Chance the Winds of Fortune

by Laurie McBain

  With his princely airs and beautiful face he had enchanted the jaded ladies of Venice when he’d acted as escort for them while their husbands had purchased elsewhere their own private amusements. By a lady’s side he had served as escort, maid, confidant and companion, court jester and lover—always at his lady’s beck and call. Perhaps Le Principe Biondo had played the cicisbeo too well, and a jealous husband had rid himself of a rival. Or had an enraged noblewoman and former protectress wanted her lover back—and had been scorned instead? Had Le Principe Biondo insulted the wrong person, perhaps cast his eyes at some churlish gentleman’s wife or mistress? He’d had the reputation of being contemptuous and jeering of those he thought beneath his dignity, and of those he didn’t need to toady up to. Too often, while intoxicated from imbibing too freely of port wine and punch, Le Principe Biondo had given rein to his tongue, which had, more often than not, been coated with disparaging remarks that were bitingly sarcastic. No one had been exempt from his virulence, except perhaps for La Rosa Triste, although no one was the wiser about their personal relationship, and what passed between them in the luxurious palace they rented just off the Grand Canal.

  “Lui è morto! Le Principe Biondo è morto!” The shrill cry sliced through the dark shadows of the canal as the gondola carrying La Rosa Triste slid beneath a bridge crowded with onlookers, some of whom were mourners. Roses floated down around the gondola as it reappeared on the other side and slipped farther down the canal, with wails of grief following in its wake.

  Suddenly a low laugh escaped from the black-clad figure, and as the slim shoulders began to shake, the laughter built into a crescendo of uncontrolled mirth. The gondolier nervously crossed himself as the eerie laughter continued, until finally it broke down into deep sobs of despair that left the cloaked mourner gasping for breath.

  With a shaking hand La Rosa Triste picked up the single rose that had fallen onto her lap, pressing her lips to it as she breathed in its sweet fragrance. He was dead. She had seen him buried this very day, and he had left her alone in their exile. How dare he do this to her? How dare he leave her to suffer alone? God, if she only could drag him up from the grave she would. Damn him anyway, he had no right to die!

  The gondola nudged against the landing in front of an elegant and strangely dignified baroque palazzo. The broad marble steps leading down to the water’s edge were crowded with liveried footmen waiting to assist their mistress from the gently swaying gondola the moment she placed a satin-slippered foot on the carpeted stair.

  Never before had the steps seemed so hard to climb, La Rosa Triste thought as she stumbled slightly, recovering before an attentive footman could reach out. Determinedly, she climbed the last of the steps, sweeping regally into her home through the carved double doors. Across the cold marble flagstones she moved, her black skirts whispering. With a steadying hand placed on the balustrade, La Rosa Triste climbed the curving flight of stairs to her private apartment. Her veiled head was bowed slightly as she entered through the tall doors and her black figure was reflected and multiplied in the mirrored walls, as were the rococo furnishings of the room. Ornately carved and gilded tables and scarlet, silk-covered chairs and sofas filled the room with splashes of color. Sparkling chandeliers with painted flowers hung from the frescoed ceiling above La Rosa Triste, who was standing in silent contemplation of the quivering shadows reflected off the water of the canal below.

  “Mi scusi, signora.” Sophia, La Rosa Triste’s loyal maid and ever-present shadow, spoke softly, almost in a whisper so as not to disturb her beloved mistress. “I tell him, you wish not to see him, but he say you will,” she said, wringing her hands. “I tell him you bury your brother today. You much sad, and you no wish to see him.”

  “Who dares to disturb me?” La Rosa Triste demanded as she looked up, her thoughts broken by her maid’s apologetic voice.

  “I do,” said Conte Niccolò Rasghieri, rising from his seat. The high velvet back of the chair had hidden him from La Rosa Triste’s view. He now came forward as if he had every right to be here in La Rosa Triste’s salon, his casually elegant air and arrogantly held head telling its own story of generations of aristocratic wealth and privilege. He was not a young man, and his years of debauchery and sybaritic indulgences had left their mark on his thin face, in deep grooves that ran from his aquiline nose to his sensual mouth. His lips seemed to have settled into a permanent sneer of contempt and there was a weariness in the slight droop of his shoulders. But it was the tired, jaded expression in his eyes that mirrored his true feelings.

