Praise for Miranda Jarrett

THE ADVENTUROUS BRIDE

‘Jarrett provides readers with a delightful,

charming art mystery set in a colourful palette

of the French countryside, ancient churches and

regal Paris. The interesting backdrop and art history

add that little something different that

many readers are searching for.’

—RT Book Reviews

RAKE’S WAGER

‘…a romp brimming with Regency style,

Jarrett’s latest cleverly adds a dollop of poignancy

by throwing Richard’s long-lost son into the mix.

The just-right pace and likable characters deliver

a quick, enjoyable read.’

—RT Book Reviews

Richard wore only his nightshirt, rumpled and loose, and yet somehow revealing far more than his usual dress did—because beneath all that snowy linen he was…naked.

The darker shadows beneath the fabric, the way the linen draped over his body, left no doubt, and Jane’s cheeks flamed at the realisation.

Hastily she looked back up to the safer territory of his face. Or perhaps it wasn’t. In all the time she’d been in His Grace’s employment she’d never seen him this dishevelled, his hair loose around his face and his jaw roughened with a growth of darker beard, his whole expression without its usual reserve and control. It was unsettling, seeing him without his guard like this, and it made him less like His Grace and more simply like any other man.

A large, scarcely dressed, and surprisingly handsome man that she’d just summoned from his bed.

Heavens preserve her—what had she done?

The Duke’s Governess Bride
Miranda Jarrett

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Miranda Jarrett considers herself sublimely fortunate to have a career that combines history and happy endings—even if it’s one that’s also made her family far-too-regular patrons of the local pizzeria. Miranda is the author of over thirty historical romances, and her books are enjoyed by readers the world over. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including two Golden Leaf Awards and two RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards, and has three times been a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award finalist for best short historical romance.

Miranda is a graduate of Brown University, with a degree in art history. She loves to hear from readers at PO Box 1102, Paoli, PA 19301-0792, USA, or at susan@susanhollowayscott.com

Novels by Miranda Jarrett:

RAKE’S WAGER

THE LADY’S

HAZARD THE DUKE’S GAMBLE

THE ADVENTUROUS BRIDE*

SEDUCTION OF AN ENGLISH BEAUTY*

THE SAILOR’S BRIDE (in Regency Christmas Weddings)

*linked by character to The Duke’s Governess Bride

Chapter One

If a Woman has any Mind to be wicked, Venice seems to be the last Place in the World to give her better Sentiments.

—‘Miss N’, to the actor Thomas Hull, 1756

Venice—January 1785

Most English gentlemen came to Venice to be amused, whether to view the antique paintings, or to wear a long-nosed mask and dance at the carnival, or to dally with a courtesan in a closed gondola. But Richard Farren, the fifth Duke of Aston, wasn’t here for idle amusement. He had come to Venice for one reason, and one reason only. He’d come for the sake of love.

Turning the collar of his heavy Melton travelling cloak higher against the wind, Richard smiled as he imagined again what his friends in London must be saying of him now. That he was a sentimental fool, surely. That he’d lost his wits, most likely. That the love he was travelling so far to offer would never be returned in equal measure—ah, there were doubtless a good many wagers being made about that, too. So be it. He’d only been able to tolerate a couple of months of loneliness at Aston Hall before he’d given in, and taken off on this journey. But then, caution and care had never been his style, and he wasn’t about to change now. Nothing ventured, nothing gained—that seemed to him not so much a time-worn adage as a good, sound philosophy.

He leaned his arms on the rail of the little sloop, staring out at the wavering dark outline of the shore. This passage from Trieste to Venice was the last step of his long journey, and he’d stood there much of the day, preferring the damp and chill on the deck to the close, fishy stench of the cabin below. Besides, he’d doubted he’d have been able to sleep even if he’d tried. After so many weeks travelling by land and sea, and hard travelling at that, his destination was now only hours away. By nightfall, all his doubts, all his worries, would at last be put to rest—or, if Fate went against him, they’d only have begun.

‘His Grace is eager to reach Venice.’ The sloop’s captain joined him unbidden at the rail. ‘His Grace is happy we make such good speed, yes?’

‘Yes,’ Richard said, hoping that brevity would make the man leave him in peace.

But the captain only squinted up at Richard, pushing his greasy cocked hat more firmly on his head against the wind. ‘His Grace is brave to sail in winter, yes? Ice, snow, wind, brr.’

The captain hugged his arms over his chest to mimic a man warming himself. In return Richard only nodded. He knew perfectly well the perils of travelling at this time of year. He had embarked from England so late in the season, almost in winter itself, that crossing the Continent to Italy through France and the Alps was out of the question. He’d had no choice but to travel by sea, around Spain and Portugal and into the Mediterranean, until he’d become heartily sick of the company of sailing men like this one.

‘Once you’re at Venice, your Grace, you stay,’ the captain continued. ‘No more journey until spring. No Roma, no Napoli, no Firenze, no—’

‘Quite,’ Richard said, his impatience with the man’s company growing by the second. He didn’t need a list of every landmark city in Italy to know that he’d be winterbound in Venice. He was rather counting on it, in fact, given the pleasing female company that was waiting for him there.

‘But his Grace will find willing friends in Venice to warm him, eh?’ The captain winked slyly, studying Richard from his thick dark gold hair to the toes of his well-polished boots with obvious approval. ‘A great English lion like his Grace will have many ladies, eh?’

Richard said nothing, choosing instead to stare out at the water and let the rascal draw whatever unsavoury conclusions he pleased. His dear wife Anne had been not only his duchess, but his best friend and his dearest love, and when she had died, he’d sworn no other woman could possibly replace her in his life. That had been fifteen long years ago, and the pain lingered still.

‘I can tell you the house of the best courtesans in the city, your Grace,’ the captain was saying. ‘I know what you English lords like, eh? A woman who will bring you to such joy, such passion, such—’

‘Enough,’ Richard said curtly, the voice he always used with recalcitrant servants, dogs and children. Why did everyone on the Continent believe English peers were in constant rut, panting after low women in every port? ‘Leave me.’

The captain hesitated only a moment before bowing and backing away, and, with a grumbling sigh, Richard turned back towards the horizon. The sloop was drawing closer to the harbour now, the outlines of the city’s skyline sharpening in the fading light of day. Richard could make out the famous pointed bell tower of San Marco’s, looking precisely the way it did in the engravings in the books in his library at Aston Hall. There was much else beginning to appear from the misty dusk, of course, places Richard supposed he should have recognised as well, but his mind was too occupied with the coming reunion to concentrate on anything else.

He remained on the deck against the urging of his manservant to come below to ready himself for shore, and he ignored the same suggestion from the captain as the crew finally dropped their anchor. Soon he’d be hearing the merry laughter that meant the world to him, and feel the soft girlish arms flung around his shoulders in the embrace he’d missed so sorely these last months.

As the sloop entered the harbour proper, a flurry of small boats came through the mist towards them, odd long skiffs that reminded Richard more of the punts at Oxford than the usual longboats, with the oarsman standing high in the stern-sheets—or what would be the stern-sheets in an English boat. Foreigners had a different name for everything.

‘What are those skiffs, Potter?’ he asked his secretary as the man joined him at the rail.

‘Gondolas, your Grace,’ said Potter, supplying the proper word in his usual helpful manner. Like some small, bustling, black-clad badger, the secretary had ducked from the path of the sailors to join Richard, while the rest of the English party, Richard’s manservant and two footmen, saw to his belongings below. ‘Gondolas are the common means of travel throughout Venice, rather like hackneys in London.’

‘Then pray hail one for us directly,’ Richard said. ‘The sooner we’re off this infernal sloop and on dry land again, the better.’

At once Potter nodded, bowing over his clasped hands. ‘I am sorry, your Grace, but before we can venture into the city, we must clear customs.’

‘Customs?’ Blast, he’d forgotten that every last city and village in Italy considered itself its own little country, complete with a flock of fawning satraps who expected to have their palms greased. ‘Customs.’

‘I fear so, your Grace,’ Potter said. ‘That building on the promontory is the Dognana di Mare, the Customs House of Venice, your Grace, where we must go—’

‘Where you must go, Potter,’ Richard said. ‘You see to whatever needs seeing to, and pay whatever fees the thieving devils demand. I’ll proceed directly to the ladies.’

Potter’s expression grew pinched. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, but surely you must realise that the customs officers will expect you—’

‘They can expect whatever they please,’ Richard said, ‘I’ve more important business this night than to bow and scrape to their wishes. They may call on me tomorrow, at a civil hour, at the—the, ah, what the devil is the place called?’

‘The Ca’ Battista, your Grace,’ Potter said. ‘But if you please, your Grace, we—’

‘Ca’ Battista,’ Richard repeated the house’s name to make sure he’d recall it, and nodded with satisfaction. Though he’d no notion what the words meant, they had a fine, righteous sound to them. ‘Tell the drones in the Customs House to come to me there.’

‘I beg your pardon, your Grace,’ Potter persisted, ‘but Venice has a very poor reputation in its treatment of English visitors. Venice is a republic, and their officials have little respect for foreign persons of rank, such as yourself. It can be a place full of danger, your Grace. This city is not London, and—’

‘But I am not a foreigner,’ Richard said. ‘I am an English peer. Now a boat, Potter, one of your gondolas, at once. At once!’

Soon after Richard was, in fact, in a gondola, seated on a low bench against leather cushions, his long legs bent at an ungainly angle before him. Yet he couldn’t deny the swift efficiency of this peculiar vessel as it glided into one of the channels, or canals, that divided the city and served as a type of watery streets. On this evening, the canal seemed muffled in mist and fog and the endless lapping of the wavelets against the buildings, with the striped poles used for mooring like so many drunken demons lurching through the waters.

Without a city’s usual bustle and clatter from horses, carriages and wagons, the canals seemed oddly quiet, so quiet that to Richard the loudest sound must surely be the racing of his own heart. His long journey, and his waiting, was nearly done.

‘Ca’ Battista, signori,’ the oarsman announced as the gondola slowed before one of the grandest of the houses: a tall square front of white stone, punctuated with balconies and pointed windows frosted with elaborate carvings, which sat so low on the dark water that it seemed to float upon it. The gondolier guided the boat in place before the house’s landing, bumping lightly against the dock. Roused by the noise, a sleepy-eyed porter opened the house’s door and held up a lantern to peer down from the stone steps.

