Pleasured by the English Spy

Pleasured by the English Spy
Bronwyn Scott

English spy Andrew Truesdale has been sent to Florence on a mission–to befriend widowed contessa Olivia di Montebaldi and discover if she's plotting a nationalist revolution in the aftermath of Napoleon's defeat.Andrew expects the assignment to be easy. After all, his job with the British Diplomatic Corps required him to perfect the art of flirtation and become a consummate seducer of women. Everything changes, however, when he arrives at Olivia's villa. Instead of the middle-aged woman he expects, Andrew finds a vivacious young beauty who piques his interest. . . and his lust.But while Andrew may be taken aback by the contessa, Olivia knows exactly who Andrew is. . . and that he is dangerous. She may let him claim her body, but can she trust him with her secrets?

Pleasured By the English Spy

Bronwyn Scott

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Author Note

I cannot think of a lovelier place to be than Florence, Italy, in the fall. The days are comfortably cool and the new wine is almost ready. I’ve been wanting to do a story set in and around Florence for some time now. I had the good fortune to live in Florence on a teaching assignment a few years ago and I fell in love with it. So I jumped at the chance to put Andrew Truesdale there on his adventure.

Andrew Truesdale is a friend of Valerian Inglemoore, the Viscount St. Just from The Viscount Claims HisBride (March 2009 Mills & Boon Historical) during Valerian’s years abroad. The Viscount’s circle of friends during this time include Julian Burke, in the January 2009 Undone short eBook Libertine Lord,Pickpocket Miss, Andrew Truesdale, who gets his own story here in Pleasured By the English Spy, Camden Mathison and Valerian’s lovely cousin Emma, both of whom hope for their own adventures in the future.

The Undone short stories have been a fun way to explore some of the experiences Valerian refers to in The Viscount Claims His Bride when he returns home after nine years abroad. Now, when Val is talking about how he sent a Chusan palm home from Italy, you know exactly what he and his friends were doing when that occurred! You can say, “ah, that must have been when….”

For fun facts about Florence and other settings used in my Undone short stories, come visit my blog at www.bronwynswriting.blogspot.com

Ciao!

Chapter I

October 1823, Florence Italy

Ah. He could breathe again. Andrew Truesdale steadied the gray-flecked stallion beneath him and sucked in a lungful of country air. Below him lay the red-roofed duomo that majestically marked the landscape of Florence. Beyond it, to the west, lay the dome of the Medici Chapel in the San Lorenzo neighborhood. From the hills above, the city looked peaceful, even stately and organized, each neighborhood marked with churches and towers.

Up here, one was hard-pressed to believe in the chaos below. Hidden from view were twisting streets hardly big enough for the service wagons that traveled through them and the narrow pavements that lined them. Certainly there were things he loved about Florence. The tight spaces were not among that number.

He preferred the wide openness of the countryside, any countryside. It didn’t have to be the English countryside. It was the rhythm of the land he loved. He could see it in the change of the seasons, in the rituals of the harvest. In many ways, he believed October was the best time to be in Italy; the grapes were ready to pick for the new wines, olives hung plump with juice on their branches waiting to be plucked. There would be long days of hard work ahead for those who harvested the land, followed by nights of laughter and feasting as they celebrated the bounty saved in their storehouses, security against the coming year. If life was busy during the harvest it was simple too, with everyone focused on the singular goal of bringing in the crops.

He knew the pattern of this season intimately. He’d been here before, lived here as a boy with his grandparents. It was why he’d been the one chosen to come, the one the British delegation in Vienna had trusted with this mission.

Andrew turned his horse onto the upward path that led to his destination: the Villa of the Breezes, home to the woman whom the British believed held the key to the latest wave of liberal nationalism to gain momentum in the wake of Napoleon’s ruined empire.

He gave the sure-footed stallion full rein to find a way over the hilly path, while he turned his thoughts to the details of his commission. Like most of the diplomatic work he’d been involved with in Vienna, this latest assignment was both straightforward and complicated. A few months earlier another attaché, the Viscount St. Just, had written from Florence, where he’d stopped en route to his destination in Naples. St. Just had sensed something was afoot in the salons of Florence, but hadn’t had the time to investigate further. The corps of diplomats in Vienna, headed by the viscount’s uncle, had decided to send a delegate to Florence.

