I’m fond myself of solitude or so,
But then, I beg it may be understood,
By solitude I mean a sultan’s not
A hermit’s, with a haram for a grot.
Lord Byron
Don Juan, Canto the First
Two nights later
On nights like this Francesca truly appreciated her freedom. She had gone first to the theater, then to the Caffè Florian, and now—Giulietta having parted from her for an assignation—she was going home, where she might sit up for a time, reading.
She would not have to make conversation or stifle yawns. She would not have to be clever or amusing or enticing or even agreeable.
Tonight she need please only herself.
She sat in the gondola, her chin resting on her hand, watching the familiar line of palazzi near her house float past. It was delicious, sometimes, not to have to talk or even think, to simply savor the moment and her surroundings: the beautiful houses, which had stood here for centuries; the quiet of the canal, the same quiet it had known for centuries, too; the peace of this strange city.
None of the cities she’d visited since she’d left England had soothed her as Venice did. She had no trouble understanding why Lord Byron had been, in a sense, reborn here.
At present, she lacked nothing in her life, she thought. She was financially secure. She was free—in ways she couldn’t have dreamed of in her old life. She had a friend in whom she could confide.
She needed nothing—except perhaps a lover who would give her a few hours’ pleasure and go away and leave her in peace. Or perhaps a dog would be better, she thought with a smile. In lieu of carnal pleasure, a canine would offer unquestioning love and devotion.
But dogs could not buy her diamonds. Or rubies, emeralds, sapphires, pearls, peridots, amethysts, or any of their fellows.
She’d have to make do with a lover. She laughed softly at the thought.
As the gondola neared her house, she looked up toward the Ca’ Munetti. Arnaldo had told her that the new tenant was hiring more servants. Several boats had arrived with supplies for the house. Of the tenant himself Arnaldo had learned little more. The gondolier Zeggio had claimed his master wished for privacy. He’d come to study with the monks and to concentrate on his work, whatever that was. He might go to the theater on occasion, or visit a church or a palazzo, to view the works of art. But he did not wish to attend the conversazioni—Venice’s salons, or what was left of them—or go to parties or to the hotels to dine with friends.
He was reclusive, then, but not precisely a hermit, she decided. He was, her sources said, about Lord Byron’s age but “perhaps more handsome.” The shadowy form she’d glimpsed from time to time in the Ca’ Munetti’s windows was that of a tall man.
The rest was left to her imagination. And in imagining him, she lost awareness of her surroundings.
She heard the faint plash of oars but thought nothing of it.
The night was dark, and the gondoliers didn’t see the danger, either, until a minute too late.
It happened so quickly.
A noise, the gondola rocking.
She looked to the front of the felze in time to see the man heave over the gondola’s side, leap up at Uliva, and push him into the water. It happened in the blink of an eye. She tried to scream, but only a squeak came out. Her throat was tight and her heart beat so fast, she couldn’t breathe properly, couldn’t find the wind to cry for help.
She was aware of movement, more rocking. A thunk, then a splash. She scrambled up from her seat, but the attacker shoved her back into the cabin and fell upon her.
She punched and kicked but he was too big, a great barrel of a brute. The stench of unwashed body clogged her nostrils.
His hands went round her throat. She clawed at them, struggled and squirmed, but it was like trying to move an elephant. She tried to thrust her knee in his groin, as she’d been taught to do. He was too heavy. She couldn’t move her legs. He muttered an obscenity while his hands tightened round her neck.
James had come home half an hour earlier. He’d stripped down to shirt and trousers and donned his dressing gown. A glass of wine in his hand, he was standing at the darkened window next to Zeggio when it happened.
Zeggio had been watching the small boat—one house down from theirs—since midnight, he explained.
“I do not like it,” he told James. “But I do not like to make trouble and call attention to us. What do you think, signore?”
“I don’t like it, either,” James said.
He’d scarcely uttered the words when her gondola swam into view. It was mere yards from the water gate of the Palazzo Neroni when the small boat moved out from the shadows.
James made out two figures in the rowboat.
It moved swiftly toward the gondola.
