Your Scandalous Ways (24 page)

And it leapt lightly onto the gondola. The vessel swayed.

Uliva swore. So did Dumini.

“What would you have me do?” came a familiar, deep voice, indisputably Italian. “When I try to speak to her in a proper place, in her father's house, she storms away in a temper. Here she cannot get away from me.”

With that, Cordier ducked into the
felze
, closed the door, and sank into the seat beside her.

Francesca looked the other way, out of the window while her heart raced with anticipation.

“Very handsome diamonds,” he said, incurably English now.

“The set was made by Nitot,” she said, naming the jeweler who'd assembled gems for French royalty, from Bourbon to Bonaparte and back again.
“Some of the stones belonged to King Louis XIV. It was given to me by a very handsome, amusing, and devoted
marchese
.”

“I know who you mean,” he said. “But my mother's family is older and nobler than his. And my mama will give you a much warmer welcome than his would ever do. His mama is a great snob, because her family is bourgeois. My mama, on the other hand, will be delighted that I've found a wife with exquisite taste in jewelry. She will not fuss over trifles, such as how the jewelry was obtained. And you know I would never fuss, because I've obtained jewelry by more disreputable methods.”

The trouble with him was, he was honest. An honest rogue. She turned to him. He was in elegant evening garb, all black, with a dash of white at the neck and cuffs. He'd taken off his hat, the great tease, and the black curls gleamed in the cabin's lamplight. He knew he had beautiful hair. He knew women liked to tangle their fingers in it. Oh, he was wicked.

“Cordier.”

He took her gloved hand in his. That was not very satisfying. But if she took off her gloves, she must take off his, and then—and then…

“It's time to put the past behind us,” he said. “We're done, both of us, with Elphick. I could never settle down while my comrades were un-avenged. Now they will be. You will be avenged, too. And when matters are finally sorted out, your father will be avenged as well, absolved of the fraud Elphick committed.”

She looked down at the gloved hand holding
hers and frowned. “Are you quite, quite sure it wasn't papa? Because, he is not altogether…reliable, you know.”

“Whatever else your father may or may not have done, that great swindle was planned and executed by your former husband.”

“Papa never let on,” she said. “It was so very clever—and had such spectacular results—that I think he was a little envious and didn't like to admit he'd been a dupe, like everyone else.”

“Never mind,” he said. “That chapter is closed. I should like us to begin a new chapter.”

“I should, too,” she said. “I know you mean well, offering to marry me, but you don't understand. You're a man.”

“I know. It can't be helped.”

“You don't know what it's like for women, to be respectably married. I thought that was freedom—until I moved to the Continent and gave up being respectable. Women, married women, live in a prison of rules and don't even realize it. Respectable women can't do this and can't do that, and if they break the rules they must be very discreet. They must sneak about and be complete hypocrites.”

“That's England,” he said. “This is Italy. And your father and I have drawn up a proper Italian marriage contract—”

“Did the two of you lose your hearing simultaneously?” she said. “Did I not say no? This is so typical—the arrogance of males—”

“—which specifies a
cavalier servente
,” he went on as though she hadn't spoken. He let go of her hand and began to strip off his gloves. “It is un
thinkable for a lady of gentle birth and breeding not to have one. One must have a husband, which is a great bore. And so, to mitigate this oppressive state of affairs, there is the devoted friend, who goes where the lady goes and does her bidding and amuses her and who may or may not be her lover.”

While he talked, his gloves came off.

She looked down at his naked hands, at the long, nimble fingers. She swallowed. “But you cannot be both my husband and my
cavalier servente
,” she said.

“I thought that, if I could contrive not to be a great bore, perhaps you wouldn't require a serving cavalier—or any other supernumerary lovers to augment your happiness.”

She watched the long fingers move to her arm and slide under her shawl. Then she felt those thief 's hands drawing her glove down to her wrist. Carefully he drew the soft kid through her bracelets.

“You say that now,” she said shakily. She believed him, though, in spite of good sense and bad experience. But a woman would believe anything with those clever hands stealing her reason away.

“
Amor mio,
if I cannot keep you amused and happy, I don't deserve fidelity.” He leaned in closer and went to work on her other glove. “And if I cannot be content with one woman who is everything I could ever want—”

“Please don't forget that I am everything
every
man could ever want,” she said.

