Your Scandalous Ways (Fallen Women 1)

Perhaps, after all, James thought, he should have followed his first instinct and bolted as soon as he heard the footsteps: military footsteps, a sound he’d recognize anywhere.

But he hadn’t known what they—whoever they were—wanted, and it was unchivalrous to leave Francesca in the lion’s den—though he would have abandoned her, he assured himself, if only she’d told him where the damned letters were.

That was all he wanted. The rest—jealousy and hurt feelings and betrayed trust—didn’t signify. This was work, and he knew better than to let feelings get tangled with work. Let her go to Magny if she wanted. She might go to the devil, for all James cared.

Meanwhile, the sooner he smoothed Goetz’s ruffled feathers, the sooner he could get back to work.

“I’m fairly familiar with this house,” James said. “Perhaps the search will go more quickly if I help you.”

Since Marta Fazi wasn’t in the middle of the melee at the Palazzo Neroni but watching from a small rowboat at a safe distance, it took her far less time than it did her hired ruffians to realize that Plan C wasn’t going well.

She did not wait about, hoping it would come out right. She might not be able to read as easily as some people but she had no trouble recognizing a fiasco when she saw one.

It was a good thing she had her hands occupied rowing, else some innocent bystander might have found out—in an acutely painful manner—exactly how disappointed she was.

However, this was Venice, and it was hard to do bodily injury to others while rowing a boat, trying to find one’s way in the middle of the night while keeping clear of the accursed gondolas that cluttered the waterways.

The best Marta could do was relieve her feelings aloud, in her own language, incomprehensible to those who might overhear her as she passed.

“This is what happens when you must work with incompetents,” she raged to the world at large. “It’s all well for him, in London, with all his lackeys, to say ‘Oh, Marta, my dear, will you get me some letters, if you please.’ Why did he let the great whore take those letters in the first place? Why did he not beat her and make her give them back? Why does he write to her still? Why does he care anything about her? She is too tall. Why does he not buy me a red dress? When was the last time he sent me jewelry? If I want it, I must steal it for myself. Not her. The stupid men give it to her, only because she goes on her back and gives them what most women would give them for free. I hate her and her stupid letters. She thinks she is so clever and every man will do her bidding, the fine lady. Only let me get my hands on her, once, and we’ll see. We’ll see who is beautiful and who is clever. Oh, yes, let me get my hands on her, only once. Then I will know what to do.”

Yes, indeed, Marta knew what to do with the so-clever English whore. The only question was, how to get her hands on her.

Goetz was thorough. His men began on the roof and worked their way down. Though James helped, he’d not much hope of finding the letters. Francesca would not have appeared so unconcerned at the prospect of a search had she hidden them in the palazzo. Whatever else had troubled her each time she or her house had been attacked, she’d not seemed in any anxiety about the letters.

What in blazes had she done with them?

And blazes was not the cheeriest turn of speech. Was it possible she’d burned them?

But no, she couldn’t be so stupid. Whatever else she was, Francesca Bonnard was not stupid.

Difficult, temperamental, cynical, obstinate, reckless, and very, very naughty, yes. If she had not been all these things and more—intelligent and witty and so fiercely, passionately, alive…and expensive, mustn’t forget that—deuced expensive—if she had not been all these things, James would have solved the problem in three days at most.

But she was all those things, and the letters were nowhere in the Palazzo Neroni. He’d stake his life on that. He’d even climbed a ladder and searched the numerous chinks and crooks and crevices of the plaster children and draperies. He’d checked the frames of paintings as well, for hollow places. He told Goetz he was looking for wires or springs for traps.

Late in the day, having found neither insurrectionists nor murderous devices, James went on with the governor to the Ducal Palace and a lengthy interrogation.

He managed to pacify Goetz by claiming to have heard rumors that one Marta Fazi, a criminal known in the south and in the Papal States, was at large in Venice. Very likely she’d made Mrs. Bonnard her target, James said, because the English lady was (a) a woman and thus vulnerable and (b) the owner of a fine collection of jewelry.

“Fazi is a thief,” James told the governor. “A violent one, like so many in the lawless parts of Italy. No finesse. They make a lot of noise and kill people needlessly. They’re vengeful. It would seem this Fazi woman has tried and failed several times. The angrier she gets, the more determined, violent, and reckless.”

“The Papal States are a disgrace,” Goetz said. “Two hundred murders in the last year alone. But here we have the rule of law. We will find this woman, and the rest of the criminals will learn to stay in their own disorderly countries.”

Good luck, James thought.

Having returned to the Ca’ Munetti shortly before midnight, James slept well into the following day.

Sleeping—no matter what the circumstances—was a skill he’d learned long ago. In the Abbaye prison, their tormentors had, among other amusements, kept him and his fellows awake for days on end, until they were hallucinating. James had taught himself to sleep with his eyes open. He could make himself sleep anywhere, any time, and wake up quickly.

He was deeply angry, deeply unhappy—and that was about as far as he cared to examine the turmoil within—yet he slept.

When he woke, matters did not appear much brighter.

He was having a late breakfast when the message arrived.

It was not from Francesca.

It was on expensively masculine paper, written in the clear, formal hand of a secretary, and worded in the formal style of, say, a royal proclamation.

In sum, he was invited to tea with the comte de Magny.

James sent an equally formal acceptance, then summoned Sedgewick and spent the intervening hours fretting about what to wear.

Francesca had had to send back to the Palazzo Neroni for clothes. Resisting the temptation to fuss, she simply told Thérèse who was coming to tea, and let the maid decide.

The result? Ruffles, wave upon wave of them. White ruffles, no less.

They began at the base of her throat, fluttering about a modestly high neckline. They quivered in a line down the front of her gown and shivered along the hem. Her arms were encased in a series of puffs, trimmed in silk ribbons and ending in, yes, ruffles. The first time she’d looked in the glass, she’d put herself

in mind of those great cakes she’d once served at parties in London.

At one moment, she believed she looked equally delicious—and Cordier must eat his heart out. At another, she feared she looked ridiculous, too girlish—and he’d die laughing.

So long as he died, she could have no complaints. This is what she tried to tell herself as Cordier entered the room, and her imbecile heart fluttered like the ruffles.

He was impeccably dressed in a tailcoat of the finest wool, in a shade that most unfairly emphasized the deep blue of his eyes and contrasted splendidly with the pale yellow waistcoat. His trousers fit like another skin over his muscled thighs. His snow-white neckcloth was simply, perfectly tied, every crease exactly where it ought to be. An onyx gleamed darkly in its folds.

But her mind turned cruel and offered an image of him naked, and of the pair of them entwined among the rugs and exotic trappings of his pretend seraglio, making love, impatiently and passionately at first, and later, so tenderly.

But it had not been lovemaking to him, she reminded herself, merely copulation and a means to an end.

The reminder helped her arrange a cool expression upon her face and a frigid little smile. It helped her pretend she felt no more about this meeting than Magny did: It was a business negotiation, he told her, and she, after all, was a businesswoman.

Thus the greetings were polite, the gentlemen’s bows and her curtsy precisely what was required. Cordier and Magny were resolved to behave as men of the world and she, a woman of the world, could act with the best of them.

That’s all you do, Cordier had said. Pretend and play games and lie…you’d say acting is what your profession requires. It’s the same for me.

She felt a twinge. Well, perhaps he wasn’t entirely wrong about that. Even so…

Oh, what was the use? What stuck in her mind was herself, in nothing but a shift, jumping into the canal to save him, like the greatest romantic ninny who ever lived.