And swiftly attacked, taking the gondoliers unawares.
The man rowing the small boat reached over and grabbed the side of the gondola. He spread his legs to hold the rowboat steady while his accomplice climbed onto the gondola and made straight for the front gondolier. He pushed Uliva into the water and without the slightest pause, turned, hurtled over the cabin, and attacked the other gondolier, knocking him into the water.
Then he went for her.
It all took less than a minute.
But in less than a minute James was moving, throwing off the dressing gown and kicking off his slippers. He flung open the window, stepped onto the balcony, and jumped off.
Francesca’s accoster grunted, relaxed his grip slightly, and began grinding his pelvis against hers. Despite the layers of clothes between them—her pelisse, gown, petticoat, and shift, and his filthy rags—she was all too aware of his erection…and how small a chance she had of stopping him from doing what he meant to do.
She was too afraid to be sickened, too busy gasping for breath and trying not to lose consciousness. He lay atop her, a great, stinking ox. His breath was foul, hot on her face.
She was dimly aware of sounds outside but her mind couldn’t sort them out. She clawed with one hand at the thick fingers on her neck while with the other she tried to find something—a weapon of some kind, any kind.
James hit the water next to the rowboat. As soon as he came up, he caught hold of the side and heaved, throwing all his weight into it. The little boat tipped over, and the rower went over, too, with a curse and a shriek.
James pulled himself onto the gondola, and charged into the felze. The brute attacking her jerked up his head in surprise. James shoved his forearm across his throat and squeezed, trapping him tight in the crook of his arm. The villain was big, and he thrashed madly, but not for long. A few last, feeble twitches, and he went limp.
James dragged him out of the cabin and pushed him into the canal and watched the dark form sink beneath the water.
He returned to her. She sprawled half in the seat, half on the floor, her skirts bunched up above her garters, her stockings sagging. She was panting, one hand at her throat.
He reached to help her up. She recoiled from his outstretched hand. She rolled to one side, grabbing a bottle. She threw it at him. He ducked, and the bottle sailed harmlessly into the canal.
Relief coursed through him, as cool as the water streaming down his body. The black, consuming rage ebbed.
He set his fists on his hips and laughed. He had to. It was all too absurd, and he most absurd of all, in his shirtsleeves, dripping wet.
“Ma amo solo te, dolcezza mia,” he said.
But I love only you, my sweet.
“Vai al diavolo!” she gasped.
Go to the devil, in Italian with an amusing English accent.
“That,” he said in English, “is both rude and ungrateful, after I have spoiled my best trousers on your account. Or perhaps you’ve reason to be ungrateful?” He pushed dripping black curls back from his face. “Did I mistake the situation, and interrupt a bout of lovemaking? Like it rough, do you?”
She scrambled up to a sitting position, tugging her skirts down over long, shapely legs. In the dim lamplight her face was ghostly pale, her eyes great, dark hollows in her face.
“Rough?” she said blankly. “Rough?” She shook her head, like one waking from a dream. “You’re English?”
He was real. This was real.
She was cold and shaking and bile was rising in her throat. She was going to be sick.
Eyes fixed on the apparition before her, Francesca dragged in air and tried to make her mind work.
He couldn’t be real.
Greek and Roman statues looked like that, not living men. Mythical gods and demigods looked like that, not mortal men.
But he was breathing. Hard. She watched his big chest rise and fall under his sopping shirt. The sodden linen was merely a veil clinging to his skin, hiding nothing. She could discern every taut line of muscle in his powerful shoulders and arms and torso. The wet trousers hugged a narrow waist and hips and long, muscled legs.
Very long legs. Had she ever met a man, a living man, as tall as this? Or did he simply seem so, towering over her as she lay sprawled in the cabin’s seat?
Her first impression was of a handsome, strong-featured face, its expression so cold that it might have been chiseled in marble. The forbidding countenance was at odds with the mop of wet curls falling over his forehead.
She felt a wash of cold, then potent heat, a chill again, and heat again. All the while her head spun, trying to make sense of a world turned wildly awry and trying to make sense of him, while he shifted so easily from one language to another. At one moment he was indisputably Italian, in the next, incurably English.
