Your Scandalous Ways

by Loretta Chase

  The man who was trouble retrieved the jewelry case from the table in the portego where he’d tossed it shortly after leaving madame and a moment before Magny appeared. This time James didn’t pause but continued through the archway, and down the stairs to the andron.

  He fixed his attention on his surroundings, taking in every detail. Though he’d come this way before, it was the first time he’d done so in broad day. He could only hope his years of training had survived the tempest that was Francesca Bonnard, and he’d remember, once he calmed down, every detail of the rooms he’d passed through this day. He had to hope that some part of his mind had paid attention, while the rest of it was roiling with anger, jealousy, lust, frustration, and several other emotions he’d rather not examine too closely.

  If all else failed, he’d have to search the house. In such a case, it was best to have a mental picture of the likeliest hiding places. Searching, however, was the method he’d hoped to avoid. On the occasions when he had to turn burglar, he preferred to know exactly where to find what he was looking for.

  That was not the case here. Though, like other Venetian palazzi, hers was fairly simply laid out, the house was large, containing all too many possible hiding places. With most people, he could easily deduce where they’d keep precious items, once he understood how their minds worked. The trouble was, he could not unscramble the workings of a woman’s mind while she was scrambling his.

  He swiftly made his way to his waiting gondola. Sedgewick and Zeggio, who’d been talking softly, looked up at the same time. Both faces were wary.

  They think I’ve taken leave of my senses, James thought, and they’re not wrong.

  He told Zeggio to take them to the island of San Lazzaro.

  James needed to clear his head, and he was sure that would happen more quickly once he was out on the water, several miles from Venice—and from her. The tiny island, once a haven for lepers, was now home to the Armenian monastery where Byron had studied.

  A monastery, at the moment, sounded like heaven.

  Chapter 8

  Oh Pleasure! you are indeed a pleasant thing,

  Although one must be damn’d for you,

  no doubt:

  I make a resolution every spring

  Of reformation, ere the year run out,

  But somehow, this my vestal vow takes wing,

  Yet still, I trust it may be kept throughout:

  I’m very sorry, very much ashamed,

  And mean, next winter, to be quite reclaimed.

  Lord Byron

  Don Juan, Canto the First

  “You should not have come,” Francesca again told Magny as she emerged from the dressing room.

  He’d left the window and planted himself on a chair in the boudoir. His hands folded upon the elaborate gold knob of the walking stick propped between his legs, he glowered at the floor.

  “I hear things,” he said. “They make me think you’ve taken leave of your senses.”

  “You are at liberty to think what you like.”

  She walked to the writing desk she often used as a receptacle for odds and ends of jewelry, scarves, gloves, creams, and lotions. She sank into the chair, and hunted through the bric-a-brac for her note paper and pen. “I will not allow any man to rule me. If that was what I’d wanted, I’d have remarried.”

  “Thérèse, do gather up those pearls and put them away properly,” he said. “For God’s sake, Francesca, let the girl tend to your jewelry. What has come over you, to make you so careless?”

  Look at the way you treat those pearls, those splendid pearls, Cordier had said. I’m not one of your baubles. You won’t use me as you use your jewelry. I won’t be used, to prove whatever it is you want to prove, and cast aside.

  Men used women, but when the tables were turned…oh, that was another matter altogether. That was a capital crime.

  “Take them,” Francesca told her maid. Though Thérèse ignored the count, she was no doubt itching to do as he commanded.

  Francesca pushed a jar of powder aside. “Ah, there’s a pen.” She took it up, separated the inkwell from the other little jars and bottles, and cleared a space on the table. She found a few sheets of note paper under a scarf.

  Magny knew better than to ask to whom she was writing. He knew she’d only tell him it was none of his affair.

  “I understand they’ve caught one of the men,” he said after a moment’s thunderous silence.

  “Footpads,” she said. She shuddered involuntarily. She gave a short laugh to conceal it. “Or are they floatpads in Venice?”

