“Oh, no, milord, he'd not want a gentleman of quality such as yourself turned away. Not one who came all the way from...”
“Tuscany,” Giovanni supplied helpfully.
“That near Wales, is it?” the porter asked.
“Near enough.”
Giovanni spied Sybil out of the corner of his eye. The little minx was scurrying toward the main staircase as if her knickers were on fire. She was tugging on her second glove. When she reached the foot of the steps, she cast a furtive glance each way, her gaze bouncing over Giovanni as if she didn't recognize him.
Did fine clothes really change a man that much?
She started in the direction of the music, nearly taking the steps two at a time. Then she seemed to catch herself and slowed to a more sedate pace. She looked like sin with feet swaying in that scarlet gown.
“I believe I see someone with whom I am... well acquainted,” Giovanni said. “Tell his lordship I am at his disposal after he has finished with his other guests.”
He didn't wait for the porter's murmured “Yes, milord” as he hurried after his wayward lover. He caught up to Sybil before she reached the first landing.
“Well met, my Lady Sybil,” he said, snatching up her hand and bowing over it correctly, when he wanted nothing more than to scrape his teeth against her perfumed knuckles. “I hope you have saved a dance for me.” Then he lowered his voice to a furious whisper, because the porter was gawking up at them with deep interest. “Why not cut out my heart with my own palette knife, cara mia? It would be less cruel.”
Her hazel eyes registered shock.
“Si, it is me.” Sybil had never suspected his locked trunk held velvets and gold brocade. Giovanni turned back to the porter. “The lady and I are old friends and have much to... how you say... catch down on? Is there such a place where we may not be disturbed?”
“His lordship's library. Back down on this level. Round that corner. Second door on the right,” the porter said. “If it please you, milord, I could have a bit o' rum punch sent in for you and the lady's refreshment.”
“No need,” Giovanni said, as he grasped Sybil's elbow and was pleased by her little squeaking gasp. “The Lady Sybella's company, she is refreshment enough.”
The real Sybil picked her way through the labyrinthine corridors leading from the kitchen to the showier parts of Lord Hartwell's grand manor. Jane's homespun was scratchy against her skin as she walked.
The halls were better lit in this part of the house, but dark doorways led off on either side. For a moment, Sybil fancied she was creeping past the open maws of slumbering beasts.
“That's what I get for bedding an artist,” she muttered. “More imagination than a body needs.”
She could hear the sound of music one floor above. In the ballroom, the string quartet would be competing with the low rumble of myriad conversations, clinking crystal and the swish of silk.There was the grand foyer ahead, with the porter leaning indolently against the wall. She quickened her pace.
A footman was coming down the grand staircase, moving quietly as a cat, his gaze focused on the porter.
He doesn't want to be seen, Sybil thought, wondering if the man was making off with a pair of Lord Hartwell’s diamond studs. She squinted at him. There was something vaguely familiar about him.
He's wearing Somerville livery, but he's not Edward or Charles, Sybil realized suddenly. Even though all footmen tended to look alike, surely she'd have remembered that handsome face and broad-shouldered frame.
The floor creaked under her step and his gaze shot to her. A smile lit the man's face like a sunrise.
“Jane!” He abandoned stealth and bounded down the rest of the stairs in a couple of leaps. “Janie, me love, I know ye enjoyed wearing that borrowed finery, but believe me, ye shine everyone else down in your own sweet things. I knew ye'd see reason, lass.”
Suddenly Sybil was in the large man's embrace. His lips covered hers in a deep kiss. She put up a token struggle, but his kiss was far from unpleasant, so she decided to relax and enjoy it.
He'll have to come up for air sometime.
When he did, she ran her tongue over her bottom lip and said, “Well, that was interesting, but I think you should know I'm not Jane.”
“What are you two doing here?” the porter demanded, leaving his post to close the distance between them. “If you're not in service, get you back to the kitchen. No, no. We can't have you wandering the halls. Take the back way.”'
The porter pulled open a low-slung door along the side of the staircase to reveal a dim, narrow route disappearing beneath it. “And don't let me catch you in the public areas again or I'll toss you both into the snow myself.”
Sybil grasped the handsome footman's hand and pulled him into the small space after her. Once, when she was ten, she had managed to sneak out of the most boring piano recital in human history and discovered the door beneath these main stairs. She'd spent the entire evening wandering the secret places of Hartwell House and no one was ever the wiser.
“This might be just the thing for finding your Jane without being seen,” she whispered.
The door closed behind them, casting them into dimness, broken only by thin shafts of light knifing through the cracks in hidden doors.
“Then you must be Lady Sybil.”
“Brilliant deduction,” she said as she moved down the narrow space. “Never let it be said Somerville doesn't hire the brightest and best. Come. There's a dumbwaiter hidden in the library. We can use it to get up to the ballroom level.”
