Georgianne laughed, but Chris thought she would scream. She had felt as if she were on the edge of her chair all night.
Finally, the couples broke up for the evening, with Chris promising to get in touch with Georgianne soon and tell her what she had decided about work.
Marcus was silent when they entered a cab to take them back to their hotel in Nice. Withdrawn, brooding.
But when his eyes touched her, she felt their fire. Cold, icy fire from out of the shadows.
Chris kept silent, determined to show him that his unwarranted moods didn’t affect her in the least.
But alone in their room, facing the shore, it was difficult. Marcus silently removed his jacket, cuff links and shirt. She felt his eyes on her all the while. Chris disappeared into the bathroom, donned a gown and then ignored him as she crawled into bed, now miserably tense herself, ready to jump at the slightest sound. But he didn’t speak. He neatly hung up his clothes. She yawned and closed her eyes, pretending exhaustion. Then she was sorry she had closed her eyes because she couldn’t hear him anymore, and she felt as if her nerves were screaming.
She felt his weight as he crawled in beside her, and his hand on her waist as he pulled her around. She opened her eyes. His were burning jet in the moonlight. A shiver of dismay streaked through her as he taunted in perfect French, “So, you have your life to lead and you’re returning to Paris?”
What had she and Georgianne said? Chris wondered with growing alarm. He seemed so angry….
“You speak French,” was all she could think to murmur uneasily.
“Mais oui,” he murmured, a sharp edge to his low tone. “Venezia is in the north of Italy, contessa. And business often takes us to France, as well as Switzerland and Austria. If you choose to discuss me again, may I suggest that you don’t do so in German? Perhaps I should also warn you that most Europeans study languages with far greater fervor than Americans. We share a continent, you see, with many neighbors.”
He released her, smiled dryly and turned his back on her. “We’ll return to the palazzo in the morning. We must solve the problems in your life—yes?—so that it may be returned to you.”
Chris lay there, swallowing in pained and aching silence. She didn’t understand quite what had happened, only that he had apparently tired of his own game. He had seduced her into his life; now he wanted her out of it.
She didn’t sleep for a long while. She felt his weight beside her, his heat…but not his touch. She wanted to reach out to him, but hurt and confusion kept her still. And it felt so strange. She had grown so accustomed to being loved and held….
She stared miserably out at the moon and listened to the waves pound lullingly against the sand. She felt like crying, but she couldn’t. He might hear her.
She should never have come, she thought. Never have allowed him to seduce her into these days of drifting and never-ending pleasure. For Marcus it was a casual affair, just like any number with which he had probably entertained himself over the years. True, he had married her, but only to protect her. Their lovemaking was a fringe benefit, well deserved after such a sacrifice, she thought bitterly.
But neither bitterness nor anger could shake the pain. She had fallen in love with him.
It was probably natural that when she finally slept that night, she dreamed.
She was in the crypt again, running along the tunnel. Someone was behind her. Marcus? She didn’t know. She only knew that she was frightened. She watched the archways, wondering if the shadow that pursued her would become a panther, black in the night, threatening to claw her to shreds.
But when she looked back she didn’t see Marcus or a panther. And certainly not a winged lion of justice.
She was being pursued by a figure in a bright-red cloak.
And tonight she was carrying something. There was something in her hand. Something she knew she had to hide. Because if the figure in the cloak discovered what she had, she would be beaten and punished….
Chris ducked behind a tomb. She reached a hand over the effigy of a long-dead di Medici and peeked over the edge. A spider crawled over her hand, and she inadvertently screamed. The figure in the cloak heard her, and she screamed again and again….
“Christina! Christina, shhh, shhhh, amore mio….”
Chris awoke to feel Marcus’s arms around her, holding her, soothing her. She had broken into a cold sweat. Her gown clung to her damp flesh; her hair felt plastered to her brow. For several seconds her heart continued to pound.
“Christina…what is it?”
Her eyes at last focused on his. His features were tense and concerned. She swallowed nervously, remembering how he had rejected her. But the dream had frightened her badly, and she closed her eyes and rolled against his chest, burying her face against the dark mat of hair there.
“I dreamed that…the figure was after me in the tombs. That I had something that the figure wanted. Oh, Marcus…”
“Shhh, amore mio. It was only a dream. You will not be alone. Never alone. And there will be no reason for you to be in the catacombs.” He held her close, soothing her until the trembling left her body and she began to cool off in the air-conditioning. Until she left behind the shadowy nightmare, and the fear drained from her body.
“Better?” he asked her.
She nodded.
“There is nothing to fear, Christina. I will be with you.”
“I know.”
He held her in silence for a while, and then she smiled, because she felt his palms moving over her body. He tugged at her gown impatiently. “Why have you worn this? Did you seek a barrier against me?” he teased.
She shook her head, meeting his eyes. “I don’t think that a barrier could be erected against you,” she whispered.
“You are right,” he promised softly in return, and then she felt the touch of his lips against her bare flesh. Familiar heat and the sweet aphrodisiac of anticipation claimed her body, as did he. She could only be glad of the dream then, glad of the night hours that it gave them.
