Your Scandalous Ways (15 page)

“You're a man,” she said. “It's impossible for you to understand. Men have all the power. Men control everything. They make the official laws and all the ordinary and unofficial rules. They—”

“Your husband broke your heart,” he said.

What was she to do? Lie and lie again? Pretend, endlessly pretend? That worked well enough with everyone else, but with this man the pretense made her sick and confused.

“Yes,” she said. Her shoulders sagged. She was weary, so weary.

“Come here,” he said.

She went to him, of course. That was all she
wanted to do: to go to him, to feel his arms about her.

But he didn't pull her into his arms. He turned her around and unhooked the back of her gown. “You look like Isis in this gown,” he said. “After she fell into the Nile.”

In spite of the weariness, in spite of old wounds, she smiled. “Did she fall into the Nile?”

“Or was she pushed? Who knows?” He untied the waist, and the gown drooped. If it had been dry, it would have slid down. “I like this garment construction,” he said. He tugged gently, drawing the gown down over her hips.

“It was a beautiful gown,” she said. “Dry, it whispered over my petticoats as it slid to the floor.”

It wasn't dry now, though, and he had to help it down. Once past her knees, it fell to the floor with a most unseductive
plop.

He went to work on the wet strings of her petticoat. “I'm sure you don't like being wet and bedraggled any more than you like being upset,” he said. “You should have thought of that before you jumped into the canal.”

“You were going to throw me in.”

“And you jumped to rob me of the pleasure?”

“I wasn't thinking clearly,” she said.

“As I believe I pointed out to you. More than once.
Al diavolo!
”

“What's wrong?”

“These strings are impossible,” he said. “By the time I've got them and your corset string untied, you'll have pneumonia. And the bath will be cold.
I'm cutting them. It's not as though you can't afford to replace them, what with your being the great Whore of Babylon and all, and rich as Cleopatra besides.”

Her chest heaved.

“Don't cry,” he said.

“I'm n-not,” she said.

She felt the strings give way.

He swiftly stripped off the petticoat, stays, and shift. She stood only in her soaked stockings and garters, and her water-stained slippers.

She heard him suck in his breath.

She turned toward him.

He stood, looking at her, up and down, up and down. He had a penknife in his right hand.

“I'm going to faint,” he said.

“Don't be silly,” she said. “You've seen lots of naked women.”

“I'm not silly,” he said. “I'm half Italian, and you…” He drew his left hand down over her breast. “I think you must be the Eighth Deadly Sin. And well worth an eternity in Hell.” He knelt, slid the penknife between her leg and the garter, and slit it. He peeled the stocking down, slipped off her shoe, and drew the stocking over her foot. He kissed her knee.

Her legs trembled. She set her hand on his shoulder to brace herself. He slit the other garter and performed the same ritual.

“I can think of a great many things to do at this moment,” he said, stroking her thigh. “But the bath will grow cold, and you do smell of canal, and so do I.”

He rose, set aside the knife, and began to work his way out of his sopping coat. The garment fit, as it ought to do, like skin.

She moved to help.

He waved her away. “Get in the tub,” he said.

“You'll never do that alone,” she said. He probably needed two servants to get him out of it.

“Watch me,” he said. “Get in the tub.”

She climbed in, and groaned involuntarily. It was beautifully warm and smelled like a lemon grove.

She closed her eyes and leaned back, resting her neck on the thick linens with which the servant had draped it.

“This is a wonderful bathing room,” he said.

She opened her eyes. He was hanging his coat over the back of a chair. This was a man who'd had practice in doing without servants, she thought.

This man. She knew so little about him. Five days. And yet…

He unbuttoned his waistcoat. “Nymphs and satyrs frolicking on the walls. Candles and incense. It's your own little temple, isn't it? The Temple of Francesca, Goddess of the Canal.”

“It's the Temple of the Vestal Virgins,” she said. “I've never had a man in here before.”

He paused in the act of pulling off his waistcoat. “I'm the first?”

“You've no idea how privileged you are,” she said.

He got the waistcoat off and draped it neatly over the chair seat. “I have an excellent idea,” he said. “Especially now that I've seen you naked.”

“You don't need to flatter me,” she said. “I don't need honeyed words.”

