She was ready the next morning a quarter of an hour before she expected Nicholas to call. Once again she was wearing the pale green sprigged muslin gown she had worn on her first morning in Venice, and she stood on the balcony watching the fruit barges making their way to market.
Someone knocked at her bedchamber door, and she turned in surprise. Nicholas was early. She hurried to open the door, but the smile of welcome died on her lips as she saw not Nicholas but the baron standing there.
She could not speak. Her hand crept to her throat to finger the black velvet ribbon.
He smiled coolly and walked into the room without permission, closing the door behind him. “Good morning, my dear Miss Milbanke.”
“Please leave,” she whispered, backing away from him. All the terror returned, and not even the brightness of the spring morning could dispel it now.
“Leave? But that would avail me of nothing.”
“Avail you?”
He nodded, still smiling as he came closer to her. She was aware only of the intensity burning in his eyes. “I ask you again to leave!” she cried.
“How very beautiful you are, even when you are afraid,” he murmured, reaching out a gloved hand to touch her pale cheek. “You have eluded me, Miss Milbanke, and your beauty almost led me astray from my main purpose. But now it is done, in a few minutes it will all be over and my purpose completed—well, almost completed.”
She stared at him.
“Even had you been as ugly as sin itself, Miss Milbanke, I should still have come here now. Fortune, however, has smiled upon me and made you so very beautiful that my task will be sweetly accomplished. Oh, how sweetly.”
“Please go,” she said, her voice barely audible, “Please….”
He reached out to her and she stumbled back against a small table as she tried to elude him. She wanted to scream, but as before in the piazza, her voice lost all strength. Please let Nicholas come soon! Please!
Moving with unexpected swiftness, the baron caught her wrist, his smile not wavering as he drew her into his arms. He was so very strong that she stood no chance. Pressing her body against his, he forced her face up and kissed her hard on the lips. It was a kiss that seemed to last a lifetime, during which the mute helplessness and revulsion swam over her again and again in sickening waves. Her mind screamed for help to come, but her voice was struck dumb, her strength drained so that she could not even struggle against her assailant.
Vaguely, almost from beyond consciousness, she heard someone knocking at the door. It must be Nicholas! It must be! Please God…. With a supreme effort she summoned her poor strength to thrust herself away from the baron, and at last found voice enough to scream.
The door opened immediately and Nicholas came in, his eyes hardening with anger as he saw the scene. Instinctively he held out a hand to her and she ran to him, clinging to his fingers and almost sobbing with relief.
“I thought he was you,” she cried, “I let him in.”
The door remained open and Nicholas coldly inclined his head toward it. “I think your presence is displeasing to Miss Milbanke, sir,” he said.
The baron smiled, not at all perturbed by the situation, indeed he seemed to be rather enjoying it. “Yours is the presence which is displeasing, my dear Sir Nicholas.”
Two Austrian officers stood outside the door, their attention caught by what was happening, “Baron, I demand that you leave,” said Nicholas.
“But you heard what Miss Milbanke told you,” said the baron reasonably, “She let me in. Do not let her protestations of innocence fool you, Grenville. She invited me in knowing full well what would ensue. She has played games with me since first she arrived, enticing me and playing the coquette. It was all leading to but one purpose, which as a man of the world you must know as well as I do. You have interrupted a tender consummation, sir, and it is I who must ask you to leave.”
Laura stared at him. How very convincing he was, how very plausible!
The baron smiled again. “Keep your well-bred nose out of my affairs, Grenville, and you may take that as a timely warning, a warning to which you would be advised to pay good heed.”
Laura knew suddenly that he was doing it all purposely; he was deliberately trying to provoke Nicholas into a duel. But why? Why? Her fingers tightened over Nicholas’s. “Be careful,” she said urgently. “Just let it pass, I beg of you.”
The baron’s dark eyes swung angrily to her then. “Whores should be seen and fondled, madam, but never, ever heard!”
“You go too far now,” said Nicholas in a cold voice.
“Too far? When I state the obvious—that the lady is a whore?”
“You are a liar, and have lost any claim to being called a gentleman.”
Again the baron smiled. “I suggest that you retract that, my dear sir, for I do not take kindly to being insulted.”
“I retract nothing.”
Laura stared from one to the other in growing horror. The inevitability of it all was terrifying. They were moving toward an unavoidable confrontation, and she was the unwitting catalyst. the pawn the baron had chosen to employ. For some reason the Austrian had singled Nicholas Grenville out to be his eleventh victim, and he would be just that unless she could dissuade him now from allowing the baron to force him into a corner from which there was no escape.
“Sir Nicholas,” she pleaded, “don’t listen to him, don’t let him have his way. He wants a duel, can’t you see? Please, just retract and let it finish at that! Please.” She whispered the last word, almost in tears now, for she knew that she could not divert him.
Nicholas ignored her. “I will not retract,” he said again to the baron.
“Then I consider my honor to be impugned and I demand satisfaction.”
“No!” breathed Laura desperately. “No!”
