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He was chafing her wrists. “You should not have run.”
“Don’t scold,” said Giulietta. “She takes great risks for you. Even to your former amorosa she tries to be gentle and kind.”
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“Fazi is not my former amorosa,” Cordier said.
“What then?” said Francesca. “You made quite an impression on her. Something about ‘sweet lovemaking,’ as I recollect.”
“He is a man,” said Lurenze. “It is natural to wish to be sweet to the woman. What, is he a great boor—What is the word you told me, my sweet one? The word you say for these persons, ignorant and with no manners?”
“Da cafone,” Giulietta said. “This is the term you seek, I believe, your celestiality.”
“Yes, like that. The man of ignorance and low breeding is careless of the feelings of the woman. But the true gentleman is always gallant, even to the woman who is of a low position.”
“Even when she is beneath him, you mean, your supremeness?” said Giulietta.
“You know what I mean, naughty girl,” said Lurenze. But he chuckled and added, “It is a very pretty joke with words you make. Naughty but most amusing. I must remember it.”
“Fazi was business,” Cordier said, his voice oh-so-patient. “I made an impression because I stole her emeralds. Which, by the way, were not hers. They’d been stolen from their proper owner.”
“Did you make sweet love to the proper owner as well?” Francesca asked.
“No,” he said between his teeth. “I returned them to him. They happened to belong to a royal treasury, and the party who’d lost them was able to provide something of value to certain other parties with whom I was associated. And that is all I am going to say about it.”
“It is politics,” Lurenze said, nodding wisely. “I know of these things. Please do not be of too much curiosity, ladies. But Mr. Cordier, we must tell something to the governor. He will hear very soon of the disturbance at the Riva del Vin. You must advise me what to say. I do not wish to put in my mouth my feet.”
“We’d better go to the Ducal Palace,” Cordier said. “Someone will be waking Count Goetz with the news. It might as well be us. But you,” he said, reverting to Francesca, whose hand he still held in his big, warm one. “You we’re taking home first. And you must promise to go straight to bed.”
“I promise,” she said. “I haven’t the wherewithal to argue. I haven’t even the energy to make naughty innuendoes.” She looked at Giulietta. “I must leave that to you, my dear.”
“No, no.” Giulietta took her other hand and kissed it and held it against her cheek. “This is no joke to me. I know you are tired and troubled. I will stay with you tonight. The men must go and do their manly things and have their plots and conspiracies and politics. It is too boring. Me, I would like a little something to eat, a little something to drink, and then to be lazy. We put our feet up, near the fire and maybe we look up and count all the little penises on the ceiling.”
“That sounds delightful,” said Francesca.
“And tomorrow night, when we are rested and ourselves again, we go to the opera.”
“An excellent plan.”
“And perhaps the men will join us there, if they promise not to speak of boring politics and the other women whose hearts they break.”
Cordier attempted to speak. “I did not break any—”
“Say, ‘yes, we promise,’” Lurenze advised. “To agree is more simple.”
“Yes, I promise,” Cordier said.
Francesca and Giulietta spent a pleasant night together. They did not sit in the Putti Inferno counting infant organs but adjourned to Francesca’s boudoir, where they ate a little and drank a little and talked a great deal. And when at last they could no longer keep their eyes open, they climbed into Francesca’s great bed, and murmuring drowsily of this and that, finally went to sleep.
There was nothing wrong with a man in bed, as Giulietta said. In fact, there was usually a good deal right about that. But sometimes, one wanted only to be alone. And sometimes one wanted only to be with a good friend.
Being with her friend quieted the turmoil in Francesca’s mind. To Giulietta she could speak freely of Elphick and Marta Fazi and why she’d felt sorry for Marta and hated her at the same time. And she could believe Giulietta’s reassurances that Francesca had done the proper thing in offering the sapphires. She’d acted decently and generously—and it was not Francesca’s fault the other woman was too ignorant to appreciate it.
As to chasing Marta Fazi, Giulietta understood that, too.
“Me, I would like to shake her until her teeth rattle in her head,” Giulietta said. “‘How can you be so greatly stupid?’ I would say. ‘Why take the chance to be hanged or have them cut off your head—for a man? What man is worth this? Where is your brain?’ Me, if I could be in her place, do you know what I would do? I would make a pretty curtsy to you and I would say, ‘Thank you, lady. This is a very beautiful gift. And this man who is with you? Now I look more closely, I do not remember that I have ever seen him before. Good-bye.’ And then I would tell the man with me to put away his knife. ‘Venice is too wet,’ I would tell him. ‘Let us go to another place, far away, where there is less water and they speak a language I understand.’ This is what I would do.”
