Beyond Seduction (32 page)

"Good." Her grin went through him as potently as her kiss. "I'll be looking forward to that."

He could not contain his laugh, or the joy that bubbled up behind it. "Brat." He slung his arm around her neck. "Shall I introduce you to the city in the meantime?"

"Oh, yes." She sat straighter on the scarlet cushion, her eyes still glinting with carnal mischief. "I'm sure playing
tour guide would help distract you from the rather formidable size of your discomfort."

So he pointed out the sights as the young Venetian rowed them up the
Canalazzo:
the domed white church of Santa Maria della Salute, the crooked Palazzo Dario with its colored marble front, the Accademia where he'd studied as a young man, and the narrow
rio
that wound through the Dorsoduro district to his favorite small cafe.

"We'll go there," he said, abruptly afire to show her his youthful haunts. "There's a place in the
campo,
the square, where the city's cats laze in the sun. You can't walk up the steps without tripping over them.

I used to spend hours there as a student, trying to catch them in my sketchbook."

"I want to see it," she said with a blissful sigh. "I want to see everything."

He could not miss the adoration in her eyes, but for once he did not regret it. He was too happy to be here. The canal was quiet, the city drowsing in the quiet hour after lunch. A single gondola trailed

behind them with another passenger from their ship, too well bundled for Nic to tell if the figure was

man or woman.

He was thankful for the solitude. For this one magical hour he didn't want to share Venice, or Mary,

with anyone. He found himself wishing he'd leased a palazzo himself, or even taken rooms in a hotel. He'd made his plans so quickly after Mary changed her mind he hadn't stopped to think whether he

really wanted to stay with Sebastian and Evangeline.

He'd been too jubilant to think.

In fact, he'd been more jubilant than wisdom would advise.

Suddenly uneasy, Nic worried his thumb against his teeth while the oarsman adjusted their course to avoid a
traghetto
ferrying a pedestrian to the opposite bank of the canal. The gondolier's motions were smooth, almost hypnotic, the sun flashing off the water and the oar, the prow cutting smoothly through tiny waves.

No, Nic thought, his elation had been perfectly understandable. Mary was a charming bed partner and compan
ion. As pleasure loving as he was, it would have been more surprising if he hadn't been glad.

Plus, there had been her bout of illness on the ship. A stone could not have failed to admire the pluck

with which she'd faced it. She'd seemed so fragile huddled in that bunk—a child, really—putting on her bravest face as he watched her getting weaker, as her skin thinned and paled and her veins stood out in threads of lapis blue.

She'd frightened him, not only for the echo of memories he'd been running from for years, but for

herself. He didn't want to lose
her
: Mary Colfax. Her light was far too bright to leave the world. He had no intention of telling her now, but if she hadn't finally managed to drink and eat, she might have died

on that stupid boat.

Haunted by the thought, he shuddered against a chill that came entirely from within.

"What is it?" Mary asked. "What's wrong?"

He could only shake his head. He knew what moved him wasn't love. He didn't have that in him. This emotion was no more than the primitive male urge to protect those weaker than themselves. Or maybe she called to the artist in him. She was original. Irreplaceable. But he would have felt the same for a crumbling villa or a snippet of ancient song. What he felt wasn't love. It was simply high regard.

Despite the logic of this argument, he could not explain his tenderness away. Giving in to it, he smoothed her curls around her beautiful little head. "We're taking the train home," he declared, "and Perdition take the dust."

*  *  *

The Palazzo Guardi rose from the flickering waters in a fantastical Byzantine-Gothic heap. Its facade was painted the soft brick red Nic informed her was
pastellone
, against which peaked and balconied windows stood out in grimy white Istrian stone. Marking a berth for the gondola to slip into was a line of Venice's trademark spiral-striped mooring posts. On their brief journey up the canal, Merry had seen these listing poles in every color of the rainbow. The Guardis' were a striking green and gold.

Both Nic and the curly-haired gondolier helped her onto the landing where a shallow set of steps led straight out of the water. As a perch, it seemed precarious. The second tread from the top bore the mark of a recent tide.

"Goodness," she exclaimed, "what do they do when it floods?"

Nic laughed as he paid the boatman. 'The same thing their great-grandfathers did. They nail a board over the door and move upstairs."

Still smiling, he lifted a golden lion's head doorknocker and let it fall. After a short wait, a portly man in a suit admitted them with a bow. "Ah.
Signor Craven e signorina Colfax. Buon giorno.
I believe signor Locke is out, but the other signora is working in the
portego
."

Nic nodded and thanked him in fluent Italian. Assuring the man they could find their way, he led Merry down a broad hall toward some ancient marble stairs. "That's signor Vecchi," he explained, "the countess's man of business." He waved at the doors they were passing, one of which was open to reveal

a number of straw-filled packing crates. "For five generations, the Guardis have exported Venetian glass around the world. This floor serves as their warehouse and their office."

"They conduct their business from their home?"

"That's not unusual here, Duchess. Unlike the English peerage, Venetians are proud of being merchants. To them, the arrangement is practical."

Who would have thought it? she mused, then caught her breath as the musty, chilly stairwell widened

into something quite extraordinary. Here, on a landing of colorful inlaid stone, four tall quatrefoil windows overlooked a sunny courtyard. Opposite this sudden flood of illumination, two flights of steps led grandly up from either side, their balusters carved in.beautiful gray-white marble.

