TWENTY-TWO

Harry?” Wallingford turned to her. “Who the devil’s Harry?”

Abigail shook him loose and ran forward to take the hands of Harry Stubbs between her own. “I can’t believe it! How did you know I was here? How on earth did they let you out of the country, with that forgery conviction?”

Harry gave a great sigh from his great height—almost as high as Mr. Burke himself—and opened his mouth to speak, but Wallingford broke in instead.

“Harry Stubbs,” he said, laden with irony. “Harry Stubbs, down the pub. What a devil of a coincidence.”

Abigail turned. “Why, do you know Harry, too?”

Wallingford folded his arms. “As a matter of fact, I do. But our friend Harry Stubbs, unprincipled scoundrel that he is, has a number of aliases. Among them, I believe, is the character of the Italian, Signore Rosseti. Another is the august title of Duke of Olympia.”

Abigail gasped. She turned back to Harry. “Harry! It’s not true. You taught me how to pick horses! You taught me how to render a man unconscious!”

Harry glanced at Wallingford and back at her. “My dear,” he said, in a voice quite different from the one he employed down the pub, “I thought it might be wise to ensure you had every possible defense at your disposal, given your nature.”

“Well, well.” Wallingford’s voice was deadly behind her shoulder. “It appears my grandfather has managed to pick himself out a bride for me after all. Well played, old man. I stand in awe. I suppose you placed that advertisement in the Times yourself?”

“Oh, I say!” exclaimed Mr. Burke. “Damnably clever. I can’t thank you enough.” He lifted Alexandra’s hand to his lips and kissed it.

“Like a damned puppetmaster. And you!” Wallingford pointed to Leonora. “I suppose you picked me out in the cathedral. Plucked out all my secrets like an expert.”

Abigail whirled toward him. “How dare you! Leonora is an angel! And she’s been here all along, preparing for the ceremony.”

“Leonora?” Wallingford looked at her in confusion. “I mean the friar. We met in the cathedral, not an hour ago. Didn’t we, sir?”

Abigail turned to Leonora, mouth open.

Leonora stepped forward. “My brother. He is here, beside me. He perform the vows.”

The air seemed to whirl in a dreamlike circle around Abigail’s head. She stared at Leonora and the empty space next to her.

“Abigail? Are you all right?” Wallingford touched her shoulder.

Abigail stepped forward and reached out her hand to the empty space. “You’re Signore Monteverdi, aren’t you? But I can’t see you, or hear you.”

Leonora said quietly, “He say to tell you yes, he is here.”

“Do you mean to say you can’t see him?” asked Wallingford.

“No.” Abigail went on staring at the empty space. “No more than you can see Signorina Monteverdi, who stands next to him. Until the curse is broken, I suppose.”

“She’s here? Right here?”

Leonora held out her hand. Her eyes glimmered wetly. “My son, the son of my blood. I am here.”

“You can’t see her,” Abigail whispered, “but she’s here.”

Alexandra’s voice broke the stillness. “I don’t understand. Do you mean you can’t see the nun, Wallingford?”

Abigail brushed her eyes and turned to her sister. “It’s too much to explain, dearest, but yes. Do you remember, I told you once about the curse on the castle?”

“As a very great muddle of fathers and pistols and lovers, yes.”

“Until this curse is broken, the women can see only Leonora, and the men can see only her brother. The men and the women, you see, are eternally separate.”

Alexandra’s face was white. She was clutching Mr. Burke’s hands with great force. “Good God. I suspected . . . I thought . . . Good God.”

“And how is this curse to be broken?” asked Mr. Burke. His face was equally pale.

“We hope . . .” Abigail looked at Wallingford.

The duke’s eyes were round and soft in his handsome face. He stepped to Abigail and took her hand. “If I pledge myself in faithful love, isn’t that right? I, the last prodigal son of Copperbridge.”

A breeze drifted across the garden, making the leaves rustle in the lemon tree.

“Is late,” said Leonora. “The moon, she is rising. Signorina Abigail, who give you in marriage?”

“I . . . I don’t know . . .”

Leonora turned to her right and spoke softly. A short pause, and then the Duke of Olympia stepped forward. “I do.”

I am going to be married, Abigail thought wildly. Right now. To Wallingford. She looked up and met his eyes. Something light and vibrant flew through her blood, thrilling and frightening all at once.

