Your Scandalous Ways Read online

  Francesca raised her glass. “I’ll be thankful for that, in any event.”

  They clinked the glasses and drank.

  “But now let us set aside for the moment this provoking man who rescues you, and so stupidly declines to have his way with you,” Giulietta said.

  “Set him aside, indeed.” Francesca gave a rueful laugh. “Easy for you to say. You haven’t seen him yet. You haven’t seen him wet.”

  “Sooner or later I will see him,” Giulietta said. “Then I will understand why he made you break your rules. For now he matters only because he saved your life. To me the important question is, Who wants you dead?”

  That night, at La Fenice

  La Gazza Ladra. Again.

  Lurenze. Again.

  But not in the place of honor, James noted as he followed the Austrian governor Count Goetz into Mrs. Bonnard’s box. In the choice seat, on Mrs. Bonnard’s right, sat a tawny-haired Russian officer. To Mrs. Bonnard’s left sat her little friend Giulietta. The two women had their heads together and whispered behind their fans.

  The officer, who must have some understanding of the ways of women, made no attempt to claim her attention but chatted with the Russian consul, who sat nearby.

  Lurenze, who obviously hadn’t spent any time cogitating upon the conundrum that is Woman, sat halfway across the box. He watched her in the fixed way a dog watches at a table for a scrap to fall.

  Exactly like a dog, he was not easily diverted. Goetz, whom protocol obliged to introduce James, tried several times before he succeeded in obtaining his highness’s attention, and then the prince could barely conceal his impatience at the interruption. He did look at James, though, during the introduction, and let out a little sigh. James could guess what he saw: yet another rival.

  But if his highness felt discouraged, it wasn’t enough to make him leave. He forgot James as soon as the introductions were over and returned his adoring gaze to Mrs. Bonnard.

  The women, James knew, were fully aware of his arrival. Though they did not turn their heads, he noted the subtle change in their posture, the coming-to-alertness that told him they were paying close attention to what went on behind them.

  Ignoring his aide’s whispered attempts to explain where Mr. Cordier fit in the English aristocracy, Lurenze addressed his lady love. “Madame, so crowded here it is. Perhaps you wish for some air.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, throwing the briefest glance his way—and affecting not to notice James. “I don’t find it stuffy at all.”

  “This is because you sit at the very edge,” Lurenze said. “I observe this with great alarms. Count Goetz, you must explain to the lady of the danger, to make herself exposed. After what happens last night, it cannot be wise to appear where everyone can look.”

  “I want them to look,” she said, turning a lazy smile upon the Russian beside her. “Let them see I’m not afraid. Let them see that I will not hide or run away.”

  “I agree,” James said. Suppressing a prickle of irritation—Did she smile at every male that way?—he made his way to the front of the box, Goetz in his wake. “For Mrs. Bonnard to hide herself would be a crime.”

  The two feminine heads turned his way in graceful unison.

  “Mr. Cordier,” Bonnard said coolly. “You have set aside your studies to visit us? How flattering.”

  “I have told him he must,” said Count Goetz. “If not for him—”

  “Let’s not dwell on unpleasant subjects,” James cut in. “Please be so good as to present me to the ladies.”

  “Yes, do, sir,” said Bonnard. “Giulietta has been dying to meet my intrepid neighbor.”

  “Dying isn’t strictly necessary,” James said as he bowed over Giulietta’s hand.

  “He says that now,” Mrs. Bonnard told her friend. “But you know what I had to do to get his attention.”

  Through this exchange, Count Goetz somehow managed to effect proper introductions.

  “This is the man?” The officer, who turned out to be Count Vimstikov, rose. “Mr. Cordier, may I shake your hand? You have my gratitude. Indeed, I think I speak for everyone here—perhaps all of Venice—when I give you my heartfelt thanks.”

  Being an old hand, James had no trouble concealing his surprise. He’d been thanked before, yes, and often, usually in the form of money or valuables. Public thanks were altogether new to him.