“Believe me, I will never forget it,” he said. “If I
cannot be supremely happy with you, if I cannot exert myself to make you happy, then I deserve to be cuckolded repeatedly.” The second glove came off. She watched him toss it aside, on top of the others: hers, his.

“You have a point,” she said.

“Then let me proceed to the next point,” he said. His hand crept up to the diamonds at her ear. “As I have shown to your father's satisfaction, I may be a mere younger son but I have done well in my branch of the service.” He toyed with the diamond. “I should be able to keep you in a style—well, not exactly what you are accustomed to, but very near.” He kissed her ear.

“I am not greedy,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Very near is near enough. But you must give me back the peridots.”

He laughed against her neck, and his warm breath tickled her skin. “What, those paltry things?”

“They are the first jewels you almost gave me,” she said. “I shall treasure them for sentimental reasons.”

“Very well, you may have them back. Will you have me, then,
tesoro mio?
” He kissed her neck, in the special place, then lower.

Her mind was turning into warm honey. How could she not have him? she thought dizzily. She'd already risked her life, more than once, for him. Could she not risk her future?

She remembered what Giulietta had said last night, before they fell asleep.

But this is the gamble I take. And I take it with my eyes open.

It was always a gamble, love was.

“I'm thinking it over,” she said.

“Now we're getting somewhere.” He pulled her onto his lap. He bent his head and made a slow, hot trail of kisses over the skin along the edge of her neckline.

“Are you sure you won't be sorry later, that you didn't wed one of those maidens in white dresses?” she whispered.

He pushed down the neckline, and she gasped as his mouth slid over her breast.

“The maidens,” she said weakly. “The clubs. The dining room and the men telling dirty jokes. Hyde Park.”

“The hell with them,” he growled. His tongue grazed the taut peak of her breast. She felt the tug down low, the same she'd felt the first time she saw him, when she didn't know who he was.

Mere lust, perhaps, for an attractive man.

Or perhaps it was the powerful pull to one's soulmate.

She didn't want to resist. Yet she was…afraid.

“And your family?” she said desperately. “Italian mothers. No woman is ever good enough for—”

“Trust me,” he murmured. His hands moved down to her skirt. “She'll like you. She'll say I got the better bargain. How can you talk of mothers at a time like this?”

She didn't want to talk about such things. But she needed to, before she melted away completely. Her mother had died shortly after she was wed. She'd missed her very much. “I like…to be friends with women.”

His hands had slid under her dress, under her petticoat. A part of her was lost, enslaved by his hands, by desire. How long had it been since they'd made love? Yet a part of her thought of friends, so many she'd lost during that ghastly time in her life.

“Giulietta,” she murmured.

“I know,” he said. He lifted his head and gazed into her eyes. “Trust me. We'll be happy. Close the shutters.”

She closed them, squirming as his hands slid up over her garters. She cupped his face and brought it close to hers. “You are too hasty,” she said. “
Baciami
.”

He laughed and kissed her and she tasted the laughter. He was a sinner, too, like her, and unrepentant, like her. He would never be quite respectable. He would never be stuffy. He didn't care if she was a harlot and he wouldn't care if her best friend was one, too. With this man she could be happy.

With this man she could be drunk in an instant on one hot, laughing kiss.

She reached down and unfastened his trouser front. She grasped him and he gasped at her touch. “Who's hasty now?” he said thickly.

“We're nearly at the theater,” she said. She let her hand stroke over the hot length of his cock but she hadn't the patience to toy with him now. He pulled up her skirts and she moved to draw her legs up against his waist. His big, wicked hand stroked over her and “Yes,” she said. “Yes, now.” She wrapped her arms about his neck and kissed him, fiercely, as he pushed into her.

Warmth exploded through her, the warmth of pleasure and happiness and possession. She let go, gave up thinking, gave up her precious control, and let feeling take her where it would.

This one—this man—was to keep, and so she held on, as their bodies pulsed together, as their hearts beat harder and harder, together. She held on, kissing him and laughing through the mad rush to joy. She came to the peak, and then another, and one last time, as he surrendered, too. Together they crested the last wave, and together they gently floated into the quiet of pure happiness.

 

Outside, meanwhile, Uliva and Dumini had taken note of the fact that the shutters were closed though it was an unseasonably warm night and the few clouds passing overhead did not threaten rain.

