Scandalous Brides: In Scandal in Venice\The Spanish Bride (10 page)

“Is there something amusing over there, ladies?” Nicholas called out.

Elizabeth and Katerina both started guiltily and looked away. Katerina fanned herself vigorously, and Elizabeth busied herself mixing more pigment.

“Oh, not at all!” she answered. “Signora Bruni was just telling me a bit of interesting gossip she heard at the ball last night.”

“Oh? And would you care to share it?”

He sounded so very much like the stern Miss Thompson at her old school that Elizabeth laughed out loud again. When she turned to him to share this, however, he looked so very forbidding that she merely shook her head. “It would not interest you, Nicholas.”

“Hmm.” He shut the account book he had been perusing, and rose to his feet. “I must run an errand. I will see you after tea.”

Elizabeth frowned. “Very well. Don’t forget about the Vincenzis’ party tonight.”

“I will not. Good afternoon, Elizabeth. Signora Bruni.” He bowed, and was gone.

“Now, then, Signorina Cheswood,” Katerina said. “He is gone, and you can tell me all. Is that
dolce
man your lover? And if he is not, would you object if I tried my luck?”

“No!” Elizabeth cried, appalled at the thought of Nicholas in the very alluring arms of Signora Bruni. “Well... that is, he is not my lover. Not precisely. We have... kissed, that is all.”

“Ah, but some kisses are enough, yes?”

“I ... yes. Some kisses are quite enough.” Elizabeth shook her head. She had not stuttered so very much since she had learned to talk.

“Then,” Katerina continued, “you must want him as your lover.”

“No. I ...”
I want him as my husband.
Elizabeth almost dropped her paintbrush in shock at the unbidden thought. As it was, she trailed a long streak of blue over the creamy expanse of painted shoulder.

“I see.” Katerina nodded wisely. “Well,
cara,
it is simple enough. I shall loan you one of my black silk chemises. They are always successful.”

Elizabeth placed the brush carefully into the jar of turpentine, her hands shaking so much she feared for the rest of the painting.

“Are we finished for the day, Signora Bruni?” she said.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, I must be at the dressmaker’s in half an hour. Shall I see you on Tuesday?”

“Yes, Tuesday.”

After Katerina had departed, Elizabeth busied herself tidying up, cleaning off the ugly blue streak, but her mind was miles away.

Nicholas, a
husband?
She, Elizabeth, a
wife?
It was such an absurd idea!

She had vowed never to marry, to put her art first. Now here were visions of country churches. And large, cozy marriage beds.

“Stop that right this moment!” she told herself sternly, as she struggled to push the chaise back against the wall. “You are being a nodcock, and it must cease now before it begins to affect your work.”

She collapsed onto the chaise, and stared up at the ceiling in utter confusion.

All the worry and fuss was probably for naught, anyway. Nicholas had been very distant and preoccupied ever since he had come to breakfast that morning, not looking at her, not speaking to her directly if he could avoid it. He seemed, in point of fact, to be thinking of something far away, and not her and what had happened between them at all.

That kiss, that wonderful, glorious kiss had obviously not affected him as it had her. She had longed to run to him as soon as she awoke that morning, to feel his arms around her, keeping her safe.

He had appeared to want to run
from
her.

“Perhaps I made far too much of a small thing,” she mused aloud.

That was, unfortunately, entirely possible. She did not have the experience Nicholas did. What was earth-moving to her was probably a mere diversion to him, a pleasant interlude.

“Oh!” she whispered in abject confusion. “Why can love not be simple?”

She needed advice—badly.

Benno (“No last names, signor”) was a very disreputable character indeed. His hair fell in greasy black hanks from beneath a battered hat; his coat was full of holes; and his stench rivaled that of the fetid alley where Nicholas stood speaking with him. Still, Benno did seem to know his business. And he had been highly recommended by the people Nicholas had been talking to in the tavernas in the previous days.

“So, signor.” Benno’s bloodshot gaze shifted around them, always searching. “You require a kidnapping. Of a lady.”

