Your Scandalous Ways (8 page)

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 ev
eryone 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 head 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—”

“Excellent,” said Cordier. “I'm glad we're all in agreement.”

She opened her mouth to retort, but his large, firm hand wrapped about her upper arm and exerted a light but inescapable pressure. She looked down at his hand, then up at him. In a properly ordered world, the look she gave him would have shriveled him to a husk that would burst into flame, leaving a tiny speck of ash behind.

He did not regard her at all. He was nodding at Lurenze and saying something in Russian to Vimstikov. All the while, the big hand continued to exert its inescapable pressure. To her fury, the light touch was sufficient to lift her from her chair and push her to the door.

“Cordier,” she said between her teeth. “If you do not let go of me I will kick you where it hurts, and do it hard enough so that you won't soon forget it.”

“Are you always this thick?” he muttered. “Isn't it obvious? I'm trying to help your little friend.”

T
he dirty truth was, James wasn't thinking clearly.

At one point he was listening to Giulietta, trying to learn what he could about her friend. But behind her, at the corner of his vision, sat the friend and Lurenze. James caught scarcely one word in ten of their conversation. He didn't need more to grasp the meaning. He was aware of Bonnard leaning toward
the prince to give him an unobstructed view of her breasts. James heard clearly enough the change in her tone, how it became softer and more seductive.

Then he was murmuring polite excuses to Giulietta, and rising from his seat and walking toward the pair: the dark head, glimmering with pearls, bent so close to the fair one, as though they were sharing secrets.

He saw Bonnard applying her siren's arts to the young prince and her victim practically wriggling with delight, like a puppy having his belly scratched.

James found himself one furious heartbeat away from lifting her out of her chair and carrying her bodily from the opera box.

Luckily, lying was second nature to him, costing him nothing. A conscience was something he'd owned at one time, but it was a very long time ago, and he couldn't remember much about it.

The lie had worked, and that was what mattered. Though he could feel her anger pulsing in the air between them, she did not threaten him or argue as they left the opera box. When she encountered acquaintances on the way downstairs, she appeared completely at ease, chatted briefly, and left them smoothly.

Like so many of her ilk, she was an excellent actress. She might be longing to plunge a dagger into his black heart but she made a good show of going with him peaceably out of the theater.

When they stepped out into the night, James was relieved though not altogether surprised to find her boat in readiness. Her gondoliers were reliable men, Zeggio had confirmed. Their ancestors
had served Venice's great families for generations, protecting them from treachery both political and personal. Thus, when James said quietly, “Don't take the usual way,” Uliva didn't seek confirmation from his employer but simply nodded.

Soon they were making their way along the Rio delle Veste past the crowd of vessels converging at the Fenice's rear door.

Mrs. Bonnard settled into her seat in the posture he remembered from the time he'd played Don Carlo. She leant her elbow on the edge of the open window, rested her cheek on her knuckles, and looked out at the passing scene.

She was shutting him out, as she'd done then.

He wished he could shut her out. He'd closed the door unthinkingly. The space inside the cabin had shrunk and, even with the windows open, felt too small, too close.

Though the gondola glided smoothly through the water, now and again a movement brought her hip against his, her shoulder against his upper arm. The skirt of her silken gown slid against his trousers. The breeze gently entering through the casements traveled toward rather than away from him, carrying her light scent to his nostrils.

He needed a distraction. An argument would do admirably. But he refused to be the one to break the silence. He stared hard at the pearl and diamond bracelets hanging upon her gloved wrists and tried to occupy his mind by calculating their worth.

Finally, when they were clear of the theatergoers' boats, she said in a bored voice, “So, you were helping Giulietta. How gallant of you.”

“I thought you needed only a hint,” he said. “It was hard to believe you meant to keep the boy prince to yourself, since you don't really want him.”

“It's unwise to let men believe one wants them,” she said. “They only presume.”

The scornful glance she threw him was as easy to read as a tavern sign.

He told himself to ignore it. He couldn't. “You mean me. I'm presumptuous, you've decided.”

“You seem to be under the misapprehension that I've been languishing for your company,” she said. “Let me quiet your anxieties. Last night my mind was disordered by shock and my reason overcome by gratitude. Such is not the case tonight. You lost your one and only opportunity with me.”

