In the Garden of Sin (15 page)

“Perhaps you should tell him what you’ve told me,” Elle said, still gazing at the spot where Vitturi had disappeared into the woods.

“Tell him why I’m really here? Nay!”

She looked at me. “He’s Buckingham’s friend, Hannah. He may know why the duke accused your uncle of treason. Is that not what you came here to find out?”

That, and if luck smiled on me, to convince the duke that it had been a mistaken accusation. The possibility that Buckingham might have confided to Vitturi the grounds for that accusation had never occurred to me. After all, Vitturi was Venetian; he would have little interest in political intrigues between England and Spain. Still, if there was a chance he might know something…

“You’re right,” I said. “I should question Don Domenico, but in an offhand manner, as if I were simply discussing current affairs. I absolutely cannot let him know I came here under false pretenses. He would almost certainly send me back to England, and if that happens, I shall have no hope at all of swaying Buckingham. Surely you can see the wisdom in that.”

Elle acknowledged reluctantly that she did.

I said, “All that remains, then, is for me to contrive a private little tête-à-tête with Don Domenico. ’Twill be easier said than done, given what a recluse he’s become.”

Elle regarded me in silence for a moment with those radiant blue eyes that seemed to see everything. With a knowing little smile, she said, “Is this Buckingham business the only reason you want to be alone with Domenico?”

“Oh, honestly, Elle.” I looked away so she wouldn’t see me blushing. In truth, the notion of being with him in a secluded place filled me with a jittery excitement that had nothing to do with Buckingham and everything to do with the memory of Vitturi’s warm mouth on mine.

Elle said, “You asked before where he goes when he wanders off like that.”

I sighed. “’Twas a rhetorical question.”

“I know where he goes.”

I turned to look at her.

“I asked him yesterday. He told me. If you’d like to know, I’ll tell you.”

“I thought you’d never betrayed a confidence in your life.”

“He didn’t ask me not to tell,” she said. “He just assumed I wouldn’t.”

“Because it never occurred to him that you would,” I said, beset with misgivings.

With a vexatious groan, Elle said, “Very well,” and stood, puffing up her skirts. “If you don’t care to know, then—”

“Where does he go?” I asked as I, too, rose from the swing.

“There’s a path through the woods behind the carriage house—a network of paths, actually. One of them leads to a place called the Nemeton. ’Tis a clearing in the woods that was a place of worship for the Gaulish tribe that once lived here. They conducted rituals there, some of which amounted to sexual orgies.”

“My word.”

“They chose that spot because oak trees were sacred to them, and that area of the forest is mostly oaks. Only very special visitors are permitted to see it. I took Domenico there several years ago because I felt he would appreciate it, and he did.”

“Is it very far?” I asked.

“Only eight or nine hundred yards from here as the crow flies, but over a mile by foot along the paths. ’Tis a rather tortuous route, the better to keep the Nemeton away from prying eyes. ’Tis rare that someone stumbles upon it. The directions are fairly complicated.”

“You’ll share them with me?” Was I “special” enough?

“But of course.” Elle smiled. “I shall explain them on the way to the kitchen.”

“The kitchen?”

Taking my arm, she said, “Come along.”

I paused on the path, a blanket over one arm and a basket of food and wine over the other, when I spied an open, sunlit area up ahead. Looking down, I saw that my blue satin gown had gotten slightly dirty around the hem, but was otherwise unscathed after my mile-long trek along the web of narrow forest trails that led there. I wished, not for the first time since setting out, that my bodice didn’t reveal an eight-inch swatch
of bare skin, but there was no help for that; I had to wear what I was given.

Taking care to walk silently, I approached the clearing, stopping just short of it to have a look around. The oak trees surrounding the Nemeton looked to be very ancient, and many grew in strange, twisted shapes; birds chattered and sang within their branches. The grass was neatly shorn, indicating that someone took the trouble to come out there with a scythe on a regular basis. I saw the carved stone altar Elle had told me about, and a fire pit that looked to be long disused.

I did not, however, see Domenico Vitturi. Filled with disappointment, I stepped into the clearing, squinting against the sun… and stopped when I saw something black hanging from a branch of a massive oak about five yards to my left: a doublet.

I took another two steps, and there he was, sitting in his shirtsleeves—it was a warm day, after all—on a squarish boulder at the base of the tree, which he lounged against as he read his book. My view was of the injured side of his face. It wasn’t quite a full profile, as he was facing slightly away from me, which would be why he hadn’t noticed my presence; the silken rustle of my skirts might have been taken for a breeze drifting through the trees.

The early afternoon sun filtered through the leafy branches overhead, painting him with a lacework of light and shadow. He turned the page with an expression of fierce absorption that made him appear almost angry.

I licked my dry lips. “Don Domenico,” I said.

He looked sharply in my direction. For several seconds, he just stared at me.

I curtsied.

As if suddenly remembering his manners, he leapt to his feet and bowed. As he pressed his right hand to his chest in the
Venetian manner, it appeared to dawn on him that he was greeting me in his shirt.

