The Girl Behind the Mask (28 page)

What had possessed me? I didn’t know where he was. I had assumed he was emailing me from a private office, but he might have been sitting at a desk in the middle of a room full of people. They might have been looking over his shoulder while he typed the instructions I carried out that morning. They might even have been in on the joke, adding their own depraved suggestions. The house might have been full of specially invited perverts.

Why had I let myself get into this position again? The critical voice inside my head was full of answers, of course. At best I must have been trying to restore my self-esteem after the shock of losing Steven, thinking that if I could persuade someone as rich and good-looking as Marco Donato to love me, I would have proved myself worth more than the affections of a penniless academic. Or perhaps I just liked being humiliated. Perhaps I wanted Marco to make me cross the boundaries I once thought I would never cross. After all, wasn’t I the one who had suggested the sex-club trip that led to my break-up with Steven? No matter what I told myself, part of me must have
wanted
to go to that club. I could not deny I had been mind-blowingly turned on by my first and last Sapphic encounter. I still thought about that threesome, too. The two men with the girl in the collar.

I was so confused. I sat at the kitchen table and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. What did I want? Was my true nature that of an exhibitionist? A voyeur? A masochist? Maybe I was a little of all of those things. But above all I wanted to be understood. I wanted to be loved. Marco had seemed to understand me, but now that I had put my cards firmly on the table, he was gone.

I sat in the kitchen for a long time but when I heard the bells of the Chiesa dei Carmini strike two, I forced myself up from the table and into the bedroom. I had not finished my angry email to Marco but there seemed to be little point. Such furious bleating wouldn’t change his mind. Maybe I had to change
my
mind. I had to think about what I really wanted. Maybe I had to avoid these puppetmaster men and find myself someone worth loving for real.

Chapter 41

When I finally got to sleep, I dreamed I was back at the palazzo, but this time the usual man in the mask wasn’t there to greet me. Instead, my masked lover was Steven. His eyes may have been covered but his smile was unmistakable. He took me by the hand and I followed him into the library. We weren’t to be on our own there. Curled up in a chair like the cat she longed to be was Kitty, Steven’s erstwhile student and lover. She was wearing that black cat’s-eye mask she had been wearing at the sex club.

‘Do it for us,’ said Kitty. ‘Show us what you did for him.’

I sat down at the desk. My laptop was already there. It was open. The direct-message window was flashing. The instructions were already coming thick and fast. I sat still. I read them but I didn’t act. Steven read over my shoulder and murmured encouragement. Kitty, growing bored of my inaction, got up from her chair.

‘Let us help you,’ she said.

She slipped her hand into the neckline of my white dress and made a grab for one of my breasts. She squeezed it hard. With her other hand she pulled my hair until my face was tipped back towards her. She kissed me with such ferocity, my lips bled.

Steven joined her. Four hands all over my body. No fraction of my flesh was out of bounds to them. I did not move as they stroked and kissed and pinched me. I let myself be moulded entirely as they wished. My eyes were on the laptop’s screen, where new instructions blinked into life every couple of seconds.

Put your fingers inside her. Pinch her nipples. Twist her clit.

I realised they were not instructions for me. They were for Steven and Kitty. It wasn’t about what I should do to myself this time, it was about what they should do
to
me. I was to be entirely passive.

I lifted my arms obediently as Steven stripped off my dress. I was subservient as a small child while Kitty helped me step out of my underwear before she buried her face greedily in my soft pubic hair. I went limp as Steven suckled at my tits. I could barely feel Kitty’s fingers inside my vagina.

After a while, it was as though I was no longer in my body at all. My flesh was just a conduit for other people’s desires. Kitty’s. Steven’s. Marco’s. Anybody’s. Meanwhile, I floated somewhere above them, just observing their frantic efforts to please themselves and, I suppose, to somehow please me too. My body reacted like an automaton. Enough kissing, stroking and licking would make me come. It was a matter of persistence. Push the right buttons. Keep pushing. Win the prize.

I glanced down to where Steven was pleasuring himself frantically as he watched Kitty lick at my clit with ferocious determination to make me come first. On the screen, Marco’s words flickered menacingly.

Lick her. Penetrate her. Make her come for me. Make her come.

Steven came first. His face was anguished and ecstatic all at once as he unleashed his load all over my body. Kitty whooped in delight when she saw it. She dived to catch his semen on her tongue. She licked at the places where Steven’s cum had splashed onto my body like an animal desperate for cream. She licked a pathway up the centre of my chest and came to a halt, looking into my eyes. Staring into them.

‘Sarah? Sarah? She isn’t looking at me. Steven? Marco? Where has she gone?’

Chapter 42

12th June, 1753

Shortly after the night at the Ridotto, Giacomo, as I now called him, wicked man, went away. He said he had business in the north. When I asked him what kind of business, he wouldn’t tell me. I had learned not to press him for details. Likewise, I closed my ears to the gossip I heard about him everywhere from the kitchen to the front pews of the church.

I suppose I should have stayed at home, but I was used to my freedom now and the idea of even one night without escape from my father’s house was something I could not bear. So this time, when I was supposed to be asleep, I set out along the canal in the opposite direction to Giacomo’s hovel. I went to Ernesta’s house.

She was happy to see me. ‘I want for intelligent female company,’ she said. ‘Much as I like most of the men who visit me, men very rarely talk of anything but themselves.’

We sat in her salon and talked of everything. I definitely wanted her to talk about herself. I wanted to know how she had come to be so rich when she claimed she started life on the church steps, abandoned by her mother, wrapped in a piece of rich silk.

‘Which suggests to me that my mother was a businesswoman herself,’ she cackled.

