“These are not the letters,” she said.
The two young men looked at each other then at her.
“I showed them to you,” said the smaller one. “You said, ‘Yes, let’s go.’ You made us hurry away. You gave us no time even to pick up some of the jewelry.”
“I told you it wasn’t real!” she lied. “You want to make the English whore laugh at how stupid you are? You think she keeps her fine jewelry in her house, in a drawer where anyone can get it?”
Even Marta, who’d been told of the jewelry, hadn’t believed her eyes at first. But the Englishwoman was a rich whore with many servants. Those arrogant ladies never dreamed anyone would steal from them. They were always so shocked and outraged when it happened.
Though the messenger had hinted that she could help herself, Marta knew better. When one stole from the rich, the laziest authorities became brutally efficient—and the Austrians were not lazy. They’d caught Piero in no time. Of course, he was an idiot. Even so, it was clear that the great English whore was no mere puttana in the eyes of the Venetian governor. Had Marta and this pair made off with all the jewelry they’d found, they’d be swiftly hunted down…and if they were captured, the precious letters would fall into the wrong hands.
She’d taken a risk, she knew, to steal the emeralds. But that was only one set, among so many riches…and it was fine, as the messenger had promised. Fit for a queen.
All this was far too complicated to explain to this pair of fools. They didn’t know she’d taken any jewelry. At the moment, however, she was not worried about being hunted down for one measly set of emeralds.
She was far more disturbed about the letters.
“These are in his hand,” she said, half to herself. “But the dates are only this year and last year. The ones they want are old. And where are the names they told me to look for? Nowhere do I see them. But why does he write to her, still, the woman he hates?”
She might as well have asked the two to explain the Pythagorean theorem. They were little more than boys, because a person sporting half a day’s growth of black beard does not make a believable nun. They only lifted their shoulders in the universal gesture of “I dunno.”
Marta folded the letters, tied them with a piece of string, and set them down on the table. “He will explain this,” she said. “And it will be a good explanation or he will be very sorry.” She looked at the boys. “These are not the letters we want. I am finished playing games with the fine lady, the English whore. Enough.”
“It’s done then?” said the smaller one.
“Done? Did the Sicilian sun cook your brain? How can it be done when I have the wrong letters?”
“But you said ‘enough.’”
“Enough with creeping about,” she said. “Enough with looking here, there, everywhere. The next time we do it properly.” The way Bruno and Piero were supposed to do it, the imbeciles. “The next time we make her tell us.”
She took out her knife and held it up to the light. She smiled.
The monastery of San Lazzaro degli Armeni stood amid groves of cypress and fine gardens on a small island off the Lido. Early in the previous century, the former hospital island for lepers was given to an Armenian monk from Morea who’d been forced to flee invading Turks. Here, a few years ago, Byron had struggled to learn Armenian. He’d never succeeded, most likely because of all the women distracting him.
James had only one distraction in female form. The trouble was, she was more disruptive to his reason than the scores in Byron’s harem.
Putting her out of his thoughts was out of the question, since she was the subject of the present conversation.
James was strolling—or giving the appearance of strolling while inwardly roiling with impatience—through the cloisters with Lord Quentin. This was the man who, half a lifetime ago, had saved him from a life of unsanctioned crime and lured him into a life of sanctioned crime.
Ten years older than James, his lordship had embarked on the life of secrets and conspiracies at an early age as well. In fact, in many ways he was better suited to the trade, being of average height and unexceptional looks and having a way, as Sedgewick did, of calling no attention to himself. Men like Sedgewick and Quentin rarely needed a disguise. People took little notice of them.
“If Mrs. Bonnard hears that you’re here and I’ve been talking to you, I might as well go home,” James said.
“I know the risk,” Quentin said. “But I needed to speak to you directly. I heard about the attack the other night.”
“That came as a surprise,” James said. “No one told me she was in danger.”
“We’d no idea Elphick would act so quickly.”
“He was bound to hear of your visiting her,” James said. “He has agents here. Not that he needs any. She probably wrote to him about it.” If Elphick was writing to her, she must be writing to him.
“They correspond, yes, but unless they’ve a secret code, it’s utterly trivial: who was at which party and what they said. There’s far juicier stuff in the scandal sheets.” Quentin shook his head. “It’s more likely he got the wind up as soon as he learned I’d come to Italy. But I’d expected to be here and back by the time he got word. Who could have guessed she’d be so irrational about the letters we wanted, given what he did to her? I was certain she’d jump at the chance to ruin him. If I hadn’t been certain, I should never have approached her directly.”
That completely settled one question, then: The not-love letters from Elphick that Thérèse had reported missing weren’t important—to the mission, at any rate. Bonnard hadn’t been feigning indifference about their whereabouts. She truly hadn’t cared.
“In any event,” Quentin went on, “you don’t seem to be making great progress. What the devil have you been doing for this last week—besides nearly killing a potential informant?”
“Piero is still alive, so far as I know,” James began.
“I referred to the other one,” Quentin said. “We found him yesterday, and we had the devil’s own time getting him away without attracting attention.”
“Bruno? He’s alive?”
