Seduction of an English Beauty. Miranda Jarrett
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brows rose, his open hand still planted firmly upon his chest. “You don’t believe in fate?”
“Not like that, no,” she said. She took a single step away from him, taking care to make her white muslin skirts drift gracefully around her legs. “Rather I believe that we control our own lives and destinies, with the free will that God gave us. Otherwise we’d be no better than rudderless skiffs, tossed about on a river’s current. That’s what I believe. As, I suspect, do you.”
He sighed, and at last let his hand drop from his chest. “You suspect me already, my lady?”
She smiled, letting him think whatever he pleased. “What I suspect, Lord Edward, isn’t you in general, but your actions.”
“My actions?” he asked, his blue eyes wide with disbelief. “Why, I’ve only known you for half an hour!”
“More than enough time, however noble your motives may be.” She spread her fan, fluttering it languidly beneath her chin as she walked slowly towards the far window. She hadn’t enjoyed herself this much since she’d left England. “I suspect that you are as bored as I here in Rome, with all the best people still away at their villas for the summer.”
“Not at all!” he exclaimed. “Why, I’ve only—”
“Please, my lord, I’m not yet done,” she said softly, making him listen even harder. “I suspect that you came to the common room across the hall with full intention of meeting me. And I suspect you somehow contrived for your uncle to entertain Miss Wood and thus leave us together, as we are now. Those are my suspicions regarding you, my lord.”
“I see.” He clasped his hands behind his waist and frowned, thinking, as he followed her. “Yet now you’ll fault me because I did not wait for fate to toss you into my path, but bravely bent circumstance to my own will?”
“Oh, I never said I faulted you, my lord,” she said, her smile blithe. “I said first that I suspected you did not believe in fate any more than I, and then I offered my other suspicions to prove it.”
He raised his chin a fraction, the line of his jaw strong in the muted light. “Then I find favor with you, my lady, and not fault?”
“Not yet,” she said, as he came to stand beside her in the window’s alcove. “But I must say, it’s unusual for a gentleman to be so forthright in his attentions.”
“I’ve no desire to be your rudderless boat, my lady,” he said. “Consider me the river’s current instead, ready to carry you along with me wherever you please.”
She laughed softly, intrigued. Most gentlemen were too awed by the combination of her beauty and her father’s power to speak so decisively. She liked that; she liked him. What would he be like as a husband? she wondered, the face she’d wake to see each morning for the rest of her life? “And where exactly do you propose to carry me, Lord Edward?”
He made a gallant half bow. “Wherever you please, my lady.”
“But where do you please, Lord Edward?” she asked. “Or should I ask you how?”
“How I please?” He chuckled. “There are some things I’d prefer to demonstrate rather than merely to explain, Lady Diana.”
“You forget yourself, my lord.” She laughed behind her fan, taking the sting from her reprimand, and pointedly glanced past him to her governess and his uncle, their heads bent close over the broken crockery. “This is neither the place nor the time.”
He grinned, not in the least contrite, and leaned back against one side of the alcove with his arms folded over his chest. “We’ll speak of Rome instead. That’s safe enough, isn’t it?”
She shrugged and leaned back against the other side of the window opposite him, leaving him to decide what was safe and what wasn’t. The rain had dwindled to a steamy mist, the sun brightening behind the clouds.
“There are so many attractions in Rome, my lady, both ancient and modern,” he continued. “It’s why we English make this journey, isn’t it? Our choices are boundless.”
She wrinkled her nose, and turned away from him to gaze out at the red-tiled rooftops and dripping cypress trees. “No tedious museums or dusty old churches, I beg you. I’ve enough of that with Miss Wood, traipsing across France and Italy with her lecturing me at every step.”
“But this is Rome,” he said, “and I promise I can make even the dustiest old ruin interesting.”
“I’m no bluestocking, Lord Edward,” she warned. “Broken-down buildings are never interesting.”
“With me, they would be.”
She shrugged, feigning indifference. In truth she couldn’t imagine anything better than to trade Miss Wood’s tours for his. She’d be sure to be ready in the morning, and keep him waiting only a quarter hour or so. “I already have a governess, my lord. I don’t need a governor to match.”
“Then come with me tomorrow, and I’ll show you Rome as you’ve not yet seen it,” he urged. “I’ll have a carriage waiting after breakfast. You’ll see. I’ll change your mind.”
“Perhaps,” she said, not wanting to seem over-eager. “Look, my lord, there. Can you see the rainbow?”
With colors that were gauzy pale, the rainbow arched over the city, spilling from the low-hanging gray clouds to end in a haze above the Tiber. Diana stepped out onto the narrow balcony, her fingertips trailing lightly along the wet iron railing.
“I can’t recall the last time I saw a rainbow,” Lord Edward marveled, joining her. “I’d say that’s a sign, my lady. I meet you, and the clouds roll away. You smile at me, and a rainbow fills the sky.”
But now Diana was leaning over the railing to watch an open carriage passing in the street below. The passengers must have trusted in the promise of that rainbow, too, to carry no more than emerald-colored parasols for cover: three beautiful, laughing women, their glossy black hair dressed high with elaborate leghorn straw hats pinned on top and their gowns cut low and laced tightly to display their lush breasts. The carriage seemed filled with their skirts, yards and yards of gathered bright silks, and as the red-painted wheels rolled past, the tassels on their parasols and the ribbons on their hats waved gaily in the breeze.
“Now that’s a sorry display for a lady like you to have to see,” Lord Edward said with righteous disapproval. “A covey of painted filles de l’opera!”
“That’s French.” Diana knew perfectly well what he meant—that the women were harlots—but she wanted to hear him say so. “Those women are Italian.”
“Well, yes,” Lord Edward admitted grudgingly. “Suffice to say that they are low women from the stage.”
“But isn’t it true that women of any kind are prohibited from appearing on the Roman stage?” she asked, repeating what she’d heard from their landlord. “That all the female parts in plays or operas are taken by men?”
“True, true, true,” Lord Edward said, clearing his throat gruffly at having been caught out. “You force me to be blunt, my lady. Those women are likely the mistresses of rich men, and as such beneath your notice.”
But it wasn’t the women that had caught Diana’s eye, so much as the man sprawled so insolently in the midst of all those petticoats and ribbons. Could he keep all three women as his mistresses, she wondered with interest, like a sultan with his harem?
He sat in the middle of the carriage seat, his arms thrown carelessly around the shoulders of two of the women and his long legs crossed and propped up on the opposite seat. He was handsome and dark like the three women, his smile brilliantly white as he laughed and jested with them, and his long, dark hair tied carelessly back into a queue with a red silk ribbon that could have been filched from one of their hats. But then everything about this man struck Diana as careless and easy,