Communion Blood (47 page)

Scarlatti took up the subject with immediate comprehension. “It is only my concern that the strength of La Ferrugia’s voice may make the balance of the whole too much to the treble.” He glanced in Cicogna’s direction for the first time. “Ah. We may be creating more work for you, Cicogna, I regret to say.”

“I am willing to work,” said the very self-contained copyist. “Signor’ Aulirios sent me to fetch you. I apologize for interrupting your discussion.” He sounded just curious enough that Ragoczy provided an explanation.

“I learned long ago, Signore, that one does not discuss the music for singers in front of them.” Ragoczy saw Scarlatti gesture in agreement. “It seemed wisest to speak privately, and the day being so pleasant...”

“It
is
a fine day,” said Cicogna, glancing somberly up through the branches of the pear trees. “They say a wet spring leads to more mal aria in the summer.” He bowed slightly to the two men. “Well, I have delivered my message. I will not linger.” Nor did he. He went off down the path, not looking back.

“That was... not quite what it seemed; or perhaps precisely what it seemed,” Ragoczy said. “Thank you for your help, Maestro.”

“My honor, Eccellenza,” Scarlatti replied with a bit of a flourish with his lace-edged handkerchief. “Although he might not have been spying on us.”

“And then again he may,” said Ragoczy. “Well, we should start back, in any case. To put suspicions to rest, if nothing else.”

Scarlatti strolled along, about half a stride behind Ragoczy. As they went past the berry vines, he ventured, “About the matter—?”

“I will think about it,” said Ragoczy. “Do not despair. Something can be done.” He went on as if on the same subject. “We will balance the sound of it all somehow.”

“And remember, the theater where we perform it will shape the music differently than this chamber where we rehearse. When we go there, we will have to balance again.” Scarlatti smiled, taking up his tone. “So day after tomorrow we may discuss the changes?”

“Before rehearsal, of course,” said Ragoczy as he walked across the narrow terrace to the villa.

“Very good, Eccellenza.” He made a leg. “Thank you for hearing me out.”

Ragoczy cocked his head. “Very flattering, Maestro.”

“And to a good end,” said Scarlatti playfully. He went off toward the side-room where his remaining musicians were putting away their instruments and enjoying the wine, cheese, and ham set out for their delectation.

“There you are,” said Giorgianna as she looked up from the keyboard. “I was beginning to fear you had forgot me.”

“Never,” said Ragoczy as he came to her through the empty chairs and music stands. He stopped behind her, bent down, and kissed her shoulder. “No one could ever forget you, Giorgianna.”

“You flatter me, Conte,” she said flirtatiously. “You went off with Maestro Scarlatti and were gone so long.” She sighed prettily.

Ragoczy slipped his arms around her under her breasts. “Then I was a fool,” he said and kissed her shoulder again; her pearl earring pressed against his cheek as he did, and the lace of her corsage was under his chin.

“Have you missed me?” She played a minor arpeggio on the keys, the very turn of her wrist seductive.

“Constantly,” said Ragoczy, knowing what she wanted to hear. “You have been the one solace amid many tribulations.” His expression was as extravagant as the times demanded, but the sentiment was genuine. “I am still astonished that your husband should be willing to allow you to resume with me.”

“Well, I promised him you would do nothing that could or would endanger the succession, or that you never have in the past and I am prepared to believe you will not,” she said with a pert smile. “So long as that is the case, he will have no objection to our dalliance until I am pregnant again.”

“And do you intend to be pregnant again? I recall you intimated it was not to your taste.” He neither condemned nor condoned her; he was only seeking information.

“For now I will be satisfied with my twins. But in time it may be wise to have more children.” She sighed, this time with some regret. “It is ever the fate of women to have to prove their worth through their bodies. Well, that duty is done, and now I will have my reward.” Her perfume was modem, combining two fragrances most daringly— an intense compound of rose-and-jasmine; she had put it on her wrists and elbows as well as between her ample breasts. As she leaned back into his embrace, she sighed luxuriously. “You have no notion how much I have missed you, Conte.”

“I have certainly missed you,” he murmured, caressing her breasts through the taffeta and lace of her corsage.

