Didst ever see a Gondola? For fear
You should not, I’ll describe it to you exactly:
’Tis a long cover’d boat that’s common here,
Carved at the prow, built lightly,
but compactly;
Row’d by two rowers, each call’d ‘Gondolier,’
It glides along the water looking blackly,
Just like a coffin clapt in a canoe,
Where none can make out what you say or do.
Lord Byron, Beppo
Venice
Tuesday, 19 September 1820
Penises. Everywhere.
Francesca Bonnard thoughtfully regarded the ceiling.
A century or two ago, the Neroni family had gone mad for ornamental plasterwork. The walls and ceilings of the palazzo she rented were a riot of plaster draperies, fruits, and flowers. Most fascinating to her were these winged children called putti. They crawled about the ceilings, lifting plaster draperies or creeping among the folds, looking for who knew what. They clung to the frames of the ceiling paintings and to the gold medallions over the doors. They vastly outnumbered the four bare-breasted women lolling in the corners and the four muscled adult males supporting the walls.
They were all boys, all naked. Thus the view overhead was of many little penises—forty at last count, though there seemed to be more today. Were they reproducing spontaneously or were the buxom females and virile adult males getting up to mischief when the house was asleep?
In her three years in Venice, Francesca had entered a number of ostentatious houses. Hers won the prize for decorative insanity—not to mention quantity of immature male reproductive organs.
“I shouldn’t mind them so much,” she said, “but they are so distracting. The first time visitors call, they spend the better part of the visit dumbstruck, gaping at the walls and ceiling. After giving the matter serious thought, I’ve decided that Dante got his idea for the Inferno from a visit to the Palazzo Neroni.”
“Let them gape,” said her friend Giulietta. She rested her elbow on the arm of her chair and, chin in hand, regarded the deranged ceiling. “While your guests stare at the putti, you might stare at them as rudely as you like.”
They made a complementary pair: Francesca tall and exotic, Giulietta smaller, and sweet-looking. Her heart-shaped face and innocent brown eyes made her seem a mere girl. At six and twenty, however, she was only a year younger than Francesca. In experience, Giulietta was eons older.
No one would ever call Francesca Bonnard sweet-looking, she knew. She’d inherited her mother’s facial features, most notably her distinctive eyes with their unusual green color and almond shape. Her thick chestnut hair was her French paternal grandmother’s. The rest came from Sir Michael Saunders, her scoundrel father, and his predecessors. The Saunderses tended to be tall, and she was—compared, at least, to most women. The few extra inches had caused the caricaturists to dub her “the Giantess” and “the Amazon” in the scurrilous prints they produced during the divorce proceedings.
Her divorce from John Bonnard—recently awarded a barony and now titled Lord Elphick—was five years behind her, however, as was all the nonsense she’d believed then about love and men. Now she carried her tall frame proudly and dressed to emphasize every curve of her lush figure.
Men had betrayed and abandoned and hurt her once upon a time.
Not anymore.
Now they begged for her notice.
Several were coming today for precisely that purpose. This was why Francesca did not entertain her friend in the smaller, less oppressive room, the one adjoining her boudoir, in another, more private part of the house. That comfortable, almost putti-free parlor was reserved for intimates, and she had yet to decide which if any of her soon-to-arrive guests would win that status.
She wasn’t looking forward to deciding.
She left the sofa on which she’d been lounging—a position that would have horrified her governess—and sauntered to the window.
The canal it overlooked wasn’t the canal, the Grand Canal, but one of the larger of the maze of secondary waterways or rii intersecting the city. Though not far from the Grand Canal, hers was one of the quieter parts of Venice.
This afternoon was not so quiet, for rain beat down on the balcony outside and occasionally, when the wind shifted, against the glass. She looked—and blinked. “Good grief, I think I see signs of life across the way.”
“The Ca’ Munetti? Really?”
Giulietta rose and joined her at the window.
Through the sheeting rain, they watched a gondola pause at the water gates of the house on the other side of the narrow canal.
Ca’, Francesca knew, was Venetian shorthand for casa or house. Once upon a time, only the Ducal Palace bore the title palazzo, and every other house was simply a casa. Nowadays, any house of any size, great and small, might call itself a palazzo. The one opposite might have done so, certainly. Outwardly, from the canal side, it was similar to hers, with a water gate leading to the ground floor hall or andron; balconied windows on the piano nobile, the first floor; then a more modest second floor; and above that, attics for the servants.