The two Venetians merely glanced at each other, and patiently took the gondola on an extended detour.

T
he scandal surrounding Lord Elphick's trial proved even more spectacular than the one that had attended his divorce. Newspapers devoted column after column to details of the trial. Mr. Cruikshank and his fellow artists created a feast of images for the print-buying public: Lord Elphick kissing Napoleon's bum, Lord Elphick in a drunken orgy with a group of poxy damsels, Lord Elphick's head as a toadstool growing on a dunghill, Lord Elphick defecating on a fallen Brittania, Lord Elphick stealing food from starving soldiers. These were some of the milder ones.

Each day, when his lordship was taken to Westminster for his trial, the mob pelted the carriage with dead animals and excrement, rotten fruits
and vegetables being deemed insufficient to express loyal Britons' feelings.

The trial was very long—longer than that of Queen Caroline and a good deal more sordid. In the end, to nobody's surprise, he was found guilty.

Still he contrived to cheat justice. On the night before the execution, he was found writhing on the floor of his cell. He'd not been allowed a razor, knife, rope, or even braces, as a precaution against his doing away with himself. Excellent precautions but insufficient. He contrived somehow to get hold of poison. They found him still alive but it was too late. Nothing could be done. He died some hours later, in great agony.

Given the symptoms described in a newspaper clipping one of James's sisters had sent, he decided it must have been arsenic. He also decided it was not suicide. “If he could contrive to get poison,” he told Francesca, “he could contrive to get a pistol or a razor. And of all poisons, to choose arsenic. So hard to get the dose right. I'll wager anything it was a woman. It isn't that hard to poison a prisoner.”

“Even one under vigilant guard?” said his wife. “How would you go about it?”

“I'm not telling,” he said. “If you decide to poison me, you must work it out for yourself, in the time-honored tradition of my ancestors.”

“Well, I shan't try to guess who poisoned him,” she said. “It might have been one of any of the hundreds he used.”

“The ones who didn't run away the instant the scandal broke,” he said.

“His dear Johanna didn't wait that long,” she said. “She was gone before Quentin arrived in London.”

Not long after this conversation, the letters began to arrive. Lord Byron had already written gleefully to Francesca, “At least one of us is vindicated.” He'd enclosed a short poem he'd composed for the occasion, which included several naughty innuendoes about her second husband.

Lord Quentin had written, too, keeping them abreast of proceedings in London and thanking her for helping them complete the case they'd been assembling for many months.

But then, to Francesca's great shock, came letters from old acquaintances and friends. There were letters of thanks and letters of apology.

Most shocking of all was a letter to them both from the King. Having traveled by special courier, it arrived late one day in February, long after the servants had collected the post. James and Francesca were awaiting company: Lurenze and Giulietta were to join them for dinner before they all set out for the opera.

James was lounging on the sofa, studying the
putti.
When they were discussing where to live as a married couple, he'd suggested they remain here at the Palazzo Neroni because the plasterwork had sentimental meaning for him.

Letter in hand, she came to sit beside him. He slid up on the cushions in order to read over her shoulder. Among other things, his majesty thanked her for putting herself in bodily danger on behalf of her country.

“Didn't know that, did you?” James murmured, after they'd read for a moment in stunned silence. “When you were risking your life, trying to save me, you didn't know you were performing a public service.”

“It was very good of Quentin to make me out to be a hero,” she said. “But really, I was only being stupidly in love.”

“It was very good of you to be stupid,” he said. “Stupid, but very good.”

She turned to the next page and read on. “Good heavens!” she said.

“Santo Cielo!
” he said.

“The silly things,” she said. “What can they be thinking?”

“Lord and Lady Delcaire.” James looked at her. “How do you like the sound of that? We are to be ennobled—for state service, no less.”

“
You
are to be ennobled,” she said. “I merely go along as necessary baggage.”

“So you do, you baggage.”

“Oh, and I was just getting used to being Mrs. Cordier.”

“There are several Mrs. Cordiers,
mia cara
,” he said. “And more to come, undoubtedly. And only think: As my lady, you will get to wear a pretty coronet with silver balls and a coronation robe with ermine.”

“But I missed the coronation!”

“You can wear your coronet and robe to bed.”

