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‘Here you are, Your Grace,’ Wilson said, holding his dressing gown out before him. ‘Put this on, and warm yourself. This is a perilously damp place, your Grace, all this water and musty old plaster, and I won’t have you taken ill from standing about. Now here, let me take those papers from you.’
‘No, I’ll keep them,’ Richard said, ignoring the dressing gown and returning to his bed, or rather, the bed that had come with the room. No respectable Englishman would ever consider such a bedstead as ‘his’, not when it was tricked out with gilded swans and crimson hangings shot with gold thread. All it required was a looking-glass overhead in the canopy and a naked whore or two to make it fit for the priciest brothel in London.
Grumbling, he let Wilson pull the coverlet up and plump his pillows as he picked up the first package of letters, the ones that had come from his older daughter Mary. One look at that familiar, girlish penmanship, and he forgot all about Miss Wood and her bare feet.
How could his girls marry without his consent? How could they abandon him like this, without so much as a by your leave? How could they possibly have changed so fast from his little girls in their white linen dresses and pink silk sashes into women grown and wed to other men?
‘Ah, your Grace,’ Wilson said, beaming. ‘Letters from the young ladies?’
‘That will be all, Wilson ,’ Richard said curtly. ‘Leave me.’
Leave me—that was what his girls had done, hadn’t they? He’d come all this way for them, yet they’d already gone.
He waited until Wilson had gone, then slowly opened the first of Mary’s letters and tipped the sheet towards the candlestick on the table beside the bed. It felt strange reading letters not addressed to him, like listening at a keyhole or behind a fence, practices no gentleman would do.
Yet as soon as he began to read, he heard the words in Mary’s voice, as clearly as if she were in the room speaking to him, and his heart filled with emotion. The letter seemed to date from early autumn, soon after her marriage, after Miss Wood had continued on to Italy with Diana and left Mary behind in Paris with her new husband.
Ah, Mary, his dear Mary. Mary had always been his favourite of his two daughters. It wasn’t that he loved her any more than he loved Diana, for he didn’t, but Mary was easier to like than Diana. With her calm, thoughtful manner and pleasing serenity, Mary was the opposite of her impulsive and passionate sister. For better or worse, Diana took after him, while Mary favoured her mother, and as she’d grown older, Richard had come to rely on Mary to handle things about the house that had once been his wife Anne’s domain. Even now he’d put off making certain decisions at Aston Hall—new paint for the drawing room, improvements that Cook wanted in the kitchen—telling himself that they could wait until Mary came home to guide him.
Except that now, as he read, he learned she wasn’t coming home. No, worse—that home for her no longer meant Aston Hall, but wherever this Irish-born rascal she’d married took her. He learned that though this man seemed to have some sort of income, he’d no proper home for Mary beyond bachelor lodgings in London. Instead they seemed to be content to live like vagabonds in Paris—in Paris!—dining out and wandering about day and night. To be sure, their lodgings were in an excellent area that even he recognised by name, and at least Mary had enough of a staff to be respectable. Richard could learn that much from the letters, and know his Mary wasn’t in any need or want.
But as he read on, Richard discovered that Mary had found more than simply respectable lodgings in Paris. In this Lord John Fitzgerald, she also seemed to have discovered a man who shared her interest in musty old pictures and books and long-ago history: a man who could make her happy.
And Mary was happy. There wasn’t any doubt of that. Every page, every word seemed to bubble with unabashed joy in her new life and her new husband. Richard couldn’t recall the last time she’d been as jubilant and light-hearted as this, not since she’d been a small girl before her mother had died.
Diana’s letters were shorter, less thoughtful, and full of the dashes and false starts that made her writing so similar to her speech, darting here and there like a dragonfly over the page. Her new bridegroom, Lord Anthony Randolph, was delicious, and sought endlessly to please her. Their life together in his native Rome was full of music and friends, parties and other amusements. She’d ordered a new gown, a new hat, yellow stockings to his lordship’s delight. He’d given her a talking bird from Africa. Like her sister, she was happy, more happy, she claimed, than she’d ever been in her life. She was also already four months with child.
His grandchild.
Richards groaned, and let his daughter’s familiar girlish signature blur and swim before his tired eyes. He wasn’t even forty, yet tonight he felt twice that. Oh, he’d learned a great deal from the letters. He’d learned that though he’d always done his best to make his girls happy, these unknown young men had succeeded far beyond his lowly paternal efforts. He’d learned that, no matter that his daughters had been the very centrepiece of his life, he really didn’t know them at all, not as they were now. He’d learned that Mary and her husband were likely even now on their way here to Venice to meet Diana and her husband, and together to bid their favourite Miss Wood farewell before she sailed away for England. But the blistering greeting that Richard would have offered them earlier wouldn’t happen. Not now, not after he’d read these letters.
