Your Scandalous Ways (Fallen Women 1)

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.

Chapter 4

’T is a sad thing, I cannot choose but say,

And all the fault of that indecent sun,

Who cannot leave alone our helpless clay,

But will keep baking, broiling, burning on,

That howsoever people fast and pray,

The flesh is frail, and so the soul undone:

What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,

Is much more common where the climate’s sultry.

Lord Byron

Don Juan, Canto the First

The following afternoon

Mr. Cordier’s treatise had been delivered while Francesca was still abed, though not asleep. She’d spent most of the night—or what was left of it—awake, wanting to kill him—which effectively took her mind off the men who’d tried to kill her.

She wrote one short note to the comte de Magny, briefly explaining what had happened and assuring him she was unharmed. After telling Arnaldo to have it delivered without loss of time, she took up the treatise.

At present, still in her dressing gown, reclining upon the chaise longue of her private parlor, she read:

In fact, the second husband of Lucrezia Borgia was strangled because he had, quite innocently, become a political liability to her brother Cesare Borgia. The murder took place in the couple’s apartments. Lucrezia did her utmost to save her twenty-year-old spouse, to no avail. Long afterwards, she remained inconsolable. Her father, sick of listening to her weeping, sent her out of Rome.

“So that was my problem,” Francesca muttered. “No brother.”

“Signora, here is Signorina Sab—”

“Oh, get out of the way,” Giulietta said, pushing past Arnaldo. She hurried to Francesca’s side, knelt on the footstool, and took her hand. “It is all over Venice,” she said. “Someone tried to kill you. It cannot be true.”

Francesca threw down the pamphlet. “That much is true. Whatever else you’ve heard is bound to be less than accurate.” In ruthless detail she described what had happened from the time the men had attacked to the moment Mr. Cordier had taken his leave.

Halfway through the recitation, Giulietta turned pale, but the story of Francesca’s futile attempts to seduce Mr. Cordier revived her.

“I have to kill him,” Francesca said. “It must be poison, though, because he’s too big to strangle.”

“Big and beautiful and he would not make love to you,” Giulietta said with a laugh. “Who can blame you for wishing to murder him?”

Francesca had described him in mouth-watering detail: the thick, curling, raven-black hair; the eyes so shockingly blue; the athletic physique, the potent aura of masculinity.

Her mouth still watered, though she of all people ought to know better. She waved her hand dismissively. “I’ll get over it. A temporary madness, perfectly understandable in the circumstances.”

“He is beautiful. He saves your life. You are shocked and frightened. It is natural to want a big, strong man in your bed to keep you safe.”

“And to help me forget,” Francesca said. “What better than a bout of lovemaking to shut out unpleasantness? If only he’d obliged, I might have had a proper night’s sleep.?

??

“I understand,” Giulietta said. “Everyone knows this happens. After a great danger, after a funeral, the lovemaking proves that we are alive. To me the puzzle is why he refuses. He desires men, do you think?”

“No.” Francesca glanced at the small table placed, as always, near at hand. Today it held the wine decanter on its silver tray, along with two wine glasses, for she’d known Giulietta would arrive earlier than usual. Rumor traveled at a stunning speed in Venice.

In her mind’s eye, Francesca saw Mr. Cordier’s long-fingered hand as he set down his drink on that table. Recalling the quick, cool work he’d made of her attacker, she’d felt a chill—of fear or of excitement, she wasn’t sure.

Then she’d felt his slight inclination in her direction, and the chill dissolved into a tingle of anticipation. But he’d straightened in the next instant, and withdrawn.

“Not that it matters,” she went on, “because he won’t get a second chance. A younger son, my dear? That would never do. He could never keep me in the style to which I’ve chosen to become accustomed, and I cannot lower my standards.”

One standard being that Lord Elphick must get a stomachache when he learned who the latest lover was, instead of smirking at what he’d perceive as her downfall, the downfall for which he waited so eagerly. He’d still be waiting, she was determined, when he breathed his last—and, she hoped, agonizingly painful—breath.

“I cast lures at Mr. Cordier only because I was overwrought.” She hesitated briefly before continuing, “I was grateful as well, naturally. Do you know, this was the first time in my life a man came to my rescue? Not one of the men I’d known during my Season or during my marriage made the smallest attempt to help me when my husband behaved so abominably. My father had already run away, leaving me to the wolves. Imagine the shock to my sensibilities, when a complete stranger risks his life on my account!”

Giulietta’s brow furrowed. She rose from the footstool and turned to the small table. She picked up the wine decanter and filled the two glasses. She gave one to Francesca, then took her own and lifted it. “You are alive,” she said. “For this I give your neighbor thanks.”