Your Scandalous Ways (Fallen Women 1)

Eating would give her something to do while she waited but she had no appetite. After staring at the food for a time, she went back to the door. Perhaps someone in the household knew what the master was up to. She was a seductress, she reminded herself. She could seduce the information out of somebody.

The door wouldn’t open.

She tried the other two doors. They wouldn’t open, either.

Locked up for her own good or for his convenience? He probably assumed the two were the same. Who wanted a pesky female underfoot?

She considered screaming, and quickly realized it was pointless. He’d given orders and his servants would obey him. Hell, her servants obeyed him.

She paced for a time, and realized she was rubbing her arms. He’d left her nothing to wear but the shift she’d donned. Though the night wasn’t very cold, a fire burned in the grate. All the same, she couldn’t seem to get warm. She pulled up one of the rugs and wrapped it about her. But the chill came from within, from doubt and its favorite companion…dread.

She made herself think, calmly.

He had told her that the fire and noise was a diversion and a trap. Someone was at or near the Palazzo Neroni, waiting for her, he said. She knew they weren’t after her jewelry. They wanted the letters. They’d given up trying to search for them and meant to make her reveal where she’d hidden them.

Elphick must be in a panic.

Finally, after five years.

But he’d no reason to worry previously. He’d ruined her so thoroughly that no one would believe anything she said about him. At the time, even she hadn’t been sure the letters signified what she thought they did. Yet she knew they must be important. Otherwise, why should he keep them in a locked drawer?

Quentin’s visit during the summer had erased any remaining doubts. If those letters weren’t important, he wouldn’t have asked for them, and come back, repeatedly, trying to persuade her to give them up. He’d said he and his associates had gathered other clues, parts of a puzzle they’d been trying to assemble for years.

The trouble was, knowing how devious and ruthless her former husband was, she found it all too easy to believe he’d sent Quentin.

Naturally Elphick would want to tie up loose ends, now that he’d grown so popular. He had hopes, she knew, of replacing Lord Liverpool as prime minister. Meanwhile, thanks to her letters, Elphick was aware that she traveled in high circles, among influential men. Foreigners, yes—but some foreigners had influence at Whitehall. An important foreign nobleman or royal would be heeded, where a discarded wife would not.

She remembered what Magny had told her about Cordier’s parents. They’d risked their lives to save French nobles and others from Madame Guillotine. There were many foreigners with similar sympathies, who’d be happy to bring down a traitor.

Elphick had reason to be afraid now, and thus reason to act—as Magny had warned her more than once recently.

But Magny didn’t trust Quentin any more than she did.

Magny trusted nobody.

She would be wise to do the same, probably.

Restless, she moved to the window. The moon, past its full but still three-quarters visible, bathed the canal in its glow. The excitement across the way seemed to be dying down, as was the fire. Few onlookers remained on the nearby balconies.

Cordier was right, then. It hadn’t been a real fire. In these ancient houses, fires were rarely doused so quickly and easily. It was ironic, wasn’t it? to be in the middle of the sea, in a structure built on wooden poles in water, and watch a house burn to the ground. But she’d seen that happen during her first year here. The Doge’s Palace had burned to the ground several times over the centuries, she’d been told.

Still, those had been real fires and this was a diversion, according to Cordier. And he…

I have to be you.

She saw her gondola start across the canal. A woman sat inside…wearing her red gown. The color stood out against the black, even at night, as Francesca had wanted it to do. She loved the drama of a vivid color against the black of the gondola. And what could be more dramatic than red?

She pressed her nose to the window.

I have to be you.

It was he.

He had to be her because he was the bait.

Her heart thumped once, hard, then beat so violently that she couldn’t draw her breath.

She watched the gondola make its away across the canal. It had but a short distance to travel. As it came to a stop, the water gates flew open. Several dark figures burst through and leapt onto the gondola, pushing the gondoliers into the water.

In an upraised hand, a blade gleamed in the moonlight. The one holding it lunged toward the felze.

It was an ambush, and they’d taken no chances this time, James saw.