Because what he’d learned the most from them this night was exactly what Miss Wood had predicted: that his darling girls had somehow changed into women in love, blissful, heavenly love, with the men they’d chosen as their mates for life.
And he, their father, had been left behind.
Chapter Four
Giovanni Rinaldini di Rossi stood close by his bedchamber window, watching. It was early for the Englishwoman to come calling on him, impossibly early by Venetian standards, yet there was Miss Wood, hurrying across the bridge towards his house. She walked briskly, with the determination and purpose with which she seemed to pursue everything, her plain dark skirts rippling around her legs. He knew ancient, widowed matriarchs who dressed with less solemnity than this little English wren did. Almost like a nun, she was, and the thought made him smile. No wonder he found her so desirable.
Without shifting his gaze, he idly touched one fingertip to the chocolate powder floating on the foamy top of his cappuccino and tapped it lightly on the tip of his tongue to taste the sweetness. Like so many of the windows in Venice, this one was designed for seeing without being seen, for mystery rather than clarity. The glass was not set in flat panes, as was done in other places, but in small round bull’s-eyes framed in iron. Miss Wood would have no idea he was standing here, or that he’d been watching her ever since he’d glimpsed her in the gondola. A pretty deception, like everything else that made life interesting.
He shifted to one side so he could watch her as she waited at his door. She’d pushed back the hood of her cloak, and now he could see how the chilly early morning air had pinked her cheeks and the tip of her nose.
There were never any of the usual female artifices of powder or paint with her, none of the little false ways of hiding from a man. She was always as she seemed, fresh as new cream. Despite her age, he’d stake a thousand gold sequins that she was a virgin. He could sense it. She’d be as untouched as any young postulant, really, and he’d always a weakness for debauching convent flesh.
It was this utter lack of guile that had tempted di Rossi from the moment Miss Wood had appeared one morning in his drawing room, her letter of introduction in her gloved hands. Seduction, corruption, ruin or simply a worldly education in pleasure—it would all amount to the same thing for him. She was a governess of no social standing or family, a foreigner, in truth no more significant than any other servant. He could do whatever he pleased with her without consequences.
Now he watched as she entered his house, the door closing after her, then he smiled, and considered the delicious possibilities she presented like a gourmet before a rich feast. Though clearly she’d the body of a woman beneath that grim, shapeless gown, in her heart she still had that innocent’s trust in the goodness of men. Teaching her otherwise was proving to be the greatest diversion he’d had in years.
Jane perched on the very edge of the chair. No matter how she tried, she could never quite relax on the delicate gilded chairs here in Signor di Rossi’s drawing room. The red-silk damask cushions seemed too elegant to sit upon and the artfully carved legs in the shape of a griffin’s clawed feet seemed too delicate to support any grown person. She was certain, too, that the chairs were very old and very valuable, like everything else in the signor’s house, and she would hate to repay his hospitality by being the clumsy Englishwoman who broke a chair.
Once again she drew her watch from her pocket to check the time. She realised that calling here so early in the day could be interpreted as an affront, especially by the signor, who had the most refined manners she had ever encountered in a gentleman. But the hour could not be helped, not if she wished to offer both her thanks and farewell. As much as she’d enjoyed his company these last weeks, her time for the idle pleasures of art and conversation were done.
Restlessly she smoothed her skirts over her knees. She’d already accomplished much this morning, making her plans for life beyond the Farren family. She had decided to stay here in Venice rather than return to England, where her likely lack of references from the duke would be an impossible handicap. With the assistance of the English ambassador here, she had already found new lodgings with a Scottish widow that were both respectable and inexpensive. The ambassador had also promised to help her find a new place with a family with children here, either English or Italian. Failing that, she could be a companion to a widow or other elderly lady. She couldn’t afford to be particular. She’d little money of her own, certainly not enough for the costly passage back to England. No wonder her situation was a complicated one, and vulnerable, too. Given his Grace’s fury last night, she could return to the Ca’ Battista and find all her belongings bobbing in the canal outside by his orders.
‘Ah, Miss Wood, buon giorno, buon giorno!’ Signor di Rossi entered the room with the easy self-assurance that generations of aristocratic di Rossis had bred into his blood. ‘You cannot know how a visit from you pleases me.’