“My brother, he speak the words to the duke,” said Leonora. “I give them to you. Take your hands, the both of you.”

Another pause, and Wallingford picked up her other hand.

The words began to pass between them: Leonora’s low tones and Wallingford’s rich voice, steady and reassuring, promising to love and to cherish her, to be faithful only to her. And Abigail’s own voice, high and strange in her own ears, promising the same extravagant fidelities.

“The ring,” said Leonora. “There is a ring?”

The Duke of Olympia stepped to his grandson and offered him a small gold band. Leonora gave a little gasp, as if she recognized it.

“With this ring,” said Wallingford, sliding it on her finger, “I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

He leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on her lips. Above his dark head, the full moon nudged its yellow rim into the evening sky.

The air went still, except for the lark in the lemon tree, who sang out with joy.

“It is done,” said Leonora. “You are wed.”

Wallingford kissed Abigail’s hand, right above the wedding band, and the warmth of his lips traveled up her arm to cradle her heart.

“I love you,” Abigail whispered.

Someone sighed deeply to her left. Alexandra, she thought. Her eyes blurred.

She turned to thank Leonora, to see Signore Monteverdi for the first time. But the space next to the nun remained empty, and only the golden cross showed through the arriving twilight.

*   *   *

There is no explanation,” said Wallingford. “These are mysteries we can’t begin to comprehend.”

Abigail sank into the armchair. “I wanted so much to free her. You should have seen her face, Wallingford.”

He loosened his tie, unbuttoned his waistcoat. The room was small and provincial, no telephones and electric lamps and gleaming en suite facilities, but this was his wedding night and only two things were essential: a bed and his wife.

His wife.

She sat in the ancient armchair, staring not at him, her new husband, but at the wooden floor. Her delicate fairy face was not radiant with joy, but heavy with disappointment. “Perhaps it takes time. Perhaps it’s not an instant thing. Or perhaps it’s because Olympia hasn’t got any sons, any legitimate sons . . .”

Wallingford knelt before the chair and placed his hands on her knees. “Darling, look at me.”

She looked up.

He smiled at her. “Your Grace. My own dear Duchess of Wallingford.” He touched her nose. “My wife. I have pledged you my hand and my heart today, and I meant every word. Isn’t that enough?”

She smiled faintly. “For me, it is. Evidently not for Leonora.”

“We have celebrated with my family and yours. I’ve endured your damned sister leering triumphantly over me and calling me her dear nephew. We have made our toasts, and eaten our cake . . .”

“And very nice cake it was. So rich and dense, and all those lovely currants . . .”

“I’ve carried you once more across a threshold, nearly causing my back to spavin. And now, my love, my adorable bride, I want nothing more than to take you to bed and consummate our marriage properly.” He kissed her hand. “Do you have any objections?”

She put her arms around his neck. “None at all, Your Grace. Consummate away.”

He undressed her with care, beginning with the pins in her hair, and placed each item carefully on the chair as he removed it. He wanted to test himself, to keep himself in rigid check, to prove to her he was master of himself.

She stood patiently, almost passively, as he uncovered each radiant inch of her skin. Only her eyes glowed, watching him with that curious knowingness of hers, that innocent elvish wisdom that seemed to penetrate his soul. Silently she helped him with his buttons, drew off his shirt, put her hands against his chest. The room was still hot from the afternoon sun, and only a faint breeze stirred from the crack in the window. Her hands felt cool against his skin, though her cheeks wore the bright flush of arousal.

How was it possible that one little person, one delicate female form, could have conquered him, the mighty Duke of Wallingford? He was her willing slave, her supplicant. She could send him to the ground with a flick of her fingers.

He took her hand and led her to the bed. He pulled back the thin summer covering. The sheets, at least, were clean and white. A large bed: Abigail looked pale and small in the center, sitting up with her legs tucked under her, looking up at him. She was trembling, he realized.

He set his knee down, and his hand. “I believe we have at least twenty-three positions left to try. What do you wish?”

She put her arms around him. “I want to see your face. I want to feel your belly against mine. I want to hear your voice in my ear.”