“Not even Adina Bonasoli has tempted you?” she asked archly. “I have seen her watching you; the poor woman has tried everything to catch your notice.” She reached over her shoulder to touch his face. “That widow is enamored of you.”

“She is enamored of not being a widow anymore. If I had a squint and was missing a foot, so long as I had my fortune and my title, she would be interested in me.” He said it more sadly than harshly, and his voice was land. “What else is there for her to do, but marry again?”

“True,” said Giorgianna, no longer interested in the Widow Bon- asoli’s plight. “I am greedy enough to have a husband
and
a lover. Why should I not, if my husband does not forbid me? He understands that artists are not like other people. If I cannot find all I need in one man, then I will have two.” She stopped her desultory playing and swung around to face him. “It is a wonderful thing to be with you again.”

He bent to kiss her lips, very softly, very persuasively. He did not rush, letting their sensations play out before he spoke again. “There is a very pleasant room upstairs. Niklos Aulirios has prepared it for our use. Would you do me the honor to come there with me?” “Since you ask me so prettily, how can I refuse?” She held out her hand so that he could assist her to rise from the bench without snaring her profusion of skirts on it; this also provided her a plausible excuse to lean against him while he swept her petticoats free. Once beyond the instrument, she swung around to face Ragoczy; pressing

herself into his arms, she kissed the comer of his mouth. “You are a lover any woman would dream of.” She took his hands in hers and guided them around her waist. “Do you want me? Do you want to do all those wonderful things we did before? Do you want to try something new?” she asked playfully, but with an underlying urgency that startled him.

For an answer he kissed her lips, lingeringly and thoroughly, relearning his sense of her in the nuances of her response to him. She was then all the reality in the world to him, the beginning and ending of time. The scent of her perfume seemed to penetrate everywhere, heady and seductive, an outward sign of her rising passions; he drew her even closer, ignoring the profusion of lace at her elbows and corsage, and lace extravagance of petticoats. Beneath all the clothes and corsets there was the utterly genuine flesh of a passionate woman. He could feel her ardor in the restlessness of her hands on his shoulders, in her breath on his cheek, in her quickening pulse. “Come with me, Giorgianna. We should be private.”

She was a bit dazed as she stared at him. “Oh, yes,” she admitted. “The servants.”

“And our host,” Ragoczy added. “You will be more comfortable with a bed to lie upon, and not the floor.” His chuckle was sympathetic. “And so would I. I am no longer so young that I see no virtue in lying at ease.”

Her hand slipped into his. “Then let us go there, and quickly. I have been hungry for you since I came back from my honeymoon.” They went into the corridor, where three servants were studiously busy with minor duties, then along it to the stairs that led up to the second floor. He took her to a room about halfway between the stairs and the end of the corridor. “This has been my apartment for many years. Nildos readied it for me—and you.”

The apartment was filled with the pinkish light of a spring afternoon, making the elegant outer chamber glow. Two upholstered chairs covered in damask silk with rosewood legs sat in the alcove of the louvered windows; three fine paintings adorned the walls, one of them by Velasquez, one by Titian, one a faded fresco section that showed a view of Roma as it had looked fifteen hundred years earlier;

on the far side of the room was a sumptuous divan of authentic Turkish design, covered in heavy, iridescent silk. Ragoczy led her toward this, saying, “You will find this a pleasure to he upon, dolcina.”

“They say the Turks are very decadent,” Giorgianna said, smiling like a cat. “To have such a thing as that, they would have to be debauched.”

“You may put that to the test,” said Ragoczy, and slipped his arms around her again. “Shall I be your maid?” He touched the lacing down the back of her dress.

“Now and after?” she teased.

“Of course,” he said, his voice soft and mellifluous. “It would never do to have you leave here looking like a ragamuffin. You must leave as you came, nothing out of place.” He found where the ties were slipped under the bodice just above the skirt. “Do you want me to loosen these?”

“Yes, please,” she said, her face and bosom flushing in anticipation. The knots slipped easily, and the taffeta corsage and bodice fell away, revealing the satin-and-whalebone corset beneath; embroidered flowers twined the stays and ornamented the edge of the garment. “Now the skirt,” she said, slipping away from him so that she could unfasten it herself; she let it drop, then raised her arms as if to acknowledge applause. “Illirio doesn’t ask me to take off more than this. He says he likes to play with the petticoats.”