No one had lived in the Ca’ Munetti, however, for nearly a year.
“A single gondolier,” Francesca said. “And two passengers, it appears. That’s all I can make out in this wretched downpour.”
“I see no baggage,” Giulietta said.
“It might have been sent ahead.”
“But the house is dark.”
“They haven’t yet hired servants, then.” The Munetti family had taken their servants with them when they moved. Though they were not as hard up as some of the Venetian nobility, they’d either found Venice too expensive or the Austrians who ruled it too tedious. Like the owners of the Palazzo Neroni, they preferred to let their house to foreigners.
“A strange time of year to come to Venice,” said Giulietta.
“Perhaps we’ve made it fashionable,” said Francesca. “Or, more likely, since they’re bound to be foreigners, they don’t know any better.”
Everyone who could afford to do so abandoned Venice during the steaming summers. They moved to their villas on the mainland in July and tended not to return from villeggiatura—summer holiday—until St. Martin, the eleventh of November and the official start of winter.
Francesca had left the Count de Magny’s villa in Mira early, following a quarrel about a visitor from England, Lord Quentin. Here in her own house, she answered to no one. Here, too, she wasn’t the locals’ prime entertainment. She’d never cared much for rusticating, in any event. She preferred town life. On rare occasions, she even missed London, though not nearly so much as she’d done at first—not that she ever admitted to missing anything about England at all.
A manservant entered to set the table for tea.
“Arnaldo, have you heard anything about the Ca’ Munetti?” Francesca asked him.
“The baggage came first, late yesterday,” said Arnaldo. “Not very much. They have hired the gondolier, Zeggio, who is a cousin of the wife of the cousin of our cook. He says the new master is connected to the Albani family. He desires to study with the Armenian monks, as your friend Lord Byron did.”
Eyebrows raised, Giulietta met Francesca’s gaze. Then they laughed.
“Byron studied with the Armenian monks,” said Giulietta. “But he was not a monk.”
“Still, only two servants…” Francesca watched the water gates open.
“Perhaps the new tenant is a Venetian, after all,” Giulietta said. “They are too poor to keep a proper staff. Only foreigners and whores can afford a houseful of servants.”
Arnaldo went out, and the conversation reverted to English.
“My new neighbor might be a miserly foreigner,” Francesca said. “Or a hermit.”
“In any of these cases, he is not for us.”
“Good heavens, no.” Francesca let out a peal of laughter.
Her laughter was as famous as her unusual looks, perhaps more so.
After the divorce set her adrift from respectable Society, she’d had to learn how to manage men. She’d learned quickly. Fanchon Noirot, her Parisian mentor, had told her she had the gift.
The most important lesson Francesca learned was how to talk to men—or, more important, how to listen to them.
But when Francesca Bonnard laughed, men listened, with all their being.
“When you laugh,” Lord Byron had told her, “men catch their breath.”
“They’d do better to catch hold of their purses,” she’d answered.
Then he’d laughed, albeit ruefully, because it was true.
Francesca Bonnard was a courtesan, so expensive that very few men could afford her. Lord Byron wasn’t one of them.
Meanwhile, across the canal
Of all the cities in all the world, she had to come to this one.
It was deuced inconvenient.
Not to mention wet.
James’s gondola had set out from the mainland in a drizzle and traveled the Grand Canal in a torrent so fierce that they’d closed the casements of the felze, the vessel’s black passenger cabin. Only a blur of houses and stone piers was visible through the blinds. No sound came to him but the rain drumming on the cabin and deck of the boat.
One might almost believe this was the underworld his Roman ancestors had believed in. He might be floating upon the River Styx, among the shades of the dead.
That flight of imagination thudded to earth—or water, rather—when he heard the echo of oars under a bridge and their gondolier’s announcement, “Ponte di Rialto.”
The gondolier’s name was Zeggio. At first glance, the Venetian appeared too young to guide anybody anywhere, too pretty to be performing manual labor, and too innocent to be taken seriously. This appearance explained why James’s associates deemed Zeggio the most suitable guide in Venice. He was, in fact, thirty-two years old, far from innocent, and they’d employed him before.
