“There are several Mrs. Cordiers, mia cara,” he said. “And more to come, undoubtedly. And only think: As my lady, you will get to wear a pretty coronet with silver balls and a coronation robe with ermine.”
“But I missed the coronation!”
“You can wear your coronet and robe to bed.”
She considered. “And nothing underneath.”
“An excellent idea. One of the many things I love about you is your fashion sense.”
“But we must go to London,” she said.
“It would be the polite thing to do,” he said. “Shall you mind? We needn’t stay permanently. But perhaps for a few months? The height of the Season?”
“How can I mind now?” she said. “My friends have asked me to forgive them. My husband has been granted a title. The height of the Season will do very well. We’ll have parties.”
The letter slid from her fingers as she became lost in happy plans. “A dinner party to start, I think. Oh, what fun it will be! I wonder if we can persuade Giulietta and Lurenze to come to London. I am sure we can manage it. If he would make her a countess or some such, no one will mind. And he is a foreign prince. Everyone lets royalty do as they please—especially foreigners. They’re not held to the same standards.” She nodded. “Yes, we can manage it.”
For a moment he only watched her, drinking in her exotically beautiful face, alight with pleasure. He could not count all the ways in which he loved her but this was, perhaps, the heart of it: her exuberance, the sheer fun of her.
“Come here,” he said. He moved closer to the back of the sofa, to make more room for her, and patted the place beside him. “I’ve never kissed Lady Delcaire before.”
“None of that,” she said primly while devilment danced in her extraordinary eyes. “You’ll wrinkle my dress.”
“That was my intention.”
“We have company coming.”
“How shocked they will be! Come, you baggage. All I want is a kiss…and perhaps a little husbandly fondling.”
She laughed and did as he bid, easing her beautiful body down alongside his. He turned her face to his and cupping her chin, kissed her, long and sweetly. She tangled her fingers in his hair and returned the sweetness.
And when at last they drew away, he looked into green eyes so soft, and thought, yes, he’d drown there, happily.
“When shall we set out?” she asked. “For London?”
“Whenever you like.” His hands strayed over the bodice of her dress. “A fortnight? How long does it take a woman to pack for a long trip?”
“I can manage in a fortnight, I think,” she said.
“We’ll come back, of course,” he said. “I’m not sure how long I can bear to be away from the children.”
She looked up at the ceiling and smiled. “They’re so ridiculous. And yet one does grow attached to them.”
“Or one attaches things to them—to their innocent bottoms, for instance.” He paused as his hand slid over the soft swell above the neckline of her gown. “That reminds me: When we do get to London, you are not to tell anyone where you’d hidden those letters.”
Her eyes, which had been fluttering closed, opened. “You never told Quentin? He never asked?”
She had stayed in the gondola that day. Quentin had come out to the landing place at San Lazzaro. Only James had left the vessel. “We don’t usually hold long discussions in such cases,” he said. “I gave him the packet and he said, ‘It’s about bloody time,’ and away he went.”
“If that was all the thanks he gave you, he doesn’t deserve to know,” she said.
“I wouldn’t have told him if he’d asked,” he said. “Who knows? Someday I might need the hiding place.” He returned his attention to his wife’s soft bosom.
“I thought you’d retired,” she said.
“I certainly did,” he said. “Despite how exciting it became with you as a partner in crime. Or anticrime, rather.”
“You said it was exciting, though. Your work.”
“By the time I came here, I’d had a bellyful of skullduggery,” he said. “But it stopped being boring when I met you. And that encounter with Marta Fazi was possibly the most hair-raising experience of my life.”
She sank back more deeply into the cushions. She lifted her hand and brushed it against his jaw. “That was exciting.”
He turned his head to kiss the palm of the hand caressing his face. “The unpredictability of you—that’s what did it. It added a thrill I’d not experienced in a long time: the thrill of sheer terror.” He frowned. “No, come to think of it, being married to you ought to be excitement enough. All the same, let’s keep the secret of the putti to ourselves, shall we?”
She traced his lips with her finger. “Sì, eccellenza,” she said.
He laughed, and she drew her hand away. “What?” she said. “Isn’t every nobleman addressed as ‘eccellenza’?”
“It’s your accent,” he said. “So English.”
“The marchese said my accent was charming.”
“It’s delicious,” he said. “You’re delicious. Forget the marchese.”
The devils were dancing again, there among the gold flecks in her eyes. “I’m not sure I can. I may need…a diversion.”
He slid his hand down the length of her magnificently curved body. “Very well, Lady Delcaire. Let’s see how diverting I can be.”
Author’s Note
Lord Byron’s spelling, like that of many people of the time, including Jane Austen, is more haphazard than ours. His punctuation is distinctively his own. So no, those are not typos in the poem excerpts. Those are…Byron.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to:
Anna Baldi for helping me put the correct Italian words in my characters’ mouths.
Owen Halpern, Sherrie Holmes, Margaret Evans Porter, and Katherine Shaw for their invaluable help with matters Venetian.
My family and friends, with special thanks to Walter, Cynthia, Mary Jo, Nancy, and Twin Girl.
About the Author
LORETTA CHASE holds a B.A. from Clark University, where she majored in English and minored unofficially in visual art. Her past lives include clerical, administrative, and part-time teaching at Clark and a Dickensian six-month experience as a meter maid. In the course of moonlighting as a corporate video scriptwriter, she fell under the spell of a producer who lured her into writing novels…and marrying him. The union has resulted in more than a dozen books and a number of awards, including the Romance Writers of America’s RITA® Award. You can talk to Loretta via her e-mail address, [email protected], visit her website at www.LorettaChase.com, and blog with her and six other authors at WordWenches.com.
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By Loretta Chase
YOUR SCANDALOUS WAYS
NOT QUITE A LADY
THE LAST HELLION
LORD OF SCOUNDRELS
CAPTIVES OF THE NIGHT
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
YOUR SCANDALOUS WAYS. Copyright © 2008 by Loretta Chekani. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition APRIL © 2008 ISBN: 9780061801846
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