“When have I flattered you?” he said. He undid the button at the neck of the shirt sticking wetly to his torso. It sagged open, revealing a V of his powerful chest, gleaming bronze in the candlelight. “I believe I called you an idiot more than once this morning alone.” He sat on the chair, on top of his wet waistcoat, and tugged off his stockings. “And to think I nearly wore boots today. We might have both drowned. Or you would have done so, by the time I got them off.”

“I don't know what to do,” she said.

He stood up and pulled his shirt over his head. “Give me one more minute,” he said. “I'll think of something.” He began unbuttoning his trousers.

 

She ducked down, under the water, and came up again, looking like one of the nymphs in the frescoes. Only more beautiful.

She was right: James had seen countless women naked. Perhaps she wasn't perfect. Her high, round breasts could have been a bit fuller, her waist a bit narrower…

No. He couldn't be objective. All he could see was womanly perfection, a goddess.

He peeled off his waterlogged trousers, kicked them aside, and climbed into the tub.

She drew in her legs, making room for him.

For a moment he simply let himself sink into the warmth and the delicious scents swirling in the atmosphere of the intimate room. He slid down as she had done, bringing his head under water, and
came up again. He let the back of his head rest on the thick towels draped upon the tub's rim and looked up at the ceiling, where nymphs and satyrs were cavorting among bunches of grapes and flagons of wine and Pan playing his pipes.

“I'd always thought these rooms were used as offices, like the ones below, on the
andron,
” she said. “But I was told that in the last generation or so, the family used them as sitting rooms and parlors. I made this one my private bathing room because it's closer to the water supply and the kitchen. Less work for the servants, heating and carrying the water. And I liked the frescoes.”

He sat up and reached beside him for a square of soap from the basket on the table. He reached under water and found her ankle. “You need a bath, my water nymph,” he said. “And I'm going to give you one.”

“Do you promise not to pull me under?” she said.

“No,” he said. He lifted her foot above the water and began to soap it, taking his time. He worked his way up her ankles and up and round and over the shapely calves and onward, over her knees. As he washed her, he inched closer. But when he reached the juncture of her thighs, he simply let his hand drift over the bottom of her belly. He heard her inhale sharply, but he continued to the other thigh, and worked his way down that leg.

“You're not very…thorough,” she said softly.

“Give me time,” he said.

“No, you give
me
time,” she said. “My turn now.”

She took a sponge from the basket, wet it, then
took the soap from him, and rubbed it over the sponge until she'd made a lather. She draped her long legs over his thighs, and slid closer, until she was entwined with him in the middle of the tub. She drew the soapy sponge over his neck and shoulders, down over his chest, and down, where his cock strained to meet her hand—to meet any female part it could.

But it would have to wait.

He put out his hand. “My turn.”

He did as she had done, moving the soapy sponge over her neck and shoulders and down over her arms and hands and between her fingers and over her palms and up again and down again, slowly, lovingly, over her perfectly rounded breasts. And while he did this the words came out, so easily, as though they'd been waiting for this moment. He told her, softly, in Dante's language, that she set him on fire, that he'd wanted her from the first moment he'd met her…

She reached up and tangled her fingers in his hair and she smiled the smile of a girl, a playful, naughty girl.

He was mesmerized. The sponge slid from his hands and they moved over her, skin to skin this time, over her neck and the sweet slope of her shoulders and her arms and down to her long, slim fingers, then up again and down again, over the smooth arcs of her breasts. And all the while he watched her unearthly face as she played with his hair. And all the while he was murmuring love words in his mother's language, like the romantic he wasn't.

Her green gaze slid down and met his.

They remained so for a long moment, their gazes locked.

Then she brought her mouth to his, but only lightly touching.

“
Per quanto ancora mi farai aspettare?
” he said against her lips. How long will you make me wait? “
Baciami.
” Kiss me.

She smiled.

He drew his lips along that long curve. “
Baciami,
” he said.

The smile his lips had traced was her harlot's smile, and he expected the harlot's kiss, though that wasn't what he wanted and he couldn't say what it was he wanted.

“
Baciami
,” he said.

And she kissed him.

Shyly. Sweetly. Tenderly, so tenderly that he trembled, and told himself it was the bath water cooling.