She let her gaze drop to the hand he’d stretched out to her. Now it hung at his side, a long, strong hand that, only a moment before, had reduced a great barrel of a man to a rag doll. He’d thrown the big villain’s body over the side as casually as he might have flung a rat.
Who are you?
What are you?
She forced her gaze upward, back to his face, so hard and pitiless a moment ago. It was still without warmth, though he’d laughed, and the smile yet lingered at his mouth.
She wanted him to dive back into the water. He wasn’t human. He was a merman, part of a nightmare she wanted desperately to wake up from. Let him go back to his native element, let him vanish like the apparition he had to be.
But he’d saved her life.
Whoever, whatever he was, he’d saved her life.
In all her seven and twenty years, no man had ever come to her rescue before.
Who are you? she wanted to scream. What are you?
But what came out was the silliest question of all: “You’re English?”
James had already decided how to play it, though he hadn’t planned for this scenario.
“To a point,” he said.
She gazed dazedly about her. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Who were they? Why?”
Her voice was hoarse, and he knew that in better light, he’d see the imprint of her attacker’s thick fingers on her throat.
He felt the rage rebuilding—the lunatic fury he’d felt a moment ago.
Lunatic, indeed.
He had a temper: He was half Italian, after all.
But temper—emotion of any kind—had no place in his work. Hotheads failed. Hotheads got their comrades tortured and killed. Hotheads ended up with missing digits, missing limbs. They were left to rot in rat-infested holes or buried alive or staked under the desert sun. Hotheads came to a thousand bad ends, and the end rarely came quickly and painlessly.
Settle down, he told himself. Think.
She, clearly, hadn’t dreamt she was in danger. He, clearly, hadn’t dreamt it, either. His superiors had offered no hint. She didn’t understand. Neither did he.
Not that this would be the first time he’d been told only part of the story.
They always made it sound so simple—Get the letters—and it always turned into un mare di merda, a sea of excrement.
He scanned the immediate vicinity. “No sign of the would-be killers or rapists or thieves or whatever they were,” he said. “No sign of their boat, either. With any luck, they’ve drowned.”
He didn’t tell her it wasn’t good luck.
He didn’t tell her he should have taken more care.
He should have used another method to immobilize the one he’d pulled off her. He should have made sure to keep him alive, to hold onto him and question him. James would have enjoyed the interrogation.
But there was the swine, chortling while he tortured her, choking her slowly and grinding his groin—doubtless crawling with vermin and disease—against her.
James had charged in like a mad bull.
So that one had got away—or, equally likely, was dead—and the other was either sinking to the bottom of the canal or had got away, too.
Clumsy work. Not setting a good example for Zeggio, going off half-cocked like that, a bloody damned Sir Baconhead, saving fair maidens from dragons.
Still, it was done and couldn’t be undone.
James tensed as two heads popped out of the water. Then he recognized Uliva.
“Ah, here are your fellows,” he said. “I guessed they’d be along soon enough.”
The episode had taken a minute or two, start to finish.
He’d sized up her gondoliers the other night, and understood they were men to be reckoned with. The attackers probably hadn’t known that.
Whatever the villains knew or didn’t know, James couldn’t leave it to the gondoliers to rescue her.
As it was, he might have reached her too late. It took no time at all to kill somebody, as he well knew.
He watched her two stalwart boatmen climb into the gondola. “Get the lady into the house, quickly,” he told them in Italian. “Make sure to pour some brandy into her.”
He moved to the side of the boat. It had drifted a ways from their respective domiciles, but not so very far, and this was not the Grand Canal but a rio, a smaller side canal. He was already wet. He’d a short, easy swim home ahead of him. The cold water would do him good.
He needed to get away. He wasn’t happy with his performance this night. He’d had everything planned: their meeting and how he’d manage it.
He prepared to dive.
“Where are you going?” she cried. “Where’s your boat? You’re not going to swim, surely? Wait! I don’t even know who you are.”
