A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth, and love,
And beauty, all concentrating like rays
Into one focus, kindled from above;
Such kisses as belong to early days,
Where heart, and soul, and sense,
in concert move,
And the blood’s lava, and the pulse a blaze,
Each kiss a heart-quake,—for a kiss’s strength,
I think, it must be reckon’d by its length.
Lord Byron
Don Juan, Canto the First
James was putting puzzle pieces together. He didn’t like the looks of any of them.
Letters had been stolen.
And emeralds.
The robbers had taken the wrong letters, apparently. Bonnard would not be so amused—and he was sure she hadn’t feigned that—if they’d taken the right ones. But what was in the wrong ones, to amuse her so?
Or was she simply amused at the error?
He wasn’t.
Someone who did not read very well in the first place and who understood very little English in the second, might easily make the mistake.
That someone needn’t be Marta Fazi. Who else, though, besides Marta, was demented enough to take emeralds and leave diamonds, rubies, pearls, and sapphires behind?
The logical conclusion was, someone had sent Marta to retrieve the letters. The someone had overestimated her intelligence and underestimated Bonnard’s.
Her former husband?
They play a game, Giulietta had said of Bonnard and her former spouse, and to kill her is to admit he loses.
The trouble was, bringing crazy Marta Fazi into the business indicated a willingness to kill. James tried to remember if he’d heard of any connection between Fazi and Elphick. Nothing came to mind.
Was he completely wrong? Was there something he ought to see that he couldn’t? If so, it was not surprising. He was stumbling in the dark because he didn’t understand the game Bonnard played with Elphick. And he’d keep on stumbling until he put an end to the game she played with James Cordier.
He turned to Thérèse and gave orders in the French he’d perfected decades ago, the impeccable accents that had spared him decapitation on more than one occasion.
“Madame requires a bath,” he said. “While that is in preparation, have servants repair her bed. While they do this, you will restore order to the dressing room and carry out the inventory madame ordered. She will expect you to list every missing item, no matter how unimportant. After madame has bathed and rested and is properly supplied with correct information, she will decide how to proceed.”
Thérèse bowed her head. “Oui, monsieur,” she said. She hurried from the room.
Bonnard stared after her. Then she stared at James. “Who are you?” she said. “A long-lost Bourbon? She won’t heed even Magny, yet she heeds you.”
“It’s my charm,” James said. “Irresistible.”
Her beautiful eyes narrowed.
“I told her to do precisely what she wanted to do,” he said. “She’s too worried about you to pay proper attention to your belongings. Once you’ve bathed and rested, she’ll be able to concentrate on her work. Likewise, you can’t be expected to think clearly until you’ve had time to recover.”
“From staying out all night?” she said. “I’m used to that.”
“From the shock.”
“It’s true I’m still reeling at the idea of nuns as burglars.”
“Those weren’t real nuns,” he said. “And it wasn’t a simple robbery. What is this about, Bonnard?”
She shrugged, and picked up a bottle from the floor.
He moved to her. “How stupid do you think I am?” he said. “I know something is going on here. What are you hiding? How can I help you if you won’t tell me anything?”
“Where did you get the idea I needed help?”
“A pair of nasty brutes assaulted you last week, supposedly for your jewelry—”
“Supposedly? Aren’t you sure? You told me that the one who was captured said it was an attempted robbery.”
“A few days after that attack, your house is searched,” he said. “How much more evidence do you need that something is wrong? Why should someone make off with your husband’s letters?”
“And my emeralds,” she said. “Maybe something alarmed the naughty nuns when they were ransacking my dressing room, and they simply snatched up what was at hand. They might have mistaken the letters for bank notes.” Maybe they thought they were passionate love letters and they could sell them to the scandal sheets. If so, they’re in for a disappointment. They’ve stolen a lot of boring boasting and name-dropping—”
“Francesca.”
“It’s none of your affair!” she snapped. “I don’t want your help!”