Not shy. Not sweet. Not tender. Not she.

Yet she was. She made his cold, hard heart ache. His arms went round her and he dragged her up against him. Her legs wrapped about his waist. He held her so, as the kiss went on, deepening and deepening, a drowning of a kiss. He held her tightly, as though she'd be pulled away, dragged out to sea, and be lost forever otherwise.

Perhaps it was then he understood what had happened to him when she fell from the balcony. Or perhaps he only felt something he did not understand until later.

Her hands slid down, from his hair and along his jaw and down over his chest. He broke the kiss
to take her hand and kiss her knuckles, her fingertips, and then to press his mouth to the soft palm.

She kissed the back of the hand holding hers, and slipped her hand free, and down it went, reaching through the water until it closed around his cock. He groaned. She covered his mouth with hers, and stole his soul with another wrenching kiss. He reached down, and pushed her hand away, and quickly, more quickly than he'd ever meant, he was inside her. He still held her tightly, as though the world would end if he loosened his grasp.

Slow
, he told himself.
Make this last forever
.

He tried to make it slow, but she was kissing his face, his neck, and her hands were so soft, and nothing was real. The water pulsed around them as they pulsed against each other.

He gave up trying to control any of it, and let the tide take him. They rose and fell together, higher and higher each time until there was nowhere left to go. Then she shuddered against him, and the world flew apart. Release came, and down he went, a drowning man, happily drowning.

H
e was kissing her so sweetly: scores of tender kisses on her nose, her cheeks, her forehead, her ears, her neck, her shoulders. Francesca kissed him back in the same way, like a girl in love for the first time. And when he stopped and drew away a bit and looked at her, she knew she was looking
back at him with stars in her eyes, but she couldn't help it.

She'd been numb for so long, dead to feeling without realizing it. Until now. It was as though the long, sensual bathing ritual had washed away—not her sins, for she was deeply attached to those—but a coating or shell of some kind that had stopped her from feeling too deeply, too fully.

She felt now, deeply and fully.

Joy was coursing through her. It was not the simple physical pleasure of coupling but a bright happiness that lightened her heart.

He drew her upright, and she rose out of the water like one mesmerized. She couldn't make her eyes turn anywhere but up to him, to look up into his handsome face.

Later she'd ask herself why but for now she could only gaze at him in a kind of stupid wonder.

“Don't look at me like that,” he said.

“Like what?” She said, as though she didn't know she wore the expression of a girl hopelessly in love.

He turned away to reach for a dry towel. “You'll put ideas in my head,” he said. He wrapped the towel around her and helped her out of the tub. “I shouldn't have kept you here for so long. If you take cold, Thérèse will kill me.”

“But it was great fun,” she said.

“Fun,” he said. Frowning, he picked up another towel and as smoothly and efficiently as Thérèse could have done it, wrapped her hair into it and twisted the towel about her head like a turban.

“Oh, you've done this before,” she said.

“Never,” he said. “You're the first.”

She almost wished that were true. She almost wished he'd been the first for her and she could persuade herself he felt as she did.

She knew better.

Still, she told herself, if it had been the first time, she couldn't have properly appreciated what had happened. She wouldn't know enough to savor it, to store it in her memory.

“Go sit by the fire,” he said.

She walked to the couch and sat.

She watched him take up a towel and vigorously rub his hair. When he was done, the shiny black curls bounced about his head. She ached to tangle her fingers in his hair again. She longed to touch everything. She let her gaze travel wistfully over his long body. Then she made herself turn away. She lay down on the couch and stared into the fire.

She wasn't aware of falling asleep.

She never heard him leave.

 

James had wrapped a towel about his waist and gone out to look for a servant to fetch them something to eat and to send for his clothes.

He found one too soon.

Sedgewick was sitting on the stairs nearby, waiting for him.

Arnaldo had already sent across the canal for a change of clothes. Sedgewick had brought the clothes. He'd also brought a message.

“It's from San Lazzaro,” Sedgewick said. “You're wanted there.
Without further loss of time
, I was to tell you, sir.”

 

“Monsieur left a note, madame,” Thérèse said, handing it to her.

