The Very Daring Duchess Part 29

But that would keep until London, too. In London, he would tell her he loved her, and show her, and make sure that both were in ways she would never forget.

Francesca sat on the deck with the drawing board in her lap, singing haphazardly to herself as she sketched. She was sheltered from the worst of the spray and bright sun by the canvas windbreak that Edward had had rigged for her, and bundled in the extra shawls and woolen petticoats that Lady Hamilton had wisely recommended, the Antelope's deck was an altogether pleasant place to be.

In the two weeks since they'd sailed from Palermo, the weather had grown milder, the sun warmer, and while Edward warned her once they pa.s.sed from the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic that winter would return, for now she was content to spend as much of her day as she could here on deck. She prided herself on becoming quite a model female sailor, or at least a model sailor's wife, and she'd learned to share Edward's delight in the ever-changing sky and sea around her.

Now she frowned critically at her drawing, tapping her fingers on the tacks that kept the paper from blowing away. She was sketching three sailors as they trimmed the Antelope's mainsail, and she wanted to capture not only the details of their task, but how hard their labor was, how their backs and arms strained beneath the weight of the heavy, damp canvas. Such a subject was a new challenge for her, since before this she'd concentrated on women and children, not the harsher details of men's lives. It was a challenge she enjoyed as well, and she could imagine being quite content to spend all her days sailing about the world, drawing whatever new sight caught her eye.

But while she dreamed, she was also giving a great deal of thought to her more realistic plans for her life once they reached London. First of all, she must find her uncle, the only relative or friend she had in the city. She knew his name and address, and what her father had told her: that his brother John was a gruff old bachelor with a merchant's golden soul and no eye or sympathy for true art, but still with enough of a sense of family duty that he'd welcome his niece if she ever appeared on his doorstep. She hoped Papa had been right, even though she planned to stay with her uncle only until she'd found suitable lodgings for herself and a place to display the Oculus and the rest of Papa's collection.

She'd have to be careful with every penny, for the only money she had with her was the fee that Lady Hamilton had paid for her last portrait in Naples. It wouldn't be nearly enough. She'd have to sell something fast, whether it was one of Papa's pieces or a painting of her own.

She would need to decorate her new studio and picture gallery, and hire servants. She must advertise, of course, and send letters of invitation to all the English ladies and gentlemen who'd visited her studio in Naples, to inform them she'd relocated to London and would welcome their custom.

She'd have to have new clothing made, too, for all her favorite gowns and turbans had been left behind, and it was important for her to look the part of an artist. She needed that mystique, that distance that a costume could grant, or she would seem like only one more rootless foreign ballet dancer or opera singer looking for a gentleman to set her up in keeping-the very last thing she wished, for her sake and for Edward's.

But then all her careful plans always came back to Edward, didn't they? When she'd first agreed to marry him, that long-ago night in the Palazzo Sessa, it had seemed easy enough to consider staying with him only until she'd found her feet again. The courts would be sure to grant an annulment as long as she remained a virgin, and especially if she made no claims to his estate.

Even when they'd sailed from Palermo, she'd convinced herself that she and Edward would part once they'd reached London, amicably, with a certain sadness, yes, but as worldly adults, for he'd no more use for a wife like her than she had for a husband like him. She'd be a dreadful handicap for him wherever he went, a foreign-born embarra.s.sment, especially now that her complexion had grown even darker and less English-pale from these days in the sun.

But this voyage had immeasurably complicated that easygoing scenario. Each night that she and Edward lay side by side in that uncomfortable wooden bunk, together but barely touching as the tension simmered between them, they would talk until they were too exhausted to do anything other than sleep. They talked of childhood pets and favorite desserts, of politics and books and plays, of s.h.i.+pbuilding and sculpture, of Saint Paul's in London versus Saint Peter's in Rome, of the very best way to varnish a painting to make it look antique, and the most direct course for sailing across the Bay of Biscay. By the wavering light of the tallow candle, they confessed and listened and laughed and argued and teased and complained and flirted and, once or twice, even wept.

But most of all, they'd fallen in love.

When the sun rose each morning over the blue-green Mediterranean, that care-free parting that Francesca had envisioned in London became more unlikely, if not outright impossible. Now she would no more be able to ask Edward Ramsden for her freedom than he would be to grant it.

