As bits of plaster fell on his head, he wondered why he’d never thought of that: tuck the packet of letters into a convenient crevice and plaster the lot over. It wanted only a thin coat of plaster and a little skill to make it blend in. An artist—the one who’d done the work in the first place, would have noticed. But even a sharp eye like James’s could easily miss it. The packet would appear to be another fold in the drapery—and he’d been looking for letters, paper.
“You needn’t fear they’re damaged,” she said as she went on with her cautious work. “I took care. I wrapped them in oilcloth to protect them from the wet plaster, then I wrapped a rough cloth over that, so the plaster would stick properly. It worked out well. It made the packet more rounded, so it resembled a fold of the drapery.”
“I had read that the great courtesans of Venice were extremely well educated and multitalented,” he said. “But I never heard of their learning plasterwork.”
“They were blondes; did you know that?” she said. “I think a reddish blond was the fashionable hair color. The ones who didn’t come by it naturally used a rather ghastly bleaching process.”
“I like your hair exactly as it is,” he said. “But did these beauties work in plaster?”
“They might have done,” she said. “Lots of ladies do in England, certainly. We learn in the schoolroom. Artistic pursuits. Sticking shells and such on the walls of playrooms, decorating man-made—or woman-made grottoes. Making plaster casts of our hands. Masks.”
More chips fluttered down. She reached behind the boy’s bottom and took out a rounded packet. Then she quickly climbed down. Her eyes sparkled and her face was flushed.
He moved out of the way back as she stepped off the last rung onto the floor.
She set down her knife. “There,” she said. She held out the packet. Bits of plaster still stuck to the outside. He took it.
He stared at the thing in his hand. After all this time, after all the trouble, here it was. If he’d had to search again, he still wouldn’t have found it.
He looked up at the ceiling, at the little bottom and legs, where only a few chips in the plaster offered any hint of something extra having been there. Even then, who’d know? The plasterwork was more than a century old, cracked here and there, patched here and there.
“The only thing that truly worried me was the house burning down,” she said. “That was why I panicked the other night.”
He nodded.
“What?” she said. “Are you dumbstruck at last?”
His gaze drifted down to meet hers. He saw the triumph in her eyes, and laughter, too…and the ghost.
“Only you would make a little boy’s bum your hiding place,” he said. “What fun you are.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am.” She backed away and gave a little wave of her hand. “Well, run along now and do whatever it is you have to do.”
He remained where he was, gazing at the packet in his hand, then at her, in her schoolgirl dress, which she contrived somehow to make exotic and seductive.
He thought of how clever she’d been, how she’d outwitted her devious spouse and England’s best agents. He thought of how brave she was—stupidly brave, as one needed to be at times. He thought of the shame and misery she’d undergone and how she’d turned disgrace into triumph.
He thought of what he’d felt like when he first came to Venice: utterly weary, in body and soul, and utterly disgusted. He didn’t even know who that man was anymore.
Because of her.
Because he’d fallen in love, stupidly, hopelessly, incurably in love.
But if he said so she wouldn’t believe him and he couldn’t blame her for not believing him.
And so, instead, he said, “This thing I have to do…I wonder if you’d like to do it with me?”
She studied his face for a moment. “Is that an innuendo? Forgive me if I didn’t quite understand but it’s wretchedly early in the morning.”
“Not an innuendo,” he said. “I told you I had a plan. I didn’t tell you much about it. Would you like to be my accomplice?”
Her face came alight then, the way it had done the first time he’d spoken to her, when he’d been Don Carlo and she’d started to talk of Byron. “Cordier, that is the first sign of true intelligence you’ve shown this morning.”
“I take it that’s a yes?” he said.
She threw herself at him so hard that he dropped the packet. He didn’t care. She pulled his head down and kissed him hard, too. He didn’t mind that, either. He wrapped his arms about her and kissed her back with the same energy, and hoped he had not just offered to make the gravest mistake of his life.
That night
It was not hard to hide in Venice if one were clever, knew where to go, and made friends easily. This was not the case for Piero, unfortunately.
He would not have ended up in the pozzi had he not tried to steal a gondola. He had not realized how much skill it required to maneuver them. He had not realized how possessive gondoliers were about their ridiculous boats.
Marta Fazi should have told him. Unlike him, she’d traveled a great deal, especially during the war, and she’d been to Venice before. She had money, and a comfortable room in a house in the neighborhood of the Rialto Bridge.
When Piero appeared at her door, she welcomed him as one might a long-lost son.
While not the world’s deepest thinker, he knew better than to believe she was so very happy to see him. Still, he knew, too, that she was desperately short of men, because all the ones who’d gone after the Englishwoman the other night had been captured. Unless Marta took one of her fits, he ought to be safe from her knife.
She sat at a small table in a comfortable little room. Two other chairs stood at the table. Under it lay a rug. A fire burned in the little fireplace. He knew she was used to grander surroundings these days. Yet once upon a time, she’d lived on the streets. She could make herself at home anywhere.
At present, she sipped wine from a pretty glass. He had known her to drink straight from the bottle. She offered him none. But she didn’t take up the knife that lay on the table next to the bottle. She listened patiently while he explained why the governor had let him go.