“Done.” He kissed her slowly, caressed her soft body, laid her in the pillows. When she was ready, when her breath came fast from her chest and his finger was covered with her miraculous wetness, he mounted her and drove inside her, watching with wonder her changing expression, her noises of pleasure. Passionate Abigail, she was already approaching her peak, he could feel it, and it was too soon. He wanted more for her.

He pulled back, drawing her with him, arranging her, until they were sitting upright on the bed with limbs overlapping, still joined.

“Oh,” she said in surprise, rocking gently, as if to test their connection.

“Open your eyes, Abigail.”

She opened them.

He took her hand from his shoulder and guided it downward. “Feel it, Abigail. Feel us.”

Her fingers touched him, touched herself, circled around the intimate point of their merging.

“Do you see what I mean?” he whispered. He wanted to say more. Do you see how we connect? Do you see that I’m yours, entirely yours, that by this physical act I have joined us into one inseparable flesh? But the words wouldn’t form.

“I see,” she whispered back. “I know.” She slipped her hands around the back of his head and kissed him, and the sultry scent of her arousal drifted into his brain. She rose up a fraction and sank down, in a sweet rocking motion, and then said, “Oh!” with widened eyes, as some point of pressure came to bear on her.

“Like this?”

“Yes!” She rocked harder and rose up, coming down again with an explosive little sigh. Wallingford felt as if he were going to burst at the sight of her, at the feel of her breasts sliding against his chest and her wet flesh sliding along his cock, as she used his body for her own pleasure. The candlelight turned her body to gold, shadowed her every delicious curve, and as her movements grew more urgent he buried his face in her neck and drew in her sweet scent, her lemons and blossoms, until she was crying out in his arms, convulsing, his passionate Abigail.

He set himself free at last in a long and voluptuous spend.

Consummation.

She dropped her head against his shoulder and rested. Her heartbeat slammed against his, slow and immeasurably strong. “I lied to you before,” she whispered.

“What’s that?” His befuddled brain trudged slowly through her words.

“When I told you I didn’t care how many women you’d had. I do care. I care passionately.” Her voice ebbed, and he realized she was nearly in tears. “I hate them all, every one. I can’t bear to think of it, and I can’t help thinking of it. I can’t help picturing you doing this to some other woman, in some other bed. Touching her the way you touch me. And it hurts my heart, Wallingford.”

“Hush.”

“It hurts my heart so, because I love you, and this, when we do this . . .” She raised her head. “It’s so precious. I don’t want to share it with anyone. I don’t want to share you.”

What could he say? His heart ached, too, ached for her pain. And anything he could say would have the ring of banality, would be nothing but cheap appeasement. It meant nothing. I never loved them. I regret it all.

But she was his wife. He had to try.

“Would it help,” he said carefully, “if I told you that all those women belong to the past, before I knew you? And that I didn’t really exist back then, not as I do now. It seems like another life. It was another life.”

“I suppose it helps a little. But then I see you with a beautiful marchesa on the cathedral steps, after you’ve been missing for hours; or perhaps, one day, I’ll see a lady in a London drawing room, some lover of yours, and the past isn’t really past, is it? It’s not another life at all. It’s your life, and there are living women who have been to bed with you, who know you like this, and I have to find a way to accept that. To accept the possibility that one day, there may be others.”

He held her tightly and rocked her. “Abigail, never.”

“We didn’t break the curse, Wallingford. We’ve failed them.”

“It means nothing.” He said it with all the conviction he could muster.

My dear boy, has the entire conduct of your adult life ever suggested your usefulness for anything else?

The failure was not theirs, was it? It was his, his alone. His vow was not enough.

She was clinging to him, her head buried in his shoulder, her damp skin stuck to his.

“How many are there, Wallingford? Just so I know. What are my odds, at any given party in London, that you’ve been up someone in the room?”

His chest was wet with her tears. “Abigail,” he said softly, comforting her as best he could, holding her against him.

“I don’t blame you, exactly. It’s simply a fact, a part of you, and I don’t know what to do. I love you so. If I didn’t love you like this, it wouldn’t hurt. I can’t have one and not the other.”

“We could live here in Italy, if you like. Anywhere you want. Whatever you want, Abigail.”

“Run away, you mean.”

“If it makes you happy. I only want your happiness, Abigail.”

She looked up, and her eyes were awash: Abigail, who never cried. “I know you do. I know you do now. But tomorrow?”