  True, he’d dutifully reported the crime not only to Goetz but to the British consul general, Mr. Hoppner. While James customarily worked behind the scenes, this was not the sort of episode—given the victim and its happening in front of a pair of gondoliers—one could keep secret in Venice. Besides, if it turned out to be an ordinary crime, unconnected with his assignment, the Austrian governor’s men were best qualified to solve it.

  Since everyone seemed to assume it was an ordinary if inexplicable crime, their thanking James was reasonable and normal.

  He hoped they were right—that would simplify matters—but he doubted it. The crime didn’t seem ordinary to him. Worse, it was completely unexpected. He’d received no hint that her life was in danger. He’d merely happened to be in the right place at the right time.

  If he had not happened to be there…

  But he shook off that thought as Lurenze at last remembered his manners and added his thanks to the general gratitude for the harlot’s preservation.

  “But these heroisms should not be necessary,” his highness added. “For the woman alone to travel in the nighttime is always dangerous.”

  Count Goetz defended Venice’s policing methods, concluding with, “This was a shocking aberration, your highness. I assure you that we are investigating.” He approached the prince to explain exactly what was being done. The Russian consul joined them. National interests apparently led Count Vimstikov to graciously yield the place of honor to James, and join the others who surrounded the prince—and to his evident annoyance, blocked his view of his beloved.

  James started to sit in the vacated chair but, “Not there,” Mrs. Bonnard said, rising. “You had better take my chair and sit between us. Giulietta wants to feel your muscles.”

  Giulietta smiled sweetly up at him. “We argue that only men who work very hard have them. I must prove for myself.”

  “Well, if it’s for scientific reasons,” James said.

  This set of chairs being drawn up close to the rail of the box, they had little space for maneuvering. He was aware of the swish of silk as Bonnard brushed against him. He caught her scent again, a gossamer-light lure inviting a man to discover its source. Her skin? Her hair? He had to concentrate hard to keep his head from inclining toward her neck. He focused on the pearls she wore, the size of quail eggs, and wondered how many men in the world, let alone in Venice, in this opera box, could afford her.

  James hadn’t much time to calculate the net worth of the males in the vicinity, because the shushing started soon after he took his seat.

  On stage, the evil mayor was about to ravish poor Ninetta.

  This was one of the good parts.

  Mr. Cordier was the only man in Francesca’s opera box who was truly paying attention to the opera. The rest merely bided their time, keeping silent only because the Italians would kill them otherwise. Not until the proper moment—when the audience in loud bravas or bravos or hoots, catcalls, and fruit and vegetable missiles, gave its opinion of the proceedings—not until then might normal activity resume.

  Her neighbor’s attention remained on the stage well after everyone else’s had left it, however. This gave Francesca far too much time with nothing to distract her from her pulsing awareness of the size of him and the scent of him and the sheer maleness of him, mere inches away.

  He was, beyond question, the most masculine male there. She had no doubt the others knew it, too.

  Men are like wolves and dogs, her mentor, Madame Noirot, had told her. Some are leaders; some are followers. You will notice how one man arrives upon the scene and the others defer. Either that, or
they fight for position. The man you want is the one who is most powerful, the one to whom the others defer.

  At the moment, Francesca was well aware that the most powerful male in the Fenice sat beside her.

  Ignoring her.

  She was not used to being ignored, and that was only the start of her vexations. Equally galling was his becoming completely engrossed in the opera, as she always wanted to do but must not, because to sit rapt through the whole performance was gauche.

  He cared nothing for what was or wasn’t gauche.

  But he had all the advantages: He was (a) an aristocratic male, and they all did as they pleased, (b) a scholar, and they were allowed to be eccentric, and (c), most important, the man at the top of the male pecking order, who answered to nobody.

  A younger son was not at the top for her, she told herself, even though his presence diminished every other man about him.

  He was not at the top for her, despite his broad shoulders and rampant masculinity and wicked black curls begging her fingers to come and play.