He turned and gazed into her white, frightened face. He remembered the arrogant sway of her backside as she’d abandoned him in the Florian. He remembered the laughter, promising sin, and the smile, the devil’s own smile.
He felt a stab, as of loss, though he’d lost nothing, though he had nothing to lose. Yet he turned away from the water and, with wry resignation, toward her.
“I’m the fellow across the way,” he said.
An hour later
Francesca’s neighbor was taller than she’d estimated, based on glimpses of a silhouette in a window. She could not have guessed how splendidly made he was.
At the moment, the leanly muscled body was not so plainly on display as it had been a short while ago. The recollection, however, was burned into her mind, and it made her go hot and cold again as, clean and dry and freshly clothed, he sauntered into the small parlor she reserved, usually, for her close friends.
He wore a curious combination of articles borrowed from the largest of her servants. The shirt and coat were too short in the sleeves, the waistcoat was too loose, and the breeches too baggy. The shoes were neither too large nor too small, but her discerning eye told her they did not shape properly to his feet. Yet he wore the ill-fitting hodgepodge with the same cool assurance he’d displayed as he stood in her gondola, half-naked and dripping.
Francesca could have changed into a dressing gown over one of her naughty negligees. She might have made herself more comfortable in dishabille. She was a harlot, after all, and need not play the modest lady.
Yet after a furious scrubbing to rid herself of the smell, the touch, the memory of the animal who’d assaulted her, she’d had her maid Thérèse dress her in a gown she might have worn when she had guests to tea.
Tonight—or this morning, rather—tea was laughably inadequate.
Arnaldo brought brandy. Her rescuer sipped his appreciatively as he gazed about the comfortably appointed room adjoining her boudoir.
She sat, supported by pillows, upon the sofa. “‘The fellow across the way,’” she said. She took a shaky gulp of her drink. “That is not the most enlightening introduction I’ve ever heard.”
It was all she’d obtained so far. He’d hustled her inside, allowing no opportunity for questions because he’d been too busy ordering her servants about as though he were lord of the place.
Whatever else he was, he was without question an aristocrat.
“The gossip claims you are a member of the Albani family,” she pressed on into the unencouraging silence. “A most distinguished family, they say. A pope or two in it, I’m told. But now you say you’re English.”
Glass in hand, he moved to a large portrait of her that hung on the portego side of the room. It was one of several the marchese had commissioned in the course of their relationship. This, the largest and most recent, was the only one he’d sent her after she ended the affair.
“My father is Lord Westwood,” her guest said, his gaze still on the portrait. “My mother, his second wife, is Veronica Albani. They come to Venice from time to time. Perhaps you’ve met them?”
“I’m not usually invited to genteel gatherings,” she said while she tried to place Lord Westwood. Once upon a time she’d had Debrett’s Peerage memorized. Once upon a time she’d understood the intricate family connections of Great Britain’s aristocracy. She’d been John Bonnard’s political hostess, after all.
She had no trouble at present remembering the names of those who’d cut her after the divorce—and that was everybody. At the moment, however, Lord Westwood was a blank to her. She had no idea where he stood in the hierarchy of noblemen: duke, marquis, earl, viscount, baron.
“I should hardly call my parents genteel,” he said unhelpfully. He looked away from the portrait, studying her face, his own soberly critical. “An excellent likeness.”
Under his quiet scrutiny she felt as awkward as a schoolgirl.
That was patently ludicrous.
You’re a notorious slut, she reminded herself. A demimondaine. A woman of the world. Act like one.
“No one seems to know your name,” she said. “It’s most mysterious. What does it say on your passport, I wonder, and why does no one seem to know this simple thing?”
He shrugged. “Hardly a mystery. I’ve been in Venice for only a few days, and the curious can’t have tried hard to find out answers. As you say, it’s a simple thing, easy enough to find out. One need only ask the Austrian governor, Count Goetz, or his wife—or Mr. Hoppner, the British consul-general.” He paused. “I’m James Cordier.”
Then at last her mind made the connection. The Earl of Westwood’s family name was Cordier.
“I am Francesca Bonnard,” she said.
“That much I know,” he said. “You’re famous, it seems.”
