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“‘That sort of farthing candlelight which glimmers/Where reeking London’s smoky caldron simmers,’” he quoted Byron.
“I miss it sometimes, though, the farthing candlelight,” she said.
“Enough to wish to go back?”
She felt a stab, sudden and surprising, of loss. She had not felt it in a long time.
Perhaps that was what loosened her tongue. Or maybe it was the way he watched her, the way he listened so intently, truly paying attention, as men so rarely did. Even with her, their attention was not, really, on what she said but how she said it and how she looked saying it.
She knew this about men. She used the knowledge to manipulate them. She was finding it impossible to manipulate him.
She said, “I do wish, sometimes, to go…home. I know it’s silly. Upon the Continent, I’m merely a divorcée. In many places that’s respectable enough. I’m invited nearly everywhere, except where English society gathers. I ought to be happy, not needing to abide by their tedious and endless rules or to bear their special brand of hypocrisy.”
“All the same, you’re a foreigner here,” he said. “It’s natural, from time to time, to miss the world in which you grew up.”
Of course he understood, and it had nothing to do with their being soulmates, she told herself. There was no such thing between men and women. She’d learned that the hard way. He understood her feelings because he was a wanderer, too. Early on he’d told her he’d spent little time in England.
“I miss the voices,” she said. “I miss the sound of my own language in all its accents, high and low. And I do miss London Society, the Season. I was good at that, you know. I was a good hostess. I did everything I ought to do. I was a good wife, truly. I loved my husband. I wanted to be the best wife in the world. I thought it was part of the bargain, that we would be as good to each other as we could. I thought, if one loved somebody, and married that somebody, it was forever, exactly as the vows say.”
Her chest heaved and the tears started. She brushed them away and said, “Curse you, Cordier. What is it about you that makes me weepy? How could you let me drone on about my misbegotten marriage? What wine was that, to make me so maudlin?”
He reached out and lightly stroked her cheek with his long fingers. “Maudlin or angry?” he said. “Women weep oftentimes because they’re angry. Unlike men, they’re discouraged from expressing strong feeling physically. Throwing someone in a canal, for instance, is a good way of dealing with a lot of annoying emotion churning inside.”
She laughed, and the shocking pain subsided, as though it had never been. He drew his hand away, though, and she wished he hadn’t.
“It’s true,” she said. “Women are trained to smile and be brave—or to relieve our feelings with words.”
“You could write a novel, a thinly disguised roman à clef, like Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon,” he said. “Only think how wonderfully she savaged her beloved Byron.”
Francesca shook her head. She raised herself up, took up her wine glass, and sipped. She looked into it as though it would tell her what to do, what to say, how far to trust.
“I have my own way,” she said after a moment. “More direct. I write to Elphick, at least once a week.”
Cordier’s dark eyebrows rose. “So often?”
“Oh, yes. I’m quite faithful—in my correspondence.”
“You write to rail at him, after all this time?”
She laughed at his baffled expression. “Certainly not. Then he’d believe I was unhappy and suffering. Instead, I let him know how delightful my life is. I tell him who calls on me, and what we talk about, and who invites me where, and who has commissioned a portrait of me from which famous artist, and who has bought me this and that and what it’s worth. My letters are filled with great names—painters and poets and playwrights and such. But most important, they’re filled with the names of Continental royalty and nobility—precisely the kinds of people he likes to hobnob with. I know he grinds his teeth when he reads such things, and it is a pleasant revenge.”
Silence.
She drank more, bolstering her courage. “I think it serves him well. He’d turned every friend I had against me. My father had bolted. I had no one to take care of me. Naturally Elphick expected me to sink quickly into the gutter.”
“Instead you’re a queen.”
“A queen of whores, but upon the Continent that is almost as good as being a real queen,” she said. “Did you know that in some courts, there was an official position, the King’s Mistress? It was so in France, and is still so in Gilenia, I’m told.”
His expression changed, turning stony in an instant. He sat up, his face hard. “Were you aiming for that position with Lurenze? Have I thrown your careful plans into disarray?”
