Seduction of an English Beauty

“You meant that?” He leaned back against the arch, folding his arms over his chest with a nonchalance that he was certain she found maddening. “My ill manners, instead of yours?”

“No, no, no!” she cried, stopping just short of stamping her well-bred foot at not being obeyed. “I meant that your English speech is that of a gentleman, but that no true gentleman would behave towards me in this barbarous fashion. Refusing to tell me your name! It’s not fair, sir, not fair in the least.”

“What’s not fair, cara, is seeing you squander yourself on a man like Warwick.” Anthony made sure to keep his judgment no more than a stingingly idle observation. “My lady of the moon deserves far better than that pompous yellow-haired sciocco.”

“Sciocco?”

“A fool,” he explained, happy to do so. “A dolt. A popinjay. A fellow not worth your notice.”

“A popinjay!” she exclaimed. “How can you call Lord Edward a popinjay? He’s worth ten of you—no, a hundred! He treats me with respect and regard as does no other man. Why, do you know where he is this very moment? He has gone to fetch me orange-water, just because he was thoughtful enough to anticipate my thirst!”

“Admirable qualities in a lackey or footman, true,” Anthony said with a shrug of indifference, “but not in a lover, not for such a passionate woman who—”

“How dare you!” she cried furiously, and jerked up her hand to slap him.

But Anthony was larger, stronger and all too accustomed to such female outbursts. He easily caught her wrist before she could strike him, holding her hand away from his face.

“A passionate woman, yes,” he said, his voice low as she struggled to break free. “You prove it yourself. Not a lady, but a woman first, eh, cara?”

“And you’re—you’re no gentleman, but a vile, low, ill-behaved beast!” she cried, practically spitting the words. “Let me free at once!”

“If that is what you truly wish,” he said easily, “then I will.”

“What I wish!” she sputtered. “What I wish!”

“What you wish as a woman.” He liked how her temper had shattered that aristocratic shell of propriety. In his experience, temper and passion were the closest of cousins, and it never took much to introduce one after the other. “If you wish me to release you so you can flee to Warwick, then all you must do is ask.”

Instantly she stopped struggling, her wrist still in his fingers.

“Why wouldn’t I wish to go back to Lord Edward?” she asked suspiciously. She was watching him closely, the moonlight casting long curving shadows from her lashes over her cheeks. “He is a gentleman, and you are not. What other reason could I possibly have for fleeing from you back to his safekeeping?”

“You know that better than I,” Anthony said. It was clear that she already had her own doubts about Warwick; it wouldn’t take much to tip her to his own side. “If you’re the lady you claim to be, and he is the gentleman, that is.”

“I am a lady,” she said quickly, and he noted how this time she didn’t defend Warwick. Poor bastard, his days basking in her favor must be numbered.

“I never said you weren’t.” He lowered his face nearer to hers. He liked her scent, lilacs with a hint of spice. “But while you’re here in Rome, you should let yourself be a woman first.”

“I’ll ignore that.” She raised her chin, just a fraction, but enough to challenge him. Lady or not, she must have felt the tension swirling between them. “And you’re still a beast.”

“I never said I wasn’t.” He retained his hold on her wrist, but the fight had gone from her hand and her fisted fingers had begun to unfurl. Yet he could also feel how her pulse raced, her heartbeat quick there beneath his fingers. “Perhaps I feel an affinity for all the poor beasts killed within these walls.”

From the look in her eyes, he knew he’d caught her interest now. That was good. He knew he couldn’t have much more time before Warwick would come bumbling back with whatever it was she’d sent him to fetch.

“The ones killed by the gladiators?” she asked. “The wild beasts from the jungles and forests?”

“The same,” he said quietly. Slowly he lowered her captured wrist, his grip on it so light now that they might be dancing partners instead of adversaries. “But I like to think the wild beasts killed a few of those butchering gladiators in return, too.”

For the first time she smiled. “You sound as if you sympathize with the lions and tigers.”

“I do.” He drew her a fraction closer, and she leaned into him another fraction more. He liked how her body was fuller, more rounded, than he’d realized from the balcony, and he liked how near that body was to touching his. “How could I not? Their spirit, their savagery, their magnificence. Most of all, their refusal to be tamed into submission.”

