Kitabı oku: «The Duke's Governess Bride», sayfa 3

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.’

The secretary backed his way from the room, and shut the door after him. Miss Wood continued to stand, her expression so unperturbed that Richard found himself unsettled by it.

‘Sit, Miss Wood, sit,’ he said, waving his hand towards a nearby chair. ‘That is, if you wish to.’

‘Thank you, your Grace.’ She sat with an unstudied grace, the slight flutter of her plain woollen skirts around her ankles reminding him painfully of her night-shift last night in the hallway.

Unaware of his thoughts, she sighed and glanced down at her letter, still open on the table before him.

Her smile became more forced, its earlier pleasantness gone. ‘I suppose you wish to discuss terms, your Grace. I can be gone from this house by nightfall today, if that is your desire.’

‘It most certainly is not!’ he exclaimed, appalled. ‘Look here, Miss Wood, what I was saying when you came in—I didn’t mean you, or that you were to leave.’

Her eyes widened with bewilderment, and she flushed. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, but I don’t understand. When I entered just now, you were looking through the window, saying nothing.’

‘Very well, then, very well.’ He cleared his throat to cover his discomfort. That was a fine start to things, stammering out an apology when none was needed, like some tongue-tied schoolboy. ‘I’ve no intention of sending you off to fend for yourself without any warning. It’s not right, and I won’t have it said that I’d do such a thing to any woman in my employment.’

‘You’re very…kind.’ Now her smile was tremulous with an uncertainty he’d never seen from her before, and that touched him at once. Little tendrils of her dark hair had escaped from beneath her linen cap, doubtless coaxed into curls by Venice’s perpetual dampness, and reminding him again of last night. Why had he always believed her hair to be straight and uninteresting before this?

‘It’s not kindness,’ he said as firmly as he could. ‘It’s my duty to you, in return for how well you have served my daughters.’

‘It is kindness, your Grace,’ she said carefully, ‘and I thank you for it. But I cannot continue here, a governess with no charges to govern. It would not be right.’

‘And I say it is.’ To prove it, he took her letter and tore it in two. ‘There. We’ll forget about this notice, and you can continue with the same wages. I’ll have Potter settle the particulars, to make sure I’m not in arrears with you for the quarter.’

‘But for what, your Grace?’ she asked. ‘Before you arrived, I could continue to stay here until I took the passage for home because I was following my orders as we had arranged last summer. I could continue as I was, because I’d no reason not to, even without any responsibilities. But now that you do know my situation, everything changes. To accept wages from you for being idle would be perceived as unseemly, your Grace.’

Her cheeks had remained pink, and he wondered if she, too, were remembering last night. Had he surprised her as much as she had him? Had she been aware of him as a man, and not just a master? Is that what she meant by ‘unseemly’?

‘You’ve been in my household for years, Miss Wood.’ A thousand memories of her with his daughters came racing back to him—more, really, than he had of the girls with his wife. All he asked now was that she share that with him for another fortnight. ‘You are in many ways a part of our family, you know. Certainly my two daughters feel that way towards you.’

With triumph he saw the brightness in her eyes that meant unshed tears. She wouldn’t go now, not so long as she thought of Diana and Mary.

He lowered his voice, softer but no less commanding. ‘Please, Miss Wood. No one would question it if you remained here another few weeks.’

But instead of immediately agreeing, as he’d expected, she shook her head. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, but I believe they would. A governess is always vulnerable to talk.’

‘No female servant has ever come to grief in my household,’ he declared proudly, ‘and I defy anyone to say otherwise. That shall not change, Miss Wood. I give you my word of honour.’

‘I thank you, your Grace.’ She rose, and he stood, too, on the other side of the table with her torn letter lying between them. ‘But I must refuse. I have no choice, not if I hope to be at ease with myself. I cannot remain here to take money from you for doing nothing in return.’