“Every tomorrow.”

She went on looking at him with her wet eyes, gazing upon his face with such love and sadness he thought he would break apart. Her hand came up and touched his cheek, ran across the emerging stubble on his jaw. “At least I have you now,” she said. “At this moment, in this present minute, there are no others. I have you now, don’t I?”

“You have me now.” He eased her into the pillows and drew the sheets over them, and he held her close, because he knew that was all he could do. After a while, he made love to her again, lavished her with every possible pleasure, told her again how he loved her, until her body arched and trembled with the force of her climax, and this time she fell without words into an exhausted slumber, tucked into the circle of his arms.

*   *   *

Wallingford was exhausted, too, but his eyes remained stubbornly open, staring at the moonlit shadows on the ceiling. Somewhere in the room, a clock ticked away in loud scratches, in time with the beat of his heart.

He looked down at Abigail, at her trusting head nestled under his arm. He stroked her hair, her shining chestnut hair that he loved. She was deeply asleep; she didn’t even flinch. Poor Abigail, he hadn’t allowed her much rest in the past thirty-six hours.

He disengaged from her slowly, doing his best not to disturb her, though he suspected an elephant might have wandered across the bed without causing her to wake. Silently he found his clothes, dressed to his waistcoat, and opened the door with a soft click of the latch.

The full moon was low in the sky, nearly dipping behind the rooftops. Wallingford longed for a drink or a smoke, something to do with his fingers, and in the absence of either he stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets and walked across the empty Piazza del Campo, up the hill toward the striped cathedral, around the deserted streets. The air was still languid, still bearing a trace of the midday heat. His eyelids began to grow heavy at last, and he turned back for the hotel.

As he reached the awning, a voice stopped him. “Rather an odd place to find a man on his wedding night.”

Wallingford sighed and turned in his grandfather’s direction. “Afraid I haven’t done my duty for the dukedom, are you? Let me assure you to the contrary.”

Olympia emerged from the shadows, his bare white head catching the moonlight. “As it’s not my dukedom, I don’t really give a damn. Except I have rather a fondness for your new bride, and I should hate her to be disappointed.”

Wallingford leaned against the wall and studied his grandfather. “It was all very neatly done, wasn’t it, Grandfather? Tell me, how long ago did you pick her out?”

“A year or two, I suppose. You must admit I chose well.”

“I won’t deny it.”

“And the others? Roland and Burke?”

Olympia came to rest on a nearby pillar. “In fact, it all started with your brother. I had done a bit of meddling, in earlier days . . .”

“I am shocked to the core.”

“. . . and I decided it was time to put things right. I was simply fortunate in the matter of cousins.”

“Better to be lucky than clever, so they say.”

Olympia tapped his long fingers against his trousers. “You love her, I see.”

“More than I ever imagined. I would die for her.” Wallingford spoke plainly.

“Given up your philandering ways and all that?”

“That is my firm intention.”

Olympia raised a single eyebrow at that. “One couldn’t help noticing, at the conclusion of the ceremony,” he said, “that this so-called curse has apparently not been lifted.”

Wallingford shrugged. “As to that, I can’t say. I meant every word of my vows to her. I would cut off my right arm before I looked at another woman.”

“And still.”

Wallingford said nothing, because to say anything would give voice to the doubt in his chest, the doubt of himself.

“You don’t think yourself capable, do you?” Olympia said at last.

“You certainly don’t think me capable. You never have.”

“Then I suppose, for the sake of that inexpressibly dear girl who sleeps upstairs in your bed,” said Olympia, straightening from the pillar, “you had better find a way to prove to yourself that you are.”

*   *   *

For some time, Wallingford sat in the armchair, watching her sleep. The rise and fall of her chest mesmerized him. He studied the curve of her cheekbone in the last of the moonlight, the dark pool of her hair on the pillow, the warm white swell of her breasts. He wanted to bury his face in them once more, to taste her skin, but he held himself in check.

She stirred; her eyelids flickered. He put his face into his hands.

“Why are you dressed?” she asked sleepily.

“I went for a walk.”

The sheets rustled. “Look at me, Wallingford.”

He raised his head. She sat in the bed, her lovely body shrouded by a white sheet, watching him with her wise light brown eyes.