“You’re behaving like an idiot,” he said. “Are you pregnant?”
The bottle shot toward his head. He ducked. It struck the back of a chair, and toppled to the floor, unbroken. It must be a heavy little bottle. If he hadn’t ducked, it might have cracked his skull open.
“Pregnant?” she cried. “Pregnant? Why not ask if it’s coming to that time of the month?”
“Well, is it?” he said.
“You stupid, stupid man! I’m not pregnant. It’s not coming to that time of month. I’m tired and dirty and I want a bath. And some sleep. And I want you out of my house. Va via!” She flung up her hand in that provoking backhanded gesture of dismissal.
He shook his head and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and its cavorting mythological beings. Hadn’t he told her, a moment ago, that she needed a bath and rest?
He strode to her, and scooped her up in his arms.
“Put me down,” she said.
“I’m going to give you a bath,” he said. “I’m going to throw you into the canal.”
Francesca did struggle but it was pointless. The brute who’d tried to strangle her was three times her size, and he’d struggled with this man to no avail.
She remembered how easily Cordier had subdued him, how effortlessly he’d tossed him into the canal.
“You wouldn’t,” she said.
He didn’t answer, only strode out of the bedroom and down the portego toward the canal-facing windows. With their balconies. Directly over the canal.
“Can you swim?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Then you’ve nothing to worry about, have you?”
“Cordier,” she said.
“The water is cool and refreshing at this time of year,” he said. “Exactly the sort of thing you need to clear your addled little head.”
She was addled, she knew, and she’d been an utter bitch as well.
She laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m…emotional, I know.”
“No, you’re insane,” he said.
“I don’t want to care for you,” she said.
He kept on walking. “Honeyed words will not work,” he said. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“Oh, very well, then,” she said. “Drown me. It’ll be a relief.”
“No, it won’t. You know how to swim, you said. Besides, you’re beautiful. A romantic Venetian is sure to fish you out before the tide carries you out to sea.”
She tightened her arms about his neck. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t be angry with me.” She felt the tears trickling from her eyes. Again. This was horrible, worse than she’d supposed—and she’d thought she’d supposed the worst.
She was afraid of losing him. She must be mad. She hoped she was. The alternative was too ghastly to contemplate. Five days! She’d met him only five days ago!
“I’m immune to tears,” he said. “I’m doing this for your own good.”
“I’m g-going to s-scream for help,” she said. “The s-servants will c-come to my r-rescue.”
“They’ll have to be deuced qu-quick,” he said mockingly.
They’d reached the portego windows.
“Cordier.”
The arm under her knees shifted slightly, and he put his hand on the window handle.
“You won’t do it,” she said.
“Watch me,” he said.
She was aware of heads popping out of doorways. “The servants won’t let you,” she said.
“Yes, they will,” he said. “They’re Italian. They’ll understand perfectly.”
He opened the tall window and carried her through it. The balcony was narrow. It wanted only a step to carry her to the edge. He set her down on the wide stone railing.
She locked her hands behind his neck. “If I go down, you’re going with me,” she said.
He reached for her hands.
He’d have no trouble getting free of her.
And that was the trouble.
She let go of him and quickly, before she could think twice, turned.
And jumped.
“Merda,” she heard him say.
It did not take very long. Merely a lifetime while James’s heart stopped and he blinked in disbelief, while he uttered the one word and pulled off his shoes. Merely a lifetime passed while he plunged in after her.
He caught hold of her before she could swim away—or attempt it: a considerable challenge, given the impediments of skirts and petticoats and stays. He dragged her the few feet to the water gates, wrenched them open, dragged her inside, rose, hauled her upright, and shook her.
“Don’t ever.” Shake. “Do that.” Shake. “Again.”
She stood, dripping, looking up at him, her green eyes so soft, filled with the ghost.
“Don’t look at me that way,” he said.
“I’m not,” she said.
