A Rogue to Remember Page 3

  Lottie’s expression didn’t change, but her breathing quickened slightly. “How impressive. I didn’t realize merely witnessing a kiss could lead to memory loss.”

  Alec’s lips curved. “Though I’ve been told my talents in that realm are substantial, the point is that it makes for a better story. We need something that takes attention away from you. Imagine: Instead of a dubious young widow staying here alone and arousing suspicion, we’re a young married couple on their honeymoon. The groom kept delaying their journey because of business in Florence, so the bride grew cross and came without him—very sympathetic. No one would blame her.”

  As he spoke, Lottie watched closely. She still hadn’t learned to play the coy, bashful lady. Alec had forgotten how penetrating, and slightly unnerving, her gaze could be. It set his blood moving far more than any saucy wink or fluttering eyelash ever had.

  “But when he finally arrived, and after a fine bit of groveling, all was forgiven.” The corner of his mouth lifted at the thought of all the ways he could beg forgiveness from her. “Who could resist that?”

  Lottie’s cheeks took on the most becoming shade of pink, but she let out an indignant huff. “Why is it that people always seem most titillated by stories of fallen women or romance?”

  Alec’s smile grew. He needed to think of a way for her to say titillated again. “I haven’t the faintest. I’ve always preferred a good mystery myself. But in this case, I say we indulge the masses. And don’t leave any room for doubt.”

  There was no need for them to actually kiss, of course; it merely needed to appear that way to Marta. But before he could clarify that little detail, Lottie spoke up.

  “Fine. You may kiss me,” she said flatly. Then her gaze sharpened. “But it had better be good.”

  Alec managed to keep his cavalier expression while internally his reaction was nothing short of pathetic. He had never been one to back away from a challenge, or turn down the chance to kiss a beautiful woman. A tiny voice inside his head suggested that perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to kiss this beautiful woman in particular, but the half-hearted warning was easily dismissed.

  “As my lady commands,” he said with a dramatic sigh. Best not to look too eager.

  In one swift movement, his hand laced around her nimble waist while the other cupped her nape and gave it a little squeeze. She let out a gasp as her head tilted back but didn’t offer any protest as he gently set his lips to hers.

  One could almost believe she was enjoying this.

  As if it wasn’t enough for Alec to come strolling in and upend all of Lottie’s plans, now he was trying to further unnerve her with a kiss. No doubt he assumed she would be positively shocked by the mere idea of kissing him, but Lottie had been kissed before. Three times, actually. Ceril Belvedere had even pressed her against the wall of Lady Arlington’s balcony. It had been rather exciting, at least in the moment, but this…

  Once, for a very brief period, Lottie had spent untold hours imagining what it would be like to kiss Alec. And even she could not resist the chance to see if her dreams lived up to the reality.

  Apparently her imagination had been decidedly lacking.

  Yet it wasn’t only the feel of his lips on hers, so firm, commanding, and confident. It was the way he held her close and cradled her in his arms. As if she really did belong to him.

  As if he really did want her.

  Alec squeezed her neck a bit more and her mouth opened slightly. Then he gently parted her lips further with his own. That hardly seemed necessary for Marta’s sake, but then one would expect him to be fully committed to his duty. Uncle Alfred had made that plain years ago when Alec left.

  He will do whatever is necessary. That is not the kind of life for a man with a family. The Crown must come first. Always.

  Lottie had never once spoken to anyone about her feelings for Alec, as she hardly knew what to make of them herself. Alec’s friendship had always been invaluable to her, and yet at times she had ached for something more. More than she could ever put into words. More than she ever dared act upon. But her uncle seemed to understand. There was little use trying to have secrets from a man who had spent much of his life either ferreting them out or keeping them safe. And if Uncle Alfred had known, it stood to reason that Alec did as well. Perhaps for longer than she realized. Lottie had once deluded herself into thinking that Alec had morals, a sense of common decency, and, dare she think it, a fondness for her. But he had done a very fine job of divesting her of all those pesky illusions. Completely. Alec wouldn’t think twice about exploiting anything he could in order to bend her to his will. Even something as innocent as her girlhood affection.

