How To School Your Scoundrel, page 20
“Yes.” Luisa nodded to the hackney waiting by the curb.
Lady Somerton held out the reins. “Is there somewhere nearby I can stable my horse?”
A quarter hour later, they were crossing the Arno in the hackney, enjoying—if that was the word—the relief of the draught that rushed against their faces. The sky was hot and blue, and the air laden with spiciness by the dark green cypress trees lining the dusty road toward the villa. “He should not have taken Philip,” Lady Somerton said suddenly. “He should leave the boy out of it.”
“You took him away! Without leaving word, without saying where you’d gone. Philip is Lord Somerton’s son, too. He doesn’t belong to you exclusively.”
“He’s never shown an interest in him before.”
“Because you never let him. You’ve guarded the door to Philip’s heart since the moment he was born.”
The countess knotted her hands in her lap. “Because I know what my husband is like. You don’t know what a brute he is. How easily he could hurt Philip, or turn him into another version of himself.”
Luisa hesitated. “Yes, he can be brutal. But he has also the capacity for great devotion. And you never knew. You never gave him a chance, did you? You never opened your heart to him.”
Lady Somerton turned away and watched the cypress slide by.
The Palazzo Angelini stood alone between the road and the river, at the top of a hill that sloped down gradually to the brown green width of the summer Arno. Luisa had sat up waiting in the drawing room the night before, Quincy at her feet, until Somerton arrived in a carriage shortly before sunrise, carrying the sleeping Philip in his arms. She had led them both to Philip’s room on the third floor and woken Mrs. Yarrow to care for the boy, and then she had followed Somerton to his own magnificent bedroom, the master’s room. His eyes were rimmed with exhaustion. “He went right to sleep in the carriage,” he said, and there was an odd sort of joy in his face, amid the heavy lines. “He’s a good lad.”
The valet entered the room at that point, shrugging on his jacket as he went. “Get some rest,” Luisa had replied, and she had taken Somerton’s carriage back to the Grand Hotel, leaving Quincy behind to curl on Philip’s bed until the boy woke. As she looked back, the pinkness of dawn turned the brick chimneys bright red.
Now, under the white midday sun, the old stones of the villa blazed in pale Palladian splendor at the end of the graveled drive. The fountain rustled calmly in the center of the outer courtyard. Luisa leapt out of the hackney first and held out her hand for Lady Somerton.
“Thank you,” the countess said coldly. She looked up at the white portico. “Where is my son?”
Luisa glanced at the third-floor windows and down again. “He’s well. Lord Somerton would like to see you first.”
“Naturally.” Lady Somerton’s voice was bitter.
She followed Luisa into the villa and up the curving marble staircase to the room Somerton had set aside for the purpose, furnished with a pair of chairs and an escritoire. When the countess had settled into her chair, Luisa went to Somerton’s chamber and knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
He was standing before the window in his trousers and shirtsleeves and an immaculate waistcoat of gray houndstooth, drinking a cup of coffee from a small blue and white cup of nearly translucent delicacy. His black hair was brushed, his cheeks faintly pink from a recent shaving. “How is she?” he asked, without turning.
“Exhausted. Upset. But in good health, considering the circumstances.”
He drained the coffee and set the cup aside in its saucer with a distant clink. “Then we had better get to it, hadn’t we?”
“You can still put an end to this,” she said. “You can still bring about a sensible resolution. You have allowed her divorce petition to proceed without protest.”
He turned. His necktie was folded in precise creases that echoed, somehow, the strict austerity of his features. His eyebrows lifted slightly. “And how did you come by this information? Olympia, I suppose?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not really. But you must know that the decree is only preliminary.”
“You can’t possibly intend to reconcile.”
Somerton drew a charcoal tweed jacket from a nearby chair and shrugged his arms inside. “Of course not. But it remains a chip with which to bargain, does it not?”
Luisa shook her head. “Can you not simply forgive each other and part as friends? Must you destroy her?”