Francesca knew she was deeply, unforgivably foolish. Before melancholy and disappointment could settle upon her, one hastily scrawled note drove them away. She tried but she couldn't stifle the surge of relief and happiness. She laughed softly.

And when Thérèse scolded and said madame needed something to eat and a proper sleep, Francesca smilingly agreed.

She'd need her strength for tonight.

Meanwhile, in less elegant quarters in Venice

A ceramic Madonna flew across the sitting room of Marta Fazi's lodgings and shattered against a door frame.

The two young men waiting to collect their pay only watched Marta's hand, to see if she would throw anything else. But she was too puzzled to be truly enraged, and her temper cooled quickly, as it often did. She returned to her chair at the small table.

“These are not the letters,” she said.

The two young men looked at each other then at her.

“I showed them to you,” said the smaller one. “You said, ‘Yes, let's go.' You made us hurry away. You gave us no time even to pick up some of the jewelry.”

“I told you it wasn't real!” she lied. “You want to make the English whore laugh at how stupid you are? You think she keeps her fine jewelry in her house, in a drawer where anyone can get it?”

Even Marta, who'd been told of the jewelry, hadn't believed her eyes at first. But the Englishwoman was a rich whore with many servants. Those arrogant ladies never dreamed anyone would steal from them. They were always so shocked and outraged when it happened.

Though the messenger had hinted that she could help herself, Marta knew better. When one stole from the rich, the laziest authorities became brutally efficient—and the Austrians were not lazy. They'd caught Piero in no time. Of course, he was an idiot. Even so, it was clear that the great English whore was no mere
puttana
in the eyes of the Venetian governor. Had Marta and this pair made off with all the jewelry they'd found, they'd be swiftly hunted down…and if they were captured, the precious letters would fall into the wrong hands.

She'd taken a risk, she knew, to steal the emeralds. But that was only one set, among so many riches…and it was fine, as the messenger had promised. Fit for a queen.

All this was far too complicated to explain to this pair of fools. They didn't know she'd taken any jewelry. At the moment, however, she was not worried about being hunted down for one measly set of emeralds.

She was far more disturbed about the letters.

“These are in his hand,” she said, half to herself. “But the dates are only this year and last year. The ones they want are old. And where are the names they told me to look for? Nowhere do I see them. But why does he write to her, still, the woman he hates?”

She might as well have asked the two to explain the Pythagorean theorem. They were little more than boys, because a person sporting half a day's growth of black beard does not make a believable nun. They only lifted their shoulders in the universal gesture of “I dunno.”

Marta folded the letters, tied them with a piece of string, and set them down on the table. “He will explain this,” she said. “And it will be a good explanation or he will be very sorry.” She looked at the boys. “These are not the letters we want. I am finished playing games with the fine lady, the English whore. Enough.”

“It's done then?” said the smaller one.

“Done? Did the Sicilian sun cook your brain? How can it be done when I have the wrong letters?”

“But you said ‘enough.'”

“Enough with creeping about,” she said. “Enough with looking here, there, everywhere. The next time we do it properly.” The way Bruno and Piero were supposed to do it, the imbeciles. “The next time we
make
her tell us.”

She took out her knife and held it up to the light. She smiled.

 

The monastery of San Lazzaro degli Armeni stood amid groves of cypress and fine gardens on a small island off the Lido. Early in the previous century, the former hospital island for lepers was given to an Armenian monk from Morea who'd been forced to flee invading Turks. Here, a few years ago, Byron had struggled to learn Armenian. He'd never succeeded, most likely because of all the women distracting him.

James had only one distraction in female form. The trouble was, she was more disruptive to his reason than the scores in Byron's harem.

Putting her out of his thoughts was out of the question, since she was the subject of the present conversation.

James was strolling—or giving the appearance of strolling while inwardly roiling with impatience—through the cloisters with Lord Quentin. This was the man who, half a lifetime ago, had saved him from a life of unsanctioned crime and lured him into a life of sanctioned crime.

Ten years older than James, his lordship had embarked on the life of secrets and conspiracies at an early age as well. In fact, in many ways he was better suited to the trade, being of average height and
unexceptional looks and having a way, as Sedgewick did, of calling no attention to himself. Men like Sedgewick and Quentin rarely needed a disguise. People took little notice of them.

