The Stargazer: The Arboretti Family Saga - Book One

by Michele Jaffe

  Ian sneaked up behind him. Holding his breath, he brought the silver spice container down against the back of the intruder’s head. The criminal gasped, then collapsed onto the floor, unconscious. The candle fell from his hand and was retrieved by Ian. By its light he untied the black mask, but soon wished he had not. There, lying unconscious on the floor, was Bianca. As he stood over her, stunned and astonished, her eyes began to flutter. She groaned in pain as he tried to prop her up against the wall. Finally she opened her eyes.

  And then she opened them even wider. She was completely distracted from the ache in her head by the vision that confronted her. Ian’s naked body was more breathtaking than anything she had imagined in all her hours of imagining live male bodies. His limbs were taut with muscle, his arms and broad shoulders powerful, and his chest covered with golden hair that glimmered in the candlelight and descended past his slim waist into a triangle of darker curls at the junction of his legs. She was so rapt in admiration that she did not notice when he began speaking.

  “Signorina Salva, Bianca, damn it, can you hear me?” he demanded finally, shaking her to get her attention.

  She nodded slowly, dragging her eyes from his body to his face.

  “What the devil do you think you are doing? I might have hurt you.

  “I think you did,” Bianca said, wincing as she felt the bump on the back of her head.

  “You deserve that and more. Who suggested that you could go roaming around the house, dressed like a boy, at all hours?”

  “Oh, no, my lord. You needn’t worry about me roaming around the house. I have hardly been here. I just got back, actually.”

  Ian’s anger was tempered by incredulity. “You went out? Dressed like that? Whatever for?”

  “If you only had seven days to live, wouldn’t you try to enjoy them to the utmost?”

  “But if you were innocent, as you claim, you would have more than seven days to live. Is this a confession?”

  “No. More like my assessment of life married to you.” Bianca hoped to cool the triumph she heard in his voice.

  It worked. She could have sworn she heard Ian growl. But then she realized the noise was coming not from the naked man before her, but from upstairs, in another part of the palazzo. Ian’s head shot around to follow it, both their ears straining in the darkness. Motioning to her to be quiet, Ian turned to the staircase, taking the steps two at a time. Bianca followed behind slowly, hindered by the sharp pain that went through her body every time she moved her head. Nonetheless, she was grateful to be wearing tight breeches instead of layers of petticoats, which would have made following Ian nearly impossible.

  At the top floor they stopped. Ian put the candle on a console along the wall and made a sign for her to stay there. Her head was aching, and she figured she had already antagonized him beyond endurance for one night, so she dutifully followed his orders. The noise seemed to be coming not from within his laboratory, directly in front of them, but farther along the hall, from hers. Of course, she realized with a flash, whoever had murdered Isabella had probably come in search of the body. What a fool she had been not to have foreseen it and locked herself up here to greet the malefactor when he arrived! Excitement got the better of her restraint, and she began to move more quickly toward Ian. When she reached him, he was turning the door handle slowly.

  The door moved inward without a sound. Little by little Ian inched it open, reminding himself to give Giorgio a raise the next day for not having locked it. When the opening was wide enough for him to slip his head through, he silently peered into the room.

  The laboratory was empty save for a figure, cloaked in black, with his back to Ian. The window on the far wall had been shattered by the prowler when he entered. Bianca’s instruments had been thrown from their chests and cases and lay scattered around the floor of the room. The figure stood in the midst of them, attentively studying a pile of papers before him. Ian pushed the door open wider and stepped into the room, right onto something sharp. Cursing silently, he slipped closer to the intruder, ready to strike again with the silver spice container.

  As he raised it over the intruder’s head, it caught the light of the candle. A reflection flashed across the far wall. The intruder looked up from the papers for a moment, then looked back down apparently unconcerned. But he had been alerted. The man moved just as Ian brought the box down where his head should have been and was at the window before Ian realized what had happened.

