Seduction of an English Beauty

“Not at all!” he exclaimed. “Why, I’ve only—”

“Please, my lord, I’m not yet done,” she said softly, making him listen even harder. “I suspect that you came to the common room across the hall with full intention of meeting me. And I suspect you somehow contrived for your uncle to entertain Miss Wood and thus leave us together, as we are now. Those are my suspicions regarding you, my lord.”

“I see.” He clasped his hands behind his waist and frowned, thinking, as he followed her. “Yet now you’ll fault me because I did not wait for fate to toss you into my path, but bravely bent circumstance to my own will?”

“Oh, I never said I faulted you, my lord,” she said, her smile blithe. “I said first that I suspected you did not believe in fate any more than I, and then I offered my other suspicions to prove it.”

He raised his chin a fraction, the line of his jaw strong in the muted light. “Then I find favor with you, my lady, and not fault?”

“Not yet,” she said, as he came to stand beside her in the window’s alcove. “But I must say, it’s unusual for a gentleman to be so forthright in his attentions.”

“I’ve no desire to be your rudderless boat, my lady,” he said. “Consider me the river’s current instead, ready to carry you along with me wherever you please.”

She laughed softly, intrigued. Most gentlemen were too awed by the combination of her beauty and her father’s power to speak so decisively. She liked that; she liked him. What would he be like as a husband? she wondered, the face she’d wake to see each morning for the rest of her life? “And where exactly do you propose to carry me, Lord Edward?”

He made a gallant half bow. “Wherever you please, my lady.”

“But where do you please, Lord Edward?” she asked. “Or should I ask you how?”

“How I please?” He chuckled. “There are some things I’d prefer to demonstrate rather than merely to explain, Lady Diana.”

“You forget yourself, my lord.” She laughed behind her fan, taking the sting from her reprimand, and pointedly glanced past him to her governess and his uncle, their heads bent close over the broken crockery. “This is neither the place nor the time.”

He grinned, not in the least contrite, and leaned back against one side of the alcove with his arms folded over his chest. “We’ll speak of Rome instead. That’s safe enough, isn’t it?”

She shrugged and leaned back against the other side of the window opposite him, leaving him to decide what was safe and what wasn’t. The rain had dwindled to a steamy mist, the sun brightening behind the clouds.

“There are so many attractions in Rome, my lady, both ancient and modern,” he continued. “It’s why we English make this journey, isn’t it? Our choices are boundless.”

She wrinkled her nose, and turned away from him to gaze out at the red-tiled rooftops and dripping cypress trees. “No tedious museums or dusty old churches, I beg you. I’ve enough of that with Miss Wood, traipsing across France and Italy with her lecturing me at every step.”

“But this is Rome,” he said, “and I promise I can make even the dustiest old ruin interesting.”

“I’m no bluestocking, Lord Edward,” she warned. “Broken-down buildings are never interesting.”

“With me, they would be.”

She shrugged, feigning indifference. In truth she couldn’t imagine anything better than to trade Miss Wood’s tours for his. She’d be sure to be ready in the morning, and keep him waiting only a quarter hour or so. “I already have a governess, my lord. I don’t need a governor to match.”

“Then come with me tomorrow, and I’ll show you Rome as you’ve not yet seen it,” he urged. “I’ll have a carriage waiting after breakfast. You’ll see. I’ll change your mind.”

“Perhaps,” she said, not wanting to seem over-eager. “Look, my lord, there. Can you see the rainbow?”

With colors that were gauzy pale, the rainbow arched over the city, spilling from the low-hanging gray clouds to end in a haze above the Tiber. Diana stepped out onto the narrow balcony, her fingertips trailing lightly along the wet iron railing.

“I can’t recall the last time I saw a rainbow,” Lord Edward marveled, joining her. “I’d say that’s a sign, my lady. I meet you, and the clouds roll away. You smile at me, and a rainbow fills the sky.”

But now Diana was leaning over the railing to watch an open carriage passing in the street below. The passengers must have trusted in the promise of that rainbow, too, to carry no more than emerald-colored parasols for cover: three beautiful, laughing women, their glossy black hair dressed high with elaborate leghorn straw hats pinned on top and their gowns cut low and laced tightly to display their lush breasts. The carriage seemed filled with their skirts, yards and yards of gathered bright silks, and as the red-painted wheels rolled past, the tassels on their parasols and the ribbons on their hats waved gaily in the breeze.

