bitterest disappointment. At Aston Hall, he never would have revealed so much of himself; he was always simply his Grace, distant and omnipotent, a deity far above mere governesses.
Yet tonight, she’d glimpsed something else. Loneliness like that was unmistakable, as was the love that had inspired it. Didn’t she suffer the same herself?
Swiftly she tied the letters together once again. Better to go to bed than to sit about weeping like a sorrowful, sentimental do-nothing. She climbed into her bed, blew out the candle and closed her eyes, determined to lose her troubles in sleep.
But the harder she tried to sleep, the faster her restless thoughts churned, and the faster, too, that her first sympathy for the duke shifted into indignation on behalf of Mary and Diana.
She could just imagine him, snoring peacefully in the huge bed in the front bedchamber upstairs. Even asleep, he’d be completely resistant to the notion that his daughters might be happy with men of their own choosing instead of his. He didn’t want to hear their side. He’d already made his decision, and he was so stubborn he’d never change it now, either.
He wasn’t just a duke. He was a bully and a tyrant to his own daughters, and it was time—high time!—that someone stood up to him on their behalf.
She flung back the coverlet and hopped from her bed, grabbing her shawl from the back of the nearby chair. She gathered the ribbon-tied letters from Mary and Diana into her arms and, before she lost her courage, hurried from her room and up the stairs to the duke’s chambers. The rest of the house was silent with sleep, and by the pale light of the blue-glass night lantern hanging in the hall, her long shadow scurried up the stairs beside her.
She stood only a moment at the duke’s tall, panelled door before she thumped her fist. She waited, her bare feet chilled by the marble floor, heard nothing, then knocked again. In truth, she was only summoning the duke’s manservant, Wilson, or perhaps Mr Potter, but she’d still make her point.
The duke. Hah, more like the Duke of Intolerance than the mere Duke of Aston, to say such impossibly cruel things of his own new sons-in-law, without so much as the decency of—
‘Yes?’ The door swung open, not just a servant’s suspicious crack, but all the way. ‘What in blazes—Miss Wood!’
She gasped, clutching the letters more tightly in her arms. Not Wilson, or Potter, but the duke himself stood in the open door, scarce a foot apart from her. Clearly she’d roused him from his bed, and from a deep sleep, too, for he was scowling at her as if he wasn’t quite sure who she might be. She understood his confusion; she’d never seen him like this, either. He wore only his nightshirt, rumpled and loose, yet somehow revealing far more than his usual dress did because beneath all that snowy linen, he was…naked. The darker shadows beneath the fabric, the way the linen draped over his body, left no doubt, and Jane’s cheeks flamed at the horrible realisation. To make matters worse, the throat of the shirt was unbuttoned and open to reveal his chest and a large thatch of dark curling hair, his sleeves were pushed up over his well-muscled arms, and his stocky legs and large, bare feet showed below.
Hastily she looked back up to the safer territory of his face. Or perhaps it wasn’t. In all the time she’d been in his Grace’s employment, she’d never seen him this dishevelled, his hair loose around his face and his jaw roughened with a growth of darker beard, his whole expression without its usual reserve and control. It was unsettling, seeing him without his guard like this, and it made him less like his Grace, and more simply like any other man.
A large, scarcely dressed and surprisingly handsome man that she’d just summoned from his bed.
Heavens preserver her, what had she done?
Chapter Three
The duke stared down at Jane, clearly not pleased to find her standing at the door to his bedchamber in the middle of the night.
‘Miss Wood,’ he said again, sleepily rubbing his palm over his jaw, ‘why are you here? I thought we’d agreed that in the morning—’
‘Forgive me, your Grace, but this could not wait,’ Jane said, speaking to him more firmly than she’d ever thought she’d dare. ‘It is most important, you see.’
‘But it can’t be more than two hours past midnight,’ he protested. He was looking downwards, not at her face, and his scowl had become less perplexed, more thoughtful. Belatedly she realised that if she’d noticed he wore nothing beyond his nightclothes, then he was likely noticing the same of her. Yet instead of being mortified or shamed, she felt her irritation with him grow. How could he let himself be distracted in this idle fashion when so much—so very much!—was in question?
‘Forgive me for disturbing you, your Grace.’ She raised her chin, and impatiently shook her hair back from her eyes. ‘But your daughters and the gentlemen they wed deserve that much from me, your Grace, and I would never forgive myself if I didn’t speak on their behalf.’
His frown deepened, his thick, dark brows drawing sternly together. ‘No gentlemen would steal another man’s daughters. They are rogues and rascals, and I will deal with them accordingly.’
‘Your daughters would not agree with your judgement, your Grace.’
‘My daughters are too young to realise their folly, mere girls who—’
‘Forgive me, your Grace,’ Jane interrupted, her voice rising with uncharacteristic passion, ‘but they are women grown, who know their own hearts.’
‘“Their hearts,” hah,’ he scoffed. ‘That is the sorriest excuse for mischief in this world, Miss Wood. When I consider all the sorrow that has come from—’
‘Such as your own marriage, your Grace?’ she demanded hotly. ‘That is what I have always been told, and by those who would know. Did you not follow your heart when you wed her Grace, and at the same age as your daughters are now?’
His face froze, his anger stopped as cold as if he’d been turned to chilly stone.
