He remembered the green evening slippers he’d seen flung about her bedroom in gay abandon, and he grew impatient. He had to concentrate all his will on not stalking down the long room and dragging her up from her chair and away from the company.
The company, meanwhile, merely watched the group at the other end of the room for a moment or two before returning to their conversations.
The Countess Benzoni said to him, “We cannot expect his highness to tear himself away from that pair. They are too amusing. Have you attended Signora Bonnard’s conversazione, Signor Cordier?”
He didn’t say Bonnard hadn’t invited him to one of her salons. He said, “I have been in Venice for only a week.”
“Once upon a time, you might choose from scores of conversazioni, every day of the week,” she said. “When Lord Byron first came here, only two remained: mine and the Countess Albrizzi’s. But then Signora Bonnard arrives, and hers become his favorites. She has the joie de vivre. In addition, she is well read.”
“No one is more beautiful and clever than you, my soul,” said Rangone, the countess’s devoted cavalier servente.
“So you say, but when she laughs, you turn your head, exactly the same as the other men,” said his beloved.
A little while later, Mrs. Bonnard laughed again. Turning toward the sound, James saw her leaving with her two companions. A few minutes and what seemed like an endless series of farewells later, he slipped out of the door after her.
He discovered the trio nearby, only a few yards from the Florian. Mrs. Bonnard was looking across the way, up at the Torre dell’Orologio, the beautiful clock tower at the northeast corner of the Piazza.
Above the tower, a few wispy clouds drifted across the night sky. The moon, which had only recently passed its full, shone brightly, and the stars were out in force. The square was well lit, too. All the same, James couldn’t read her expression.
Giulietta had her hand over her face, and as he neared, he heard her giggling. As always, people came and went. Even in decline, Venice never slept.
None of the three seemed to notice James’s approach. Lurenze was saying something and gesticulating.
Then Bonnard turned her head. James saw her posture stiffen as she spotted him. He felt himself tensing, too, with anticipation.
He sauntered to the group. “Everyone in the contessa’s circle was wild to find out what was so humorous,” he said. “You were all so merry.”
“Cundums,” said Giulietta. She went off into whoops.
“Signorina Sabbadin enjoys to make me blush,” said Lurenze. “I tell her, in my country, we are shy to speak of such matters. To say them in the company of the woman is unheard of.”
“But we are not in your country, your supremeness,” said Giulietta.
“For this I am most thankful,” the prince said with a smile. “But you—it is too shocking what you do and say. You are a naughty child.”
Instantly her merriment vanished, and her sweet face turned cold and austere. “I am no child,” she said. And off she went, a compact bundle of outraged womanhood, storming across the square, hips swaying, nose aloft.
Lurenze looked from Bonnard to James. “What is it I say?”
“I don’t know,” James said. “Italians are so passionate. I hope she doesn’t throw herself into the canal.”
The prince’s innocent eyes widened. “Oh, but no. This is unthinkable.”
Bonnard opened her mouth, but his highness had already dashed away after Giulietta.
Madame watched them go. “She may be Italian,” she said, “but she is no more likely to throw herself into the canal than I am, as you are undoubtedly aware.”
“You’re so thick,” James said. “You know she did that to get him to go after her. I was merely helping. Are you going to be cross? Had you meant to keep him all to yourself?”
“I had,” she said. “But then I saw you. What, I asked myself, would I want with a beautiful young prince, the possessor of mountains of money he’s desperate to spend on wicked women, when I might spend my time with an ill-mannered, impecunious younger son who begrudges me a few peridots, stirs up trouble with my friends, and can’t make up his mind what he wants?”
“Did you miss me, cara?” he said. “It’s been three whole days and more.”
“So long?” she said. “It felt like three minutes. It seemed I’d hardly got rid of you—and here you are again.”
“If that’s how you’re going to be, I won’t take you up to the top of the Campanile,” he said, with a nod in the direction of the brick bell tower straight ahead.
“I am desolated,” she said. “I wonder if I can find the strength to pick up the shattered pieces of my life and go on.”
“Have you ever been to the top of the Campanile at night?” he said.
“I doubt anyone has since Galileo went up to discover that the world was round,” she said. “It’s closed at night these days. There’s a guard.” Yet her gaze strayed upward and a gleam came into her eye.
“It’s a perfect night, but the sky will be lightening in an hour or two,” he said. “We’d better make haste.” He took her hand.
She tried to pull away but he kept a firm grip and started walking toward the bell tower.
She wisely gave up struggling. “I refuse to wrestle with you in St. Mark’s Square,” she said.
“Good, because you’ll lose,” he said. Her gloved hand fit comfortably in his. He remembered her peeling off her gloves. Heat arrowed straight to his groin.
“If we do get to the top of the tower,” she said, “the first thing I’m going to do is push you off. But you needn’t worry, because we won’t get in. The watchman’s bound to be Austrian, and you know what sticklers they are for rules.”
“Stop talking,” he said. “You’ll need your breath for the climb.”
Francesca was out of breath before they started.