“Indeed.” She tipped her head to one side, her glance slanting up at him from under her lashes: hardly the sort of glance most young English ladies had in their arsenal, and he liked that, too. “Then you consider yourself untamed as well?”

“Oh, completely.” He rested his free hand on the back of her waist, lightly, as if by accident. “I’m as wild as any lion.”

She eased herself away from his hand. She didn’t fuss or squawk in a maidenly scene. She simply moved, silently establishing her boundaries, and his estimation of her rose another notch.

“Not so vastly wild,” she said, still smiling. “I’d wager that would change if only you’d meet the proper lion-tamer.”

“I wouldn’t offer that wager, cara,” he said, spreading his fingers along her back with just enough pressure to feel the bones of her stays and her body beneath. “I devour lion-tamers for breakfast.”

She chuckled, a throaty sound that delighted him. “Do you eat them with jam and butter?”

“This is Rome, not barbarous London,” he said. “I prefer a splash of olive oil and sweet basil to taste.”

She chuckled again. “Pity the poor lion-tamers, to meet such an end!”

“Pity me, for having to make such a dish of the wretched beings.” He sighed dramatically, even as he reached out to touch her cheek. “I suspect the real problem is that I’ve yet to meet the right golden lioness.”

“Ahh.” She went still, but didn’t pull away from him. “You must recall that I’m here with Lord Edward.”

“I remember,” he said, lowering his face to hers, “though I’m determined to make you forget he was ever born.”

He kissed her then, exactly as he’d planned from the moment he’d followed her here. He swept her from her feet before she could stop him, leaned her back into the crook of his arm, and kissed her as she deserved to be kissed, with skill and passion, admiration and desire, and as the first, inevitable step to seduction.

He kissed her, and Diana stiffened with surprise. It wasn’t that she was surprised that he’d kissed her. She knew when men were contemplating her with that in mind, and she’d been expecting this man to kiss her ever since he’d grabbed her by the wrist.

But she’d never anticipated how he’d kiss her. It wasn’t like any other kiss she’d ever experienced. He didn’t slobber, or grunt, or press too hard, or bump his teeth against hers. He didn’t taste like his pipe, or the onions he’d eaten earlier. What she’d always liked best about kissing came afterwards, when the man was so grateful and devoted because he wished to do it again. That was the only reason she ever permitted it.

But the way that this man kissed stunned her with its intimacy. She couldn’t begin to fathom it. He kissed her, and made her lips tingle and grow warm, her head spin and her heart quicken. He coaxed her, teased her and yet there was never any doubt that he was the untamed lion he claimed to be. His mouth tasted inexplicably male, just as kissing him made her feel not like a schoolgirl burdened with her governess, but a woman. It didn’t matter that he was a stranger to her. She sensed that he could teach her mysterious things she didn’t yet know existed, things her body ached to know, and eagerly she parted her lips to let him deepen the kiss.

To her dismay, he didn’t answer, but drew back, into the darkest shadows.

“I must go, bellissima,” he whispered, brushing his fingertips lightly across her cheek. “Buona sera.”

“No!” she cried in a breathless whisper as he turned away from her. “I don’t even know your name!”

“You don’t need to,” he said, backing away. “You have Warwick.”

Lord Edward. Oh, how had she forgotten him so easily? She took a single step towards the stranger, wishing she could follow.

“Don’t go,” she said softly. “I beg you, please!”

He didn’t stop. Yet as he walked away, he turned back to smile one last time at her over his shoulder. He touched his fingers to his lips and swept his hand towards her, the same salute he’d made to her when she’d stood on the balcony. Then he turned through an arch and vanished into the night.

Diana pressed her fingers to her mouth, wishing she could magically keep the sensual memory of the kiss alive though its giver was gone. Her lips felt ripe, sensitized in a way that was new to her, almost as if they were no longer her own.

How could the stranger have done this to her and disappeared without even telling her his name? How could he have changed everything she thought a kiss could be and then be gone from her life? She’d wanted adventure to break this tedious journey, she’d longed for a romantic intrigue, but now that she’d been tantalized with both this night, all she could do was wish for more.

“Lady Diana!”

She turned away from the shadows and into the moonlight. Edward was coming towards her with a small glass clutched in his hand, puffing from his climb up the steps.

