The Stargazer: The Arboretti Family Saga - Book One

  But even in Tullia’s enchanting presence, in her most seductive boudoir, he found he was still, unstoppably, thinking about Bianca. He reached out to caress Tullia’s hair and wondered why it was not blond. Her body, once her main attraction to him, seemed too voluptuous, too perfumed, too artificial. When he took her breast in his hand, he was disappointed to find it was not small and hard like the small, firm breasts he had seen the previous night. He was even about to fault her for not having a clover birthmark above her left thigh. But he still had three and a half hours, and there was no telling what kind of magic Tullia could work in that time. Ian stretched out to his full length, pulled her on top of his body, and decided to let her try.

  It was a disillusioned Ian who departed for home some hours later. Tullia had outdone herself, employing her body with all the expertise of her ten years as a courtesan, but nothing had been able to free Ian from the chimera that had taken hold of his senses. She later had occasion to tell a companion that no one had ever treated her with such a divine mixture of hunger and delicacy as Ian did that day. He had not even made love to her, Tullia recounted, but only wanted to hold her like a lover would his beloved. Once, she admitted blushing, he even called her carissima.

  But Ian’s psyche refused to be deceived by childish games of pretend, and he felt his desire for Bianca deepening rather than ebbing as the afternoon wore on. His body, which had been alarmingly unresponsive to the exertions of the queen of courtesans, responded promptly to the slightest thought of Bianca. He would simply have to bed her, he finally rationalized, half with excitement and half with dread. For while he could not exorcise her image from his mind, he also could not forget the way her kiss had scorched him. He suspected her of trying to manipulate him, of trying to use her physical attractions to blur his judgment and convince him of her innocence. It was a trick all women used on men, using sex to accustom them to their feminine guile and bend them to their wills. But having recognized it, he reasoned soberly, he could protect himself from it and refuse to be torqued around like a pulley rope.

  S’blood, he could go her one better, he could turn it back on her: he could use intimacy to manipulate her, to keep the reins on her behavior, even to probe her innocence… or her guilt. He found himself beaming as he thought of it. Of course, there was a downside. He had no doubt that, after their first night together, he would be tired of her charms, yet he would have to continue to seduce her if he wanted to continue to control her, and especially if he wanted to get to the bottom of this murder. But it was his duty, as a man and as a citizen of Venice. Yes, he would even court boredom for the cause of justice and his beloved homeland. He began to think that his neighbor, the French ambassador, had a very good idea. He would go to his club first, have dinner, lose some money at the tables, really think the thing through, and then return home to undertake his mission. Congratulating himself on his selflessness, Ian sighed deeply, a long, content, and very patriotic sigh.

  Chapter Ten

  Scented steam curled around the two figures in the bath. The woman tossed her head back, eyes closed, as her maid dexterously sponged her voluptuous contours. Lost in their ablutions, neither woman saw the door facing them open, nor the visitor enter.

  The young man crossed to the tub and looked down at the two women. Too preoccupied with pleasing her mistress, the maid had not heard his footsteps, but the other woman languidly raised her eyes to take in their guest. As usual, he was impeccably dressed, his coat cut to emphasize his broad shoulders and slim waist, his leggings sculpted on his strong thighs, his massive codpiece alluding favorably to the burden it concealed. He smiled down at her as she reluctantly pushed her maid away.

  “I came as soon as I got your note.” He tried to keep the agitation out of his voice. “I passed Ian Foscari on the way. Was he coming from here?”

  The woman laughed, not merrily. “Is my angel jealous? Worried that after his pathetic performance last night I am looking for a replacement? Someone who loves me enough to bring me real proof, not tattered scraps of paper with obscene drawings on them? Someone who does not place their comfort and happiness above mine? Someone who cares about pleasing me?” The woman’s eyes moved from the young man’s face to her maid’s, then back again.

  Color rose in the young man’s face. He had risked his life, almost been killed by that madman, Ian Foscari, and she spoke of not caring enough about her. S’balls, it wasn’t his fault that the place had been gone over from the roof to the floorboards, leaving not even as much as a trace of blood. The body had been there, he was sure of it, but no one would ever be able to prove it. He thought the gory drawings might help, but all they had done was earn him the wrath of his impetuous mistress. And worse, he had been banished from her bed. He felt hollow inside when he thought of the pleasure he had missed, and determined to do everything necessary to re-ingratiate himself.

  “I know that I cannot apologize enough, madonna. I admit that I failed miserably to bring back the proof you were looking for. I beg you to allow me some way to regain your good graces.”

  He was rather handsome when he groveled like that, the woman thought to herself. Also, uniquely suited for the plan she and her brother had concocted in the early hours of the morning. Their last attempt had been too subtle; this time there would be no way for those Arboretti worms to squeeze their way out of it. The woman sighed at the magnitude of the task before her and rose from the bath. The maid was about to rise too but her mistress motioned her down.

  “My angel will attend me. You deserve a rest after all your hard work.” She gave the girl a significant half-smile and the young man regarded the foreign maid with envy, not for the first time.