‘Stop gaping, man,’ Potter shouted as Richard clambered from the gondola. ‘Go to your mistress and tell her that the Duke of Aston is here.’

Still the servant hesitated, his face full of bewilderment. With an oath of impatience, Richard swept past him and through the open door, his long cloak swinging from his shoulders. The entry hall was a hexagon, supported by more of the tall columns and pointed arches. A pair of gilded cherubs crowned the newels at the base of the staircase, the steep steps rising up into the murky gloom. The floor was tiled, the walls painted with faded pictures, with everything dismally half-lit by a single hanging lantern. There were no other servants to be seen besides the single hapless porter; in fact, Richard had no company at all except his own echoing footsteps.

He swore to himself with furious 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 travelling foreigners as lodgers.

‘Madam,’ the duke said curtly to the signora, too caught up in his own anger to perceive her slight. ‘Damnation, Miss Wood, come down here where I can see you properly.’

Jane grabbed her skirts to one side so she wouldn’t trip, and hurried down to stand before him.

Or, rather, beneath him. In the half-year since she’d last seen him at Aston Hall, she’d forgotten how much taller he was than she, and how much larger, too. The duke had a presence that few men could match, a physical energy that seemed to vibrate from him like the rays from the sun. While most men of his rank and age masked their emotions behind a show of genteel boredom, he let them run galloping free. The results could make him either the very best of men, a paragon of charming good nature and generous spirit, or the very worst of devils, when his temper triumphed. Everyone acquainted with the duke knew this to be so, from his daughters to his servants, his neighbours, even his pack of hunting dogs.

As, of course, did Jane. And there was absolutely no doubt as to which side of the duke now held sway.

‘Explain, Miss Wood,’ he ordered curtly. ‘Now.’

‘Yes, your Grace.’ She took another deep breath, and forced herself to meet his gaze. ‘Your daughters have both wed most excellent gentlemen, your Grace, gentlemen of whom I dare to believe you yourself will approve upon acquaintance.’

‘Then why the devil didn’t they wait to ask me properly?’ the duke demanded. ‘Gentlemen, hah. Only the lowest rascal steals away a lady from her family like that.’

‘In ordinary circumstances, they would have, your Grace,’ Jane agreed, blushing at what she must next say. ‘But once your daughters had…ah…become their lovers, it seemed best that they wed at once before—’

‘My girls were ruined?’ the duke asked, sputtering with horror.

‘Not ruined, your Grace,’ Jane said. ‘They were—they are—in love, and love will not be denied.’

‘It would have if I’d been here,’ he said grimly. ‘Their names, Miss Wood, their names.’

‘Lady Mary wed Lord John Fitzgerald in Paris—’

‘An Irishman? My Mary let herself be seduced and wed to an Irishman?’

‘A gentleman of Irish birth, your Grace,’ Jane said firmly, determined to defend the choices that both her charges had made. ‘His lordship is a younger son, true, but his brother is a marquis.’

‘An Irish peerage is as worthless as muck in a stable!’ the duke cried with disgust. ‘At least if the thing was done in Paris with a Romish priest, then I can have it dissolved as—’

‘Forgive me, your Grace, but they were wed properly, before an Anglican cleric,’ Jane said. ‘Lady Mary herself was most conscious of that.’

Pained, the duke closed his eyes. ‘If Mary’s thrown herself away on an Irishman, then what kind of scoundrel has ruined Diana?’

‘Lady Diana’s husband is Lord Anthony Randolph, your Grace, brother to the Earl of Markham.’

‘Another younger son, when with her beauty and breeding, she could have had a prince!’ He shook his head with despair. ‘At least he’s an Englishmen, yes?’

‘His father was, yes. His mother was from an ancient Roman family of great nobility, which is why his lordship has resided in that city all his life.’

‘A Roman by birth, and by blood,’ he said, bitterness welling over his words. ‘An Italian, draped with an English title. An Italian, and an Irishman. My God.’

‘I beg you, your Grace,’ Jane said softly. She loved his daughters, and because of that love, she owed it to them to try to make their father understand. ‘These are good and honourable gentlemen, worthy of—’

‘Miss Wood.’ He cut her off as surely as if the words had been wrought of the steel. ‘I trusted you with my dearest possessions on this earth, and you—you have carelessly let them slip away.’

‘But, your Grace, if I might explain—’

‘No.’ Pointedly he turned away from her. ‘Signora, pray show me to my rooms. I will dine there, alone, as soon as your kitchen can arrange it.’

Signora della Battista knew when to put aside her animosity, especially towards the gentleman who had leased her entire house in the winter, a season of few travellers. The Venetian republic was famous for its mercenaries, and the signora was no different.

‘This house is honoured beyond measure, most excellent sir,’ she said in English. ‘My finest chamber shall be at your disposal, and my cook will prepare his very best to tempt you. This way, if you please.’

As Jane watched the duke follow the signora up the stairs, she saw how his usually squared shoulders sagged with weariness and discouragement, how the jagged white salt-stains from the sea worn into his once-elegant dark cloak seemed to illustrate just how long and arduous his journey here had been. She deeply regretted disappointing him, and though she knew better, she impulsively hurried up the stairs after him.

‘Your Grace, if you please,’ she said softly. ‘If I might speak to you further, to explain and—’

‘You’ve explained more than enough for tonight, Miss Wood,’ he said, brushing her away. ‘If you’ve any sense left at all, you should prefer to wait until tomorrow to hear what else I shall say to you.’

This time, Jane did not follow. Instead she remained behind, alone on the staircase, listening as the voices and footsteps of the duke and the signora grew fainter before they finally faded away.

It couldn’t have gone any worse with his Grace, short of him tossing her into the Grand Canal. Perhaps, Jane thought with growing despair, his Grace was saving that for tomorrow. In any event, she should prepare herself for the worst. Lady Mary and Lady Diana had assured her that their father would understand, and that he couldn’t possibly blame Jane for their choices. Yet already she’d seen that he could, and he would.

She had failed in her duty, failed in a way that in her entire life she’d never failed before. She had put the wishes of her charges ahead of their parent, an unforgivable sin in any governess. Yet still she believed she’d acted in the interests of both sisters. Wasn’t that the first order of her responsibilities? To put the welfare of her charges before everything else? But because of it, she was sure she’d now be turned out here in a foreign country, without references, or worse, with damning ones from the duke.

Slowly she climbed the rest of the stairs and headed down the long hallway to her room. She’d already dined earlier with the signora; there was nothing left for her to do this evening beyond preparing for her seemingly inevitable departure in the morning.

Like all the lesser rooms in grand Venetian houses, hers lay between the elegant bedchambers that were to have been occupied by the duke’s two daughters. One of these faced the front of the house, with tall windows and a balcony that overlooked the Grand Canal, while the other faced the house’s rear courtyard and private garden. Although comfortable enough, Jane’s chamber was undeniably intended for a servant, with a lesser view of the Rio della Madonnetta. Depending on the hour and the cast of the sun, candles were necessary, and the tiny stove for heat did little to relieve the winter damp either.

Always frugal, Jane lit only the single candlestick beside the small bed. She set her two trunks on the coverlet, and briskly set about emptying the clothes-press and chest of her belongings. Given the humble nature of her wardrobe, packing her clothes into the trunks took no time at all, and only her letters now remained to be sorted. She changed from her gown into her nightshift, brushed out her hair from its customary tightly pinned knot and wrapped an oversized wool shawl around her shoulders against the chill. Then, with fresh determination, she scooped the bundled papers into her arms and headed for the front bedchamber.

Once Signora della Battista had understood that Jane had arrived alone, without the English ladies who had been expected, she’d given the governess leave to use the other two bedchambers as well. It was of no concern to the signora who occupied them; she’d already been handsomely paid in advance long ago by the duke’s agents.

But for Jane, the luxurious bedchambers had only added to the dream-like quality of her visit to Venice. Each room had exuberant carved and gilded panelling and swirling paintings of frolicking ancient goddesses and cupids. Huge looking-glasses reflected the view of the canal and the garden, and magnified the dappled light off the water as well.

Jane hadn’t gone so far as to sleep in either of the huge bedsteads—each more like a royal barge than a mere bed—but she had permitted herself to spend time in the rooms, and she’d taken to writing letters at the delicate lady’s desk overlooking the Grand Canal.

Now she set her papers on the desk’s leather top, and settled in the gilded armchair. First she turned to the journal that had accompanied her ever since they’d left Aston Hall late last summer. This tour of the Continent had been planned to put the final finishing on the educations of Lady Mary and Lady Diana before they returned to London society and, most likely, suitable husbands and marriages. The trip was also meant to restore the reputation of Lady Diana, singed as it had been by a minor scandal. Her father had decided that a half-year abroad would serve to make people forget Diana’s misstep, and Jane had guided the girls with the mixed purpose of education, edification and whitewashing.

To Jane it had been a glorious challenge. She’d begun by recording her impressions each day in her journal in precise short entries, from their crossing to Calais, the carriage across the French countryside to Paris and then on to Italy, to Florence and Rome and finally here to Venice.

But those initial brief entries had soon blossomed into longer and longer writings as Jane had succumbed to the magic of travel, and the journal bristled with loose sheets of unruly scribbled notes and sketches that she’d hurriedly tucked inside. But that wasn’t all. Pressed into the journal were all kinds of small mementos, from tickets and playbills to wildflowers. Jane smiled as she rediscovered each one, remembering everything again. Not even his Grace could take such memories away from her, and with special care she tied the journal as tightly closed as she could.

Yet there’d been far more to her journey than medieval cathedrals, and this was to be found in the letters she’d received from Lady Mary and Lady Diana since their marriages. These were filled with rare joy and the happiness that each of them felt with their new husbands, and so much love that Jane’s eyes filled with tears.

How she missed her ladies, her girls! Jane had thought she’d been prepared for their inevitable parting, the lot of all governesses; shejusthadn’t expected it to come so soon. As much as she’d enjoyed Venice, she would have much preferred it in their company, the way it was originally planned. But love, and those two excellent young gentlemen, had intervened, and though Jane would never wish otherwise for Mary and Diana, there were times when her loneliness without them felt like the greatest burden in the world. The two newlywed couples planned to meet here in Venice for Carnivale later in the month, and at their urging, she’d decided not to risk the hazardous winter voyage back to England, but remained here instead to see them once again. They’d convinced her that, since everything had been long paid for, she might as well make use of the lodgings, and she’d hesitantly agreed. But now, everything had changed.

