Your Scandalous Ways

by Loretta Chase

  She didn’t want to understand the men who’d degraded and humiliated her. But she hadn’t considered the context. It didn’t make them any the less hateful to her, but it made their behavior a degree more comprehensible.

  “I’m not stopping them making amends,” she said. “If you are who you claim to be, if you are one of the good ones—”

  “Not if,” he said. “I want you to know, without the slightest doubt. Not in six months or twelve or whenever we get it all sorted out but now. I want to prove it to you.” He paused. “And I have an idea how to do it.”

  Francesca looked up at Neptune, then further along the great hall to Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, standing guard over another portal. Could a woman ever be truly wise, when it came to men? Probably not, else the species would not survive.

  “You are so aggravating,” she said. “After all this time, I’d finally decided to get rid of those dratted letters. Now I’m wild to get them off my hands, and you won’t take them.”

  “I will, but not today,” he said. “Until I get matters sorted out, they’re safer where they are.”

  “And I am supposed to fold my hands and wait patiently for you to carry out your cunning plan? I am to wait about, not knowing how or when that Fazi creature will strike next?”

  “She needs to regroup,” he said. “She needs reinforcements. That gives us as much as a week. But I promise not to make you wait that long. A day or two, no more.”

  What choice did she have? “Very well. Sort matters out. In the meantime, I’m going home. I have had as much as I can bear of my—of Magny. And you, if you are wise, will keep out of my way until you’ve something worthwhile to bother me about.”

  The next day found James at the Ducal Palace, facing a still-suspicious Count Goetz.

  “We have questioned the man Piero again and again,” he told James. “Naturally, it occurred to me that he had lied, even to you, about his motives. He is from the south, it appears. That abominable dialect. This Fazi woman is from the south, I am informed. For the two of them to come to Venice at the same time is no coincidence. But he claims he has never heard of her. He holds to the same story, like a dog with a bone. I know he is lying. What shall I do? Hang him by his thumbs? Then someone will complain of our brutality and make inflammatory speeches in one of the squares. The next we know, they make an insurrection. They are very obstinate, these people, and of a quick temper.”

  “I don’t think he’s obstinate,” James said, “so much as terrified.”

  Goetz stared at him for a moment. “What difference does it make? Either way, he tells us nothing.”

  And even if Piero did tell them, they wouldn’t understand one word in twenty. If that.

  “I wonder if you might let me have a go,” James said.

  “No,” said Goetz.

  Two hours later, James returned to the Ducal Palace, this time with Prince Lurenze.

  Though he cast an unamiable eye upon James, Goetz was all gracious welcome this time, eager to know what he could do for his highness.

  There were certain advantages to being royalty.

  “Please to explain,” said the Prince of Gilenia, “why Mr. Cordier is not permitted to try where you have failed, to obtain information which may prevent harm coming to Mrs. Bonnard.”

  Goetz began to recite certain rules about prisoners and foreign visitors.

  Lurenze held up his hand. “Please to explain,” he said, “where is the rule to endanger a lady instead of doing all that is possible to protect her and capture dangerous persons?”

  Goetz gazed down at his immaculate desk. His jaw set.

  It wasn’t difficult to guess what he was thinking.

  People spoke of the Austrians as rulers of northern Italy but of course it was Austro-Hungarian rule. Goetz knew as well as James did that a certain Hungarian lady of high birth had been proposed as Prince Lurenze’s consort.

  The governor of Venice would be most unwise to risk offending the crown prince of Gilenia, especially over such a small matter: merely giving one of the prince’s English friends a few minutes alone with a prisoner.

  The count, upon further consideration, decided he was not sure he’d interpreted the rule correctly. “You may try your luck with him, Mr. Cordier,” he said. “But you will give me your word as a gentleman to tell me everything he tells you.”

  “Certainly,” James said. Gentleman or not, he’d lied before and would do it again. Not that he necessarily needed to lie. After all, Goetz had not specified when he must be told.