“Now that’s a sorry display for a lady like you to have to see,” Lord Edward said with righteous disapproval. “A covey of painted filles de l’opera!”

“That’s French.” Diana knew perfectly well what he meant—that the women were harlots—but she wanted to hear him say so. “Those women are Italian.”

“Well, yes,” Lord Edward admitted grudgingly. “Suffice to say that they are low women from the stage.”

“But isn’t it true that women of any kind are prohibited from appearing on the Roman stage?” she asked, repeating what she’d heard from their landlord. “That all the female parts in plays or operas are taken by men?”

“True, true, true,” Lord Edward said, clearing his throat gruffly at having been caught out. “You force me to be blunt, my lady. Those women are likely the mistresses of rich men, and as such beneath your notice.”

But it wasn’t the women that had caught Diana’s eye, so much as the man sprawled so insolently in the midst of all those petticoats and ribbons. Could he keep all three women as his mistresses, she wondered with interest, like a sultan with his harem?

He sat in the middle of the carriage seat, his arms thrown carelessly around the shoulders of two of the women and his long legs crossed and propped up on the opposite seat. He was handsome and dark like the three women, his smile brilliantly white as he laughed and jested with them, and his long, dark hair tied carelessly back into a queue with a red silk ribbon that could have been filched from one of their hats. But then everything about this man struck Diana as careless and easy, even reckless, and thoroughly, thoroughly not English.

“Will you bring a carriage like that one tomorrow, Lord Edward?” she asked, bending slightly over the rail to watch as the carriage passed beneath them. “One with red wheels and bells, and ribbons and flowers braided into the horses’ manes?”

“Only if I hire one from some carnival fair, my lady.” Lord Edward shook his head, his expression disapproving. “I respect you far too much for that.”

“Do you,” she said slowly. “And here I’d thought it looked rather like fun.”

“Like scandal, with that lot.” He took her by the elbow, ready to guide her from the unsavory sight. “Come away, Lady Diana. Don’t sully yourself by paying them any further attention.”

He turned away to return to the others, while Diana hung back for a final glimpse of the gaily decorated carriage. As she did, the flutter of her skirts must have caught the eye of the dark-haired man, and he turned to look up at her. For only a second, her gaze met his, his eyes startlingly pale beneath his dark brows and lashes. He pressed his first two fingers to his lips, then swept his hand up towards her on the balcony, a gesture at once elegant and seductive. He didn’t smile. He didn’t need to. That wind-blown kiss was enough.

“Lady Diana?” Lord Edward’s fingers pressed impatiently into her arm. “Shall we join the others?”

“Oh, yes.” Her heart racing inexplicably, she smiled at Lord Edward. “The rainbow’s gone now anyway.”

And when she stole one more glance back over her shoulder, the carriage and the man were gone, too.

Chapter Two

Lord Anthony Randolph tipped the heavy crystal decanter and filled his glass again.

“Summer’s done,” he said sadly, holding the glass up to the window’s light to admire the glow of the deep-red wine. “The English demons are returning to conquer poor Rome again.”

Lucia laughed without turning towards him, her back straight as she sat at her dressing table while her maid wrapped another thick strand of hair around the heated curling iron. “How can you speak so, Antonio, when you are one of the English demons yourself?”

“Don’t be cruel, Lucia,” Anthony said mildly, sipping the wine. “Half my blood’s English, true, but my heart is pure Roman.”

“Which of course entitles you to say whatever you please.” Critically, Lucia touched the still-warm curl as it lay over her shoulder. “Which you would continue to do even if you’d been born on the moon.”

“I would, darling,” he said, dropping into a chair beside the open window and settling a small velvet pillow comfortably behind his head. Anthony was prepared to wait. Though the days when he and Lucia had been lovers were long past, as friends they were far more tolerant of one another’s foibles and flaws. “I cannot help myself. As soon as the days begin to shorten, the whey-faced English descend upon us in heartless droves, complaining because the wine’s too strong, the sun’s too hot and there’s no roasted beef on the menu.”

