“There’s a smaller tub upstairs,” she said. “It’s mainly for the benefit of gentlemen who might wish to watch me bathe. But this room is for me.”
The servant went out and Thérèse hurried in, carrying a basket of soaps, creams, and perfumes. Over one arm hung a dressing gown. She looked hard at Francesca, glanced at Cordier, and compressed her lips. “Madame will take cold,” she said.
“I’ll see that she doesn’t,” Cordier said. He took the basket and dressing gown from her. “Madame pleases to drive me mad—”
“Monsieur pleases to provide me the same service,” Francesca said.
“Nonetheless, I shall see that she comes to no harm,” Cordier said. “You may go now. She’ll scream if she needs you.”
Thérèse looked to Francesca. “You may go,” Francesca said.
The maid went out.
“Every member of the household knows what happened,” he said. “It will be all over Venice in five minutes.”
“You upset me,” she said.
“The feeling is mutual,” he said.
“I don’t like to be upset,” she said.
“Who does?”
“I have spent the last five years arranging my life to keep that from happening,” she said.
He inspected the jars and bottles and soaps in the basket and removed one bottle before setting down the basket on the table close by the tub. He unstopped the bottle, sniffed it, then sprinkled a few drops into the tub. “I’m beginning to understand,” he said.
“You’re a man,” she said. “It’s impossible for you to understand. Men have all the power. Men control everything. They make the official laws and all the ordinary and unofficial rules. They—”
“Your husband broke your heart,” he said.
What was she to do? Lie and lie again? Pretend, endlessly pretend? That worked well enough with everyone else, but with this man the pretense made her sick and confused.
“Yes,” she said. Her shoulders sagged. She was weary, so weary.
“Come here,” he said.
She went to him, of course. That was all she wanted to do: to go to him, to feel his arms about her.
But he didn’t pull her into his arms. He turned her around and unhooked the back of her gown. “You look like Isis in this gown,” he said. “After she fell into the Nile.”
In spite of the weariness, in spite of old wounds, she smiled. “Did she fall into the Nile?”
“Or was she pushed? Who knows?” He untied the waist, and the gown drooped. If it had been dry, it would have slid down. “I like this garment construction,” he said. He tugged gently, drawing the gown down over her hips.
“It was a beautiful gown,” she said. “Dry, it whispered over my petticoats as it slid to the floor.”
It wasn’t dry now, though, and he had to help it down. Once past her knees, it fell to the floor with a most unseductive plop.
He went to work on the wet strings of her petticoat. “I’m sure you don’t like being wet and bedraggled any more than you like being upset,” he said. “You should have thought of that before you jumped into the canal.”
“You were going to throw me in.”
“And you jumped to rob me of the pleasure?”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” she said.
“As I believe I pointed out to you. More than once. Al diavolo!”
“What’s wrong?”
“These strings are impossible,” he said. “By the time I’ve got them and your corset string untied, you’ll have pneumonia. And the bath will be cold. I’m cutting them. It’s not as though you can’t afford to replace them, what with your being the great Whore of Babylon and all, and rich as Cleopatra besides.”
Her chest heaved.
“Don’t cry,” he said.
“I’m n-not,” she said.
She felt the strings give way.
He swiftly stripped off the petticoat, stays, and shift. She stood only in her soaked stockings and garters, and her water-stained slippers.
She heard him suck in his breath.
She turned toward him.
He stood, looking at her, up and down, up and down. He had a penknife in his right hand.
“I’m going to faint,” he said.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You’ve seen lots of naked women.”
“I’m not silly,” he said. “I’m half Italian, and you…” He drew his left hand down over her breast. “I think you must be the Eighth Deadly Sin. And well worth an eternity in Hell.” He knelt, slid the penknife between her leg and the garter, and slit it. He peeled the stocking down, slipped off her shoe, and drew the stocking over her foot. He kissed her knee.
Her legs trembled. She set her hand on his shoulder to brace herself. He slit the other garter and performed the same ritual.
“I can think of a great many things to do at this moment,” he said, stroking her thigh. “But the bath will grow cold, and you do smell of canal, and so do I.”
He rose, set aside the knife, and began to work his way out of his sopping coat. The garment fit, as it ought to do, like skin.
She moved to help.
He waved her away. “Get in the tub,” he said.
“You’ll never do that alone,” she said. He probably needed two servants to get him out of it.
“Watch me,” he said. “Get in the tub.”
She climbed in, and groaned involuntarily. It was beautifully warm and smelled like a lemon grove.
She closed her eyes and leaned back, resting her neck on the thick linens with which the servant had draped it.
“This is a wonderful bathing room,” he said.
She opened her eyes. He was hanging his coat over the back of a chair. This was a man who’d had practice in doing without servants, she thought.
This man. She knew so little about him. Five days. And yet…
He unbuttoned his waistcoat. “Nymphs and satyrs frolicking on the walls. Candles and incense. It’s your own little temple, isn’t it? The Temple of Francesca, Goddess of the Canal.”