This time there were not merely two villains but half a dozen at least. They must have secreted themselves somewhere on the ground floor during the uproar. Now they spilled out through the gates into the gondola.

Uliva and Zeggio were expecting an attack, but not in these numbers. As he was drawing his knife, James saw the two gondoliers thrown overboard. The man coming at him, knife in hand, hesitated when James burst from the cabin and went straight at him. But James’s foot caught in the hem of the gown, and down he went, sprawling face first. He felt rather than saw the man move, and rolled aside before the knife could plunge into his back. He kicked out at the ruffian’s ankles, and the fellow crashed to the deck. James rolled up onto his knees and raised his own knife.

“Look out!” a female voice screamed.

He dodged, reacting instinctively, and the club whooshed past his head and slammed onto the deck.

“Aiuto! Aiuto! Help! Help! Murderers!”

The feminine screams pierced the nighttime quiet. In the distance, dogs barked and howled. The men in the boat froze briefly, eyeing their surroundings. People rushed out onto their balconies, everyone shouting.

While his assailants were looking wildly about them, James attacked. He got the club from the one who’d tried to break his skull. Meanwhile Zeggio clambered back into the gondola and subdued the one with the knife.

The others were trying to get away, but Bonnard’s servants had rushed down to the water gates. Leaving the villains to them, James turned his attention to the direction from which the screams had come. He saw her, then, clinging to a gondola mooring.

She could swim to the house, Francesca told him indignantly as he pulled her into the gondola. It was only a few feet, she pointed out. She was only catching her breath after screaming.

She found herself swiftly transported from the gondola to the andron.

All of her servants were there, some with villains in tow, all of them brandishing improvised weapons: candlesticks, kitchen knives, pots, trays, and bottles. They lowered the weapons as Cordier pulled her inside.

He gave her a shake. “Don’t ever.” Another shake. “Do that.” Shake. “Again.”

“I was creating a diversion,” she said.

“You’re creating a diversion, all right,” he said. “You’re wearing a shift that’s soaked through. You might as well be wearing nothing. And everybody’s looking.”

“That will never do,” she said. “I’m a harlot. They must pay to look.”

“I’m going to kill you,” he said. He turned away. “Zeggio, stop gawking, and fetch the lady’s shawl before she catches her death.”

Francesca wasn’t thinking about being cold. She was taking him in. He had on his shirt and waistcoat as well as her gown, which he wore backward, the bodice hanging over his bottom.

He noticed her studying it. “It didn’t fit,” he said.

“I told you that.”

Zeggio approached with the shawl. Cordier snatched it from him and wrapped it about her. Then he marched her to the stairs.

Thérèse pushed her way past a pair of kitchen maids. “Oh, madame,” she said.

“I know,” Francesca said. “He’s ruined my sec

ond favorite gown.”

“It isn’t ruined,” Cordier said. “I took pains not to get blood on it. Did you notice that I did not jump into the canal to rescue you this time? Look.” He whirled about, so gracefully, as though he’d been wearing skirts all his life.

She giggled. She couldn’t help it. He was an excellent mimic. She hadn’t realized…

A mimic.

A host of images crowded into her mind: The comical Spaniard who moments later turned into someone more disturbing—the long-legged man lounging at the door of her gondola…later, the same man sweeping off his hat in the Caffè Florian and making a flourish of a bow…his black hair glued down with pomade. Countess Benzoni looking not at his hair but at his tall, strong body. This tall, strong body.

Another tall, strong body appeared in her mind’s eye. She saw again the long, muscled legs in servant’s breeches: the servant at La Fenice who spilled wine onto Lurenze’s trousers…the servant with the mouth-watering physique.

This physique.

She remembered what he’d said a short while ago, before he’d taken her gown: I’m going to tell you, and you’re going to hate me.

“You,” she said. “That was you.”

He stilled, his playful expression fading, his eyes wary. “What was me?”

“You,” she said, searching for words, unable to find them among the images churning in her mind: the Campanile, the lovemaking, the seraglio, the lovemaking. “The servant. The Spaniard. You. Whoever you are.”