Your Scandalous Ways (Fallen Women 1)

“How was I to know Quentin could be trusted?” she said. “Have you any inkling how many men have lied to me? Have you any idea how many of the people I trusted turned on me? Have you any notion what it’s like, to have everyone you ever knew, every single one, turn against you—on one man’s word? How was I to know Quentin wasn’t another one of the ones on Elphick’s side? They all were. Every last damned one of them. Even my lawyers despised me.”

“Quentin and I are not on Elphick’s side,” he said. “Ten years ago, your former husband betrayed me and five comrades to agents of Napoleon. We ended up in the Abbaye. We were tortured. For weeks.”

She shut her eyes briefly. She’d heard about the prisons in Paris. The Abbaye was infamous. Fanchon Noirot had told her of friends who’d gone there. The few who emerged went on to Madame Guillotine. She opened her eyes and found his blue gaze boring into her.

“‘And they are dead,’” he quoted from the Book of Job, “‘and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.’ But why should you believe me?”

Why, indeed? All the same, she was finding it hard not to believe. His taut expression told her he’d watched or heard his comrades die—ugly deaths, she was sure. Too, she knew what Elphick was capable of—or thought she knew. Until this moment she hadn’t fully grasped the implications.

She should have realized: Elphick had no conscience, no loyalty, no feeling at all. He was a monster. What he’d done to her was nothing to what he’d done to others.

She’d focused on herself and the misery she’d endured. She’d been so young, so naïve. His collusion with England’s enemies—its consequences and the people who’d suffered—those were abstractions to her. Cordier had made them real. Human beings. Young men. His comrades. Himself. Tortured.

Perhaps it was all lies, but she felt sick.

She turned away and walked to the window. Across the way, the windows of the Ca’ Munetti were lit. Elsewhere all was dark. The moon must have gone behind clouds or set. How fitting, the darkness. She’d thought she’d understood but she’d been stumbling in the dark.

“You’re going to have to trust someone,” he said. “It must be me or them.”

“Must it?” she said. “How am I to know you’re not part of it? How am I to know this isn’t a great show, to make you seem a hero, so that I’ll trust you?”

“What am I to say?” he said. “How do I make you believe me? Why don’t I simply choke it out of you and have done with it?”

He paused, apparently to grapple with his temper, because he went on in a level voice, “Those two men who attacked you last week? The nuns from Cyprus who searched your house? The fellows who attacked your gondola tonight, thinking you were in it? Their chief is a woman named Marta Fazi. She’s about your age, but I don’t think you’ll find her simpatica. When she was eight years old, she cut off the ear of a girl who insulted her. If those charming fellows tonight had captured you, they would have taken you to Marta. She would have persuaded you to tell her where the letters were. She would persuade you by cutting up your face. She likes to do that to beautiful women. If she’s in a kind mood. In her less kind moods, the method of persuasion would be more unpleasant.”

Francesca’s ears were ringing. She felt herself swaying. He moved toward her, his hand outstretched. She pushed him away, staggered to a chair, and sat down hard.

“We’re trying to find her,” he said. “Quentin’s even asked Goetz to help—though the governor doesn’t know the half of it and is not to know. Until she’s caught—or until you give us the letters—you’re not safe.”

She laughed. Not a pretty sound, this one, but bitter, edged with hysteria. “All that time, no one believed me,” she said. “When Elphick discovered I’d taken the letters from his desk, he wasn’t concerned. He’d already ruined me. In putting me beyond the pale, he made it impossible for me to hurt him. And for all the time I couldn’t hurt him, I was safe. He let me run away abroad the way duelists and debtors and other undesirables and minor criminals do. He didn’t pursue me here. I would have stayed safe, would I not? had I only sunk into the gutter as he hoped. But no, I had to have nobles and royals at my feet. Now I matter. Now I have important friends. Now I’m worth killing.”

And now she was cold. She shivered. She heard Cordier move. She was aware, through her misery and the ringing in her ears, of the clink of glass. He pushed something into her hand. A glass of brandy. “I wonder if it’s poisoned,” she said, and drank it down, all of it. It was liquid fire in her throat but it made the noise in her head subside.

