The Stargazer: The Arboretti Family Saga - Book One

  The throbbing pain in her head, the scratchiness in her throat, the exhaustion in every corner of her body, were nothing compared to the complete despair that then took hold of Bianca. Ian’s accusations about their previous night’s intimacy stung her far more than all of his other allegations about her character. She harbored no illusions that it had been as special to Ian as it had been to her, but to hear it reduced to the level of petty manipulation was too much. She had been honest with him, she had given herself to him, willingly and entirely. And he had taken her, without any sign of restraint, whispering hot words, compliments, endearments, at the height of his pleasure. How could he pursue his delusions about her, even after that?

  When she spoke, her voice was calm and measured, betraying none of her inner torment. “In the space of ten hours, my lord, I have lost my virginity, miraculously delivered a baby, been buried under a collapsed building, set up a hospital, bandaged two hundred burns, set fifty broken bones, removed a burst appendix, and sewed a leg back on a young girl’s doll. While I am flattered at your conception of my capacities, I’m afraid I cannot also take credit for having maliciously seduced you. Not only do I not know how, I simply did not have time.”

  She sighed and went on. “As for leaving your house without permission or a guard, I was not aware either were needed. And even if I had known, I probably would have neglected it because I departed in such a rush. Had I been delayed even another five minutes, a woman and her baby would have died. Would you really put your rules before their lives? Really?”

  There was neither challenge nor malice in her voice when Bianca asked the question, just curiosity. Nor did her gaze, leveled squarely and openly at Ian, contain anything to make him defensive. In the absence of her hostility, he admitted to himself that he had overstepped a boundary, accusing her of orchestrating a seduction he had himself spent hours planning. What he would have called anger only minutes before, he now recognized as a messy mixture of emotions, remorse, uncertainty, despair, confusion, pain. There was of course also some anger, but the emotion most prominently filling his breast at that moment was relief, relief that she was safe, relief that she had not abandoned him. Or rather, he corrected himself hastily, that she had not escaped.

  “You will not leave that way again.” Ian stated it, but Bianca chose to interpret it as a question.

  “I cannot make that promise, my lord. Perhaps if you could explain what right you have to ask me for an accounting of my movements?”

  “Even if I did not have the right of the law on my side—which, as your betrothed, I do—it would be obvious to the greenest observer that you are not fit to take care of yourself.” Ian swept his pointed look from her bare feet and legs, to her missing hemline, and finally brought it to rest on her bandaged head.

  “That is uncalled for, my lord. Certainly this is an extraordinary occurrence. It’s not every day that wealthy libertines undertake to explode the arsenal.”

  Ian continued as if she had not spoken. “You will check all of your outings with me. And you will always take one of the staff with you as a guard. A grown member of the staff, not that little hellion you found for yourself.”

  “Your uncles found him for me. I cannot believe you would quibble with their judgment after setting them up as my wise chaperons.”

  “I don’t care where he came from, he is not adequate protection.”

  “Be reasonable, my lord. I am conducting a murder investigation which requires discretion and wit. I cannot tromp around with an army of men behind me and you rushing up at inopportune times to ruin everything. If I had a mind like yours, I would suspect that you were purposely trying to hinder my work, intentionally attempting to make it impossible for me to prove my innocence.”

  “You will do as I say.”

  “Maybe.”

  In the strained silence that followed her ambiguous statement, Ian studied her.

  She was filthy and unkempt.

  She looked beautiful.

  In a flash, he had a brilliant inspiration. He had had the perfect means of persuasion at his fingertips the whole time. How had he neglected it so long? It was precisely for situations like this one that he had concocted his clever scheme the day before. Clearly appealing to her reason he would get nowhere, so he would appeal instead to her body. Ian poked his head out of the cabin to murmur something to his gondoliers, then closed the curtains on the windows, reached for her at the other side of the cabin, and pulled her to his chest.

  At first she resisted, using her minimal remaining strength to keep herself firmly planted on her seat. Soon, her strength ran out, and she had to give in. She fought as hard as she could, she consoled herself, but she was simply too tired. And the feel of Ian’s hands on her, the warmth of his body, the smell of his skin after hours of exertion, were not entirely without attraction. But she would just lie there, she told herself, doing nothing, so he could not accuse her of trying to seduce him. Yes, that would be fine, she just would not move, would not make a sound.

  Ian was surprised but not displeased by her passivity. He pulled her head onto his chest and gingerly brushed her hair aside. He began lightly rubbing her neck, his strong fingers kneading away the knots of tension and strain that had formed there, then moved his hands to her back. It felt heavenly.

  His hands moved expertly down her thighs and calves, stopping at her feet. It had never occurred to Bianca that so many pleasurable sensations could emanate from her feet, but that day she learned her error. He ran his thumb up her arch and let it rest on the ball of her foot, kneading it in delicious circles. His hands worked magic from her smallest toe to her heel, melting away her stress, and with it, her reserve. When his hands moved back up to her thighs, pulling the hem of her dress with them, she barely resisted the urge to moan. As his fingers worked to open her to him, she had to clench her jaw to stop from calling out. And when he began to stroke her, gently insinuating the fingers of one hand into the waiting, wet lips between her legs, slowly stroking her sensitive spot with the fingers of the other, she bit her tongue to keep it in her mouth. But that could work for only so long, and before she knew it she heard a voice, presumably hers, begging him to touch her harder.