“I do not aim to belong to any man,” she said, “king or not.” She made herself laugh. “Compose yourself, sir, or I shall imagine you’re jealous.”
“I am,” he said. “Will you write to your former husband about that, as well?”
“Heavens, no,” she said. “You’re merely a younger son. He won’t give a damn about you.”
“It’s stupid, you know,” he said tightly. “A stupid, dangerous game. Your marriage was over five years ago.”
“He won’t leave it alone,” she said. “Why should I? He taunts me with the social events he attends. He tells me who was there and what was said. He knows I miss it. He knows I miss my so-called friends. And so he makes sure to rub salt in the wound. I know he wants me to be scorned by everybody and left miserable and penniless—and so I torment him with my successes. What would you do in such a case?”
He took the wine glass from her hand and set it down. “I should never have let you get away in the first place.” He moved quickly, then, gathering her into his arms. He kissed her, angrily, fiercely, and in a moment so deeply that she lost her moorings. Her head fell back and she let him take her where he would, do what he would. In no time at all she was flat on her back, laughing, while he pulled up her skirts.
Chapter 13
The heart is like the sky, a part of heaven,
But changes night and day, too, like the sky;
Now o’er it clouds and thunder must be driven,
And darkness and destruction as on high:
But when it hath been scorch’d, and pierced,
and riven,
Its storms expire in water-drops; the eye
Pours forth at last the heart’s blood turn’d
to tears,
Which make the English climate of our years.
Lord Byron
Don Juan, Canto the Second
James was angry for a hundred reasons: She played a dangerous game with a dangerous man; she was being hunted by some of the worst villains in Italy—and that was saying something; he had been false and she’d hate him when she learned the truth; and she must learn the truth—soon—for her own protection.
There was more, a great deal more, but he was in no mood to contemplate all the nuances of his state of mind. He dealt with it as men usually deal with strong feeling, in physical action. He claimed her in a deep, impatient kiss. His impatience amused her and she laughed against his mouth. She laughed as he pushed her onto her back and pulled up her skirts, and he was aware, through the tumult of feelings, of the quality that had intrigued him from the first: the rare exuberance of her nature. He understood it better now: She felt deeply, experienced deeply, loved deeply…and she would hate him with the same ferocity.
He didn’t trouble to undress her or himself. He unbuttoned his trousers and pushed them down, as he’d done in the Campanile. He was as mindlessly impatient as any schoolboy. He didn’t care about his lack of finesse, and neither did she.
She tangled her fingers in his hair and whispered wicked words, in English and then, more arousing, in her English-accented Italian. He laughed, too. He couldn’t help it. It was heated laughter—at his impatience, his mad lust, and at the sheer joy of her, the joy of tou
ching her, and finding her heated and ready, too, in the soft, sweet place between her legs. Her fingers touched his as he guided himself inside. The touch melted thought and quieted anger, and he was lost again, inside her. He didn’t even try for control this time. Theirs was a quick, fierce joining, a pulsing race to climax and completion.
He rolled off her, taking her with him. He held her tightly, her backside against his groin. He concentrated on the feel of her in his arms, where she fit so perfectly. He tried not to think of what the near future held. He refused to ask himself what he’d do, afterward, when she hated him.
She didn’t hate him now, though.
She’d need to know the truth…soon, too soon. He couldn’t go on playing games with her. They hadn’t time. She was in too much danger.
But she didn’t need to know the truth yet.
They had this night.
The moon had risen during their frantic coupling. Its light streamed faintly through the long window. In its glow, her skin shimmered like pearls.
He kissed the place behind her ear where she liked to be kissed, and she trembled, as she always did when he kissed her there. He kissed the nape of her neck, then drew back and began to undo the fastenings of her dress. The back slid down, revealing the shocking tattoo. He kissed the serpent.
He eased her out of the garments: the gown, petticoats, stays, and shift. She let him play lady’s maid, smiling as he turned her this way and that until she was naked. He took off his own garments, not hurrying this time.
She turned fully onto her back, her hands behind her head, and watched. That was all she had to do—let her green gaze trail over his body—to stir his cock to life.
This time, though, it must wait.
