Yet after a furious scrubbing to rid herself of the smell, the touch, the memory of the animal who’d assaulted her, she’d had her maid Thérèse dress her in a gown she might have worn when she had guests to tea.
Tonight—or this morning, rather—tea was laughably inadequate.
Arnaldo brought brandy. Her rescuer sipped his appreciatively as he gazed about the comfortably appointed room adjoining her boudoir.
She sat, supported by pillows, upon the sofa. “‘The fellow across the way,’” she said. She took a shaky gulp of her drink. “That is not the most enlightening introduction I’ve ever heard.”
It was all she’d obtained so far. He’d hustled her inside, allowing no opportunity for questions because he’d been too busy ordering her servants about as though he were lord of the place.
Whatever else he was, he was without question an aristocrat.
“The gossip claims you are a member of the Albani family,” she pressed on into the unencouraging silence. “A most distinguished family, they say. A pope or two in it, I’m told. But now you say you’re English.”
Glass in hand, he moved to a large portrait of her that hung on the portego side of the room. It was one of several the marchese had commissioned in the course of their relationship. This, the largest and most recent, was the only one he’d sent her after she ended the affair.
“My father is Lord Westwood,” her guest said, his gaze still on the portrait. “My mother, his second wife, is Veronica Albani. They come to Venice from time to time. Perhaps you’ve met them?”
“I’m not usually invited to genteel gatherings,” she said while she tried to place Lord Westwood. Once upon a time she’d had Debrett’s Peerage memorized. Once upon a time she’d understood the intricate family connections of Great Britain’s aristocracy. She’d been John Bonnard’s political hostess, after all.
She had no trouble at present remembering the names of those who’d cut her after the divorce—and that was everybody. At the moment, however, Lord Westwood was a blank to her. She had no idea where he stood in the hierarchy of noblemen: duke, marquis, earl, viscount, baron.
“I should hardly call my parents genteel,” he said unhelpfully. He looked away from the portrait, studying her face, his own soberly critical. “An excellent likeness.”
Under his quiet scrutiny she felt as awkward as a schoolgirl.
That was patently ludicrous.
You’re a notorious slut, she reminded herself. A demimondaine. A woman of the world. Act like one.
“No one seems to know your name,” she said. “It’s most mysterious. What does it say on your passport, I wonder, and why does no one seem to know this simple thing?”
He shrugged. “Hardly a mystery. I’ve been in Venice for only a few days, and the curious can’t have tried hard to find out answers. As you say, it’s a simple thing, easy enough to find out. One need only ask the Austrian governor, Count Goetz, or his wife—or Mr. Hoppner, the British consul-general.” He paused. “I’m James Cordier.”
Then at last her mind made the connection. The Earl of Westwood’s family name was Cordier.
“I am Francesca Bonnard,” she said.
“That much I know,” he said. “You’re famous, it seems.”
“Infamous, you mean.”
His long stride brought him quickly across the small room to her. “Are you really?” he said. His eyes had widened with what seemed to be genuine surprise, and she was shocked to discover that they were not dark brown or black as she’d at first supposed, but blue, deep blue.
He sat in the chair nearest hers and leaned forward, studying her intently, rather as though she were another portrait whose quality he was assessing. “What dreadful thing have you done?”
Again she had to fight with herself not to squirm.
Scrutiny from men she was used to. What she wasn’t used to was being studied as though she were an abstruse line of Armenian. She felt stiff and uneasy. She was aware of heat spreading over her cheeks.
A blush, of all things! She, blushing!
She was disconcerted, that was all, she told herself. He wasn’t what she was used to. He was reputed to be a scholar. He was reclusive. What surprise was it, then, if he was eccentric, too?
“Perhaps you don’t go out much in Society,” she said.
“English Society, do you mean?” he said. “No, I spend little time in England.”
“I’m divorced,” she said. “The former wife of Lord Elphick. It was a great scandal.”
