“Thank you for the tour of your laboratory, d’Aosto,” Alessandro was saying when Bianca came out of her reverie. “It is a splendid space. When I return from my next voyage, you will have to come out to my estate with me to look at the ruins of the Roman observatory. I would love to hear your opinion of them. And of course, yours too, signorina.”
“You have been in the laboratories?” was Bianca’s none too genteel interjection.
“Yes, d’Aquila shares my, or rather, our interest in stargazing.” Ian felt her body relax against him as he spoke. He looked down at her, trying to read the confused emotions in her eyes, and she returned his look with what he supposed was supposed to be a smile. It wasn’t.
Alessandro felt a pang of envy as he watched the intimate exchange of glances between the couple. They looked as if they shared a world apart, a magical space all their own, and were eager to get back to it. He was too much of a gentleman to linger when it was painfully obvious that they wanted to be alone, so he politely took his leave, telling them not to bother escorting him out. While descending, he berated himself for not having pursued Bianca with more vigor during her first months in Venice, then reminded himself he would never have had a chance against the Conte d’Aosto.
Only when they were finally alone did Ian loosen his grip on Bianca.
“You were in the laboratories with the Duca d’Aquila?” Bianca repeated.
“Why do you keep asking me that?” Ian’s confusion sounded like annoyance, and Bianca pulled away from him. She wanted to be able to see his face clearly when she asked the next question.
“You were not with Mora? In your room? In your bed?”
Now Ian really was angry. “Did she tell you that?”
He had not denied it. Bianca struggled to keep her voice even. “No. I heard you. Through the door.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Ian was moving with grim determination, descending the stairs at a rapid pace. Bianca was torn between continuing on her way to the laboratories to throw herself into the canal, as planned, or following Ian. Her feet made the decision for her, and she was already tripping down the stairs behind him when her mind hit upon the rationalization that the canal would still be there in another hour.
The smell struck him even before the sight, the seductive, singular scent of Mora. He could feel her there, feel her suffusing the room with her presence. A black silk stocking lay abandoned on the velvet divan, the silk coverings of the bed had been carelessly thrown aside, and the sheets still showed the impression of two bodies caught in a passionate tussle. But the room was empty, the bodies gone. She had defiled his room, purposely, blatantly, filling it with the smells and signs of her body, and then left. Ian was seized with a deadly rage.
The signs were unmistakable, but Bianca felt suddenly clearheaded. “You do not need to explain, my lord, nor deny it. I understand why you would be drawn to her. I felt her attractions myself. I am just going to go up to the roof—”
Bianca stopped speaking because Ian had grabbed her and was looking at her with eyes filled with dark emotion. “Stop it!” he commanded in a voice that left no room for disobedience. “It was not me, not with her, not ever again. You must believe that.”
Bianca had never wanted to believe anything so much in her entire life. “I do, my lord,” she assured him, hoping to banish the hunted look from his face. When Ian relaxed his hold on her arms, she swallowed deeply and then asked the question whose answer she was afraid to know. “Did you send her to me to tutor me? To teach me to make love the way you like?”
Ian was aghast. The idea that Bianca had anything to learn from anyone about lovemaking was so ludicrous he almost wanted to laugh. But the way she seemed to be holding her breath for the answer told him this was no joke to her. “Of course not! Who told you that? Actually, there is no need—undoubtedly it was Mora herself.” Ian looked away so she would not see the deep anger in his eyes and misunderstand its object, but a noise brought his attention back to her. “What are you doing?” Bianca had burst into tears.
“Oh, madonna. She hurt you, didn’t she? I will kill her. What did she do to you? Tell me, Bianca, damn it, what did she do?” Ian’s voice was rapier sharp with rage.
Bianca shook her head and tried to stop her tears of relief. When she spoke, it was between little gasps of air. “No—no—nothing. She didn’t do anything except kiss me. But I was so worried, I was so worried that you had sent her like she said, that I displeased you, that you were dis-dis-disgusted with me—”
Bianca was again silenced by Ian grabbing her, but this time it was to hug her close to his chest. He would protect her, he vowed, he would show her how completely undisgusting he found her. He gathered her against him and held her there with all his strength. She thought she felt him shaking, but it could merely have been the trembling of her own body.
Without speaking, they moved to the bed. Ian helped Bianca undress but refused to let her remove the massive stone that still hung between her breasts. When they were both nude, they climbed into the russet bed and reclaimed it as their own, making slow, deep love. Afterward, they spoke of their experiences at the ball, cuddling close together like a blissful couple long accustomed to intense intimacy. The mood was spoiled only when Bianca described her conversation with Giulio Cresci and Ian stood to challenge the man to a duel, but with a few well-placed kisses Bianca persuaded him to lavish his heated attention on her instead. As the embers in the fireplace died out, they fell asleep entwined tightly together, listening to the light rain on the windowpanes.
Something heavy fell on Bianca’s nose, waking her, but if it hadn’t, she would have awoken a moment later when the shouting started. It was indistinct, more noise than words, but it was unquestionably coming from the man next to her, the man whose arm was presently hindering her breathing.