  “Nicki,” La Rosa Triste breathed her friend and lover’s name. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she threw herself into the familiar arms she had known for over fifteen years.

  Looking over her veiled head at the vigilant Sophia, he motioned the maid from the room with an imperious hand, ignoring the old woman’s jealous glare as he completely took over comforting her mistress.

  “He is dead, Nicki,” La Rosa Triste cried. “He has finally left me. What shall I do without him? He was my other half. I shall miss him so, Nicki,” she sobbed, then looked up at the tall conte who held her so securely in his arms. “But I still have you. Always you come when I need you most. Why is that, I wonder,” she asked him, her pale blue eyes glittering strangely through her mask.

  The conte smiled. “Because I do not have to come. Because it is my choice alone, and I do not owe you anything. We have no ties to one another. That is why we are still friends today. We understand one another, my dear. You do not set down rules for me to follow, nor do I for you. I do not sit in judgment on you. I accept you as you are, and you accept me as I am.”

  “Did you never wish that I was not a courtesan?” she asked him, voicing a question on which she’d held her silence for many years. “That I could walk with pride into your home, meet your wife without being shunned?”

  The conte laughed, his hold tightening painfully on La Rosa Triste as she tried to pull away from him, her shoulders stiffening with indignation at his laughter. “God forbid that ever happening. She would bore you stiff, my dear. Besides, you have nothing to be ashamed of, for I sometimes wonder if there is really any difference between the two of you. She calls herself a lady, and you are called a…” He allowed his words to drop off and shrugged his shoulders. “But she has her lovers, as do most ladies of this town. But you, my dear, are at least honest about yourself.”

  “Thank you,” La Rosa Triste said a trifle sardonically. “I never knew I had inspired such admiration in you.”

  “Of course, I suspect that there is more to your past than you will ever let me know about,” he continued smoothly, his tone almost rebuking her for her secrets. “You have many of the airs and graces of a lady bred to the part. But you do not mimic your betters; in fact, many a fine lady of Venice has taken to wearing black in imitation of you—but none do it so well as yourself, madam.”

  La Rosa Triste sighed deeply. “You are so good for me. Already I begin to forget some of my misery. I know you never cared much for my brother, but he was all that I had.” As she spoke, tears were shimmering in her eyes. “And now he is gone, and I have nothing. Nothing! Everything from the past has gone now. I am alone, and soon you will leave me too.”

  “No!” the conte contradicted her, a glint in his eye as he pulled her against him. “I will make you forget, mia rosa triste. You will think of nothing but me. I shall be your every breath from now on. I will have you smiling again, have you crying out with love,” he promised as his mouth descended on hers, forcing her to forget her grief under the onslaught of his rising passion. With a sudden movement of his lean body, he swept La Rosa Triste up into his arms and strode with her into the bedchamber that he knew as well as his own, and, with a gentleness unusual for him, laid her down on the fur-covered bed that he knew so well. With a practiced hand he began to undress her, baring the slim alabaster body that had been swathed in black silk.

&nbs
p; “You are as lovely today as you were fifteen years ago when I first lay with you,” the conte whispered, removing his own clothing as he stood over the bed. He stared down at her smooth skin, so pale and translucent, her breasts as small and delicate as a young girl’s, and he felt his passion as fiery as if he were again a young man of twenty experiencing his first woman. Her glorious silver-gold hair tumbled down around her hips, teasing him with glimpses of soft, secret places.

  “You flatter me, Nicki, but I no longer care about the truth. I know I am not a young girl anymore,” La Rosa Triste admitted, not grieving for her lost youth. “I have lost some of the satin from my skin, but I have gained across the years so much more in experience,” she said, reaching up and pulling him down on top of her. “I can please you far more today than I ever could have at sixteen. That is a fair trade, I think,” La Rosa Triste told him with a promise of pleasures to come before her words could be silenced by his searching mouth. “Now make me forget, Nicki. Make me forget the rest of the world except for us. The memory of no one else must intrude. Not now, Nicki. Not tonight.”