“Small thanks to you. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking to stop him from killing Mrs. Bonnard,” James said.
“And you nearly stopped him permanently from answering questions,” Quentin said. “Has that troublesome woman got her hooks into you, too?”
Yes, James thought. Yes, indeed, she has.
He said, “I was on the brink of getting the information we’re looking for when you summoned me here. Was it only to complain about how long it’s taking me?”
Quentin glanced casually about him. The cloisters surrounded a large garden. Two monks walked slowly through the shaded passage on the other side of the garden, well out of earshot. “Our friend Bruno’s too sick to be of much use,” he said. “Pneumonia, damaged windpipe, dislocated shoulder, among other things. The only bit of luck we had was his fever. He had a bout of delirium. Along with the other ravings, he babbled something about letters and mentioned Marta Fazi several times.”
James’s last, very feeble hope—that he’d got it completely wrong—died a quick death. He’d got it right, and the situation, as he’d deduced, was very bad, very tangled, and about to become a great deal worse.
What else was new?
“Oh, there’s a bit of luck, indeed,” he said. “Dear Marta. I remember her well. The darling lass who promised to cut off my balls in little bits, slowly, first chance she got. The one who, last I heard, was locked away in the deepest, darkest dungeon in Rome. The one who apparently wasn’t locked up anywhere, since she was in Venice last night, ransacking the Palazzo Neroni.”
He didn’t want to imagine what Marta would have done had Francesca Bonnard been home at the time. His mind imagined anyway, and he felt sick.
“That’s not good.” Quentin paused and shook his head. He moved to a stone bench and sat down, looking weary.
James sat down be
side him, weary, too. He was angry, yes, but then he was often angry. Plans fell apart. Villains slipped through their nets. Documents ended up in the wrong hands. And comrades were killed, too often in appalling ways. Such was the nature of the work. He’d learned that early on. One dealt with human beings. All were fallible. Not all were trustworthy.
“You’re sure it was Fazi?” Quentin said.
“They were dressed as bloody nuns! They got into the house and drugged the food. It was exactly the same method she used in the other thefts. They took a lot of letters—the wrong ones—and emeralds. No other jewels. Only emeralds. Who else could it be?”
“So Elphick’s set her on his former missus,” Quentin said. “Bastard.”
“How the devil did he come to hire Fazi?”
“Who’s to say?” Quentin looked about him. “We’ve only started watching him closely in the last eighteen months—since you worked out that code. He might have met her years ago, back in the time when no one paid any attention to him. Or one of his agents in Italy might have hand-picked her to do the job. They must have paid a fortune to get her out of prison.”
“That tells me Elphick knows her well, either personally or by reputation,” James said. “In his place, she’s what I’d choose for a job like this. She’s no giant intellect, but she’s cunning, daring, and very, very dogged.”
Her cunning and daring had resulted in several remarkable jewelry thefts in the last year or so. Still, James and his associates had deemed her the local government’s problem, until the affair of the emeralds. In that case, British agents had become involved as a favor to an important ally. The ally had repaid the favor by signing his name to a crucial treaty.
“Every instinct told me the first attack on Mrs. Bonnard was not simple robbery.” James went on. “But it certainly didn’t look like Fazi’s work.”
“You incapacitated her best men in Rome,” Quentin said. “She’s making do with what’s available. I’ll wager anything that pair the other night weren’t following orders. There was a cock-up of some kind.”
James considered. “Mrs. Bonnard was wearing a magnificent set of sapphires. They made my hands itch. Apparently Bruno lacked my superhuman powers of self-restraint. He got distracted by the sparkly gems and the beautiful woman. What are the chances, do you reckon, of a brute like that ever getting his hands on a beautiful, highborn woman? Too much temptation for his tiny brain. Then I interrupted before his partner could remind him what he was supposed to be about.”
“I should like to know what exactly they were supposed to be about,” Quentin said. “Our friend Bruno hasn’t been terribly enlightening.”
“They were supposed to terrify her,” James said. Now that he had no remaining doubt about Marta Fazi’s involvement, he had no difficulty working out the plan. “They were bully boys, sent to scare Mrs. Bonnard into telling where the letters were. If that didn’t work, they’d take her away and torture her until she cooperated.”
His stomach knotted and his head pounded. He stood up. “The moment I stepped into the gondola last week, I knew I was stepping into un mare di merda. I’d better get back to Venice.”
Quentin rose, too. “I’d better make sure Goetz learns there’s a dangerous fugitive on the loose in Venice. At this point, it doesn’t matter who finds Fazi, so long as she’s found and locked up. The last thing we want is for Mrs. Bonnard to come to harm. Her death would be—”
“Deuced inconvenient,” James said. “Yes, I know.”
It seemed to take forever to get back to Venice. The whole while James fretted, even though common sense told him Marta Fazi was unlikely to risk an attack in broad day, and even though he’d taken precautions. Before leaving for San Lazzaro, he’d sent a message to Lurenze, suggesting he play guard dog again. And to make sure Lurenze did nothing else but guard, James had sent a message to Giulietta as well.