  He was not at the top for her, even if he had saved her life. He’d had his chance to enjoy her gratitude, and he’d declined. No man got a second chance with her.

  She rose.

  All the men rose as well—he, absently, still watching events unfolding onstage. She resisted the childish urge to swat him with her fan—or a chair—and made her way to Lurenze. At her approach, the other men gave way, and the prince’s beautiful face lit up like the sun.

  She gave him her most dazzling smile.

  James found Giulietta amusing. In ordinary circumstances—for instance, had he been one of these other men—he would have preferred her uncomplicated good nature to the mysteries and moodiness of her friend.

  But James was not yet permitted an ordinary life. When he had one, it would be in England. And when he chose someone cheerful and uncomplicated, he’d choose a fresh young maiden who’d brighten rather than add to the murk within him. She’d remind him that not all of life—or even most of life—was about deceit, treachery, greed, and unnatural deaths. She’d prove to him that not everyone spent his time navigating un mare di merda, as this mission was rapidly becoming.

  He was still, as usual, trying not to drown in that sea. And so he couldn’t simply turn his charm upon Giulietta and look forward to a cheerful romp between the sheets.

  He was obliged to play cat and mouse with her provoking friend, who was now getting Lurenze’s hopes up, not to mention other parts of his anatomy.

  “You resist her but you want her,” Giulietta whispered behind her fan.

  “What man doesn’t want her?” James said with a shrug. “I wonder how you can be friends with her.”

  “Most of the time we do not like the same kinds of men,” she said. “For instance, for myself, I like Lurenze very much more than she does.”

  “He is deemed classically handsome, I believe,” James said. He reputedly has brains the size of a squirrel’s, but he’s the prettiest squirrel-brain in town.

  “He is so sweet, an unspoiled child,” said Giulietta. “That is so rare.”

  “That won’t last long,” James said.

  “I know,” Giulietta said wistfully.

  “I collect you deem it unethical to poach on your friend’s preserve,” he said. “Even though it’s a vast preserve. I should think there were plenty of men to go around, and she wouldn’t miss one or two or ten.”

  “She would not mind but he can see no one else,” Giulietta said. “His life has been too wholesome, you see. And so he finds attractive the women who look dangerous, exotic. Alas, I am cursed with a face like a child.”

  “Not always a curse, surely,” James said. “Some men find a wholesome countenance appealing.” I certainly do.

  “But not he,” she said. “Stupid boy! He cannot guess what fun we could have, how much I can teach him. But she will break his heart. I know, sooner or later, someone must, and she at least would not be cruel—and yet I cannot help dreaming a little, of what might be.”

  “You weren’t dreaming of killing off the competition, I trust,” James said.

  She looked at him, the doe eyes incredulous. “You mean Francesca? You think I would send those animals to kill my friend—because of a man?”

  It was amazing how much scorn a woman could pack into the three-letter word man.

  James laughed. “There’s a setdown if ever I heard one. Men are so far beneath contempt that they’re not worth killing.”

  “You must not misunderstand,” she said. “Mine is not a gentle soul. I am Italian, through and through. If I learn who this was who tried to kill her, this one I would kill—man or woman. I would do it with a smile, too, upon my so sweet and innocent face. And even the Austrians would not convict me.”

  “Mrs. Bonnard has no idea, it seems,” James said. “She insisted it wasn’t her husband.”

  Giulietta shook her head. “I cannot believe it is he. They play a game—and to kill her is to admit he loses.”

  “A game?”

  Giulietta looked away, fanning herself. “That is private, between them.”

  “But you know.”

  “If you wish to know, ask her,” Giulietta said.

  Francesca allowed herself a quick glance at the front of the box, where Mr. Cordier and Giulietta were engrossed in their tête-à-tête, their two dark heads bent together. She felt a sharp stab, too much like an emotion she hadn’t experienced in years and which she’d believed herself immune to. What she felt was mere pique, she told herself, not jealousy. Giulietta was welcome to him.