  James had been through the Ducal Palace before. On his previous tour, when the governor had felt more kindly toward him, he’d been given a tour. They had not gone as far as the prisons, however. On the last visit, Goetz had had Piero brought to them.

  This time, James deemed it best to go to Piero.

  Lurenze insisted on going with him, in case anyone made difficulties, he said.

  “I am not happy with the behavior of the governor to you,” he said after they left a deeply annoyed Goetz. “His look is unfriendly. If I am by, he will not make up some foolish rule to put you in prison, too.”

  Ah, well, at least someone trusted him, James thought. Ironic that it was a rival. Or perhaps not—or not so much of a rival as previously.

  James had chased all over Venice looking for Lurenze, and finally run him to ground—or water, rather—en route to Magny’s palazzo. In the gondola with his highness was Giulietta. They had seemed quite cozy, though Giulietta persisted in addressing his highness in the most ridiculous terms: “your celestiality,” “your luminescence,” “your magnificence,” and the like, all of which Lurenze bore with a straight face.

  His absurdly handsome face was solemn now, as they followed the guard assigned to take them to Piero.

  The route from the Ducal Palace to the prisons was not calculated to lift the spirits. They traversed a narrow, uneven, and dark passage that led to the Bridge of Sighs. From the outside, the arched bridge was quite beautiful. Within, all was gloom, proving how it had earned its title. A pair of corridors ran its length. Two heavy grated windows dimly lit the way. The guard, bearing a lighted candle, led Lurenze and James through narrow passages and down the stairs to the nether regions, to the dungeons known as the pozzi, the wells.

  The guard, clearly accustomed to the role of guide—and probably in the habit of conveying tourists through the place, was cheerfully talkative. He told them there were eighteen cells built in tiers. The cells were about ten or twelve feet long and six or seven feet wide, he said. They were arched at top, with a small opening in front. The lower group were level with the water in the canal.

  He pointed to little niches in the stones on the wall. These, he informed them, were made to hold bars on which convicts were hanged or strangled to death. He called their attention to other niches, black with smoke. Here the executioners used to set their lamps, to allow them to see what they were doing. With relish, he explained certain holes in the pavement. When criminals were quartered, he explained, the blood drained off through the holes and into the canal. He indicated a door, from which the corpses were thrown into boats and taken away to be disposed of.

  “I was told these were the modern prisons,” said Lurenze. “Prigioni Nuove is the name. The New Prisons.”

  “They were modern two hundred years ago, when they were built,” James said.

  “This is barbaric,” said Lurenze.

  “I’ve seen worse,” said James. He’d been confined in worse.

  They arrived, finally, at the cell in which Piero had been left to ponder his sins and the advisability of telling his captors what they wanted to know. He had been left in the dark. When the door was unlocked, the stench wafting out into the passage was nigh overpowering.

  It seemed to overpower Lurenze, who staggered back from the door.

  “This is abominable,” he said.

  “You needn’t come in,” James said. “It’s going to be very close in there.”

 
; “No, I come,” said Lurenze. “A moment is all I need.” He squared his shoulders. “There. I am ready.”

  A prince, perhaps, and pampered, but he had some solid stuff to him.

  Still, this had better not take long, James thought. Brave or not, the lad wasn’t used to it, and was all too likely to faint or cast up his accounts. That was no way to awaken fear and respect in the prisoner.

  “Very well, your highness,” James said. He lowered his voice and reverted to English. “First, I advise you to stay near the door. You’ll get a bit of air—such as it is—from the passage through the little window. Second, you must give me your word you will not speak until spoken to, and then you will follow my lead. This is most important, excellency. A matter of life and death.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Lurenze.

  James told the guard they were ready. The man lit the lamp in the passage and gave James the candle. James entered the cell, Lurenze following.

  The door clanged shut behind them.

