Seduction of an English Beauty. Miranda Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      He stopped in the carriage’s door. “I don’t have to go with you tonight, Lucia. If I’m so damned impossible, it might be better for you to go to Giovanni’s fete by yourself. Beside you, no one notices me, anyway.”

      Her head whipped around, her dark eyes wounded even in the half light of the carriage. “Of course they notice you, Antonio. You know as well as I that you are never overlooked or forgotten. That is the kind of man you are.”

      He dropped onto the leather seat beside her and sighed. “There are so many ways for me to take that, Lucia.”

      But Lucia didn’t answer, turning again to face the open window, and for the next quarter hour they rode in a silence that felt more like an uneasy truce.

      “She will be easy for you to find, your little yellow-haired virgin,” she said at last. “Your English consul can tell you her name. There are not so many like her in Rome, especially not this early in the autumn.”

      “I haven’t said I was interested in her, have I?”

      “You needn’t speak the words aloud for it to be understood, Antonio,” she said, touching a handkerchief deeply bordered in lace to the corner of her eye. “Not by me.”

      “Lucia, enough,” Anthony said firmly. “Isn’t your darling Signor Lorenzo the love of your life? The only man in Rome with devotion enough to tolerate your tantrums, and gold enough to keep you in the luxury you demand?”

      “We’re not speaking of Lorenzo.” Impatiently she flicked her handkerchief towards Anthony. “We’re speaking of you, Antonio, and this English girl that you are plotting to seduce. What if you’re the loser in your little game this time? You’re already beguiled with her—no, bewitched! What if she steals you from us, and carries you back to England as her prize, eh? What if you abandon all of us for her?”

      Amused, Anthony leaned his head back against the leather squabs and chuckled. “It won’t happen, Lucia. It can’t.”

      “No?” Her eyes glittered, challenging. “You are very confident.”

      “I’m confident because I’m right,” he said easily. He took her hand and kissed the back of it, right above her ruby ring. “No woman in this world could claim that kind of lasting power over me. You should know, Lucia.”

      She sniffed, and pulled her hand free, curling it into a loose fist against her breasts. “I tired of you first, Antonio. Don’t let your male pride remember otherwise.”

      He glanced at her, so obviously skeptical that she hurried on.

      “I should just let you marry the underfed little creature,” she said. “You could coax her into bearing your weakling children, in the passionless English manner.”

      “You won’t change my mind, darling. I’m not marrying her, or anyone else.”

      Her fingers opened, fluttering over her décolletage so the half light danced over her ruby ring. “Do you believe yourself safe enough that you’ll stake a small wager upon it?”

      He smiled. “Small enough that Lorenzo won’t question it, but sufficiently large to hold my interest?”

      “Exactly.” She leaned towards him. “I’ll wager that before Advent begins, you will become so obsessed—so lost!—pursuing this English virgin that you will need to be rescued by your friends and saved from marrying her.”

      “Marrying her!” Anthony laughed aloud at the sheer preposterous idiocy of such a notion. Him with a wife, a Lady Anthony to dog him to his grave! This girl might be a delicious change, but hardly enough that he’d give up his cheerfully self-indulgent life here in Rome for the sake of her hand. “I’ll take your wager, Lucia, and I’ll set your stake for you, too. I’ll win. I’ll seduce the girl, I’ll enjoy her as much as she will me, but she’ll never be my wife. I’ve no doubt of that. And when I win, I’ll expect you to sing an entire aria on the Spanish Steps.”

      She frowned, not understanding, nor wishing to. “Overlooking the Piazza? Before all of Rome?”

      “For free, my darling,” he said easily. Short of standing on the papal balcony of St. Peter’s, he couldn’t imagine a more public place. The Spanish Steps had been built earlier in the century, a grand, flamboyant flow of marble cascading down the hillside from the French church of Trinita dei Monti to the Piazza di Spagna centered by one of the city’s more celebrated fountains, the Fontana della Barcaccia. The piazza was not only a favorite idling place for Romans, but a prime attraction for foreign visitors, too. Lucia would be guaranteed an enormous audience on the natural stage formed by the steps, and the fact that her performance would be within view of the English girl’s lodgings would serve as an extra fillip of amusement to their wager.

      Anthony smiled, savoring the possibility. “A small gift of your voice to all of Rome. Nothing that will be missed from Randolfo’s pockets, yes?”

      “For free!” Lucia sputtered, outraged. “I never sing for—for nothing!”

      He crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s my stake. If you choose not to accept it, why, then the wager is—”

      “Then if you lose, you must sing instead!” she said quickly. “You, Antonio, who bray like a donkey! If this girl ruins you, as is sure to happen, then you must sing to her yourself on the same steps!”

      “Agreed.” He did sing like a donkey, and even then only after a sufficient amount of very strong drink, but he was confident that the wager would never come to proving it. How could it, really?

      “And—and a hundred Venetian gold pieces!”

      “Venetian it is,” he said, amused. Only Lucia would be so specifically greedy. “Prepare your favorite aria, darling. You’ll want to sing your best for the people of Rome.”

      “I promise I’ll rehearse and rehearse, Antonio.” Her smile indulgent, she reached out and patted his cheek. “For your wedding, eh? For your wedding.”

      “That, ladies is the great Coliseum.” Reverend Lord Patterson paused for solemn effect, pointing his walking stick out the carriage window. “Where pagan warriors battled for the amusement of the Caesars, and where countless victims were slaughtered at the whim of a ruthless dictator’s down-turned thumb. Within those very walls, ladies!”

      “Gracious,” murmured Miss Wood, mightily impressed. “To think that all that happened inside those very walls! Lady Diana, you recall reading of the gladiators in the Coliseum, don’t you?”

      Diana glanced dolefully out the window at the huge stone ruin looming beside them. She’d been trying hard these last three days to be enthusiastic for Edward’s sake, and interested in what interested him. That was what her sister Mary had done with Lord John Fitzgerald. It had worked, too, because he’d fallen so deeply in love with Mary that he’d eloped with her in the most romantic fashion imaginable.

      But it wasn’t easy for Diana, not when Edward found ancient Rome the most interesting topic imaginable. She leaned forward on the seat, trying to see if there was more to see that she was missing, but still the great Coliseum looked suspiciously like yet another tedious pile of ancient stone.

      And Edward, bless him, realized it, too.

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