She’d never expected the duke to surprise her like this, or to make so perilous a journey on what seemed like a whim. Yet as soon as she’d seen his face, she’d understood—he’d missed his daughters just as she missed them now, and he would have travelled ten times as far to see them again. She’d been stunned by the raw emotion in his face, the swift transition from anticipation to bitterest disappointment. At Aston Hall, he never would have revealed so much of himself; he was always simply his Grace, distant and omnipotent, a deity far above mere governesses.

Yet tonight, she’d glimpsed something else. Loneliness like that was unmistakable, as was the love that had inspired it. Didn’t she suffer the same herself?

Swiftly she tied the letters together once again. Better to go to bed than to sit about weeping like a sorrowful, sentimental do-nothing. She climbed into her bed, blew out the candle and closed her eyes, determined to lose her troubles in sleep.

But the harder she tried to sleep, the faster her restless thoughts churned, and the faster, too, that her first sympathy for the duke shifted into indignation on behalf of Mary and Diana.

She could just imagine him, snoring peacefully in the huge bed in the front bedchamber upstairs. Even asleep, he’d be completely resistant to the notion that his daughters might be happy with men of their own choosing instead of his. He didn’t want to hear their side. He’d already made his decision, and he was so stubborn he’d never change it now, either.

He wasn’t just a duke. He was a bully and a tyrant to his own daughters, and it was time—high time!—that someone stood up to him on their behalf.

She flung back the coverlet and hopped from her bed, grabbing her shawl from the back of the nearby chair. She gathered the ribbon-tied letters from Mary and Diana into her arms and, before she lost her courage, hurried from her room and up the stairs to the duke’s chambers. The rest of the house was silent with sleep, and by the pale light of the blue-glass night lantern hanging in the hall, her long shadow scurried up the stairs beside her.

She stood only a moment at the duke’s tall, panelled door before she thumped her fist. She waited, her bare feet chilled by the marble floor, heard nothing, then knocked again. In truth, she was only summoning the duke’s manservant, Wilson, or perhaps Mr Potter, but she’d still make her point.

The duke. Hah, more like the Duke of Intolerance than the mere Duke of Aston, to say such impossibly cruel things of his own new sons-in-law, without so much as the decency of—

‘Yes?’ The door swung open, not just a servant’s suspicious crack, but all the way. ‘What in blazes—Miss Wood!’

She gasped, clutching the letters more tightly in her arms. Not Wilson, or Potter, but the duke himself stood in the open door, scarce a foot apart from her. Clearly she’d roused him from his bed, and from a deep sleep, too, for he was scowling at her as if he wasn’t quite sure who she might be. She understood his confusion; she’d never seen him like this, either. He wore only his nightshirt, rumpled and loose, yet somehow revealing far more than his usual dress did because beneath all that snowy linen, he was…naked. The darker shadows beneath the fabric, the way the linen draped over his body, left no doubt, and Jane’s cheeks flamed at the horrible realisation. To make matters worse, the throat of the shirt was unbuttoned and open to reveal his chest and a large thatch of dark curling hair, his sleeves were pushed up over his well-muscled arms, and his stocky legs and large, bare feet showed below.

Hastily she looked back up to the safer territory of his face. Or perhaps it wasn’t. In all the time she’d been in his Grace’s employment, she’d never seen him this dishevelled, his hair loose around his face and his jaw roughened with a growth of darker beard, his whole expression without its usual reserve and control. It was unsettling, seeing him without his guard like this, and it made him less like his Grace, and more simply like any other man.

A large, scarcely dressed and surprisingly handsome man that she’d just summoned from his bed.

Heavens preserver her, what had she done?

Chapter Three

The duke stared down at Jane, clearly not pleased to find her standing at the door to his bedchamber in the middle of the night.

‘Miss Wood,’ he said again, sleepily rubbing his palm over his jaw, ‘why are you here? I thought we’d agreed that in the morning—’

‘Forgive me, your Grace, but this could not wait,’ Jane said, speaking to him more firmly than she’d ever thought she’d dare. ‘It is most important, you see.’

‘But it can’t be more than two hours past midnight,’ he protested. He was looking downwards, not at her face, and his scowl had become less perplexed, more thoughtful. Belatedly she realised that if she’d noticed he wore nothing beyond his nightclothes, then he was likely noticing the same of her. Yet instead of being mortified or shamed, she felt her irritation with him grow. How could he let himself be distracted in this idle fashion when so much—so very much!—was in question?

‘Forgive me for disturbing you, your Grace.’ She raised her chin, and impatiently shook her hair back from her eyes. ‘But your daughters and the gentlemen they wed deserve that much from me, your Grace, and I would never forgive myself if I didn’t speak on their behalf.’

His frown deepened, his thick, dark brows drawing sternly together. ‘No gentlemen would steal another man’s daughters. They are rogues and rascals, and I will deal with them accordingly.’

‘Your daughters would not agree with your judgement, your Grace.’

‘My daughters are too young to realise their folly, mere girls who—’

‘Forgive me, your Grace,’ Jane interrupted, her voice rising with uncharacteristic passion, ‘but they are women grown, who know their own hearts.’

‘“Their hearts,” hah,’ he scoffed. ‘That is the sorriest excuse for mischief in this world, Miss Wood. When I consider all the sorrow that has come from—’

‘Such as your own marriage, your Grace?’ she demanded hotly. ‘That is what I have always been told, and by those who would know. Did you not follow your heart when you wed her Grace, and at the same age as your daughters are now?’

His face froze, his anger stopped as cold as if he’d been turned to chilly stone.

And at once Jane realised the magnitude of what she’d done and what she’d said. The late Duchess of Aston was often mentioned at Aston Hall, and always with great affection and respect, and sorrow that she’d died so young. Her beauty, her kindness, her gentleness, all were praised and remembered by those who’d known her, and over time in the telling the duchess had become a paragon of virtue, a veritable saint. By an order so long-standing that its origins had been forgotten, no one spoke of her Grace before the duke. It was terribly tragic and romantic, true, but it was also the one rule of the house that was never broken.

Yet this was Venice, not Aston Hall. Things were different here, or perhaps it was Jane herself who was different after having been away for so many months. Either way she likely wasn’t a member of the duke’s household any longer, and certainly not after this.

‘Forgive me for speaking plainly, your Grace,’ she said. The words could not be taken back now, nor, truly, did Jane wish them unsaid, not in her present humour. ‘But how can you not wish the same contentment for your daughters that you found with—?’

‘You presume, Miss Wood,’ he said sharply. ‘You have no knowledge of these matters.’

‘I know the young ladies, your Grace,’ she insisted, ‘and what brings them joy and happiness.’

‘I know my own daughters!’

‘You may know them, your Grace, but you will never know the gentlemen they love, not so long as you remain so—so set against them.’

He drew back as abruptly as if she’d struck him. ‘Love,’ he said, practically spitting the word. ‘What do my daughters know of love? What can you know of it, Miss Wood?’

‘I know what I have read for myself in your daughters’ own words.’ She thrust the bundled letters into his arms, making him take them. ‘I know they are happy, and that they love the gentlemen they chose as their husbands. And that is what I know about love, your Grace.’

She curtsied briskly in her nightshift, then retreated without waiting to be properly dismissed. He did not try to stop her, nor did she look back.

She ran down the steps to her room, her shawl billowing out behind her shoulders. She closed the door to her bedchamber and took care to latch it. For what might be the last time, she sat at the gilded desk before the window, curling her feet beneath her and pressing her trembling palms to her cheeks.

She stared out at the mist rising from the canal and waited for her breathing to calm and her racing heart to slow. The night was still and quiet, with no sounds coming from his Grace’s rooms upstairs. By now he must have returned to his bed to sleep. By now, too, he would have made up his mind regarding her future. Which was just as well, for she’d decided it, too.

With a sigh, she reached for a clean sheet of paper and a pen, and began to write her letter giving notice to the Duke of Aston.

‘Your Grace!’ Bleary-eyed, Wilson hurried out from the shadows, his striped nightcap askew over one ear and his nightshirt stuffed haphazardly into his breeches. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, I did not hear you call.’

‘I didn’t.’ Richard still stood in the doorway to his rooms, scowling down the stairs where Miss Wood had vanished. She’d appeared like a wild-haired wraith, and disappeared like one, too, so fast that he wondered now if he’d dreamed the whole thing. ‘I answered the door myself.’

‘Oh, your Grace, you shouldn’t have done that, indeed you shouldn’t have,’ his manservant said, scandalised. ‘It’s not safe, not in a queer foreign place such as this.’

‘I’m safe enough, Wilson,’ Richard said. ‘Besides, it was hardly some brigand come to the rob me. It was Miss Wood.’

‘Miss Wood, your Grace?’ asked Wilson, clearly astonished. ‘Our Miss Wood? Come here, at this hour? Why, your Grace, I’d scarce believe it, not of Miss Wood.’

‘Nor I,’ Richard said. ‘Yet here she was, and in a righteous fury, too.’

He glanced down at the two bundles of letters she’d left with him, each tied neatly with ribbons. Of course they’d be neatly tied, just as he was certain they’d each be folded back into their seals and sorted in precedence of the date they’d been received. That was the way Miss Wood always did things, with brisk, predictable order. But there’d been nothing orderly or predictable about her outburst just now—not one thing.

‘She must’ve had a powerful strong reason, your Grace,’ Wilson said, hovering like the old nursemaid he very nearly was. ‘It don’t seem like her in the least.’

‘It didn’t, indeed.’ Earlier this day he’d barely noticed Miss Wood at all, except to register that she was in fact the same governess he’d trusted with his girls’ welfare. She’d simply been Miss Wood, the woman that had lived beneath his roof for nearly a decade, the same stern, plain Miss Wood that would have cowed him into obedience as a boy and had gone completely unnoticed by him as a man.