He was too dark, too exotic by English standards, but here in Venice Jane thought he was the very model of an Italian gentleman. He was perhaps thirty, even thirty-five. Over his shirt and black breeches he wore a long, loose dressing gown of quilted red-and-gold silk. With the pale winter sunlight glinting on the gold threads, the extravagant garment floated around him as he walked, more like a king’s ceremonial robes than a gentleman’s morning undress while at home. By contrast, his olive-skinned face seemed almost ascetic, his cheekbones and nose sharply defined. His black hair was sleeked back into a simple queue, and his dark eyes were full of welcome as he reached out to take her hand, and lift her up from her curtsy.
‘You are most kind, signor.’ Jane smiled, flushing with embarrassment as he held her fingers a moment longer than was proper in England. ‘Most kind. You always have been that way to me.’
‘But that is hardly a challenge, Miss Wood,’ he said, motioning for her to sit. ‘Not between friends such as we, surely?’
Purposefully she didn’t sit, determined to keep the visit short, as she’d intended. ‘I am honoured that a gentleman so grand as yourself would consider me as such, signor.’
‘Please, Miss Wood, no more.’ He waved his hand gracefully through the air, the wide sleeve of his banyan slipping back over his arm. ‘You speak as an Englishwoman who has had the misfortune to have spent her life in the thrall of your English king. Venice is a republic, her air free for all her citizens to breathe. If I wish to call a gondolier, or a fisherman, or an English governess my friend, then I may.’
As experienced as Jane was at masking her feelings, she couldn’t keep back a forlorn small sigh at that. She’d miss her time with Signore di Rossi, discussing the beautiful paintings that his family had collected over the centuries. She’d met him soon after she’d arrived in Venice, through a letter of introduction meant for the duke’s daughters. This was the customary way that well-bred English visitors could view private collections on the Continent, a day or two walking the halls of palaces and country houses with a watchful housekeeper as a guide. But to Jane’s surprise, the signor had shown her his pictures himself, and invited her to return the following day, and every day after that.
And the signor was speaking the truth. He had treated her as a friend, almost as an equal. He had respected her observations about art so much that he’d sought her opinions as if they had actual merit. No other gentleman had listened to Jane like that before. Was it any wonder, then, that her visits here to him had become the most anticipated part of her day?
And now—now they must be done.
‘Let me send for refreshment for you,’ the signor continued as he stepped to the bell to summon a servant. ‘It’s early, yes, but not so early that I cannot play the good host to my favourite guest. A plate of biscotti, a cappuccino, a dish of chocolate, or perhaps your English tea?’
‘Thank you, no, signor,’ Jane said, though sorely tempted. She’d come to adore Venetian chocolate in her time here, and it would be one of the things she’d miss most when she returned to England. ‘You are most generous, most kind, but I cannot stay.’
He turned on his heel and stopped, one black brow raised with surprise. ‘How do you mean this, Miss Wood? How can you come, and yet not intend to stay?’
‘Exactly that, signor. I’ve come only to thank you, and to—to say farewell.’
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I shall not permit it. I’ve something special and rare to show you today, a manuscript book, drawn by hand four hundred years ago in a Byzantine monastery. The artistry will steal your breath, Miss Wood, with each parchment page brought to life with ground lapis and gold leaf and—’
‘Forgive me, signor, but I cannot stay,’ she repeated. She had to tell him the truth; putting it off like this was not making her task any easier. ‘My master, his Grace the Duke of Aston, unexpectedly arrived in Venice last evening, and he—he is most displeased with me. I have given my notice to resign my place in his service, and must find another directly.’
‘No!’ He rushed back to her, the scarlet silk billowing after him. ‘What manner of man is this duke, to be displeased with you?’
‘He is a very great man in England, signor.’ Jane sighed, thinking of how different the gruff, broad-shouldered duke was from the man before her, like comparing a great shaggy roaring lion to a sleekly self-possessed jaguar. How could she fairly describe the hearty, noble Englishness of his Grace to a gentleman as elegantly refined as Signore di Rossi? ‘I still believe that I did what was best for his daughters, but because His Grace was expecting to find them here in Venice with me, he was…distraught.’
‘For that he has cast you out?’ the signor asked. ‘For doing your duty as best you could?’
‘I did not wait for him to dismiss me,’ Jane said with care. To fault the duke felt disloyal; besides, when she remembered how shocked he’d been, she could almost excuse him. ‘But because I felt it was inevitable, given the degree of his unhappiness, I chose to give notice first.’
Di Rossi stared at her, openly aghast. ‘Yet from your telling, the daughters love you as if you shared the same blood.’
