The Very Daring Duchess Part 22

"It won't always be like this," she said through her tears, telling a truth she knew he wouldn't understand. "My poor brave lion, I won't always torment you like this."

For in London I'll be gone, and never torment you again.

"Only if we don't both go mad from wanting and waiting." He drew her back to his chest, his arms linked lightly around her waist as he kissed the back of her ear, but now they both understood with bittersweet certainty that nothing more would come of it.

Nothing, that is, but an uneasy kind of peace between them, an empathy, a shared sense that they were bound together by trust as much as attraction. He made her feel safe, and he made her feel content, wrapping her in warmth as sure as his arms were around her now.

And that was far, far more dangerous than anything they'd done upon that long mahogany table.

"Look," he said at last. "It's snowing, and us set to make La Cala and Palermo before nightfall."

"But it never snows in Palermo, Edward," she protested, glancing toward the stern windows. "Sicily's too far south for snow."

Yet it was snowing, fat, white flakes that swirled and danced in the wind only to disappear when they struck the dark sea.

"Not this year," he answered. "Perhaps Napoleon ordered it from the Alps to confound us. But it does look more like December at home, I'll grant you that."

England, his home, and soon to be hers: More cold, more ice and snow in one December than she'd seen in a lifetime in Naples, and with a shiver Francesca leaned closer against him. "Will there be a great deal of snow in London?"

"Possibly," he said. "But by the time I can show you London, the seasons may have turned round to summer, or summer and winter yet again."

"But I thought we were going to London after we left Palermo!"

"The Centaur sails where the admiralty sends her, la.s.s, and you and I go with her. Given this war, I could be at sea another year or more, or even here in Palermo, before I'm granted leave for home."

"A year or more," she repeated, letting the awful reality of that settle around her. A year or more at sea alone with him, a year or more to wait for London and her art.

"Happy Christmas, My Lady Edward," he was saying, blissfully unaware of her thoughts. "Perhaps that's why we've snow this day, snow for Christmas. Yet I do regret I've no gift to give you."

"But you've already given me so much, haven't you?" she said wistfully. "What more could there be?"

"It's only the beginning, Francesca," he said, lifting her hand to kiss her fingers below the gold ring. "You have my word."

She looked down so he wouldn't see the tears that once again stung her eyes. Oh, yes, he'd already given her so much, and she'd no doubt he'd keep his word and give her the rest.

And she deserved none of it.

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"This is the first time since we've been in Palermo, caro mio, that the admiral has asked you to call on him in the middle of the day like this," said Francesca, her breath a frosty little cloud before her face even inside the carriage. "Perhaps he intends to send you upon a special mission of some sort."

"I doubt that very much, sweetheart," said Edward, covering her little gloved hand with his own to still its restless movement along his arm. The hired carriage was not very clean and hideously overpriced, like everything else here in Palermo, but he could hardly complain about sitting so cozily near to Francesca on the worn leather seat, her hip pressed close against his. "Rumor is that we're to stay here until Ferdinando can take back his throne in Naples, another three months or more. Besides, the admiral requested your presence, too, and he wouldn't have done that if he wished to give me new orders."

"Santo cialo, of course he could," she declared emphatically, the curling green plume on her hat nodding in agreement. "Most likely I was also invited to the villa simply because Lady Hamilton wished it. We ladies shall be packed off to amuse ourselves while the gentlemen discuss matters of state. Don't smile, Edward, you'll see soon enough that I am right."

"I am smiling, Francesca, because you make me happy," he said evenly, "not because I fault your reasoning."

She narrowed her eyes skeptically, though her own smile robbed that skepticism of any serious sting. This was what had evolved between them in this last week: A wary friendship grown from necessity and proximity, and an attraction neither could deny, but that carried a dark undercurrent of uneasy tension that both of them were trying their d.a.m.nedest to ignore.

Yet while most of the other refugees that Edward had seen from Naples seemed haggard and miserable, Francesca had somehow managed to grow even more beautiful, more desirable in his eyes. Elegant, flattering new clothes had mysteriously appeared without any funding from him-most likely thanks to the machinations of Lady Hamilton-and while they weren't Francesca's former exotic striped silks and turbans, these fashionably pale gossamer woolens cut with high waists and low necklines not only accentuated her voluptuous figure, but also suited her station as the newlywed Lady Edward Ramsden. She smiled often and laughed more, and she charmed everyone she met with the same thoroughness she'd always possessed, whether in English, Italian, or French.

But as proud as Edward was of her, he was the only one who saw the little cracks in her careful facade, small missteps that she tried so hard to hide. Though she never complained, she clearly missed her work and her home, and all the small comforts and niceties that were so painfully absent on a warship. He'd seen the proof in many ways: the random, unfinished sketches he'd come across on the backs of crumpled account bills or old news sheets, the unexpected tears she barely managed to keep back, how her laugh would sometimes be too bright, or the circles of weariness beneath her eyes in the morning to prove she was sleeping as little as he.

Sleeping: what a great lie that had become! Only Edward himself (and Peart) knew the bitter truth, that each night Francesca retreated alone to his cot, while he slung a hammock in his great cabin with a latched door between them. He tried to keep as busy as he could with his duties and the familiar routine of the navy, but with Francesca on board the Centaur, routine was no longer quite enough. He was restless and frustrated, and ironically she was both the cause and the solution. Aye, she made him happy-what man wouldn't be happy with such a beautiful wife?-but she was also making him thoroughly miserable, as miserable as he was most likely making her.

Yet he never doubted that he was doing the right thing. Each night as he stared up at the moon's reflection off the water onto the beams overhead, trying not to imagine her lying in her shift in the next cabin, he found comfort knowing that he'd come one more day and one more step closer to winning his wife and her trust, and to proving to himself that he was a better man than his brothers.

