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“Very well. But in Italy, respectable matrons might have two lovers and perhaps an aberration or two.”
“I’m not Italian,” she said. “I’m English, and a divorcée.”
“When in Rome,” he said, “it’s best to do as the Romans do. In Rome—in Italy—in nearly every nation of the Continent, you are a pitiful excuse for a whore.”
“Don’t be absurd,” she said. “I’m a magnificent whore. I have the jewels to prove it.”
“A magnificent businesswoman, certainly,” he said.
“I learned from the best,” she said. “In Paris. Fanchon Noirot.”
He gave a soft whistle. “I’ve heard of her. She must be sixty.”
“Sixty-five—and living a luxurious retirement with a devoted lover. That is one harlot who did not end up in the gutter.”
He paused. “By gad, Bonnard, you went about this methodically, I see.”
“You may read all about it in my memoirs,” she said. “I plan to write them when I’m forty: before all the main characters are dead and while they’re not too old to be embarrassed—or amused, as the case may be.”
“Will I be in them?”
“Probably not,” she said. “I plan to forget you by tomorrow.”
“In that case, I’d better make the most of today,” he said. He squeezed her hand, and continued up the winding ramp.
Chapter 9
The moment night with dusky mantle covers
The skies (and the more duskily the better),
The time less liked by husbands than by lovers
Begins, and prudery flings aside her fetter;
And gaiety on restless tiptoe hovers,
Giggling with all the gallants who beset her.
Lord Byron, Beppo
He was like a cat, Francesca thought. Though they made their way through a nigh-impenetrable gloom, Cordier never hesitated, never stumbled.
There was not a clumsy bone in that body…
Something flickered in the back of her mind, but it was as fleeting as the light of a firefly.
It left her uneasy, though, and as they neared the belfry, she became conscious, at last and far too late, of being utterly alone with a man she didn’t really know. She remembered, at last and far too late, that a man had tried to kill her a few days earlier…and another man, with a legitimate title and connections to the British government, had had her house searched some weeks ago. She remembered, at last and far too late, how shockingly strong this man was. He might easily pick her up and toss her through one of the arches onto the stones below.
Her heart thudded. She told it not to be ridiculous. She was letting Magny’s fussings and alarms prey on her mind.
“Why?” she said. “Why did you take it into your head to ascend the Campanile in the dead of night?”
“I had a fancy to see Venice by starlight, with a beautiful woman at my side,” he said.
“There were beautiful women among the Countess Benzoni’s coterie,” she said. “Giulietta is beautiful. You could have been quicker off the mark and chased after her.”
He sighed. “I know. The trouble is, you’re the only one I can see—and for some mad reason, you’re the only one I want to climb to the top of this bell tower with. Strange, isn’t it?”
“Not at all strange,” she said. “You’re infatuated with me. It happens all the time.”
He laughed—and tripped, tumbling forward. She shrieked, and tried to yank back on the hand gripping hers, before he could pull her down with him. But he easily and quickly righted them both, and told her to hush.
“I forgot,” he said. “There’s a stairway here.”
The noise they’d made alerted the watchman. The small, dark figure, carrying a lantern, bustled out from wherever he’d been keeping himself and demanded to know who was there.
Cordier had no more trouble with him than he’d had with the guard at the bottom. He talked, the man answered, and so it went, back and forth in the friendliest way. He showed the ticket the guard below had given him, and dropped a coin into his newfound friend’s hand. Chatting amiably, the watchman led them up another set of stairs, opened the door to the upper gallery for them, then went back to his interrupted nap.
“I’m not infatuated,” Cordier said as he led her to the edge of the stone balcony.
Perhaps you’re not, but I am, she thought.
“Stop talking,” she said.
She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to think. She wanted to put everything else from her mind and simply drink in this moment, and the view of this magical place.
The sky was showing the first signs of lightening but stars still hung in the heavens. Below, the city was a dark fairyland dotted with faintly twinkling lights. She moved along the balustrade, enchanted, as she gazed at the world below her and beyond. The lagoon twinkled, too, reflecting the fading starlight and the lights of the boats, and perhaps the sun as well, still lurking below the horizon.
“This is the way deities see the world,” she said softly. “We’re merely specks to them.”
The people in the square below were dark, moving specks against the silver and shadow of their surroundings. She looked for the labyrinth of canals, but at this height, the city’s domes, towers, and palaces concealed them. She knew the snowcapped mountains were out there, too, but at present the darkness hid them. She supposed they’d gradually appear when the sun rose, if the day continued as clear as the night had been.
But the mainland’s distant heights weren’t what captivated her. It was the lagoon and the islands scattered upon the glistening water and the boats plying among them, already busy at the first promise of daybreak.
She drank in the sea air. “This is what heaven ought to be like,” she said. Then her throat ached and her eyes filled, and to her chagrin, she started to cry.
James was not the type of man to be alarmed by women’s tears. He had what seemed to be an infinite number of sisters as well as aunts and nieces and female cousins beyond counting.
But those were his sisters and aunts and nieces and female cousins.
He left the wall he’d been leaning on and went to her. He pulled her into his arms. “Per carità,” he said. “For pity’s sake, wha
t is it?”
She bowed her head upon his chest and wept, not gently but in harsh, racking sobs he recognized as the deepest grief.
His heart pounded. “Come, Bonnard, you mustn’t take on so,” he said with forced lightness. “I know your love for me is nigh unbearable, but still…”
She gulped, and sobbed some more.
He tightened his hold of her. “I beg you will not throw yourself over the railing. I’m not worth it.”
She looked up at him. Tears glistened on her lashes. A tear trickled down the side of her nose.
“Really, I’m not,” he said.
“Cretino,” she said, her voice clogged with tears. “If only I were big enough to push you over the balustrade.”
You’d think it was an endearment, to be called a cretin, for relief washed through him, sweet and cool as the breeze coming off the water.
“I need a handkerchief,” she said, in the same watery voice. “Or may I wipe my nose on your neckcloth?”
“No,” he said. “I should do anything for you, mia cara, but a man’s neckcloth is out of bounds.”
He let go of her in order to hunt for his handkerchief. By the time he’d fished it out of his tailcoat pocket, she’d unearthed her own: a tiny square of tissue-thin linen surrounded by about six yards of lace.
She dabbed her eyes with this useless bit of froth and daintily wiped her nose.
He put away his handkerchief. “Wipe your nose on my neckcloth, indeed,” he said. “You do believe I’m infatuated, don’t you? Well, let me explain something to you, Goddess of Beauty, Wicked Harlot, Queen of the Nile, and whatever else you imagine yourself to be—”
“You’re a man,” she said. “You don’t know anything. Not a damned thing.”
She threw one gloved hand up in the air in a queenly gesture of dismissal and walked away to the stairs.
“Exits,” he said. “These women are always making dramatic exits.” He followed her, singing Figaro’s lines, “‘Donne, donne, eterni dei,/Chi v’arriva a indovinar?’”