  “It does not amuse me,” he said.

  She shrugged. “They’d heard of my jewelry. That’s what they wanted—and to entertain themselves by tormenting a helpless woman.”

  “Is that what the governor believes? Is that what you believe?”

  She paused, the pen in midair. She turned and looked at him. “The man was already in custody,” she said. “He’s sure to be executed. Why should he lie? What had he to lose by telling the truth?”

  “I don’t know. I cannot help thinking it had to do with that business earlier in the summer.”

  “Lord Quentin,” she said grimly. She turned back to her note.

  She didn’t know how Quentin had learned about the letters she’d taken from the locked drawer in her former husband’s desk. She didn’t know how Quentin had obtained the fragment he’d shown her, so startlingly like those she had. It sounded, however, as though he’d made the discovery not very long ago.

  The matter has puzzled us for some time, he told her. But it was only recently that we’ve begun putting the puzzle pieces together.

  The puzzle pieces indicated that Elphick was what she’d suspected him to be five years ago: a man who worked for his country’s enemies. But five years ago no one would have believed her. With the appalling accusations he’d made during the divorce, he’d destroyed her credibility—that was to say, what little credibility remained, after her father had swindled half the Beau Monde.

  Her own lawyers, to whom she’d shown one of the letters, had told her they’d do her more harm than good, either during the criminal conversation case John had brought against her lover, Lord Robert Meadows, or during the divorce proceedings. John’s lawyers would have no trouble making people believe the letters were the inventions of a vindictive, amoral woman.

  They’d had no trouble, she’d discovered, making the world believe the worst of her, in any case. Her father had made that all too easy for them.

  She’d not been without sin, true. She’d served her faithless spouse as he’d served her. But no one cared about a man’s infidelities, even when they were beyond counting. Meanwhile, by the time John was done poisoning everybody’s mind, her one spot of mud—one affair, undertaken when she was maddened by heartbreak and rage and longing to get even—had grown into a reeking cesspit.

  Like father like daughter, all of England believed. Even her lover, embarrassed by the crim con case and sickened by the stories, abandoned her.

  Lord Quentin had urged her to entrust the letters to him. She remembered the exchange very well:

  You must have heard the rumors, he said. Elphick has hopes of becoming our next prime minister.

  Some would say that England will get the leader it deserves, she answered.

  If the man’s a traitor, his lordship said, isn’t it long past time he paid the penalty?

  Hanged, drawn, and quartered, do you mean? she said. But is that punishment enough? Why don’t you leave it to me?

  She didn’t add, Why should I trust you?

  For all she knew, Quentin was one of Elphick’s pawns. For all she knew, every word Lord Quentin uttered was part of an elaborate lie concocted by her former husband, a brilliant liar.

  Quentin had returned several times, until at last she’d told the servants he was not to be admitted.

  Some weeks later, her villa was searched. It was efficiently done. The signs were not obvious. But Magny had noticed, and
once he pointed out the signs, so had she.

  He’d warned her that her bank accounts and the contents of the bank vaults would probably be scrutinized. Government agents could get in wherever they liked, and Elphick had built up a network of allies in government. Magny had offered plenty of advice. Too much. The matter had made him finical and meddlesome. Since she’d decided years ago that no man, ever again, would control her, they’d quarreled, repeatedly.

  And so she’d left Mira.

  Magny’s voice ended her brief journey into the recent past. “You never let me help you,” he said.

  “Make decisions for me?” she said without looking up. “No, thank you, sir.”

  “Francesca, this is absurd. Let me take you back to Paris.”

  “My enemies can find me as easily there as here,” she said, “if that’s what worries you. I’m not worried. They dare not kill me until they find what they want, because they don’t know what arrangements I’ve made in the event of my untimely demise. They cannot risk those letters being published.”

  “Francesca.”

  “I have letters to write,” she said.