He was a highly regarded local agent. Nonetheless, he aspired to become the Venetian version of James Cordier.
Poor sod.
After turning off the Grand Canal into a narrower waterway, then another, they came at last to the Ca’ Munetti.
“Ah, Venice,” James said as he took in the view—such as it was—in front of and behind him. The buildings and gondolas were merely darker shapes in the grey haze. “A fine place, indeed, but for the damp.”
His servant Sedgewick said something under his breath. He was a small fellow, so thoroughly nondescript that people tended to take no notice of him whatsoever. That would be their first mistake, possibly their last.
“What was that, Sedgewick?” James said.
“Wish I was in England,” his former batman muttered.
“Who doesn’t?” said the master. England would be colder, and certainly no sunnier, but it was England, after all, not yet another damned country filled with foreigners.
Not that James was a foreigner here, precisely. His mother was related to at least half the great families of Italy, her ancestry as distinguished as that of his father, Lord Westwood.
Venice, however, wasn’t Italy.
Venice was…Venice.
The gondola paused at the water gate and James glanced up at the house opposite, where she lived.
She being Francesca Bonnard, daughter of the infamous swindler, the late Sir Michael Saunders; former wife of the so-called pillar of rectitude Lord Elphick; and at present the most expensive whore in Venice.
Some would say that winning the last title was not the achievement it might have been, say, three centuries earlier. Venice had come down in the world, most obviously in recent decades. La Bonnard, however, was reputed to be the most expensive of her ilk in all of the Veneto and very possibly all of Italy and, some said, the Continent.
Why the queen of courtesans should come to Venice at all was the pertinent question. The fabled city was poor, a large number of its noble families had departed, and its floods of visitors had thinned to a trickle.
Why hadn’t she remained in Paris, where she’d first achieved fame three or four years ago and where she might choose among multitudes of wealthy victims? Or why not Vienna? Or, at the very least, Rome or Florence?
He’d probably find out why, sooner or later, if he needed to. It had better be sooner. He had plans, and she’d interrupted them.
He’d recovered the emeralds from Marta Fazi and delivered them to their owner. In exchange for the British government’s doing him this little favor, the owner had signed an important treaty. He’d rewarded James as well, quite handsomely.
That was supposed to be James’s last mission. He was supposed to be on his way home, to a well-earned retirement.
But no.
He was wishing Lord Elphick’s discarded wife in Hades as the water gates opened and the gondola came to a stop.
He stepped out of the boat onto the stone and marble squares that paved the andron. Dark boarding covered the walls. The space was cold, and the musty odor of damp filled his nostrils.
They followed Zeggio up a staircase to the piano nobile, and found themselves in a vast central hall. This portego, as the Venetians called it, ran from one end of the house to the other.
It was clearly designed for show. The line of magnificent chandeliers down the center of the ceiling and rows of immense candelabra standing on tables along the wall—all dripping the famously magnificent glass work of Murano—would, when fully lit, have made a dazzling display of the gilt, the plaster ornamenting the walls, the sculpture, the paintings.
“All this, on top of water,” Sedgewick said, shaking his head as he looked about him. “What sort of people is it, I wonder, goes and builds a city on stilts on a swampy lot of islands?”
“Italians,” said James. “There’s a reason they once ruled the world, and a reason Venice once ruled the seas. You must at least give credit for a marvel of engineering.”
“I’ll give them credit for an easy route to malaria,” said Sedgewick. “And another easy one to typhus.”
“Oh, but there is no disease now,” Zeggio assured them. “The malaria she comes in the summer and the typhus he comes in the spring. Now is a most healthy time.”
“There’s always your pneumonia,” Sedgewick said. “Your putrid sore throat. Your consumption. Your affection of the lungs.”
“That’s my Sedgewick,” James said. “Likes to look on the bright side.”
Zeggio led them down the great hall into one of the side rooms at the canal end. “You will see,” he said. “In the autumn and the winter, Venice is more agreeable than the mainland. This is why everyone returns on the day of San Martino.”
Everyone except her.
