Gianna did quick calculations in her head: How long would it take a message from the count to travel? When would he send it? Surely, not until tomorrow at the earliest and only then if he felt sure she was not coming back. Perhaps she could afford to wait twenty-four more hours, especially if waiting ensured her success and reduced her risk. With Nolan’s plan, they wouldn’t have to break in, only retrieve the item in question.
‘Now that’s settled...’ Nolan smiled, sensing her acquiescence before she gave it ‘...I must thank you for the delicious meal and make my excuses. I need to change and be off.’
‘You’re leaving?’ Gianna trailed behind him into the bedroom. This was not going as planned, but why did that surprise her? Nothing had gone as planned.
Nolan pulled off his coat and undid his cravat, quick hands undoing the buttons on his waistcoat and pulling out the tails of his shirt. ‘Yes. I am committed to a card game this evening and I cannot be late. Can you pass me my evening jacket?’
‘No, I cannot pass you your jacket.’ Gianna fumed. This was not where she’d imagined the evening headed. They were supposed to be in a gondola by now, headed towards the count’s house. Since they weren’t burgling him tonight, she didn’t have a back-up plan for the evening—perhaps do a bit of planning with the masquerade? Go over the layout of the count’s palazzo? Whatever it was, it wasn’t this.
Her temper started to rise. ‘I’ve been stuck in this room all day, I’ve been pricked with needles and pins, draped with bolts of fabric and discussed as if I was nothing but a doll. On top of that, I planned you an excellent meal and all you have to say is “I’m going out”?’
Nolan tossed his old shirt on to the bed, obviously less concerned than she that he was undressing in front of her. He faced her, hands on hips, chest gloriously bare, his arms and torso an exhibition in lean, muscled strength. ‘Yes, I am going out. I am committed to a card game this evening and I cannot be late, not if your penchant for spending my money is any indication of what it will cost me to keep you for the interim. You, my dear, have proven to be a very expensive acquisition. You have me buying wardrobes, eating silver-plated candlelight meals, drinking French champagne and burgling the homes of nobility.’ He reached for a clean shirt and slid his arms into the sleeves. ‘Now, I am going to change my trousers. You are welcome to stay and watch.’
Gianna fought the childish urge to stomp her foot. His arrogance was insufferable! He knew he was an attractive man in and out of his clothing. Two could play this game. ‘I am not that desperate for entertainment. Perhaps, I shall go out as well. There was a concert at San Giorgio I wanted to take in.’ It was true, a quartet of some talent was performing Vivaldi tonight. She moved with brisk efficiency towards the wardrobe where she’d stored some of the items Signora Montefiori was able to leave behind this afternoon. There was a gorgeous, fur-collared cloak she was eager to try.
Nolan’s hand came over her shoulder and slammed shut the wardrobe door, his voice a growl in her ear, ‘Don’t be a fool, Gianna. You can’t possibly go out, not if the count is as dangerous as you say.’
‘Let go of the door, Nolan. You’re being ridiculous. I’ll be perfectly anonymous. It’s dark out, there are revellers everywhere. No one will notice me.’ She flashed him a coy smile over her shoulder, trying to ignore the fact that his half-dressed body was mere inches from hers. ‘The more the merrier, isn’t that right? Why is it that we can hide in plain sight at the masquerade tomorrow, but I can’t hide in plain sight tonight?’ There. Hoisted by his own petard, she thought smugly.
‘Because there’s no “we” tonight. You cannot go out in the dark alone.’
He had a point. Secretly, she was starting to rethink her hasty decision. Hardly anyone would notice her, that much was true, but that also meant no one would notice if anything untoward happened to her. Carnevale was a fun time, a free time, but it could also be a frightening time if one wasn’t careful. She wouldn’t be the first to go missing during Carnevale and never be heard from again. ‘Come with me, then,’ she challenged.