“And does he harbor ill will, do you think?” he said. “Do you suppose he might have hired men to kill you?”
Remembering Quentin’s visit, and the sudden interest in those old letters of Elphick’s, she’d considered the possibility and quickly discarded it. If Elphick had her killed now, he might get into trouble he wouldn’t be able to get out of. She was no longer his despised slut of a wife. Here on the Continent she was a glamorous divorcée with important friends. Her untimely demise would cause an uproar. It would be scrupulously investigated. Not to mention that Elphick couldn’t be sure what arrangements she’d made about the letters, in the event of her death. No, killing her was too risky for him.
“Good grief, no,” she said. “I’m more useful alive. He looks so much nobler and more virtuous in comparison to his wicked wife. He can pose as brave and forbearing. No, killing me would spoil his fun.”
“And dying would spoil yours, I reckon,” he said.
Surprised, she laughed. She had not thought she could laugh again, so easily, so soon after a narrow escape from rape and a grisly death—but then she was resilient, wasn’t she?
She became aware of an odd stillness about him that seemed to tauten the very air of the room. But she’d scarcely noticed it before it vanished.
“One’s first theory is that they were robbers,” he said. “But what a curious way to go about it. It would have been so much easier to knock you unconscious and strip off the jewelry and toss about your skirts for your purse. But this was meant to cause you as much suffering as possible in a short time. I saw it happen from my balcony, and it was plain that the assault was planned. Since violent crime is rare in Venice, one must conclude that this was deliberate, aimed at you. The motive, though…” He shrugged, in a most un-English way, drawing her attention to his big shoulders.
“You sound like a lawyer,” she said tightly. “You seem to know a great deal about criminals.”
“You sound like someone who doesn’t like lawyers,” he said. “You seem to know a great deal about them.”
“I’m a divorced woman,” she said. “My father was Sir Michael Saunders, the man who, single-handedly, nearly destroyed the British economy a few years ago. Yes, Mr. Cordier, I’ve had a great deal of experience with lawyers. I don’t particularly like them. I don’t particularly hate them, either. For a woman in my position, they represent an unfortunate necessity.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Your position. A divorcée.”
“Divorziata e puttana,” she said tautly. A divorcée and a whore.
He leapt from his chair as though one of Satan’s imps had pricked his arse with a hot fork.
“Good heavens!” he said. “I do beg your pardon. Am I keeping you from your work?”
That did it, finally. She stared at James, the green eyes huge in her face, shadowed and so vulnerable. He knew it was simply the aftereffects of looking death in the eye, yet it angered him. Before this, she had been so confident, so arrogant—
Then the too-fragile expression crumbled and she laughed, heartily and long.
His heart skipped a beat and another and went on so, beating raggedly.
He couldn’t help that. He couldn’t help smiling, either.
She was good, very good, and at last he was beginning to understand—in his gut, not simply in his mind—why she was so deuced expensive and why the men who could afford her paid without the smallest hesitation. This was a rare beauty with a rare exuberance.
&nbs
p; She must be great fun in bed.
Small wonder the notoriously fickle Bellaci had kept her for so long.
“Keeping me from my work,” she said, her laughter subsiding to a soft chuckle while the naughty glint returned to her green eyes. “I must tell Giulietta. She’ll love that one. But no, Mr. Cordier, you are not keeping me from the streets, because I don’t walk them. Besides, you may have noticed that Venice hasn’t much in the way of streets. I’m the other kind of harlot. The excessively greedy kind. And I had planned to spend this night in bed—with a book.”
“Then it’s all too strange to me—at least to the Italian side of me,” he said. “I shouldn’t have imagined a woman of your quality would spend a night alone. But then, I’m still trying to imagine what would possess a man to divorce you. Was he enamored of his own sex perhaps? Or was it sheep he preferred?” He waved his hand, as though to dismiss the subject. “But it is none of my affair. I keep you from your book, and perhaps, after all, a book is preferable to a lover.”