Because they did return to Venice, to the palazzo, in the morning.
* * *
Perhaps she could create no barriers against him, but Marcus was quite adept at building them against her.
He was remote during the entire trip back. Not until they entered the palazzo did he touch her again with more than absent consideration. And as they came into the entryway with its magnificent chandelier and Roman columns, she knew that his apparent affection for her was only for the benefit of others.
Genovese took their luggage. Sophia announced that there was coffee in the courtyard. Tony embraced Chris with his usual fervor. “You did take a di Medici husband after all!” he teased her. “Pity it wasn’t me!” But he smiled at his brother, and Chris was convinced that the two cared deeply about one another.
She braced herself for her greeting from Gina di Medici, but to her uneasy surprise, Gina seemed to have quite accepted the situation. She smiled at Chris a little shyly, and then embraced her warmly. “I feared for a long time that my young tigers would never make me a grandmama. This was your home, and now it is your home again. Make it so fully, mia figlia.”
My daughter. Did Gina mean it? Chris didn’t know. She smiled, feeling a little ill.
“Alfred would have been pleased,” Sophia murmured, and then they all moved to the courtyard. Joe and Fredo were going to stop by for coffee and to offer their congratulations, Gina told them.
The two men did come by. Marcus and Chris were toasted over and over again. Chris tried very hard to talk and laugh with enthusiasm about their honeymoon, but now that they were back at the palazzo life had become sinister again, and the distance Marcus had created between them seemed to have left her entirely alone in a pit of vipers.
Chris was glad when the discussion turned to business and Joe Conseli apologetically announced to Marcus that his presence at the galleries was urgently needed. Tony commented that she looked tired, and Chris was grateful that she could
sheepishly admit that she was exhausted and retire.
Marcus glanced her way sharply. He told Joe, Fredo and Tony that he would be right with them as soon as he had seen his wife to their room.
When the door had closed behind them, he gripped her shoulders tightly. “Keep the door locked and go nowhere without me, do you understand?” She felt like an errant child with a schoolmaster, and heartily resented him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she murmured, slipping from his hold to wander across the room to where their luggage sat at the foot of the bed. But suddenly she was angry as well as frightened, and she wanted to hurt him, just as his brusque distance hurt her.
“If you want me, though, I’ll be in my own room.” She turned around, facing him blandly. “I think that playtime must be over, Marcus. We’ve come back to find a blackmailer and a murderer. Serious business,” she said with a dry smile.
“What are you saying, Christina?” he demanded, his eyes narrowing tensely.
She shrugged negligently, but her lashes fell over her eyes. “I’m saying that the relationship ends here. Your mother said something that gave me quite a start. I, uh, wasn’t exactly prepared for…the physical aspects of things.” She moved around the bed, uneasily straightening the sheets. “Marcus, a divorce is going to be sticky enough. There could be other complications, which I…stupidly, I admit…didn’t think about. But I’m afraid there’s not much work around for pregnant mimes.”
At that moment Chris didn’t think there could be a greater danger in the world than Marcus di Medici. She felt his anger radiating from him like steamy heat waves off a hot sidewalk. She felt herself shivering inside, waiting, expecting a terrible explosion.
None came.
“Suit yourself,” he said curtly.
Then he turned abruptly on his heel, exiting the room without another word. Chris let out a long ragged sigh and sank to the bed. And then she started to cry.
* * *
She didn’t know how long she had been in the room when the phone started to ring. She waited, certain that someone would get it elsewhere in the house. But it continued to ring, and even before she picked it up, she was certain that it was the blackmailer.
“Hello?” she said breathlessly.
“Contessa di Medici, you must come now.”
“Now…I can’t come now.”
“You must. You must come to St. Mark’s. Now. There will not be another chance. I will be there. I will give you thirty minutes. If you do not come, you will never know. For all time, your father will be the murderer.”
The line went dead.
She hung up the phone, then anxiously, feverishly, paced the room. Marcus had warned her not to leave, yet she didn’t dare miss this opportunity. She gritted her teeth together, then hurried to the phone and called the galleries. She went through an operator, then a woman who didn’t understand English or her attempts at Italian. Chris kept repeating that she was the Contessa di Medici and that she needed Marcus.
Finally Joe Conseli came on the phone. He asked her to wait a minute. When he returned to the line, he sounded very uncomfortable.
“Christina, I’m sorry. Marcus is on another line, long-distance to New York. It’s very important. He can get back to you, but he asked me to say—”
“To say what?”
He cleared his throat. “That if you are calling merely because you have more complaints, you must simply wait until he can come home. Christina, I must go. He will see you later, yes?”
“Tell him…” Chris began furiously, then she paused. “Tell him not to bother!”
She slammed down the phone, then stared at it, swearing vehemently. Damn Marcus! And damn herself, she thought fleetingly, for creating the rift between them.
She gazed at the French Provincial clock on the dresser. She had already wasted ten minutes.
Still muttering out epithets about what Marcus could do with himself—and fighting the tears that stung her eyes—Chris grabbed her purse and made certain that she was leaving with an ample supply of lire. She stared at the phone one last time. “If you can’t bother to speak to me, Marcus di Medici, don’t you dare get angry over missing the grand finale!”