  Ian was on his heels as the prowler leapt from the window onto the roof of the adjoining house. Ian could see him in the moonlight, moving quickly over the rain-slicked terra-cotta tiles, gripping the pile of papers under one arm and using the other one to maneuver. Barefoot and empty-handed, Ian was able to make better time than his prey. The intruder jumped from one rooftop to the next, with Ian following closely. Ian lost his footing and began to slip, grabbing on to a nearby chimney pot for support. He righted himself and saw that his adversary had also fallen. Scrambling rapidly across the slick tiles, Ian finally caught up to him. He made a wild leap at the man’s shoulders. For a moment the intruder lay pinned under Ian, his heart pounding rapidly.

  It occurred to the intruder that if he got caught he would receive no thanks from anyone. Fired by the thought of his mistress’s gratitude, he began to wriggle under the weight of the man on top of him. He ignored the cutting edges of the tile as he fought to break the clasp of his sable cape. All at once, the cape began to slide off, taking the man on top of it with him. Ian cursed and tried to get a handhold on a tile, but the fur cape only moved more quickly down the wet roof. He was going to die, he thought suddenly, naked, sliding on a fur cape down the steep slope of the Widow Falentini’s old house. People would think he must have been mad. Indeed, he must be mad to find himself in this situation. Betrothal to a suspected murderess, a mad chase by moonlight—these could hardly be incidents in the well-ordered life of Ian Foscari. But they were, and he was… damn it, he was enjoying it. Suddenly he wanted to laugh. And he wanted to live. Then he saw the edge of the roof approaching rapidly as the cape continued its perilous descent. With all his strength, Ian reached out and grabbed at two broken tiles, praying they were not loose.

  They weren’t. He hung, suspended from two roof tiles, naked in the moonlight. It was only the second time in his life that Ian had felt close to death, but this time was different. The last time his survival had filled him with anguish. He had felt himself longing for death, for his death instead of Christian’s. Now, instead, he felt exhilarated. “You always were good at self-preservation” he heard Mora’s voice sneering, but it seemed unimportant. More important, he realized, feeling the ache in his arms, was pulling himself onto the roof. With a groan, Ian hauled himself up and stood.

  He looked down into the dark streets, hoping for a sign of the intruder but knowing he would find none. The man was gone, leaving only his cape behind. Ian slung the garment over his shoulders as protection against the suddenly chilly air and began to move slowly over the roof tiles toward his house. Since he had made off with Bianca’s drawings, the man had obviously been looking for evidence of Isabella’s presence. But how could he have known the body had been there? Or even that there was a body? Ian had kept the news of Isabella’s murder from the Arboretti, from everyone except those who had to know, Francesco, Roberto, and Giorgio. He had kept the laboratory locked the entire time the body was there so that none of his staff might stumble on it by accident. Only five people—himself, his uncles, Giorgio, and Bianca—knew about the body, so clearly one of them had told someone. He could vouch for the security of the first four, but Bianca was unguessable. Yet she had been under constant surveillance since she arrived. She could not have communicated anything to anyone from his house. Unless…

  Unless this was her conspirator. Unless she had planned this from the beginning, planned to get into his house with the body. The dagger had been on
ly the smallest element of the frame she had arranged for him. She had intended for him to find her with the body, to move her into his house, so she would have ample opportunity to fabricate even more evidence of his guilt. Of course! And tonight’s escapade had been orchestrated well in advance. The two conspirators must have agreed on a time to enter the house, Bianca’s clumsy approach drawing Ian’s attention away from the intruder upstairs, who would be busy planting evidence. But Ian had foiled their scheme by breaking in on him, and the accomplice had been forced to flee. He must have taken Bianca’s papers as a cover, or perhaps they contained some instructions for him. Anatomical drawings indeed! The devious, conniving, murderous slut. But the pair of them would not succeed, Ian swore to himself. They would not outsmart him.