That was the last thing he wanted to do. The longer he was with Gianna, the further from sanity he slipped, and admittedly, he didn’t have the world’s tightest grasp on it to begin with. He needed distance and the card game would provide it. Just being in close proximity with her as he was now, breathing in the herbal scents of her toilet, rosemary and sage with a hint of lavender beneath, was enough to throw caution to the proverbial winds. Having already sat through a dinner, staring at her expressive face, watching her caress the pearl pendant at her throat, he thought caution might as well pack up and leave. It didn’t stand a chance.
Ignoring caution was by no means a rare occurrence for him, he was a risk-taker by nature and by trade, after all. Caution spelled doom. The moment a gambler started being cautious was the moment he lost. But his risks were calculated. Most of the time. He’d gone a little berserk at the Palio in Siena for a good cause, but that could not be the case tonight. He needed his wits. An idea started to form, his mind ran the calculations. His hand released the wardrobe door. ‘All right, we’ll go to the concert.’
He stepped back, distancing himself from the smell of her, the heat of her, watching her as she gathered her things. Gianna flirted and enticed for all the wrong reasons. He wasn’t about to take her to bed under those auspices no matter how tempting she was. As long as she used sex as a weapon, he had to be vigilant for both of them even if his body would prefer otherwise. Before that could happen, he needed her to recognise the power of the weapon she wielded. What would she do if he actually took her up on her offers? There might be a lesson for her in that. The sooner she learned it the better.
Still, Nolan was honest enough to admit that in the past twenty-four hours, Gianna had managed to get him to act not out of logic but out of emotion, not once, but three times. He was helping her because he empathised with her, not because there was any logical reason to do so. There was nothing logical about compassion. As long as he could recognise that, perhaps he wasn’t as far gone as he feared.
Tonight, he would convince her she didn’t want to be anywhere near him and that would buy him all the freedom he needed to keep his distance. He’d invest his time now for freedom tomorrow. If his plan went well, he wouldn’t need to see her at all tomorrow, except for the masquerade. And if that went well, she’d be gone the day after, out of his life, just another adventure that had come and gone. He merely needed to survive the next forty-eight hours. But he was good at surviving. He’d been doing it for years.
* * *
Downstairs in the lobby, Nolan hired a gondola to take them across the canal to San Giorgio Maggiore and whisked Gianna outside into the dark. The fewer people who saw her the better. There was a wide hood on her cloak, but Nolan encouraged her to leave it down. Hiding her face only sent the message that they didn’t want anyone to recognise her. Mystery bred attention.
‘Get in and sit down. No rocking the boat this time,’ he scolded her teasingly as he handed her in. ‘I have no desire for a swim tonight.’ He gave the gondolier their direction and ducked under the felze, taking his seat beside her as the boat pushed away from the pier.
‘Thank you.’ Gianna’s gloved hand squeezed his in friendly appreciation where it lay on his leg. It was an honest and spontaneous gesture devoid of her more sensual flirtations.
Nolan chuckled. ‘Oh, no, you’re thanking me again. That means you want something.’
‘It does not,’ she protested with a small bit of outrage and a large bit of defensiveness.
‘Yes, it does,’ Nolan insisted with a laugh, enjoying this particular argument. He covered her hand with his. ‘The first time you thanked me, you wanted to know why I was being nice to you. The second time you thanked me was followed up with a request to have me burgle your father’s home. So, you’ll have to excuse me if I’m a little suspicious.’
Touchy subject, that. But the count was also a subject about which Nolan needed, wanted, to know more. He was going to burgle the man’s house, he wanted to know what he was up against. And of course, there was the issue of knowing her. If he wanted to truly know Gianna, he had to know her past. Who was Gianna Minotti? That was the question that concerned him most as the gondola glided over the canal.
Nolan moved his thumb the length of her hand in a slow caress through the leather of their gloves. ‘And your mother? Where is she in all this?’ A low, quiet voice, the soothing motion of his thumb, the privacy of the gondola all made for a most intimate atmosphere conducive to sharing secrets, and he would take advantage.