Nicholas did not at all like the way Benno licked his lips at the mention of the word “lady.” “I require
assistance
at a kidnapping. I will stay with the lady the entire time.”

“Eh?” Benno’s eyes narrowed in disappointment. “Then what do you need Benno for, if you do it all yourself?”

“You are more familiar with Venice, the back ways, the... more flexible officials. I need assistance in making certain the lady is taken safely out of Venice, out of Italy, without being detected by her friends.”

“Benno does know the back ways of Venice, true.” His grimy face still reflected dismay at the loss of being alone with his abductee. Yet other, more mercenary, concerns soon took over his disappointment. “Benno does not come cheap, signor.”

“No, indeed. I never supposed Benno did.” Nicholas reached into his many-caped greatcoat and withdrew a hefty purse, clinking invitingly with coins. Benno snatched at it, but Nicholas deftly held it out of his reach. “This is a small payment. There will be another purse when our task is complete and the lady is out of Italy.”

“Signor ...”

“If you accept this payment, Benno, I expect service. If you take it into your head to cheat me, I Will find you and you will regret it. Are we understood?”

“Oh, yes, signor, yes! Benno would never cheat you. Never. I am an honest businessman.”

An honest extortionist and kidnapper. How novel. “Good. See that you remain so.” Nicholas delivered the purse into Benno’s eager hands. “Then listen closely. This is what I require. I want a gondola, a covered gondola, waiting tomorrow afternoon at a location I will send you word of. I will need blankets, and a quantity of laudanum.”

“Oh, yes, signor. Benno will take care of it all.”

“Excellent. Now get out of here. I will send you word shortly.”

Benno’s shuffling footsteps soon died away, and Nicholas was alone in the dark, stinking alleyway. But he did not see the tottering piles of refuse, or the rats who peered at him from the shadows. He only saw Elizabeth, as she had been on the terrace, pale in the moonlight, smiling up at him after he had kissed her so improperly.

He felt again the way she had leaned into him, the way her mouth fit so perfectly with his. The cool silk of her hair in his fingers. The trust shimmering in her eyes.

She was extraordinary, unlike any woman he had ever known before. Sophisticated but with a glowing innocence still in her eyes, alluring and beautiful but totally unaware of it. The way she moved, and laughed, and thought was utterly unique. He could have spent months,
years,
watching her, studying her, and still never have discovered all the facets of her. She was always surprising him.

He knew she would be beautiful and fascinating when she was ninety.

And it was when he realized this, last night, that he had known he had to move. He had to make this business over and finished before he could not do it at all. Before he snatched up Elizabeth and ran with her, to Turkey or China or America, or anyplace where they would never be found and where he could spend all his days watching her.

He had to forget about her. He had to think only of Peter, and his promise. He owed the man his life! And all Peter wanted in exchange was...

Nicholas’s very heart.

“Elizabeth,” he whispered. “My dear. I am so very, very sorry.”

But only the rats were there to hear him, to watch him cry for the first time in years. The first time since he had been told Peter was dead in Spain.

That afternoon, with no warning, the heavens opened and a deluge poured down. And Venice was impossibly dismal.

Georgina lay on the settee, wrapped in her warmest dressing gown after being caught in the rain on her way home from a sitting, and became engrossed in the latest horrid novel from England. Elizabeth sat in her corner, attempting to work some more on the Katerina Bruni portrait. Her brush moved over the canvas methodically, but she could not seem to concentrate on the courtesan’s pouting expression, or on giving her green eyes the sparkle that was so much a part of her.

Elizabeth’s thoughts kept flying to the kiss again, and Nicholas’s strong shoulders beneath her hands. When she tried to shade a long curl, she instead saw him smiling down at her as they floated on a sun-drenched canal while he tried to steer their gondola.

Her brush moved of its own accord, and she soon found she had painted in the margins of the canvas, not the dusky Katerina, but a laughing Nicholas.