  And so La Rosa Triste forgot her grief. Through the next few weeks she was seen with Conte Niccolò Rasghieri at every ball, carnival, soiree, and amusement held in Venice. From the glittering magnificence of the palazzi lining the Grand Canal, to the squalid gaming hells crowding the narrow back alleys, La Rosa Triste sought her pleasures. Even after the conte left Venice to see to his country estates on the mainland, La Rosa Triste still roamed, restless and searching, looking for someone or something to help her forget.

  But La Rosa Triste’s hell-bent path of self-destruction was to be crossed, and ultimately altered, by a chance encounter, a conversation overheard, which would set into motion a terrifying chain of events neither participant ever could have imagined in his wildest dreams. The repercussions of this encounter would spread far beyond the tranquil canals of Venice.

  It happened at a masque at the Palazzo Chalzini. The Grand Ballroom was crowded with masked revelers from every walk of life, from priests hiding their vows of chastity behind beaked masks and black silk hoods, to impoverished aristocrats and beggars, their true identities and situations in life hidden behind dominoes, to the incredibly wealthy, who could afford to lose vast sums at the gaming tables, their fingers flashing with jewels while they mixed with impunity amongst the rabble.

  La Rosa Triste, dressed in black velvet, with a bloodred rose folded into the silver-gold hair she left un-powdered, moved with graceful assurance from group to group, speaking French, Italian, or English with fluent carelessness as she playfully teased a French count, lost money to an Italian boatman, or berated an English lord for being too bold, even though she knew she might well make an assignation with him before the night was over.

  Like a black widow spider in a dark corner, La Rosa Triste held court with a bevy of admirers, each of whom hoped he might have the good fortune of an hour alone with her. After all, what better claim to make as proof of one’s manhood than to have spent a night of love with La Rosa Triste, a courtesan whose favors even the most titled of gentlemen were sometimes denied? With a crystal goblet brimming with wine in one hand, and a black feather fan held indolently in the other, La Rosa Triste surveyed her kingdom with a cynical eye. The gaudy surroundings and noisy people almost bored her, for she had seen it all before.

  A loud, slightly raucous laugh caught La Rosa Triste’s attention, and she turned her contemptuously amused, pale blue eyes on the woman who had dared to disturb her contemplation. The laugh had emanated from a portly woman, who seemed well used to being the cynosure of all eyes; perhaps in the past she had attracted attention with her beauty, but she now relied upon her range of voice. A black oval mask hid part of her face, although it could not disguise the double chins quivering with her laughter. Her thick hair was powdered and piled high, and it was woven with a string of pearls caught in loops held by ruby and diamond fasteners. A crimson damask gown covered a tightly corseted figure that looked tortured almost beyond human sufferance, but it was not the grand dame’s appearance that now held a spellbound La Rosa Triste’s attention. Rather, it was the name she had just spoken so casually, as if she said it frequently.

  The pale blue eyes pinpointed an indolent young man, who was twirling his discarded mask in obvious boredom as he stood in attendance beside the large woman. He was a handsome boy and could not be more than seventeen, if indeed he was that, but there was a sulky look about him, as if he’d been pampered and petted by his family until he had become a petulant young dandy hanging on to his mama’s skirts. He was the center of attention now, which he obviously enjoyed, since he was visibly preening himself, a self-satisfied smile curving his mouth.