Or had until now. He’d never seen her as he just had: looking younger, much younger and more beguiling, her hair not scraped back beneath a linen cap, but loose and tousled like a dark cloud over her shoulders, her usually pinched cheeks flushed with emotion, her eyes anything but serene. Gone, too, was the strict shapeless gown, with her body bundled and barricaded within. Instead she’d been clad in only a worn linen nightdress that had slipped and slithered over her shoulders, and had revealed far more than it hid, likely far more than she’d intended. As a man, there was no conceivable way he could have overlooked the heavy fullness of her breasts, or how the chill had made her nipples tighten enticingly beneath the linen.

He grumbled wordlessly to himself, a kind of mental shake, and pushed the door shut with his elbow. God knows plenty of scullery-maid seductresses would flaunt themselves before their masters to secure extra favours, but he wasn’t that kind of master, and Miss Wood wasn’t that kind of servant—which had made this evening all the more unsettling. He’d always thought of her as a dry old virgin, scarcely female, and now—now he saw that she wasn’t. Not at all. No wonder he couldn’t forget how she’d looked, standing there with her little toes bare to lecture him about love.

About love. Miss Wood, coming to rouse him from his bed to challenge him in her nightdress. Damnation, what was it about this infernal Italian air that seemed to turn everything upside down?

‘Here you are, Your Grace,’ Wilson said, holding his dressing gown out before him. ‘Put this on, and warm yourself. This is a perilously damp place, your Grace, all this water and musty old plaster, and I won’t have you taken ill from standing about. Now here, let me take those papers from you.’

‘No, I’ll keep them,’ Richard said, ignoring the dressing gown and returning to his bed, or rather, the bed that had come with the room. No respectable Englishman would ever consider such a bedstead as ‘his’, not when it was tricked out with gilded swans and crimson hangings shot with gold thread. All it required was a looking-glass overhead in the canopy and a naked whore or two to make it fit for the priciest brothel in London.

Grumbling, he let Wilson pull the coverlet up and plump his pillows as he picked up the first package of letters, the ones that had come from his older daughter Mary. One look at that familiar, girlish penmanship, and he forgot all about Miss Wood and her bare feet.

How could his girls marry without his consent? How could they abandon him like this, without so much as a by your leave? How could they possibly have changed so fast from his little girls in their white linen dresses and pink silk sashes into women grown and wed to other men?

‘Ah, your Grace,’ Wilson said, beaming. ‘Letters from the young ladies?’

‘That will be all, Wilson ,’ Richard said curtly. ‘Leave me.’

Leave me—that was what his girls had done, hadn’t they? He’d come all this way for them, yet they’d already gone.

He waited until Wilson had gone, then slowly opened the first of Mary’s letters and tipped the sheet towards the candlestick on the table beside the bed. It felt strange reading letters not addressed to him, like listening at a keyhole or behind a fence, practices no gentleman would do.

Yet as soon as he began to read, he heard the words in Mary’s voice, as clearly as if she were in the room speaking to him, and his heart filled with emotion. The letter seemed to date from early autumn, soon after her marriage, after Miss Wood had continued on to Italy with Diana and left Mary behind in Paris with her new husband.

Ah, Mary, his dear Mary. Mary had always been his favourite of his two daughters. It wasn’t that he loved her any more than he loved Diana, for he didn’t, but Mary was easier to like than Diana. With her calm, thoughtful manner and pleasing serenity, Mary was the opposite of her impulsive and passionate sister. For better or worse, Diana took after him, while Mary favoured her mother, and as she’d grown older, Richard had come to rely on Mary to handle things about the house that had once been his wife Anne’s domain. Even now he’d put off making certain decisions at Aston Hall—new paint for the drawing room, improvements that Cook wanted in the kitchen—telling himself that they could wait until Mary came home to guide him.

Except that now, as he read, he learned she wasn’t coming home. No, worse—that home for her no longer meant Aston Hall, but wherever this Irish-born rascal she’d married took her. He learned that though this man seemed to have some sort of income, he’d no proper home for Mary beyond bachelor lodgings in London. Instead they seemed to be content to live like vagabonds in Paris—in Paris!—dining out and wandering about day and night. To be sure, their lodgings were in an excellent area that even he recognised by name, and at least Mary had enough of a staff to be respectable. Richard could learn that much from the letters, and know his Mary wasn’t in any need or want.

But as he read on, Richard discovered that Mary had found more than simply respectable lodgings in Paris. In this Lord John Fitzgerald, she also seemed to have discovered a man who shared her interest in musty old pictures and books and long-ago history: a man who could make her happy.

And Mary was happy. There wasn’t any doubt of that. Every page, every word seemed to bubble with unabashed joy in her new life and her new husband. Richard couldn’t recall the last time she’d been as jubilant and light-hearted as this, not since she’d been a small girl before her mother had died.

Diana’s letters were shorter, less thoughtful, and full of the dashes and false starts that made her writing so similar to her speech, darting here and there like a dragonfly over the page. Her new bridegroom, Lord Anthony Randolph, was delicious, and sought endlessly to please her. Their life together in his native Rome was full of music and friends, parties and other amusements. She’d ordered a new gown, a new hat, yellow stockings to his lordship’s delight. He’d given her a talking bird from Africa. Like her sister, she was happy, more happy, she claimed, than she’d ever been in her life. She was also already four months with child.

His grandchild.

Richards groaned, and let his daughter’s familiar girlish signature blur and swim before his tired eyes. He wasn’t even forty, yet tonight he felt twice that. Oh, he’d learned a great deal from the letters. He’d learned that though he’d always done his best to make his girls happy, these unknown young men had succeeded far beyond his lowly paternal efforts. He’d learned that, no matter that his daughters had been the very centrepiece of his life, he really didn’t know them at all, not as they were now. He’d learned that Mary and her husband were likely even now on their way here to Venice to meet Diana and her husband, and together to bid their favourite Miss Wood farewell before she sailed away for England. But the blistering greeting that Richard would have offered them earlier wouldn’t happen. Not now, not after he’d read these letters.

Because what he’d learned the most from them this night was exactly what Miss Wood had predicted: that his darling girls had somehow changed into women in love, blissful, heavenly love, with the men they’d chosen as their mates for life.

And he, their father, had been left behind.

Chapter Four

Giovanni Rinaldini di Rossi stood close by his bedchamber window, watching. It was early for the Englishwoman to come calling on him, impossibly early by Venetian standards, yet there was Miss Wood, hurrying across the bridge towards his house. She walked briskly, with the determination and purpose with which she seemed to pursue everything, her plain dark skirts rippling around her legs. He knew ancient, widowed matriarchs who dressed with less solemnity than this little English wren did. Almost like a nun, she was, and the thought made him smile. No wonder he found her so desirable.

Without shifting his gaze, he idly touched one fingertip to the chocolate powder floating on the foamy top of his cappuccino and tapped it lightly on the tip of his tongue to taste the sweetness. Like so many of the windows in Venice, this one was designed for seeing without being seen, for mystery rather than clarity. The glass was not set in flat panes, as was done in other places, but in small round bull’s-eyes framed in iron. Miss Wood would have no idea he was standing here, or that he’d been watching her ever since he’d glimpsed her in the gondola. A pretty deception, like everything else that made life interesting.

He shifted to one side so he could watch her as she waited at his door. She’d pushed back the hood of her cloak, and now he could see how the chilly early morning air had pinked her cheeks and the tip of her nose.

There were never any of the usual female artifices of powder or paint with her, none of the little false ways of hiding from a man. She was always as she seemed, fresh as new cream. Despite her age, he’d stake a thousand gold sequins that she was a virgin. He could sense it. She’d be as untouched as any young postulant, really, and he’d always a weakness for debauching convent flesh.

It was this utter lack of guile that had tempted di Rossi from the moment Miss Wood had appeared one morning in his drawing room, her letter of introduction in her gloved hands. Seduction, corruption, ruin or simply a worldly education in pleasure—it would all amount to the same thing for him. She was a governess of no social standing or family, a foreigner, in truth no more significant than any other servant. He could do whatever he pleased with her without consequences.

Now he watched as she entered his house, the door closing after her, then he smiled, and considered the delicious possibilities she presented like a gourmet before a rich feast. Though clearly she’d the body of a woman beneath that grim, shapeless gown, in her heart she still had that innocent’s trust in the goodness of men. Teaching her otherwise was proving to be the greatest diversion he’d had in years.

Jane perched on the very edge of the chair. No matter how she tried, she could never quite relax on the delicate gilded chairs here in Signor di Rossi’s drawing room. The red-silk damask cushions seemed too elegant to sit upon and the artfully carved legs in the shape of a griffin’s clawed feet seemed too delicate to support any grown person. She was certain, too, that the chairs were very old and very valuable, like everything else in the signor’s house, and she would hate to repay his hospitality by being the clumsy Englishwoman who broke a chair.

Once again she drew her watch from her pocket to check the time. She realised that calling here so early in the day could be interpreted as an affront, especially by the signor, who had the most refined manners she had ever encountered in a gentleman. But the hour could not be helped, not if she wished to offer both her thanks and farewell. As much as she’d enjoyed his company these last weeks, her time for the idle pleasures of art and conversation were done.

Restlessly she smoothed her skirts over her knees. She’d already accomplished much this morning, making her plans for life beyond the Farren family. She had decided to stay here in Venice rather than return to England, where her likely lack of references from the duke would be an impossible handicap. With the assistance of the English ambassador here, she had already found new lodgings with a Scottish widow that were both respectable and inexpensive. The ambassador had also promised to help her find a new place with a family with children here, either English or Italian. Failing that, she could be a companion to a widow or other elderly lady. She couldn’t afford to be particular. She’d little money of her own, certainly not enough for the costly passage back to England. No wonder her situation was a complicated one, and vulnerable, too. Given his Grace’s fury last night, she could return to the Ca’ Battista and find all her belongings bobbing in the canal outside by his orders.

‘Ah, Miss Wood, buon giorno, buon giorno!’ Signor di Rossi entered the room with the easy self-assurance that generations of aristocratic di Rossis had bred into his blood. ‘You cannot know how a visit from you pleases me.’

