“I see.” The crease in Bianca’s forehead and the far-off look in her eyes belied her easy acceptance of the mystery’s solution. It was the look she got when she was at her most cunning, Ian knew, and it made him nervous to see it in connection with something as benign as a plant. His nervousness was compounded by suspicion when, soon after, she made an excuse to leave.
“Where are you going?” Ian demanded roughly.
Bianca cocked her head to one side. The far-off look was replaced by one Ian could only describe as playful. “I thought I would take a bit of air in one of your gondolas, then perhaps go to one of the places where women like me have their special needs met. You know, animals, whips, those sorts of things.”
The Arboretti, including Ian, just gawked.
“Santa Barbara’s hands, I am kidding, my lord. I fear that if I tell you my actual schedule, you might die of boredom, and then where would I be? A homely aged spinster once more without a husband.” Bianca rolled her eyes at the thought.
Observing that Ian was on the point of regaining use, if not control, of his mouth, she rushed on. “If you must know the truth, I am going to check on Marina and her baby. Then I thought I would spend the day taking care of some last-minute correspondence.” She paused to see whether her allusion to the short time left her had attracted his attention. “Really, my lord, the best way to be sure of my whereabouts would be to station yourself constantly at my side.”
Ian was now back in full command of his faculties. “What if someone mistook me for a fawning suitor? Surely that would damage my burgeoning popularity with other women. Not to mention how it would eat into the time I would have available to them.”
“Quite right,” Bianca said, suddenly feeling anything but jovial. “I should never want to be a hindrance to your enjoyment of life.”
“Don’t worry,” Crispin chimed in merrily. “Ian has not enjoyed life in years.”
To Crispin’s stupefaction, Ian concurred. “True, so true.” Then, struggling to keep his voice morose and free from any hint of the excitement he was feeling, he addressed Bianca. “And to ensure I continue to be miserable, I request your company tonight for dinner when the clock strikes nine. It seems we have many things to discuss that are better handled in private.” He added, as if an afterthought, “And don’t forget to dress appropriately. Green is not at all the thing this season.”
The room shook with the impact of the door slamming behind Bianca, but nowhere near as much as it did later when, recalling the expression on her face, Ian’s laughter reverberated off the walls.
Chapter Twenty-One
When Nilo came back with the message, Bianca was in the servants’ wing having Marina arrange her hair. She had passed the three hours since the boy’s departure in an agony of expectation, for the success or failure of her plan hinged entirely on the answer he would bring her. Had she been able to, she would have climbed the walls of her room, but instead had to content herself with pacing its length, width, and diagonals. When she had exhausted the entertainment value of that activity, about five minutes after commencing it, she had picked up a book, read a page, put it down, unwittingly picked up a different book, read a different page, put that one down, over and over again with five books. That used up four minutes. She then consumed ten minutes checking over the lists she had made and the messages she had written should she decide to go ahead with her plan, five minutes assuring herself of the eventual success of the plan, thirteen minutes telling herself of its certain failure, nine minutes wondering what Ian wanted to talk to her about, fourteen minutes imaging what she would rather do with him than talk, twelve minutes trying to properly identify all the women pictured on her walls, eleven minutes making up new names for them, fifteen minutes staring into space, eight minutes trying to decide which of her four gowns to wear, another eight minutes changing her mind, and ten minutes maneuvering her body into the one she finally selected.
At that point, two hours later, it had been clear that neither her mind nor her room could offer her any further amusement unless she began moving the furniture around. Just as she was reflecting that she liked the arrangement of the furniture, it occurred to her that she should pay Marina a visit. Pleased at the prospect of having someone else to pass the interminably long minutes with, she grabbed two strings of pearls from her dressing table and flew down the stairs to the servant’s room.
In her excitement, she forgot to knock and therefore was confronted with a scene not intended for her observation. Marina was propped up in bed, holding Caesar against one breast, while Giorgio gently massaged her feet. The baby was the only one not to bat an eye when Bianca came bursting in. Giorgio jumped up and away from the seat he had been occupying as if it had suddenly turned into a bed of snapping serpents, while Marina hid herself and the baby completely under the covers. Bianca, who had stopped dead in her tracks, began to laugh.
She was still gasping for breath when she spoke. “I- I- I apologize for bursting in that way. I did not mean to interrupt anything. I will just go.”
Giorgio caught her arm before she could leave. “You won’t tell His Lordship, will you?” His expression was so earnest that Bianca nearly began to laugh again.
“What? That you were performing an act of kindness for a fellow creature?”
“No, an act of kindness, when you put it that way, that is okay.” Giorgio’s voice dropped to a whisper. “But you won’t tell him it was for a woman, will you?”
Bianca considered challenging him, but decided that was a prejudice best worked out between master and servant. “Very well. I won’t tell him you were being thoughtful to a woman. I can imagine how that would ruin your reputation.”
Giorgio shook her hand in gratitude, deciding she was the nicest suspected murderess he had ever met. Seeing that she was turning to leave, he stopped her. “I was about to depart, I have dinner to attend to, but you should stay. I am sure Marina wouldn’t mind your company.”