Somerton adjusted his cuffs and walked to the tray of liquors next to the armchair. He poured himself a glass of brandy and drank it in a single smooth gulp, and then he walked with great calmness to the door. Just before he reached it, he lifted his hand and covered Luisa’s cheek with his broad palm.
“My dear, you look tired. When all this is finished, you must endeavor to rest.”
She couldn’t stand it. Her heart felt as if two strong hands had grasped each side, and were rending it down the middle. “Don’t hurt her,” she said.
His hand dropped away. He opened the door and paused, staring into the open hallway. “It is not Lady Somerton I intend to hurt,” he said.
• • •
Twenty minutes later, the click of boots on marble startled Luisa out of a reverie, as she stared through the French doors at the back of the entrance hall, all the way down the length of the precisely trimmed garden to the high green hedges of the maze at its rear.
She turned. The Earl of Somerton stepped toward her, every hair still in place, every fold of his necktie still precisely laid, except that his face had drained of blood. “It’s done,” he said. He held out a folded paper. “She wrote the note. Now take my carriage, and make haste. He may already have arrived at the hotel.”
Luisa took the note and slipped it into her jacket pocket. “Yes, my lord.”
She had dreaded this meeting, ever since Somerton had first outlined his plan to her, on the overnight train to Milan from Paris. As the carriage bore her back into town, she dreaded it even more. True, she hadn’t seen Roland in a decade, not since she was an awkward carrot-haired girl on the brink of adolescence and he was a young man at Eton, golden and glamorous. He hadn’t noticed her then, and he would hardly be searching out the features of that unremarkable second cousin Luisa in the face of the young personal secretary to his archenemy, the Earl of Somerton.
But she would know him. His charm, his good looks, his magnetism. Above all, his status as the beloved grandson of her own uncle, the Duke of Olympia.
How could she remain indifferent?
If he hasn’t already arrived, Somerton had instructed her, wait for him in the bedroom.
Luisa had wondered how Roland would know which rooms were theirs, and how he would gain entry.
Somerton had laughed at her. My dear girl, he’ll be up in a trice, never fear.
As Somerton had told her, she had the carriage pull up to the rear entrance. Sartoli was waiting for her there, his collar glowing white in the shadowed vestibule. “Has the English lord arrived yet?” she asked breathlessly.
“No, signore,” he said. He handed her the room key.
“Very good. When he does, you’re to tell him that Lord Somerton checked out of the suite an hour ago, alone.” She handed him a guinea.
He made a slight bow. “The service stairs lie to your right, signore,” he said.
“Thank you.” Luisa wrapped her fingers around the cold metal key and hurried up the stairs to the second floor, until she came to the suite of rooms she and Somerton had occupied the day before. The space was empty now, of course. What few personal articles she and the earl had brought yesterday had gone with Luisa to the Palazzo Angelini, soon after Somerton had departed for the Tuscan castle to which his wife and Lord Roland Penhallow had been traced. The gilded furniture, the heavy drapes might have belonged to any luxury hotel in Europe. Luisa closed the curtains in the sitting room and crossed to the bedroom, where she performed a similar act, enclosing the room in a murky dimness.
Just in case.
After all, the less Roland saw of her face, the better.
The clock on the desk chimed the hour in two delicate pings. Luisa settled herself into the armchair while her eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness.
• • •
The Earl of Somerton paced across the length of his bedroom in measured strides, brandy in hand. A small bowl of roses had been placed inexplicably on his bedside table—the bedside table of a bed he had never slept in—at some point during his absence, and the scent reminded him of Northamptonshire, and Markham standing in his study, about to be kissed.
He came to a stop in the center of the floor and stared at the empty glass in his hand. His fingers curled around it, as if to splinter the crystal into his calloused palm.
Now came the reckoning. He had sent Markham off to fetch Roland, had trusted her with the blind and reckless faith of a man hopelessly in love.
Would she return?