“It’s because of the English lady,” he said. “She’s afraid of you.”
“Why? She doesn’t know me. You wouldn’t be such a fool as to tell her or anyone else about me.”
He shook his head. “They said your name to me—one of the foreigners did, the first night. Then the governor said your name. But every time, I said I’d never heard of you. Only tonight, when they say what they want me to do, I tell them I will try to take a message to you.”
She glanced at the knife, which gleamed in the lamplight. “Piero, I hope you haven’t been an idiot again.”
“One tried to follow me,” he said. “I lost him in a crowd near a theater.” He didn’t add that he’d got lost several times before and after that.
“And the crowd didn’t scatter when you came?” she said. “You stink like a fish ten days dead.”
“I’m sorry for the smell,” he said. “There was no time to wash. I came as fast as I could. When I tell you how it is, you can judge if I was wrong.”
She waited.
“I know you want papers from this English lady,” he said. “One of the foreigners knew about those papers, too.”
She nodded. “If they didn’t know, my friend in England would not have asked me to perform this little service for him.”
“The two men who came to me tonight did not want to give the papers to you,” Piero said. “But the English lady is afraid you will hunt her wherever she goes. She makes her friends do as she says. The prince—the one with the yellow curls—he’s one of her friends.”
“Oh, yes. I’ve seen him. Very pretty.”
“He’s the one who made them set me free,” said Piero. “He argued with the other one—a bigger man, dark. That one’s obnoxious. To make the time pass, I dream of ways to kill him.
”
“Poor Piero! The time goes slow in prison, I know.”
She would have let him rot there or be hanged or have his head cut off on that devil’s device, the guillotine. But Piero would have done the same if she had ended up in the pozzi. One had to look out for oneself.
“The prince doesn’t care what anyone else wants. The lady is more important, he says. He wants no more trouble for her. He wants you to go away. He says you’re a nuisance.”
Marta gave a short laugh. “A nuisance? It’s true. But I wouldn’t be this great nuisance if my men did as I told them. We should have had those papers the first night we came here. But no, you and Bruno had to play with the whore.” She lifted her glass and eyed him over the rim.
“That was Bruno’s fault,” Piero said. “He was the one who didn’t follow orders.”
“And you were stupid enough to get caught,” she said. “Trying to escape in a stolen gondola. What kind of imbecile steals a gondola?”
Piero lifted his shoulders in the “I Dunno” gesture.
“This is what happens when one uses inferior tools,” she said. “I come to Venice with incompetents, with idiots. Why? Because my best men are in prison or crippled and useless. All because of that scoundrel.”
Piero waited patiently while she went into the rant he’d heard before, about the tall, handsome bastard who’d seduced her, stolen her emeralds, and maimed her best men a few months ago in Rome.
“Nothing goes right,” she said. “This stupid little city with more rats than people, and crazy streets. To go anywhere, you must go in a boat, and listen to the Venetians talking their gibberish. The last time I came here, I told myself never again. Still…” She poured herself more wine and drank. “I’ve faced worse for smaller rewards. But this time…” She scowled at Piero. “What’s she offering to make me go away? Does the bitch think a big bribe will be enough?”
“The papers,” he said. “The papers your friend in England wants.”
“That’s all?”
“They say she’ll give you the papers to make you go away.”
“I don’t believe it. I smell a trap—or is that smell only you?”
Piero lifted his shoulders again. “I don’t know. This is what they tell me. They say the English lady knows you won’t trust her. And so she asks you to pick the time and place. This is the way she can prove there’s no trick or trap. Wherever you tell her to come, whatever time you choose, she will come. But since she’s afraid of you, she will take a man with her for protection.”
“Which man?”
“Who knows? One of her lovers. The prince, probably. He’s like a puppy at her feet.”
She waved the bottle at him. “Come, have a drink while I think about this.”
Piero found a glass and poured himself a drink, then another.
After a time, she said, “I know what to do. There’s a small risk. But there always is.” She stared at him and he put his glass down on the little table. “Do you understand what those papers are worth, little man?”
“I hope they’re worth a great deal, for all the trouble they cause.”
“When my friend in England has these papers, nothing more stands in his way. He’ll be like—like a king. And he’ll reward me well, as he did before. But this time he can arrange to make me a noble lady. For—how does he say it?” She thought. “Ah, yes. For service to the Crown.” She laughed. “And the women—like the English lady—they must all bow at my feet and call me ‘your excellency.’ Oh, I’ll enjoy that very much, to see the English bitch, his wife, bow at my feet.” She refilled Piero’s glass and her own. “I think it’s even worth letting her live.” She paused. “And yet I looked forward to cutting her face a little.” She took up her knife and turned it, watching the deadly sharp blade catch the candlelight.
Piero hastily downed his drink.
She stroked the flat side of the blade with her finger. “We’ll see,” she said. “We’ll see what happens, won’t we?”
“We?” said Piero, looking about the small room.