  Francesca turned back to the prince. “Perhaps, after all, I am a little foolish,” she said.

  “This is impossible,” he said gallantly.

  She rearranged her posture to offer him a better view of her breasts. “One doesn’t wish to seem cowardly,” she said. “I’ve always believed in facing whatever trouble came my way. Still, I’ve never been in quite this situation before. It’s possible I’m not thinking logically. Perhaps there is a chance of trouble—a small one, I don’t doubt, because the Austrians are notoriously efficient.”

  “Notorious, yes,” Lurenze said in an undertone. “Always marching, so stiff. So many rules. Everything must be so. I tell them jokes. They never laugh. They are too much like my father.”

  “I am sure they will find these bad men very soon,” she said. “Venice is so small. No one can keep secrets here. No one can hide for very long, and the Venetian Lagoon is well patrolled. Still, they haven’t yet found the villains—or their bodies,” she added, as her mind painted a vivid image of her attacker, his thick neck caught in Mr. Cordier’s crushing grip. “Until that’s settled, perhaps it would be wiser not to invite trouble. Perhaps I should not travel without a male escort—at least for the time being.”

  “Madame, we are in complete accord, in this, as in so much else. If you…” He trailed off, his smile fading as his gaze slid away from her face and traveled upward.

  At the same moment she became aware of a large body behind hers, though she couldn’t see it without turning her head, which she refused to do. She felt it, though, the awareness thrumming along her nerve endings.

  “Mrs. Bonnard, a word, if you please.” The deep voice behind her carried the unmistakable and un-fakeable accents of the English privileged classes.

  She turned her head a very little bit, offering only her profile, and said coolly, “Only a word, Mr. Cordier? What word can that be, I wonder?”

  He bent and brought his mouth close to her ear. “Andiamo.”

  At the sound, so inexpressibly Italian, so intimate, tiny electric shocks danced over her skin.

  She squelched the irrational thrill, reminding herself that there was nothing romantic or even intimate about a man telling a woman, Let’s go.

  She turned to stare him down, no easy task when the deep blue eyes—not in the least abashed or apologetic—stared right back, and she was placed in the undignified position of tilting her h
ead back to look up.

  “To put it in a nutshell,” he said. Unhurriedly he straightened. He smiled a very little, as though at a private joke.

  She looked away in time to see Lurenze’s uneasy expression turn to obstinacy. He was a prince, after all, and as naïve as he was, surely he knew how to put an upstart in his place.

  “The opera isn’t over, Mr. Cordier,” she said, refusing to adopt his confidential tones. They shared no secrets, would never do so. “I’m not ready to leave.”

  “Madame is not ready to leave,” said Lurenze.

  Cordier ignored him. “Use your head, madam,” he said. “In the crush when everyone else leaves, any villain might easily accost you and escape in the confusion. You can always see the opera at another time, if you’re wild to find out how it comes out. Or I can tell you.”

  She did not tell him that she knew how it came out, having seen it more times than she could count.

  “I’m not a coward and I won’t run away,” she said. “I refuse to let my life be ruled by a lot of criminals.”

  “Madame does not wish to leave at this moment,” Lurenze said. “When she so wishes, I shall escort her to any place of her choosing. Count Goetz will supply the soldiers to guard.”

  Cordier finally looked at him. The prince reddened under his gaze but showed no signs of backing down.

  “You are exceedingly gracious to offer, your highness,” Cordier said. “But even if it were not beneath your dignity to play guard dog, I know you would not wish to endanger her inadvertently.”

  Lurenze stiffened as though he’d been slapped. “Endanger? What is your meaning?”

  “It is possible that the attack was the work of insurrectionists, revolutionaries,” said Cordier. “As your excellency knows, such persons choose important targets, celebrated people. You are a prince, heir to the throne of Gilenia, whereas I am of no importance whatsoever.”

  “I will agree that Mr. Cordier is of no importance whatsoever,” Francesca said. “Nonetheless—”