He was too dark, too exotic by English standards, but here in Venice Jane thought he was the very model of an Italian gentleman. He was perhaps thirty, even thirty-five. Over his shirt and black breeches he wore a long, loose dressing gown of quilted red-and-gold silk. With the pale winter sunlight glinting on the gold threads, the extravagant garment floated around him as he walked, more like a king’s ceremonial robes than a gentleman’s morning undress while at home. By contrast, his olive-skinned face seemed almost ascetic, his cheekbones and nose sharply defined. His black hair was sleeked back into a simple queue, and his dark eyes were full of welcome as he reached out to take her hand, and lift her up from her curtsy.

‘You are most kind, signor.’ Jane smiled, flushing with embarrassment as he held her fingers a moment longer than was proper in England. ‘Most kind. You always have been that way to me.’

‘But that is hardly a challenge, Miss Wood,’ he said, motioning for her to sit. ‘Not between friends such as we, surely?’

Purposefully she didn’t sit, determined to keep the visit short, as she’d intended. ‘I am honoured that a gentleman so grand as yourself would consider me as such, signor.’

‘Please, Miss Wood, no more.’ He waved his hand gracefully through the air, the wide sleeve of his banyan slipping back over his arm. ‘You speak as an Englishwoman who has had the misfortune to have spent her life in the thrall of your English king. Venice is a republic, her air free for all her citizens to breathe. If I wish to call a gondolier, or a fisherman, or an English governess my friend, then I may.’

As experienced as Jane was at masking her feelings, she couldn’t keep back a forlorn small sigh at that. She’d miss her time with Signore di Rossi, discussing the beautiful paintings that his family had collected over the centuries. She’d met him soon after she’d arrived in Venice, through a letter of introduction meant for the duke’s daughters. This was the customary way that well-bred English visitors could view private collections on the Continent, a day or two walking the halls of palaces and country houses with a watchful housekeeper as a guide. But to Jane’s surprise, the signor had shown her his pictures himself, and invited her to return the following day, and every day after that.

And the signor was speaking the truth. He had treated her as a friend, almost as an equal. He had respected her observations about art so much that he’d sought her opinions as if they had actual merit. No other gentleman had listened to Jane like that before. Was it any wonder, then, that her visits here to him had become the most anticipated part of her day?

And now—now they must be done.

‘Let me send for refreshment for you,’ the signor continued as he stepped to the bell to summon a servant. ‘It’s early, yes, but not so early that I cannot play the good host to my favourite guest. A plate of biscotti, a cappuccino, a dish of chocolate, or perhaps your English tea?’

‘Thank you, no, signor,’ Jane said, though sorely tempted. She’d come to adore Venetian chocolate in her time here, and it would be one of the things she’d miss most when she returned to England. ‘You are most generous, most kind, but I cannot stay.’

He turned on his heel and stopped, one black brow raised with surprise. ‘How do you mean this, Miss Wood? How can you come, and yet not intend to stay?’

‘Exactly that, signor. I’ve come only to thank you, and to—to say farewell.’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I shall not permit it. I’ve something special and rare to show you today, a manuscript book, drawn by hand four hundred years ago in a Byzantine monastery. The artistry will steal your breath, Miss Wood, with each parchment page brought to life with ground lapis and gold leaf and—’

‘Forgive me, signor, but I cannot stay,’ she repeated. She had to tell him the truth; putting it off like this was not making her task any easier. ‘My master, his Grace the Duke of Aston, unexpectedly arrived in Venice last evening, and he—he is most displeased with me. I have given my notice to resign my place in his service, and must find another directly.’

‘No!’ He rushed back to her, the scarlet silk billowing after him. ‘What manner of man is this duke, to be displeased with you?’

‘He is a very great man in England, signor.’ Jane sighed, thinking of how different the gruff, broad-shouldered duke was from the man before her, like comparing a great shaggy roaring lion to a sleekly self-possessed jaguar. How could she fairly describe the hearty, noble Englishness of his Grace to a gentleman as elegantly refined as Signore di Rossi? ‘I still believe that I did what was best for his daughters, but because His Grace was expecting to find them here in Venice with me, he was…distraught.’

‘For that he has cast you out?’ the signor asked. ‘For doing your duty as best you could?’

‘I did not wait for him to dismiss me,’ Jane said with care. To fault the duke felt disloyal; besides, when she remembered how shocked he’d been, she could almost excuse him. ‘But because I felt it was inevitable, given the degree of his unhappiness, I chose to give notice first.’

Di Rossi stared at her, openly aghast. ‘Yet from your telling, the daughters love you as if you shared the same blood.’

‘They did love me,’ she said sadly, for that, too, was true. Mary and Diana did love her, and she them, but their father loved them, too, and she thought again of the sorrow and pain she’d seen on his face last night. ‘They do. But it is their father, not they, who decides my fate, and I’d rather not wait to hear his judgement.’

The signor frowned and shook his head. ‘That is barbarously unfair, Miss Wood. To punish you for the sins of the daughters!’

‘Daughters in my safe-keeping. I was their governess. I was to watch over them, and keep them from harm.’

‘Love is not harm.’

‘Love without a father’s consent is,’ she countered wistfully. ‘At least it is if the father is an English peer of the realm.’

He shook his head. ‘This puts me in mind of an ancient tale, of a Roman messenger put to death for bringing ill news of a battle to his emperor.’

‘Forgive me, but it was a Spartan messenger.’ She smiled sadly. ‘You see how it is with me, signor. I cannot help myself. I am a governess bred to the marrow of my bones.’

‘Ah, cara mia,’ he said. ‘You were a woman before you ever were a governess.’

Cara mia: my dear. Jane’s cheeks warmed, even as she drew herself up straighter into her customary propriety. She’d learned early in her trip that gentlemen on the Continent tossed about endearments much more freely than Englishmen, yet this—this felt different.

‘These last weeks have been most enjoyable, signor, that is true,’ she said, as briskly as she could, ‘but it is past time I put aside my idleness, and found another place where I can be useful.’

‘To fill your eyes and feed your soul with the beauty of great paintings, the works of the finest masters—that is not idleness,’ he countered. ‘That is useful, Miss Wood, more useful than recalling the lesson of the Spartan messenger.’

‘A well-fed eye does nothing for an empty stomach, signor,’ Jane said, her sadness and regret rising by the second. The end would always have come in time, of course. Even if Mary and Diana had remained with her, they would have been bound to sail for home at the end of February; their passages home had been booked for months along with the rest of their itinerary. But this way, with so little warning, somehow seemed infinitely more wrenching.

‘I must work to support myself,’ she began again. ‘I’ve no choice in the matter. Being a governess is not so very bad, you know.’

‘Yet a governess is not a slave, chained to his oar in the galleys,’ he reasoned. ‘Even an English governess. No matter who employs you next, you’ll have a day to yourself each week, yes? Even the lowest scullery maid has that. A day you can come here to me?’

‘But a governess is expected to set a certain tone of propriety and behaviour, signor,’ she said. ‘Calling on gentlemen would not be considered as either.’

‘Then don’t call,’ he said with maddening logic. ‘I shall meet you elsewhere in the city by agreement. A hooded cloak, a mask, and the thing is done. No one shall ever know which is the governess, which the great lady. Venice is the best city in the world for assignations, you know.’

Any other time, and she might have laughed at the outrageousness of such a suggestion. ‘I am very sorry, signor, but I cannot do that, either. My reputation must be impeccable. I have no resources of my own, you see, nor any—’

‘Miss Wood.’ Gently he took her hand again, though this time from affection, not the polite necessity of assisting her. She understood the difference at once, and tensed in response.

He smiled over their joined hands, his fingers tightening ever so slightly around hers.

‘Signor di Rossi,’ she protested, startled. ‘Please. Please!’

‘Know that you have a friend in Venice,’ he said, his voice rich and low. ‘That is all. Know that you are not without resources, as you fear. Know that you are not…alone.’

Was it a dare, an invitation, an offer? Or simply an expression of fond regard between acquaintances and nothing more?

‘Goodbye, Signor di Rossi,’ she said, barely a whisper. ‘Goodbye.’

She pulled her hand free, turned away and, without looking back once, fled.

Chapter Five

‘Blast these infernal foreign clerks,’ Richard said, finally giving voice to his exasperation. He’d scarce sat down to his breakfast before the officials from the Customs House had descended upon him, and it had taken the better part of the morning for him and Potter to settle their questions and finally send them on their way. ‘They’re so puffed with their own importance; they do believe they’re as grand as his Majesty himself. Did they truly believe we’d try smuggling rubbish in our trunks?’

Potter made a small bow of agreement. ‘The Venetians are most particular about their trade, your Grace. They have such a long tradition of trade by sea, that they are most watchful guarding their port.’

‘Their entire city’s a port, as far as I can see.’ Richard sighed, and reached for his glass again. Despite the canals and rivers everywhere, he’d been warned for the sake of his health to stay clear of the water for drinking, and from what he’d seen floating about beneath his window, he instantly agreed. Instead he’d been advised to drink the local wine, a rich, fruity red from the nearby Veneto that was surprisingly agreeable, even when accompanied by drones from the Customs House. ‘At least we satisfied them that we’re no rascally rum-smugglers, eh?’

Potter smiled. ‘Quite, your Grace.’

‘Quite, indeed.’ Richard nodded, then sighed again. What lay next for this morning—or what was left of it—wouldn’t be nearly as easily resolved. He didn’t enjoy admitting he was wrong any more than the next man did. ‘Ah, well, now for the rest of my business. Pray send in Miss Wood to me.’

‘Forgive me, your Grace,’ Potter said with a delicate hesitation, ‘but that is not possible. She’s not in the house.’

‘Not here? Of course she’s here. Where the devil could she be otherwise?’

‘I do not know, your Grace.’ Potter stepped forwards, instantly producing a sealed letter in that mystifying way of all good secretaries. ‘But she did leave this for you to read at your convenience.’

Richard grabbed the letter from Potter’s hand. ‘I cannot believe Miss Wood would simply disappear,’ he said, cracking the seal with his thumb. ‘She’s never been given to such irresponsibility. It’s not like her.’

‘I expect she’ll return, your Grace,’ Potter offered. ‘It isn’t as if she’s run off. All her belongings are still in her room.’

‘Well, that’s a mercy, isn’t it?’ With a grumbling sigh Richard turned to the neatly written page. A single sheet, no more, covered with Miss Wood’s customary model penmanship. If she’d been upset by their exchange last night, she wasn’t going to betray it with her pen, that was certain.