She had been staying in Mira at the summer villa of the comte de Magny, a friend from her Paris days and possibly a former lover, possibly a current one: Rumor had it both ways. The trouble was, late in August, following a series of conversations with James’s superior, Lord Quentin, she’d abandoned Magny to the local beauties and returned to Venice with all her baggage. Quentin having failed to persuade the lady to turn over to him certain letters in her possession, and other agents having failed to locate them by more underhand methods, his lordship had summoned James back to work before his traveling trunks could be loaded onto the ship headed for England…away from the conspiracies, assassins, and bloodthirsty whores, this time for good.
When was the last time he’d spoken to normal, respectable people with their mundane secrets? When was the last time he’d been among men and women who didn’t lurk in the darkest corners of human life? When was the last time he’d gazed into the eyes of an innocent young woman who wasn’t his sister? He couldn’t remember.
He turned his attention to his surroundings.
Though silk, velvet, and gilt were plentiful here, too, the side room was several degrees more domestic than the portego. It was warmer as well, on this unseasonably cold day, for a fire had been lit before they arrived.
Still, the place had a weary air overall.
“Old-fashioned and shopworn,” Sedgewick said, looking about him with a critical eye.
“Venice she is like the beautiful cortigiana—the courtesan—who has”—Zeggio frowned, searching for the phrase he wanted—“dropped on the hours of trouble.”
“Fallen on hard times,” James said.
“Fallen on hard times,” Zeggio repeated. He murmured the phrase to himself a few times. “I see. The same but not the same.”
James crossed to a window and looked out across the narrow canal. A feminine silhouette passed the lighted window opposite. After a moment, the figure returned and paused there. Even though the rain obscured everything, even though it was second nature to stand out of the light, and even though the window’s tracery partially screened him from view, he stepped back further into the shadows.
“The signora is at home today,” said Zeggio. He went to the window. “Her friend will be there as well. Yes, that is Signorina Sabbadin’s gondola, as I thought. They drink tea together almost every day. They are like this.” He held up his hand, index and middle finger pressed together. “Like sisters. All of her friends follow Madame to Venezia, because it is too dull where she is not. But here we are never dull. Even now, we have the opera, the ballet, the plays. And soon, after Christmas, begins the Carnival.”
James gazed out at the rain. “Sedgewick, if Carnival begins and we’re still in Venice,” he said, “please shoot me.”
“Yes, sir,” said Sedgewick. “You’ll want to start right away, then.”
James nodded. “Zeggio, find out where she’s going tonight. I’ll want to dress appropriately.”
“La Fenice, I have no doubt,” said Zeggio.
“Ah, yes,” James said. “Venice’s most splendid theater. Where better to display herself?”
“It is because they perform the Rossini work,” Zeggio said. “La Gazza Ladra.”
“The Thieving Magpie,” James translated for Sedgewick, whose many talents did not extend to foreign languages.
“Again and again she goes to this opera,” Zeggio said. “But I will ask, to make certain. Then I arrange for someone who will bring you to her box to introduce you, yes?”
“I don’t want to be introduced until I understand her better,” James said. “I’ll want a day or two for reconnaissance.”
“Got to understand the target first,” Sedgewick explained to Zeggio. “But the master never has no trouble understanding women. We’ll make quick work of her, I don’t doubt.”
“We’d better,” James said. A large, two-oared gondola approached the Palazzo Neroni. “Who’s that?”
Zeggio studied it for a moment. “Oh, that one. He comes to Venice soon after she returns. He is the Crown Prince of Gilenia. Very beautiful, with golden hair in little curls. He is a little stupid, but they say she favors him.”
Gilenia was a barely invisible speck on the map of Europe, but it was part of James’s job to know all the specks. “Prince Lurenze,” he said. “What is he, a boy of one and twenty?”
“With respect, sir, you was six years younger than that when you was recruited,” Sedgewick said.
“So true,” said Zeggio. “Signor Cordier is a legend. Almost I think him a myth until I see for myself.”
“There’s a considerable difference,” said James, “between the troublesome younger son of an English nobleman and the heir to one of Europe’s oldest monarchies. Royals are a good deal more sheltered. And the Gilenian royals are kept in cotton wool. I’m amazed his parents let him out of their sight.”
“They send with him a great retinue,” said Zeggio. “All the diplomats court him. This is one of his difficulties with the ladies: He is never alone.”