“Oh, no!” Elizabeth stared, aghast, at her painting. “This must cease!”

“What?” Georgina looked up from her book. “Did you say something, Lizzie?”

Elizabeth tossed her brush aside and went to look out the window at the unceasing rain. The gray torrent had driven all the merrymakers indoors, and the city was deserted. Only a few bedraggled streamers and blossoms gave a tiny splash of color.

“I said this rain has to cease,” she said, tracing one fingernail through the mist on the windowpane. “Or it will ruin the Vincenzis’ party tonight.”

“Indeed, it was meant to be in their grand gardens. Such a shame if it is spoiled, and you do not get to dance under the stars with the divine Nicholas!”

“Oh, Georgie, really.” Elizabeth’s rebuke was faint. She
had
daydreamed of dancing under a star-strewn sky in Nicholas’s strong arms.

“Is that all that is worrying you, Lizzie?” Georgina put her book aside, and sat up.

“What else could it be?”

“I do not know. Nicholas? The two of you looked so happy at the opera yesterday. You could not stop looking at each other.”

“Oh, yes, it was lovely!” Elizabeth paused. “And... and last night, he kissed me.”

“Lizzie, how marvelous!”

“Yes. Marvelous.” Elizabeth’s voice was small, even to her own ears.

“Then what is wrong, dear? You are attracted to him, he is attracted to you, you are spending time together....”

Elizabeth left the window and went to sit next to her friend, tucking an extra lap robe around her chilled shoulders. “Georgie, I need your help.”

“Whatever you need, Lizzie. You only need ask.”

“I need you to tell me about your marriages.”

Georgina’s eyes widened. “My marriages? But, Lizzie, you know all about them! And none of them lasted long enough to be really interesting.”

“I know their names, but I do not
know
about them. About your feelings for them. Your letters when we were apart were always about your work, the people you were meeting. Never about your husbands.”

“Well.” The unflappable Georgina Beaumont somehow seemed at a loss for words. Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she spoke again. “Well, Lizzie, you know I will tell you whatever you want to know, but why this sudden desire to know this?”

“I do not know! I thought perhaps, oh, this is so foolish... I ... I wish to know more about men.”

“Oh.” Georgina fell back against her pillows. “But, Lizzie, you know about men! There is Stephen, as silly as he is; Paolo; Luigi; the Duc d’Evagny, who wanted to give you carte blanche...”

“Oh, them! I never felt the least bit tempted to confide in them. To be intimate with them.”

“As you do with Nicholas.”

“I may be. Yes. But...”

“But what?”

“But if I give in to my feelings, will he turn on me? Betray me, as Peter did? Are all men like Peter?”

“I see.” Georgina chewed thoughtfully on her thumbnail. “Dear, it is quite understandable that you should feel this way, that you should be so wary of giving your trust again. Peter treated you shockingly. I knew he was a bad ‘un, even when we were at school. It is a miracle you can even think of being close to another man.”

“Yes! That is just what I fear.”

“Well, Lizzie, let me assure you that not all men are like Peter Everdean. They are out there, oh yes, and you must be careful of them. Like my second husband, Sir Everett.”

The two women shuddered in concert. The late, unlamented Sir Everett had been quite wealthy; indeed, his wealth had paid for the small villa at Lake Como. But he had also been quite fat and quite temperamental. He had bred yappy French poodles on his country estate, and Georgina had often been compelled to tend their kennels.

“You must always avoid men who wear corsets and gorge themselves on fig pudding at all costs,” Georgina now admonished. “I would never have looked twice at him, if I hadn’t been so desperate when Jack died. And then, you see, there
are
men like Jack.”

The friends sighed in remembrance. Captain Jack Reid had been tall, blond, charming, dashing in his regimentals. He had been a younger son with few prospects, but all the girls at Miss Thompson’s had been quite in love with him. Georgina, older than Elizabeth and quite dashing herself, had been the envy of the school when she had eloped with him to Gretna Green and then gone with him to Portugal. He had been killed there.