  Piero was sullen. His week in the cell had turned him into a lump. Even the sight of James could not rouse him to emotion beyond a grimace. He squatted in a corner, staring at his bare and unspeakably filthy feet.

  Lurenze dutifully took up his position by the door. James wondered how long he’d remain upright. The stench was beyond anything.

  No time to waste, James thought.

  He came directly to the point. In slow, simple Italian, he said, “We are looking for Marta Fazi.” Piero’s dialect might be all but incomprehensible but he understood the language of the educated—or enough to get by, at any rate.

  “Never heard of her,” said Piero.

  “That’s a pity,” said James, “because I have something the lady wants. Something the English lady had. Not jewels. Some papers.”

  Piero did not respond, but his posture stiffened.

  “I know Marta Fazi wants these papers,” James said. “I can sell them to her or I can sell them to the other side.”

  “It’s nothing to me,” said Piero.

  “I think it is,” James said. “If I can’t find her, I will sell them to someone else. When she learns you had a chance to help her get these papers and you did nothing…”

  Piero shifted uncomfortably.

  “If she learns you failed her, she will not be pleased with you,” James said.

  Still no response.

  “I’m not sure you’ll be safe from her, even here.”

  No answer, but something changed. The man’s fear was palpable. James pressed his point. “Ah, well. You say you know nothing. Perhaps you don’t know her, as you say. In that case, it’s unfair to keep you here. I had better arrange for your release.”

  He heard Lurenze’s gasp and glanced that way, as Piero did. But the prince, to his credit, said nothing. Or maybe he dared not open his mouth for fear of vomiting.

  Piero’s gaze came back to James. The sullen expression was gone, and the fear was plain on his grimy face. “They won’t let me out,” he said.

  “Of course they will,” James said cheerfully. “Don’t you fret about it. I’ll simply tell them that, when I looked at you again, more closely, I realized I made a mistake, and you are not the man who attacked the English lady.”

  “I tell you nothing. I know nothing.”

  He was afraid of Marta, clearly. Still too afraid of her to tell what he knew.

  “This is annoying,” James said. “I am tired of this stinking hole and tired of you. I have tried to be reasonable but you won’t be reasonable. So this is what I’ll do. I shall spread a rumor that you’ve betrayed Marta Fazi, and as a reward for betraying her, you are to be released.” He looked once more at Lurenze. It was hard to be sure in the dim light, but he seemed to be turning green.

  “Your excellency,” James said. “Would you be willing to use your influence to arrange this man’s release?”

  “Assuredly,” the prince said, gagging on the syllables.

  “I say nothing,” Piero said doggedly. “I know nothing.” But his voice was less sullen now, the pitch a degree higher.

  “Rumors travel so quickly in Venice,” James went on. “If Marta Fazi is here, she’ll hear the news by this time tomorrow if not before then. I should be able to have you released in two or three days’ time. Maybe you’ll be able to get away before she finds you. Or maybe she’ll be waiting for you when you come out of this place. Or maybe some friendly men will offer to take you for a drink. Or maybe they will not be friendly. Maybe they will take you somewhere, and not for a drink, eh, my friend?”

  “You are the devil,” Piero said. “But the name you say—she is a devil, too.”

  “I only want you to take a message to her.”

  A silence while Piero considered. “This, maybe I will do,” he said. “But send that one away before he pukes on me.”

  Chapter 16

  But who, alas! can love, and then be wise?

  Lord Byron

  Don Juan, Canto the First

  In response to James’s message—not long after his interview with Piero—Mrs. Bonnard agreed to meet with him the following morning, Friday, at ten o’clock.

  The first thing he noticed as he entered the putti-infested drawing room was her pallor. She did not look as though she’d had enough sleep. Or perhaps it was the frock that made her seem so pale. It was high-necked and plain white, adorned with only a bit of pale green embroidery. She wore no jewelry. She had some sort of scarf arrangement wrapped about her head. Other women wore caps with morning dress but Francesca Bonnard in a cap—however lacy and beribboned—was out of the question.

