Chapter Seven
Climbing balconies into Ismay’s room was not part of the plan, at least not explicitly, although in hindsight Alistair could see why it might be implicitly required: they needed to meet in private, and any privacy they might claim in the public eye would only reinforce the engagement and their compatibility.
He swung a leg over the balustrade and carefully levered himself across the gap between balconies.
For the second time. Ismay’s room was not next door to his.
It was two doors over or, rather, two balconies over, and it was a long way to the ground should he falter.
He knew. He’d looked. He’d been regretting that decision ever since.
He wouldn’t say he was afraid of heights—that seemed unmanly—but they definitely made him uneasy.
He planted his bare feet firmly on Ismay’s balcony and blew out a breath of relief.
Safe at last. One would have thought he’d traversed the Alps.
Alistair raised a hand to tap quietly on the glass doors but refrained, halted by the scene inside.
Ismay sat at a small writing desk, dressed for bed in a linen nightgown embroidered at the neck with small pink flowers and tiny green vines.
Her hair was twined in a braid over one shoulder, just as it had been the first day he’d met her in the Vomero.
She looked quite genteel, quite uncharacteristically harmless with her attentions fully fixed on whatever she was writing, hardly the type of woman to take small shot to a boar.
If he didn’t know better, he’d be taken with her.
No one seeing her like this would guess at the imp within.
She’d spilled wine on him at dinner tonight—intentionally—and then called him the clumsy oaf.
In large part, that remark was why he was here.
Their plan was having unforeseen repercussions.
She was not expecting him, but they needed to assess how the plan was proceeding, and they couldn’t do that in public without raising suspicions or undoing their hard work.
He tapped on the panes of the French doors, boy in him grinning when she jumped.
She rushed to let him in, already hissing a scold.
Jupiter’s balls, she did like to hiss at him.
Most of their conversations seemed to start that way.
She yanked him inside in a flurry of admonitions.
‘What are you doing? Did you climb all the way over here? What if someone had seen you? Why didn’t you use the hallway? We have one, you know.’
‘And risk being seen sneaking into my fiancée’s bedchamber?
We’d be married tomorrow. It was safer to climb.
It’s only two balconies over.’ He dismissed the feat as if he hadn’t been outside moments ago breathing a sigh of relief at having accomplished it.
‘How else was I supposed to meet with you without compromising us? Unless of course, you’ve changed your mind?
’ He added the last for a good teasing measure.
Her lips pursed. ‘You know very well I haven’t changed my mind.’
‘Yes, I am well aware. My evening breeches are paying for your dislike. My valet assures me he can get the stain out. Maybe next time you could throw white wine.’ He strolled about her chamber, taking in the white and pink décor.
It seemed at odds with her personality, which was much stronger than frills and flounces.
He stopped to pick up one of the several books lying open on the bed’s white eyelet coverlet.
‘More volcanoes?’ He flipped through the pages.
She crossed her arms. ‘Put that down, please. I have the pages marked and the books laid out in a specific order.’ Did she realise that gesture emphasised the fullness of her breasts?
Or that her linen gown was no match for the light in the room when it came to protecting her modesty?
His eyes gave in to the temptation to skim the length of her: the curve of her hip, the flat of her belly, the hint of a shadowy triangle between her thighs that made his mouth go unexpectedly dry.
‘Was it truly necessary to try to ruin my best breeches?’ He set the book down.
‘Is that what you’ve climbed over two balconies to ask me?’ She grabbed a robe from the back of her chair and slipped it on.
‘Not only that. We need to assess our plan. It’s been five days since its inception, and I think there are some complications.’ Most of which were to his own character. It was being slowly assassinated in a death by a thousand cuts.
‘Such as?’ She resumed her seat at the desk, and Alistair cast about for a place he could also sit. Ismay Rose was not neat and tidy. Her evening gown from supper was still draped over the room’s only other chair, and her books dominated half the bed.
‘You’re making a fool of me. That was not part of the bargain.
’ He claimed the other half of the bed and stretched out alongside her books.
