A Gentleman Never Tells by Juliana Gray

Author:Juliana Gray [Juliana Gray]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, Historical Romance, Italy, Regency Romance, Love Story, England
ISBN: 9780425251072
Google: hteDtgAACAAJ
Amazon: 0425251071
Barnesnoble: 0425251071
Goodreads: 13491128
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2012-10-31T14:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

Roland had anticipated many delights from the evening, and not one of them had involved the long shanks of Phineas Burke gleaming through the moonlight between the peach trees.

Damn it all. What was the old fellow doing here at this hour?

Meeting Lady Morley, probably. As if Burke couldn’t just as easily arrange for assignations within the sheltered comfort of that damned workshop of his. No, he had to go wooing his lady-love with fragrant blossoms and moonlight and whatnot, muscling in on other chaps’ midnight frolics.

Peach bloody orchard. Come to think of it, what had Roland himself been thinking, naming such a place to meet Lilibet? Of all the damned romantic clichés. Probably half the village was lurking about the trees, drunk with springtime passion, ensuring the population of the valley would remain at a healthy replacement level the following year.

Roland set the champagne bottle and glasses on the ground—champagne did such lovely things to feminine scruples—and slid his watch out of his pocket to hold it up to the moonlight. He was quite early. Lilibet wouldn’t be about for another hour.

He glanced again at Burke’s lingering figure. No, really. He shouldn’t. Too wicked of him.

He patted his jacket pocket and found the scrap of paper and pencil stub he usually carried about him, in case of emergency. Then he cast about before him for a crisp old stick and stepped on it. Loudly.

A hasty rustling movement took place up ahead.

“Still, still, still,” he murmured, projecting his voice forward. “Pill? Kill? Oh, God, no. Mill? Hang it all. Shall have to try something else.”

He peered above the top edge of the paper and saw a sliver of tweed jacket along the edge of a tree.

He continued with enthusiasm. “. . . the memory is with me still . . . no, the memory is with me yet. The memory is with me yet, there’s the ticket. The memory is with me yet, and something something . . . shall forget? Or regret? And never shall my love regret? Oh yes. Very good.”

The most jolly awful poetry he’d ever composed, in fact. He was quite proud. He arranged himself against the knobbled trunk of an ancient peach tree and gazed up in rapture toward the blossom-crossed midnight sky.

From the corner of his eye, he caught a slight movement, as a splash of ginger hair spilled in and out from behind the tree. Well, he assumed it was ginger, in any case: In the tree-shadowed darkness, even Phineas Burke’s head of bright newpenny copper had dulled to a kind of faintly bronzed gray.

Poor fellow. Though Roland considered himself a far superior companion to the Dowager Marchioness of Morley—certainly a better hand at piquet—he doubted Burke would agree, under the circumstances.

Not that he intended to show any mercy.

“The memory is with me yet, and never shall my love regret,” he went on, with a dramatic heave of his chest.

A muffled groan, faint but unmistakable.

Roland made a little start, as if shaking off a lovesick reverie.

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