Somehow she had reached the point where she could scarcely imagine life without Edward in it, but she couldn't imagine the life she'd planned for herself in London including him, either. As understanding as he was-and for a high-bred English gentleman, that was very understanding indeed-he still believed his career with the navy must come first for them both, and worse, he believed that she should be content as his wife and the mother of his children, with her painting as a distant, hazy, ladylike pastime. Each time he spoke so thoughtlessly of her "little garret," she wanted to weep with frustration.

With a sigh she added a final bit of shading to one of the figures in her drawing before she unpinned the paper from her board and slipped it into the portfolio at her feet, replacing it with a fresh sheet. This time she idly let her chalk wander for own amus.e.m.e.nt. Today was the seventeenth of January, the day of the Festa d'o'Cippo di Sant'Antonio, and she wondered sadly if the revolutionaries like Carlo who'd taken over Naples were allowing the annual procession through the streets to the cathedral, or whether poor old Sant'Antonio had been derided and discarded as one more oppressor of the people.

"Good morning, my dear," said Edward, joining her at last. He'd brought with him Peart's usual morning brew, a pewter tankard of coffee made so ominously black that Francesca swore it would hold a spoon upright, and when Edward kissed her now she could taste its bitterness on his lips.

"Buon giorno, mio caro," she said fondly. She loved seeing him like this, dressed in an old and comfortably weather-beaten coat and long canvas trousers that somehow seemed much more das.h.i.+ng and romantic than the gold-covered dress uniform and breeches. Though he'd pulled his hat down low to keep it from blowing away, his eyes seemed all the more blue beneath the brim, as if they'd stolen their color from the cloudless sky above. This was how she wanted to remember him, relaxed and happy with the sea around him, and so full of unself-conscious masculine grace and power that she longed to paint him, too.

"So once again Peart has worked his morning miracle," she teased, "and found a handsome gentleman inside the hairy beast."

He laughed, rubbing his hand along his new-shaven jaw, even though she made the same silly jest each morning when he joined her. But her teasing was only another part of the ritual they'd evolved for their days, another thread woven into the bond tying them together.

"I need every last second of Peart's a.s.sistance in the morning, thank you," he said. "After all, I wasn't blessed with beauty the way you were, with the Graces smiling down upon my cradle."

She grinned and blushed with pleasure, even though he, too, used the same overwrought compliment each morning. How hard it would be now to begin the day alone, without such silly gallantry to make her smile!

"But what manner of drawing is this, Francesca?" he asked, leaning over her shoulder. "You've made that poor mids.h.i.+pman into a bear, haven't you?"

"I think he makes a rather splendid bear, don't you?" She chuckled wickedly, adding an extra flourish to the drawing of a bear with a disagreeable snarl that did indeed resemble the mids.h.i.+pman of the watch, coa.r.s.e fur poking out of the sleeves and collar of his uniform. "It's only because today in Naples is the Festival of Saint Anthony. He watched over all animals, small and great, and people bring every manner of creature to the cathedral to be blessed. So I suppose by turning the mids.h.i.+pman into a bear, I've offered him up for Saint Anthony's blessings as well."

"Thus as a Ramsden, you'd have no choice but to give me a great blunt nose and curling horns, eh?"

"Santo cialo, no!" she declared, beginning to draw again. "Rams are stupid, ign.o.ble beasts, concerned only with b.u.t.ting heads with their rivals and covering ewes to beget more offspring in their own stupid likenesses. Please, please, not a ram, I beg you!"

He chuckled with her, even though she suspected she'd shocked him with the bawdy remark about the ewes. Not that she regretted it; she thought it a fine idea to unsettle him like that, to remind him that she wasn't a proper English miss. Besides, it was fun.

"No, I should rather draw you as my brave English lion," she continued, rapidly sketching his face with a properly regal expression surrounded by a flowing lion's mane. "There, Edward, that is more fitting."

"Then what is this?" he asked with amus.e.m.e.nt, pointing to another, smaller sketch in one corner. "Are those to be jewels for my lioness?"

To her shock she realized she'd drawn the French queen's diamond plume, that one that Lady Hamilton had worn and that Signor Albani had wanted in return for her silence. What, she wondered uneasily, had made her do that? By now Albani must have found some other lady to blackmail, but seeing what her unconscious thoughts had remembered rattled her, and swiftly she began another sketch to distract Edward from inquiring further.