‘Damnation,’ he muttered unhappily. ‘Thunder and damnation! Potter, what does she mean by this? You read this, and tell me. What’s she about?’

Quickly the secretary scanned the letter, and handed it back to the duke. ‘It would seem that Miss Wood has given notice, Your Grace, effective immediately.’

That was what Richard had thought, too, but hadn’t wanted to accept. ‘But she can’t resign, Potter. I won’t permit it.’

Potter screwed up his mouth as if he’d eaten something sour. ‘You can’t forbid it, your Grace, if she no longer wishes to remain in your employment. As Miss Wood herself writes, with the young ladies wed and gone, there’s little reason for—’

‘I know what she damn well wrote, Potter,’ Richard said crossly. He set the letter on the desk and smoothed it flat with his palm. When he’d first heard that his daughters had married, he’d been ready to banish Miss Wood from his sight for the rest of their combined days on this earth. But once he’d read the letters from his daughters, he realised that Miss Wood was the last link he might have with them.

The last link. Lightly he traced her signature with his fingertip. He thought of how hard she’d tried to make the news as palatable as possible to him last night, how she’d tried to ease both his temper and his sorrow. She’d done her best for his girls in this, the way she always had, yet she’d also done her best for him. How many years had she been in his household, anyway? He couldn’t remember for certain. It seemed as if she’d always been there, setting things quietly to rights whenever they went awry, looking after his girls as loyally as if they’d been her own. He could hardly expect more, nor would he have asked for more, either. Surely he must have told her so, somewhere in all the time that his daughters were growing up. Somewhere, at some time, he must have, hadn’t he?

Hadn’t he?

‘Miss Wood is still a young woman, your Grace,’ Potter was saying, stating the patently obvious as he too often did. ‘No doubt she is already looking towards her future, and a position with another—’

‘I know perfectly well how young she is, Potter,’ Richard said, and as soon as he spoke he remembered how she’d looked last night, her hair loose and full over her shoulders and her eyes wide and glowing with the fervour of her argument. Oh, aye, she was young, a good deal younger than he’d remembered her to be. Now he couldn’t forget it, and his confusion made his words sharp. ‘Nor do I need you to tell me of her future.’

Potter sighed, and bowed. ‘No, your Grace.’

‘Miss Wood’s future, indeed,’ Richard muttered, pointedly turning away from Potter to gaze out the window. Nothing had prepared him for losing his girls as abruptly as he had, and now he’d no intention of letting Miss Wood go before he was ready. ‘As if I’d so little regard for the young woman that I’d turn her out in a foreign place like some low, cast-off strumpet.’

‘Your Grace.’

He swung around at once. Miss Wood herself was standing there beside Potter, her gloved hands neatly clasped at her waist and her expression perfectly composed.

‘Forgive me for startling you, your Grace,’ she said, ‘but Signora della Battista told me you wished to see me directly. I have only now returned, and I came to you as soon as I could.’

He nodded, for once unable to think of what to say. Hell, what had he been saying when she’d entered? Something unfortunate about strumpets and being turned out.

‘Potter, leave us,’ he ordered, determined not to embarrass her any further. ‘I will speak to Miss Wood alone.’

The secretary backed his way from the room, and shut the door after him. Miss Wood continued to stand, her expression so unperturbed that Richard found himself unsettled by it.

‘Sit, Miss Wood, sit,’ he said, waving his hand towards a nearby chair. ‘That is, if you wish to.’

‘Thank you, your Grace.’ She sat with an unstudied grace, the slight flutter of her plain woollen skirts around her ankles reminding him painfully of her night-shift last night in the hallway.

Unaware of his thoughts, she sighed and glanced down at her letter, still open on the table before him.

Her smile became more forced, its earlier pleasantness gone. ‘I suppose you wish to discuss terms, your Grace. I can be gone from this house by nightfall today, if that is your desire.’

‘It most certainly is not!’ he exclaimed, appalled. ‘Look here, Miss Wood, what I was saying when you came in—I didn’t mean you, or that you were to leave.’

Her eyes widened with bewilderment, and she flushed. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, but I don’t understand. When I entered just now, you were looking through the window, saying nothing.’

‘Very well, then, very well.’ He cleared his throat to cover his discomfort. That was a fine start to things, stammering out an apology when none was needed, like some tongue-tied schoolboy. ‘I’ve no intention of sending you off to fend for yourself without any warning. It’s not right, and I won’t have it said that I’d do such a thing to any woman in my employment.’

‘You’re very…kind.’ Now her smile was tremulous with an uncertainty he’d never seen from her before, and that touched him at once. Little tendrils of her dark hair had escaped from beneath her linen cap, doubtless coaxed into curls by Venice’s perpetual dampness, and reminding him again of last night. Why had he always believed her hair to be straight and uninteresting before this?

‘It’s not kindness,’ he said as firmly as he could. ‘It’s my duty to you, in return for how well you have served my daughters.’

‘It is kindness, your Grace,’ she said carefully, ‘and I thank you for it. But I cannot continue here, a governess with no charges to govern. It would not be right.’

‘And I say it is.’ To prove it, he took her letter and tore it in two. ‘There. We’ll forget about this notice, and you can continue with the same wages. I’ll have Potter settle the particulars, to make sure I’m not in arrears with you for the quarter.’

‘But for what, your Grace?’ she asked. ‘Before you arrived, I could continue to stay here until I took the passage for home because I was following my orders as we had arranged last summer. I could continue as I was, because I’d no reason not to, even without any responsibilities. But now that you do know my situation, everything changes. To accept wages from you for being idle would be perceived as unseemly, your Grace.’

Her cheeks had remained pink, and he wondered if she, too, were remembering last night. Had he surprised her as much as she had him? Had she been aware of him as a man, and not just a master? Is that what she meant by ‘unseemly’?

‘You’ve been in my household for years, Miss Wood.’ A thousand memories of her with his daughters came racing back to him—more, really, than he had of the girls with his wife. All he asked now was that she share that with him for another fortnight. ‘You are in many ways a part of our family, you know. Certainly my two daughters feel that way towards you.’

With triumph he saw the brightness in her eyes that meant unshed tears. She wouldn’t go now, not so long as she thought of Diana and Mary.

He lowered his voice, softer but no less commanding. ‘Please, Miss Wood. No one would question it if you remained here another few weeks.’

But instead of immediately agreeing, as he’d expected, she shook her head. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, but I believe they would. A governess is always vulnerable to talk.’

‘No female servant has ever come to grief in my household,’ he declared proudly, ‘and I defy anyone to say otherwise. That shall not change, Miss Wood. I give you my word of honour.’

‘I thank you, your Grace.’ She rose, and he stood, too, on the other side of the table with her torn letter lying between them. ‘But I must refuse. I have no choice, not if I hope to be at ease with myself. I cannot remain here to take money from you for doing nothing in return.’

‘Nothing?’ Swiftly he turned away from her again and back towards the window, unwilling to let her see his surprise at her refusal. When was the last time anyone had refused him like this? What more did she wish from him, anyway? What more could he offer her?

‘For the sake of my girls, I would ask you to stay,’ he said to the window. ‘Reconsider, and stay. Please.’

Yet she did not answer, and he sighed impatiently, clasping and unclasping his hands behind his back.

‘An answer, Miss Wood,’ he said. ‘Damnation, you can at least grant me that courtesy, can’t you?’

No answer came, not a word, and with a muttered oath he swung around to confront her.

And to his chagrin, learned that she had left him and he was already alone.

With feverish haste, Jane packed the last of her belongings into her travelling trunks. Despite the luxury and comfort of this house and the hospitality shown to her by Signora della Battista, the sooner she left this place, the better. No matter how much the duke insisted she stay, she could not remain here with him. She could not. It was as simple, and as complicated, as that.

She muttered with frustration, a rolled-up stocking clutched tightly in her hand. She had anticipated this tour across the Continent so much. Likely it would be the one time in her life she’d be able to see the places and paintings she’d only read about in books. While most tutors to noble families had travelled to France and Italy, very few governesses ever left their schoolrooms, and she’d counted on these new experiences to increase her value to families who’d hire her in the future.

But what she hadn’t counted on was how this trip had altered her.

The changes had been imperceptible as they’d happened, or at least they’d been so to her. When she studied her reflection in the looking-glass, she appeared much the same as she always had, with more thoughtfulness than beauty in her face. She wore the same clothes as when she’d left Aston Hall, and pinned her hair back into the same tidy knot as she had since she’d been a girl. She still wore no scent, no ornaments or jewels, no extra little enticements designed to beguile. She dressed for sturdy, respectable practicality and nothing else.

Nor could she say exactly when or how the changes had occurred. Was it because she’d been forced to step so far beyond her usual place in life, and accept more responsibility for herself and her young charges? Was it the art she’d seen in the galleries here, frankly sensual images of pagan love among the ancient Greeks and Romans, of writhing nymphs and satyrs, of Romish saints in the throes of exquisite ecstasies, that had subtly marked her? Or had the proximity to the heated affairs of Mary and Diana affected her, too, softening her, burnishing her, making her less like her familiar spinster self and more receptive to male attention, even admiration?

Because that was what had happened. Not only was she noticing gentlemen with more interest than she ever had before, but they were noticing her. To be sure, Signor di Rossi was Italian, and by his nature much given to emotional displays, but for him to have proposed assignations had stunned her. The very word sounded beyond wicked. She would be thirty on her next birthday, well beyond the impulsive age for making assignations with gentlemen. Wasn’t she?

Then why had she seen his Grace in an entirely different light last night? For ten years he had been her master and no more, the father of her charges and little else. She had admired him from afar, of course; there was much about him to admire. But once she took the letters to his room last night, everything between them seemed to have shifted. When he’d opened the door himself, she hadn’t thought of him as her master the duke, but as a large, tousled man roused from his bed.

She’d been acutely aware of his physical presence, glimpsed outside his nightshirt, of the muscles of his bare forearms and the curling hair on his chest like the naked Roman gods in the paintings by Tintoretto. His unshaven jaw bristled with a night’s worth of whiskers, and his uncombed hair had fallen across his forehead. She’d stood so close to him that she’d smelled his scent, the warmth of his skin combined with the faint fragrance of freshly washed bed-linens. He’d looked at her, too, looked at her as if he’d never seen her before, with admiration and interest and with desire for her as a woman, too, if she were being honest. In her confusion, she’d looked down to avoid his scrutiny, and had seen the shocking intimacy of his bare feet, so close to hers that their toes could have touched.