“That must make for interesting experiences in the boudoir,” said James. “If he’s had any, which is not at all certain.”
“You think the lad’s a virgin?” said Sedgewick.
“I shouldn’t lay a wager on it,” said James. “But his experience will be extremely limited.” He made a dismissive gesture. “He’ll be no problem at all. And if Magny keeps to his villa like other sensible folk, I foresee no difficulty with him.”
“And the lady?” said Veggio.
“Oh, the women’s never no problem for the master,” said Sedgewick. “No problem at all.”
Meanwhile, in London
John Bonnard, Baron Elphick, stood behind the desk of his study. Though he’d passed his fortieth birthday, his dark gold hair was still thick, his hazel eyes were unclouded, and most of his teeth remained in his head. All in all, despite a shortish stature and slight physique, he was deemed one of the most attractive men in England.
Had observers been able to see the inner man, they might have had a different opinion.
At the moment he bore a nearer resemblance to his inner self, because he was scowling at the letter that lay before him. The letter was creased, as though it had been crumpled repeatedly and flattened out.
Most of the letters his former wife sent him ended up in this condition. Oddly enough, none of them ended up in the fire.
The petite, dark-haired woman standing across the desk from him looked down at the letter and up into his face. Johanna Ide wore the expression of one who has watched the same scene unfold time and again. She did not roll her beautiful eyes, though. Elphick’s mistress of more than twenty years—and co-conspirator in all things—was well aware that in this one case, matters had not proceeded as she and he had so confidently expected.
He’d had another letter from his wife. It had put him in a temper, as usual.
“The bitch,” he said.
“I know, my dear, but she won’t trouble you for much longer.”
He looked up. “No, she won’t. Everything is in hand. I had a message this morning. Marta Fazi’s been released from prison. It took long enough, and cost enough. But it’s done, and she ought to be on her way to Verona, if she isn’t there already.”
It was Johanna’s turn to frown. She knew Marta Fazi was one of many women Elphick had used over the years. Each one believed she was the only one he truly loved. Johanna, who knew better, encouraged these liaisons. It was business, and their business was achieving power. If this hadn’t been the case, she and Elphick would have done the impractical thing and wed each other years ago. But being ambitious—soulmates in every way—they’d married other people. She was widowed now and he divorced, yet they hesitated to wed each other until everything was settled at last: until he became prime minister and his former wife was rendered hors de combat…until, in short, Johanna could be absolutely certain no one would find out what sort of man he was inside, and she wouldn’t suffer the consequences with him.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You’d prefer I employ someone else to recover the letters.”
“Fazi is barely literate,” said Johanna.
“She’ll recognize my handwriting,” he said. “I’ve sent her love notes enough. She’ll be told what names to look for. That’s all she needs to know.”
“She’s slightly unhinged as well,” Johanna said.
“She may do what she likes to Francesca, so long as she gets the letters first,” he said.
“I feel quite the same, dear, I assure you. But I should like to be certain Marta has the letters before your former wife has a fatal accident.”
“Marta doesn’t usually kill women,” he said. His gaze drifted down to the letter. “She’s more likely to spoil Francesca’s pretty face. That will send the slut’s highborn lovers packing.”
The highborn lovers were the real problem.
Five years ago, Francesca Bonnard had stolen from this very desk letters that, read by anyone with an understanding of the kinds of missives that passed between foreign agents, could prove incriminating, fatally so.
Fortunately, at the time she’d stolen them, she was the most hated and despised woman in Great Britain. Had she tried to expose her husband’s decades of clandestine dealings with the French, no one would have believed her. Everyone would have believed the letters were forgeries, a despicable effort to drag her grossly abused spouse down into the cesspit with her. He might have even been able to bring charges against her of slander and sedition.
She’d known better than to attempt to expose him, though. She’d simply gone abroad and become a whore while John Bonnard had continued to climb the ranks of his party and eventually get himself a barony.
But he’d made a few enemies along the way, and these people were now looking for ways to undermine him. One of his more worrisome foes, Lord Quentin, was in Italy. Not a good sign.
Meanwhile, instead of quickly sinking into the gutter and dying, impoverished, diseased, and mad, as Johanna and Elphick had confidently expected, Francesca Bonnard had climbed in the world, too. Now she consorted with men of influence.
