A Duke Never Yields by Juliana Gray

grandfather were in fact right. To see if he could last a year without self-indulgence of any kind; to see if he could find some cure for the dogged dissatisfaction haunting the recesses of his soul; to see if there were some finer, better, stronger-souled Wallingford lurking beneath. Someone like Finn or Roland; someone whom people might actually like rather than merely respect; someone whom a woman like Abigail Harewood might actually love rather than collect as a trophy.
    That last thought had sprung without warning from the depths, and Wallingford actually started in the saddle with the shock of it.
    “Going mad,” he said aloud.
    He put Lucifer into a canter.
    The wager. At the time, it had seemed like the worst kind of stupidity, the kind of pride-driven impulse to which dukes should not be subject. He had blamed that damnably provoking Lady Morley and her teasing. She had sounded almost exactly like his grandfather.
    Now he was grateful. Whenever he felt himself slipping, whenever the temptation of Abigail’s rosy round bosom threatened to poleax his last tottering pillar of willpower, he remembered the wager.
    He had transformed his private promise into a public one.
    He was committed.
    Lucifer cantered around the curve in the road, and the red rooftops of the village came into view, nestled below him like a cluster of russet flowers.
    My dear boy, has the entire conduct of your adult life ever suggested your usefulness for anything else?
    “I can do this, old boy.” He could not say whether he was addressing the horse or himself. He slowed Lucifer down to a trot, the better to negotiate the rocky slope of the final stretch of road.
    By God, I’ll show the old bastard .

SIX
    A bigail adored every aspect of her life at the Castel sant’Agata, but she especially enjoyed breakfast.
    “Jolly splendid of them, to find kidneys and kippers for us,” she said, tucking in half an hour later with all the gusto of an Englishwoman eating her morning ration of organ meats. “I wonder how they managed it.”
    Lilibet was chewing her toast with all the gusto of an Englishwoman eating roof shingles, seasoned with coal dust. There were just the three of them at the moment, Abigail and Lilibet and Philip, three tiny outposts of humanity set around the broad swathe of the ancient trestle table. The gentlemen made a point of breakfasting early, and Alexandra made a point of breakfasting late. “I suppose one can order these things,” she said. “There are hundreds of English in Florence.”
    “Yes, but how would they know ?” Abigail rested her cutlery against her plate in a pregnant pause. “Don’t you think there’s something a bit odd about the old place?”
    “I don’t know what you mean. It’s an old castle, that’s all.” Lilibet lifted her teacup and closed her eyes.
    Abigail tilted her head and observed her cousin’s face, which seemed rather pale and ghostly itself at the moment. She could not understand why no one else sensed the undercurrents drifting about the Castel sant’Agata; to Abigail they were as obvious as the sunshine in the morning.
    “Really? You don’t feel it? As if there are ghosts hanging about every corner?”
    “Ghosts!” Philip bounced in his seat. “Real live ones?”
    “No, darling,” said Abigail. “Ghosts are generally dead. But real dead ones, certainly.”
    Lilibet sent her a quelling frown. “What nonsense. Ghosts, indeed.”
    As she spoke, a parcel of air seemed to brush the back of Abigail’s neck, making it tingle.
    She turned to the doorway, where Signorina Morini stood quite still, headscarf like a bright red slash against the shadowed corridor behind her, teapot and toast rack in her hands. She was regarding Lilibet with a pensive expression.
    “I have more toast, Signora Somerton, and more of the tea,” she said.
    “Thank you, Morini. Are the gentlemen about yet? Lady Morley?” She asked the question with casual indifference, as if it were not common