And at once Jane realised the magnitude of what she’d done and what she’d said. The late Duchess of Aston was often mentioned at Aston Hall, and always with great affection and respect, and sorrow that she’d died so young. Her beauty, her kindness, her gentleness, all were praised and remembered by those who’d known her, and over time in the telling the duchess had become a paragon of virtue, a veritable saint. By an order so long-standing that its origins had been forgotten, no one spoke of her Grace before the duke. It was terribly tragic and romantic, true, but it was also the one rule of the house that was never broken.
Yet this was Venice, not Aston Hall. Things were different here, or perhaps it was Jane herself who was different after having been away for so many months. Either way she likely wasn’t a member of the duke’s household any longer, and certainly not after this.
‘Forgive me for speaking plainly, your Grace,’ she said. The words could not be taken back now, nor, truly, did Jane wish them unsaid, not in her present humour. ‘But how can you not wish the same contentment for your daughters that you found with—?’
‘You presume, Miss Wood,’ he said sharply. ‘You have no knowledge of these matters.’
‘I know the young ladies, your Grace,’ she insisted, ‘and what brings them joy and happiness.’
‘I know my own daughters!’
‘You may know them, your Grace, but you will never know the gentlemen they love, not so long as you remain so—so set against them.’
He drew back as abruptly as if she’d struck him. ‘Love,’ he said, practically spitting the word. ‘What do my daughters know of love? What can you know of it, Miss Wood?’
‘I know what I have read for myself in your daughters’ own words.’ She thrust the bundled letters into his arms, making him take them. ‘I know they are happy, and that they love the gentlemen they chose as their husbands. And that is what I know about love, your Grace.’
She curtsied briskly in her nightshift, then retreated without waiting to be properly dismissed. He did not try to stop her, nor did she look back.
She ran down the steps to her room, her shawl billowing out behind her shoulders. She closed the door to her bedchamber and took care to latch it. For what might be the last time, she sat at the gilded desk before the window, curling her feet beneath her and pressing her trembling palms to her cheeks.
She stared out at the mist rising from the canal and waited for her breathing to calm and her racing heart to slow. The night was still and quiet, with no sounds coming from his Grace’s rooms upstairs. By now he must have returned to his bed to sleep. By now, too, he would have made up his mind regarding her future. Which was just as well, for she’d decided it, too.
With a sigh, she reached for a clean sheet of paper and a pen, and began to write her letter giving notice to the Duke of Aston.
‘Your Grace!’ Bleary-eyed, Wilson hurried out from the shadows, his striped nightcap askew over one ear and his nightshirt stuffed haphazardly into his breeches. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, I did not hear you call.’
‘I didn’t.’ Richard still stood in the doorway to his rooms, scowling down the stairs where Miss Wood had vanished. She’d appeared like a wild-haired wraith, and disappeared like one, too, so fast that he wondered now if he’d dreamed the whole thing. ‘I answered the door myself.’
‘Oh, your Grace, you shouldn’t have done that, indeed you shouldn’t have,’ his manservant said, scandalised. ‘It’s not safe, not in a queer foreign place such as this.’
‘I’m safe enough, Wilson,’ Richard said. ‘Besides, it was hardly some brigand come to the rob me. It was Miss Wood.’
‘Miss Wood, your Grace?’ asked Wilson, clearly astonished. ‘Our Miss Wood? Come here, at this hour? Why, your Grace, I’d scarce believe it, not of Miss Wood.’
‘Nor I,’ Richard said. ‘Yet here she was, and in a righteous fury, too.’
He glanced down at the two bundles of letters she’d left with him, each tied neatly with ribbons. Of course they’d be neatly tied, just as he was certain they’d each be folded back into their seals and sorted in precedence of the date they’d been received. That was the way Miss Wood always did things, with brisk, predictable order. But there’d been nothing orderly or predictable about her outburst just now—not one thing.
‘She must’ve had a powerful strong reason, your Grace,’ Wilson said, hovering like the old nursemaid he very nearly was. ‘It don’t seem like her in the least.’
‘It didn’t, indeed.’ Earlier this day he’d barely noticed Miss Wood at all, except to register that she was in fact the same governess he’d trusted with his girls’ welfare. She’d simply been Miss Wood, the woman that had lived beneath his roof for nearly a decade, the same stern, plain Miss Wood that would have cowed him into obedience as a boy and had gone completely unnoticed by him as a man.
Or had until now. He’d never seen her as he just had: looking younger, much younger and more beguiling, her hair not scraped back beneath a linen cap, but loose and tousled like a dark cloud over her shoulders, her usually pinched cheeks flushed with emotion, her eyes anything but serene. Gone, too, was the strict shapeless gown, with her body bundled and barricaded within. Instead she’d been clad in only a worn linen nightdress that had slipped and slithered over her shoulders, and had revealed far more than it hid, likely far more than she’d intended. As a man, there was no conceivable way he could have overlooked the heavy fullness of her breasts, or how the chill had made her nipples tighten enticingly beneath the linen.
He grumbled wordlessly to himself, a kind of mental shake, and pushed the door shut with his elbow. God knows plenty of scullery-maid seductresses would flaunt themselves before their masters to secure extra favours, but he wasn’t that kind of master, and Miss Wood wasn’t that kind of servant—which had made this evening all the more unsettling. He’d always thought of her as a dry old virgin, scarcely female, and now—now he saw that she wasn’t. Not at all. No wonder he couldn’t forget how she’d looked, standing there with her little toes bare to lecture him about love.
About love. Miss Wood, coming to rouse him from his bed to challenge him in her nightdress. Damnation, what was it about this infernal Italian air that seemed to turn everything upside down?