“Sometimes,” she said, her mouth curving a little.
It was only a teasing hint of the wicked smile that sent electric shocks of anticipation straight into a man’s bloodstream, to speed merrily to his reproductive organs.
The tiny smile was a devilish glimpse of things to come. It might be an invitation. It might simply be teasing.
Whatever it meant, it worked. His temperature was climbing and his brain was already turning over negotiations to his cock.
Slow down, laddie, he told himself. You know better.
He knew, far better than most men. He couldn’t succumb. He couldn’t let her have the upper hand. He’d already decided how he’d play this: hard to get.
“He divorced me for adultery,” she said.
“Shocking,” he said. “I should have thought he had a serious complaint: You’d put arsenic in his coffee or had his drawers starched or beat him at golf.”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “I only thought of the arsenic after—and then it was too late.”
“It’s never too late for arsenic,” he said. “What it is, is too slow. Unless you only want to make him desperately sick. Or to make sure he dies slowly and painfully. For fast work, I’d recommend prussic acid.”
“You seem to know a great deal about these matters.”
He remembered that she’d watched him kill a man—or nearly kill him. James was acutely, embarrassingly aware that he’d been too enraged to pay attention to what he was doing. He’d no idea whether the pig had been breathing or not when dropped into the canal. An unconscious man sinks more or less the same way a dead one does.
She was bound to wonder about a man who could incapacitate another with his bare hands. Clearly, she wasn’t the sort who was callous enough not to wonder. He’d met far too many women who wouldn’t wonder: Marta Fazi, most recently.
“I do know a great deal,” he said. “In my youth, I fell in with a very bad lot.” Absolutely true. He preferred to keep as close to the truth as possible. So much simpler that way. “The family packed me off into the army, where criminal and violent tendencies can be properly and gainfully employed.” Also true.
“Violence, yes,” she said. “But poison? I’d always heard it was a woman’s tool.”
“I come from a long line of poisoners,” he said. “Mother’s got some Borgia as well as Medici trickling through her veins.” As he started to set down his glass on the table next to her, he caught a whiff of a light scent. Jasmine?
He carefully placed the glass and straightened, resisting the temptation to lean in closer, to find out if the scent was in her hair or on her skin. “And you, I see, come from a long line of women, eternally curious. I should be happy to…satisfy…your curiosity, but I am obliged to report the incident to the Austrian governor—as I should have done immediately. They are very strict, as you know, about their rules. Then I must be abroad early. The monks expect me punctually at ten. I shall send you my monograph on popular murder methods of the sixteenth century. My sisters say it makes excellent bedtime reading.”
“Why don’t you bring it yourself?” she said. “You might read it to me.”
In bed was left unsaid.
It didn’t need to be said. The smile lingered at her mouth and the green gaze slid over him, as smooth as water.
He wanted to dive in, even though he was sure she’d drown him there.
Tie me to the mast, he thought.
“Devo andare,” he said. I must go. “Buona notte, signora.”
“Buon giorno,” she said. “It’s nearly dawn.”
“A rivederci,” he said.
And before she could tempt him to argue whether it was night or morning or persuade him to watch the sun rise with her, he made his exit.
He was sweating.
Chapter 4
’T is a sad thing, I cannot choose but say,
And all the fault of that indecent sun,
Who cannot leave alone our helpless clay,
But will keep baking, broiling, burning on,
That howsoever people fast and pray,
The flesh is frail, and so the soul undone:
What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,
Is much more common where the climate’s sultry.
Lord Byron
Don Juan, Canto the First
The following afternoon
Mr. Cordier’s treatise had been delivered while Francesca was still abed, though not asleep. She’d spent most of the night—or what was left of it—awake, wanting to kill him—which effectively took her mind off the men who’d tried to kill her.
She wrote one short note to the comte de Magny, briefly explaining what had happened and assuring him she was unharmed. After telling Arnaldo to have it delivered without loss of time, she took up the treatise.