  “Do you like this?” Ian’s voice came to her, low and seductive, his fingers rhythmically probing her moist heat.

  “Yes, yes. Don’t stop, please. Whatever you do, don’t stop.”

  Ian smiled into her hair, biding his time. Just as he heard her breathing quicken, he lifted his hand.

  “No, no, don’t stop,” she pleaded, turning her eyes, bright with arousal, to meet his.

  Ian lifted one hand from her tender bud and brought it to his lips. Under her unwavering scrutiny, he sucked his index finger into his mouth and then pulled it out again. “Delicious,” he said huskily, and the hand he still had between her legs felt her contract with renewed arousal. How could he excite her without even touching her, Bianca wondered to herself, but not for long because Ian was whispering in her ear.

  She sat, unable to move, as he described all the things he wanted to do to her, how he wanted to stroke her hard until right before she climaxed and then have her mount him and take him, grinding her hips around him, her breasts hanging over him so he could cup them with his hands or suck them into his mouth, flicking her nipples with his tongue until he felt her tighten around him in climax.

  “Would you like that?” he whispered finally, tracing the outer contour of her ear with his tongue, trailing it down her neck, to her shoulder.

  Unable to speak, she could only nod.

  “Do you promise not to leave the house without my permission anymore?” He asked, his voice husky.

  Bianca would have agreed to anything at that moment to experience the pleasure he had described. “This is blackmail. Or a bribe.” Her voice sounded small and wistful.

  “Think of it as a contrac
t,” Ian volunteered. “You get something you want, and I get something I want.”

  It sounded perfectly reasonable to Bianca, whose powers of reason had fled the minute Ian put a hand on her body. But on principle, she knew, she should not give in without a fight. She played with the gold hair peeking out from the neckline of his shirt for a moment, considering, then made a counter offer. “Can I have a climax first, and then another one when you are inside me?”

  Ian knew he had won. His surge of victory felt strangely like arousal. “Greedy, aren’t we?” he asked rhetorically as he passed his hand back down between her legs.

  Ian was glad that Bianca came almost instantly, because he could hold himself back only a short while longer. He loved the way her eyes grew wide like saucers and filled with surprise when she found her release. He strained his ears to hear the little gurgling noises that began in her throat and bubbled up out of her mouth as joyful exclamations of pleasure.

  As Bianca was fumbling with the laces on his pants, he allowed himself momentarily to dwell on the fact that his repeated interactions with her were not diminishing her attractions in his eyes, but he decided that the more time he spent buried within her tight little body, the quicker he would build up his resistance. It was therefore with great vigor that Ian, his hard shaft freed from the constraint of his tight breeches, plunged himself into her.

  He was partially reclining against the velvet seat of the gondola with Bianca astride him. When she had taken him entirely into herself, she threw back her head, her eyes closed, and began to make wide circles with her hips. Ian thrust himself into her, and she had to reach around and grab his thighs to stay atop him. She steadied herself with one hand against the roof of the gondola, leaning forward to take him in deeper. He reached out to stroke where their bodies met, but she caught his hand and moved it to her lips. As they moved together, around and around, she delicately kissed each of his fingertips, then ran her tongue in circles on his palm, relishing the salty taste of his skin. Suddenly hungry for the feel of her pressed against his chest, for her nearness, Ian pulled her down to him and drove himself inside her with all the strength he was capable of. She pushed herself into him, letting their bodies melt together and almost cried with joy when, at the height of his shuddering climax, she heard him speak her name for the first time.

  After two tours around the island of Venice, during the second of which the rain had resumed, Ian’s gondoliers were relieved to get the signal to head for home. One of them was already picturing his warm, dry bed in the servants’ quarters of the Foscari palace, but the other had an errand to do before he could sleep. He wondered how much he would get for his rendition of how Ian had spent his time on the journey home. In the past the sums had been adequate, but he anticipated that his description of the activities of his master and mistress during this gondola ride would have an especially high value. He did not know how many of the other servants had taken that strange man up on his offer to pay for information about the goings-on at the great house, but he had augmented his already generous salary quite a bit with his harmless eavesdropping and snooping. He thought of that pretty little number he had deposited at the Foscari place earlier that day, to be his mistress’s new maid, and wondered how much more spying he would have to do to afford her favors on a regular basis.

  The growling of a tiger or the braying of a donkey would have been less unexpected to Ian than the sound that met his ears as he disembarked from his gondola. At first it was so unfamiliar that he could not make it out.

  Ian was cringing. “What is that infernal noise?”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I hired a maid,” Bianca responded brightly.

  Ian identified the sound and the cringe deepened. “Are you raising her up from an infant?”

  “No, that is Marina’s baby. The baby I delivered today. You should see him, a handsome boy. They named him Caesar, but Ian is his middle name, in honor of you, my lord,” Bianca lied, hoping to soften him.