  “…half brother of the duchess, he is,” the contessa was saying, her words carrying across the room to the attentively listening La Rosa Triste. “Unfortunately, there was a slight misunderstanding between the duchess and my late husband, the marquis, who happened to be her father. This is true,” the contessa said with growing emphasis, catching the doubtful look of one of her listeners and shaking a bejeweled hand at her. “I swear it on my own mother’s grave. I was James’s third wife, and he was my second husband, but you know he was much older than I,” she added with a sniff. “The duchess and her sister and brother, who are all English, are from his first marriage. Most unfortunate match, you know, but she was wealthy. But I am afraid,” the contessa continued, eloquently shrugging her thick shoulders, “that the marquis was a bit negligent in his paternal duties to the bambini. But who would have guessed that the little fiery one would someday wed a duke? She was a handful, that one, and such a beauty too. She looked much like my James, and he was quite the proud papa when he finally met her. But her, well,” the contessa said, sadly shaking her head, “she was not one to forget past grievances, or to forgive her papa for his neglect. But the duke, now there is a man. He was far more understanding, you know, and gave James quite a handsome sum for the marriage settlement, let me tell you. But then a man of his great wealth and stature can well afford to see that his in-laws are well provided for. Imagine,” she stated with a proud lifting of her regally coiffed head, “I am the stepmother-in-law of the Duke of Camareigh. A most important man in England. This is the truth.”

  La Rosa Triste stood like a column of black marble as she heard the name she had first sworn never to utter aloud over a decade ago. The very sound of it made her heart swell painfully in her breast, while her cheeks burned with the heat of her emotions.

  “But now that my beloved James has passed away,” the contessa was saying, a delicate lace handkerchief held to her eyes to dab at nonexistent tears, “I thought that the duchess should be informed of her father’s death. And now that his presence has been removed as an obstacle, I thought she should have the opportunity of meeting her brother. It does seem the only decent thing to do, n’è vero?”

  “I’m not sure I wish to go to London,” the half brother in question commented, his mouth settling into a pout of displeasure.

  The contessa reached out with her fan and sharply tapped her son on the wrist. His responding yelp of pain satisfied her. “You hold your tongue. You have not even been invited to London yet. And you would do well to count your blessings if you are, for I have heard that Camareigh, the ancestral home, is no less magnificent than Versailles.”

  “If I am not mistaken, Contessa,” said a doubting dowager sitting next to the contessa in overly polite tones, “has not the marquis been dead for nearly two years now? Why have you not visited this duchess you claim is your daughter-in-law before now?”

  The contessa turned an eye of dislike on the old woman. “I tell you this, Signora Perelli,” she said, for there was no mistaking this meddling Venetian, despite her mask, “and it is most extraordinary, so you may believe me or not.” The contessa shrugged, her simple gesture conveying her lack of interest in the other woman’s opinion. “My stepdaughter, the du
chess, and her husband, the duke, a devil if ever there was one, made a remarkable love match. Amazing, for you know he has a scar running down his face. Oh, he looks, and is, most diabolical,” she added, raising her hands as if in prayer. “But these Inglese, they are the strange ones. I should know, I lived with the marquis for over fifteen years. So cold they are at times, not to mention that country of theirs. Well, as I was saying, it is most uncommon, for the duchess, when I had written, had just given birth to twins. Twins! Can you imagine such a thing? The duke and duchess are not newlyweds; in fact, they have been married for close to twenty years now.”

  “Amazing!”

  “Sì, but who is the father?”

  “The duke,” the contessa replied most assuredly. “They say, and this I have heard from friends in London, and they would know, that twins have been born in the Dominick family for generations. It is not unusual. Also, they say that the twins, a boy and a girl, are both fair-haired like the duke. So I think there is little doubt that they are his. That is why my trip was postponed,” the contessa explained. “The duchess was quite ill from their birth, and I should think so. Twins! And at her age, why it is most…” The contessa’s words trailed off as a strange cry drifted to the silent group. “Che cosa è quello?” she demanded, glancing around before glaring up at her son. “Did you make that awful wail?”

  Young Giulio opened his mouth in surprise, then took a safe step backward as he indignantly protested his innocence. “Of course not, Mama!”

  “Well, I should certainly hope not. I pray I never hear such a screech as long as I live. It sent a shiver up my spine,” the contessa said, fanning herself. “Giulio, go fetch your mama something to sip. I think I am growing faint. Now, where was I? Ah, yes…” the contessa continued, her eyes following her son’s figure as he passed the empty corner where only moments before La Rosa Triste had stood.