Courtesan's Kiss (17 page)

He moved to a secluded spot, lit a cigarillo, and found a dry patch of ground. David lay down flat, closing his eyes and listening to the musicale with no doubt in his mind that Mia would stop playing if she suspected she had an audience.

He did not recognize the composer and did not have to. The melancholy sounds coursed through him, leaving him feeling as alone and lonely as she must be. The music was just one more way that Mia Castellano had found to convey her feelings, but the way she plucked the strings of the guitar brought him more insight than her conversation.

If her words revealed her as a flirt who was only interested in adventure, the music she shared sang of loss and longing, announced it as surely as sobs and tears, an affect he had yet to see her employ.

Where did the sadness come from? he wondered. The loss of her father, most likely. Leaving Italy. The end of her engagement. Fear of illness.

He drew on his cigarillo and wondered if music was the only place she allowed her heartache to show. No wonder she had been so pleased to see her guitar. No wonder Elena had sent it as quickly as she could.

Mia stopped playing abruptly and began something far more cheerful, defiant even, using her hands on the body of the guitar for a stronger bass sound. The music required a speed on the strings that he could not even visualize. David smiled and closed his eyes, and shared her good spirits as he had shared her pain.

He persisted in thinking of her as indulged and spoiled when those were not the right words at all. She struggled to take care of herself, to be independent. In a man it would be admirable. In a woman it was seen as defiant and selfish.

The next piece was romantic, charged with a sensibility between lust and love. She played it with force at first and then more quietly and quieter still, ending with a note so soft it blended with the night song of the river and the breeze.

David stayed where he was, drawing on his cigarillo. Who was she thinking of as she played? He would be a
lucky man when she decided to tell him, to share all her music conveyed.

He heard her put the guitar away and move on up the path. Just as she passed the spot where he lay, she whispered.

“Good night, Lord David.”

D
AVID DREW THE NUMBER THREE
on the date in his pocket calendar, the third day of their quarantine. No one else had sickened; the groom was recovering, but John Coachman was worse and David himself woke with a headache for the second day in a row.

He grabbed some bread and fruit, went out the garden door, and headed for the river. The sun beat down as he crossed the lawn, making the trees along the river a welcome destination.

He found heat bothersome even without a headache so he hurried, too tired to outright run, hoping that the air would prove cooler in the shade.

Reaching the trees and blessed shade in five minutes, David surprised a deer nibbling on some green shoots along the trail. The doe scampered off, and he watched her
disappear into the woods before voices from the riverbank drew his attention.

He heard the tone, out of breath and angry, but the words were unintelligible. Surely the villagers knew this was Sandleton land and off limits. He listened more carefully as he approached, and decided two people were bickering and the woman would not stop talking, though her voice rose and fell in strength.

David wanted a fight badly, so he bounded down the trail as he called out, “You there! You are not allowed on this property!”

When Mia Castellano jumped, the fish she had been playing took the advantage. The line flew back over her shoulder even as she tried to set it again with a practiced jerk of her wrist.

The wayward hook whipped toward him and pierced the pad of flesh below David’s thumb as he raised his hand to protect his face.

Mia turned to see who called to her, and David watched her expression pass from amused to distressed to annoyed in a matter of a second.

David had never seen anyone, on stage or off, who could express so much with a tilt of the head, a quirk of the lips, or the look in her eye.

“Until you came, I was enjoying the peace and quiet!”

“Damn times five,” David swore as he pulled the hook from his hand. The pad of flesh at the base of his thumb bled freely and hurt like hell. He pulled his handkerchief out and wound it around as a bandage. As he tied a knot and looked up he noticed how little she wore.

Too little.

Even as he had the thought, she stepped behind a tree that did not completely shield her, and turned her back to him.

“You can curse all you want, but the fault rests with you entirely. You gave Bruce the advantage and he escaped.”

“Bruce?”

“Yes, the fish. I named him. My father insisted that the most worthy fish deserved a name. It is my goal to actually land him before we leave here.”

She looked over her shoulder. He wanted an artist to capture that moment. Mia Castellano in her stays and diaphanous chemise, standing in the summer-lit woods like some dark-haired fairy playing at being human. Never mind an artist. He did not need a painting to recall this moment.

“Skirts are an encumbrance when angling with a fly. It requires freedom of movement.” She pulled her dress from a branch and held it against her stays for a moment. “And petticoats are even worse than a dress. So I wear as little as possible.”

“So I can attest,” he said, his brain buzzing with the vision of her.

“This is Sandleton property,” she continued, “and I hardly expected company, given that and our quarantine.”

When it occurred to him that her embarrassment was why she jabbered on, David turned to walk down to the river despite the delightful view of her back, hips, and legs.

“I love fishing,” she called out in a muffled voice.
David imagined her raising her arms, pulling her dress over her head, down the trim length of her body. “And I’ve found something to do, some way to help besides winding the clocks.”

Would she need help with the fastening of her dress? He hoped not.

“Please do not turn around yet. I have this on wrong and must take it off again.”

He heard the sound of low-voiced impatience, then the sound of material, most likely the dress, being shaken with force.

“You know, Lord David, if I catch Bruce we will have enough for a feast.”

It flashed through his mind as he studied the water that she considered him another kind of fish. Whether she intended it or not, unless he took care he would be as well and truly caught as any trout named Bruce.

