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She fell silent again, contemplating the blackness of his character.
“No insults, cara? I would that you hurl all your venom at me and save only your winsome charm for Joseph. Yes, he will be responsible for you and your safety when I am not available to be.”
A gentle breeze whipped a strand of golden hair across her cheek, and without thought, the earl raised his hand to smooth it away. She frowned at him and walked quickly toward the villa.
The Corsican stood in the entrance hall where the earl had so abruptly left him, his woolen cap in his hands. He looked, Cassie thought, strangely out of place with a marble floor beneath his feet.
“It is good to see you again, Joseph,” she said in her starchily accented Italian, which brought a smile to the earl’s face. “I fear though that you will be bored, since, I presume,” she directed this to the earl, “when you are not my companion, you will have little else to do.”
The earl interposed smoothly, “If Joseph yearns to return to the sea, my love, we will simply have a changing of the guard, so to speak.”
“Madonna, it is my pleasure to be with you again,” Joseph said finally, his voice uncertain.
Cassie smiled at him despite herself. It would be churlish of her to treat him badly, since he was here at the earl’s order. “I hope your stay will be pleasant,” she said at last.
“Excellent,” the earl said, rubbing his hands together. “Your first outing with Joseph will be to the lake, Cassandra. I trust you will not mind my accompanying you, for I have another surprise for you.”
Joseph saw the young mistress stiffen and regard the earl warily. She said something, sharply, in English, which he did not understand.
“Another surprise, my lord? Have you built a wall around the far side of the lake so that I will not swim away?”
“I am sorry to disappoint you, cara, but I have not had the time to construct so formidable a structure. Are you ready, my dear?”
Cassie’s curiosity got the better of her, and she nodded through her frown.
The Parese lake, a narrow, serpentine body of water, lay nestled in a small valley between the rolling hills, surrounded by long-branched trees whose thick leaves cast oddly shaped shadows over its calm blue surface. Cassie had visited the small lake but once and had foregone the pleasure of wading into its inviting water, for the earl had been with her. When they broke through the thick line of trees that bordered its perimeter, Cassie had an almost overpowering urge to strip off her clothes, now sticking uncomfortably to her back from the bright afternoon sun, and swim in its cool depths.
As if he guessed her thoughts, the earl smiled. “Not now, Cassandra. Just think of how embarrassed Joseph would be to see you as naked as a sea nymph.”
She made no reply, for moored to the end of a narrow dock was a sloop, its graceful lines and rigging so like her sailboat in England that she stood, open-mouthed, staring at it in dumb surprise. Painted on its stern in small black letters was the name Fearless.
“Joseph brought her from the harbor this morning.
”
“Si, madonna,” Joseph continued, waving proudly toward the small vessel, “the men have worked day and night to complete her for you.”
His voice contained a hopeful question, and Cassie, reeling in surprise, turned to Joseph, not the earl, and gasped, “Oh, Joseph, she is beautiful. You have worked wonders. How very kind of you.”
Cassie picked up her skirts and sped down the dock to her new sloop.
Joseph called after her in an embarrassed voice, “No, madonna, ’twas not I. The captain drew her plans, I but supervised the building.”
“It matters not, Joseph,” the earl said quietly, taking pleasure at the joy in her eyes. The two men stood watching her as she explored every inch of the sailboat, from the curved hull to the thick wooden mast.
“She will breathe life into it,” Joseph said.
“Yes,” the earl said with a thoughtful smile. “And it is also likely that I will have to restock the lake every year. She loves to fish, you know.”
Joseph was silent a moment, his eyes still on Cassie. “Have you met other English ladies like the madonna?”
“No, my friend, I have not.”
Joseph chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip. He had known the answer to his question before the earl had replied. He studied his master’s profile, remembering how he and the other men had believed that he had gone mad, kidnapping a young girl off the coast of mighty England and forcibly bringing her to Genoa. As a Barbary pirate, he had seen women captured on raids and ravished until their captors’ appetites were sated, and it had not surprised him, for as a young man, his sexual lust had equaled his blood lust. But that the captain, an English nobleman despite his Ligurian blood, would capture his own wife made him shake his grizzled head. So young she was, spirited, like an untamed colt. He thought of his own young wife, Maria, dead before her twentieth year at the hands of mountain bandits. He felt no pain now, for too many years had passed. Cassie’s crow of delighted laughter rang in his ears.
“Watch your footing, Cassandra.” The earl suddenly ran forward.
Cassie, who had been perched precariously, examining the clew on the canvas sail, straightened suddenly at the sound of his voice and lost her footing. She clutched frantically at empty air and fell backward into the water with a resounding splash.