  He began to move more quickly, struck by the thought that Bianca might have tried to escape when she saw all her plans unraveling. His blood was boiling with anger and exertion by the time he approached his own rooftop. Fueled by the strength of his emotions, he leapt easily from his neighbor’s roof, catching the windowsill of Bianca’s laboratory with his hands. He hauled himself into the room, half-expecting to find it empty.

  At first it appeared to be. A single candle sat on the table at the center, flickering unevenly as the night breezes entered the room. Bianca’s tools were still littered around the floor, all the drawers and chests turned upside down. From the corner of the room Ian heard a sound, a small sound, something like a whimper. There, huddled in a ball and clutching something, was a creature. It took him a moment to identify the weeping mass as the wily criminal he had just been castigating in his thoughts. Bianca looked anything but devious as the tears rolled down her cheeks and over the object in her hands. Given the way he felt about crying women, Ian was tempted to step back out the window until she was done, but then he realized that this was the first time he had seen her shed a tear since she had been with him, and it certainly had not been an easy courtship up to this point. He was momentarily puzzled, wondering what had triggered it, when it occurred to him that it was probably just a ploy for sympathy, to mask her conspirator’s flubbed attempt.

  “Very tidy, Signorina Salva, trying to get me killed this way. I suppose after the first murder they get easier?” Ian’s tone was harsh, his words cutting.

  Bianca raised her eyes from the instrument held tightly in her hands, noting Ian’s presence for the first time. She heard neither his words nor his tone, her attention riveted by the streams of blood trickling down his cut legs. She moved to stand, to find her bandages among the wreck of her instruments, but felt a firm hand on her shoulder.

  “You will stay right there, carissima. I’ll not have you attack me with this thing.” Ian tried to remove the peculiar tool from her hands as he forced her back into the corner. It looked like some sort of strange cutting machine, with one long knife and one short blunt one joined together. But even the shorter blade looked dangerous enough, and Ian was taking no more risks.

  Bianca refused to let it go. “No. It’s all I have left of him,” she said simply.

  “This belonged to your accomplice, then? Is it, perhaps, the murder weapon?”

  “My accomplice?” Bianca looked confused. “My father, you mean. It was his, a gift from King Henry of France for a special operation. My brother sold all the instruments when Papa died, without even telling me, but he couldn’t sell this because Papa left it to me in his will. It is all I have of him. And now it is broken.” Bianca shook her head miserably. Ian watched as the tears welled up in her eyes again. This was certainly a very good act, he thought, feeling a pang. Very pitiable. Very convincing.

  As he looked down at her, crying and clutching the weird tool, he wondered again if perhaps she could be innocent. Then his gaze shifted to his leg. The blood drying in rivulets from his many cuts brought him to his senses, and his rational mind returned. Women were capable of anything, he reminded himself as warm goo trickled out of a particularly nasty gash on his knee, anything at all.

  Bianca’s eye followed his gaze to his bloody legs, bringing her back to her rational mind as well. “I am sorry, my lord,” she said, shaking the tears from her eyes. “I should have attended to your cuts sooner. If you will just let me stand to find the bandages…”

  Ian shook his head. “So you can stab me with that thing of your father’s, if it really was his? You’ll go nowhere until you give that over to me. Then, we will see.”

  Reluctantly, Bianca surrendered the instrument to Ian. “Please, my lord, do not give it away. It is the most precious thing I have and I should be very sorry to lose it.”

  Ian took it from her hand and examined it. It did seem to bear the shield of Henry III, but that was no guarantee that she spoke the truth. He set it down on the table and returned his glare to her.

  “Perhaps now that you are done sobbing, you will tell me who your accomplice is? Or at least what he hoped to do here tonight?”

  “My accomplice…?” Bianca murmured. “I take it, since you are asking me this question, you did not catch up with him?”

  “So you admit that he was your accomplice?”

  “No, my lord, I said no such thing. I fear your loss of blood is impairing your hearing. Perhaps if you let me bandage your legs…”

  Ian ignored both her sarcasm and her proffered aid. “What is your relationship to him then?”