The afternoon sun coursed through the windows of the room, which faced west, toward the river breezes and the red-tiled rooftops of Florence, away from the road and the courtyard. Upstairs, his wife played with their son within a well-appointed room, locked from the outside. If he stood quite still and strained his ears, he could hear the rapid click of claws on the polished wooden floorboards, as Markham’s damned dog chased a ball for Philip’s amusement. That was something, anyway. Some piece of Markham left behind.
The clock on the mantel chimed two thirty. He took out his watch from his pocket to be certain. Yes, two thirty. Markham and Penhallow should have arrived by now, unless there had been some delay. Unless she had decided not to return after all, that her throne wasn’t worth her cousin’s life. Or that the talents of her uncle the duke—and Somerton had to give Olympia his due, the cunning old puppet master—were sufficient to secure her birthright from the anarchist assassins who had overthrown her.
He set the brandy glass down on the tray with a crash. By God, he would wring the necks of every last one of those damned bloodthirsty revolutionaries, once his business here in Italy had concluded. Whether or not Markham asked him to.
And then his head bowed.
If she asked him to.
What would he do if she didn’t?
He should have made love to her in the Northamptonshire study while he could. Or any one of a dozen opportunities between then and now: the sleeper train compartment, the house in London, the hotel in Paris. The dulcet early evening in the Grand Hotel, before he had left to spirit his son away. Now the chance had fled. Markham had fled, and he might never have the chance again. Might never know the feel of her skin against his, the kiss of her, the life of her.
As it should be, his conscience whispered.
A roar rose up in his throat. He forced it down and lifted the brandy decanter.
But as he drew the stopper from its neck, another sound drifted faintly through the half-open door.
Footsteps. Voices.
He set the stopper back and placed the decanter on the tray once more, right next to the dark ruby port.
Beneath the layers of his clothing, his heart was beating too fast. He stared at the tray of liquors and concentrated on calming his emotions, the old tricks he had learned from childhood: slow the breathing, relax the fingers, unclench the belly. The very act of concentration freed his mind, as it always did, and the familiar clarity settled upon him. Each sound, each sight, each sensation of touch and taste reached his brain with separate acuity.
He was ready.
He glanced at the chest of drawers next to the window, upon which his knife and his revolver lay, ready for use.
No. This fight would be man-to-man, skin to skin, primitive and honorable.
He straightened his cuffs and walked out of the room to the stairs.
NINETEEN
As beautiful as the Palazzo Angelini was, white-faced and elegant along the winding road into Florence, its true worth lay in the surrounding grounds. The terraced lawns, the symmetrical beds planted with rare and beautiful flowers, the hawthorn maze protecting the house from the river traffic below: All these had been laid out centuries ago, and still looked as fresh as yesterday morning.
The Earl of Somerton appreciated none of this. He emerged from the maze at a dead run, panting and perspiring, with the sun in his face. He lifted his arm to shield his eyes and cast about the sloping meadow to the dull brown ribbon of the Arno below.
Where had she gone?
Where had she taken his son?
He would never forget the shock of walking into her room and finding it empty, the window open, a rope from one of Philip’s pull toys stretching down from the balcony to the trees below. All his plans, thrown instantly into disaster. Who knew that Elizabeth harbored such intrepid determination—worthy of one of his finest agents—behind her ladylike facade?
Or that she hated him so much.
Perhaps they’d had it all planned out, she and Penhallow. Perhaps he’d gotten a message to her somehow, to meet him down by the river. And this time, they would escape for good. They would find some remote corner of the world, and he would never see Philip again.
He was not a good father. He knew that. How was a good father supposed to behave? He’d never known. His father had largely ignored him, until that fatal fifteenth birthday jaunt to the brothel. And now he had four children of his own, by four different mothers, and he was at a loss, helpless to fill the holes in his heart that each one had created, helpless to find the ways into theirs.
If he failed now. If he failed with this boy, with this son, he might never have another chance.
God grant him another chance.
A movement caught his eye, near the trees at the riverside. A voice carried upward from the water.
