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I’m better than any of the others. I’m the one who’ll make you surrender, completely.
He slid his fingers through the soft curls and cupped her. He let his fingers stroke, gently and lightly at first while he listened to her sighs. As she moved more urgently against his hand, he responded, giving her more, but little by little. He wanted to be done. He wanted to make her his completely. But he wanted, even more, her surrender, and so he made himself take his time pleasuring her.
Her head drooped against his chest. His heart pounded so hard it must deafen her. But her heart must be pounding, too, because her breathing came faster and faster. Her body shook, and she gave a little cry.
Then at last she sank against him, shaking.
He drew his hand away and wrapped his arms tightly about her, crushing her to him.
He lifted her up, to carry her to the rumpled bed.
Then he set her on her feet again.
From somewhere in the distance came sounds: voices, the click of heels on the terrazzo floor.
He heard the sounds without fully realizing and he reacted without thinking, training and experience coming to the fore. He’d learned to detect a footfall from several rooms away, through closed doors, upon carpets. He had the senses of a cat, some of his colleagues said.
If he was a cat, he’d been doing a fine imitation of a blind, deaf, and lame one.
He put her away from him, aware of her eyes and the flash of emotion in them. Anger? Hurt?
It lasted but an instant, until she noticed the sounds, too. Her gaze shot to the door.
The voices coming from the portego became plainly audible.
A female servant was saying, “But of course, monsieur le comte, I will remind the mistress that you are waiting.”
“I’ll remind her myself,” said monsieur.
Francesca wasn’t ready.
She was shattered, lost.
She didn’t understand.
She understood pleasure. She’d studied how to give and receive it.
She’d learned, as well, to keep the upper hand, never to yield altogether.
She’d surrendered completely to him after a laughably short struggle. He’d touched her, kissed her, and her strength, her hard-won strength, seeped away.
Heart beating too fast, much too fast, she looked about her and tried to think.
She was aware of his bending down and picking up something. She made herself focus. Her dressing gown. Yes. She must…cover up.
He tossed it to her. She hastily thrust her arms through the sleeves while he returned to the window and clasped his hands behind his back.
The door opened.
The maid came in, the older man close behind her.
Francesca had to struggle before she could find the casual words she needed: “There you are, Thérèse.” Her voice sounded strange, not her own. Too high-pitched. She took a quick breath and went on, “What was I thinking of, not to send for you? It is not as though I can dress myself. But having all these gentlemen stomping about the place is so distracting.”
Magny’s brow furrowed.
“Well, then, I shall take my leave,” Cordier said.
“You found your notebook, I trust,” said the count.
Cordier patted his breast pocket. “Yes, I did, at last.” He looked at Francesca. “What a strange place for it to end up in, eh, cara?”
Cara. What a joke. She wasn’t dear to him at all, merely a conquest. An easy one, more shame to her.
Beast.
He took a polite leave of Magny and an impolite one of her, catching up her hand and planting a wet kiss between the rings on her middle and third fingers.
She wanted to weep.
She wanted to kill him, to hurl a dagger into his back as he walked away, through the door.
She listened to his footsteps fade away.
Monsieur gave her one of his looks, then stalked to the window. He clasped his hands behind his back, exactly the way Cordier had done.
Trying to block out from her mind all else Cordier had done, Francesca walked past the count into the dressing room.
Thérèse followed, leaving the door open. She’d been with Francesca since the early days in Paris. Being French and eminently practical, the haughty maid was not in the least troubled by her mistress’s morals or lack thereof. To Thérèse, what mattered were Francesca’s hordes of admirers, her wealth, and her jewels. Not another lady on the Continent, save a few royals, could match the mistress in this regard. Furthermore, one of madame’s grandmothers had been a French aristocrat.
All these factors made Thérèse fiercely protective of her position. No bribe was great enough, no one important enough to pry from her a syllable of her mistress’s secrets. None of madame’s suitors received special treatment, no matter who they were. Madame ruled. Thus Thérèse would not close a door when a man was present or make herself scarce unless told to do so. And, most conveniently for Francesca and her guests, the maid condescended to understand and speak only as much English as she deemed absolutely necessary to performing her duties. She was equally scornful of Italian.
Magny took no more heed of Thérèse than she did of him. All the same, he spoke in English. “You should not have left Mira. I told you this was an unhealthy time to come to Venice.”
“You should not have come,” Francesca said, watching Thérèse fill a wash basin. She wished it were possible to scrub Cordier’s touch away. She wished she could cleanse herself of the weakness he’d somehow uncovered.
“That was the whole point of my note,” she went on. “It was supposed to reassure you. I knew you’d hear stories—and of course they’d be horribly exaggerated. I was sure you’d hear I’d been murdered. I know what gossip is like, especially in country villages.”
“Speaking of gossip,” he said.
“Gad, I knew this was coming,” she muttered.
“I hear stories,” he said, “of you and Lurenze. But when I arrive, I find an Englishman. Do you know who his father is?”
“I never met Lord Westwood,” she said. “Elphick and he did not travel in the same circles—though I don’t doubt that my former husband tried as hard as he could to worm his way into those exalted circles.”
“Westwood is a great hero, especially to the French aristocracy. One cannot count the number of hea
ds he and his lady saved from Madame Guillotine, at great personal risk.”
The image jumped into Francesca’s mind, as it had done time and again: Cordier lunging into the felze and wrapping his arm around the villain’s throat…the brute struggling helplessly, futilely…then going limp.
“Taking risks runs in the family, then,” she said. “Apparently Cordier jumped from one of his balconies into the canal to save me. Still, I should distinguish between physical daring—or recklessness is probably more like it—and heroism. He’s a black sheep. He told me so himself.”
She heard a long, loud sigh. She glanced toward the doorway but Magny was not there. No doubt he still stood at the window, looking—or glaring—out.
“I won’t ask what goes on between you,” he said.
“What else?” she said easily. “Games.”
She could not have guessed how dangerously sweet a game Cordier could make it. She could not have guessed how the light caress of his lips upon her skin could touch something hidden deep within her, a part of her being she’d buried long ago. It was as though he’d reached straight down into her soul and turned her inside out.
He’d remembered everything she’d done last night when she’d tried to seduce him. Everywhere her fingers had gone, his mouth had gone. He’d done what she’d silently invited him to do, but what he’d done to her was not what she’d bargained for.
He’d touched her and kissed her exactly as she’d instructed. And he’d made a shivering wreck of her—she, who was an expert at the give and take of dalliance. But his mouth took possession of her so easily. His touch simply stripped her, leaving her naked and blind with longing. He’d pleasured her—and she liked to be pleasured—but this was not the same. He’d cracked something inside her and she’d come within an eyeblink of weeping. She didn’t understand and wasn’t sure she wanted to understand.
Why the devil hadn’t he been quicker? Why hadn’t he thrown her on the bed and had his way with her…and let her have her way with him, let her simply enjoy his big, strong body?
Beast.
“I do not wish to know,” Magny said. “I find it is better not to know. But if you own a particle of common sense, child, you’ll send this one about his business. I survived my trials and lived this long because my judgment of men is keener than most. This one, I promise you, ma cherie, is trouble.”