“That is not why I removed you from the theater,” he said.

“It wasn't because of Giulietta,” she said. “That was a thin excuse if ever I heard one—as thin as the one you gave Lurenze.”

He'd no reason to feel embarrassed, James told himself. He lived on thin excuses.

But as easily as he might find it to lie to everyone else, he was unable to lie to himself. He couldn't pretend he didn't recognize the real reason he'd dragged her away. That she recognized it, too, made the heat race up his neck. He felt like a fool. No, it was worse than that: He, a professional, had let himself turn into the impetuous boy he'd been a lifetime ago.

Meanwhile she remained unmoved, her silken cheek still upon her hand, her green gaze shifting lazily from the scene outside to him.

“And you were toying with Lurenze in hopes of making me do exactly what I did,” he said.

To his surprise, she smiled. “It worked, did it not? Men are so easy. They're so competitive.”

James made himself smile, too. “So true. We'll fight over anything, even if we don't really want it.”

“If you're trying to crush my vanity, you must do better than that,” she said. “Pray recollect that I am a divorcée, Cordier. I've been insulted and slandered by experts.”

He felt a sharp inner twinge. It couldn't be his conscience, since he'd left his in France ten years ago. It was…irritation. “Pray recollect that I'm not a coddled royal of one and twenty, Mrs. Bonnard, but a man of one and thirty who's seen something of the world. You are not the first woman who's tried to drive me to distraction.”

“I haven't begun to try,” she said. “When I do—if I do—you'll know it.”

“You tried your damnedest last night.”

Her sleek eyebrows went up. “You think that was an effort?”

“I know a lure when I see one.”

“All I offered was a mild yes,” she said. “Very mild. Only the first notch above a no. Were I to make an effort—and no great one, either—you'd never withstand it.”

James recalled the siren laughter. He felt a prickle of uneasiness but he shook it off. “You have a high opinion of yourself. But the king's ransom in pearls you're wearing is not proof that you are irresistible, only that some men are weaker than others.”

Some man had been weak, indeed. He shifted
his gaze from her haughty countenance to the top and drop pearl earrings, then down to the two pearl necklaces circling her throat. From the upper, shorter one dangled pear-shaped drops of graduated size, the largest at the center. It pointed to the space between her breasts, whose rapid rise and fall told him she was not so indifferent as she pretended. The low-cut gown, of silk the color of sea foam, reminded one of the pearls' watery origins. The pearl and diamond bracelets at her slim wrists glimmered against the butter-soft gloves.

The jewels alone constituted a cruelly arousing sight for a man who was a thief at heart. It was maddening that he couldn't simply steal them and have done with her.

“You don't think I could bring you to your knees,” came her voice, cool and taunting. “Would you care to make a wager?”

His attention snapped back to her face.

The tension in the
felze
increased by a factor of ten.

“I don't wager with women,” he said. “It's unsporting.”

“Men so often say that when the truth is, they can't bear the mortification of losing to a woman.”

“I don't lose,” he said.

“You will,” she said. “Let me see. What shall it be?” She closed her eyes briefly, thinking. When she opened them, they glinted. “I know. There's a peridot parure at Faranzi's shop that took my fancy.”

“Merely peridots? You don't rate your powers very high.”

“I'm rating your income,” she said. “You'll find these peridots painfully expensive. You'll have to
borrow to pay for them. But they aren't beyond the borrowing abilities of one of Lord Westwood's younger sons.”

“I see. You wish it to be not merely a costly wager, but a painful and humiliating one.”

She nodded. “Well?”

“And if you lose?”

“I won't,” she said. “But if it soothes your masculine pride to imagine you'll win, then by all means choose a forfeit.”

The letters,
James thought.
The reason I'm obliged to tangle with you. All I want is the damn letters, curse you.
But even if that had been completely true, if the letters were all he wanted, it was the one forfeit he couldn't ask for.

“The peridots,” he said.

That did surprise her. She took her hand away from her cheek and tipped her head to one side, studying him.

“They'll be a gift to my betrothed,” he said.