‘Tonight, you called me a clumsy oaf.’ And she regularly quarrelled with him in public, constantly attempting to spike his guns with a sharp comment and sometimes succeeding in front of others.
‘Undermining me can have negative impacts for your father’s business if I am to be his partner.
No one wants to do business with a clumsy oaf.
I am not known to these people. I don’t have a previous reputation with them to fall back on. ’
‘You’ve forgotten one thing.’ She shook her head.
‘You are not going to be my father’s partner.
You are going to leave when the engagement is called off.
Why do you care what people think? Perhaps it will help my father to see sooner rather than later that you are not what he needs.
If he won’t call off the engagement for his daughter, perhaps he’ll do it for the sake of his business.
’ There was a familiar sourness in those words that Alistair knew all too well, the sourness of someone who’d been measured and found wanting.
‘A man has his pride, Ismay,’ Alistair warned. ‘Even me. I am happy to show everyone we don’t suit. But I will not be maligned.’
Her aquamarine eyes flared. ‘Your pride will see us to the altar if you’re not careful. We need results quickly.’
‘Careful seems to be a relative term around here. Since I’ve met you again, I’ve been repeatedly insulted, shot at and had wine spilt on me.’
‘I wasn’t shooting at you, and you’ve given as good as you’ve got. You’ve argued with me.’ But they both knew he had done so with calculated restraint. He’d argued hard enough to help make the point they were unsuitable but not hard enough to damage her reputation any further.
Alistair switched topics, to one more pressing. ‘Do you think any of it is working?’ Alistair rolled to his side and propped his head in a hand.
‘My parents are definitely noticing. My mother has scolded me for not being kind to you. She likes you immensely.’ More sourness.
‘My father does, too. It is making it hard.’ She paused, and Alistair sensed there was something more she wanted to say.
‘But you’ve written to your father. I am sure your review of me was scathing.
’ She tossed her braid in a gesture that suggested a defensive nonchalance as if she didn’t care what he’d written or how much of it was the truth.
‘I don’t know that scathing is the word I’d use.
I was merely honest.’ Even though he could have afforded to be scathing in the privacy of a letter, he’d found himself holding back.
His words would have consequences—one of which might be freeing them from this engagement, but another of which might be to damage her.
He ought not to care, but the longer he was with her, the more it seemed that she might be damaged enough.
Behind her strength and tenacity there was hurt, and it fuelled her much the same way a wound fuelled a cornered bear or, perhaps more aptly, a boar.
‘I was thinking we could create an alternative for ourselves,’ Ismay went on. ‘If my parents can’t be convinced to cry off, you could simply leave. After all, you can go back to Florence and your cousin.’
Alistair sat up and reached inside a pocket for his flask.
He did not like the sound of that at all.
‘Having me bear the brunt of breaking the agreement is not an option. It’s creating a scapegoat, and the goat is me.
You would pin the blame on me? All on me?
’ Another failure to add to the litany, even though this one would not be his fault.
He took a long, restorative swallow and would have taken another if the flask hadn’t been abruptly swiped out of his hand.
‘Do not think for a minute that you’re drinking alone.
’ Ismay wiped the mouth of the flask with the sleeve of her robe and took a healthy swig before settling down at the foot of the bed, her legs criss-crossed beneath her.
‘Hopefully, it won’t come to that. I’m just saying that if it did, you could leave. It’s an easy, elegant solution.’
‘It makes me out to be a quitter. There’s nothing elegant in that.’ It was the one thing he was trying desperately to avoid along with marriage.
‘Surely it would be better in the long run than allowing our parents to bully us to the altar.’ She passed the flask back to him and wiped her mouth again with her hand.
He tried not to think about what it would be like to taste the whiskey from her lips—as a game only, of course, an experiment to prove just how unsuitable they were for each other.
‘You’ve gotten better at drinking over the years, Ismay.’ He gave a wicked grin and swallowed.
‘More practice. Now, hand it over. It’s my turn.’
* * *