  Still, the frock seemed out of the question, too. It might have belonged to an innocent schoolgirl. Certainly it offered a striking contrast to the woman wearing it: the exotic eyes, the mouth promising sin, and the sinfully voluptuous figure. The effect was startling…and enticing as well.

  “I thought you didn’t rise before noon,” James said, not bothering with polite greetings.

  “I don’t,” she said. “But I am frantic to get this over with.”

  “My dear girl.” He crossed the room to her and took her hands in his. “I’m a beast. I should have sent word yesterday and at least let you know what I was about. But I’m not accustomed to—to—”

  “To accounting to a woman for your whereabouts?” She smiled, and there seemed to be genuine amusement in it. Perhaps he was on his way to forgiveness?

  “Not since mama demanded to know what I’d been up to,” he said.

  “When you were eight?”

  “Eighteen,” he said. “Twenty-eight. Whenever she sees me, she expects a complete accounting.”

  She cocked her head to one side, studying his face. “I daresay she gets it.”

  “I’m afraid of my mother,” he said. “As a fellow ought to be.”

  “Horrid man,” she said. “You are determined to charm me, even when I can scarcely keep my eyes open and I’m cross at having to keep them open. What an inhuman hour to be up and about!”

  “We could go back to bed,” he said.

  “Dream on,” she said. “You’ll want a great deal more than charm to accomplish that.” She slid her hands from his and moved away. It was only then, watching her walk away, that he finally noticed the oddity in the room.

  It was not as though it was hard to miss: a tall ladder in one of the corners on the side opposite the windows. He’d missed it because he’d come in looking for her and all he’d seen was her.

  Now he watched her take up a narrow object from the console table near the ladder. James joined her. And stared at the thing in her hand. “A paper knife?”

  “You have correctly identified it,” she said.

  He looked at the knife, then at the ladder, then up, at the putti-encrusted ceiling. Then his gaze came back to her amused green one.

  “I looked there,” he said. “I thought the children were hiding them. And it was no small chore, looking. There are so many plaster figures, not only here, b
ut throughout the house. I thought you might have put the letters between the legs of one of the buxom ladies holding up the plaster draperies in the corners. That would be your idea of a good joke. But I couldn’t find them there or anywhere else.”

  “I know,” she said. “I knew you’d look. And I knew you wouldn’t find them. But you’re not far wrong. Here, hold the ladder for me.”

  “Hold the ladder? Are you mad? You’re not going up there.”

  She turned fully toward him and regarded him with the level look a woman tended to employ instead of punching a man in the head as he richly deserved.

  “Once, only once,” she said with exaggerated patience, “I should like to do something without having to argue with you about it.”

  “You do exactly as you please all the time,” he said. “You do it before anyone has a chance to argue with you. Jumping into canals, for instance.”

  “I am not going to jump off the ladder,” she said. “The only way that would be fun would be if I fell on you and broke your thick head, and I suspect it’s too thick to break. Are you going to hold the ladder for me or not?”

  “Who held it for you originally?”

  “Nobody. The last thing I wanted was witnesses. I did it one night while most of the servants were away at one of the festivals. I dragged a few of the heavier tables over here to support the ladder. I should have done that today but I thought you’d want to look up under my dress.”

  The ceilings were high, the ladder alarmingly tall. Still, she was stubborn and he was a man. “Well, if you put it that way…”

  James manfully resisted the urge to lick her beautiful ankles as they passed his line of vision, and settled for looking. He admired as much of her calves as he could—not nearly enough, for the dress and petticoat clung to her legs in the most provoking manner.

  But she was soon at her work, and then he became engrossed in watching her insert the knife into a seam of plaster. As she’d said, he had judged her well—her sense of humor, certainly. She hadn’t hidden the parcel between the legs of the buxom lady in the corner but nearby, where a little boy’s legs and bottom stuck out from under the plaster draperies.