Bianca waited until the door closed behind him to address the bedcovers. “I was wondering if you would help me with my hair?”
“You will still have me?” Marina peeked out from a corner. “You’re not going to toss me out?”
“Why? Because you seem to have captivated Giorgio’s heart?”
Marina emerged farther from the covers, beaming. “Do you really think I have?” She giggled to herself. “I tell you, ma’am, never has a man been as nice to me as that Giorgio. Or for as little.”
“I hope you are not exerting yourself too much on his behalf.” Bianca’s tone was arch. “You still need time to heal.”
“Ma’am! I haven’t exerted myself, as you put it, with him at all, that’s just the thing. And yet he keeps on coming back here, all politelike, with a sweet or some wine or some little thing for the baby. Not like that other one, that gondolier. He just comes in flashing his toothy grin and the gold in his pockets. Time was he would have been the man for me, but I think my ways are changing.”
Marina kept up a steady stream of conversation as she arranged Bianca’s hair, pulling the top part back from her temples in two small braids interwoven with pearls and letting the rest hang in waves down her back. She had just handed Bianca a mirror to admire it by when Nilo burst in as his mistress had an hour earlier.
“Damnation,” he cried when he spotted Bianca, rendering the two women dumb.
Bianca recovered first. “Nilo, that word is completely inappropriate.”
“His Lordship uses it all the time,” Nilo pointed out empirically.
“Yes, but His Lordship is taller than you are,” Bianca offered, almost as empirically, hoping simultaneously that Nilo would neither question her logic nor undergo a growth spurt anytime soon.
The boy looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. “You are right. I won’t use it again until I am as tall as he is.”
�
��Very good. Now that we have settled that, what did she say?” Bianca’s tone did little to mask her excitement.
“Nothing,” Nilo replied, all innocence. “Oh, that is not strictly true. She said, ‘Wait here, little one.’” The boy looked intently at his mistress, watching for the moment when he had frustrated her past endurance.
“And?” Bianca demanded.
“I waited,” he replied simply. His stomach rumbled.
“And?” Bianca’s tone made it clear that if he did not manage an answer of more than two words this time, he might have to bid farewell to his dinner, and perhaps to food in general, forever.
“And she came back and gave me this.” Nilo pulled a letter from inside his tunic.
Bianca grabbed it, hastily broke the wax seal, and struggled to hold it steady enough to read. There were only two lines, written on scented paper and in a voluptuous script that instantly brought to mind the woman who had sent it. “Cara, All I have is at your disposal. It will be a pleasure to help you in any way I can.”
She had agreed. The plan would go ahead. Bianca did not know if she was happy or terrified, and she did not have time to decide. The clock was striking eight when she had recovered enough from her excitement to stand. She quickly took her leave of Marina and Caesar, told Nilo to go to the kitchen for something to eat and to dry off a bit, and then to meet her in her room.
While waiting for him, she took the six cream-colored packages from her writing desk and inspected them one last time. Once they were sent out, she was committed, there would be no going back, no chance to change course. The plan was risky, very risky, but it was her only option. The messages would go out. The trap would be set.
Her greatest concern was for the boy. He arrived shortly, rosycheeked and smiling from his dinner in front of the kitchen fire, but the smile died when he saw the expression on his mistress’s face.
As soon as Nilo had made his bow, Bianca handed him the six packages.
Her voice was unfamiliar when she spoke, cool and distant. “You must deliver each of these tonight. That, of course, will be no challenge for you. The challenge is that you must do it in such a way that you cannot be followed, caught, or recognized, either tonight or at any point in the future. You must be at your most nimble. All of the men to whom you deliver these will be upset, but one of them will be more than merely upset. He will be dangerous.”
Nilo nodded seriously, all trace of his earlier playfulness erased, examining the packages with care. On one side they were closed with a heavy wax seal bearing an unfamiliar coat of arms, and on the other they were addressed in a hand Bianca had tried to make as different from her own as possible. He was studying the addresses when one of them caught his eye. Looking up abruptly, he held it out to Bianca. “Mistress, are you sure you have made this one out correctly? It says—”
“Yes, I know,” she cut him off. “That one will be the hardest to deliver. It is also the most important. You must be sure it gets to him, and even more sure that you are not recognized.”
Nilo carefully tucked the packages in his tunic to protect them from the rain, then made a deep and solemn bow to her.
“Be careful, little one,” she said, her voice now familiar. “I do not want any harm to come to you.”
“Nor I, to you,” he said in a tone chivalric enough for a man three times his age.
Their solicitude for each other’s well-being made them momentarily unaware that they had been joined by another person. Ian stood at the other end of the apartment and watched as Bianca spoke with strident gestures to her little servant. Finally tired of being ignored, he cleared his throat and approached them.
“I hope, sir, that you are not also making a bid for my lady’s hand,” he said seriously to Nilo.