And then he’d spoken of his daughters and love and desire and she’d heard the passion in his voice, the urgency of his emotions, so great that she’d had no choice but to run away, just as she’d run away from him now, both times without his leave or her own common sense.

She groaned, and hurled the stocking into the open trunk. What if he’d guessed her thoughts? She’d come to his bedchamber door last night shamelessly in her night-shift. She’d told him this morning that she couldn’t take his wages without earning them, and of course he’d seen no reason to her objection. The duke was a man in his prime, and bound to make conclusions. And what if his Grace had the same wanton notions towards her that she’d felt towards him? Considering it—considering him—was enough to make her flush all over again. No, she’d no choice. She had to leave this house now, now, before she was thoroughly disgraced by her own wicked self.

She slammed the lid shut on her trunk. She would go to the Scottish widow, and put aside for ever the pleasure of viewing pictures on the arm of Signor di Rossi. She would live as chaste a life as she could until she found a new place. She’d drink no more wine, nor view inflammatory pictures. She would again be the model of English propriety. She would be lonely, too, but she’d been lonely before, it would be nothing new to her. The consequences if she chose otherwise would be far more grievous.

She heard the rap at her door—doubtless the porter come to collect her things.

‘Uno momento, per favore,’ she called, hurrying to gather up her cloak. She paused in the doorway between her little servant’s bedchamber and the more extravagant one meant for a lady, gazing for the last time at the unforgettable view of blue sky, shimmering canal and tiled rooftops framed by the window’s curving arches. It was unforgettable, too; she’d carry it in her memory for ever, and she lingered to savour the sight a moment longer.

‘Miss Wood.’

She jerked around. His Grace stood in the open door, his hand resting on the latch, surprising her just as she had done to him earlier.

‘You left before we could finish,’ he said, coming to join her. ‘We weren’t done.’

‘I believed we were, your Grace.’ She wasn’t exactly frightened of him, but she was wary: of him, and of herself.

‘We weren’t,’ he said, folding his arms over his chest. ‘You say you won’t remain with me and be paid for being idle.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘That is what I said.’

‘Then what if you remain as my guest? You’ll receive no wages, no money. There’s no sin to that, is there?’

She raised her chin, more determined than ever. ‘Idle tongues would still see sin, your Grace, whether I were paid a thousand pounds or none at all. It would be so with any woman beneath your roof.’

‘Damnation, it’s not as if we’re alone,’ he said. ‘The house is full of servants.’

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to, not with her resolve so evident in every inch of her posture.

He grumbled, a sound she knew was his way of masking an oath in the company of ladies. He began to walk slowly around her, not exactly pacing, but thinking, considering. She recognised that about him as well.

‘You speak Italian, don’t you?’ he asked at last. ‘You can manage the lingo here?’

‘A bit, your Grace,’ she admitted. ‘I am not precisely fluent in the language, but I have learned enough to make my wishes understood.’

‘Well, then, there’s the solution,’ he said as if that explained everything. ‘You can remain here as my translator. You can take me about the city and show me the sights.’

‘But I—you—already have a bear leader hired for that purpose,’ she protested, naming the professional guide who had presented himself with a flourish the morning she’d arrived, ‘a native Venetian named—’

‘I do not care what the fellow is named,’ he said grandly. ‘I would rather have you, Miss Wood, to guide me, and teach me what I should know of Venice.’

‘Oh, your Grace, I am hardly qualified—’

‘You know more than I,’ he said, smiling proudly at his solution. ‘That’s qualification enough. You are a governess, a teacher by trade.’

‘Your Grace, please—’

‘I do please,’ he said, and stopped his walking. By accident he stood framed by the arch of the window, his dark blond hair turned gold by the sun, as much a halo as any English peer would ever have. Yet he also stood beside the bed, that extravagant, opulent, sinful bed, and there was nothing angelic about that whatsoever.

‘In those letters you gave me to read from my girls,’ he continued, ‘they said they’d be here in a fortnight. They’re expecting to see you then, and they’ll have my head if you’re not here to greet them.’

‘Was that all you gleaned from those letters, your Grace?’ she asked, appalled. She had given him the letters so that he’d learn of the love his girls had found with their new husbands, and the happiness as well, but now it seemed he’d read them and learned nothing. ‘An itinerary?’

‘Two weeks, two short weeks,’ he said, ignoring her question. ‘Surely you can tolerate my company for that time, until they arrive, and then—then you may go as you wish.’

‘Why does my presence matter so much to you?’ she demanded. ‘Surely you can tell me that, your Grace. Why should you care at all?’

‘Why?’ He turned slightly, just enough so that he caught the reflections from the water, ripples of light across his face that robbed it of all his certainty, his confidence.

‘Why?’ He repeated the single word again as if mystified by how exactly to reply. His smile turned crooked, too, or maybe it was only another trick of the shifting light. ‘Why? Because my girls, my finest little joys, have grown and left me. Because you, Miss Wood, are my last link here on the other side of the world to them, and to the past that I’d always judged to be happy enough.’

‘Oh, your Grace,’ she said softly, bewildered by such an unexpected confession. She took a step towards him, her hand outstretched on impulse to offer comfort. ‘Oh, I am sorry, I did not intend to—’

‘Damnation, because I do not wish to be entirely abandoned here alone,’ he said gruffly, the truth clearly so painful to him that he could scarce speak it aloud. ‘Is that reason enough for you, Miss Wood? Is it?’

Now when she looked at him, she saw neither the overbearing master she’d always known, nor the lusty male she’d encountered last night. What remained was sorrow, loss and resignation, all the proof she needed that what he’d said was true: that he did not want to be left alone.

And neither, truly, did she.

‘I’ll stay, your Grace,’ she said softly, daring to rest her hand on his arm. ‘Until your daughters arrive, I’ll stay.’

Chapter Six

The following morning, Richard woke slowly, letting himself drift into wakefulness from the pleasing depth of unconsciousness. He’d slept much more soundly the second night in the Ca’ Battista, and he wasn’t entirely sure why. The bed was every bit as uncomfortable the second night as the first, the sheets still smelled of the damp, the fireplace still smoked with every stray gust of wind, and the peculiar little plaster cupids that surrounded the painting in the ceiling still seemed to be watching him with their sightless plaster eyes.

He smiled drowsily up at them, rolled over and buried his face once again in the musty pillow-bier. Cupids, hah. Miss Wood surely would have something to tell him about small, fat, naked boys with wings who hovered, laughing, over a gentleman’s bedstead when he—

Miss Wood. That, or rather she, must be the reason he’d slept so much better. Having an Englishwoman like Miss Wood here in Venice with him made all the difference, and knowing she’d stay would put any man’s mind at ease. She’d help him learn all the little things he’d somehow missed about his daughters, and explain to him what he didn’t know about their lives, just as she’d once kept him abreast of their progress in the schoolroom. It had all made perfect sense, and he’d never been in any real doubt that she’d agree to remain. Now he’d have to thank her for a good night’s sleep, too.

Or perhaps not. She was prickly about such things, and she might take such a compliment the wrong way, and say it was too scandalous. He grinned, and rubbed his palm over his unshaven jaw. He could show her real scandal, if she were agreeable—he was a man, after all, still in his prime. Not that he’d test any woman with so little respect, of course. Ever since his wife had died, he’d prided himself on being in control of his passions for the sake of her memory, limiting himself only to the occasional visit to a discreet house in London.

Yet there was something about this new side of Miss Wood that he found peculiarly tempting, a spark behind her prim control that hinted at more. How he’d like to kiss that severity from her mouth, and muss those tidy petticoats of hers a bit!

He chuckled, imagining how she’d react, how indignant she’d be, how shocked. Lord, what possessed him to think such thoughts of a governess? Chuckling still, he pushed himself up against the pillows. High time he rose, anyway. His manservant Wilson would be here soon with his breakfast.

Exactly on cue, Richard heard the chamber door open and shut and saw the flash of sunlight behind the bed curtains that announced Wilson’s arrival. The curtains of the bed opened, the rings scraping on the metal rod overhead, and there was Wilson’s gloomy face to greet Richard’s day, the same as it had been for years.

But on this morning, there seemed to be a change in the never-changing routine. Wilson glared, as usual, but his gnarled hands were empty, without Richard’s customary cup of steaming coffee.

‘What’s this, Wilson?’ Richard asked. ‘Where’s my brew?’

‘There’s none, your Grace,’ Wilson said, his expression sour, ‘not that I’ll be bringing you, anyways. If it were my deciding, I would, but it’s not, so’s I won’t, and there’s no help for the change from where I can see it.’

‘No riddles, Wilson. It’s far too early for that.’ Exasperated, Richard swung his legs over the side of the bed. This made no sense. He was always most particular about beginning his day with the same breakfast. Wilson knew his ways better than anyone, and had personally made certain that Richard had had his customary breakfast even on the long voyage from Portsmouth, when his shirred eggs had required the presence and supervision of three miserable laying-hens. ‘Where the devil is my coffee, you lazy sot? And where’s the tray with the rest of my breakfast?’

Wilson groaned, and held up Richard’s dressing gown. ‘I told you, your Grace, it’s not for me to decide,’ he said almost primly. ‘It’s that Miss Wood who’s doing all the deciding this morning.’

‘Miss Wood?’ Richard thrust his arms into the waiting sleeves. ‘What does Miss Wood have to do with this?’

‘Everything, your Grace.’ Wilson’s wounded pride finally gave way in a torrent of outrage. ‘On account of her telling me it was wrongful for you to eat an English breakfast in your chambers while you was in Venice, she told me you had to come down to her and eat what they eat here, foreign-like, no matter that you never do and never would. That was what I told her, your Grace, that you liked what you liked for your breakfast, but she’d hear none of it, and told me you’d already agreed to do as she said. As she said, your Grace, and you a duke and a peer and she a governess and daughter of a two-penny preacher from Northumberland!’