David concentrated on the clear clean water, its depth little more than three feet in this spot. He recalled there was a spot a little farther down with stones carefully placed so that crossing was easy. He looked across the river at the steep hillside, covered with brush and weeds. It wasn’t the only reason no one used the crossing.

Here heaps of rounded rocks lay just below the surface, making for eddies and ripples that could hide the fish from view. After a minute his sight adjusted and he counted eight fish swimming by, all of them too small to name.

The sound of the stream and the feel of the breeze
made the heat of the day a pleasure. He bent down to trail a hand in the water, pleased with the fine distraction.

A scream destroyed his reverie.

“Madre di Dio!”
The panic in her voice was unfeigned. “Help me. Oh no, please, no!”

David turned back to find Mia running toward him, holding her dress in one hand, brushing at her stays with the other. “There is a spot on my breast. I think it is a smallpox.”

“Damn times ten, you scared me.” So much that he barely noticed her dishabille. “I thought a bee had flown down your shift.”

“I would rather have five bee stings than the smallpox. Bee stings disappear.” She held her dress up in a pretense of modesty. “Look, please look, and tell me it is not the beginning of the smallpox. I cannot see well from this angle.”

“Miss Castellano, it is not smallpox.” He put his hands behind his back and stepped away.

“You cannot know until you look!”

“You have no symptoms. It is a bug bite.”

“No!” she shouted, as if nature would obey her command. “You don’t know for sure until you look.”

Fear made her shake and he took her hand. “Come back to the house. Mrs. Cantwell will look. It will be no worse for waiting a few moments.”

“But I will go mad by then.” She gripped his hand so tightly that he could feel the blood stop flowing. “I would rather die from the smallpox than survive. You know as
well as I do that my looks are all that I have. If I am marked for life no man would ever be interested in me.”

Did she actually believe that? What complete and utter nonsense. He searched her face and saw no hint of deviousness. In fact, she looked as panicked as he had ever seen her. “All right. I’ll look.”

She lowered her dress and put her back against a tree. He came close and leaned over her. He could feel her soft breath on his head, smell the morning dew on her neck, but could barely see the mark that had so upset her. If this was her idea of flirting he would banish her to her room for the rest of their quarantine.

“You are wrong, you know.” He turned his head to try to see the damn bug bite. “Men would line up to dance with you even if you had two noses.” He spoke the truth, if only to distract her.

He would lie about the mark, though. The bite lay in a spot easier felt than seen, at the curve where the soft roundness was shadowed by her cleavage. Touching her in such an intimate spot asked entirely too much of both of them. Mrs. Cantwell could confirm his diagnosis later. “It’s a bite from an insect, I am sure of it.”

Without saying a word Mia turned from him and slipped the dress over her head. Despite the fact that he could have helped her, she reached around and tied the ribbon at her neck with an ease most women could not match.

She faced him again, her cheeks flushed. “Why would a man dance with me even if I had two noses?”

“Men are attracted to you, like hummingbirds to a
flower. You embrace every moment of life and think to make it dance to your tune. It is very appealing at a ball or in the park. But as Lord William learned, it is not nearly as appealing in the day-to-day stuff of life, when every hour must be styled to suit you. When
no
is the only word one hears.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I should have known better than to ask. With you even a compliment can be made into an insult.”

If she thought him unfeeling, so much the better. He would not undo almost two days of separation by making her smile. Better that she label him with every unsavory word she could think of than to know how much one guitar concert had altered his understanding of her.

“I will leave you now,” David announced. Without waiting for her answer he turned back.

“No.”

He relaxed, relieved that his life was back in balance.

“I want to know how you can tell the difference between a bug bite and a smallpox.”

David kept his place several yards away from her as he answered. “The surgeon told me that smallpox first appears as a rash. Your mark is distinctively a bite with a dot at the center. Completely different.” He’d almost convinced himself. “And the rash almost always comes after the fever and starts in the mouth, then moves to the face.”

“The rash is always the last symptom to show? You could not tell me that before?”

“Miss Castellano, you were not inclined to listen to
anything I said. Do
not
pose me as a man looking to take advantage.” He calmed himself with a deep breath. “You begged me not to wait.”

“I suppose so.” She made a face, as though she had agreed just to appear civil when he knew she could not think of a way to use
no
in the sentence.

“Do not start sulking because I gave in to your hysteria.”

“I am not sulking.” She walked along the riverbank to a pool of water formed by a man-made stack of rock. “You cannot know what it is like to live with the fear of disfigurement and death.”

“You are not the only one who worries about such things. I woke up with a headache yesterday morning, and it took all of Novins’s skill to convince me I was not sick.”

She had just pulled the creel from the water; she dropped it in again and stood quickly, without her usual grace. “You have not had the vaccination?”

“I was in Mexico when the rest of the family had the inoculation. The disease is common in Mexico. I never took ill and supposed that I was immune. Now I’m not sure. I will have the vaccination as soon as I can arrange for it.”

“Now I must worry about you, too.”

To his surprise, she didn’t let loose a tirade over his lack of foresight. He wondered who else had a place on her list of worries.

She would worry about Elena, at least until her child came into the world. Janina. Not many. At least not many that he knew of. He should feel honored.

David watched her haul the creel out of the water again.

“I hope you like trout, my lord. There is plenty for dinner tonight. Even without Bruce.”