It was because her hand was folded in his, so big and warm and sure. The last time she’d walked hand in hand with a man was early in her marriage, in the days when John Bonnard was so tender and affectionate, when she seemed to be falling in love with him over and over.
Her eyes stung and she blinked hard, grateful for the night and the deep shadows at the back of the Campanile.
On the verge of tears, ye gods! What need had she to weep, after all this time?
Yet when Cordier released her hand, to speak to the guard, she felt bereft, and her eyes itched.
Stop sniveling, she told herself.
She heard Cordier’s low murmur, the guard’s answer. It didn’t last long. He returned to her, reclaimed her hand, and grinned, so cocksure.
“He’s Venetian,” he said. “When he saw I had a beautiful woman with me, he wanted little persuading.”
She supposed Cordier’s speaking Italian like a native had more to do with his persuasive powers than the Venetian’s romantic streak. As well, a coin or two could work wonders, even, sometimes, among the supposedly rigid and incorruptible Austrians.
“There’s another watchman at the top,” she said. “That one will surely be Austrian.”
“His job is to look out for riots, fires, invasions, and such,” said Cordier. “He might search us for weapons. Would you mind being searched?”
“That would depend,” she said, “on whether he was young and handsome.”
“Well, then, we’ll see,” he said. “Shall I race you to the top?”
“It is typical of a man to suggest such a thing,” she said. “You in trousers, and I incommoded by skirts, petticoats, and stays.”
As the guard opened the door, Cordier bent to whisper in her ear, “We can always take them off.”
Tiny electric shocks darted up and down her spine.
She stopped short.
He laughed and tugged her inside.
And she went, fool that she was, because it was a starlit night, and the bell tower was forbidden, and the last time she’d climbed to the top was in daytime, and she’d been on
e of a crowd of tourists.
…and because he’d taken her hand and she wanted to go wherever he took her. It was only lust, she told herself, and the sooner she exorcised that demon, the better.
Dawn was an hour or more away, and the moon and stars, pretty enough in the heavens, made no impression upon the tower’s interior, though James was able to discern the outlines of its arched windows. He might have asked the guard for a lantern or torch but he neither needed nor wanted additional light. He’d had never had a problem finding his way in the dark, and in the present case, he’d only one way to go: up the gentle, winding incline of the ramp.
He was more comfortable in the darkness, in any event. And this night he had her hand in his and he could hear the soft rustle of her garments as she walked with him. Sometimes her skirts brushed his legs. Sometimes, too, the scent, tantalizingly faint, drifted to his nostrils, of jasmine and her.
“Is it in your clothes?” he said. “The scent? Jasmine, it seems like, but with another note I can’t identify.”
“Thérèse puts sachets in my wardrobe, amongst my gowns, my undergarments, my gloves and handkerchiefs,” she said. “It is not enough, you see, to dress beautifully. A great whore must have her own distinctive scent.”
“Are you a great whore?” he said, refusing to let his mind linger on images of her bedroom, with the various articles of clothing strewn about, the so-feminine jars and bottles with their gold caps and swirling gold lettering. Above all, he would not let himself imagine her undergarments or recollect the salacious excuse for a nightdress she’d worn. “You keep your other lovers wonderfully secret, then, because I count only two so far—well, three, if we include me.”
“You are not included,” she said. “You are an aberration.”
“Very well. But in Italy, respectable matrons might have two lovers and perhaps an aberration or two.”
“I’m not Italian,” she said. “I’m English, and a divorcée.”
“When in Rome,” he said, “it’s best to do as the Romans do. In Rome—in Italy—in nearly every nation of the Continent, you are a pitiful excuse for a whore.”
“Don’t be absurd,” she said. “I’m a magnificent whore. I have the jewels to prove it.”
“A magnificent businesswoman, certainly,” he said.
“I learned from the best,” she said. “In Paris. Fanchon Noirot.”
He gave a soft whistle. “I’ve heard of her. She must be sixty.”
“Sixty-five—and living a luxurious retirement with a devoted lover. That is one harlot who did not end up in the gutter.”
He paused. “By gad, Bonnard, you went about this methodically, I see.”
“You may read all about it in my memoirs,” she said. “I plan to write them when I’m forty: before all the main characters are dead and while they’re not too old to be embarrassed—or amused, as the case may be.”
“Will I be in them?”
“Probably not,” she said. “I plan to forget you by tomorrow.”
“In that case, I’d better make the most of today,” he said. He squeezed her hand, and continued up the winding ramp.
Chapter 9
The moment night with dusky mantle covers
The skies (and the more duskily the better),
The time less liked by husbands than by lovers
Begins, and prudery flings aside her fetter;
And gaiety on restless tiptoe hovers,
Giggling with all the gallants who beset her.
Lord Byron, Beppo
He was like a cat, Francesca thought. Though they made their way through a nigh-impenetrable gloom, Cordier never hesitated, never stumbled.
There was not a clumsy bone in that body…
Something flickered in the back of her mind, but it was as fleeting as the light of a firefly.