‘Her antecedents matter little to me, Wilson.’ Richard whipped the sash twice around his waist, tying it snugly with the determination of a warrior readying his sword belt for battle. ‘But as for interfering in my breakfast—that is another thing entirely.’

He threw open the door and marched down the stairs to the floor with the more public rooms. Halfway down he wished he’d stopped long enough to find his slippers—the polished treads of the carved marble staircase were infernally cold beneath his feet—but he wasn’t about to retreat until he’d settled this with Miss Wood.

Following his nose and the pleasant scent of cooked food, he found her in a small parlour to the back of the house. The room was taller than it was wide, with narrow arched windows and a domed, gilded ceiling that made Richard feel like he stood at the bottom of some eastern gypsy’s jewel box. Two squat chairs covered in red were set before the little round table, likewise covered with a red cloth, only added to the sensation that he’d blundered into someone else’s exotic nightmare.

Except that sitting at the red-covered table was Miss Wood, as unexotically English as any woman could be.

‘Good morning, your Grace,’ she said cheerfully, rising to curtsy. ‘I’m glad you chose to join me for breakfast.’

Glowering, he chose not to sit. ‘There was no choice involved. You bullied my manservant, and refused to let him do his duty towards me.’

‘What, Wilson?’ She raised her delicate dark brows with bemusement. ‘Your Grace, you grant me supreme powers if you believe I ever could bully Wilson into doing—or not doing—anything against his will.’

Richard’s scowl deepened. She was right, of course. ‘Are you saying that he chose to disobey me?’

‘Oh, no.’ Her smile became beatific. ‘Rather I should say that I am most honoured that you have chosen to join me for breakfast in the Venetian manner.’

‘This is not as I wished, Miss Wood,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Not at all.’

‘Oh, but it is, your Grace,’ she said. ‘Last night you hired me to act as your guide while you were visiting this city, and to teach you what I’d learned myself of Venice. This is our first lesson, you see, to experience how a Venetian gentleman begins his day.’

Richard looked down at the array of dishes laid out on the table before her. There was a plate with paper-thin slices of ham arranged to overlap like the petals of a flower, and an assortment of fancifully shaped bread-stuffs. Beside her cup was a chocolate-mill and a smaller pot of hot milk.

‘Please, your Grace,’ she coaxed, turning the armchair beside her invitingly towards him. ‘As you see, everything is in readiness for you.’

Everything, hah. He retied the sash on his dressing gown more tightly with quick, disgruntled jerks, and sniffed while trying still to look unhappy at being crossed. He couldn’t deny that the rich assortment of fragrances that had first drawn him were tempting, or that his empty stomach was rumbling with anticipation. But likewise he liked his habits, his routines, and a breakfast that lacked eggs, strawberry preserves and well-roasted black coffee was not part of his habit.

‘Miss Wood,’ he began, determined to steer things between them more to his liking at once, before they’d escaped too far beyond his control. ‘I know you mean well, Miss Wood, but I am afraid that—’

‘Oh, your Grace!’ She was staring down at his bare feet with the same horror that most women reserved for rats and toads. ‘Oh, your Grace, your poor feet! These stone floors are so chill on a winter morning. Come, sit here beside the kachelofen and warm them at once while I prepare your chocolate.’

She bustled forwards, taking him gently by the elbow to guide him to the chair with such concern and efficiency that he could not shake her off without being rude.

‘Here now, I’m not some greybeard to be settled in the chimney corner,’ he grumbled, even as he let her do very nearly that. ‘And what the devil’s a kachelofen?’

‘This,’ she said, pointing to an ornate object behind the table. He’d thought it was a tall cabinet or chest, but now that he was closer, he could see that it was made not of painted wood, but of sections of porcelain, fantastically moulded and glazed with curlicues and flowers. He also realised that the thing was giving off heat most pleasantly, far more than the grate in his bedchamber had, and automatically he shifted closer to warm himself.

‘A kachelofen’s a kind of stove, much beloved by Venetians,’ she explained, holding her palm over the nearest surface to feel the heat for herself. ‘They claim a good kachelofen will warm a room better than an open fire, require less wood and be safer as well.’

‘Safe, you say?’ he asked, not because he really wished to know, but because it seemed rude to her not to make an enquiry or two.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said eagerly. ‘For a city surrounded by water, the Venetians are powerfully afraid of fire. Only the glassmakers are permitted to keep furnaces, because it is necessary for their trade and therefore necessary for the economy of the city.’

‘You’re full of useless information for so early an hour, Miss Wood,’ he said, though the pleasing warmth from the whatever-it-was-called was easing his temper.

Nor was she offended. ‘There is no such thing as useless information, your Grace. Only information whose usefulness is yet to be revealed. Consider how useful a kachelofen would be in the north corner of your library at Aston Hall. You could set the fashion in the county.’

‘What, for foreign kickshaws and foolishness?’

‘For efficiency, your Grace, and being clever and forward-thinking,’ she suggested. ‘The people here do understand how to make their lives more agreeable, and there would be no sin in borrowing the best of their notions. But then I would imagine your Grace has already considered it, yes?’

‘Ahh—yes, yes, of course.’ He studied her with fresh surprise. His recollection of Miss Wood with his daughters was of her being reticent, speaking only when first addressed. He’d never heard her be quite so…loquacious before. More surprising still, he realised that he rather liked it.

In fact, he liked sitting here, wearing his nightclothes in cosy domesticity with his daughters’ governess, in a room too lurid for most London bagnios. He suspected he was called many things about the county at home, but ‘clever’ wasn’t a word he’d heard often, and to his surprise, he rather liked that, too.

‘Perhaps one of these would be of use,’ he said, regarding the kachelofen now as an ally. ‘It does keep off the cold better than a grate.’

‘Indeed it does, your Grace.’ She returned to her own chair, and began to busy herself with the chocolate-mill. ‘Now that you’re warming yourself from the outside in, we must see to warming you from the inside out as well. This, your Grace, is how every proper Venetian gentleman begins his day, and likely the improper ones as well.’

He watched her briskly twisting the rod back and forth between her palms to mix a froth into the dark mixture, her little hands moving with confident dexterity. He wished she hadn’t mentioned those improper gentleman, considering how improper his own thoughts were at the moment.

‘Chocolate’s well enough for those fellows,’ he said finally. ‘But I’d as soon have Wilson fetch me my usual coffee.’

She paused, and glanced up at him without raising her chin. ‘You could, your Grace. You could. But if you did, it would be disappointing.’

It was the evenness of her voice that stopped him. No fuss, no excess of emotion, only that quietly stated disappointment.

‘Would you be disappointed, Miss Wood?’ he asked softly. Now with the idle pleasantries of the kachelofen done, he found he cared more about her answer than he’d wish to admit. ‘If I chose my old ways, would you be disappointed?’

But instead of answering, she lowered her gaze back to the mill. ‘I ask only that you try it, your Grace. This chocolate is far different from that served in London. Cocoa, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla. You will taste the difference at once.’

‘How did you come by all this knowledge of yours, eh?’ he asked, still sceptical. ‘You’ve not been here so long yourself.’

‘I listen to whomever will speak to me, your Grace, and I learn wherever I might,’ she said, carefully filling a second cup for him. ‘Signora della Battista and her cook. The gondoliers who pilot the gondolas and the old monks who show me the paintings in the churches. Here now, take care, and do not burn your tongue.’

She set the little cup before him, and Richard looked down at it so glumly that she laughed.

‘Faith, your Grace, I’ve no wish to poison you,’ she said. ‘You look like a small boy faced with a foul-smelling physick.’

He sighed dolefully. ‘If I drink it, will you let me have my coffee afterwards?’

‘An entire pot of Wilson’s best, if you wish it,’ she said. ‘But you must make an honest effort, else I won’t take you anywhere today.’

‘I suppose there’s no help for it,’ he said, manfully taking up the cup with fingers too large for the dainty porcelain handle. ‘Must obey the governess.’

Though he tipped the cup to drink, the chocolate was almost too thick to do so, not quite a pudding, nor a drink, either. What it was for certain was wonderful, redolent of spices and flavour, warm and rich, and exactly sweet enough to satisfy. It delighted his tongue and his stomach, the pleasurable sensation of contented well-being spreading through his limbs as well. She was right: he’d never tasted anything like it, and he tipped the cup again, wanting more.

‘Should I send for Wilson’s coffee now, your Grace?’ While her expression was studiously impassive, her eyes shone bright with amusement in the grey winter sunlight. ‘Or would you care for another dish of chocolate?’

He held his cup out to be refilled. ‘You tell me, ma’ am.’

She laughed and poured the chocolate. As he drank again, she took a two-tined fork and plucked up a piece of the ham. The meat was sliced so finely that she could twist it into a rosette on the tines of the fork, offering it to him.

‘That looks as thin as the sorry ham they serve at Vauxhall Gardens,’ he said, turning suspicious again. ‘Flimsy, tasteless rubbish, unfit for any man.’

‘It’s not the same, I assure you,’ she said. ‘It’s far, far more delectable than that, and not at all like that thick, fatty bacon you devour at home. Prosciutto, it’s called. Try it now, while the chocolate lingers on your tongue, and let the flavors mingle.’

This time he trusted her, taking the entire twirled rosette of ham from the fork into his mouth. Magically, the saltiness of the meat melded with the fading sweetness of the chocolate to make something entirely different. It seemed that beyond the spices of the chocolate and the spices of the ham’s curing, he could also taste the dark mystery of the cocoa along with the sweet summer grasses that the pig had eaten. He’d never tasted anything like it, especially not for breakfast. It was not only beyond his experience, but beyond his powers to describe as well.

She knew it, too, her mouth curving up in a mischievous, knowing grin as she twisted the fork into the ham once again. ‘That is how Venice tastes, your Grace, or rather, how it tastes so early in the day. We can have another lesson at each meal, if you please.’

‘Oh, it pleases me,’ he said. He took another sip of the chocolate, but instead of reaching for the fork with the ham, he leaned forwards and opened his mouth. She hesitated only a moment before her smile blossomed into a grin, and she fed the ham to him. He made a rumbling sound of happiness as he chewed, and finally winked at her by way of thanks.

Startled, she sat back in her chair, the fork still in her hand, but then she laughed softly, too, as much at her own surprise as with him. Best of all, she blushed, her cheeks turning nearly as rosy as the cloth on the table.

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