The young boy blushed and kept his eyes on the ground. “No, my lord. Not until I am tall enough to say ‘damnation.’ ”
Ian was unfazed by this new evidence of his betrothed’s unusual ability to surround herself with lunacy. “Luckily for me, that will not be for some time. Until then, I hope you will not mind if I take her in to dinner.”
Nilo, eyes still on the ground, shook his head back and forth, as Ian offered his arm to Bianca.
She was studying him, trying to recall why she had been angry with him that afternoon, wondering how she could ever be displeased with him. He was magnificent. The cuffs and collar of his silver-blue silk shirt, which was the exact color of his eyes, peeked out from under his tapered black velvet jacket. The jacket was fastened with two diamond clasps and ended just below his waist to give an unobstructed view of his sinewy thighs encased in leggings of silver-and-black velvet. Bianca found her breathing quickening as she took his arm and allowed herself to be led from the room.
They descended the first staircase but instead of continuing down the second to the dining room, or turning left to enter his apartments, Ian steered her toward a small door on the right that she had never before noticed. It gave onto a staircase wide enough for them to ascend arm in arm, brightly lit by candles. The staircase was decorated in the style of antique Rome which had been popular earlier that century, the walls a deep porphyry red and bordered by a frieze of frolicking satyrs and maidens painted to look as if they were carved statues. Bianca was so fascinated by the embellishments that Ian almost had to drag her up to the door at the top of the stairs with promises that the best was yet to come.
When Ian opened it and motioned her through, she saw he had spoken the truth. Her mind assured her that it was still a rainy night in November and she was still inside Palazzo Foscari, but her eyes told her that it was a beautiful spring day in a Roman garden. Each of the four walls of the room dissolved into a garden pavilion so skillfully rendered that Bianca was sure she smelled the fragrance of fresh jasmine and heard the rustling of a light breeze through the treetops.
“Where are we?” she asked finally, her voice filled with wonder.
“This was my grandparent’s private dining room.” Ian spread his arms wide, proudly. “My grandmother hated winter, so my grandfather brought Raphael up from Rome to paint her a room where it would always be spring.”
“But are we still in your house?” Bianca was still stunned.
Without realizing that he had let his guard down, Ian laughed. “Yes, we are between the floor you occupy and the one I occupy, somewhere under Roberto and Francesco’s rooms.”
“What is that?” Bianca spun around, looking for the source of the music that had begun to fill the room.
“Magic,” Ian said, but not in answer to her question. He was entranced by the figure spinning before him, her loose hair flying out behind her to catch the light of the candles. The dress was perfection on her, the dark gold of the brocade matching the gold of her eyes, the blue a sensational contrast with her creamy skin. He knew at that instant that the moment he had been waiting for, the moment when he would stop wanting her, stop feeling drawn to her, would never come. And he knew equally that he could never feel that way about a murderess. Ian had begun to believe, had wanted to believe in her innocence days before, but it was only then, at that moment, that it became an indisputable certainty to him.
He could have told her of his realization that night, but he was unwilling to risk spoiling their evening together by speaking of murder. There would be time for his confessions and his apologies later, he told himself, for they would have many years together. The thought suffused him with a delicious warmth, tempting him to skip dinner entirely and move into the adjacent bedchamber. His willful body was unable to override his mind, however, which was cogently advising him to savor and prolong every moment of the evening he had painstakingly planned.
Bianca noticed the dining table for the first time when Ian took her hand and led her to it. It was on a raised platform in a corner of the room, framed by an arbor that was covered with white jasmine blossoms. They l
ooked so real that Bianca was tempted to reach for them, but she pulled her hand back just in time to avoid making a fool of herself.
“Go ahead,” Ian said, reaching toward them. “These are real. My grandmother loved jasmine, and I keep these plants here in her memory.”
Two weeks earlier she would never have guessed that granite-cold Ian Foscari, the Conte d’Aosto, was capable of such a romantic act, but now it seemed an integral part of his complex personality. She watched intently as he snapped a branch of the fragrant plant from a nearby stalk and tucked it neatly into the bodice of her gown. Her skin felt warm where he had touched her, and she wondered if he was too hungry to skip dinner. Before she could proposition him, however, he was directing her to a bench at one side of the elaborately set table.
The finest Foscari silver glittered atop the white damask tablecloth in the light of almost fifty candles hidden in niches throughout the room. As if in response to some telepathic command, three servants entered, one carrying a gold carafe of wine, and two bearing steaming silver tureens. Wordlessly they set their burdens down and were gone, as silently and quickly as they had come. Ian poured the sparkling, golden prosecco into two goblets, then took something from a pedestal next to him and set it on the table before Bianca.
It was a wooden box, with the initials of Venice’s foremost goldsmith inlayed in the top. She had seen its mate, though not its twin, for this one was quite large, the day she had watched Ian present Tullia with the immense emerald earrings as payment for her services. Disgust warred with anger and then sadness as she looked at the box. Finally, she pushed it away and said in a bitter voice, “I cannot accept that, my lord.”
The Stargazer: The Arboretti Family Saga - Book One Page 26