“I couldn’t see you, my lady,” he said as he reached her. “When I looked up from the floor of the Coliseum, you were quite lost in the shadows. I worried, you know.”

“There was no need, my lord,” she said, praying that the shadows would hide her a bit longer, and mask the guilty confusion she felt sure must show on her face. “I was well enough where you’d left me. It must have been some oddity of the moonlight that hid me from your sight.”

He nodded, and held the little tumbler out to her. “Your orange-water, my lady,” he said, striving to be gallant even as he wiped the rivulets of sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief. “It was chilled when I bought it, but that was a devilish hard jaunt back up here, and I fear it may have grown warm.”

She smiled automatically, though the curve of her mouth felt as stiff as if it had been carved from wood.

If she’d truly been the honorable lady she’d been trying so hard to be these last days, she would have rebuffed the dark-clad man. She would not have let him kiss her, nor kissed him in return, nor begged him to stay….

“Thank you, my lord.” She took the glass tumbler from him, and sipped at the orange-water. It was sickly sweet, almost a syrup, so thick with sugar that she could scarcely make herself swallow it.

Yet how easy it had been to let that other man’s lips caress hers, to open her mouth to take his—

“Are you ill, my lady?” Edward was peering at her face with a frown of concern, his handkerchief clutched in a knot in his hand. “Has the closeness of this place affected you? Forgive me for speaking plain, my lady, but you don’t appear well.”

She let her gaze sweep around the great curving ruin. Likely she’d never see the black-clad man again. He was really no better than the crude rascals who tried to pinch women’s bottoms in the market, and the sooner she forgot how he’d taken advantage of her to kiss her, the better.

At least that was what her poor beleaguered conscience told her.

Her wicked body whispered otherwise.

“It’s not so much the closeness of the place, my lord,” she said with careful truth, “but the—the mystery of it that has left me rather—rather breathless.”

“It often has that effect on those who visit for the first time, my lady,” Edward said, tucking his handkerchief back into his waistcoat pocket. “It’s not surprising, really. Consider how many wicked, heathen souls must haunt this place!”

Wicked, heathen…and untamed.

She set the tumbler with the barely touched orange-water onto a nearby ledge, the heavy glass clicking against the stone. “Forgive me, Lord Edward, but I should like to return to the others now.”

“Of course.” He held his arm out to her, and when she took the crook of it, he laid his hand protectively over hers. “Whatever you wish, my lady.”

But what she wished for most was not in Lord Edward’s power to give.

“Wake up, Edward.” Reverend Lord Henry Patterson yanked the bed curtains open, the brass rings jangling mercilessly across the rod as the late-morning sun burst across Edward’s face. “We must talk.”

But Edward didn’t want to talk. He didn’t even want to open his eyes. He wanted to slip back into blissful unconsciousness, where he could forget the queasiness in his belly and the thickness of his tongue and the way that blasted sunlight seemed to pierce right into his blasted aching skull to find whatever poison remained of that blasted Roman wine.

“Edward, enough.” Impatiently his uncle smacked Edward’s leg with his newspaper. “The day is half gone, and you’ve yet to drag your drunken carcass from this bed.”

“I’m not drunk, Uncle,” Edward protested weakly, burrowing against his pillow to defend himself from the sunlight. “I’d be much happier if I were.”

“Now that’s a proper attitude for a Warwick man, isn’t it?” Uncle Henry’s disgust was as sharp as that sunlight. “No wonder my sister despairs so, cursed with a worthless son like you.”

Edward groaned against the pillow. He could make an excellent argument for his being cursed with a shrill, meddlesome mother, too, but not right at this moment.

“Get up, Edward!”

The water that splashed over Edward’s face seemed enough to drown him, and he jerked upright, sputtering and gasping for air to save himself.

“Oh, quit your complaining, Nephew,” his uncle ordered, the empty pitcher from the washstand still in his hands. “What do you think Lady Diana would say if she could see you now?”

“She’d say you were a damned wicked old bastard to treat me so.” Edward squinted at his uncle as he blotted the water from his face with the sheet. “She’d be right, too.”