"One more flight," Nic said. "Then you'll really see a show."

The prediction was no exaggeration. Struck dumb, Merry panted to a halt when she reached the top. The central hall, or
portego
, was a vast, high corridor that extended from the front of the palazzo to the back. Rows of leaded windows lit either end. Between them lay an excess of ornament she'd never seen anything to equal. Garlands and festoons and gilt and more shiny patterned floors fought for attention from her confused and dazzled eyes. What surfaces weren't adorned with stuccowork had been skillfully painted to resemble it. Doors were embellished in this fashion, and lintels, and the frieze at the upper border of the walls. No less than six cut-glass chandeliers hung from the copiously frescoed ceiling, which itself was a maze of reality and trompe l'oeil.

The effect was both hideous and gorgeous, like a rose dipped in gold and hung with diamonds. Its sheer exuberance was all that kept her English aesthetic from revolt.

Dwarfed by this grandeur, but seeming at home in it, Evangeline knelt atop a tall wooden scaffold, obviously retouching the central fresco on the ceiling.

She cried out at seeing Nic and scrambled handily down, a process made easier by her simple white smock and loose brown trousers. Braided back, her straight dark hair framed the asymmetrical drama of her face.

Merry couldn't help thinking the outfit suited her a good deal better than the dowdy gown she'd worn to Anna's.

"Nic!" Evangeline exclaimed, pulling Merry's lover into a hug. "How glad I am to see you! Seb's been totally impossible. Maybe you can make him behave."

"I doubt that." Smiling wryly, Nic stroked the edge of Evangeline's paint-streaked hair. No image could have pointed up the interests they shared more clearly. To Merry's discomfort, Evangeline turned her head and pressed a lingering kiss into his palm.

"Nic," she said, her voice husky, "must you always be neutral territory?"

Nic pursed his mouth, but did not seem annoyed. "I've discovered neutrality is the safest position around you two." Turning back, he laid his hand behind Merry's shoulder. "You remember Mary, of course."

"Of course." Evangeline broke into a laugh. "Forgive me, Mary, but you should see your face! Like a

little doe who's lost its mother." She pressed steepled fingers to her lips.

"You mustn't mind me and Nic. We've known each other forever. Our flirtation doesn't mean a thing."

Merry's brows rose in response. Nic's flirtation might not mean a thing to him, but she harbored no illusions about Evangeline's.

"Mm," said Nic, his tone as skeptical as Merry's thoughts, "a bit less of that, Evie. We've come for a

nice visit, not to play your games."

"
Mi displace
." Evangeline murmured, probably under the impression that Merry would not understand. The limits of her finishing school Italian aside, the apology seemed spurious. Evangeline's eyes were glowing with enjoyment.

"Shall I show you to your rooms?" she asked.

"Room," Nic corrected, his temper beginning at last to show. "Mary and I will stay together."

Merry was surprised to find herself blushing at his insistence, especially in front of a woman who, the

last time they'd met, had been with a different man.

Evangeline, however, was made of sterner stuff. She smiled as if Nic's anger were a compliment. "The countess suggested I give you the red suite. There's a bedroom and a parlor. Hence my use of the term 'rooms.'"

Rather than apologize, Nic hummed as he had before. Like Merry, he seemed to know Evangeline had been hoping to get a rise. Unlike Merry, though, his annoyance had disappeared. To her, this was surer evidence of their friendship than any kiss.

"Where is the countess?" Merry asked as they followed a slightly more modest flight of stairs to the floor above.

Evangeline answered with a shrug. "Morocco, last I heard. I doubt she'll return to Venice until the
Festa delta Sparesca.
" She smiled, fey and feminine, over her shoulder. "
La Serenissima
will be too cold for

her old bones until then."

Though Merry had no idea when the festival of asparagus might occur—if that was indeed what Evangeline said—she received this news with a sinking stomach. Without the presence of the older woman, however irregular a countess she might be, Evangeline's wildness would not suffer any check. Obviously, the woman intended to seduce Nic. Whether he would resist was beyond Merry's power to guess. He seemed to have grown more attached to her of late but, in Nic's moral view of the world, attachment might not imply exclusivity.

She fisted her hands in her skirts as Evangeline showed them around their quarters, barely taking in the faded crimson silk walls and the huge canopied bed. She hadn't a leg to stand on as far as objecting went. She'd presented herself to Nic as a free spirit, eager for adventure. She'd sworn her heart was in no danger of being lost.

It wasn't Nic's fault she'd been lying.

To herself, as well, she thought with a burning shiver of awareness. She'd been destined to fall the day they met.

In his canny way, Nic was sensitive to her mood. "All right," he said as the door shut behind Evangeline with a thunk, "let it out before you burst."

Merry gritted her teeth. The last thing she wanted was to rail at him like a fishwife. One little complaint, however, was more than she could restrain.

"Never in my life," she said, "have I stared at anyone like a doe!"

Nic laughed and embraced her from behind. "She was trying to make you angry."

"Well, she succeeded!" She turned in his arms, her fury abruptly spilling over. " 'Oh, you mustn't mind me and Nic. We've known each other forever.' As if I were some sort of interloper! As if she owned you!"