“It’s not poisoned,” he said. “This is not an opera, and I am not the villain of the piece. Would you please be sensible, Francesca, and tell me where the letters are?”

She looked up into his handsome face, into those midnight blue eyes. She supposed, fool that she was, that if she had it to do over again, she’d jump into the canal again, for him. To save him. Her gaze rose past him up the walls and on up to the ceiling. Those provoking children. “It’s complicated,” she said.

“No, it isn’t,” he said. “It’s very simple. You tell me where…”

She waited for him to finish. It took her a moment to realize what had made him break off. His hearing was so sharp, far sharper than hers. Only now did she recognize the sounds coming from the portego. Footsteps—booted footsteps. Official-sounding footsteps. Several pairs of them.

The door opened. No knock. No waiting for her “Avanti.”

But it was Arnaldo who, as usual, had found her unerringly. He must be part bloodhound. He always knew exactly what room she was in. “His excellency the governor Count Goetz,” he announced.

The Austrian governor followed close behind. After the first startled glance, he took care not to look at her.

“I beg your pardon, madame, for this sudden arrival, but you can guess the cause.”

“Our little disturbance,” she said.

“Not so little as one could wish,” he said. “I must speak to Mr. Cordier.”

“I thought you might,” Cordier said, all at ease again, his usual self—whoever that was. “I’m sure Mrs. Bonnard will excuse us. She will want to—er—dress, at any rate.”

“Madame has had a great shock,” said Goetz. “As we have all had a great shock. We will not inconvenience her. You and I shall talk, sir, at the Ducal Palace. In the meantime, as soon as madame can be made ready, I must insist upon her vacating this house.”

“Certainly not,” said Francesca.

“I must insist,” said the count. “The house must be thoroughly searched. It is possible that men or deadly devices have been hidden here. You will be safer elsewhere, with a friend. I shall send an armed escort with you.”

He was the governor of Venice. When the governor insisted, one obeyed. The Austro-Hungarian regime exercised a degree of tolerance for Venice’s peculiarities and foibles but they’d no tolerance whatsoever for anything hinting at disregard of authority. To the Austrians, disrespect for authority was the first sign of insurrection—and that would be firmly—brutally, if necessary—nipped in the bud.

It was the wisest course, perhaps, after all, Francesca told herself. She did not feel safe in this house at present. She did not know whom to trust. She wasn’t sure what to expect or what to do. In any case, whatever else Goetz’s men found when they searched, she was confident they wouldn’t find the letters.

Not that the Austrians would have any idea what to make of them if they did find them.

“As you wish, Count Goetz,” she said.

He nodded stiffly, still careful not to look at her. “You will wish to go to your friend, I believe.”

“No,” she said. “She’ll be…occupied.” She couldn’t help smiling, thinking of Giulietta and her prince. If only Francesca could have taken a fancy to Lurenze instead. How uncomplicated her life would be.

“I shall go to Magny,” she said. “I know I’ll be welcome there, no matter what time I arrive.”

She left the room,

aware of Cordier scowling after her.

James did not feel nearly as cooperative as he pretended to be. He was greatly disinclined to go quietly to the Ducal Palace. For one thing, he was not at all sure he wouldn’t end up in the pozzi. This would be exceedingly inconvenient, since it might take hours—perhaps as much as a day or more—for Quentin to arrange to have him released.

Prison, James knew from experience, was not necessarily bad. Except for the time in the Abbaye, he’d found it…peaceful. While uncomfortable, depending on the surroundings, it did offer a time to gather one’s wits and think, without distractions. He had a great deal of thinking to do.

At present, however, he hadn’t time to indulge himself in the cool, dark, damp, solitude of a dungeon.

Goetz certainly had reason to lock him up. The governor was not a fool, and James could guess what was going through his mind.

I had a good life, a beautiful, peaceful life—until you came to Venice, Bonnard had told him.

Goetz would be thinking along the same lines: Venice had been quite peaceful until James Cordier arrived.

There was going to be an interrogation, beyond question, and that would be tiresome. Another great waste of valuable time.