“If Mrs. Bonnard hears that you're here and I've been talking to you, I might as well go home,” James said.

“I know the risk,” Quentin said. “But I needed to speak to you directly. I heard about the attack the other night.”

“That came as a surprise,” James said. “No one told me she was in danger.”

“We'd no idea Elphick would act so quickly.”

“He was bound to hear of your visiting her,” James said. “He has agents here. Not that he needs any. She probably wrote to him about it.” If Elphick was writing to her, she must be writing to him.

“They correspond, yes, but unless they've a secret code, it's utterly trivial: who was at which party and what they said. There's far juicier stuff in the scandal sheets.” Quentin shook his head. “It's more likely he got the wind up as soon as he learned I'd come to Italy. But I'd expected to be here and back by the time he got word. Who could have guessed she'd be so irrational about the letters we wanted, given what he did to her? I was certain she'd jump at the chance to ruin him. If I hadn't been certain, I should never have approached her directly.”

That completely settled one question, then: The not-love letters from Elphick that Thérèse had reported missing weren't important—to the mission,
at any rate. Bonnard hadn't been feigning indifference about their whereabouts. She truly hadn't cared.

“In any event,” Quentin went on, “you don't seem to be making great progress. What the devil have you been doing for this last week—besides nearly killing a potential informant?”

“Piero is still alive, so far as I know,” James began.

“I referred to the other one,” Quentin said. “We found him yesterday, and we had the devil's own time getting him away without attracting attention.”

“Bruno? He's alive?”

“Small thanks to you. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking to stop him from killing Mrs. Bonnard,” James said.

“And you nearly stopped him permanently from answering questions,” Quentin said. “Has that troublesome woman got her hooks into you, too?”

Yes,
James thought.
Yes, indeed, she has.

He said, “I was on the brink of getting the information we're looking for when you summoned me here. Was it only to complain about how long it's taking me?”

Quentin glanced casually about him. The cloisters surrounded a large garden. Two monks walked slowly through the shaded passage on the other side of the garden, well out of earshot. “Our friend Bruno's too sick to be of much use,” he said. “Pneumonia, damaged windpipe, dislocated shoulder, among other things. The only bit of luck we had
was his fever. He had a bout of delirium. Along with the other ravings, he babbled something about letters and mentioned Marta Fazi several times.”

James's last, very feeble hope—that he'd got it completely wrong—died a quick death. He'd got it right, and the situation, as he'd deduced, was very bad, very tangled, and about to become a great deal worse.

What else was new?

“Oh, there's a bit of luck, indeed,” he said. “Dear Marta. I remember her well. The darling lass who promised to cut off my balls in little bits, slowly, first chance she got. The one who, last I heard, was locked away in the deepest, darkest dungeon in Rome. The one who apparently wasn't locked up anywhere, since
she was in Venice last night,
ransacking the Palazzo Neroni.”

He didn't want to imagine what Marta would have done had Francesca Bonnard been home at the time. His mind imagined anyway, and he felt sick.

“That's not good.” Quentin paused and shook his head. He moved to a stone bench and sat down, looking weary.

James sat down beside him, weary, too. He was angry, yes, but then he was often angry. Plans fell apart. Villains slipped through their nets. Documents ended up in the wrong hands. And comrades were killed, too often in appalling ways. Such was the nature of the work. He'd learned that early on. One dealt with human beings. All were fallible. Not all were trustworthy.

“You're sure it was Fazi?” Quentin said.

“They were dressed as bloody nuns! They got
into the house and drugged the food. It was exactly the same method she used in the other thefts. They took a lot of letters—the wrong ones—and emeralds. No other jewels. Only emeralds. Who else could it be?”

“So Elphick's set her on his former missus,” Quentin said. “Bastard.”

“How the devil did he come to hire Fazi?”

“Who's to say?” Quentin looked about him. “We've only started watching him closely in the last eighteen months—since you worked out that code. He might have met her years ago, back in the time when no one paid any attention to him. Or one of his agents in Italy might have hand-picked her to do the job. They must have paid a fortune to get her out of prison.”

“That tells me Elphick knows her well, either personally or by reputation,” James said. “In his place, she's what I'd choose for a job like this. She's no giant intellect, but she's cunning, daring, and very, very dogged.”