  The woman let herself be wrapped in her silk dressing gown, then led the young man through to her bedroom. He was already undoing the clasps of his jacket when the woman reached out to stop him.

  “There will be time for that after, but not now.” She pitched her voice low, knowing exactly the tone that would most arouse him. “First, I have a very important task for you, but you must concentrate as I describe it, for every detail matters.”

  It took her almost an hour to explain his errand, but it would take him ten times that to carry it out. Watching him with veiled eyes, she noted his growing reluctance and began to punctuate her speech with fluttery kisses on his wrist, his thigh, his chest, the places she knew would arouse him most with the least effort on her part. “When you have done this successfully, sometime early tomorrow morning, come back.” She slowly ran a finger up the inseam of his hose and let it linger under his codpiece, gauging his reaction with a practiced eye. When she knew she had him at her mercy, she brought her red lips to his ear and whispered breathlessly, “Nothing you could do could make me more grateful. I will spend the time you are gone thinking up an appropriate reward.”

  The young man shuddered in anticipation. This time, he promised his overwrought body, he would not fail.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ian felt as though there should be heroic fanfare to mark his homecoming that night, but instead he heard nothing save for the pounding of the fierce rain against the windowpanes. The clocks had only struck nine but his house was as quiet as it would be in the early hours of the morning. It seemed as if a pall had come over it, and Ian wondered briefly if someone had died. Hearing the sound of voices above his head, he took to the stairs and stopped before Roberto and Francesco’s apartments.

  His uncles looked dire. They were seated before the fireplace, each in his favorite chair, with a decanter of grappa between them. When Ian entered, Francesco paused mid-sentence.

  “Hello, d’Aosto,” he said coldly, and Ian stopped abruptly. Since he was a young child, Francesco and Roberto had addressed him by his title only when they had something very serious or very dreadful to tell him. He waited, reminding himself to breathe, while the silence stretched to a minute.

  “Has someone died?” h
e asked finally, unable to contain his curiosity any longer. “It’s so damn quiet here it feels like we are in mourning. But if we were, you wouldn’t be drinking my best grappa. What is going on?”

  Roberto and Francesco exchanged glances, each willing the other to speak. “Ian,” Roberto began finally, “you know that I am not really your uncle and therefore am not actually in a position to chastise you as a member of your family.” Roberto and Francesco had been together for so long that few people, including Ian, remembered that he was not in fact a relative. He only brought it up when he was so distraught by someone’s behavior that he desired to stand apart from the family. Ian was now well and truly worried.

  “Instead,” Roberto continued, “I berate you as a man. You cannot take a living person and lock them up and accuse them of murder and toy with their emotions and not expect to be held accountable. I do not know what you did to our charge today but she is a different woman. You have broken her spirit, a spirit which not only survived the death of a beloved father but has been indomitable enough to pursue a career in medicine, unthinkable to most men, let alone women. It is quite an achievement. Her misery is so palpable that the entire house has responded to it. You will find few of your staff well disposed to you, and fewer still of your relatives.”

  Ian, aghast, stared at him. “The little witch. The little manipulating, lying, saint-swearing, innocence-touting siren has told you all some false tale of my cruelty and you believed it! This is a betrayal—”

  “Silence!” Francesco was livid, his cheeks flushed with anger. “You dare to accuse us of betrayal? We who have stayed with you, protected you, supported you, loved you through the last two years when you gave us nothing back? You, young man, are not fit to speak of betrayal. Nor of that fine creature you have so cruelly betrothed and immured. No tales of cruelty passed her lips, not a single word about you was said.”

  “You don’t need to go on, Dottore di Rimini. I can tell him myself. But thank you for your kind support.” All three men swiveled to look in the direction of the small voice coming from the doorway. Bianca walked further into the room and curtsied deeply to Ian. “A word with you, my lord?”

  She did seem somehow broken, smaller and frailer than the last time Ian had seen her, but no less beautiful. If anything, her beauty was only intensified by the deep air of misery emanating from her. Looking at her, he understood how she might have captivated the imagination of his household, her unusual eyes appearing even larger and more striking against the pallor of her skin, her cheekbones more pronounced, her hair falling in tendrils around her face. But her beauty alone did not give them the right to brand him a villain, he thought indignantly. Nor to make havoc with the patriotic plan he had been so carefully laying out since he left Tullia’s, especially with his body growing aroused just looking at her there.

  “Come,” he said, sweeping past her through the door. Francesco and Roberto began to protest, but Bianca made a sign to silence them and followed Ian down a flight of stairs and into his library. Under any other circumstances, this first glimpse of such a room would have filled her with indescribable joy, but as it was she hardly noticed the thousands of volumes crowding the walls. She went and stood in front of the fire, wondering if it was any match for the chilly look Ian was aiming at her from his perch at the end of his desk. She rehearsed the opening line of the speech she had composed one last time, gathered as much courage as was left in her, and turned to face him.

  “I want to tell you something, and then I want to ask you a question. If you believe I speak the truth about the first thing, will you promise to answer the question truthfully?”

  “That depends entirely on the question. I will consider it.”