  Sunday night

  When Marta Fazi learned that Piero had been taken into custody and Bruno had disappeared, she smashed several more madonnas, had a weeping fit about her lost emeralds, and vowed revenge on everybody who’d ever annoyed her. Then, as was usual with her, she abruptly became completely calm again. Plan A—using bullies to terrify the Englishwoman into handing over the letters—having failed, she swiftly devised Plan B. Then she went out in search of lackeys to replace the pair she’d lost. This was difficult in Venice but not impossible. Everywhere, Marta had learned, a strong-willed woman could find weak-willed men to do her bidding.

  It was true that Venice was not the most welcoming place for criminals. This didn’t mean it hadn’t any. As was the case in more lawless cities, it had a population of desperately poor persons and desperate neighborhoods in which they lived. In such places, crime flourished, and as long as the criminal element confined itself to stealing from and cutting one another’s throats, nobody bothered about them very much.

  The difficulty was not in finding ruffians but in finding ruffians whose speech she could understand. The Venetians definitely didn’t qualify. For all she understood of their language, they might as well have spoken Chinese.

  Luckily for her, people came to Venice from everywhere. It had its Albanian, Armenian, Greek, Turkish, and Jewish communities. It had drawn, as well, its share of outcasts from other parts of Italy, including regions where she’d lived. Among the ne’er-do-wells who met her requirements were a handful willing—for a price—to venture outside their neighborhoods and risk the attention of the Austrian soldiers. The price, as one would expect among the poor and desperate, was quite low. It didn’t take Marta long to find what she needed.

  Three o’clock in the morning,

  the following Tuesday

  Caffè Florian, Piazza San Marco

  At this hour the coffeehouse’s rooms were thin of company. Customers were drifting away, either homeward or to other entertainments.

  Francesca and Giulietta remained, though, sharing a table with Lurenze—and, for once, no one else. He’d contrived to shed the various diplomats and most of his retinue, except for a few bodyguards trying to be unobtrusive here and there: some inside the café, others outside, loitering about the entryway.

  At the other end of the same room, most of the remaining patrons were gathered about the Countess Benzoni. Don Carlo was not among them. Francesca wondered if he’d decided Venice had insufficient quantities of the “the more old woman, who sometimes she is ugly, but very, very beautiful in the purse,” and had taken himself elsewhere.

  She’d decided to take herself elsewhere, and was debating how best to discourage the prince from following, when the atmosphere of the room changed. She looked up as Cordier came through the door.

  He was dressed in a black tailcoat worn open. Over the frilled white shirt and black under-waistcoat he wore an embroidered waistcoat, from which hung a gold watch chain and fob. His immaculate neckcloth was tied with a simple knot. Close-fitting, light-colored evening trousers displayed long, muscular legs. The black pumps, black hat under his arm, and white gloves completed the picture of the proper English gentleman. His air and the way he moved, as lithe as a panther, told another story.

  She remembered Magny’s warning: This one, I warn you, ma cherie, is trouble.

  Trouble did not look her way but made straight for the countess.

  To Francesca’s exasperation, all the men in the group made way for him, including the countess’s lover, the Cavalier Giuseppe Rangone.

  Francesca returned her attention to Lurenze, who was describing a miniature recently presented to him, of a Bavarian princess, one of the hordes proposed as the next Queen of Gilenia.

  That was to say, Francesca tried to attend to Lurenze. Her gaze kept reverting to Cordier. Though far from flamboyantly dressed, he was impossible to ignore. For one thing, the café was thinly populated. For another, he stood at least a head taller than those about him…except when he was bowing over one of the women’s hands or whispering something to make them smile or—no small achievement in that group—blush.

  A plump masculine figure hove into view, blocking the scene at the other end of the room.

  The approaching fellow paused at Francesca’s table. He carried a covered tray.

  “What is it?” Lurenze said. “Trinkets for ladies?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Giulietta said. With an impish glance at Francesca, she signaled the vendor to uncover the tray.