  No, especially something like that.

  Well, she wasn’t a girl anymore, and he wasn’t the only one who could be shocking. Lottie pressed her tongue to his, determined to show him exactly how little this meant to her—but Alec immediately froze. Her cheeks, already flushed from his attentions, burned even greater at this misstep. Rejection wasn’t humiliating enough on its own; no, she must also resemble an overripe tomato. But before she could pull back and recover what little remained of her dignity, Alec hauled her against his chest so close she could feel every thudding heartbeat. With each rhythmic pulse the kiss seemed to grow only more fierce, more desperate, and more dangerous.

  Lottie gathered what little remained of her frazzled nerves and raised a hand to push him away, but the appendage had other ideas. Instead, her fingers sank into his hair, mussing those thick waves, while her nails gently scraped his scalp. Alec shivered and gripped her harder, which only further weakened her already feeble resolve. Just as her knees began to tremble, Alec splayed one large palm between her shoulder blades while the other moved close to her backside and firmly anchored her against his form. Every inch radiated heat, strength, and undeniable maleness.

  Unlike the other gentlemen of her acquaintance, Alec did not fritter away the daylight hours in private clubs before spending the evening enjoying more shallow entertainments. His body was a weapon, and he treated it like one. She grazed a sizable biceps, and he immediately flexed beneath her fingertips. An appreciative moan rose from her throat, and Alec only kissed her more deeply. The insidious whisper in the back of her mind suddenly grew very loud: Perhaps this is real.

  Alec tore his mouth from hers, as if he had heard it. After a moment Lottie’s eyes fluttered open. She was flushed. Breathless. But Alec seemed as cool and collected as before. He was staring past her with a sharp, calculating look in those fathomless hazel eyes.

  “There,” he murmured. “That ought to do it.”

  Chapter Three

  Once again Alec had underestimated Lottie while vastly overestimating his own self-control.

  That hadn’t been an issue in years—if anything, his control had been a point of pride—but Alec didn’t dare look at her now. He heard her sharp, surprised inhalation as he pulled away, but if he caught just one glimpse of a pliant, kiss-drunk Lottie in his arms, he wouldn’t let go. Alec kept his eyes trained on a corner of the house’s stone facade as he drew his hands away from her deceptively devastating curves. She hadn’t been made of marble at all but was warm and supple, with an enticing figure that could lure men to their deaths; a land-bound siren. A temptation that would most certainly drive him insane.

  But far more unnerving was her reaction to him. Alec had felt that barely contained fire inside her. That passion simmering at the very surface, a breath away from boiling over. It might not all have been on his account—there was still the possible suitor to consider—but he sure as hell wanted to experience Lottie unbound, even if just a part of her, however small, had melted for him.

  It was one thing to want a woman madly, but nothing compared to being madly wanted in return. Except to be wanted by her was an impossibility.

  Thanks to your parents’ shame, a match between the two of you would be a disaster for her, Sir Alfred had rightly pronounced. You’ve more sense than this, Alec. And if you don’t, I
will take great pains to remind you.

  Now there was far too much about himself, both his past and the man he had become, that she could never know. Alec strode over to the other side of the terrace, desperate to smell something besides damned rosewater, hear something other than that soft, sultry moan, fill his hands with something other than her. He swung back around. She stood in the same spot, but all traces of the stubborn, frustrating she-devil had vanished. Her shoulders were slumped and her head was bowed while she nervously twisted her hands. The stark pain in her face hit him harder than any blow.