It left her uneasy, though, and as they neared the belfry, she became conscious, at last and far too late, of being utterly alone with a man she didn’t really know. She remembered, at last and far too late, that a man had tried to kill her a few days earlier…and another man, with a legitimate title and connections to the British government, had had her house searched some weeks ago. She remembered, at last and far too late, how shockingly strong this man was. He might easily pick her up and toss her through one of the arches onto the stones below.
Her heart thudded. She told it not to be ridiculous. She was letting Magny’s fussings and alarms prey on her mind.
“Why?” she said. “Why did you take it into your head to ascend the Campanile in the dead of night?”
“I had a fancy to see Venice by starlight, with a beautiful woman at my side,” he said.
“There were beautiful women among the Countess Benzoni’s coterie,” she said. “Giulietta is beautiful. You could have been quicker off the mark and chased after her.”
He sighed. “I know. The trouble is, you’re the only one I can see—and for some mad reason, you’re the only one I want to climb to the top of this bell tower with. Strange, isn’t it?”
“Not at all strange,” she said. “You’re infatuated with me. It happens all the time.”
He laughed—and tripped, tumbling forward. She shrieked, and tried to yank back on the hand gripping hers, before he could pull her down with him. But he easily and quickly righted them both, and told her to hush.
“I forgot,” he said. “There’s a stairway here.”
The noise they’d made alerted the watchman. The small, dark figure, carrying a lantern, bustled out from wherever he’d been keeping himself and demanded to know who was there.
Cordier had no more trouble with him than he’d had with the guard at the bottom. He talked, the man answered, and so it went, back and forth in the friendliest way. He showed the ticket the guard below had given him, and dropped a coin into his newfound friend’s hand. Chatting amiably, the watchman led them up another set of stairs, opened the door to the upper gallery for them, then went back to his interrupted nap.
“I’m not infatuated,” Cordier said as he led her to the edge of the stone balcony.
Perhaps you’re not, but I am, she thought.
“Stop talking,” she said.
She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to think. She wanted to put everything else from her mind and simply drink in this moment, and the view of this magical place.
The sky was showing the first signs of lightening but stars still hung in the heavens. Below, the city was a dark fairyland dotted with faintly twinkling lights. She moved along the balustrade, enchanted, as she gazed at the world below her and beyond. The lagoon twinkled, too, reflecting the fading starlight and the lights of the boats, and perhaps the sun as well, still lurking below the horizon.
“This is the way deities see the world,” she said softly. “We’re merely specks to them.”
The people in the square below were dark, moving specks against the silver and shadow of their surroundings. She looked for the labyrinth of canals, but at this height, the city’s domes, towers, and palaces concealed them. She knew the snowcapped mountains were out there, too, but at present the darkness hid them. She supposed they’d gradually appear when the sun rose, if the day continued as clear as the night had been.
But the mainland’s distant heights weren’t what captivated her. It was the lagoon and the islands scattered upon the glistening water and the boats plying among them, already busy at the first promise of daybreak.
She drank in the sea air. “This is what heaven ought to be like,” she said. Then her throat ached and her eyes filled, and to her chagrin, she started to cry.
James was not the type of man to be alarmed by women’s tears. He had what seemed to be an infinite number of sisters as well as aunts and nieces and female cousins beyond counting.
But those were his sisters and aunts and nieces and female cousins.
He left the wall he’d been leaning on and went to her. He pulled her into his arms. “Per carità,” he said. “For pity’s sake, wha
t is it?”
She bowed her head upon his chest and wept, not gently but in harsh, racking sobs he recognized as the deepest grief.
His heart pounded. “Come, Bonnard, you mustn’t take on so,” he said with forced lightness. “I know your love for me is nigh unbearable, but still…”
She gulped, and sobbed some more.
He tightened his hold of her. “I beg you will not throw yourself over the railing. I’m not worth it.”
She looked up at him. Tears glistened on her lashes. A tear trickled down the side of her nose.
“Really, I’m not,” he said.
“Cretino,” she said, her voice clogged with tears. “If only I were big enough to push you over the balustrade.”
You’d think it was an endearment, to be called a cretin, for relief washed through him, sweet and cool as the breeze coming off the water.
“I need a handkerchief,” she said, in the same watery voice. “Or may I wipe my nose on your neckcloth?”
“No,” he said. “I should do anything for you, mia cara, but a man’s neckcloth is out of bounds.”
He let go of her in order to hunt for his handkerchief. By the time he’d fished it out of his tailcoat pocket, she’d unearthed her own: a tiny square of tissue-thin linen surrounded by about six yards of lace.
She dabbed her eyes with this useless bit of froth and daintily wiped her nose.
He put away his handkerchief. “Wipe your nose on my neckcloth, indeed,” he said. “You do believe I’m infatuated, don’t you? Well, let me explain something to you, Goddess of Beauty, Wicked Harlot, Queen of the Nile, and whatever else you imagine yourself to be—”
“You’re a man,” she said. “You don’t know anything. Not a damned thing.”
She threw one gloved hand up in the air in a queenly gesture of dismissal and walked away to the stairs.
“Exits,” he said. “These women are always making dramatic exits.” He followed her, singing Figaro’s lines, “‘Donne, donne, eterni dei,/Chi v’arriva a indovinar?’”