infatuated with every step. He met her mother, took tea with them. They were a respectable family of the city, her father an attorney, but they were decidedly not nobility. Not suitable duchess material.
Nicholas opened his eyes to stare blindly out at his library, the vast, dimly lit space, shadowed by soaring shelves of leather-bound books and crowded with heavy, old furniture. In the corners lurked statues from that voyage, pale marble gods and goddesses who stared back at him with their cold eyes. He had hoped to bring home more than art, more than freezing stone. He hoped to bring back life and laughter, a wife. A family.
His courtship of Valentina was quick, passionate. After all, he came from a line of people who gave all for the sake of love—his own blood ran just as hot, and he had never felt for anyone as he did for Valentina, either before or since. He craved her presence, her smile, her kiss, wanted to be with her all the time, and she felt the same for him. They went on long walks all over the city, kissing passionately in silent alleyways, in dusty museum galleries. He sat in her family’s drawing room and listened to her play the harp while her siblings ran around them.
Her home reminded him of his own at Welbourne Manor, where his brothers and sisters dashed about amid the ring of laughter. They would love Valentina, he knew, even if society wasn’t so accepting. They would help him make her happy even in grey, damp England, he was sure of that. So he married her in a little Verona chapel. He raised her lace veil and kissed her in the glow of stained glass, and had never been happier than in that one perfect moment.
Happiness was not to last, though. They went to a country villa for their honeymoon: long days of golden sun; warm, dusty nights of passion. Even before they returned to Verona, Valentina was pregnant. There could be no question of returning to England until she and the child could travel, so Nicholas waited to write to his family until he could announce both the marriage and the baby. Otherwise they would come rushing to him, and he wanted Valentina to himself awhile longer.
Thirteen months he was a husband, barely more than a year. One hour he was a father, to a tiny son who lived such a brief life. Then both the baby and Valentina were gone. The laughter and light were vanished as quickly as they began, and he was alone.
Well, not entirely alone. He had his family, his duty, his cursed title. After his wife and child were buried, he left Italy for home once again, his heart left behind under that cemetery cypress tree outside Verona, and he devoted himself to his family. He kept that brief marriage a secret, for he could not bear to speak of it, even to his sisters. He couldn’t bear the pity he would have seen in their eyes.
Over the years, the pain faded. He learned to cherish the memory of Valentina without despairing of what might have been. Only once in a while, on days like this, did he take out her portrait and try to imagine her near him again.
It became harder all the time. She moved further into the past. Yet a vivid fear remained, especially when he was told yet again he should do his duty, marry and produce children. How could he put another woman through the pain and fear Valentina suffered when their son was born, the agony when the baby died in her arms? How could he hurt a woman like that, watching her suffer and knowing it was his fault?
He would surely never love another as he had Valentina, but he would not marry without at least liking and respecting a lady. And he could not inflict that on someone he considered a friend.
Perhaps Stephen would marry, despite his protestations, and have children who could inherit the title. Yet that seemed unlikely. He was too busy with his racetrack scheme to consider a proper marriage.
Nicholas carefully put the portrait back into its case and hid it once more in the dark drawer. That past was gone, and he had to remember that.
But that did not mean he was quite ready to face answering all those invitations just yet. He left them on his desk and went to the window to stare down at the windswept street, at all the passers-by hurrying on their busy way. Nicholas always wondered where they were going, what purpose drove them onwards during their day.
Sometimes they stopped to peer past his wrought-iron gates, no doubt wondering the same thing about him. What did a duke do behind his grand walls? Manning House was one of the largest houses in London, a vast, impractical edifice of pale stone and copious windows his grandfather had built and which they were now stuck with for ever. It was grand and impressive, surrounded by gardens, crowned by a large ballroom and a dining room large enough for a state dinner. But it was impossible to heat, and right now it was good only for nieces and nephews to chase each other down the wide corridors, once they were old enough.
It needed a mistress, a hostess to redecorate the fusty old chambers and arrange for parties to suit its grandeur. Yet another reason to put the past away and think of that blasted, ever-present Duty.
Nicholas reached for the edge of the velvet drapery to draw it across the window. Maybe if he couldn’t see outside he couldn’t be distracted by what was happening on the street. As he tugged it closer, he glimpsed an open carriage rolling slowly past on the street, carrying two stylishly dressed ladies whispering together. One of them turned her head slightly, and a ray of pale sunshine caught on a blonde curl, a soft white cheek. It was Lady Emily Carroll.
She laughed at whatever her friend was saying, her pale cheeks flushed pink. She swept back that errant curl with her gloved hand.
How beautiful she is, Nicholas thought with bemusement. Oh, he had always known Lady Emily was beautiful; she was famous for it, and it was easy to see in the perfect symmetry of her heart-shaped face. He was struck by it last summer at Welbourne, but then forgot when she seemed not to like him.
Now, with her face alight with laughter, the sun on her hair, he saw it all over again. What could make her laugh like that? What could he possibly say to make her smile?
It was a challenge indeed. And a Manning was never one to back away from a challenge.
The carriage turned the corner, seeming to head toward the park. It was nearly the fashionable hour, when all the ton piled on to their horses and into their carriages and paraded past each other yet again.
Nicholas turned away from the window, and from the work that waited at his desk, and strode out of the library. All that could wait. “I need my horse saddled! “ he called. “Quickly!”
Chapter Four
“Look, Emily! It’s Manning House. Isn’t it lovely?” Jane cried, gesturing at the vast mansion as their carriage bounced past. “Like a palace in a fairy story.”
Emily laughed as she studied the gleaming windows, laid out like endless rows of diamonds in white stone expressly to show off wealth great enough to counter any window tax. She remembered a line she learned once in lessons on Tudor history—’Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall.’ Somehow, it was hard to imagine the duke living there in that chilly mausoleum.
“If the fairy story is about the Snow Queen, bringing down winter from her mountain fortress,” she said. “It looks mightily uncomfortable.”
“But excellent for grand balls,” Jane declared, her gaze still fastened on the house. “Can’t you just imagine being the hostess of such a gathering? Being a duchess?”
“I can imagine it,” Emily said, still laughing. “It sounds horrid. Everyone staring all the time, everyone pestering for invitations to those grand balls …”
“Exactly! The Duchess of Manning would utterly rule society. She could set every fashion. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