She considered. “And nothing underneath.”

“An excellent idea. One of the many things I love about you is your fashion sense.”

“But we must go to London,” she said.

“It would be the polite thing to do,” he said. “Shall you mind? We needn't stay permanently. But perhaps for a few months? The height of the Season?”

“How can I mind now?” she said. “My friends have asked me to forgive them. My husband has been granted a title. The height of the Season will do very well. We'll have parties.”

The letter slid from her fingers as she became lost in happy plans. “A dinner party to start, I think. Oh, what fun it will be! I wonder if we can persuade Giulietta and Lurenze to come to London. I am sure we can manage it. If he would make her a countess or some such, no one will mind. And he is a foreign prince. Everyone lets royalty do as they please—especially foreigners. They're not held to the same standards.” She nodded. “Yes, we can manage it.”

For a moment he only watched her, drinking in her exotically beautiful face, alight with pleasure. He could not count all the ways in which he loved her but this was, perhaps, the heart of it: her exuberance, the sheer fun of her.

“Come here,” he said. He moved closer to the back of the sofa, to make more room for her, and patted the place beside him. “I've never kissed Lady Delcaire before.”

“None of that,” she said primly while devilment danced in her extraordinary eyes. “You'll wrinkle my dress.”

“That was my intention.”

“We have company coming.”

“How shocked they will be! Come, you baggage. All I want is a kiss…and perhaps a little husbandly fondling.”

She laughed and did as he bid, easing her beautiful body down alongside his. He turned her face to his and cupping her chin, kissed her, long and sweetly. She tangled her fingers in his hair and returned the sweetness.

And when at last they drew away, he looked into green eyes so soft, and thought, yes, he'd drown there, happily.

“When shall we set out?” she asked. “For London?”

“Whenever you like.” His hands strayed over the bodice of her dress. “A fortnight? How long does it take a woman to pack for a long trip?”

“I can manage in a fortnight, I think,” she said.

“We'll come back, of course,” he said. “I'm not sure how long I can bear to be away from the children.”

She looked up at the ceiling and smiled. “They're so ridiculous. And yet one does grow attached to them.”

“Or one attaches things to them—to their innocent bottoms, for instance.” He paused as his hand slid over the soft swell above the neckline of her gown. “That reminds me: When we do get to London, you are not to tell anyone where you'd hidden those letters.”

Her eyes, which had been fluttering closed, opened. “You never told Quentin? He never asked?”

She had stayed in the gondola that day. Quentin had come out to the landing place at San Lazzaro.
Only James had left the vessel. “We don't usually hold long discussions in such cases,” he said. “I gave him the packet and he said, ‘It's about bloody time,' and away he went.”

“If that was all the thanks he gave you, he doesn't deserve to know,” she said.

“I wouldn't have told him if he'd asked,” he said. “Who knows? Someday I might need the hiding place.” He returned his attention to his wife's soft bosom.

“I thought you'd retired,” she said.

“I certainly did,” he said. “Despite how exciting it became with you as a partner in crime. Or anticrime, rather.”

“You said it was exciting, though. Your work.”

“By the time I came here, I'd had a bellyful of skullduggery,” he said. “But it stopped being boring when I met you. And that encounter with Marta Fazi was possibly the most hair-raising experience of my life.”

She sank back more deeply into the cushions. She lifted her hand and brushed it against his jaw. “That was exciting.”

He turned his head to kiss the palm of the hand caressing his face. “The unpredictability of you—that's what did it. It added a thrill I'd not experienced in a long time: the thrill of sheer terror.” He frowned. “No, come to think of it, being married to you ought to be excitement enough. All the same, let's keep the secret of the
putti
to ourselves, shall we?”

She traced his lips with her finger. “
Sì, eccellenza,
” she said.

He laughed, and she drew her hand away. “What?” she said. “Isn't every nobleman addressed as ‘eccellenza'?”

“It's your accent,” he said. “So English.”

“The
marchese
said my accent was charming.”

“It's delicious,” he said. “You're delicious. Forget the
marchese
.”

The devils were dancing again, there among the gold flecks in her eyes. “I'm not sure I can. I may need…a diversion.”

He slid his hand down the length of her magnificently curved body. “Very well, Lady Delcaire. Let's see how diverting I can be.”