Chris was able to flag down a motor launch. They skimmed quickly over the canals to St. Mark’s Square. She paid the driver and jumped anxiously to the ground, scanning the crowd even as she hurried through it. Tourists were everywhere. And so were the pigeons. They squawked and flapped their wings in frenzied flight as she ran anxiously through the flock.
She raced up the steps to the entrance of the church. For a moment the darkness blinded her; she allowed her eyes to adjust to the muted light. As always, people were everywhere, studying the statues, the graceful altars, the fascinating tombs. Chris kept studying the people around her. There was a tour group of Japanese gentlemen who smiled at her scrutiny, and bowed politely. Chris smiled absently in return. A number of old Italian women were praying in black widows’ weeds; there was an American tour group near the main altar.
Chris sighed and walked to one of the pews. She sat, staring at the altar, waiting. No one came. She saw nothing out of the ordinary. Still she waited. And waited, and waited.
A full hour must have passed before she finally gave up. No one was going to approach her. She had come on another wild-goose chase.
Despondent and frustrated, Chris rose at last. She didn’t see any of the magnificence of the Basilica as she walked back out to the Square, to the sunlight. She was so preoccupied with her own depression that she didn’t even notice the activity on the Square at first. Only when she neared the dock, where she planned to catch a vaporetto, did she look up and notice the police cordons and the men in uniform running around, holding back the crowd, soothing a distraught woman.
There was a body on the Square, dripping wet, having been pulled from the canal. Chris made her way through the crowd. Police photographers were there; a coroner was bending over the body. Chris looked over the shoulder of a short woman in front of her, and she gasped sharply, almost screaming out loud at the terror that ripped through her.
The body on the ground was Genovese.
He was slightly blue, and there was a gaping red slit in his throat.
She did scream then, hysterically. A policeman came to her, gripping her. She tried to tell him that she was Christina di Medici, that Genovese was from her household. He tried to calm her down. Someone brought a flask of something; someone else started shouting orders.
And a blanket was drawn over the body.
Chris was seated by a pillar in the Square. The kindly officer placed another blanket over her shoulders while she sipped at some calming liquor. People were talking and talking and quizzing her; the only words she could understand were “di Medici.” And all she could think was that Genovese had been killed. It was so obvious: Genovese had been the blackmailer. She had found the blackmailer.
But not the murderer. The murderer had managed to strike again.
At last, from her web of fear and horror, she heard a voice she knew. Deep, resonant, a little harsh and strained. He was talking to one of the officers, answering questions, then demanding impatiently, “Dové la mia moglie?”
Chris looked up to see Marcus, his features tense, coming toward her. He slipped an arm around her, then continued to speak to the officer in quick Italian. The officer nodded, very courteous to Conte di Medici. Marcus led her away from the cordons, away from the police, away from the body. In minutes she was seated in the family launch and he was steering them away from the Square.
She wanted sympathy. Instead, he burst out with a furious spate of Italian that matched the roar of the launch’s engine. Chris put up a hand and pleaded softly, “Per favore, Marcus…”
He stopped speaking. She felt his tension, his anger. “Marcus, I tried to call you—”
“It could have been you!” he thundered, and she went silent again, staring at the wooden floor of the boat. Seconds later they reached the palazzo
. An anxious Tony met them in the entryway. Marcus spoke to him quickly, and Tony nodded. Marcus took Chris up the stairs, shutting the door abruptly behind him once they had entered his room. Chris walked to the bed, where she lay on her back, pressing her temples between her hands while she waited for his words.
“I am sending you away from Venice tomorrow,” he told her coldly. “Until then, Christina, you will not leave this room. For your life, you will listen to me.”
She didn’t answer him.
“Christina!”
He was next to her, standing over her, and then he was sitting, shaking her shoulders.
“Yes! Yes, I understand!” she cried, and despite the dark fury in his eyes, she threw her arms around him. “Marcus,” she whispered, “I tried to get you…. I tried….”
For a moment he was stiff; she barely noticed. Then his arms wound tightly around her. “Don’t you think I know that it was my fault?” he demanded gruffly. He unwound her arms from his neck and eased her back to the bed. He stared at her, and she couldn’t understand the raging turmoil in his eyes.
He rose, securely locking the doors to the terrace. “I’ve got to go to the police station. You will lock yourself in, and you will not leave.”
“Yes,” Chris replied in a whisper. She forced herself to rise. He was still staring at her, a furious warning in his eyes again. “I’m locking it, I’m locking it,” she promised.
“I’ll make your travel arrangements,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Chris locked the door in his wake. She returned to the bed and lay there, terrified. She couldn’t forget the color of Genovese’s flesh, nor the red at his throat.
She remained in a daze on the bed until darkness fell and the shadows became too deep. Then she rose to turn on the lights. She showered, continually placing her face beneath the cool water. She dressed in one of her white gowns again and paced the room, longing for Marcus to return.
Genovese hadn’t been the murderer. That left Gina, Fredo, Joe, Sophia—or Tony. People she lived with, ate with, laughed with…
The Di Medici Bride Page 23