  “I detest him,” Bianca answered frankly.

  “Aha! So you do know him?”

  “That scarcely follows logically, my lord. Loss of blood does not usually affect the powers of reason, but—”

  “Cease these lessons on anatomy! Tell me, carissima, how you know you despise him if you don’t know who he is?” Ian’s demand had the tone of a much worn syllogism.

  “By Santa Olivia’s ring finger, I should say it is obvious. He broke my father’s scissors and he stole my drawings. Both are unique, irreplaceable, and infinitely valuable to me.”

  Ian’s eyes raked her face, looking for signs of deception, but found none. It was all so plausible, it would be so easy to believe. But she might be a devious murderer, or at least know someone who was. Someone who, he reminded himself, had first tried to frame him and then had nearly gotten him killed. He forced his mind back to his earlier train of thought.

  “If you will not admit this man was your accomplice—” Bianca tried to interject something but Ian continued over her. “If you persist in denying that, perhaps you will explain how you came to be sneaking into the house dressed like a boy.” A very shapely boy, Ian now thought to himself, wondering how he had failed to notice it before.

  Bianca paused, deciding how much to tell Ian. Her concern for his cuts and preoccupation with the loss of her treasures had made her momentarily forget that she hated him. That and the sight of his naked body in the candlelight earlier that night. But his repeated insistence on her “accomplice” and her evil intent—not to mention the ache in her head where he had bashed her—reminded her, and she decided he deserved to know very little. “I was investigating,” she said finally.

  “Investigating?” Ian snorted. “Where, some gambling hall? What sorts of investigations require murderesses,” he used the word to be deliberately cruel, “to dress like men?”

  Bianca ignored his attempt to rile her. “Though you are probably not aware of it, my lord, women’s clothing is quite restrictive. It is impossible to row a gondola in female attire, or scale a wall, or even mount a—”

  “Because,” Ian interrupted, “women are not to do those things. I hardly think, Signorina Salva, that you are in a position to be giving lectures on appropriate dress and deportment.”

  “Nor are you in much of a position to comment on those subjects,” Bianca retorted, looking pointedly at Ian’s attire, or lack of it.

  This was madness, Ian realized. He was completely nude, standing in a freezing room, surrounded by a pool
of his own blood, arguing with a tricky female who used logical arguments to avoid giving him any information. It was so mad that it was funny, and for the third time in as many days the unthinkable happened: Ian laughed. It began as a small chuckle but grew and grew until it was reverberating off the walls of the small laboratory. Head thrown back and eyes closed, Ian let wave after long-repressed wave of laughter roll out of him.

  Bianca was first startled, then alarmed, then very alarmed. This was not normal, not for anyone, and especially not for the notoriously mirthless Ian Foscari. Clearly his wounds were more serious than she had realized and he was temporarily out of his sane mind. Slowly she slid up the wall into a standing position, trying not to alarm the hysterical figure in front of her. She watched him in his mad merriment, waiting until he was calm enough to be spoken to.

  “My lord,” she began tentatively, reaching out a hand toward his arm. “My lord,” she tried again, louder. “I really think I ought to tend to your cuts. This behavior is, well, most disturbing.”

  Ian opened his eyes and looked at her, a chuckle caught in his throat. Who was this creature who had turned his sober, well-ordered, content—not really content, he admitted to himself—but definitely rational life upside down? She truly was most exquisitely beautiful, he thought, remembering the comments of the other Arboretti. He reached out and caught one of the dark gold curls that had sneaked out of her black cap, watching the candlelight play over it. He wanted to bring it to his lips, to tickle them with its silky smoothness. Then he would move his mouth to her delightful ear, flicking lightly with his tongue, whispering words to make her ready for him. His hands would caress that body, the body with the small firm breasts and velvety thighs, the body he had dreamt about, the one he now ached to bury himself inside of.