‘They did love me,’ she said sadly, for that, too, was true. Mary and Diana did love her, and she them, but their father loved them, too, and she thought again of the sorrow and pain she’d seen on his face last night. ‘They do. But it is their father, not they, who decides my fate, and I’d rather not wait to hear his judgement.’
The signor frowned and shook his head. ‘That is barbarously unfair, Miss Wood. To punish you for the sins of the daughters!’
‘Daughters in my safe-keeping. I was their governess. I was to watch over them, and keep them from harm.’
‘Love is not harm.’
‘Love without a father’s consent is,’ she countered wistfully. ‘At least it is if the father is an English peer of the realm.’
He shook his head. ‘This puts me in mind of an ancient tale, of a Roman messenger put to death for bringing ill news of a battle to his emperor.’
‘Forgive me, but it was a Spartan messenger.’ She smiled sadly. ‘You see how it is with me, signor. I cannot help myself. I am a governess bred to the marrow of my bones.’
‘Ah, cara mia,’ he said. ‘You were a woman before you ever were a governess.’
Cara mia: my dear. Jane’s cheeks warmed, even as she drew herself up straighter into her customary propriety. She’d learned early in her trip that gentlemen on the Continent tossed about endearments much more freely than Englishmen, yet this—this felt different.
‘These last weeks have been most enjoyable, signor, that is true,’ she said, as briskly as she could, ‘but it is past time I put aside my idleness, and found another place where I can be useful.’
‘To fill your eyes and feed your soul with the beauty of great paintings, the works of the finest masters—that is not idleness,’ he countered. ‘That is useful, Miss Wood, more useful than recalling the lesson of the Spartan messenger.’
‘A well-fed eye does nothing for an empty stomach, signor,’ Jane said, her sadness and regret rising by the second. The end would always have come in time, of course. Even if Mary and Diana had remained with her, they would have been bound to sail for home at the end of February; their passages home had been booked for months along with the rest of their itinerary. But this way, with so little warning, somehow seemed infinitely more wrenching.
‘I must work to support myself,’ she began again. ‘I’ve no choice in the matter. Being a governess is not so very bad, you know.’
‘Yet a governess is not a slave, chained to his oar in the galleys,’ he reasoned. ‘Even an English governess. No matter who employs you next, you’ll have a day to yourself each week, yes? Even the lowest scullery maid has that. A day you can come here to me?’
‘But a governess is expected to set a certain tone of propriety and behaviour, signor,’ she said. ‘Calling on gentlemen would not be considered as either.’
‘Then don’t call,’ he said with maddening logic. ‘I shall meet you elsewhere in the city by agreement. A hooded cloak, a mask, and the thing is done. No one shall ever know which is the governess, which the great lady. Venice is the best city in the world for assignations, you know.’
Any other time, and she might have laughed at the outrageousness of such a suggestion. ‘I am very sorry, signor, but I cannot do that, either. My reputation must be impeccable. I have no resources of my own, you see, nor any—’
‘Miss Wood.’ Gently he took her hand again, though this time from affection, not the polite necessity of assisting her. She understood the difference at once, and tensed in response.
He smiled over their joined hands, his fingers tightening ever so slightly around hers.
‘Signor di Rossi,’ she protested, startled. ‘Please. Please!’
‘Know that you have a friend in Venice,’ he said, his voice rich and low. ‘That is all. Know that you are not without resources, as you fear. Know that you are not…alone.’
Was it a dare, an invitation, an offer? Or simply an expression of fond regard between acquaintances and nothing more?
‘Goodbye, Signor di Rossi,’ she said, barely a whisper. ‘Goodbye.’
She pulled her hand free, turned away and, without looking back once, fled.
Chapter Five
‘Blast these infernal foreign clerks,’ Richard said, finally giving voice to his exasperation. He’d scarce sat down to his breakfast before the officials from the Customs House had descended upon him, and it had taken the better part of the morning for him and Potter to settle their questions and finally send them on their way. ‘They’re so puffed with their own importance; they do believe they’re as grand as his Majesty himself. Did they truly believe we’d try smuggling rubbish in our trunks?’
Potter made a small bow of agreement. ‘The Venetians are most particular about their trade, your Grace. They have such a long tradition of trade by sea, that they are most watchful guarding their port.’
‘Their entire city’s a port, as far as I can see.’ Richard sighed, and reached for his glass again. Despite the canals and rivers everywhere, he’d been warned for the sake of his health to stay clear of the water for drinking, and from what he’d seen floating about beneath his window, he instantly agreed. Instead he’d been advised to drink the local wine, a rich, fruity red from the nearby Veneto that was surprisingly agreeable, even when accompanied by drones from the Customs House. ‘At least we satisfied them that we’re no rascally rum-smugglers, eh?’