Andrew was to befriend the widowed contessa who’d come to St. Just’s notice. He was to discover what went on at her salons, what politicos frequented her gatherings. She wouldn’t be the first to attempt to sponsor a nationalist revolution under the cover of a harmless intellectual gathering. If St. Just’s suspicions were borne out, things would get thorny. The complications were in the consequences of Andrew’s findings.

Britain’s position on liberal nationalism was tenuous. Theoretically, Britain supported the desire of territories to bind together into larger nation-states. Under Napoleon’s regime, Italy, a region populated by city-states and principalities, had been converted into the Kingdom of Italy. After Napoleon’s defeat, the country was swamped with a sense of national unity that competed with the Conference of Vienna’s decision to disband the Kingdom of Italy and return the lands to their original status. Lands had been restored, but the wave of nationalism had not subsided.

That put Britain in an awkward position. Britain had supported similar movements in Portugal and Spain but could not openly do the same for Italy. Supporting a unified Italy meant alienating the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which controlled large amounts of land in northern Italy. They would have to be defeated in war in order for Italy to claim those lands. But Britain could not openly fight the Austro-Hungarians. Britain needed their alliance. Without that alliance, Britain risked trouble in regards to the Eastern Question and water rights in Turkey which secured the British passage to India.

It was enough to make any man’s head swim. But that was the diplomatic game these days in the new Europe and Andrew had a very astute mind for it. Any one move anywhere would impact alliances everywhere.

Andrew rounded a final corner, and the long gravel drive to the villa presented itself, lined with tall poplar trees on either side. He had a fair understanding of what he’d see at the far end; a villa designed to be an aristocratic refuge with long windows rounded on the top, columns and terraces to catch the cooling breezes against the summer heat, all of this surrounded by expanses of parkland. After all, this was the home of a widowed contessa who kept a small palazzo in Florence but retreated during the summer months to escape the heat.

Andrew had his own mental picture of the contessa, too: a woman of middle years with a fading beauty, whose sharp wit and political ties made her more attractive to the company she kept than her looks. He knew how to charm that kind of woman. Vienna was full of them. Such flirtations had become de rigueur, his stock in trade as it were. The British delegation must have expected as much when they’d made their selection. Along with his background and fluency in Italian, Andrew Truesdale was a consummate seducer.

With these preconceived notions in mind, Andrew had been a bit surprised to find that the contessa in question was still residing in the hills when he’d arrived in town. A socialite didn’t obey the call of the seasons like a farmer. He’d have thought she would have returned to town and her intellectual milieu at the first sign of cooler weather. But her small palazzo in town was still closed up. The servant stationed there had directed him to the summer villa.

That bit of surprise was nothing compared to the surprise he experienced now. The villa at the end of the drive was majestic enough with its columned main building and the single-story wings that flanked it, but there was no mistaking this for a socialite’s retreat. This was a working villa like his grandparents’ home.

Andrew dismounted and led his horse toward what looked to be a stable-block. A lone groom was on duty, polishing tack.

“Where is everyone?” Andrew asked in flawless Italian, although there was no disguising the accent that lurked underneath his perfect words.

The groom gestured vaguely past the house. “They’re picking the grapes.”

Andrew took that as an invitation to join whomever he found there. He strode forward, rounding the corner of the house. Nature brought him to a full stop. The lands of this house weren’t given to pretty-but-useless expanses of green lawn. They were given to the growing of crops. Groves with their straight rows of olive trees, vineyards with their terraces of vines laden with grapes rose on the gentle slopes. There were weathered buildings too, probably an olive mill of sorts, Andrew guessed, and a workspace for wine making. The hillside was full of people picking grapes; snatches of song floated to him.

He had not expected this. Andrew made his way towards the people, asking the closest one where the contessa was. He was half expecting to hear that she was back at the house. The first person he asked gestured for another to join them. The newcomer was a tall, well-formed young man in his early twenties, a few years younger than Andrew. He shook Andrew’s hand in the English custom and steered him away from the bustling vineyard, wiping sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.

“You’re looking for Olivia, then?” the man asked in decent English.

Ah, the contessa had a name. Olivia. A rather ironic name given the surroundings. Fortunately, the young man was affable and didn’t ask him to state his business.