“You’re not certain, either? Whether you can do this. Whether you can be faithful for the rest of your life. That’s why the curse isn’t broken.”

“Rubbish. I would never stray from you, Abigail. I would never hurt you.”

“You’re only saying that to reassure me, because you want so much for it to be true. But a rake doesn’t really reform, does he?”

He rose from the chair and went to the window. “I am not a rake.”

“Still, you’ve behaved like one, all your life. That’s why you came to Italy to begin with, after all. To prove that you were more than that. To try to get along without women and wine. And then I came along.”

“Yes, you came along.”

“So you don’t really know, do you? Whether you can resist all the temptation around you, all the temptation to which the Duke of Wallingford is subject.”

“I can. I must. I love you too much to fail.”

The sheets rustled again, and a moment later he felt her hand against his back, and then her smooth cheek. “Listen to me,” she whispered. “I’ve been thinking, thinking a great deal. Wallingford, my love, my husband. Go from here. Spend a year on your own. The year of chastity you set out for yourself, the one I interrupted . . .”

He turned. “What the devil, Abigail? What are you talking about?”

“What’s a year, after all?” She put her hands around the back of his head. “There’s no more rush, no curse to be broken. I’ll wait for you. I’ll wait at the castle. Set off on your own, and scratch for your own worms.” She bent her head and kissed his chest. “I’ll keep your tender heart right here, safe between my hands.”

He was falling, right through some gaping hole in the floorboards, into an abyss below.

He scratched out, “Leave you? You’re sending me away?”

“I’ll manage. I’m strong enough; you know I am.”

“It’s impossible. It’s ridiculous. I could never leave you . . .”

“Darling, you must.”

“. . . to say nothing of the estate . . .”

“On my own, I should certainly bollox it all up, but I know your brother will help me manage things. Roland’s very clever, you know.”

He bowed his head above her and anchored himself in the soft scent of her hair.

“Listen, my love,” she said. “I know you, I know you to your bones. I understand everything. I know why you went out walking in the moonlight on your wedding night. I know what weighs on your heart. You need this. You needed it last March, and you still need it. Simply loving me isn’t enough. We proved that today.”

“Yes, it is. You’re my strength, Abigail.”

“No, I’m not. You’re your own strength, Wallingford, and you must see that. It’s there, it’s in everything you do, and you simply don’t know it.”

Wallingford closed his eyes.

“You are so full of golden promise,” she said.

He pressed his lips against her hair.

She went on. “And I need this, too. I need you to suffer a little, to try yourself at ordinary tasks as mortal men do. To learn how to be the true and faithful husband who will share my bed and board, who will father my children.”

“Abigail, it’s absurd. I can’t leave you.” Was that his voice? He hardly recognized it. A tear left his right eye and rolled down his cheek, disappearing into her hair.

“You can, Wallingford. You should. A year of chaste living: It’s what you meant to do all along. You knew, you always knew what had to be done.”

He gathered her hair in his hands, tilted up her face, and kissed her. “Go back to bed, darling. You’re making no sense at all.”

“I’m not sleepy.”

“Yes, you are. God knows I am. We’ll both feel better in the morning.”

He led her back to the bed and stretched himself next to her, with his shoes still on, and in an instant she was asleep on her side, facing him, his slumbering angel. He lay watching her, taking her breath into his lungs. His heart crashed painfully against the crumbled walls of his chest.

At last he rose and found a sheet of paper in the desk. In the light of the moon, he wrote down names and addresses: his solicitor, his banker, his man of business in the village. He took the marriage certificate from his jacket pocket and laid it out beneath a paperweight. He wrote a letter such as he had never written: words of love, of abiding faithfulness; and having used up all his store of sentiment, signed it simply Arthur.

She would know what it meant.

He packed nothing with him, not even a razor. He took only a few lire notes from his pocket and left the rest on the desk. Satisfied, he went to the bed and looked down at his wife. He drew the blanket over her; without his body curled around hers, she might be chilled, even in this warm room. With his finger he touched her hair, her cheek, her breast, her belly, marveling at her softness. He longed to touch the turned-up elfin tip of her eye, but he was afraid to wake her.

At last he turned and left the room, not daring to look back.

Outside the window, the moon disappeared below the horizon.