  She might as well have been that cherubic girl again, appealing to every protective instinct he ever had, while he was the same surly eleven-year-old rejecting her affection in a desperate effort to maintain the impenetrable wall around himself. Until the day she finally managed to scale it. From then on he vowed to do her no harm, and to keep that damned look off her face, but now he was the cause. Alec moved to reach for her, to call her name, to soothe her, but the housekeeper chose that moment to arrive with their long-overdue tea.

  Lottie immediately straightened at the sight of Marta stepping onto the terrace with a heavy tray. She ignored Alec as she walked toward the housekeeper; that cool marble facade had reappeared once again, destroying any trace of vulnerability.

  “Here, Marta. Let me help you.”

  Together they placed the tray on a table and began arranging the tea things. Marta must have included every delicacy in the house, but Alec was in no state to eat.

  Marta was prattling on in rapid Italian—she had been delighted to learn he was fluent, and even knew a bit of the local dialect—but Alec barely heard a word. “Grazie. Puoi andare,” he said and waved her away.

  Marta bowed eagerly. “Prego, prego. Grazie, signore.” She then scurried back into the house.

  “Lord of the manor already?” Lottie quipped as she moved to pour for both of them.

  Alec sat down and tried not to stare at her slender, bare hands gracefully holding the teapot. “Just trying to act the part.”

  A bit of tea dribbled over the spout and Lottie caught it with her finger, then promptly brought it to her lips. Alec coughed and shifted in his seat.

  “About that,” she said, adding a dash of milk to her cup without offering him any. “Why is Marta under the impression that you’re a nobleman?”

  Did she remember he took it plain, or was this merely a snub?

  “I told her my surname was Petrucci. It’s a very old, very well-respected family in these parts.”

  Lottie raised an eyebrow. “A noble one?”

  “You could say that.” Alec picked up his teacup and took a sip while Lottie turned her attention to the plate of pastries; out of all the delicacies before them, she chose an individual custard tart—a crostata con crema. Alec’s favorite.

  “What are you supposed to be, then? A duke? A marquis?” She passed the plate bearing the tart to him. “Oh, but do they have those here?”

  Alec stared blankly at the plate.

  She did remember.

  “Yes, they do,” he said and accepted the dessert. “But this branch of the Petruccis are counts.” His lips curved in a smile. “Which makes you a contessa.”

  Lottie laughed, as if the idea was absurd. As if she couldn’t marry any man she wanted. She had rejected Ceril Belvedere only months ago, and he was the heir to an earldom.

  She chose a few amaretti biscuits for herself and sat down. “Was it difficult to speak Italian again? I’ve been having a terrible time of it.”

  Though Alec’s father had been English, he had been born in Venice to an Italian mother.

  “A little, at first. But it grew easier once I began spending more time here.”

  Lottie’s mouth tightened slightly. “And when was that?”

  She really didn’t know, then.

  Alec held her gaze. “About five years ago. The Mediterranean was deemed the most advantageous place for me. I moved around initially, but I always found my way back to Italy. Venice in particular.”

  His father, the superfluous third son of a viscount, came to the floating city as a young man after a family quarrel over his pursuit of poetry instead of the church. The estrangement had only deepened when he took up with Alec’s mother. At the time of his death, Edward Gresham had not set foot in England in fifteen years. Though he had risen to become a well-respected member of Venetian society, it had not come without a cost. One that Alec still bore.

  It didn’t seem necessary to add that Sir Alfred also had a number of connections to the city and expected Alec to use his Italian heritage in order to gain closer access to the powerful Venetians who wouldn’t otherwise trust an outsider, especially an English one.

  “I see.” Her mouth tightened again, but the grimace was more pronounced this time. “I suppose playing a reprobate Englishman must make for an excellent disguise.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I teach at the Università Ca’ Foscari now.”

  Lottie couldn’t hide her surprise. “You’re a professor?”

  Alec nodded. There were already enough English reprobates in the Byronic mold wandering around Venice. His middling academic career was one of the few things he was actually proud of. “I’ve been putting that blasted first in history to use.”