“She’s in the shed.” His guide nodded towards one of the weathered buildings Andrew had noticed earlier. “Is she expecting you?”

“Not particularly. I was unable to send a precise date of my arrival.” Andrew said vaguely. The young man nodded with careless acceptance of his answer. Andrew was silently grateful there hadn’t been any further questions about his business.

Happy voices shouting in tones of amusement filtered out of the shed through the half-opened door. Andrew pushed the door open wider. His eyes adjusted to the dim interior and he smiled at the once-familiar scene. Women crushing grapes in the giant vat, skirts kilted up high, ready for the ancient Tuscan dance. He hadn’t seen anything like it since he’d left his grandparents.

Glad memories swamped him, and he was content to stand there for the moment, letting the sweet smell of grapes wash over him in a pungent wave, remembering the thrill of the grape harvest, watching the women work. One woman in particular garnered his attention. In the center of the enormous vat was a goddess of nature come to life; black hair, held loosely by a ribbon, spilled in waves down her back. Her legs were long and shapely, tanned where her skirts were drawn up. Watching those legs work to squash the grapes conjured up a hundred hot fantasies. But it was her face that captivated Andrew the most.

Although much of her face was hidden from view in the dimness of the shed, Andrew could see the woman’s smile; warm and lovely, this smile came from the core of her. There was no mistaking that she was lit up with joy from the inside out. Such unadulterated happiness was a rare commodity in his hard-bitten world, where everything was just another move on a chessboard and agendas as well as emotions were meant to be veiled.

The primal man in him surged unexpectedly to the fore. He wanted her with a clarity that precluded all else. He wanted this woman with the honest smile for his own. Never before had Andrew felt such a raw, instantaneous attraction. This was entirely new to him. The force of his desire to claim her was shockingly strong. He was used to playing the tiger, stalking his prey, studying it before he ran it to ground.

“Livvy!” His guide called out beside him. “There’s someone here to see you.”

Confusion paralyzed Andrew’s thoughts for a moment. The contessa was crushing grapes? No one in the big vat had looked old enough to be the contessa of his imaginings. Then his earth goddess nimbly climbed out of the vat and came towards them. She was the contessa? His goddess was the contessa? In no way did she resemble the aging woman he’d pictured in his head, and his body thrummed with the knowledge of it.

Chapter II

Up close, her face was as lovely as the shadows had promised. Almond-shaped eyes tilted slightly upwards at their tips. The soft curve of cheek and jaw gave her face a classic feminine look. This was a face that drove men to protect, to claim. This was a face men would want to come home to. It conjured up visions of uncomplicated pleasures: a simple meal at a rough-hewn table, a rope-strung mattress and a well-worn quilt. Dressed as she was in the cotton skirt and blouse of a peasant, it was not hard to imagine claiming her on that rope bed. The neck of her loose blouse had come open, offering a tantalizing peek of her breasts beneath the fabric. It was proving difficult indeed to reconcile this peasant princess with the contessa he was seeking.

She was all smiles when she spoke. “Who have you found now, Piero?”

Her Italian was easy, natural; to many, it would sound like a native tongue but Andrew heard the difference because it was the same difference he possessed. The Italian widow described in St. Just’s letter was no more Italian than he was. The contessa was English. Had St. Just known?

“It’s the other way around this time, Livvy. He’s found us. He’s looking for you.” Piero said. Only then did Andrew realize he’d failed to give his name.

Andrew stepped forward. “I’m Andrew Truesdale. Are you Contessa di Montebaldi? I’m a friend of Viscount St. Just,” Andrew explained as blandly as he could. He was already reaching inside his coat for his papers and the letter of introduction St. Just had written.

Her smile disappeared, and she speared him with sharp brown eyes the color of earth and agates. “I’m the contessa, and you can put those papers away. If you’re St. Just’s friend I know everything I need to know. I know you’re dangerous.”

Olivia held the stranger’s gaze for a long moment, as if in that span of time she could take his entire measure. Here was another handsome Englishman. He was the second in five months. She’d told Piero this would happen. She’d begged Piero after St. Just’s departure to be more careful. She’d told him he could not bring his “business,” such as it was, to her home any longer. He’d been more circumspect the last few months, but apparently her warning had come too late.