Now he leaned forward in the carriage, trying to gauge from the buildings they were pa.s.sing exactly how much farther they were from Sir William's villa. Palermo's streets were narrow and winding, closed in by dilapidated houses that had been musty in the time of returning Crusaders. There was only one inn in Palermo, and it was charging four times its usual rate for refugees to sleep six to a room on straw pallets, without fireplaces or gla.s.s panes in the windows in this unseasonably cold winter. The English amba.s.sador was faring much better than most, having rented a vast furnished villa that was also serving as Admiral Nelson's quarters in Palermo.

"Perhaps the admiral has invited you for another reason, la.s.s," he said lightly. "Perhaps he wishes you and Lady Hamilton to concoct some sort of grand entertainment to amuse all the bored ladies and gentlemen stranded here in Palermo."

She wrinkled her nose with disgust. "Oh, perdition! They do not need my help, nor Her Ladyship's, either. Even for Neapolitans, they're squandering their lives prodigiously well on their own. When I think of how His Majesty has abandoned his poor wife to go to the theater and the opera and off with his wretched hunting dogs, without the least concern for her sorrow-oh, it makes me ill!"

Two thousand refugees-Neapolitan and French royalists as well as touring English caught by the French army-had sailed from Naples in twenty merchant vessels as well as the Centaur and three other naval ships, yet despite the snowstorm, the only casualty had been a six-year-old boy, the youngest son of King Ferdinando and Queen Maria Carolina. While the queen was grief-stricken over the death of her little prince, refusing to leave her chambers in their Sicilian palace, the king had shown far more concern for his hunting dogs and for shooting the woodc.o.c.ks that were now in season on the island, and his courtiers had scandalously followed his lead instead of his wife's.

"I always knew his majesty was a stupid man," continued Francesca, "but I didn't know he was so cruel as well. Granted, he has a great many other princes and princesses, but still, to care so little about the death of one's own child...."

Her words drifted off as she stared out the carriage window, her expression full of sadness for the unmourned young prince. Her love for children wasn't benignly sentimental, or limited to the ones she'd drawn and painted. Edward had seen how she genuinely cared for all children as small, individual persons. He couldn't help wondering if the prince had been on board the Centaur instead of the flagship, and had been given over to Francesca's keeping like the two d'Arienzani girls, perhaps he'd be alive still.

And what if there had been a woman so loving and warm in his own life, back when he'd been a motherless boy cowering from his brothers' bullying amid the icy grandeur of Winterworth Hall? What if his family had been like his friend Will's, full of laughter and warmth, the kind of family he longed to have with Francesca?

"You would make a first-rate mother, la.s.s," he said impulsively. "You've the perfect temperament, kind and warmhearted. I could even see it from those drawings of yours you'd made of the women with their babes in the market. Fortunate the child will be to have you bending over his cradle."

She looked at him sharply over her shoulder, her dark eyes guarded beneath the curving brim of her hat. "I have always loved children, yes, but only those of other women. That is why they are always so sweet-faced in my drawings, because I do not have to wake in the night to their crying or wash their soiled clothes."

"But surely you've desired a child of your own," he persisted, relishing the image of a laughing, plump-cheeked girl with dancing black curls, a miniature version of Francesca herself. "I thought that was something all women wanted."

"Most women do," she said defensively. "Of course I have imagined the children I could have with you. I can see them so clearly that I could draw their dear little faces here, now, if only I'd a pen."

He could imagine them, too. "A man also wishes children. Sons to follow after him, and daughters to spoil and dote upon."

"Ah, so you see that as well?" She looked down into her lap, plucking restlessly at the tip of one finger of her glove. "A handsome son to carry on your grand t.i.tle, a pretty daughter for you proudly to present at court!"

"That's not all, Francesca," he insisted, wishing he knew how to explain the confused emotions swirling around him now. "Our children would mean much more than that."

"And where would that leave me, Edward?" she asked. "Am I to be that kind and warmhearted mama in your dreams, the one with the perfect temperament and endless grat.i.tude? Dutiful, obliging Lady Edward, who is so very good with children?"

"Aye," he said, mystified that she'd even ask such a question. "Is that such a woeful fate?"

"It's not my fate, Edward," she said sadly, "but it is your dream, not mine. There I would be, in a rough nursemaid's ap.r.o.n spotted with porridge, mired on sh.o.r.e wiping running little noses and unclean little bottoms while my paints and brushes grow dusty and you are off having grand adventures at sea. I can see the end of all my dreams, caro mio, cast up and broken there on those English rocks. Where would I be then, eh?"

There was so much he could answer to that question. He could tell her he was rich enough to hire a score of nursemaids to do the bottom-wiping, and that he'd never expected her to wear a rough ap.r.o.n covered with porridge. He could a.s.sure her that she could always continue to paint and draw as much as she pleased, that such occupations were perfectly acceptable pastimes for English ladies. He could explain that he never intended to leave her alone on sh.o.r.e unless she wished it, that though a baby was even more unusual on board a warship than a captain's wife, it could be managed like anything else.

Or, most important of all, he could tell her how their child would be the chance to right all the wrongs they'd each suffered as children themselves, how their child would be wanted and loved by parents who loved each other.

Love: where the devil had that sprung from, anyway?

He could have told her all these things, or any of them, and through honesty redeemed himself both in her eyes as well as his own. He could have drawn them closer, and he could have taken another step toward making those children-and their marriage-real.

But instead of being honest, he was a coward. Instead of their children or his hopes for their marriage or even of love, he avoided it all and spoke of his ship.