Now she was a problem, a very dangerous one.
Meanwhile, in Verona
“Do you not understand?” Marta Fazi raged at the gentleman who’d brought the message to the little cottage. “I’ve lost my best men, thanks to that Roman pig, whoever he is. Three of them crippled—useless. Another half dozen the soldiers took away. They are still in prison.”
“We got you out,” said the messenger. “It cost a bloody fortune in bribes.”
“I am worth it,” she said, chin aloft. “My Lord Elphick knows. But what can I do when my best men are useless?”
“Use your second-best men,” said the messenger.
She scowled at something across the room. She stalked past him to a shelf and turned a little statue of the madonna to face the wall. “Why does she look at me like this?” she said. “She knows what I have suffered. That cruel man. May he burn in hell.”
“Never mind the cruel man,” the messenger said.
She swung round, her black eyes glittering with rage. “Never mind? Do you know what he did?”
“I know he made you lose your temper and go on a rampage, which is how you ended up in prison and cost us—”
“My emeralds!” she cried. “My beautiful emeralds! He took them!”
“This is rather more important than—”
“Queens wore those emeralds!” she raged on. “They were mine!” She pressed her first to her bosom. “Do you know what I had to do to get them, those beautiful stones?” Her dark eyes filled. She, who mutilated for sport and killed with a smile on her face, wept over green minerals. “I loved them like children. My own little babies. Where will I find jewels to match those again? When I find that black-hearted pig who took them—”
“You can look for him later. Right now—”
“Who did this to me? Who is he?”
“We don’t know. We don’t have time to find out. Forget him. Forget the emeralds. You’ll never get them back. They’ve gone back to the royal coffers they came out of.”
“No!” She snatched the little madonna from the shelf and threw it across the room. It hit the back of a chair and shattered into fragments. “Forget? Marta Fazi never forgets! Not even a ring does he leave me. Not one ring! Nothing. Gone! All gone!”
“She has jewelry,” the messenger said. “She’s famous for it.”
The storm abruptly abated.
“Mrs. Bonnard has sapphires, pearls, rubies, diamonds,” the messenger said into the intense quiet. “And emeralds.”
“Emeralds?” Marta smiled like a child offered sweetmeats.
“Very fine emeralds that once belonged to the Empress Josephine,” the messenger said. “Get the letters and no one will mind if you take a few baubles as well. Deliver those letters safely to his lordship and he’ll give you the Crown Jewels.”
Venice, that night, at the opera
Though the season had not officially started, the boxes and pit of La Fenice were very nearly filled. This, James was aware, was partly because Rossini’s popular La Gazza Ladra was being performed and partly because Francesca Bonnard and her friends occupied one of the most expensive of the theater’s four tiers of boxes. As many people were looking up at her box as were looking at the stage.
And, this being Italy, many other people were doing neither.
As he well knew, Italian theaters were a different species from those in England. In Italy, theaters were social centers. To accommodate sociable theatergoers, the stairs and refreshment rooms were enormous. The vast foyers had been used until very recently for gambling. Now, with gambling forbidden, theatergoers were reduced to playing backgammon.
During the season, the educated classes attended the theater four or five times a week. Since this was a home away from home, the boxes were large as well, many of them furnished like drawing rooms and used in much the same way. From some, one could barely see the stage.
During the performance, people ate, drank, and talked. They played at cards, flirtation, and seduction. Servants went in and out. The opera or play provided background color and music, for the most part.
But at certain important times in the performance—the start of a favorite aria, for instance—the audience became hushed, and attended with all its might.
Such a hush was not in progress as James entered the box where Francesca Bonnard held court. Several parties on stage were screeching and bellowing something or other to which no one was paying the slightest heed.
No one paid James any heed, either. He appeared to be merely one of the several wigged and liveried servants going in and out with this or that: food, wine, a shawl. Playing a servant was easy. Those they served took little notice of them. He might stab the crown prince of Gilenia in the neck in front of a dozen witnesses, and later, not one of those witnesses would be able to identify James as the killer. No one would remember what kind of wig or livery he wore.
He was certain of this, having done away with two pieces of human slime under similar conditions.