Potter smiled. ‘Quite, your Grace.’
‘Quite, indeed.’ Richard nodded, then sighed again. What lay next for this morning—or what was left of it—wouldn’t be nearly as easily resolved. He didn’t enjoy admitting he was wrong any more than the next man did. ‘Ah, well, now for the rest of my business. Pray send in Miss Wood to me.’
‘Forgive me, your Grace,’ Potter said with a delicate hesitation, ‘but that is not possible. She’s not in the house.’
‘Not here? Of course she’s here. Where the devil could she be otherwise?’
‘I do not know, your Grace.’ Potter stepped forwards, instantly producing a sealed letter in that mystifying way of all good secretaries. ‘But she did leave this for you to read at your convenience.’
Richard grabbed the letter from Potter’s hand. ‘I cannot believe Miss Wood would simply disappear,’ he said, cracking the seal with his thumb. ‘She’s never been given to such irresponsibility. It’s not like her.’
‘I expect she’ll return, your Grace,’ Potter offered. ‘It isn’t as if she’s run off. All her belongings are still in her room.’
‘Well, that’s a mercy, isn’t it?’ With a grumbling sigh Richard turned to the neatly written page. A single sheet, no more, covered with Miss Wood’s customary model penmanship. If she’d been upset by their exchange last night, she wasn’t going to betray it with her pen, that was certain.
‘Damnation,’ he muttered unhappily. ‘Thunder and damnation! Potter, what does she mean by this? You read this, and tell me. What’s she about?’
Quickly the secretary scanned the letter, and handed it back to the duke. ‘It would seem that Miss Wood has given notice, Your Grace, effective immediately.’
That was what Richard had thought, too, but hadn’t wanted to accept. ‘But she can’t resign, Potter. I won’t permit it.’
Potter screwed up his mouth as if he’d eaten something sour. ‘You can’t forbid it, your Grace, if she no longer wishes to remain in your employment. As Miss Wood herself writes, with the young ladies wed and gone, there’s little reason for—’
‘I know what she damn well wrote, Potter,’ Richard said crossly. He set the letter on the desk and smoothed it flat with his palm. When he’d first heard that his daughters had married, he’d been ready to banish Miss Wood from his sight for the rest of their combined days on this earth. But once he’d read the letters from his daughters, he realised that Miss Wood was the last link he might have with them.
The last link. Lightly he traced her signature with his fingertip. He thought of how hard she’d tried to make the news as palatable as possible to him last night, how she’d tried to ease both his temper and his sorrow. She’d done her best for his girls in this, the way she always had, yet she’d also done her best for him. How many years had she been in his household, anyway? He couldn’t remember for certain. It seemed as if she’d always been there, setting things quietly to rights whenever they went awry, looking after his girls as loyally as if they’d been her own. He could hardly expect more, nor would he have asked for more, either. Surely he must have told her so, somewhere in all the time that his daughters were growing up. Somewhere, at some time, he must have, hadn’t he?
Hadn’t he?
‘Miss Wood is still a young woman, your Grace,’ Potter was saying, stating the patently obvious as he too often did. ‘No doubt she is already looking towards her future, and a position with another—’
‘I know perfectly well how young she is, Potter,’ Richard said, and as soon as he spoke he remembered how she’d looked last night, her hair loose and full over her shoulders and her eyes wide and glowing with the fervour of her argument. Oh, aye, she was young, a good deal younger than he’d remembered her to be. Now he couldn’t forget it, and his confusion made his words sharp. ‘Nor do I need you to tell me of her future.’
Potter sighed, and bowed. ‘No, your Grace.’
‘Miss Wood’s future, indeed,’ Richard muttered, pointedly turning away from Potter to gaze out the window. Nothing had prepared him for losing his girls as abruptly as he had, and now he’d no intention of letting Miss Wood go before he was ready. ‘As if I’d so little regard for the young woman that I’d turn her out in a foreign place like some low, cast-off strumpet.’
‘Your Grace.’
He swung around at once. Miss Wood herself was standing there beside Potter, her gloved hands neatly clasped at her waist and her expression perfectly composed.
‘Forgive me for startling you, your Grace,’ she said, ‘but Signora della Battista told me you wished to see me directly. I have only now returned, and I came to you as soon as I could.’
He nodded, for once unable to think of what to say. Hell, what had he been saying when she’d entered? Something unfortunate about strumpets and being turned out.
‘Potter, leave us,’ he ordered, determined not to embarrass her any further. ‘I will speak to Miss Wood alone.’