“I will not complain about the English gentlemen,” she said, holding one eyelid taut as she lined her eye with dark blue. “They are very attentive, and they come to call again and again.”

He raised his glass towards her. “How can they not, my lovely Lucia, when you are the golden prize they all wish to possess?”

“Oh, hush, Antonio,” she scolded. “You could fill the Tiber’s banks with all the idle flattery that spills from your mouth.”

“Exactly the way you wish it to be, Lucia,” he said, his smile lazy. They would be at least an hour late for the party at the studio of the painter Giovanni, but instead of fuming at the delay, he’d long ago learned to relax instead, and enjoy the intimacy of Lucia’s company. “Name another man in this city who knows how to please you better than I.”

She made a noncommittal little huff, concentrating on her reflection as she outlined the rosebud of her lips with cerise. Like every successful courtesan, she knew the value of making a grand entrance, even to a party among friends, and she wouldn’t leave her looking glass until she was certain every last detail of her appearance was perfect. Besides, tonight she’d been asked to sing as part of the entertainment. Her voice was as beautiful as her face, and she knew the power of both. It was a terrible injustice that Pope Innocent XI had banned female singers from the Roman opera nearly seventy years before. In any other city, her voice would have made her a veritable queen, and free to choose more interesting lovers than the fat, jolly wine merchant who currently kept her.

“You do well enough,” she said at last, pouting at herself, “for a whey-faced Englishman.”

He groaned dramatically. It was true that his father had been an English nobleman, heir to an earldom so far to the north that his land had bordered on the bleak chill of Scotland. Yet, on his Grand Tour after Oxford, Father had discovered the sun in Rome, and love in the effervescent charm of his mother, wealthy and noble-born in her own right. Anthony’s two much-older brothers had dutifully returned to England for their education, and remained there after their father’s death, but in his entire twenty-eight years, Anthony had never left Italy, delightfully content to remain in the warmth of that southern sun and his mother’s exuberant family.

“I do not have a whey-colored face, Lucia,” he said patiently, as if they hadn’t had this same discussion countless times before. “Nor am I sanctimonious, or overbearing, or ill-mannered, in the fashion of these traveling English.”

“But who’s to say you won’t end up like that puffed-up fellow we saw on the balcony today, eh?” she teased, hooking long garnet earrings into her ears. “Another year or two, Antonio, and you will look just the same, your waistcoat too tight over your belly and your face pasty and smug.”

At once Anthony knew the man she’d meant. How could he not? He’d been leaning from his lodgings to glower with disapproval as he and Lucia and two of her friends had passed through the Piazza di Spagna on their way to an impromptu picnic in the hills.

“That Englishman’s younger than I,” he said, proudly patting his own flat belly as if that were proof enough. “Lord Edward Warwick. He has been in Rome only a month, yet he believes he knows the city and her secrets better than a mere Roman. I was introduced to him last week in a shop by a friend who should have known better, and I’ve no further wish to meet him ever again.”

“You wouldn’t say the same of the lady standing with him.” Finally ready, Lucia rose from the bench, and smiled coyly. “You cannot deny it, Antonio. I know you too well. I saw how you looked at her, and she at you.”

“I won’t deny it for a moment.” He savored the last of his wine, remembering the girl on the balcony beside Warwick. She’d been English, too, of course. No one else ever lodged in the Piazza di Spagna. Besides, she’d stood at the iron railing in that peculiarly stiff way that always seemed to mark well-bred English ladies, as if they feared the luxury of their own bodies.

But that could be unlearned with the right tutor. The rest of her was worth the effort. In the soft light as the sun broke through the rain clouds, her hair had seemed as bright as burnished gold, her skin a delicious blend of cream and rose without a hint of paint. Too many of his father’s people were pale and wan to his eye, as if they’d been left out-of-doors in their wretched rainy climate to wither and fade away. But this girl managed to be pale without being pallid, delicate without losing that aura of passion, of desire, that he’d seen—no, felt—even at such a distance, and for so short a time before the carriage had turned the corner.

He’d wanted more. He still did.