“Father?”
He heard a woman’s voice, smothering the child’s, but the single word was enough.
He bolted down the slope at a dead run, legs pumping, arms swinging. The two figures came into view, Elizabeth and Philip, the little boy holding out his arms and the mother crushing him to her chest, the way Penhallow had held Markham a short while ago.
Out from his lungs came a furious noise, a snarl of rage.
Elizabeth turned and tried to run, tugging Philip along with her, but the boy struggled out of her grasp and ran toward him.
Toward him.
He staggered to a halt, several yards away. The words jumbled in his head. A father should be stern yet kind. A father should command his household. A father should. A father should. “Young man . . .” he began.
“Father, where’s the doggie? I want the doggie,” said Philip. His face was pleading.
The dog? He wanted the damned dog?
“That’s Mr. Markham’s dog, Philip. Now come with me.” He held out his hand.
“No, Philip!” Elizabeth snatched the boy’s other hand. “Come along.”
Philip looked at him apologetically. “Mama says I should come with her, sir.”
Elizabeth began to pull Philip down the river path, and something snapped inside of Somerton’s heart.
He would never have Philip, because his wife would never let him. She stood like a knight in front of Philip’s young heart, refusing entry, refusing even to let him try. To try to be a father, to try to learn, somehow, what it was that fathers were supposed to do.
A growl started in his ribs and parted his lips. He bent down and swooped up Philip in his arms, and by God, the boy laughed. He laughed with glee, and the growl choked in Somerton’s throat, strangled by the joy of holding his own son, his own warm-bodied, eager-limbed son in his arms.
“Stop it! Put him down!” screamed Elizabeth. “You’ll hurt him!”
Enough was enough. He swung the delighted Philip under one arm and grabbed Elizabeth by the other hand and hauled them both across the grass, up the slope toward the maze. “Into the house, by God. We’re going to settle this, we’re going to . . .”
“No! You can’t have him, do you hear me? You brute, you lecherous madman . . .”
“Not in front of the boy, Elizabeth. For God’s sake.” He brought his arm around her shoulders and went on striding up the hill, dragging her along with the force of his determined momentum. “We’ll discuss this inside. I am not giving him up.”
“You can’t take him! I’m his mother, I . . .”
The words died away. Elizabeth twisted her body and looked up the hillside. “Oh, look!” she cried out. “Roland’s here!”
Somerton looked up.
He had forgotten entirely about Penhallow. The thoughts of revenge that had consumed his hours had somehow dissolved into the warm skin of the little boy now tucked under his left arm. But Penhallow himself had not dissolved. He stood poised at the entrance of the maze, bathed in afternoon sunshine, like a god returned to earth. He sent them a cheerful wave and called something down.
In the instant of surprise, Somerton loosened his grip on his wife’s shoulders. She whirled around and drove her fist into his back.
The shock of it nearly sent him to his knees. Philip scrambled out of his other arm.
“Run, Philip!” Elizabeth screamed. “Run for the maze!”
The boy pelted happily up the hill. “Uncle Roland!” he called out. “There you are!”
Uncle Roland.
Like a nightmare, the scene unfolded before him. Philip, his boy, his dark-haired son, ran away through the trim green grass, his little calves pumping with effort. And Penhallow, golden Penhallow, Fortune’s favorite child, grinning like a lunatic, dropped to one and stretched out his arms.
Philip ran straight into Penhallow’s embrace, to be enfolded by those long arms, to be kissed on the top of his dark head by those smiling lips.
When Somerton was not much older than Philip—eight, perhaps, at the most—he had wandered into the music room one afternoon and found his mother lying on the chaise longue by the window with a strange man on top of her. His mother’s clothes were rumpled, her breasts bare, her skirts up around her waist. The man had his clothes on, except for his bottom, which was bare and white. He had his mouth on her mouth. He was braced on his elbows, grunting and pumping his bottom on top of her, and his mother was crying out softly.