“What she’d say is that you’re a lazy sluggard with no respect for your elders.” Uncle Henry pulled a chair close to the bed, flipped the tails of his coat to one side, and perched on the edge of the seat. “While you’ve been snoring away your wine, I’ve been to the consulate this morning. I’ve made a few inquiries, and on your behalf, too. Lady Diana Farren is indeed Aston’s daughter, exactly as she and the governess have claimed. They’d letters of introduction so grand that there was no doubt of it. But of greater interest to you, however, is that she’ll bring £20,000 a year to whichever lucky gentleman claims her hand.”

“Twenty thousand?” That was enough to clear anyone’s head. Edward swung his legs over the side of the bed, ready to hear more. “A pretty penny by any reckoning.”

His uncle nodded, patting his pockets until he found his pipe, and the tinderbox with it. “You’ll never have a sweeter plum drop into your undeserving lap, Edward. And you’ll have none of the competition here in Rome that you would back in London.”

“That’s precious hard.” Edward scowled, his pride wounded by the unfortunate truth. “You’ve seen how Lady Diana looks at me. I’d venture she’s rather fond of me already.”

“Perhaps.” His skepticism obvious, Uncle Henry thrust the stem of his pipe into his mouth. “Though you haven’t had much luck with ladies before this, have you?”

“I haven’t been trying, that’s all,” Edward said defensively, running his fingers back through his bed-flattened hair. This was a difficult enough conversation without having to conduct it in his nightshirt, rank with last night’s excesses. “Those smug overbred London bitches—they’re not easy on a man, you know. They’ll cut you off at the knees as soon as look at you.”

“Don’t try to bluff me, Edward,” Uncle Henry said sternly as he concentrated on lighting his pipe, puffing furiously until the tobacco finally sparked. “I know your situation, and why your poor widowed mother put you into my safekeeping here in Italy, away from the bailiff’s reach. You’ve squandered what little inheritance you had on kickshaw schemes.”

“They were legitimate investments in inventions with great promise.” There’d been a sure-fire method for converting wood into coal, a proposal for a wagon-tunnel from Dover to Calais, a way to turn brass into true gold: all that had been wanting had been a cagey investor, capable of the vision to see the potential. How he loved to listen to the scientific gentlemen explain their genius, and how, after a suitable investment, they’d all become rich as Croesus without a day of ungentlemanly toil on his part!

“Such ventures offer enormous opportunity for those clever enough to see it, Uncle,” he continued. “It’s hardly my fault that my funds weren’t sufficient to see the projects through to fruition and profit.”

“Tossing good money after bad into the ocean is more the case,” his uncle said with contempt. “You’ve scarce a farthing left to your name, Edward. You might as well have lost it all at cards or dice for the good it’s done you. There’s only one venture left open for you now. You must marry soon, and marry well. Otherwise you’ll be doomed to keeping yourself by the gaming tables in Calais, or saddling yourself with some thick-ankled coal heiress from the north.”

“I know, Uncle, I know,” Edward said with frustration. Blast, but he was still a young man, and as such he’d hoped to sow a few more wild oats here in Italy before he had to play the docile husband. This was his mother’s idea, of course. She might be three countries away, but he could feel her tentacles reaching out to control him through his uncle, just as she had in London.

But twenty thousand a year would change everything. Twenty thousand, and marrying into the exalted family of the Duke of Aston. Of course he’d have to bow to the traces in the beginning, but once he could pack Diana off to the country to breed like every other noble wife, then he could begin living his life the way a gentleman should. He’d finally have the funds to back his favorite ventures, and see them made real. Let the others invest in old-fashioned plans like fur-trading in Canada, or tea from the Indies. He’d make more than the rest combined, and be lauded as a visionary, too.

And Diana Farren wasn’t some coarsely bred heiress, either. She would make a first-rate wife, the kind of filly that other men would envy. Delighted by such a glorious prospect, he reached for the wine bottle—ah, Virgil’s own inspiration!—that he’d left beside his bed last night.

“No more of that,” his uncle snapped, reaching out to rap Edward across the wrist. “Tell me instead how far you’ve proceeded with the lady.”

“I’ve treated her as her rank deserved,” Edward declared. He’d planned to kiss Lady Diana last night at the Coliseum, but by the time he’d brought her that blasted orange-water, she’d turned odd towards him, and he’d lost his nerve. Beautiful women did that to him, and Lady Diana was very, very beautiful. “You can’t fault me there. I’ve done nothing but blow her the usual puffery about admiration and respect.”