“Ian,” she said, first softly, then again more insistently, but not loud enough to be heard over the shouting. She wriggled out from under his arm and moved to shake him, but as soon as she touched him, he pushed her away and off the bed.
“Ian!” she shouted, righting herself, gripping his shoulders and shaking him as hard as she could. “Santa Beatrice’s scars, Ian, wake up!”
Ian sat up, panting, and looked around him disorientedly. He looked down at the hands still holding his shoulders, then up at the woman standing over him before he remembered where he was and understood what had happened. The nightmare had been different this time, more realistic and more intense than ever before. It was all Mora’s fault, suffusing his room with her smell and her presence, bringing back the memories and the pain of that time with unmatched clarity. He shuddered as Bianca climbed back into the bed next to him, putting her arms around him and resting his head on her chest.
It felt nice lying with her like that, and Ian relaxed enough to catch his breath. She stroked his hair soothingly with one hand, her fingers lightly massaging his scalp. When his breathing had slowed to normal, she spoke.
“Why don’t you tell me about the nightmare?”
He went rigid again and tried to pull away from her, but she held fast. She wanted so desperately to understand him, to know what had made him so impossibly hard, to see into his secrets, and to help him heal his wounds. After the torturous moments of self-doubt she had experienced that night, she was not going to let him pull away from her again. “You have to tell someone. If you keep them to yourself, they will never go away.”
Rain streaked the windows and the silence stretched. Bianca’s arms stayed around Ian, protective and warm, and his head stayed on her breast. Its softness was wonderfully alluring, and as he moved his cheek back and forth against it, he felt himself becoming aroused. He would make love to her, he decided, and then they would sleep and then she would stop pestering him with questions. He was vaguely aware that he was doing something wrong, but decided to ignore the feeling, to
lose himself in the delicious woman next to him. He took her hand from his shoulders and moved it down his torso toward his already growing shaft. At the same time he rotated his body so he was on top of her.
“Make love to me, carissima. Take me into you,” he whispered in a voice that promised pleasure, a voice he knew she could not resist.
“No.” She shook her head and met his hooded eyes. “Not until after you have told me about your nightmare. I want to know what pains you so much. I want to help you stop it.”
She was unprepared for Ian’s demonic laugh when it came. Still over her, he pulled himself up on his elbows to laugh at her. The laugh was anything but mirthful, and the expression on his face sent a chill through Bianca’s body. Ian laughed and laughed. She wouldn’t make love to him until he told her his nightmare, she claimed, but he knew she wouldn’t make love to him afterward. Afterward she would not want to touch him; she would leave him, as fast as she could. And that was what made Ian laugh the hardest, because, of course, she was trapped, she was his prisoner, a criminal or his betrothed, either way she could not leave. She would have to stay, and he would make love to her, watch her cringe away from him, feel her pull back from his odious touch, know that she found him hideous, horrible, disgusting. All of Mora’s predictions would come true. Bianca had once said she hated him, but that was nothing compared to the complete revulsion she would soon feel.
Ian continued to laugh, even when Bianca called his name, even when she tried to push him away. He would give her a reason to hate him, and then he would not have to explain. She wanted to know him better, be closer to him. Fine, then he would help her to see him as he saw himself.
“You will make love to me. Now.” It was a command, issued in a voice she did not recognize. “It will be better this way, easier for you to hate me. Believe me, carissima, it is better this way.”
As he spoke, Ian reached down and tried to pull her legs, clamped shut, apart. Her effort to push him away seemed to work, but only long enough for him to get his arms up over hers, to pin her hands above her head. This time he shoved his knee between her legs, managing to spread them as she writhed under him. He held both her hands in one of his and used the other first to roughly fondle her breasts, then to guide himself into her. He saw her face fill with fear but closed his eyes before he saw the loathing that he knew would follow it. She kicked against him, screaming, fighting, as the full horror of his sudden madness swept over her.
“No! No, Ian, no!” He kept his eyes closed as he struggled to subdue her and enter her. “It won’t work, Ian, it will not work. You cannot make me despise you!”
Her words brought a grim smile to his lips, and he opened his eyes. “Make you? I thought you already did. You told me so yourself, in this room only days ago.”
“I was wrong. My feelings had been hurt and I spoke rashly,” Bianca apologized.
Ian, or the man who was once Ian, grunted. “I will hurt more than your feelings this time, carissima.”
Now feverish to be inside her, he redoubled his efforts to rip through her defenses and plow himself into her. But she fought back just as hard, kicking with the full force of her strength.
“Call me a bastard,” Ian whispered in her ear, squeezing her wrists tighter and tighter as she refused to speak. “Tell me that I am a coward. Call me a rapist.”
“No,” she repeated over and over, “no, no, no,” her last defense against the pain in her wrists.
“Tell me you hate me.” Ian’s face was only a hair’s breadth from hers. “Say it, damn you, say it!”
Bianca shook her head and spoke in a new voice, a voice that was calm and quiet. “It is no good, my lord. I won’t. This is not the right way, to run and hide, pushing away the people who try to care about you. You may hurt me, my lord, you may violate my body, you may pollute my womb, though I don’t believe you will. But you cannot make me defile my mind or my mouth with statements which are untrue. I will not be stopped so easily.”