  Unsatisfied but without an alternative, Bianca went on. “I want to tell you the other reason I was at Isabella’s house. I really did have a standing appointment to teach her to write, and she really was helping me with my book, but there was also something else.”

  Ian and Bianca’s hearts were both beating hard, Ian’s with the bittersweet expectation of a confession of murder, Bianca’s with embarrassment. She swallowed twice and continued.

  “In exchange for teaching her to write, Isabella was teaching me something.” She paused, searching her memory for the words she had prepared, wondering if it was really necessary to admit everything. “She was teaching me, describing to me really, what it was like to be with a man. To be intimate with a man.” Bianca stopped talking. Unable to meet Ian’s eyes, she stared at a spot in the vicinity of his chin.

  “That’s all? That’s what you did not want to tell me?”

  Bianca earnestly addressed his chin. “My lord, you must understand how difficult and embarrassing this is for me. To tell you, whose only interest is in women of experience, and whom I would have liked more than anything to make love to me, to tell you—”

  “What?” Ian sat up, paying very close attention. Not only did it look as if his plan might work, but it might work even better than expected. He had thought he would have to spend a good half hour making her want him so he could withhold his favors until she agreed to his demands. But if she wanted to be seduced, it would be even easier to use her desire as a means of manipulation. Ian was so busy contemplating his luck and his growing arousal that he hardly heard her question.

  “Which brings me to my question. What is wrong with me, my lord?”

  In an unparalleled act of courage, Bianca shifted her gaze from his chin to his eyes. She noticed with alarm the dangerous twitching at the side of his mouth that always augured badly for her and wondered if he was going to laugh at her or bite her. She let Ian contemplate her for a few moments, giving him time to inventory her imperfections, before asking her question again.

  Ian brushed it aside. “I was just thinking about whether it would be better to make love to you first on the carpet in front of the fire or in a bed. Which would you prefer?”

  Bianca’s mouth went dry. “I don’t know… ah… um… the fire is awfully nice…?”

  Ian nodded but did not leave his position at the end of his desk. “Take off your dress,” he commanded softly.

  “You are not going to undress me just so you can repudiate me again, are you, my lord?” Bianca’s hands hovered over the bodice, awaiting his answer before proceeding.

  “It depends on how well you answer my questions and comply with my demands.”

  Something about the way he spoke made Bianca shudder. Her hands fell to her sides. “I will not be humiliated again, my lord. I did not ask you to make love to me, only to tell me what was wrong with me. I know I am not beautiful and sensual like Tullia—”

  “Whom?”

  “Santa Catarina’s head, you know well who I mean, you spent the afternoon with her!”

  Ian was momentarily stunned. “Are you having me followed?” He stood and drew close to her, making his voice dangerously low. “You wouldn’t dare, would you?”

  Bianca scowled at him to show him what she thought of his idiotic suggestion and then deeper to remind both him and herself that she hated him. “Oh yes, I have a small battery of men at my disposal for exactly that purpose. I figure it is worth expending the better part of my fortune to trace your movements as you traipse from one boudoir to another, until you come home and decide to humiliate me.” She turned to go, but Ian caught her arm and swung her around to face him.

  “Humiliate you? How do I know you do not want to humiliate me? Last time we talked, you told me you hated me. Now you are begging me to bed you.” He regarded her through narrowed eyes and tightened his grip on her arm. “If you are not having me followed, what makes you think I went to Tullia’s, which I am not admitting? I told no one of my destination.”

  Bianca rolled her eyes. “I applaud your discretion, my lord, though not your powers of logic. I actually preceded you to Tullia’s. It was an accident that we were there at
the same time. I was just leaving when you arrived. Now, if you would kindly peel your fingers from my arm, I might possibly avoid having bruises to match the bump on my head you gave me last night. I begin to understand why you selected doctors as my chaperons. Another few days under your solicitous care, however, and it’s an embalmer, not a doctor, I will be in need of.”

  Ian ignored her gibe, but loosened his fingers on her arm. “If you were at Tullia’s when I—theoretically—arrived, why didn’t I see you leaving?”

  Bianca regarded him slyly. “What makes you think I left?”

  “You were there, at Tullia’s, when I was there?”

  “Don’t you mean, if you were there?” Bianca’s efforts to be helpful met with glaring ingratitude from Ian.

  “What were you doing? With whom?”

  “You might say I was alone. Or you could say I was with you. Since I could see you the whole time.”

  “You watched? You were watching me?” Though he would admit it only later, Ian found the thought arousing. Indeed, it made him want to know more. Now, however, he took his growing arousal as a fine sign of his patriotism and exultation at the revival of his carefully laid plan. His tone was different, no longer challenging, when he asked, “What did you see?”

  The atmosphere in the room changed instantaneously. Ian’s grip on Bianca’s arm was transformed from one of restraint to one of invitation. The pain that she had complained about turned into an intriguing warmth emanating from that single point of contact. His eyes no longer looked suspicion and malice on her, but something different and infinitely more appealing. Bianca did not want to pass up this opportunity, possibly her only opportunity ever, to experience the delights of the flesh. But it was more than her unbounded interest in experimentation that drew her closer to him.