Your Scandalous Ways (Fallen Women 1)

“These are not the letters,” she said.

The two young men looked at each other then at her.

“I showed them to you,” said the smaller one. “You said, ‘Yes, let’s go.’ You made us hurry away. You gave us no time even to pick up some of the jewelry.”

“I told you it wasn’t real!” she lied. “You want to make the English whore laugh at how stupid you are? You think she keeps her fine jewelry in her house, in a drawer where anyone can get it?”

Even Marta, who’d been told of the jewelry, hadn’t believed her eyes at first. But the Englishwoman was a rich whore with many servants. Those arrogant ladies never dreamed anyone would steal from them. They were always so shocked and outraged when it happened.

Though the messenger had hinted that she could help herself, Marta knew better. When one stole from the rich, the laziest authorities became brutally efficient—and the Austrians were not lazy. They’d caught Piero in no time. Of course, he was an idiot. Even so, it was clear that the great English whore was no mere puttana in the eyes of the Venetian governor. Had Marta and this pair made off with all the jewelry they’d found, they’d be swiftly hunted down…and if they were captured, the precious letters would fall into the wrong hands.

She’d taken a risk, she knew, to steal the emeralds. But that was only one set, among so many riches…and it was fine, as the messenger had promised. Fit for a queen.

All this was far too complicated to explain to this pair of fools. They didn’t know she’d taken any jewelry. At the moment, however, she was not worried about being hunted down for one measly set of emeralds.

She was far more disturbed about the letters.

“These are in his hand,” she said, half to herself. “But the dates are only this year and last year. The ones they want are old. And where are the names they told me to look for? Nowhere do I see them. But why does he write to her, still, the woman he hates?”

She might as well have asked the two to explain the Pythagorean theorem. They were little more than boys, because a person sporting half a day’s growth of black beard does not make a believable nun. They only lifted their shoulders in the universal gesture of “I dunno.”

Marta folded the letters, tied them with a piece of string, and set them down on the table. “He will explain this,” she said. “And it will be a good explanation or he will be very sorry.” She looked at the boys. “These are not the letters we want. I am finished playing games with the fine lady, the English whore. Enough.”

“It’s done then?” said the smaller one.

“Done? Did the Sicilian sun cook your brain? How can it be done when I have the wrong letters?”

“But you said ‘enough.’”

“Enough with creeping about,” she said. “Enough with looking here, there, everywhere. The next time we do it properly.” The way Bruno and Piero were supposed to do it, the imbeciles. “The next time we make her tell us.”

She took out her knife and held it up to the light. She smiled.

The monastery of San Lazzaro degli Armeni stood amid groves of cypress and fine gardens on a small island off the Lido. Early in the previous century, the former hospital island for lepers was given to an Armenian monk from Morea who’d been forced to flee invading Turks. Here, a few years ago, Byron had struggled to learn Armenian. He’d never succeeded, most likely because of all the women distracting him.

James had only one distraction in female form. The trouble was, she was more disruptive to his reason than the scores in Byron’s harem.

Putting her out of his thoughts was out of the question, since she was the subject of the present conversation.

James was strolling—or giving the appearance of strolling while inwardly roiling with impatience—through the cloisters with Lord Quentin. This was the man who, half a lifetime ago, had saved him from a life of unsanctioned crime and lured him into a life of sanctioned crime.

Ten years older than James, his lordship had embarked on the life of secrets and conspiracies at an early age as well. In fact, in many ways he was better suited to the trade, being of average height and unexceptional looks and having a way, as Sedgewick did, of calling no attention to himself. Men like Sedgewick and Quentin rarely needed a disguise. People took little notice of them.

“If Mrs. Bonnard hears that you’re here and I’ve been talking to you, I might as well go home,” James said.

“I know the risk,” Quentin said. “But I needed to speak to you directly. I heard about the attack the other night.”

“That came as a surprise,” James said. “No one told me she was in danger.”

“We’d no idea Elphick would act so quickly.”

“He was bound to hear of your visiting her,” James said. “He has agents here. Not that he needs any. She probably wrote to him about it.” If Elphick was writing to her, she must be writing to him.

“They correspond, yes, but unless they’ve a secret code, it’s utterly trivial: who was at which party and what they said. There’s far juicier stuff in the scandal sheets.” Quentin shook his head. “It’s more likely he got the wind up as soon as he learned I’d come to Italy. But I’d expected to be here and back by the time he got word. Who could have guessed she’d be so irrational about the letters we wanted, given what he did to her? I was certain she’d jump at the chance to ruin him. If I hadn’t been certain, I should never have approached her directly.”

That completely settled one question, then: The not-love letters from Elphick that Thérèse had reported missing weren’t important—to the mission, at any rate. Bonnard hadn’t been feigning indifference about their whereabouts. She truly hadn’t cared.

“In any event,” Quentin went on, “you don’t seem to be making great progress. What the devil have you been doing for this last week—besides nearly killing a potential informant?”

“Piero is still alive, so far as I know,” James began.

“I referred to the other one,” Quentin said. “We found him yesterday, and we had the devil’s own time getting him away without attracting attention.”

“Bruno? He’s alive?”

“Small thanks to you. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking to stop him from killing Mrs. Bonnard,” James said.

“And you nearly stopped him permanently from answering questions,” Quentin said. “Has that troublesome woman got her hooks into you, too?”

Yes, James thought. Yes, indeed, she has.

He said, “I was on the brink of getting the information we’re looking for when you summoned me here. Was it only to complain about how long it’s taking me?”

Quentin glanced casually about him. The cloisters surrounded a large garden. Two monks walked slowly through the shaded passage on the other side of the garden, well out of earshot. “Our friend Bruno’s too sick to be of much use,” he said. “Pneumonia, damaged windpipe, dislocated shoulder, among other things. The only bit of luck we had was his fever. He had a bout of delirium. Along with the other ravings, he babbled something about letters and mentioned Marta Fazi several times.”

James’s last, very feeble hope—that he’d got it completely wrong—died a quick death. He’d got it right, and the situation, as he’d deduced, was very bad, very tangled, and about to become a great deal worse.

What else was new?

“Oh, there’s a bit of luck, indeed,” he said. “Dear Marta. I remember her well. The darling lass who promised to cut off my balls in little bits, slowly, first chance she got. The one who, last I heard, was locked away in the deepest, darkest dungeon in Rome. The one who apparently wasn’t locked up anywhere, since she was in Venice last night, ransacking the Palazzo Neroni.”

He didn’t want to imagine what Marta would have done had Francesca Bonnard been home at the time. His mind imagined anyway, and he felt sick.

“That’s not good.” Quentin paused and shook his head. He moved to a stone bench and sat down, looking weary.

James sat down be

side him, weary, too. He was angry, yes, but then he was often angry. Plans fell apart. Villains slipped through their nets. Documents ended up in the wrong hands. And comrades were killed, too often in appalling ways. Such was the nature of the work. He’d learned that early on. One dealt with human beings. All were fallible. Not all were trustworthy.

“You’re sure it was Fazi?” Quentin said.

“They were dressed as bloody nuns! They got into the house and drugged the food. It was exactly the same method she used in the other thefts. They took a lot of letters—the wrong ones—and emeralds. No other jewels. Only emeralds. Who else could it be?”

“So Elphick’s set her on his former missus,” Quentin said. “Bastard.”

“How the devil did he come to hire Fazi?”