She looked down at their hands, her voice quiet. ‘My mother has been dead these last five years.’
She’d been alone with only the count to guide her into adulthood. She’d been seventeen? Sixteen, maybe? On the verge of being presented to society. What sort of effort or commitment would the count have made on her behalf? Nolan had no sisters, but he had cousins and he’d watched them prepare for their débuts. Mothers were essential. What did fathers know of gowns and parties and navigating society when one was a young girl? Boys simply threw themselves on society, their wildness, their wilfulness, their mistakes tolerated as the sowing of oats. But girls had no such luxury. One mistake was fatal, like go risotto.
‘Do you have any aunts nearby?’ He knew before she answered that she did not. She would not have stayed with the count otherwise. But he was unprepared for the leashed vehemence in her response.
‘My mother had no friends, not females friends at any rate. She was a high-class courtesan who managed to marry a nobleman before her looks went. So, no, I don’t have any aunts, or any of the extended family Italians pride themselves on. The count does, of course, but there is no use in me accessing any of them even if they would acknowledge me.’
‘There is just you?’ Nolan traced circles on the back of her hand, feeling some of the tension go out of her. That gave rise to innumerable scenarios. A young woman alone, under the care of a guardian who had no compelling reason to look out for her best interests. The situation was ripe for all nature of scandal and the abuse of power. But it wouldn’t last for ever, would it? Nolan thought about majorities and coming of age. ‘At some point, you will outgrow the count’s power. Is that what the other night was about?’
‘He didn’t think he’d lose. He meant only to use the wager as leverage to blackmail me into marriage.’ Her voice was quiet.
‘With whom?’ A suspicion started to lay down roots in his mind. If she came of age the count would no longer have control over her. To some that would be a boon, a welcomed burden removed. Nolan would have thought the count would be overjoyed to be free of the obligation. Unless the count didn’t want to lose control of her.
‘Preferably with him,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘You do see why I can’t go back to him now. Going back would be a rather permanent arrangement.’ Of course it would be. She had something the count wanted and every man and legal system in Europe knew the best way to control a woman and her property was through marriage.
‘What is the item we’re going to get tomorrow night?’ It must be of great value if she’d risk walking back into the count’s house. He’d seen her shudder earlier. Now he better understood what going back meant to her. It must also be the item the count wished to control through her.
‘My mother’s jewel case,’ she said simply. Too simply. Nolan stopped caressing her hand. He didn’t quite believe her. She’d told him more in this boat ride across the canal than she’d told him all day and while the atmosphere certainly prompted confidences, he had to wonder about the last. He didn’t doubt that it wasn’t true, only that the truth wasn’t quite complete. She was still hiding something.
The gondola bumped against the pier at San Giorgio Maggiore and Nolan handed her out, keeping a hand at her back as they made their way into the church. The crowd was negligible. There were grander festivities all over Venice tonight. A few folding chairs had been set out and they found two on the far side of the aisle where they’d be out of the direct light. All the better for the lesson he wanted to teach.
He’d learned a great deal about this woman tonight, but he wasn’t certain it had advanced his plan of convincing her how much distance she needed to keep from him. If anything, it had done the opposite and drawn him closer. A woman’s physical beauty was something he’d disciplined himself to understand as a superficial characteristic and if need be to resist. But physical attractiveness coupled with a sharp intelligence that sparred with his wit, that defended her secrets—well, that was nigh on irresistible. It didn’t help that his body was so keen on remembering the way her hands had felt and less keen on remembering why she’d done it. She’d wanted him distracted. Her gamble had been one-part genius and two-parts desperation. As such, it had and hadn’t worked. He might have stopped her from seducing him, but her strategy had also succeeded in stopping the conversation.
The musicians took the small stage and the quartet settled into their chairs, giving their instruments a final tune-up. The audience went collectively still in anticipation. Silence filled the church and the music began, the plaintive strains of a lone violin announcing Vivaldi’s ‘Adagio in D’.