  He did so, and Lurenze leaned forward to peer at its contents. He instantly recoiled, as though it had been filled with rats, and waved his hand. “No, no! Are you mad? Cover those things! Be off with you!”

  When he chose, Lurenze could be imperious. The vendor hastily threw the cloth over the tray and started to back away.

  “No, please wait,” said Giulietta. With crooked finger she summoned the vendor. She turned a limpid, doe-eyed gaze upon the prince. “This is most important, your illustriousness. These are cundums.”

  “I know what they are,” Lurenze said. “I am not a child. But you—please not to speak of this in a place so public. It is most improper of this man to come before ladies.”

  “It is always improper for the man to come before the lady,” said Giulietta.

  Francesca laughed.

  After a moment’s cogitation, Lurenze understood the joke. “Oh, she is wicked,” he said, clearly torn between mortification and amusement. “Someone must wash her mouth with soap.”

  “But your radiance, the cundum is most useful,” Giulietta said. “You would not wish to have a deformed heir, or an idiot to succeed to the throne of Gilenia—or perhaps to have no successor of any kind. These are some consequences of the pox. Also, to go mad and have ugly sores on the face, not to mention warts on the manly organ.”

  His fair countenance instantly turned rosy. “Signorina Sabbadin, I promise you, I do not consort with persons who carry these diseases,” he said.

  “But what of Lord Byron?”

  His eyes opened very wide. “Lord Byron? Lord Byron? What is this you say? He is a man! A man does not consort with men. It is unnatural!”

  “He is a great poet,” said Giulietta. “Yet even he, an intelligent man of letters, received an unwanted gift from a highborn lady.”

  “I could name several ladies in England who received similar gifts from titled gentlemen of their acquaintance,” said Francesca. With any luck, a lady will be so accommodating as to pass on the gift to Elphick.

  Lurenze’s gaze went from her to Giulietta. Then it settled upon the cundum seller, patiently waiting.

  “Very well,” said the prince. “I do it for my posterity.”

  “Show his excellency your wares,” Giulietta briskly told the vendor. “The good ones. Underneath.”

  Obediently, the man
lifted out the first tray, to reveal the articles below, in their thin paper packets.

  Lurenze peered at them for a time. Then he reached for one.

  “Not that one,” said Giulietta, nudging his hand away. “This one.” She picked up one of the larger packets and took out the cundum. The ribbon with which one tied it onto the penis was deep red. The prince’s color, which had begun to return to normal, instantly matched the ribbon.

  “Is this the largest one you have?” Giulietta asked the seller. “A prince is more magnificent, you know, than the ordinary gentleman.”

  “Signorina, I promise you, this will accommodate the greatest size,” said the seller. “These are of the finest quality, of the intestine of the sheep.”

  Her face grave, Giulietta tugged on the cundum. Then she stuck her dainty hand into it, as though it were a glove. She held up her sheep-gut-encased hand. “Do you think this will be large and strong enough, your sublimeness?” she said.

  Lurenze studied it, eyes narrowed. Then, “I cannot be sure,” he said. “Pull it over your head.”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners and he laughed, so heartily that Francesca had to laugh, too. Giulietta joined in.

  Every head in the room turned their way.

  Including, at last, Cordier’s.

  James did not want to look. If he didn’t, though, he’d be the only one.

  There were the three of them, laughing while a vendor pressed his wares upon them.

  Bonnard dripped rubies this night. Along with the gems hanging from her ears and throat and wrists, she wore a magnificent ruby-colored cashmere shawl. It had slid from her shoulders, revealing the deep neckline of a jade green gown of a thin fabric—possibly silk or a crepe of some kind. Metallic thread in the embroidery made it shimmer when she moved. It fell from the high waist in numerous thin pleats, like certain draperies he’d seen on women in Egyptian tomb paintings. The pleats clung in a perfectly obscene manner to the curves of her hips and long legs, of which he had a mouth-watering view from this angle.