“It’s the Temple of the Vestal Virgins,” she said. “I’ve never had a man in here before.”
He paused in the act of pulling off his waistcoat. “I’m the first?”
“You’ve no idea how privileged you are,” she said.
He got the waistcoat off and draped it neatly over the chair seat. “I have an excellent idea,” he said. “Especially now that I’ve seen you naked.”
“You don’t need to flatter me,” she said. “I don’t need honeyed words.”
“When have I flattered you?” he said. He undid the button at the neck of the shirt sticking wetly to his torso. It sagged open, revealing a V of his powerful chest, gleaming bronze in the candlelight. “I believe I called you an idiot more than once this morning alone.” He sat on the chair, on top of his wet waistcoat, and tugged off his stockings. “And to think I nearly wore boots today. We might have both drowned. Or you would have done so, by the time I got them off.”
“I don’t know what to do,” she said.
He stood up and pulled his shirt over his head. “Give me one more minute,” he said. “I’ll think of something.” He began unbuttoning his trousers.
She ducked down, under the water, and came up again, looking like one of the nymphs in the frescoes. Only more beautiful.
She was right: James had seen countless women naked. Perhaps she wasn’t perfect. Her high, round breasts could have been a bit fuller, her waist a bit narrower…
No. He couldn’t be objective. All he could see was womanly perfection, a goddess.
He peeled off his waterlogged trousers, kicked them aside, and climbed into the tub.
She drew in her legs, making room for him.
For a moment he simply let himself sink into the warmth and the delicious scents swirling in the atmosphere of the intimate room. He slid down as she had done, bringing his head under water, and came up again. He let the back of his head rest on the thick towels
draped upon the tub’s rim and looked up at the ceiling, where nymphs and satyrs were cavorting among bunches of grapes and flagons of wine and Pan playing his pipes.
“I’d always thought these rooms were used as offices, like the ones below, on the andron,” she said. “But I was told that in the last generation or so, the family used them as sitting rooms and parlors. I made this one my private bathing room because it’s closer to the water supply and the kitchen. Less work for the servants, heating and carrying the water. And I liked the frescoes.”
He sat up and reached beside him for a square of soap from the basket on the table. He reached under water and found her ankle. “You need a bath, my water nymph,” he said. “And I’m going to give you one.”
“Do you promise not to pull me under?” she said.
“No,” he said. He lifted her foot above the water and began to soap it, taking his time. He worked his way up her ankles and up and round and over the shapely calves and onward, over her knees. As he washed her, he inched closer. But when he reached the juncture of her thighs, he simply let his hand drift over the bottom of her belly. He heard her inhale sharply, but he continued to the other thigh, and worked his way down that leg.
“You’re not very…thorough,” she said softly.
“Give me time,” he said.
“No, you give me time,” she said. “My turn now.”
She took a sponge from the basket, wet it, then took the soap from him, and rubbed it over the sponge until she’d made a lather. She draped her long legs over his thighs, and slid closer, until she was entwined with him in the middle of the tub. She drew the soapy sponge over his neck and shoulders, down over his chest, and down, where his cock strained to meet her hand—to meet any female part it could.
But it would have to wait.
He put out his hand. “My turn.”
He did as she had done, moving the soapy sponge over her neck and shoulders and down over her arms and hands and between her fingers and over her palms and up again and down again, slowly, lovingly, over her perfectly rounded breasts. And while he did this the words came out, so easily, as though they’d been waiting for this moment. He told her, softly, in Dante’s language, that she set him on fire, that he’d wanted her from the first moment he’d met her…
She reached up and tangled her fingers in his hair and she smiled the smile of a girl, a playful, naughty girl.
He was mesmerized. The sponge slid from his hands and they moved over her, skin to skin this time, over her neck and the sweet slope of her shoulders and her arms and down to her long, slim fingers, then up again and down again, over the smooth arcs of her breasts. And all the while he watched her unearthly face as she played with his hair. And all the while he was murmuring love words in his mother’s language, like the romantic he wasn’t.
Her green gaze slid down and met his.
They remained so for a long moment, their gazes locked.
Then she brought her mouth to his, but only lightly touching.
“Per quanto ancora mi farai aspettare?” he said against her lips. How long will you make me wait? “Baciami.” Kiss me.
She smiled.
He drew his lips along that long curve. “Baciami,” he said.
The smile his lips had traced was her harlot’s smile, and he expected the harlot’s kiss, though that wasn’t what he wanted and he couldn’t say what it was he wanted.
“Baciami,” he said.
And she kissed him.
Shyly. Sweetly. Tenderly, so tenderly that he trembled, and told himself it was the bath water cooling.
Not shy. Not sweet. Not tender. Not she.
Yet she was. She made his cold, hard heart ache. His arms went round her and he dragged her up against him. Her legs wrapped about his waist. He held her so, as the kiss went on, deepening and deepening, a drowning of a kiss. He held her tightly, as though she’d be pulled away, dragged out to sea, and be lost forever otherwise.