Ragoczy was unsure if she approved or disapproved of her husband’s tastes. He touched her shoulder with the tips of his fingers. “If he keeps you clothed, he is depriving himself of much joy.” In two steps he was beside her; he reached behind her and tugged out the whalebone latch that held the corset together.

With a gleeful cry, Giorgianna wriggled out of her petticoats and was left standing naked but for her white silken hose gartered just below the knees, and her brocaded shoes with wide silver buckles. “There! Oh, yes!” she exclaimed, flinging up her hands again, and then, with another shriek of pleasure, cast herself back onto the divan; the furniture creaked as it shifted to support her body, accommodating the movements she made. “Oh! I wouldn’t have thought— This
is
marvelous,” she purred as she slid about on it.

Ragoczy went down on one knee beside the divan. “The saddlers make them on flexible frames, and they have eight layers of padding, so that they are always soft.” He took her hand and kissed each finger, then the palm, then the wrist.

“How clever,” she murmured, but whether in praise of the Turkish saddlers or Ragoczy’s kisses was impossible to tell.

At her elbow, Ragoczy paused, alternately kissing then using his tongue before making his way up to her shoulder; her skin was lovely and flawless, as enticing as the silken divan. His need answered hers as his lips touched her mouth; Giorgianna arched her back as Ragoczy’s fingers brushed her throat, her breasts, evoking bliss.

“Thank all the Saints you know what you’re doing,” Giorgianna said when she had the chance to speak. “I am so tired of being nothing more than a.. .” Ragoczy flicked her nipple with the tip of his tongue and she forgot all her complaints. She was too eager to be pliant in his embrace, too hectic in her carnality to achieve the abandon she longed for. She was moving so he could touch as much of her as possible as quickly as she felt the impulse. She sighed and strained, wanting to make up for the long months without this fulfillment.

Ragoczy drew back a bit. “Giorgianna, dolcina,
un poco adagio,”
he said, smiling at his musical joke. “If you hurry it, you will miss what you want most. You are rushing to the last movement before the first is hardly done. There is much to delight in in between. The gratification will be all the greater if you give it its full crescendo.”

“Your metaphor is very good,” she remarked impatiently. She squirmed, her face a bit flushed. “But it’s been so long,” she protested quietly. “I can feel my desire all through me. I am afraid I will burst with it.”

He stroked her side and hip, then down her leg; his touch was light, just enough to cause a frisson as it went. “Go a little slower, and I promise you, you will not regret it.”

“Oh, all right,” she said, not as petulantly as she would have liked. “You have never disappointed me before.” There was an underlying note of doubt in her assertion, so she added, “It’s just that I have missed this so much.”

“As have I,” said Ragoczy candidly. He did not add that visiting women in their dreams offered only a dim reflection of what a knowing partner gave him. “You have had other things to occupy your mind; I have not. Do not assume I do not know what you desire, for I do, and I treasure it.” He bent to kiss her again, this time tenderly, persuasively, allowing her to reach her arousal more gradually, with more rapture and less frenzy. His hands soothed, coaxing her trembling out of her and replacing them with shivers of ecstatic anticipation as he rekindled her passions, finding places on her flesh that she never knew could feel so deliciously keen, so deeply defined in every fiber of her being as his touch traveled all the hidden byways of her body.

Gradually her tension drained out of her to be replaced by an ardent languor, and she was content to indulge all her senses, savoring each caress of his hands and lips, his understanding of her joy. When her release came, it surprised her with its suddenness and its intensity, pulsing through her in blissful jolts that made her cling to him, small, high sounds like the cry of birds escaping her as she held his head pressed to her neck. Finally she sighed with profound contentment and let go of him. “I was afraid it wouldn’t be good anymore,” she confessed as she stared up into his compassionate, enigmatic dark eyes. “They say after you have children, it isn’t the same.”

“Who says this?” He stroked the damp tendrils of her hair back from her brow.

“Old women. Priests. They all say the pleasure is less.” Her faint frown began to fade. “Everyone.”