The baron smiled coldly at her. “He will not listen to you, Miss Milbanke, for he is an English gentleman, a man of pride and honor. He would sacrifice both were he to step down from me now. Is that not so, Grenville?”
She lowered her eyes. This could not be happening. Only a short while ago she had been on the balcony in the sunshine, everything had been so calm and pleasant…. Now it was all a nightmare from which she could not awaken.
Nicholas spoke. “Name your time and place and send your seconds to me.”
Laura’s fingers slipped away from his. Blinded by tears she leaned her hands on the cold marble surface of a table, her head bowed. He was throwing his life away, and for what? For honor! What was foolish honor when set beside his life?
She heard little of the next exchange between the two men before the baron left the room, nor did she hear much of what the two Austrian officers said as they offered their services to Nicholas as his seconds. Then they too had gone and she was alone with Nicholas.
He closed the door and she turned to look at him, tears shining in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry—”
“You have no reason to be.”
“If I had not involved you in my foolish anxieties, then he would not have been able—”
“I involved myself willingly enough, and I must remind you that you distinctly tried your best to avert the danger. I chose not to listen.”
“It’s still all my fault.”
“No.” He took his handkerchief and gently wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Please don’t cry, for I cannot bear to see a woman weep.”
“He used me in order to force you into this duel.”
“Come now, that is a little fanciful. You underestimate yourself, Miss Milbanke, for you are an exceedingly beautiful woman, by far desirable enough to lure a man like the baron.”
But she could remember the baron’s words only too clearly. But now it is done, in a few minutes it will all be over and my purpose completed—well, almost completed…. Even had you been as ugly as sin itself, Miss Milbanke, then I should still have come here now. Fortune, however, has smiled upon me and made you so very beautiful that my task will be sweetly accomplished. Oh, how sweetly…. Those were not the words of a man driven solely by desire to possess her, they were the words of a man who had an entirely different object in view. He had also said something about her beauty almost leading him astray from his main purpose. What else could he mean but that until this one time he would not have been able to successfully involve Nicholas Grenville? The baron had used her to achieve this duel with Nicholas, and nothing anyone could say would turn her from that opinion.
“Miss Milbanke, honor is a precious thing—in that the baron was correct. It cannot be set lightly aside if a man is to hold his head up among his peers, believe me.”
“Then I ask you to think of Miss Townsend. Can you lightly set aside her future happiness because of honor?”
“Do you honestly imagine Augustine would think better of me for taking such a cowardly course? She would scorn me, of that you may be sure.”
She stared at him, tears pricking her eyes again. “I would not scorn you,” she whispered, “I would love you all the more for having the strength to refuse to be forced into something like this. No one questions your bravery, Sir Nicholas, least of all me. If Miss Townsend has an ounce of love for you, she will feel the same. If I were in her place I would thank God above for your safe deliverance from such a vainglorious and futile death!”
For a long moment he looked into her tear-filled eyes. “But you are not in her place,” he said softly, “And I am vainglorious enough to wish to continue with this. He said things about you which no man of honor, least of all myself, could allow to pass unchallenged.”
“Oh, how can you be so calm about it?” she cried, “He’ll kill you, he’ll make you his eleventh victim—and for what? You hardly know me, you don’t even like me very much—and yet you are about to die for my good name!”
He smiled. “It is not true that I do not like you, Miss Milbanke; it is not true at all. Oh, I admit that my manner may have—did—give you that impression, and for that I have already apologized. I thought you knew that I meant every word I said last night. Perhaps it will convince you if I ask you to spend the rest of this day with me.”
“Now you jest—”
“It is hardly something to jest about. This may be my last day on this earth, and what better way to spend it than with you?”
There was nothing she would like more than to spend a day alone with him, but not like this—not with such a dark and terrible shadow hanging over them.
“If my past conduct weighs too heavily still…” he began, seeing her indecision.
“No. No, it is not that. Please believe me.”
“What then? Will propriety be offended?”
“Propriety is offended already. It was offended the moment I left England alone, without a companion or a maid, and it is offended each time I speak to you when I have no chaperone to watch over me. No, Sir Nicholas, it is not propriety. What of Miss Townsend? How will she feel if she discovers not only that I am the cause of your predicament, but that you also spent a day with me? How will she feel then?”
“She is not here, Miss Milbanke. You are. I do not see that under these circumstances there is anything else to consider, do you?”
She met his gaze. “No, I suppose not,” she answered. Oh, dear God, how easy it would be to fall in love with this man. With a glance and a soft word he could melt her heart, make her forget everything but the pleasure of being with him. She had been drawn to him from the outset, and each moment with him now merely made her admit to herself that she was dangerously close to loving him already.
“Then it is settled. Shall we go?” He offered her his arm.
Slowly she slipped her hand over the rich stuff of his sleeve.
“Besides,” he murmured lightly, almost to himself, “who is to say that this will indeed be my last day on earth? I am not exactly cross-eyed and palsied, you know, as many a Frenchman found out to his cost at Waterloo. It could be that the baron is my first victim—that would be a turn up for the proverbial book, would it not?”
She felt an absurd desire to laugh as they walked from the room.