  “You hired a maid who has just given birth? That’s idiotic. She won’t be any good to you for at least two months.”

  “No matter, I don’t really need a maid anyway. I just wanted to give her a better place to live. Or,” Bianca continued snidely, “since her house was destroyed in the explosion, a place to live at all.”

  “Why stop at her? Why not move an entire body of displaced females into my house and pay them to sit around doing nothing?”

  “That’s a wonderful idea, my lord. Let’s! I can have it all arranged by tomorrow.”

  It was too much for Ian. The Arboretti were under direct attack, he was betrothed to the prime suspect in a murder investigation, and someone had introduced a baby into his house. Between Bianca’s feigned misunderstanding of his sarcasm and the continued wails coming from Colpo or Caruso or whatever the damn thing’s name was, Ian was completely undone. He cast a last baleful look on the beautiful woman whose obvious goal was to destroy his life and headed for the stairs as the clocks on the floor above struck twelve.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ian had barricaded himself in his laboratory. He was trying to figure out how many adjustments would be necessary to make it a permanent living space. His meals could easily be brought up, but because every available surface was covered with some substance—animal, vegetable, or mineral—it was hard to find a place adequate for sitting, let alone sleeping. Since these days he rarely had time to sleep, he consoled himself morosely, it probably wouldn’t matter much anyway.

  This fit of house moving had been brought on by the shrieks and gurgles that had accompanied his bath and grown louder while he dressed. He had stormed out of his room to silence the unholy racket, only to discover the largest part of his household gathered around a hideously ugly bundle in a white blanket in the middle of his reception hall. Each scream issuing from the bundle seemed to elicit broader smiles from Bianca, Francesco, Roberto, Crispin, and most incredibly, Giorgio. When he spoke to demand order in his house, he was brusquely shushed by all of them and told to keep his voice low so as to avoid waking the sleeping mother. It was then that, muttering threats and blasphemies, he had fled, taking the stairs without stopping, until he was safely locked in his laboratory.

  That had been over two hours ago, and Ian found he was not only peevish and hungry, but also in need of several items from his room. He cautiously opened the door of his laboratory and stood, waiting. He heard a door close. He heard footsteps. He heard a man’s voice. More doors. More voices. The normal sounds of his house. That meant no wails, no slurps, no baby noises at all. Maybe they had found a cage for it, he mused, or better yet, sold it. Bravely, he ventured forth onto the landing and, after a brief pause to be sure, descended like a man who has just tasted victory.

  Halfway down the second staircase, he was met by Giorgio.

  Ian regarded his most trusted servant bitterly. “I saw you with that infant. Good god, man, I thought I could count on you, and now I see that you, too, are a party to this travesty. I and that boy, Cholera or whatever his name is—”

  “Caesar,” Giorgio supplied.

  “—Cretin,” Ian continued, “he and I will be the innocent victims of it. Both doomed to lives made unbearable by the machinations of women.”

  “Mmmm,” Giorgio murmured sympathetically.

  “Did you come here to mumble at me?” Ian demanded fiercely. “Have you lost your powers of adult speech? I suppose that before the day is out we will all be prancing around, gurgling and burping.”

  “And spluttering. You are doing a fine job of it now, my lord.”

  Giorgio came close to getting the neck wringing Ian had previously earmarked for Bianca, but the servant knew his master well and quickly dodged out of the way.

  “Actually, I came to tell you that you have a caller and to find out where you will see him. Il Signore Valdone. He assures me it’s not about the arsenal
fire.”

  “Damned nuisance,” Ian gurgled, scratching his chin. “I suppose that Clotin creature has been put away for the afternoon? Is it safe to descend? Or could you send Valdone up here?”

  “I would suggest the library. Caesar is sleeping down behind the kitchens, and I give you my personal assurance that you will hear no more from him today. Additionally, your caller does not look quite up to the ascent to the laboratories. He is rather over the normal size.”

  That Giorgio had not done Valdo Valdone justice with his description was revealed to Ian upon his first step into the library. The man was squeezed uncomfortably into a chair that, though ample for a person of normal dimensions, only accommodated him with difficulty. He tried to rise, but Ian, concerned about the effect of that operation on his furniture, motioned the man back down.

  Though they had never met, Ian knew of him by reputation. As he crossed to the chair behind his desk, Ian hastily reviewed what he had been told of the man. Originally a farmer from the small town of Thiene, he had developed a fortune turning his plants and herbs into perfumes and unguents for women. Instead of cultivating a courtly clientele, creating unique perfumes for every duchess and countess, Valdo Valdone had decided to make his products in large quantities. This meant that they could be sold at prices accessible even to the wives and daughters of small shopkeepers. From a makeshift stall in the middle of one of the shoddier squares of his hometown, Valdo had moved his enterprise to Venice, where he had met with such success that he now did business down the entire length of the Italian peninsula. With each success, it was said, his body grew a little more, so that the size of his corporation was directly proportional to the size of his corpus.

  At least, Ian thought, taking in the immense figure before him, he is to scale. It was not just his body that was large, but also his head, eyes, nose, and mouth.