Lurenze, however, was merely in the way. Since, given the lady’s reputation, one must expect a male—or several—to be in the way, James preferred the obstacle to be young and not overly intelligent. The French count Magny, with the advantages of age and experience—which included not losing his head, literally, during the Terror or thereafter—might have proved a more serious obstacle.
James’s attention shifted from the golden-haired boy to the harlot beside him. They sat at the front of the box, Lurenze in the seat of honor at her right. He’d turned in his seat to gaze worshipfully at her. She, facing the stage, pretended not to notice the adoration.
From where he stood, James had only the rear view, of a smoothly curving neck and shoulders. Her hair, piled with artful carelessness, was a deep chestnut with fiery glints where the light caught it. A few loose tendrils made her seem the slightest degree tousled. The effect created was not of one who’d recently risen from bed but one who had a moment ago slipped out of a lover’s embrace.
Subtle.
And most effective. Even James, jaded as he was, was aware of a stirring-up below the belly, a narrowing of focus, and a softening of brain.
But then, she ought to be good at stirring up men, he thought, considering her price.
His gaze drifted lower.
A sapphire and diamond necklace adorned her long, velvety neck. Matching drops hung at her shell-like ears. While Lurenze murmured something in her ear, she let her shawl slip down.
James’s jaw dropped.
The dress had almost no back at all! She must have had her corset specially made to accommodate it.
Her shoulder blades were plainly visible. An oddly shaped birthmark marked the right one.
He pulled his eyes back into his head and his tongue back into his mouth.
Well, then, she was a fine piece, as well as a bold one, no question about that. Someone thought she was worth those sapphires, certainly, and that was saying something. James wasn’t sure he’d ever seen their like, and he’d seen—and stolen—heaps of fine jewelry. They surpassed the emeralds he’d reclaimed from Marta Fazi not many months ago.
Bottle in hand, he advanced to fill their glasses.
Lurenze, who’d leaned in so close that his yellow curls were in danger of becoming entangled with her earrings, paused, leaned back a little, and frowned. Then he took out his quizzing glass and studied her half-naked back. “But this is a serpent,” he said.
It is?
James, surprised, leaned toward her, too. The prince was right. It wasn’t a birthmark but a tattoo.
“You, how dare you to stare so obscene at the lady?” Lurenze said. “Impudent person! Put your eyes back in your face. And watch before you spill—”
“Oops,” James said under his breath as he let the bottle in his hand tilt downward, splashing wine on the front of his highness’s trousers.
Lurenze gazed down in dismay at the dark stain spreading over his crotch.
“Perdono, perdono,” James said, all false contrition. “Sono mortificato, eccellenza.” He took the towel from his arm and dabbed awkwardly and not gently at the wet spot.
Bonnard’s attention remained upon the stage, but her shoulders shook slightly. James heard a suppressed giggle to his left, from the only other female in the box. He didn’t look that way but went on vigorously dabbing with the towel.
The red-faced prince pushed his hand away. “Stop! Enough! Go away! Ottar! Where is my servant? Ottar!”
Simultaneously, a few hundred heads swiveled their way and a few hundred voices said, in angry unison, “Shh!”
Ninetta’s aria was about to begin.
“Perdonatemi, perdonatemi,” James whispered. “Mi dispiace, mi dispiace.” Continuing to apologize, he backed away, the picture of servile shame and fear.
La Bonnard turned round then, and looked James full in the face.
He should have been prepared. He should have acted reflexively but for some reason he didn’t. He was half a heartbeat too slow. The look caught him, and the unearthly countenance stopped him dead.
Isis, Lord Byron had dubbed her, after the Egyptian goddess. Now James saw why: the strange, elongated green eyes…the wide mouth…the exotic lines of nose and cheek and jaw.
James felt it, too, the power of her remarkable face and form, the impact as powerful as a blow. Heat raced through him, top to bottom, bottom to top, at a speed that left him stunned.
It lasted but a heartbeat in time—he was an old hand, after all—and he averted his gaze. Yet he was aware, angrily aware, that he’d been slow.
He was aware, angrily aware, of being thrown off balance.
By a look, a mere look.
And it wasn’t over yet.
She looked him up. She looked him down. Then she looked away, her gaze reverting to the stage.
But in the last instant before she turned away, James saw her mouth curve into a long, wicked smile.