disappointment. He was angry and tired and cold, but most of all, if he were truthful, he was wounded to the quick. This was hardly the welcome he’d expected. Where were the kisses and tears of joy? Hadn’t the landlady received his letters? Why the devil weren’t they prepared for him? Blast the infernal Italian post! He knew he’d gambled by coming all this way on impulse, but damnation, he’d paid for the lease of this wretched, echoing house. Wasn’t that enough to earn him at least a show of affection in return?
‘The English lady, most excellent one?’ the porter asked breathlessly as he finally trotted up behind Richard. ‘You wish to see her?’
‘Who the devil else would it be?’ At least the man had worked out that much. In fact, Richard was here to see two English ladies, not just one, but he’d credit the mistake to the porter’s general confusion. ‘Go, tell her I’m—’
‘A thousand pardons, but she waits for you.’ He pointed behind Richard. ‘There.’
Richard whipped around, gazing to where the man was pointing. At the top of the stairs stood a woman, indeed, an Englishwoman, but neither of the ones he’d so longed to see. She was small and pale, her eyes enormous with shock in her round little face. Her hair was drawn back severely from her face and hidden beneath a linen cap, relieved only by a narrow brown ribbon that matched the colour of her equally plain brown gown. She clutched at the rail, clearly needing its support as she struggled to regain her composure after the shock of seeing Richard.
‘Your—your Grace,’ she said, and belatedly curtsied. ‘Good evening, your Grace. You—you took me by surprise.’
‘Evidently,’ he said, his voice rough with urgency. ‘I’m tired, Miss Wood, and eager to see my girls. Please take me to them directly.’
‘Lady Mary, Your Grace?’ she asked with a hesitation that did not please him, not from the woman he’d trusted as his daughters’ governess. ‘And Lady Diana?’
‘My daughters,’ he said, taking another step towards her. His daughters, his girls, his cherubs, the darlings of his heart—who else could have made him come so far? Solemn, dark-haired Mary, the older at nineteen, and Diana, laughing and golden, a year younger. Could any father have missed his children more than he?
A second woman came to join the governess, dark and elegant, a lady dressed in widow’s black. Most likely this was the house’s owner, he guessed, their landlady Signora della Battista.
‘My journey has been a long one, Miss Wood,’ he said, ‘and you are making it longer still.’
‘Your daughters,’ the governess repeated with undeniable sadness, even regret. The older woman spoke gently to her in Italian, resting her hand on her arm, but Miss Wood only shook her head, her gaze still turned towards Richard. ‘You did not receive my letters, your Grace, or theirs? You do not know what has happened?’
‘What is there to know?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve been at sea, coming here. The last letters I had from you were from Paris, weeks ago, and nothing since. Damnation, if you don’t bring my girls to me—’
‘If it were in my power, your Grace, I would, with all my heart.’ With her hand once again on the rail, she slowly sank until she was sitting on the top step, so overwhelmed that she seemed unable to stand any longer. ‘But they—the young ladies—they are not here. Oh, if only you’d been able to read the letters!’
A score of possibilities filled Richard’s heart with sickening dread: an accident in a coach, a shipboard mishap, an attack by footpads or highwaymen, a fever, a quinsy, a poison in the blood. Long ago he’d lost his wife, and grief had nearly killed him. He could not bear to lose his daughters as well.
‘Tell me, Miss Wood,’ he asked hoarsely. ‘Dear God, if anything has happened to them—’
‘They are married, your Grace,’ the governess said, and bowed her head. ‘Both of them. They are married.’
Chapter Two
‘Married?’ roared the Duke of Aston. ‘My daughters? Married?’
‘Yes, your Grace.’ Jane Wood took a deep breath, and told herself that the worst must now be over. Surely it must be, for as long and as well as she’d known the duke, she could not imagine him becoming any more incensed than he was at this moment. Nor, truly, could she fault him for it. ‘Both have wed, and to most excellent gentleman.’
‘Most excellent rascals is more likely!’ His handsome face was as dark as an August thunderstorm, and she realised to her surprise that his expression was filled with as much disappointment as anger. ‘Why did you not put a stop to these crimes, Miss Wood? Why did you permit it?’
‘Why, your Grace?’ She forced herself to stand, to compose herself to give her answer. In his present state, the duke would see any kind of confusion as weakness and incompetence. Rather, further incompetence. His Grace never expected to be crossed, and his temper was legendary. After nearly ten years in his service, Jane knew that much of him, just as she knew that the surest way to calm him was to present the facts in a quiet and rational manner. That had always proved successful with him before, and there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t again.
She took another breath and lightly clasped her hands at her waist, the way she always did. She shouldn’t have let herself be so shocked. She wasn’t some callow girl, but a capable woman of nearly thirty. A calm demeanour was what was required now, she told herself firmly, a rational argument. Yes, yes—rationality and reason. Not a defence, for she believed she’d done nothing wrong, but the even, well-reasoned explanation of the events of the last few weeks that she’d been rehearsing ever since she’d come to Venice from Rome.
But she’d always expected to be delivering that explanation in the duke’s sunny library at Aston Hall, in Kent, once she herself was safely returned to England, and long after he would have read his daughters’ letters. She never imagined he would have come charging clear across the Mediterranean like a mad bull to corner her here on the staircase of the Ca’Battista.
‘Permit me to summon the watch, Miss Wood,’ said Signora Battista in indignant Italian, standing beside her. ‘Or at least let me call the footmen from the kitchen to send this man away. There is no need for you to tolerate the ravings of this lunatic!’
‘But there is, signora,’ Jane murmured swiftly, also in Italian, ‘because he is my master. I am employed in his household, and rely upon him for my livelihood.’
‘Livelihood!’ The signora made a sharp click of disdain. ‘What manner of life can there be with an intemperate male creature such as this one?’
Swiftly Jane shook her head, appalled by such disrespect. She was most fortunate that the duke was proud, as only an English peer could be, of speaking no other language than English, and hadn’t understood the other woman’s comments. Hurriedly she shifted back to English herself.
‘Your Grace,’ she began, ‘if you please, may I present Signora Isabella della Battista, the owner of this fine house? Signora, his Grace the Duke of Aston.’
To Jane’s dismay, the signora’s nod of acknowledgement was also calcuated at the precise angle to signify exactly where a parvenu English duke of only two or three hundred years’ nobility stood in relationship to her, a member of one of the most ancient families of the Republic of Venice who was at present so unfortunately impoverished that she was in need of rich