A man's voice carried through the thick library door, his tone angry and growling. Eddleton couldn't make out all the words, but he suspected some of them were foreign. Pity he hadn't paid more attention while he was on his Grand Tour. Once he had picked up the best way to invite himself into a lady's boudoir, his interest in other languages waned.
“Someone's coming,” he whispered, pulling back and adjusting his small clothes.
“But we're not done yet, Bert,” Lady Darvish complained. “Leastways I'm not.”
The crystal doorknob jiggled and began to turn.
“Quick! Through there.” Eddleton picked Lady Darvish up, clamping a hand over her mouth, and scuttled toward the curtained alcove where French doors led out onto a terrace. The last thing he needed was to be caught in flagrante delicto with the Black Widow of Wembley Street on the night he plighted his troth to Sybil Somerville.
Just as he yanked the draperies closed, a man and woman stormed into the room. Eddleton peeked through a slit in the curtain.
And recognized the red gown. His nearly betrothed, b'Gad! With another man. Why, he ought—
Lady Darvish squirmed in his arms and grabbed one of his hands. After she slid it into the top of her bodice, she settled and gave him a wink and a shrug.
Eddleton sighed and began toying with her tight little nipple. Anything to keep the woman quiet...
“Well?” the man demanded. His ensemble was cut in fashion of the first stare, Eddleton noted. But he wore the fine clothing carelessly, with none of the English stiffness, as though the trappings of success were nothing.
“Well, what?” Sybil demanded with a quaver in her voice. “You're the one who dragged me in here. What do you want?”
“Wait.” In the hidden passage, Ian set his feet and pulled the real Lady Sybil up short. “I hear Jane. On the other side of this wall.”
Sybil scrunched down and peered through the narrow slit around the hidden servants' door. A slice of the library and its occupants came into sharp focus.
“No wonder servants always know everything that goes on in a great house,” she muttered. Then she blinked hard. “That's my Giovanni. He's only a poor painter. Where did he get those clothes?”
Ian braced himself behind her to peek through the same slit at a higher level. “A resourceful man will use whatever he must to get close to the woman he loves.” He frowned. “But that's not the woman he loves. That's my Janie.”
“Are you not surprised to see me like this?” Giovanni spread his arms and did a slow turn. “Allow me to introduce myself to you properly.” He executed a sweeping bow with careless elegance. “I am Giovanni Baptiste Salvatore Brunello, Count of Montferrat. I posed as a starving artist in your country so I could find a woman who would love me for myself, not my station.”
Sybil gasped. Jane only stared at him in puzzlement.
“And I thought I had found her, but now I know that money is all you care for, crudele.”
“No—” Sybil began, but Ian clamped a hand over her mouth to keep her quiet.
“If I have caused you pain, milord, I'm truly sorry, but I really must go,” Jane said, two frown marks drawing her brows toward each other. “I'm determined to accept a proposal of marriage from Viscount Eddleton during the last waltz and nothing you can say will make me change my mind.”
“Stubborn as a rock,” Ian muttered.
Sybil dug her elbow into his ribs. “Have a care what you say,” she whispered furiously. “That's my sister you're talking about.”
“Words, they will not move you?” Giovanni closed the distance between him and Jane with the grace of a great cat. “Then I shall not speak.”
He crushed Jane to his chest and kissed her.
“No way in bloody hell,” Ian shouted and gave the secret door a kick that knocked the portal off its hidden hinges.
Chapter Twelve
“Ian!” Jane couldn't decide if she was relieved to see him or upset that he was about to destroy her disguise. She still had a promise to keep.
“What is wrong with this cursed country?”' Giovanni bellowed. “Can I not make love to the woman I intend to wed without the walls erupting with peeping-Thomases?”
“That's no’ the woman you intend to wed.” Ian stepped between Jane and the Italian count, a fist drawn back at the ready. “She's mine.”'
“I should say not!” The draperies parted at the far end of the room and Viscount Eddleton stalked out. “Lady Sybil is promised to me. Her father and I have all but shaken hands upon the matter. I tell you, Lord Somerville shall hear of this!”
The library door flew open and a tall, white-haired gent strode in.
“Someone has been taking my name in vain.” Lord Somerville's frosty manner thawed when he looked at Jane. “My apologies, Sybil dear. I so wished to escort you to the ball this evening, but once you hear my news, you'll agree my time has been well spent.”
Lord Somerville's gaze darted from Viscount Eddleton to Ian, to the Italian, and then back to Jane. This time, his brows tented in a puzzled frown.
“The porter told me I'd find you in Lord Hartwell’s library with a gentleman. Apparently, he miscounted how many gentlemen by a goodly number.” He lifted a silver brow and the chill returned to his tone as he eyed the viscount. “Was that you, Eddleton, bandying my name about?”
“Lord Somerville.” Eddleton bowed stiffly. “I'm gratified you're here to see for yourself what a shameless wanton your daughter is—consorting with foreigners and common footmen! It would have pained me deeply to bring the matter to your attention. I fear this means I must insist upon an alteration of our arrangement. I shall require additional incentives to take her as my bride.”