“Infamous, you mean.”
His long stride brought him quickly across the small room to her. “Are you really?” he said. His eyes had widened with what seemed to be genuine surprise, and she was shocked to discover that they were not dark brown or black as she’d at first supposed, but blue, deep blue.
He sat in the chair nearest hers and leaned forward, studying her intently, rather as though she were another portrait whose quality he was assessing. “What dreadful thing have you done?”
Again she had to fight with herself not to squirm.
Scrutiny from men she was used to. What she wasn’t used to was being studied as though she were an abstruse line of Armenian. She felt stiff and uneasy. She was aware of heat spreading over her cheeks.
A blush, of all things! She, blushing!
She was disconcerted, that was all, she told herself. He wasn’t what she was used to. He was reputed to be a scholar. He was reclusive. What surprise was it, then, if he was eccentric, too?
“Perhaps you don’t go out much in Society,” she said.
“English Society, do you mean?” he said. “No, I spend little time in England.”
“I’m divorced,” she said. “The former wife of Lord Elphick. It was a great scandal.”
“And does he harbor ill will, do you think?” he said. “Do you suppose he might have hired men to kill you?”
Remembering Quentin’s visit, and the sudden interest in those old letters of Elphick’s, she’d considered the possibility and quickly discarded it. If Elphick had her killed now, he might get into trouble he wouldn’t be able to get out of. She was no longer his despised slut of a wife. Here on the Continent she was a glamorous divorcée with important friends. Her untimely demise would cause an uproar. It would be scrupulously investigated. Not to mention that Elphick couldn’t be sure what arrangements she’d made about the letters, in the event of her death. No, killing her was too risky for him.
“Good grief, no,” she said. “I’m more useful alive. He looks so much nobler and more virtuous in comparison to his wicked wife. He can pose as brave and forbearing. No, killing me would spoil his fun.”
“And dying would spoil yours, I reckon,” he said.
Surprised, she laughed. She had not thought she could laugh again, so easily, so soon after a narrow escape from rape and a grisly death—but then she was resilient, wasn’t she?
She became aware of an odd stillness about him that seemed to tauten the very air of the room. But she’d scarcely noticed it before it vanished.
“One’s first theory is that they were robbers,” he said. “But what a curious way to go about it. It would have been so much easier to knock you unconscious and strip off the jewelry and toss about your skirts for your purse. But this was meant to cause you as much suffering as possible in a short time. I saw it happen from my balcony, and it was plain that the assault was planned. Since violent crime is rare in Venice, one must conclude that this was deliberate, aimed at you. The motive, though…” He shrugged, in a most un-English way, drawing her attention to his big shoulders.
“You sound like a lawyer,” she said tightly. “You seem to know a great deal about criminals.”
“You sound like someone who doesn’t like lawyers,” he said. “You seem to know a great deal about them.”
“I’m a divorced woman,” she said. “My father was Sir Michael Saunders, the man who, single-handedly, nearly destroyed the British economy a few years ago. Yes, Mr. Cordier, I’ve had a great deal of experience with lawyers. I don’t particularly like them. I don’t particularly hate them, either. For a woman in my position, they represent an unfortunate necessity.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Your position. A divorcée.”
“Divorziata e puttana,” she said tautly. A divorcée and a whore.
He leapt from his chair as though one of Satan’s imps had pricked his arse with a hot fork.
“Good heavens!” he said. “I do beg your pardon. Am I keeping you from your work?”
That did it, finally. She stared at James, the green eyes huge in her face, shadowed and so vulnerable. He knew it was simply the aftereffects of looking death in the eye, yet it angered him. Before this, she had been so confident, so arrogant—
Then the too-fragile expression crumbled and she laughed, heartily and long.
His heart skipped a beat and another and went on so, beating raggedly.
He couldn’t help that. He couldn’t help smiling, either.
She was good, very good, and at last he was beginning to understand—in his gut, not simply in his mind—why she was so deuced expensive and why the men who could afford her paid without the smallest hesitation. This was a rare beauty with a rare exuberance.
She must be great fun in bed.