“But you would never be in that situation,” Francesca said, “because you have a brain and a good heart.”
“All the same, we must remember: Without the grace of God, there is where we go.”
And with such talk, and the philosophy of her friend, Francesca found herself more at peace than she’d been in a very long time. As she’d told Lurenze, it was over.
The long, demented game she’d played with Elphick was over at last. She was finished with that and she felt heart-whole, finally.
She hadn’t realized one nasty little thorn had remained in her heart for all this time. She only knew it now, because it was gone, and she breathed free, at last.
As to Cordier…
“I think this one is to keep,” was Giulietta’s considered opinion when Francesca turned to this subject. “You know—like Countess Benzoni and her devoted Rangone. This one, I think, is devoted to you.”
“We’ll see,” Francesca said drowsily. “And Lurenze?”
Giulietta gave a sleepy smile. “Oh, he is delicious. I fear he will grow bored with me long before I am bored with him. But this is the gamble I take. And I take it with my eyes open.” Then she closed her beautiful doe eyes and fell asleep.
The following afternoon found Francesca at Magny’s palazzo. He’d sent a note, demanding to know what had happened: He’d heard the most ridiculous rumors.
He was not pleased with her account. She did not expect him to be pleased. He objected to her going into deserted squares in the middle of the night to meet villainous women. He objected to her offering her sapphires to a lunatic felon. He was speechless with rage when she told him how she’d chased Marta Fazi to the canal’s edge.
“Are you quite, quite mad?” he demanded, when he found his voice again.
“I was angry,” she said.
“That does it,” he said. “From now on—”
He was unable to complete the sentence because a servant entered to announce that Mr. Cordier had arrived and sought permission to see the count.
“Of course he has permission,” Magny said irritably. When the servant went out, Magny said, “I don’t understand all this ceremony. He sent a note this morning. He had a private matter to discuss, he said.”
The so-called count rose and went to his writing desk. “There.” He held up a thick piece of expensive writing paper.
Francesca, who’d followed him, took the letter from him. It bore only a few lines. She looked at her father, her eyebrows raised. “How formal he is.”
“Something to do with my borrowed identity, I’ll wager,” he answered in a low voice. “I daresay Quentin asked awkward questions.”
“Signor Cordier.”
The servant stood aside and Mr. Cordier entered. He was even more elegant than usual, in a dark blue tailcoat over a spotted waistcoat with shawl collar. His pristine white trousers had stirrups to hold them in place over the gleaming boots.
/> Francesca casually dropped the letter onto the desk.
Cordier greeted her with excessive politeness. Amused, she followed his lead. After a brief exchange of banalities she said, “I know you wish to meet privately with monsieur. I’ll see you later. At La Fenice?”
She moved past him, letting her skirts brush his legs. As she passed she murmured, “Perhaps you could come in your servant disguise. That would be…exciting.”
“I might,” he said. More audibly he added, “There’s no reason for you to leave, Mrs. Bonnard. You might as well hear what I have to say to Count Magny.”
She was curious. The man pretending to be Magny expected her to tell him everything. He did not return the favor. Most blatantly, for example, he had failed to tell her he was not dead. He’d simply appeared one day in Paris, and frightened her out of her wits.
Cordier turned his attention to her provoking parent. “Sir, I won’t sicken you with maudlin speeches. Plain and simple, then: I seek your permission to marry your—er—this lady.”
Francesca felt her jaw drop.
Magny was, if anything, even more shocked. He put his hand to his heart. “You take my breath away,” he said in a low, shaky voice. “Will you really? Marry her, I mean?”
“I see no alternative,” said Cordier.
Francesca found her wits and her voice. “I do,” she said. “Marry?”
“Yes, please,” said Cordier. “I am fearfully in love with you.”
“Yes, I know you are—but marry? Have you taken leave of your senses? Why would you wish to spoil a perfectly good liaison by marrying?”
“Because I want only you, my sweet.”
“Of course you do, but I am not at all sure I want only you,” she said.
“Francesca, really,” said her father. “Here is a man, willing to make an honest woman of you, in spite of all you’ve done—”
“I don’t want to be an honest woman! When will the pair of you get it through your thick heads?”