“Then perhaps it’s time you did a bit more,” his uncle advised. “She’s a lady, yes, but she’s also a woman. Women like having a man behave as the master, so long as it is decently done.”

“Uncle, I’ve known her less than a week!”

“Twenty thousand pounds are at stake, nephew, twenty thousand that you could sorely use,” Uncle Henry said through the wreaths of pipe smoke drifting about his face. “You can’t expect to live out your life on my generosity, you know. My regard for your poor mother will go only so far.”

Now that was true enough, thought Edward, his resentment bubbling beneath the conversation. Uncle Henry had more money than Croesus to squander on bits of broken ancient crockery, yet still he made Edward grovel and beg for every favor. But with twenty thousand a year, Edward would never have to ask for anything again, either from his uncle or his mother. He’d be his own man. Why, Mother would even have to bow down to his wife because she’d be a higher rank. Hah, how he’d like to see that!

He rubbed his hand across his mouth, imagining every detail. His wife, Lady Diana Warwick. His children, with a duke for a grandfather. His pockets, filled with guineas. How could he ask for more?

“God helps those who help themselves, Edward,” Uncle Henry was droning on, as pompously as if he were standing in his pulpit. “Remember that, and how you must always take whatever—”

“Consider it done, Uncle,” Edward said with more determination than he’d ever felt in his life. “By the time we leave Rome, I assure you, Lady Diana Farren will be my wife.”

“Is that how you wish the curl to fall, my lady?” Diana’s maid Deborah stepped back, comb in hand, to let Diana study her reflection in the looking glass at her dressing table. “Because you must wear your hat with the widest brim against the sun, my lady, very little of your hair shall show beyond that single curl.”

Diana sighed unhappily, touching the silvery-blond lovelock that hung across her shoulder. Deborah was right. Traipsing through yet another pile of ruins offered little inspiration for dressing with elegance. It was more important to dress sensibly, to hide one’s skin from the burning Roman sun while still keeping as cool as was possible in the wicked heat.

But in Diana’s eyes, the sensible dress was ugly and uncomfortable. And how was she supposed to beguile Lord Edward while bundled up in scarves, hat and gloves from her head to the tip of her dreadful, sturdy walking shoe? Swaddled away like this, how could she possibly inspire him to be more romantic, more passionate, more able to make her forget the stranger she’d kissed last night?

“It’s well enough, Deborah,” she finally said, reaching for her wide-brimmed leghorn hat from the dressing table. “I don’t even know if his lordship will notice.”

“Oh, my lady, what a thing to say!” Deborah clucked her tongue, taking the hat from Diana’s hand and pinning it into place on her piled hair. “’Course his lordship notices you. Any gentleman worth his salt notices as soon as he sets his eyes upon you, my lady, and that’s the good Lord’s honest truth.”

Any gentleman worth his salt. The stranger had noticed her from a distance, and for only a handful of moments, yet that had been enough that he’d followed her for the chance of seeing her again and then—

No. She closed her eyes, her conscience at war with her memory. She must not think of that man; not with interest, regret, longing or even curiosity. She must purge him from her thoughts forever, and forget how his kiss, his touch, his—

“Ah, my lady, look what just arrived for you!”

Diana opened her eyes just as Miss Wood handed her a bouquet of flowers. Late red roses, some kind of wild daisies, mixed with curling grasses and other local flowers she didn’t recognize, framed with lace and tied up with an extravagant bow of black and white ribbons. There was an effortless art to how the bouquet had been gathered, the costly roses combined with weedy wildflowers into a beautiful design that was unlike any bouquet she’d ever received before.

“Oh, Miss Wood, how lovely!” she cried, cradling the flowers in her hands. “Who sent them?”

Miss Wood was smiling so broadly that her eyes were nearly hidden by her round cheeks. “I should venture after last night that it was Lord Edward, my lady.”

“But there’s no card or note,” Diana said, searching through the leaves. “Did the servant tell you nothing?”

“They were brought not by a proper servant, but by a scruffy small beggar-boy, doubtless in the employ of the flower-seller,” Miss Wood said. “But they must be from Lord Edward. Who else could it be here in Rome?”