“Think twice, Antonio, then think again,” Lucia warned. She handed him her merino shawl, then turned with a performer’s calculated grace. “Will she be worth the trouble she’ll bring you?”

He took the shawl, holding it high over her like wings before he settled it over her shoulders. “Who says she’d bring trouble?”

“I do,” Lucia said, turning once again so she was facing him. “I am serious, sweet. She is English. She is a lady. She is most likely a virgin. She will have men around her, a father, a brother, a sweetheart, to watch over that maidenhead. That will be your trouble.”

He smiled and traced his finger along the elegant bump on the bridge of her nose. “You worry too much, my dear.”

She swatted his hand away. “I know you too well.”

“And she doesn’t know me at all, the poor creature.”

“She’ll wish she didn’t by the time you’re through with her,” Lucia said darkly. “No woman escapes unmarked by you.”

His brows rose with mock surprise. “I don’t recall you complaining before this.”

“Don’t put words into my mouth, Antonio,” she said, baring her teeth like a tigress. Lucia might sing like an angel, but she pursued everything else with more inspiration from the devil than the divine. “You know I never complained when I was with you, nor shall I begin now. But for you, love is no more than a game, and that little English virgin may not understand how you play.”

He wouldn’t disagree. He had always enjoyed women, and he’d been careful to make sure that they found pleasure with him as well. Because of that, and because he was rich, he never lacked for lovers. But although he was nobly born, he preferred the company of the city’s more celebrated courtesans and a few married ladies with scandalous reputations, women who understood that love was no more than a passing amusement. Respectable young ladies bored him, and besides, their mothers kept them from his path. He didn’t care, either. He’d no need to marry for money, position or an heir. Lucia was right: for him, love was a game, and he intended to play it as long as he could.

He smiled at Lucia, hoping to coax her into a better humor. “Since when have you become so kind, darling? That girl is nothing to you.”

“And what is she to you, eh? Another of your English demons, ready for your scorn?”

“She’s only a pretty little creature I spied on a balcony, Lucia,” he said evenly. “Be reasonable, pet. You’ve no right or reason to be jealous.”

“Oh!” she gasped, her eyes wide with righteous fury. “Oh, how dare you say such a thing to me?”

She shoved her hands hard into his chest, and spun away from him. “Why are you so stubborn—so stubborn that you won’t give me the truthful answer I deserve? Your oldest friend, your dear Lucia! You are impossible, Antonio! Impossible!”

She tossed her head, sending the elaborate construction of ribbons, sugar-stiffened curls, powder and false hair quivering. With her skirts gathered to one side, she swept from the room and down the stairs.

Anthony sighed. Everything with Lucia was a scene, to be performed grandioso for the greatest effect. He was fond of her, very fond, but she was also wearying. Surely that lovely English girl would be different. Innocent. Peaceful. Not so eager to bite. A pleasing change, a relief, really, like a still pond in a country meadow after a raging storm at sea.

He slipped on his coat and reached for his hat, letting his mind happily consider the different ways he could steal this delightful blond girl away from the charmless Lord Edward. He paused before Lucia’s glass to set his hat at a suitably rakish angle.

He wasn’t handsome by English standards. His more fair brothers had always been quick to tease him about his darker skin and black curling hair, his strongly prominent nose and jaw, all inherited from his mother’s family. But from his father had come his pale-gray eyes and easy smile, and more than enough wit and confidence to make women forget his craggy, swarthy face. The English girl was sure to be no exception. He winked at his reflection and headed down the stairs, figuring by now it should be safe enough to join Lucia in the carriage. She should have had plenty of time to calm herself.

Or perhaps not.

“Impossible,” she muttered, her face turned away from him as he climbed into the carriage. “You are impossible.”

He stopped in the carriage’s door. “I don’t have to go with you tonight, Lucia. If I’m so damned impossible, it might be better for you to go to Giovanni’s fete by yourself. Beside you, no one notices me, anyway.”

Her head whipped around, her dark eyes wounded even in the half light of the carriage. “Of course they notice you, Antonio. You know as well as I that you are never overlooked or forgotten. That is the kind of man you are.”

He dropped onto the leather seat beside her and sighed. “There are so many ways for me to take that, Lucia.”

