LITMIR.BIZ

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like a schoolgirl burdened with her governess, but a woman. It didn’t matter that he was a stranger to her. She sensed that he could teach her mysterious things she didn’t yet know existed, things her body ached to know, and eagerly she parted her lips to let him deepen the kiss.

      To her dismay, he didn’t answer, but drew back, into the darkest shadows.

      “I must go, bellissima,” he whispered, brushing his fingertips lightly across her cheek. “Buona sera.”

      “No!” she cried in a breathless whisper as he turned away from her. “I don’t even know your name!”

      “You don’t need to,” he said, backing away. “You have Warwick.”

      Lord Edward. Oh, how had she forgotten him so easily? She took a single step towards the stranger, wishing she could follow.

      “Don’t go,” she said softly. “I beg you, please!”

      He didn’t stop. Yet as he walked away, he turned back to smile one last time at her over his shoulder. He touched his fingers to his lips and swept his hand towards her, the same salute he’d made to her when she’d stood on the balcony. Then he turned through an arch and vanished into the night.

      Diana pressed her fingers to her mouth, wishing she could magically keep the sensual memory of the kiss alive though its giver was gone. Her lips felt ripe, sensitized in a way that was new to her, almost as if they were no longer her own.

      How could the stranger have done this to her and disappeared without even telling her his name? How could he have changed everything she thought a kiss could be and then be gone from her life? She’d wanted adventure to break this tedious journey, she’d longed for a romantic intrigue, but now that she’d been tantalized with both this night, all she could do was wish for more.

      “Lady Diana!”

      She turned away from the shadows and into the moonlight. Edward was coming towards her with a small glass clutched in his hand, puffing from his climb up the steps.

      “I couldn’t see you, my lady,” he said as he reached her. “When I looked up from the floor of the Coliseum, you were quite lost in the shadows. I worried, you know.”

      “There was no need, my lord,” she said, praying that the shadows would hide her a bit longer, and mask the guilty confusion she felt sure must show on her face. “I was well enough where you’d left me. It must have been some oddity of the moonlight that hid me from your sight.”

      He nodded, and held the little tumbler out to her. “Your orange-water, my lady,” he said, striving to be gallant even as he wiped the rivulets of sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief. “It was chilled when I bought it, but that was a devilish hard jaunt back up here, and I fear it may have grown warm.”

      She smiled automatically, though the curve of her mouth felt as stiff as if it had been carved from wood.

      If she’d truly been the honorable lady she’d been trying so hard to be these last days, she would have rebuffed the dark-clad man. She would not have let him kiss her, nor kissed him in return, nor begged him to stay….

      “Thank you, my lord.” She took the glass tumbler from him, and sipped at the orange-water. It was sickly sweet, almost a syrup, so thick with sugar that she could scarcely make herself swallow it.

      Yet how easy it had been to let that other man’s lips caress hers, to open her mouth to take his—

      “Are you ill, my lady?” Edward was peering at her face with a frown of concern, his handkerchief clutched in a knot in his hand. “Has the closeness of this place affected you? Forgive me for speaking plain, my lady, but you don’t appear well.”

      She let her gaze sweep around the great curving ruin. Likely she’d never see the black-clad man again. He was really no better than the crude rascals who tried to pinch women’s bottoms in the market, and the sooner she forgot how he’d taken advantage of her to kiss her, the better.

      At least that was what her poor beleaguered conscience told her.

      Her wicked body whispered otherwise.

      “It’s not so much the closeness of the place, my lord,” she said with careful truth, “but the—the mystery of it that has left me rather—rather breathless.”

      “It often has that effect on those who visit for the first time, my lady,” Edward said, tucking his handkerchief back into his waistcoat pocket. “It’s not surprising, really. Consider how many wicked, heathen souls must haunt this place!”

      Wicked, heathen…and untamed.

      She set the tumbler with the barely touched orange-water onto a nearby ledge, the heavy glass clicking against the stone. “Forgive me, Lord Edward, but I should like to return to the others now.”

      “Of course.” He held his arm out to her, and when she took the crook of it, he laid his hand protectively over hers. “Whatever you wish, my lady.”

      But what she wished for most was not in Lord Edward’s power to give.

      “Wake up, Edward.” Reverend Lord Henry Patterson yanked the bed curtains open, the brass rings jangling mercilessly across the rod as the late-morning sun burst across Edward’s face. “We must talk.”

      But Edward didn’t want to talk. He didn’t even want to open his eyes. He wanted to slip back into blissful unconsciousness, where he could forget the queasiness in his belly and the thickness of his tongue and the way that blasted sunlight seemed to pierce right into his blasted aching skull to find whatever poison remained of that blasted Roman wine.

      “Edward, enough.” Impatiently his uncle smacked Edward’s leg with his newspaper. “The day is half gone, and you’ve yet to drag your drunken carcass from this bed.”

      “I’m not drunk, Uncle,” Edward protested weakly, burrowing against his pillow to defend himself from the sunlight. “I’d be much happier if I were.”

      “Now that’s a proper attitude for a Warwick man, isn’t it?” Uncle Henry’s disgust was as sharp as that sunlight. “No wonder my sister despairs so, cursed with a worthless son like you.”

      Edward groaned against the pillow. He could make an excellent argument for his being cursed with a shrill, meddlesome mother, too, but not right at this moment.

      “Get up, Edward!”

      The water that splashed over Edward’s face seemed enough to drown him, and he jerked upright, sputtering and gasping for air to save himself.

      “Oh, quit your complaining, Nephew,” his uncle ordered, the empty pitcher from the washstand still in his hands. “What do you think Lady Diana would say if she could see you now?”

      “She’d say you were a damned wicked old bastard to treat me so.” Edward squinted at his uncle as he blotted the water from his face with the sheet. “She’d be right, too.”

      “What she’d say is that you’re a lazy sluggard with no respect for your elders.” Uncle Henry pulled a chair close to the bed, flipped the tails of his coat to one side, and perched on the edge of the seat. “While you’ve been snoring away your wine, I’ve been to the consulate this morning. I’ve made a few inquiries, and on your behalf, too. Lady Diana Farren is indeed Aston’s daughter, exactly as she and the governess have claimed. They’d letters of introduction so grand that there was no doubt of it. But of greater interest to you, however, is that she’ll bring £20,000 a year to whichever lucky gentleman claims her hand.”

      “Twenty thousand?” That was enough to clear anyone’s head. Edward swung his legs over the side of the bed, ready to hear more. “A pretty penny by any reckoning.”

      His uncle nodded, patting his pockets until he found his pipe, and the tinderbox with it. “You’ll never have a sweeter plum drop into your undeserving lap, Edward. And you’ll have none of the competition here in Rome that you would back in London.”

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