  Her eyes warmed with a hint of approval. “The Etruscans, I take it?”

  First the tarts, now Etruria. While Sir Alfred had a well-documented passion for the Roman conquest of Britain, Alec’s interests had always verged toward the more ancient and mysterious. “Naturally.”

  She smiled a little and dipped her head, but when she spoke her tone was carefully bored. “I suppose you live alone?”

  “Yes.” An admirable attempt to fish for information. “I could never ask a wife to subject herself to the demands of my work.”

  Lottie glanced away. “Of course.”

  He ignored the stirring in his chest that came when he uttered the word wife and pushed ahead. “Your uncle explained what I was doing, then?”

  It was common knowledge that Sir Alfred had the admiration of the queen and the ear of the prime minister, but few really knew how far his influence extended. He had spent the better part of his adult life spying for the Crown and championing the use of both foreign and domestic intelligence in affairs of state. Though the practice had flourished during the Napoleonic wars, since then England had fallen behind the comparatively advanced operations of adversaries like Russia and Germany. Those in power were slowly coming to see the value of such information, but missions were still underfunded and mostly undertaken by amateurs––wealthy, well-connected gentlemen who wanted a little adventure. Alec was one of the few men who had been specifically recruited for such work and highly trained. At some point Sir Alfred had let his niece further into the fold, but Alec had no idea just how much she knew.

  Lottie didn’t meet his eyes. “He told me enough. And it was rather easy to piece the rest together after you left.”

  “But you didn’t know I had gone to Italy,” he prodded.

  She was quiet for a long moment. “I never asked. For all I knew, you were in London this whole time.”

  Alec inhaled deeply, trying to keep his irritation in check. How could she think such a thing? “I haven’t set foot in England since I left,” he said through clenched teeth, but Lottie merely shrugged and took a sip of tea, as if it made no difference. That stung more than it should have. He hadn’t come here to reopen old wounds. But then they shouldn’t even be having this conversation. She was supposed to marry fabulously, take her rightful place at the top of society, and have a veritable litter of children by now. Yet here she was, trying to undermine her own future.

  Did she truly not want those things? Or had she been led astray and then abandoned by another man? Neither possibility was appealing; the latter for the obvious reasons, as well as other, less obvious ones Alec would rather not explore. But at the thought of the first possibility, a dull pain began to bloom in his chest un
til he smothered it. Like all the others.

  For if she did not want that glittering London life, what had all this sacrifice been for?

  Lottie broke the tense silence. “I will go with you, but only on two conditions.”

  Alec set down his teacup, grateful to be distracted from such unnerving thoughts. “Anything.”

  “I want to see Venice before we leave Italy.”

  “Absolutely not,” he barked, but Lottie was unruffled.

  “I know it adds time to the return journey,” she conceded. “But this may be my only chance to see the place. I have no idea how long I will be in England. If Uncle Alfred has truly fallen ill, I’d like to help him. But if he survives, I foresee some objections should I try to leave again.”

  “He can’t hold you prisoner, Lottie,” Alec scoffed.

  Her eyes narrowed. “He can do any number of things, if his faculties remain. Do you doubt it?”

  Alec was silent in the face of her hard stare. In his rush to rescue her from ruin, he had given no thought to what would happen upon her return to London. Yes, Sir Alfred had been angry, but he loved his niece and only wanted what was best for her.

  Of that Alec was absolutely certain.

  “I assume you haven’t sent word to anyone yet that you’ve found me. I’m willing to sacrifice a day or two, if you are.”

  “That isn’t enough time to see Venice properly,” he grumbled. But it could be more than enough time to create complications. For them both.

  “Oh, I quite agree with you,” she said. “But I’d rather see only a bit than nothing at all.”

  Alec glowered. He refused to be guilted by her. She had put herself in this position. If Lottie had wanted to see Venice so badly, she could have gone with her chaperone.