But Lucia didn’t answer, turning again to face the open window, and for the next quarter hour they rode in a silence that felt more like an uneasy truce.

“She will be easy for you to find, your little yellow-haired virgin,” she said at last. “Your English consul can tell you her name. There are not so many like her in Rome, especially not this early in the autumn.”

“I haven’t said I was interested in her, have I?”

“You needn’t speak the words aloud for it to be understood, Antonio,” she said, touching a handkerchief deeply bordered in lace to the corner of her eye. “Not by me.”

“Lucia, enough,” Anthony said firmly. “Isn’t your darling Signor Lorenzo the love of your life? The only man in Rome with devotion enough to tolerate your tantrums, and gold enough to keep you in the luxury you demand?”

“We’re not speaking of Lorenzo.” Impatiently she flicked her handkerchief towards Anthony. “We’re speaking of you, Antonio, and this English girl that you are plotting to seduce. What if you’re the loser in your little game this time? You’re already beguiled with her—no, bewitched! What if she steals you from us, and carries you back to England as her prize, eh? What if you abandon all of us for her?”

Amused, Anthony leaned his head back against the leather squabs and chuckled. “It won’t happen, Lucia. It can’t.”

“No?” Her eyes glittered, challenging. “You are very confident.”

“I’m confident because I’m right,” he said easily. He took her hand and kissed the back of it, right above her ruby ring. “No woman in this world could claim that kind of lasting power over me. You should know, Lucia.”

She sniffed, and pulled her hand free, curling it into a loose fist against her breasts. “I tired of you first, Antonio. Don’t let your male pride remember otherwise.”

He glanced at her, so obviously skeptical that she hurried on.

“I should just let you marry the underfed little creature,” she said. “You could coax her into bearing your weakling children, in the passionless English manner.”

“You won’t change my mind, darling. I’m not marrying her, or anyone else.”

Her fingers opened, fluttering over her décolletage so the half light danced over her ruby ring. “Do you believe yourself safe enough that you’ll stake a small wager upon it?”

He smiled. “Small enough that Lorenzo won’t question it, but sufficiently large to hold my interest?”

“Exactly.” She leaned towards him. “I’ll wager that before Advent begins, you will become so obsessed—so lost!—pursuing this English virgin that you will need to be rescued by your friends and saved from marrying her.”

“Marrying her!” Anthony laughed aloud at the sheer preposterous idiocy of such a notion. Him with a wife, a Lady Anthony to dog him to his grave! This girl might be a delicious change, but hardly enough that he’d give up his cheerfully self-indulgent life here in Rome for the sake of her hand. “I’ll take your wager, Lucia, and I’ll set your stake for you, too. I’ll win. I’ll seduce the girl, I’ll enjoy her as much as she will me, but she’ll never be my wife. I’ve no doubt of that. And when I win, I’ll expect you to sing an entire aria on the Spanish Steps.”

She frowned, not understanding, nor wishing to. “Overlooking the Piazza? Before all of Rome?”

“For free, my darling,” he said easily. Short of standing on the papal balcony of St. Peter’s, he couldn’t imagine a more public place. The Spanish Steps had been built earlier in the century, a grand, flamboyant flow of marble cascading down the hillside from the French church of Trinita dei Monti to the Piazza di Spagna centered by one of the city’s more celebrated fountains, the Fontana della Barcaccia. The piazza was not only a favorite idling place for Romans, but a prime attraction for foreign visitors, too. Lucia would be guaranteed an enormous audience on the natural stage formed by the steps, and the fact that her performance would be within view of the English girl’s lodgings would serve as an extra fillip of amusement to their wager.

Anthony smiled, savoring the possibility. “A small gift of your voice to all of Rome. Nothing that will be missed from Randolfo’s pockets, yes?”

“For free!” Lucia sputtered, outraged. “I never sing for—for nothing!”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s my stake. If you choose not to accept it, why, then the wager is—”

“Then if you lose, you must sing instead!” she said quickly. “You, Antonio, who bray like a donkey! If this girl ruins you, as is sure to happen, then you must sing to her yourself on the same steps!”

“Agreed.” He did sing like a donkey, and even then only after a sufficient amount of very strong drink, but he was confident that the wager would never come to proving it. How could it, really?