Both would have heard about the burglar nuns soon enough. They probably would have hastened to the Palazzo Neroni in any event. But James wanted to make sure they stayed with Bonnard until he could take over. Fazi would never attack while the lady had important guests, especially royalty. Even the most lax and corrupt government would marshal all its forces and hunt down anyone who troubled important visitors.
Even so, he was angry and impatient all the way back, and short with Zeggio and Sedgewick, who only irritated him further by exchanging that look, again and again.
Not until they came up the canal, and he saw the two gondolas moored outside the Palazzo Neroni, did James begin to relax a very little.
Yet he remained uneasy while he dressed, and gave too many unintelligible orders regarding dinner. When the servants told him that Mrs. Bonnard’s gondola was coming across the canal, he raced down the stairs to the andron. Her feet had scarcely touched the terrazzo floor when he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, fiercely and long, until they were both breathless.
He broke the kiss reluctantly, to let her draw breath. “Gad, I thought those accursed monks would never let me leave,” he said.
She looked up at him in that way she’d done before, with the ghost full in her exotic green eyes, so that all he saw was a girl, a beautiful girl, gazing at him adoringly.
It was what he’d always wanted—for one girl to look at him so, with all her heart in her eyes—but he’d imagined it so differently. He’d pictured an innocent girl with an honest, caring heart, who knew nothing of life’s darker side, who’d saved herself for him and who’d be true, who’d never deceive him.
“Wicked monks,” she said. “Did they make you study Armenian against your will? Byron finally admitted it was beyond him.”
“The curst fellow was there at last—the monk who had the key to the library,” he lied. He saw the irony at once: He, who did little but deceive, insisting upon purity and truth in a woman. “But there were other visitors today, and what must he do but take the lot of us on a tour, and show us every last volume in the place. Then the visitors must ask idiotish questions, which he answered soberly, too patiently, and at interminable length.”
She reached up and brought her soft palm to his cheek. “Poor man. Such an ordeal you’ve endured.”
He turned his head to kiss the palm of her hand. He inhaled the scent of her skin, mingled with the teasing hint of jasmine.
“And all for naught,” he said. “I heard not one word in fifty. My mind was in Venice, at the Palazzo Neroni, where a troublesome girl was probably sleeping—and I spent far too much time wondering if I was in her dreams.”
Her hand slid away, and she looked away. “Have a care, sir. You are beginning to sound romantic.”
“Lack of sleep, probably,” he said. “I’ll be better in the morning.”
“Won’t that depend on how you spend the night?” she said. The ghost vanished from her green eyes, and mischief twinkled in its place.
“I have a plan for that,” he said.
It was meant to be a Roman orgy, he’d explained.
The trouble was, he hadn’t any proper Roman furnishings. And so he’d had the servants take out most of the furniture, pile carpets and cushions on the floor of one of the canal-side rooms off the portego, and strew flower petals everywhere. It must be a Turkish seraglio instead, he told her. He would be the sultan and she would be all the women of the harem.
The way he looked at her when he said it made Francesca feel as though she were all the women in the world—or at least all the women he could ever want.
She supposed other men looked at her in that way.
But she remembered the way he’d pulled her into his arms as she disembarked from her gondola, and his kiss, so wild and hot that for a moment she’d believed there was desperation in it.
She’d felt desperate, too. Lurenze and Giulietta had heard about the burglarious nuns, and they’d been waiting for her when she finally woke in the afternoon. She’d had the devil’s own time, first trying to quiet their anxieties and later, trying to carry on a rational conversati
on. All the while, all she’d wanted was to be on the other side of the canal. In this man’s arms.
Only pride had kept her from flying from the house in her dressing gown. Pride demanded she wear a gown to make his mouth water. It was crimson, a perfect color for a harlot, and cut low, front and back. A corner of her tattoo, her mark of sin, was just visible above the back of the gown.
She knew that he, being a man, couldn’t feel as desperate as she, being a fool, did. The wild heat she felt was merely lust, which she’d done her utmost to arouse. What he expressed was the intense passion usual at the start of an affair.
While they dined, she tried not to let herself build castles in the air. It was hard not to, when he treated her so tenderly and kindly.
Reclining as his Roman ancestors must have done, he fed her tidbits of this and that, olives and bread and delicately prepared shellfish, fruits, and cheeses.
After they’d eaten, she lay with her head upon some cushions while he lay on his side, leaning on his elbow, the two of them facing each other, in a strange sort of intimacy, like…friends, while they…talked.
He described the monastery and told her how the monks had made a shrine of the room in which Byron had studied.
“Shall you study there, too?” she said.
He blinked. “I?”
“Did you not come to study Armenian with the monks?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said. “But Armenian is impossible. No wonder Byron gave it up. I’d rather study you.”
“Not too closely,” she said. “And never in bright sunlight. No woman can withstand that kind of scrutiny.”
“What, do you think the noonday sun will shatter my illusions? Do you think I have any, foolish girl?”
She was so foolish. When he smiled at her in that way, as though he were truly fond of her, and she looked into his deeply blue eyes, she forgot everything she’d learned in the last five years. All her illusions and delusions came back.
“The sun in England is kinder to women,” she said. “There we needn’t try to stand up bravely to its glare, since it so rarely glares.”