“You and me, little one,” she said. “She will bring a man. I will bring a man: you. And if this is a trap, and you have betrayed me…” She smiled. “I’m quick. Quick on my feet and quick with my knife. Pray hard, Piero, that you have not been stupid again.”
The following night
Cordier’s job, Francesca decided, was not one she’d choose. For one thing, there was too much waiting. She wasn’t used to waiting. She wasn’t used to being at anyone’s beck and call, let alone the beck and call of thieves and murderers. She didn’t like it.
Giulietta and Lurenze had joined them for dinner but afterward the prince had a social gathering he was obliged to attend. Though Giuletta had offered to stay behind, Cordier had encouraged her to keep the prince company. “I doubt anything will happen tonight,” he’d said, “and I know the dreary diplomatic business will pass more pleasantly for his highness if you are by.”
Assured that they’d be sent for the instant the situation changed, Lurenze and Giulietta had left an hour ago.
At present, Francesca and Cordier were in the private parlor adjoining her boudoir. She was trying to write a letter to Lord Byron, but it was very difficult to concentrate with Cordier asking her questions and looking over her shoulder and breathing down her neck.
He had started out lounging on the sofa, and she’d assumed that he, accustomed to waiting, would take a nap. But the instant she commenced writing, he became deeply interested in that.
She set down her pen. “Perhaps you ought to wait at your house,” she said. “If a message comes, I can let you know in minutes.”
“As I told Lurenze, I doubt a message will come this soon. Fazi is more likely to make us wait another day or two while she makes arrangements to get away. And while she scouts Venice for the best site for a rendezvous.”
Francesca turned around in her chair. “You are so sure she’ll agree to this?” she said.
“Oh, yes. Do you write to him regularly?”
She turned the letter over and pushed it to one side of her cluttered writing desk. “Not as regularly as I would like.” She recovered the inkwell.
“Sorry.” He straightened. “But spying is what I do. Among other things.”
He smiled a smile so full of wicked meaning that she was strongly tempted to grab his neckcloth and kiss him until he fainted.
It would be a good way to pass the time. It would relieve the tension.
No, it probably wouldn’t. She was, in fact, deeply uneasy about what was to come, though she was doing her best to appear as nonchalant as he.
“You’re supposed to understand these matters better than I,” she said. “But if I were Marta Fazi, I would be making myself scarce about now. I find it hard to believe she’ll risk a noose on Elphick’s account, no matter how much he’s paying her. It’s hard to believe she can be that desperate.”
“She’s a desperado, not desperate,” he said. “They hired Fazi because they know what she’s like. She doesn’t give up. She’s tried three times to get the letters from you and failed three times. That’s not cause for surrender. Now winning is a point of pride. After all the trouble she’s gone through, I don’t see her letting an opportunity go, even if she suspects a trap.”
“She’d have to be an idiot not to suspect one.”
“She’s daring and resourceful,” he said. “She has to be. Men don’t like taking orders from a woman. But she’s always managed to get a lot of cutthroats to do her bidding.”
“Not this time, though, you said.”
“The chances are small,” he said. “The men who tried to kidnap you are in custody. Piero’s friend Bruno is incapacitated. That leaves Piero. Fazi needs more than a few hours to recruit new henchmen. She doesn’t understand Venetian. Being short of help and frustrated might make her more dangerous. On the other hand, it does make her more willing to take a risk. The sooner she responds, the less likely it is that she’ll have anyone b
ut Piero with her.”
His blue gaze became searching. “Are you getting cold feet? It’s not too late to back out. I can get Zeggio to dress up as you—as I’d planned originally.”
Oh, she was tempted. “And let the pair of you ruin another gown?” she said. “I think not.” Yes, she was frightened. But he’d invited her to—to be his partner—and to her, that was almost as good as a gift of diamonds.
Well, perhaps it was better, if one wanted to be stupidly sentimental and romantic about going out to confront a desperate—or desperado—woman.
“Speaking of gowns,” he said.
Though she’d understood she might spend this night waiting for word that didn’t come, Francesca had not dressed for an evening at home. She’d dressed at her usual time in the usual way, for an evening out. She wore a blue crepe gown, set off with a suite of pearls. Her headdress was adorned with pearls, too.
His searching blue gaze traveled down over the gown to her slippered feet then up again to the pearls encircling her neck and dangling from her ears. “That’s a little excessive, don’t you think, for a rendezvous with a killer?”
“It’s evening,” she said. “In the event I’m obliged to go out, I want to be properly dressed.”
“Improperly, you mean. If the neckline were any lower, I could see whether your navel went in or out.”
“Don’t you remember?” she said.
“In,” he said.
She remembered, too, and heat washed through her in wave after dizzying wave. But she was not a naïve girl, to be disconcerted by mere words. With her index finger she traced the décolletage.
The blue gaze smoldered. “On the other hand,” he said, “if that wicked neckline is all for my benefit…” He bent his head.
The door opened and Arnaldo walked in, silver tray in his hands. “A boy has brought this, signora,” he said.
Cordier came to attention, every evidence of lust erased, his face hard and alert.
“A dirty little ruffian,” the butler went on. “He gives it to me and runs away.”