She blinked. “You're betrothed?”

It was an easy lie, too easy. He was far too angry to utter it. “Not yet,” he said. “But before too long. It will be a fine symbol for my bride-to-be. It will signify my ability to defend my principles and honor in the face of all-but-irresistible temptation.”

Her exotic eyes narrowed. “There'll be no
all-but
about it.”

“We'll see,” he said. “Name your time and place.”

She glanced out of the window. “Now,” she said. “We've plenty of time before we reach my house. This shouldn't take so long, at any rate.”

Her confidence—hell, her insolence—was beyond
anything. It was infuriating. Knowing he was in a temper, he should have held his tongue. He should have given himself time to cool down and think. But he was too angry—with her, with himself.

“Do your worst,” he said.

 

Francesca couldn't remember when last she'd been so furious.

She'd made a fool of herself last night, and now he presumed she was his for the taking—if and when he felt like it.

To him, she was merely a whore.

You are,
a rational voice within reminded her.
You chose to be.

True enough. Nonetheless, the pearls he called a sign of men's weakness were in fact a sign of respect, a sign of her power.

Since she'd left England—that frigid island of provincials, Puritans, and hypocrites—no man had shown her disrespect…except this one.

An Englishman, naturally. Half an Englishman, to be precise, but half was more than enough.

He needed desperately to be taught a lesson.

Unhurriedly she slid shut the casement beside her and closed the blinds. She reached across him, letting her bosom brush against his chest, and closed the window and blinds on his side.

As she moved back to her place, she felt his chest rise and fall a little faster than it had done a moment earlier.

She folded her hands in her lap. “There,” she said. “No one can see.”

“There won't be anything to see,” he said.

“We'll see,” she said.

She looked down at her hands. She looked at them for a while, making him wait.

Since he sat to her right, she started with her left glove. She slid it down toward her wrist until it bunched against her bracelets. She tugged on the thumb, the index finger, and so on, each finger by turn. She did it in a leisurely way, as though her mind were elsewhere. Then she drew off the glove, pulling it gently through the bracelets.

She dropped the glove into her lap.

She didn't look at him. She didn't have to. She knew he was riveted on her hands. She knew he was breathing faster and harder and trying not to.

She went to work on the other glove, again, slowly, casually, in the way she might if she were alone in her boudoir. Undressing.

She let the second glove drop onto her lap.

She adjusted the bracelets, letting her fingers trail lightly over the pearls and diamonds circling her now-naked wrists.

She lifted her hand.

He tensed.

She didn't touch him.

She touched herself, bringing her index finger to her right ear. She made a light path along the curve of her ear and behind it, lingering at the place below her ear where she liked to be kissed.

She felt him shift in his seat.

She ignored it. She pretended she was alone, enjoying her treasures, herself.

She drew her finger down over the earrings, caressing the round top and the pear-shaped
drop, savoring the feel of these, the most sensuous of gemstones.

She let her hand glide down over the upper necklace, and enjoyed the feel of the large pearls under her fingers. Back and forth, back and forth she went, then down, to fondle the immense pear-shaped pearl at the center.

And down further still she went, to play with the other necklace. And down again. This time she slid her hand over the silk of her bodice, making the fabric whisper. Then lightly she cupped her breast.

He made a sound, deep in his throat.

She didn't look at him. She watched her hand as she might have done had she been alone…touching herself.

She drew her thumb along the edge of her bodice, slowly, back and forth, tracing the swell of her bosom.

Then she lightly pushed the edge of the bodice down, baring another inch of skin.

His breath came out in an abrupt
whoosh
.

“Diavolo!”
he growled.

His arm wrapped about her waist. He pulled her onto his lap. He grasped the back of her head and brought her face close to his.

It happened so fast, faster than she'd expected. She wasn't ready. She wasn't done yet.

“I'm not done y—”

His mouth silenced her. It was warm and stubborn and very, very angry.

She brought her hands up to his chest and pushed.

I'm not done yet.

“I'm n—”

But she forgot the rest, because his mouth was so warm and sure and…

And then her hands went limp, her mind clouded, and everything turned hot and confused, and she was swimming in awareness.