This was why he didn’t go to concerts. The music was too damn beautiful, too damn soulful. It made him feel, it eroded his edge. It was why he pushed music away, but not Gianna. The music drew her. Beside him, Gianna was enrapt, the willingness to give herself over to the music evident in her eyes, in the soft smile that lingered on her lips over the familiar tune.
She looked over at him and that soft smile became his. He knew a moment’s victory in that smile. He’d managed to steal it from the music. Her mouth began to move, to form words of gratitude. ‘No,’ he stopped her with a whisper and private smile. ‘Don’t even think about saying it, because I can’t imagine what you might want next.’
He had no trouble imagining what he wanted next, though. He wanted to make love to her, wanted to show her sex was so much more than a weapon. But not yet. First, he had to show her how dangerous it was to wield, especially for a purported novice in the arts. Was the count’s claim true? If so, it was all the more reason to protect her from herself and from him. Nolan nearly laughed out loud. There was a certain irony to the situation. In London, he was the man most likely to seduce, well, anything. Now, he’d become a protector of virgins.
The adagio ended and the quartet launched their full assault on his senses with their main presentation, the classic Four Seasons: forty-three minutes of mental lovemaking. Nolan did not try to fight it. He gave his imagination free rein. He wanted to pull the pins out of her hair to the languorous melodies of summer, wanted to watch her hair fall in slow accord to the violins’ indolent, lazy strains.
The quartet moved into the rousing melodies of autumn and he imagined dancing her up against the wall of the church, running playful kisses down her neck, over her breasts, kneeling before her and skimming her navel with his lips in a celebration of passion and life before he took her with hard thrusts, to the sharp, icy rhythms of winter, letting passion break over them with the force of an avalanche. He let his eyes slide in her direction. Did she have any idea of the thoughts running through his mind as she sat there? This was why he was dangerous to her, why she should have let him play cards tonight instead. She thought he was her assistant, that she had somehow manoeuvred him, when really he was winter’s wolf and he would ravish her with the slightest of invitations.
Chapter Ten
The music faded in a single, quivering note, followed by the applause of the modest audience. ‘Did you enjoy it?’ Gianna reached for her cloak where it draped over her chair, but Nolan was faster. He h
eld it out for her, letting his hands linger firmly at her shoulders in a gesture that left no room for misinterpretation. This was no subtle brushing of hands that might be dismissed as accidental. This was a man issuing an invitation, and it made her mouth go dry. This particular man didn’t have to ‘invite’, he could have simply announced his intentions. She was technically his and she hadn’t forgotten. Yet, he’d given her the choice.
His voice hovered warm and private at her ear. ‘I did. However, I enjoyed watching you far more.’ She’d known that. She’d felt his gaze on her throughout the concert, hot and intense but she’d not found it repellent or frightening. Just the opposite. Heat had pooled low in her belly as if he were the flame to her match and her pulse had raced at the thought of attracting the attentions of a man like Nolan Gray; a man who was powerful, handsome, skilled in the art of seduction.
She should not be excited by him. What did that say about her? Did such an attraction make her wanton? Did the blood of a courtesan run in her veins, too? Perhaps there truly was no escaping her destiny. The strategist in her whispered the tempting thought: If it is inevitable, why not embrace it, embrace your power? He desires you. Use it to your benefit.
Gianna turned in his grasp, a coy smile on her lips as she raised her eyes to his, her voice pitched husky and low. ‘Was I a worthy subject for your ruminations?’ Her hands rested on the lapels of his coat, against the strength of his chest.
His hands reached behind her neck, drawing the pins from her hair. She could feel the coiffure loosen, a few curls fall. His fingers combed through them, his touch brushing against her neck, sending a shiver of delight down her spine. She suddenly wanted his touch on her everywhere. ‘You were more than worthy.’
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