He pulled her into his arms. He kissed her wet forehead, her nose, her cheeks. He dragged his hands through her sopping hair while he waited for his heart rate to return to normal. It wouldn’t, just kept thudding unevenly, with panic and anger and he didn’t know what else. He didn’t know how to stop it. He didn’t know how to feel in control again.
Then his mouth came at last to hers and he kissed her, like the drowning man he was. It was deep and hot and ungentle, and she kissed him back in the same ferocious way.
She was bold and unafraid and shameless—the exact opposite of what he wanted. Nonetheless he wanted her, and the fierce kiss left him weak in the knees.
Yet all the while he was still himself, still aware of where they were. He knew he couldn’t let his brain go weak as well. Not now. For her sake he must keep his wits about him.
Oh, yes, and for king and country, too.
The last thought was as bracing as a slap in the face.
He drew away. “I should have stayed where I was and waved good-bye,” he said. “‘Ciao,’ I should have said. I should have waved and thought, good riddance. That’s what I should have done. You are nothing but trouble.”
She flung her arms around his waist and held him tightly.
Then he was done for, king or not, country or not.
“You smell like canal,” he said. “You really need a bath.”
“So do you,” came her muffled voice from his waterlogged coat.
“How big is your bathtub?” he said.
“I’m a great whore,” she said. “What do you think?”
It was only a short distance to the bathing room, which Francesca had created from one of the cozy rooms on the mezzanine, between the andron and the piano nobile. The tub was very large, as befitted a courtesan, but she had not yet entertained a man here while bathing.
A small window let in light from the courtyard. Even when the sun was at the best angle this room was one of the darker ones in the house. A servant was lighting candles as they entered. He’d already lit the fire in the fireplace.
The light flickered over what she thought of as a most luxurious cave.
The tub stood to one side of the fireplace. A Roman-style couch stood on the other. Soft towels, neatly folded, stood in heaps on tables nearby.
She’d furnished the room in the style she’d seen on mosaics from Roman times, to go with the frescoes. Instead of the putti and saints and martyrs prevalent elsewhere, the flickering candlelight here revealed gods and goddesses, nymphs and satyrs, food and wine, dancing and lovemaking. Incense burned in the braziers, as it had done in the old days of the Republic.
This room was private, a refuge. She never brought company here.
The servants had already prepared it for her, though. In the circumstances, it was irrational as well as inconsiderate to make them labor again, this time hauling water all the way up to the piano nobile. She was cold and wet. Cordier was cold and wet…and what did it matter if she let him into her sanctuary? What was the point of trying to keep him out of any corner of her life?
“You’re full of surprises,” he said, looking about him. “I’d expected to see a tub wheeled into your boudoir or bedroom.”
“There’s a smaller tub upstairs,” she said. “It’s mainly for the benefit of gentlemen who might wish to watch me bathe. But this room is for me.”
The servant went out and Thérèse hurried in, carrying a basket of soaps, creams, and perfumes. Over one arm hung a dressing gown. She looked hard at Francesca, glanced at Cordier, and compressed her lips. “Madame will take cold,” she said.
“I’ll see that she doesn’t,” Cordier said. He took the basket and dressing gown from her. “Madame pleases to drive me mad—”
“Monsieur pleases to provide me the same service,” Francesca said.
“Nonetheless, I shall see that she comes to no harm,” Cordier said. “You may go now. She’ll scream if she needs you.”
Thérèse looked to Francesca. “You may go,” Francesca said.
The maid went out.
“Every member of the household knows what happened,” he said. “It will be all over Venice in five minutes.”
“You upset me,” she said.
“The feeling is mutual,” he said.
“I don’t like to be upset,” she said.
“Who does?”
“I have spent the last five years arranging my life to keep that from happening,” she said.
He inspected the jars and bottles and soaps in the basket and removed one bottle before setting down the basket on the table close by the tub. He unstopped the bottle, sniffed it, then sprinkled a few drops into the tub. “I’m beginning to understand,” he said.
“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.