"La, what use would a lioness have for jewels?" she asked skittishly, her chalk sweeping quickly over the page. "But here, I'll make you into another beast."

This time she'd drawn him as a man, a stern-faced captain, albeit one without a s.h.i.+rt, his arms folded over his bare chest. But below the waist she'd added a stallion's prancing body, complete with a stallion's impressive endowments.

"Ha, Francesca, you've made me the centaur himself!" exclaimed Edward, roaring with amus.e.m.e.nt. "Can you imagine what Nelson and the others would say if they saw this?"

"They'd give you back your s.h.i.+p directly, as you deserve," she said promptly as she continued to draw. A handful of quick strokes, and she'd added a sly, long-legged nymph, clothed only in her long, curling hair, lounging wantonly across the centaur's broad back, a nymph that looked suspiciously like herself. "And they'd let you bring your charming wife along, too, for company upon long voyages."

"Captain Ramsden, sir," said Lieutenant Pettigrew, suddenly standing before them. "Lady Edward, ma'am. A word with you both, if you please."

Francesca gulped and blushed, her gaze falling with immediate guilt to the scandalous drawing she'd made, and, of course, drawing instant attention to it. Pettigrew had only to follow her gaze, his response being a gratifying cross between a throttled wheeze and a horrified bray, his eyes bulging so wide she wondered that they remained attached to their sockets.

"Lady Edward is a most accomplished artist, Lieutenant," said Edward, his own voice none too steady. "She especially favors subjects drawn from the cla.s.sical texts of the ancients. Isn't that so, my dear?"

"Yes," croaked Francesca, who was perilously close to nervous giggles of the most debilitating variety. "Yes, caro mio, I do."

"Yes." Edward cleared his throat and bent to pull the tacks from the drawing, briskly rolling it and tucking it into the front of his coat. "And such a handsome job you've done with this one, my dear, that I shall put it away for safekeeping."

"Aye, aye, sir," Pettigrew managed to croak. "Don't want such pictures to fall into the hands of the men, sir. Pictures like that-I told you, sir, I run a proper, G.o.d-fearing s.h.i.+p."

"And so you do," agreed Edward, placating the lieutenant while he pointedly avoiding Francesca's eye. "Now, Lieutenant. You wished a word with Lady Edward and myself?"

"Aye, aye, captain." Pettigrew's coloring, and his eyes, had nearly returned to normal, which meant he was once again looking at Francesca with barely-disguised contempt. "We'll be at Gibraltar by nightfall, and I was wondering, sir, if you and, ah, Lady Edward might be wanting us to put into the harbor. There's a powerful lot of officers' ladies there, sir, and they'll be waiting to, ah, to welcome Lady Edward into their fold."

Instantly Edward's expression turned rigid, and Francesca's heart plummeted. She wasn't a fool; she could read the signs well enough for herself. Those proper English wives of proper English officers wouldn't welcome anyone as different as she into their fold. More likely they'd close their ranks against her, and slash her to tiny pieces with tongues sharper than their husbands' swords.

Which was precisely what Pettigrew expected, and hoped for, too. This was his heavy-handed attempt to see her humiliated and shamed, without him having to risk facing Edward in a duel. She didn't care what the other officer's wives said of her, but Edward would, and she'd never do that to him, or give him such an excuse to go challenging half the station on her account.

"I thank you for your concern on my behalf, Lieutenant Pettigrew," she said evenly, somehow keeping the pain from her voice. "But my own humble wishes account for nothing beside the welfare of dear England. The dispatches you carry must be delivered to the Admiralty in London as swiftly as possible, yes?"

"Aye, aye, my lady," said Pettigrew, his disappointment palpable. "But with a fair wind, we're no more than a fortnight from Dover, my lady, and then 'tis only a day and a night to London and Whitehall."

"On to London, then, if you please, Lieutenant," she said softly. A fortnight, a day and a night, and they would be in London. No more than two weeks left of the wondrous fantasy-world of being Lady Edward Ramsden, fourteen days before she was once again hard-working, independent Signora Francesca Robin.

She stared down at Edward's ring on her hand, the golden dolphins and anchors in an endless circle around her finger. She'd return it to him, of course. The ring had meant much to him before he'd given it to her, and she'd no right to keep it.

A fortnight, then, and a night and a day. All that was left before she would give back the ring and lose her anchor, regain her freedom and break her heart.

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