‘Nothing?’ Swiftly he turned away from her again and back towards the window, unwilling to let her see his surprise at her refusal. When was the last time anyone had refused him like this? What more did she wish from him, anyway? What more could he offer her?

‘For the sake of my girls, I would ask you to stay,’ he said to the window. ‘Reconsider, and stay. Please.’

Yet she did not answer, and he sighed impatiently, clasping and unclasping his hands behind his back.

‘An answer, Miss Wood,’ he said. ‘Damnation, you can at least grant me that courtesy, can’t you?’

No answer came, not a word, and with a muttered oath he swung around to confront her.

And to his chagrin, learned that she had left him and he was already alone.

With feverish haste, Jane packed the last of her belongings into her travelling trunks. Despite the luxury and comfort of this house and the hospitality shown to her by Signora della Battista, the sooner she left this place, the better. No matter how much the duke insisted she stay, she could not remain here with him. She could not. It was as simple, and as complicated, as that.

She muttered with frustration, a rolled-up stocking clutched tightly in her hand. She had anticipated this tour across the Continent so much. Likely it would be the one time in her life she’d be able to see the places and paintings she’d only read about in books. While most tutors to noble families had travelled to France and Italy, very few governesses ever left their schoolrooms, and she’d counted on these new experiences to increase her value to families who’d hire her in the future.

But what she hadn’t counted on was how this trip had altered her.

The changes had been imperceptible as they’d happened, or at least they’d been so to her. When she studied her reflection in the looking-glass, she appeared much the same as she always had, with more thoughtfulness than beauty in her face. She wore the same clothes as when she’d left Aston Hall, and pinned her hair back into the same tidy knot as she had since she’d been a girl. She still wore no scent, no ornaments or jewels, no extra little enticements designed to beguile. She dressed for sturdy, respectable practicality and nothing else.

Nor could she say exactly when or how the changes had occurred. Was it because she’d been forced to step so far beyond her usual place in life, and accept more responsibility for herself and her young charges? Was it the art she’d seen in the galleries here, frankly sensual images of pagan love among the ancient Greeks and Romans, of writhing nymphs and satyrs, of Romish saints in the throes of exquisite ecstasies, that had subtly marked her? Or had the proximity to the heated affairs of Mary and Diana affected her, too, softening her, burnishing her, making her less like her familiar spinster self and more receptive to male attention, even admiration?

Because that was what had happened. Not only was she noticing gentlemen with more interest than she ever had before, but they were noticing her. To be sure, Signor di Rossi was Italian, and by his nature much given to emotional displays, but for him to have proposed assignations had stunned her. The very word sounded beyond wicked. She would be thirty on her next birthday, well beyond the impulsive age for making assignations with gentlemen. Wasn’t she?

Then why had she seen his Grace in an entirely different light last night? For ten years he had been her master and no more, the father of her charges and little else. She had admired him from afar, of course; there was much about him to admire. But once she took the letters to his room last night, everything between them seemed to have shifted. When he’d opened the door himself, she hadn’t thought of him as her master the duke, but as a large, tousled man roused from his bed.

She’d been acutely aware of his physical presence, glimpsed outside his nightshirt, of the muscles of his bare forearms and the curling hair on his chest like the naked Roman gods in the paintings by Tintoretto. His unshaven jaw bristled with a night’s worth of whiskers, and his uncombed hair had fallen across his forehead. She’d stood so close to him that she’d smelled his scent, the warmth of his skin combined with the faint fragrance of freshly washed bed-linens. He’d looked at her, too, looked at her as if he’d never seen her before, with admiration and interest and with desire for her as a woman, too, if she were being honest. In her confusion, she’d looked down to avoid his scrutiny, and had seen the shocking intimacy of his bare feet, so close to hers that their toes could have touched.

And then he’d spoken of his daughters and love and desire and she’d heard the passion in his voice, the urgency of his emotions, so great that she’d had no choice but to run away, just as she’d run away from him now, both times without his leave or her own common sense.