Small wonder the notoriously fickle Bellaci had kept her for so long.
“Keeping me from my work,” she said, her laughter subsiding to a soft chuckle while the naughty glint returned to her green eyes. “I must tell Giulietta. She’ll love that one. But no, Mr. Cordier, you are not keeping me from the streets, because I don’t walk them. Besides, you may have noticed that Venice hasn’t much in the way of streets. I’m the other kind of harlot. The excessively greedy kind. And I had planned to spend this night in bed—with a book.”
“Then it’s all too strange to me—at least to the Italian side of me,” he said. “I shouldn’t have imagined a woman of your quality would spend a night alone. But then, I’m still trying to imagine what would possess a man to divorce you. Was he enamored of his own sex perhaps? Or was it sheep he preferred?” He waved his hand, as though to dismiss the subject. “But it is none of my affair. I keep you from your book, and perhaps, after all, a book is preferable to a lover.”
“Sometimes,” she said, her mouth curving a little.
It was only a teasing hint of the wicked smile that sent electric shocks of anticipation straight into a man’s bloodstream, to speed merrily to his reproductive organs.
The tiny smile was a devilish glimpse of things to come. It might be an invitation. It might simply be teasing.
Whatever it meant, it worked. His temperature was climbing and his brain was already turning over negotiations to his cock.
Slow down, laddie, he told himself. You know better.
He knew, far better than most men. He couldn’t succumb. He couldn’t let her have the upper hand. He’d already decided how he’d play this: hard to get.
“He divorced me for adultery,” she said.
“Shocking,” he said. “I should have thought he had a serious complaint: You’d put arsenic in his coffee or had his drawers starched or beat him at golf.”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “I only thought of the arsenic after—and then it was too late.”
“It’s never too late for arsenic,” he said. “What it is, is too slow. Unless you only want to make him desperately sick. Or to make sure he dies slowly and painfully. For fast work, I’d recommend prussic acid.”
“You seem to know a great deal about these matters.”
He remembered that she’d watched him kill a man—or nearly kill him. James was acutely, embarrassingly aware that he’d been too enraged to pay attention to what he was doing. He’d no idea whether the pig had been breathing or not when dropped into the canal. An unconscious man sinks more or less the same way a dead one does.
She was bound to wonder about a man who could incapacitate another with his bare hands. Clearly, she wasn’t the sort who was callous enough not to wonder. He’d met far too many women who wouldn’t wonder: Marta Fazi, most recently.
“I do know a great deal,” he said. “In my youth, I fell in with a very bad lot.” Absolutely true. He preferred to keep as close to the truth as possible. So much simpler that way. “The family packed me off into the army, where criminal and violent tendencies can be properly and gainfully employed.” Also true.
“Violence, yes,” she said. “But poison? I’d always heard it was a woman’s tool.”
“I come from a long line of poisoners,” he said. “Mother’s got some Borgia as well as Medici trickling through her veins.” As he started to set down his glass on the table next to her, he caught a whiff of a light scent. Jasmine?
He carefully placed the glass and straightened, resisting the temptation to lean in closer, to find out if the scent was in her hair or on her skin. “And you, I see, come from a long line of women, eternally curious. I should be happy to…satisfy…your curiosity, but I am obliged to report the incident to the Austrian governor—as I should have done immediately. They are very strict, as you know, about their rules. Then I must be abroad early. The monks expect me punctually at ten. I shall send you my monograph on popular murder methods of the sixteenth century. My sisters say it makes excellent bedtime reading.”
“Why don’t you bring it yourself?” she said. “You might read it to me.”
In bed was left unsaid.
It didn’t need to be said. The smile lingered at her mouth and the green gaze slid over him, as smooth as water.
He wanted to dive in, even though he was sure she’d drown him there.
Tie me to the mast, he thought.
“Devo andare,” he said. I must go. “Buona notte, signora.”
“Buon giorno,” she said. “It’s nearly dawn.”
“A rivederci,” he said.
And before she could tempt him to argue whether it was night or morning or persuade him to watch the sun rise with her, he made his exit.
He was sweating.