Diana stifled the urge to twist the ties that bound her hands and reached for the only weapon she had available: her wiles.
She glanced at Titus from beneath her eyelashes and dropped the pitch of her voice to a husky tone. “I’m wondering, Mr. Titus, if you would appease my curiosity.”
“We all know what curiosity does to cats,signorina.”
“Indulge me,signore.What did Widow offer you in exchange for the necklace?”
Titus laughed and wagged a finger at her to mock her attempt to beguile him. “If Widow hasn’t told you,piccola, I won’t. But I’ll give you a hint.”
He signaled to agendarme, who belted Ian in the stomach.
As Ian doubled over, guards seized him by each elbow, while two others gripped his neck in a headlock.
“There’s no need for this,signore.” Diana wrestled against her restraints. “Let us negotiate.”
“This is not something we can haggle over.You have nothing left to concede. And no incentive that would persuade me to abandon my plans.”
It took three of them to hold Ian down while they pried his jaw open. One of them poured a vial down his throat and smothered his nose and mouth, forcing him to swallow it.
“What are you doing?” Diana bellowed, because she’d never stop the ratbags by shrieking like some harpy. Rage made her limbs convulse, but she clung to it because it was far more useful than terror.
“This is business,signorina.” Titus shrugged. “Widow insisted we keep you alive. I thought about taking you both as insurance for our agreement, but you’re too unpredictable and I don’t have money to waste on more men. Thesegendarmesare costing me a fortune.” He laughed as if he spoke about a new pair of horses.
Ian’s legs buckled, and he fell to the ground on his hands and knees.
Tears pricked at her eyes, and Diana didn’t fight them. “We gave you the necklace. There’s no need for this.”
“Consider it an education,” Titus quipped. “So neither of you forgets the rules again.”
The men wrestled Ian to the ground and pulled at his shirt. Buttons scattered across the stone floor as the cloth parted and exposed his skin.
And the small splash of ink above his heart.
“Wait!” she roared loud enough to attract Titus’s notice. “Ian wears the mark of the Tarka. Beneath his shirt.”
The men paused.
Titus ripped Ian’s shirt back and acknowledged the tattoo with a faint grunt. “So. Alberti marked you.”
He shoved Ian’s face into the ground and motioned to his men to lock their pistols before he turned to Diana. “UntilIl Giococoncludes, I can’t harm anyone bearing a mark of an heir. But the two of you have held up this competition long enough.”
The men bound Diana’s mouth with a gag while the burliest guard threw Ian over his shoulder. The rest kept their pistols aimed at them as they dragged them out of the church to a waiting wagon. Diana protested against her gag, but with thegendarmesstanding guard, the few people they passed didn’t give them a second look.
The cart stopped at the harbor, and the guards dragged them to a dilapidated pier, where a rickety rowboat was moored behind an ancient tug. They shackled Diana’s bound hands to the rudder and hauled Ian’s limp body onto the boat.
Titus nodded approvingly. “We’ll let nature take its course. Find out if you’re a strong as you think you are.”
He raised his walking stick, and the horn of the tug blew. The sound pierced Diana’s ears and she arched over Ian’s body to protect him.
As the tugboat lurched away from the port, the horn blew again to drown out her screams.
A viselike pain strangled Ian’s head.
Consciousness found him shortly afterward. The first thing he detected, along with the pounding at his skull, was that he was bobbing up and down on the water.
He pried his eyes open, found hard wood digging into his back, a dawn-lit sky above him, and the scent of salt and sulfur. He gripped the wooden hull, pulled himself up, and bent over the side of the boat to relieve the contents of his stomach.
A hand gently rubbed his back. “Ian?”