Ernesta was taken in by a wealthy family, who raised her among their servants with the hope that one day she would make a fine lady’s maid. That was not to come to pass. When Ernesta was thirteen, the man of the house took a fancy to her. The price of Ernesta’s silence was her first pearl.

‘This one,’ she said, plucking the bead from her jewellery box. ‘Not much for my maidenhead, eh?’

Every jewel in the box had a similar story behind it.

‘This bead was the price of my arse,’ she said, handing me a ruby. Then an uncut sapphire. ‘This was the cost of three days tied to a bed.’

‘What about the pearl you gave me?’ I asked her.

‘That was from Magherini, the duke. It was the price of a first kiss.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Darling, you don’t know how well I kiss. Besides, Magherini has exotic tastes. He considered the pearl a big deposit on further adventures.’

Her eyes clouded over. I could tell she was upset at a memory.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I want to show you something different.’

She pulled me to my feet and we walked down the gallery round her courtyard.

‘There is my true pearl,’ Ernesta told me then.

Though it was late, a small girl was playing in the courtyard. Her golden hair was brighter than any mirror in the house. She danced round the fountain, stopping from time to time to flick water into the air so it glittered like diamonds as it fell.

‘All this will be hers and she will never have to take a man to her bed unless she wants to. She can be the woman she wants to become. She can be a mother or a musician, a merchant or a muse. Hell, I don’t even care if she wants to become a nun. She’d look lovely in the outfit.’ Ernesta laughed.

‘Wouldn’t it be hard for her to make a good marriage anyway?’ I asked. ‘I mean . . .’

‘With my reputation? Oh Luciana. You dear sweet little thing. You would be surprised at what people are prepared to overlook for a house like this. Don’t you think I get marriage proposals every day of the week? Respect has nothing to do with “good” marriages. Neither does reputation. It’s all about the consolidation of two fortunes. Respect? Huh. The freedom to become what you wish to become and to choose whom you want to share your bed with is worth the respect of a million doges. In any case, the Doge is a particularly close friend . . .’

We both laughed at that.

Downstairs in the courtyard, the little girl protested as a nurse appeared to take her to bed.

‘Go to bed!’ Ernesta called down to add her weight to the side of sense. ‘It’s late.’

‘Mamma, Mamma! I have learned a new song.’

The girl sang a snatch of a gondolier’s lament, but with lyrics I had not expected. Even Ernesta had to blush.

‘Wherever does she learn those things?’ Ernesta asked. She squeezed my arm.

‘Come along. There is someone else I suppose you should meet, if only to know to avoid him outside my four walls.’

Ernesta paused so that her monkey could climb onto her shoulder. I had already noticed that evening that instead of its usual jewelled collar, the monkey was wearing a string of pearls. The Duke’s pearls. Ernesta held on to the monkey’s tail as we walked to the salon on the
piano nobile
. The monkey held the largest pearl – the pendant – like a blackbird’s egg in one tiny old-man’s hand of a paw.

‘You might want to wear your mask,’ Ernesta told me.

I did as I was told and when a footman opened the door I waved Ernesta through ahead of me. After all, I was still a boy.

‘The Duke Magherini,’ said the footman with due ceremony. It was the man who had bought Ernesta the pearl that now lay in my pocket. I was fascinated to see him. In my head he was a swashbuckling adventurer. Handsome and suave. In reality, he was shorter than I expected. He was not handsome. He had a weak chin. His eyes were close-set and mean. No wonder he has to buy kisses, I thought, a little cruelly.

The Duke blanched when he saw the monkey on Ernesta’s shoulder.

‘Last time he was here Umberto bit him,’ Ernesta whispered. ‘But it was his own fault. No one holds Umberto’s tail except me.’

‘You’ve brought that bloody monkey,’ the Duke complained.

‘Umberto says he has forgiven you,’ Ernesta replied smoothly. ‘But you will have to remember to behave yourself in his company.’

‘And who is he?’ The Duke nodded in my direction.

‘A relation,’ said Ernesta. ‘From Turin.’

I bowed.

‘I didn’t expect to have to share you,’ the Duke told her.

‘Come now,’ said Ernesta. ‘You have never really had me to yourself.’

The Duke seethed through the whole of his visit. He threw dark looks in my direction all the while. I said nothing. Ernesta led the conversation. She talked of music and art. She teased the Duke about his extravagant hat. He did not like to be teased.

Worse still, I imagined the Duke felt he had bought Ernesta’s time with those pearls but the fact that Umberto was wearing them was obviously meant to tell him Ernesta expected more than baubles for her heart.

Eventually, the Duke gave up.

‘It’s late,’ he said. ‘If your relation isn’t tired enough to go to bed, then I certainly am.’

Ernesta made a show of protesting at his departure but when she went to kiss the Duke, Umberto hissed and chattered.

‘You are still not in his favour,’ said Ernesta.

‘Will I ever be properly in yours?’ the Duke replied.

‘He loves you,’ I observed when the Duke had left us and Ernesta was undressing again.

‘Perhaps he does, but he is brash and too bold and often angry.’

‘Angry with you?’

‘Angry with womankind.’

Ernesta took my hand and turned her face towards me so that I could see the faint shadow of a bruise now that her make-up was gone.

‘He has passions far too violent for my taste. I believe he will not stop until he throttles some poor girl. That is why I will not see him alone again.’

I was aghast. I had read of such passions but hoped never to experience them myself. ‘Why do you receive him at your house at all?’

‘Because having him as an enemy would be even more dangerous than having him as a lover. At least when he is in my home, I can see exactly how he plans to harm me.’

I shuddered at the thought.

‘I prefer my lovers to be gentle.’

She combed out her hair. I watched from a chair in the corner. After a while she put down her brush and crossed the room to take my hands.