Perhaps it was then he understood what had happened to him when she fell from the balcony. Or perhaps he only felt something he did not understand until later.
Her hands slid down, from his hair and along his jaw and down over his chest. He broke the kiss to take her hand and kiss her knuckles, her fingertips, and then to press his mouth to the soft palm.
She kissed the back of the hand holding hers, and slipped her hand free, and down it went, reaching through the water until it closed around his cock. He groaned. She covered his mouth with hers, and stole his soul with another wrenching kiss. He reached down, and pushed her hand away, and quickly, more quickly than he’d ever meant, he was inside her. He still held her tightly, as though the world would end if he loosened his grasp.
Slow, he told himself. Make this last forever.
He tried to make it slow, but she was kissing his face, his neck, and her hands were so soft, and nothing was real. The water pulsed around them as they pulsed against each other.
He gave up trying to control any of it, and let the tide take him. They rose and fell together, higher and higher each time until there was nowhere left to go. Then she shuddered against him, and the world flew apart. Release came, and down he went, a drowning man, happily drowning.
Chapter 12
They blush, and we believe them; at least I
Have always done so; ’tis of no great use,
In any case, attempting a reply,
For then their eloquence grows
quite profuse;
And when at length they’re out of breath,
they sigh,
And cast their languid eyes down,
and let loose
A tear or two, and then we make it up;
And then—and then—and then—sit down
and sup.
Lord Byron
Don Juan, Canto the First
He was kissing her so sweetly: scores of tender kisses on her nose, her cheeks, her forehead, her ears, her neck, her shoulders. Francesca kissed him back in the same way, like a girl in love for the first time. And when he stopped and drew away a bit and looked at her, she knew she was looking back at him with stars in her eyes, but she couldn’t help it.
She’d been numb for so long, dead to feeling without realizing it. Until now. It was as though the long, sensual bathing ritual had washed away—not her sins, for she was deeply attached to those—but a coating or shell of some kind that had stopped her from feeling too deeply, too fully.
She felt now, deeply and fully.
Joy was coursing through her. It was not the simple physical pleasure of coupling but a bright happiness that lightened her heart.
He drew her upright, and she rose out of the water like one mesmerized. She couldn’t make her eyes turn anywhere but up to him, to look up into his handsome face.
Later she’d ask herself why but for now she could only gaze at him in a kind of stupid wonder.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said.
“Like what?” She said, as though she didn’t know she wore the expression of a girl hopelessly in love.
He turned away to reach for a dry towel. “You’ll put ideas in my head,” he said. He wrapped the towel around her and helped her out of the tub. “I shouldn’t have kept you here for so long. If you take cold, Thérèse will kill me.”
“But it was great fun,” she said.
“Fun,” he said. Frowning, he picked up another towel and as smoothly and efficiently as Thérèse could have done it, wrapped her hair into it and twisted the towel about her head like a turban.
“Oh, you’ve done this before,” she said.
“Never,” he said. “You’re the first.”
She almost wished that were true. She almost wished he’d been the first for her and she could persuade herself he felt as she did.
She knew better.
Still, she told herself, if it had been the first time, she couldn’t have properly appreciated what had happened. She wouldn’t know enough to savor it, to store it in he
r memory.
“Go sit by the fire,” he said.
She walked to the couch and sat.
She watched him take up a towel and vigorously rub his hair. When he was done, the shiny black curls bounced about his head. She ached to tangle her fingers in his hair again. She longed to touch everything. She let her gaze travel wistfully over his long body. Then she made herself turn away. She lay down on the couch and stared into the fire.
She wasn’t aware of falling asleep.
She never heard him leave.
James had wrapped a towel about his waist and gone out to look for a servant to fetch them something to eat and to send for his clothes.
He found one too soon.
Sedgewick was sitting on the stairs nearby, waiting for him.
Arnaldo had already sent across the canal for a change of clothes. Sedgewick had brought the clothes. He’d also brought a message.
“It’s from San Lazzaro,” Sedgewick said. “You’re wanted there. Without further loss of time, I was to tell you, sir.”
“Monsieur left a note, madame,” Thérèse said, handing it to her.
Amor mio,
Those accursed monks! I had appointed to meet with them at San Lazzaro this morning. Something made me forget. A troublesome girl, I believe. Forgive me. Dine with me tonight in my bachelor lodgings and I will make it up to you.
Caramente,
C
Francesca knew she was deeply, unforgivably foolish. Before melancholy and disappointment could settle upon her, one hastily scrawled note drove them away. She tried but she couldn’t stifle the surge of relief and happiness. She laughed softly.
And when Thérèse scolded and said madame needed something to eat and a proper sleep, Francesca smilingly agreed.
She’d need her strength for tonight.
Meanwhile, in less elegant quarters in Venice
A ceramic Madonna flew across the sitting room of Marta Fazi’s lodgings and shattered against a door frame.
The two young men waiting to collect their pay only watched Marta’s hand, to see if she would throw anything else. But she was too puzzled to be truly enraged, and her temper cooled quickly, as it often did. She returned to her chair at the small table.