It was her voice as much as her words that broke through Ian’s dementia. His face contorted with pain, and he collapsed on top of her, suddenly without strength. Bianca, too, felt spent but at the same time euphoric. She had saved both of them from a violation that would have scarred them each forever. She had penetrated Ian’s defenses, fought her way inside the stony fortress he had erected around his emotions. Nothing could be the same between them again, but she dared to hope it might be better.
As soon as his hand slipped from her wrists, Bianca brought her arms around Ian and held him as he lay on top of her. There was no question this time that he was trembling. He was mortified and horrified, shattered by the violence he had almost perpetrated on Bianca’s body. He did not know what had happened to him, what demon had taken over his mind. Or rather, he knew too well. He felt as if he had made the nightmare true, acting out each of the hateful labels that Mora had assigned him. Reflecting on his loss of control and the horrible cruelty he had almost committed against Bianca brought with it a wave of nausea and self-disgust so acute that he could scarcely bear to be in his body.
But then he felt Bianca’s arms around him, holding him close with no malice. If she could forgive him, after what he had just done to her, certainly he could forgive himself. He owed her an apology. And an explanation. He would have to tell her, tell her the history behind the nightmare, the history for which there could be no forgiveness. But he wanted to put it off as long as possible, to relish one last time the quiet splendor of her body before it was forever out of his reach.
“I am sorry,” he finally mumbled where he lay, into her breast.
“Now tell the other one.” She spoke quietly and seriously.
He turned his head and spoke clearly to the other breast. “I am sorry.”
She raised his face to hers, her eyes a smoldering gold. “Now kiss me.”
“Are you sure?” Ian suddenly felt boyish and insecure, but looking into her eyes, those deep, unusual eyes, his compunctions vanished. He brushed his lips over hers, gently, then spoke into her ear. “I am sorry, Bianca. I am so very sorry.”
She nuzzled against him, using her arms to pull him closer. “I know you are. I do not want it to happen again. You scared me.”
The simple honesty with which she spoke penetrated deep within Ian. He owed her honesty in return. But he, too, was scared, scared that once she knew the truth about him, she would despise him as he knew he deserved, and as he despised himself. Even a suspected murderess had a right to feel superior to a coward.
He did not allow himself to wonder what it might mean that he was so worried she would repudiate him. Nor to ask himself why he suddenly wanted her to know all of it. He just started talking.
“I have told only one person this story before, and I hope never to tell it again. No one else, not Crispin, not the other Arboretti, know this. It would bring great dishonor upon all of them. I ask you, please, not in my interest but in theirs, never to repeat it.” Ian paused long enough for Bianca to nod, then turned and settled himself so he would not have to look at her face. When his back was against her chest and her arms were wrapped around him, he resumed in a businesslike voice.
“Christian’s birthday was only two days after mine, and we grew up together, like twins. Indeed, everyone joked that we looked and acted more like each other than like any of our siblings. Our families were close, so we had the same tutors, practiced the same sports, accompanied one another on vacations, attended the same university, and then later, often traveled together. Our friendship was deep and unlimited. He would do anything for me, and I would do anything for him. Or so I thought. But I am getting ahead of myself.
“I had to go to Sicily for business, and at the last minute Christian decided to accompany me. He had just broken off an engagement with an heiress from Florence and wanted to get away from the gossip it had caused. I was thrilled to have the c
ompany and the opportunity to talk to him. He had spent much of the past year in Florence orchestrating his betrothal, and we had not had time to spend together. Also, I had been…busy. Needless to say, I was excited by the prospect of a journey together with him.
“We sailed to Messina, then proceeded by horseback to Syracuse. My negotiations there were brief but tremendously successful, and I was eager to get back to share the news with the other Arboretti.” Ian stopped, shuddered once, and went on.
“It was summer, so the days were long, and I insisted that we travel with as much haste as possible. But into the second day of our return trip, Christian developed some sort of illness. He told me to go ahead, that he would catch up with me along the way, or at least at Messina, where we had left Giorgio with our ship. We were traveling with only a minimum of servants, and in any event, I was reluctant to leave him behind. The trip would be more pleasurable with him than alone, and I did not want to abandon him while he was ill. Despite his urging, I remained with him at our camp, hoping that he would improve. He did, and as dusk fell we rode out, planning to travel at least a few leagues before it got completely dark.”
Ian shook his head. “I should not have been in such a rush. I should have known better. By day Sicily is safe, but at night merchant caravans are ripe prey for bandits. Foolishly I rationalized that since we had no actual merchandise, only papers, and since we were relatively small, no one would be interested in us. But the sun had only just dipped into the sea when we were set upon. There were five of them and eight of us until our servants, whom we had only hired for the trip in Messina, fled, leaving Christian and me to protect ourselves with only our swords. The bandits got between us, surrounding each of us separately, their horses sidling into ours.” Ian’s voice changed and sounded tighter, as if there were a huge weight on his chest.