Your Scandalous Ways (Fallen Women 1)

Piero did not respond, but his posture stiffened.

“I know Marta Fazi wants these papers,” James said. “I can sell them to her or I can sell them to the other side.”

“It’s nothing to me,” said Piero.

“I think it is,” James said. “If I can’t find her, I will sell them to someone else. When she learns you had a chance to help her get these papers and you did nothing…”

Piero shifted uncomfortably.

“If she learns you failed her, she will not be pleased with you,” James said.

Still no response.

“I’m not sure you’ll be safe from her, even here.”

No answer, but something changed. The man’s fear was palpable. James pressed his point. “Ah, well. You say you know nothing. Perhaps you don’t know her, as you say. In that case, it’s unfair to keep you here. I had better arrange for your release.”

He heard Lurenze’s gasp and glanced that way, as Piero did. But the prince, to his credit, said nothing. Or maybe he dared not open his mouth for fear of vomiting.

Piero’s gaze came back to James. The sullen expression was gone, and the fear was plain on his grimy face. “They won’t let me out,” he said.

“Of course they will,” James said cheerfully. “Don’t you fret about it. I’ll simply tell them that, when I looked at you again, more closely, I realized I made a mistake, and you are not the man who attacked the English lady.”

“I tell you nothing. I know nothing.”

He was afraid of Marta, clearly. Still too afraid of her to tell what he knew.

“This is annoying,” James said. “I am tired of this stinking hole and tired of you. I have tried to be reasonable but you won’t be reasonable. So this is what I’ll do. I shall spread a rumor that you’ve betrayed Marta Fazi, and as a reward for betraying her, you are to be released.” He looked once more at Lurenze. It was hard to be sure in the dim light, but he seemed to be turning green.

“Your excellency,” James said. “Would you be willing to use your influence to arrange this man’s release?”

“Assuredly,” the prince said, gagging on the syllables.

“I say nothing,” Piero said doggedly. “I know nothing.” But his voice was less sullen now, the pitch a degree higher.

“Rumors travel so quickly in Venice,” James went on. “If Marta Fazi is here, she’ll hear the news by this time tomorrow if not before then. I should be able to have you released in two or three days’ time. Maybe you’ll be able to get away before she finds you. Or maybe she’ll be waiting for you when you come out of this place. Or maybe some friendly men will offer to take you for a drink. Or maybe they will not be friendly. Maybe they will take you somewhere, and not for a drink, eh, my friend?”

“You are the devil,” Piero said. “But the name you say—she is a devil, too.”

“I only want you to take a message to her.”

A silence while Piero considered. “This, maybe I will do,” he said. “But send that one away before he pukes on me.”

Chapter 16

But who, alas! can love, and then be wise?

Lord Byron

Don Juan, Canto the First

In response to James’s message—not long after his interview with Piero—Mrs. Bonnard agreed to meet with him the following morning, Friday, at ten o’clock.

The first thing he noticed as he entered the putti-infested drawing room was her pallor. She did not look as though she’d had enough sleep. Or perhaps it was the frock that made her seem so pale. It was high-necked and plain white, adorned with only a bit of pale green embroidery. She wore no jewelry. She had some sort of scarf arrangement wrapped about her head. Other women wore caps with morning dress but Francesca Bonnard in a cap—however lacy and beribboned—was out of the question.

Still, the frock seemed out of the question, too. It might have belonged to an innocent schoolgirl. Certainly it offered a striking contrast to the woman wearing it: the exotic eyes, the mouth promising sin, and the sinfully voluptuous figure. The effect was startling…and enticing as well.

“I thought you didn’t rise before noon,” James said, not bothering with polite greetings.

“I don’t,” she said. “But I am frantic to get this over with.”

“My dear girl.” He crossed the room to her and took her hands in his. “I’m a beast. I should have sent word yesterday and at least let you know what I was about. But I’m not accustomed to—to—”

“To accounting to a woman for your whereabouts?” She smiled, and there seemed to be genuine amusement in it. Perhaps he was on his way to forgiveness?

“Not since mama demanded to know what I’d been up to,” he said.

“When you were eight?”

“Eighteen,” he said. “Twenty-eight. Whenever she sees me, she expects a complete accounting.”

She cocked her head to one side, studying his face. “I daresay she gets it.”

“I’m afraid of my mother,” he said. “As a fellow ought to be.”

“Horrid man,” she said. “You are determined to charm me, even when I can scarcely keep my eyes open and I’m cross at having to keep them open. What an inhuman hour to be up and about!”

“We could go back to bed,” he said.

“Dream on,” she said. “You’ll want a great deal more than charm to accomplish that.” She slid her hands from his and moved away. It was only then, watching her walk away, that he finally noticed the oddity in the room.

It was not as though it was hard to miss: a tall ladder in one of the corners on the side opposite the windows. He’d missed it because he’d come in looking for her and all he’d seen was her.

Now he watched her take up a narrow object from the console table near the ladder. James joined her. And stared at the thing in her hand. “A paper knife?”

“You have correctly identified it,” she said.

He looked at the knife, then at the ladder, then up, at the putti-encrusted ceiling. Then his gaze came back to her amused green one.

“I looked there,” he said. “I thought the children were hiding them. And it was no small chore, looking. There are so many plaster figures, not only here, b

ut throughout the house. I thought you might have put the letters between the legs of one of the buxom ladies holding up the plaster draperies in the corners. That would be your idea of a good joke. But I couldn’t find them there or anywhere else.”

“I know,” she said. “I knew you’d look. And I knew you wouldn’t find them. But you’re not far wrong. Here, hold the ladder for me.”

“Hold the ladder? Are you mad? You’re not going up there.”

She turned fully toward him and regarded him with the level look a woman tended to employ instead of punching a man in the head as he richly deserved.

“Once, only once,” she said with exaggerated patience, “I should like to do something without having to argue with you about it.”

“You do exactly as you please all the time,” he said. “You do it before anyone has a chance to argue with you. Jumping into canals, for instance.”

“I am not going to jump off the ladder,” she said. “The only way that would be fun would be if I fell on you and broke your thick head, and I suspect it’s too thick to break. Are you going to hold the ladder for me or not?”

“Who held it for you originally?”

“Nobody. The last thing I wanted was witnesses. I did it one night while most of the servants were away at one of the festivals. I dragged a few of the heavier tables over here to support the ladder. I should have done that today but I thought you’d want to look up under my dress.”

The ceilings were high, the ladder alarmingly tall. Still, she was stubborn and he was a man. “Well, if you put it that way…”

James manfully resisted the urge to lick her beautiful ankles as they passed his line of vision, and settled for looking. He admired as much of her calves as he could—not nearly enough, for the dress and petticoat clung to her legs in the most provoking manner.

But she was soon at her work, and then he became engrossed in watching her insert the knife into a seam of plaster. As she’d said, he had judged her well—her sense of humor, certainly. She hadn’t hidden the parcel between the legs of the buxom lady in the corner but nearby, where a little boy’s legs and bottom stuck out from under the plaster draperies.