“Pray, pardon my state of undress,” he said as he took the doublet off the branch and shook it out. “I wasn’t expecting—”

“Nay, signore, please don’t trouble yourself,” I said, but he was already shrugging it on. As he did so, his gaze lit on my bosom, so brazenly exposed by the gold-laced opening in my bodice. For a moment, he seemed almost transfixed, which surprised me—he’d never been one to leer. A prickly warmth crawled up my chest and throat to my face.

Redirecting his attention to the buttons of his doublet, he pushed them one by one through their loops. “Elle sent you here?”

I shook my head. “She just told me where to find you.”

He looked up, his gaze shifting from my eyes to the items I was carrying.

Eager for something to do to with the nervous energy trembling through me, I put down the basket and set about laying the blanket out on the grass.

“What is this?” he asked, taking a few steps in my direction to peer into the basket.

“Um, wine and food,” I said as I knelt on the blanket, smoothing it out, making the corners lie flat. “Some cheese and bread, fruit pastes, tarts…”

“You came all the way here just to bring me dinner?”

I stopped my pointless fussing and sat staring at a rumpled corner of the blanket. Feeling starved for air, I said, “Nay,” but it emerged as a barely audible whisper.

The ensuing silence was absolute. Even the birds seemed to have ceased their chirping.

   KEPT MY GAZE TRAINED on the blanket as Vitturi came and knelt before me, a bit awkwardly because of his bad leg.

He said my name very softly—not “Mistress Leeds” this time, but “Hannah.”

He reached toward my face, hesitating with his fingertips a hairsbreadth away.

I took his hand and pressed it to my cheek, closing my eyes. His palm was very warm as I leaned into it, savoring his touch.

He curled his other hand around the back of my head, tilted it up, and kissed me with a sweet, hot hunger that was more thrilling than anything I’d ever experienced. We crushed our bodies together, kissing at such length, and with such passion, that when our mouths parted for a moment, we both gasped, laughing in astonishment.

The sky reeled drunkenly as we fell upon the blanket. He kissed me again and again, his hands roving everywhere, squeezing, caressing, plucking the pins from my hair, untying the gold cord that laced up my bodice.

Sitting astride me, he yanked the cord through its eyelets and flung it aside. He opened my bodice and gazed upon me, his hair disheveled from my hands, a feral glint in his eye. Yet his touch, as he trailed his hands over my breasts, was gentle as a whisper. I gasped when his fingertips brushed my nipples, which instantly stiffened. He stroked them very softly— maddeningly so—as I writhed to his touch, my sex growing damp in response.

They say he has the gentlest hands in Christendom
.

I unbuttoned his doublet. He tore it off and whipped his shirt over his head. His torso was lean, but muscular, the epitome of masculine beauty save for a long-healed gouge from his right shoulder to the bottom of his rib cage.

He lowered himself onto me and kissed me again, his bare chest pressed to mine, our hearts pounding in unison. We moved together in a primeval rhythm; even through my skirts and his breeches, I could feel his arousal. Without breaking the kiss, he pulled my skirts up and caressed me with those deft, probing fingers until I was moaning and clutching at the blanket.

“Make love to me,” I whispered.

“God, how I wish I could. I can’t. I can’t, Hannah. We can touch each other, pleasure each other, but if you’re to be a maiden when you arrive in Ven—”

“That doesn’t matter. I’m not… I… I don’t care about that. I just want to make love to you.”

He searched my eyes as he pondered that. “This has naught to do with…repaying my patronage?”

“Nay! ’Tisn’t that, I promise you. I want you to be the first, no one else, just you.”

He gathered me in his arms and kissed me again, groaning into my mouth when I stroked him between his legs. I unbuttoned his breeches and closed a hand around his erection. It felt impossibly hard, like skin stretched over marble.

He caressed me intimately until I was delirious with lust, and then he pushed a finger into me, igniting a climax that shuddered through me so long and so hard that I thought my heart might burst.

He kissed me as the tremors waned, murmuring how beautiful I was, how exciting it was to watch me come apart. “Your maidenhead is already torn,” he said, still stroking me from within.

“How is that possible if I’ve never been with a man?”

“It happens,” he said, lying on his back to strip off his breeches, hose, and boots. “’Tis a good thing. ’Twill be easier for you.”

He undressed me more slowly than he had himself, kissing and stroking every inch of skin he uncovered, and then he lay atop me, cradled in the juncture of my thighs. When I reached between his legs, he pulled my hand away, saying “I’m too close as it is.”

I tensed when I felt his fingertips part my sex and seat his own within it—just the tip, but it felt far larger than I had expected, like the hard round head of a club pushing into me.

“Shh,
cara,”
he whispered against my lips as he stroked my hair. “Easy, easy. Let me in.”

I felt a burning as he stretched me open, using shallow, measured thrusts. It was a slow and steady incursion, made more bearable by the fact that I was so wet—no doubt this had been his purpose in bringing me to orgasm beforehand.