At present, still in her dressing gown, reclining upon the chaise longue of her private parlor, she read:
In fact, the second husband of Lucrezia Borgia was strangled because he had, quite innocently, become a political liability to her brother Cesare Borgia. The murder took place in the couple’s apartments. Lucrezia did her utmost to save her twenty-year-old spouse, to no avail. Long afterwards, she remained inconsolable. Her father, sick of listening to her weeping, sent her out of Rome.
“So that was my problem,” Francesca muttered. “No brother.”
“Signora, here is Signorina Sab—”
“Oh, get out of the way,” Giulietta said, pushing past Arnaldo. She hurried to Francesca’s side, knelt on the footstool, and took her hand. “It is all over Venice,” she said. “Someone tried to kill you. It cannot be true.”
Francesca threw down the pamphlet. “That much is true. Whatever else you’ve heard is bound to be less than accurate.” In ruthless detail she described what had happened from the time the men had attacked to the moment Mr. Cordier had taken his leave.
Halfway through the recitation, Giulietta turned pale, but the story of Francesca’s futile attempts to seduce Mr. Cordier revived her.
“I have to kill him,” Francesca said. “It must be poison, though, because he’s too big to strangle.”
“Big and beautiful and he would not make love to you,” Giulietta said with a laugh. “Who can blame you for wishing to murder him?”
Francesca had described him in mouth-watering detail: the thick, curling, raven-black hair; the eyes so shockingly blue; the athletic physique, the potent aura of masculinity.
Her mouth still watered, though she of all people ought to know better. She waved her hand dismissively. “I’ll get over it. A temporary madness, perfectly understandable in the circumstances.”
“He is beautiful. He saves your life. You are shocked and frightened. It is natural to want a big, strong man in your bed to keep you safe.”
“And to help me forget,” Francesca said. “What better than a bout of lovemaking to shut out unpleasantness? If only he’d obliged, I might have had a proper night’s sleep.?
??
“I understand,” Giulietta said. “Everyone knows this happens. After a great danger, after a funeral, the lovemaking proves that we are alive. To me the puzzle is why he refuses. He desires men, do you think?”
“No.” Francesca glanced at the small table placed, as always, near at hand. Today it held the wine decanter on its silver tray, along with two wine glasses, for she’d known Giulietta would arrive earlier than usual. Rumor traveled at a stunning speed in Venice.
In her mind’s eye, Francesca saw Mr. Cordier’s long-fingered hand as he set down his drink on that table. Recalling the quick, cool work he’d made of her attacker, she’d felt a chill—of fear or of excitement, she wasn’t sure.
Then she’d felt his slight inclination in her direction, and the chill dissolved into a tingle of anticipation. But he’d straightened in the next instant, and withdrawn.
“Not that it matters,” she went on, “because he won’t get a second chance. A younger son, my dear? That would never do. He could never keep me in the style to which I’ve chosen to become accustomed, and I cannot lower my standards.”
One standard being that Lord Elphick must get a stomachache when he learned who the latest lover was, instead of smirking at what he’d perceive as her downfall, the downfall for which he waited so eagerly. He’d still be waiting, she was determined, when he breathed his last—and, she hoped, agonizingly painful—breath.
“I cast lures at Mr. Cordier only because I was overwrought.” She hesitated briefly before continuing, “I was grateful as well, naturally. Do you know, this was the first time in my life a man came to my rescue? Not one of the men I’d known during my Season or during my marriage made the smallest attempt to help me when my husband behaved so abominably. My father had already run away, leaving me to the wolves. Imagine the shock to my sensibilities, when a complete stranger risks his life on my account!”
Giulietta’s brow furrowed. She rose from the footstool and turned to the small table. She picked up the wine decanter and filled the two glasses. She gave one to Francesca, then took her own and lifted it. “You are alive,” she said. “For this I give your neighbor thanks.”