The Wrong Way to Catch a Rake, page 3
‘Don’t tell me you too are planning to put pen to paper and create an epistolary masterpiece,’ the brute said the moment she stepped out of the shop. ‘That seems to be the ambition of almost every Englishwoman in Venice, second only to capturing the perfect sunset over St Mark’s Cathedral in watercolours.’
‘The wine has addled your sense of direction along with your wits, Lord Wrexham. The cathedral faces west. If the sun ever sets over it, David Hume will pop out of his grave and say: “I told you so.”’
She walked past him. She was tempted to shove her package at him like a footman, but he would probably drop it in the first canal he crossed.
He followed her with a husky laugh. ‘Fanny Hill and David Hume’s Enquiry. I’d give something to see your bookshelves, Miss Brimford.’
She sighed. She’d been correct. Somewhere in that spirit-fogged mind were the remnants of a decent education. What a waste. If she’d been at all like her mama and papa, she would have taken it as her mission to reform the wastrel and turn him to the Path of Light.
Luckily she wasn’t like them in the least. She had no illusions about the inherent virtue of man. Or the inherent evil of woman.
‘Well, I’d give something to see the back of you,’ she muttered as she ascended the steps of a bridge over one of the small canals.
‘Hmm... I am said to have a rather fine posterior.’
The book slipped from her hands and skidded towards the openings between the wooden railings. In her mind she already saw Fanny Hill sinking into the murky water of the canal, but Lord Wrexham lunged, catching it just as it teetered on the edge. It was so fast it seemed for a moment he too might go over by sheer force of momentum. She grabbed his coat, fisting her hands in the sun-warmed fabric. He straightened with a grunt, tucking the book under his arm, and plucked the wrapped package of Cavalli’s papers from under her arm.
‘I think I will carry your purchases for you, Miss Brimford. It is safer for both of us.’ He secured them both under his arm and then added, with less of a bite, ‘You may let go of my coat now, I think I’ve found my balance.’
She dropped his coat and pressed her hands together. ‘Can you swim?’
His dark brows rose. ‘I can. Why?’
‘It seems inevitable you will one day end up in a canal. It would be nice to know you have a fighting chance when you do.’
He smiled, his eyes echoing the colours of the water behind him. ‘Such consideration. I am touched. Can you?’
‘Can I what?’
‘Swim?’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course.’
‘Why of course?’
‘Because it is the less likely answer. Unexpected. Like you.’
It was not a compliment, but it felt like one. Damn the man, she would not blush. She set off eastwards once more.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked.
‘I am going to the basilica. You are not. Our ways will part by the dell’Accademia bridge.’
He strolled on, oblivious to her hints. ‘Why the basilica? Off to commune with God? I seem to remember someone mention you were raised by missionaries.’
‘Begat by missionaries, but that is it. I was raised by my uncle and he was as much a man of God as you are a teetotaller.’
‘Goodness, do they do everything in extremes in your family? So how did you end up as Lady Grafton’s companion? I must have been asleep when they were gossiping about you two.’
He was impossible. It was easier to just give him the bare minimum of her story than continue to sidestep his intrusive questions.
‘She is my aunt and a widow and wished to travel and for that she needed a companion.’
‘I see. How long have you been a companion?’
‘Six years.’
‘And before that?’
‘I told you. I was raised by my uncle.’
‘An economic story.’
‘An economic life.’
It sounded so dry and proper like that. Women in her position didn’t even need a name. She was Lady Grafton’s companion. Companions were destined to be someone’s apostrophe until they became obsolete or died.
She shuddered. Thank goodness she had escaped such a fate.
‘Cold?’ he asked, and she shook her head and looked up at the strip of bright blue sky visible above them. In the narrow little alleys, with the blank earth-coloured buildings tight around them, it was pleasantly cool, and she loved how when they passed over a bridge or through a square the sun caught them, like a child or a dog pouncing on them in play: Aha! Caught you!
‘It isn’t truly a hard life, being Lady Grafton’s companion,’ she said. ‘We have been to France and Belgium and Austria and now Italy. Perhaps I am luckier than some of my old school friends who married well and are now surrounded by six children and a philandering husband who beats them when he’s drunk or loses at cards.’
‘There are other options between those two extremes,’ he replied softly.
She could feel his gaze on her profile, as if trying to force her to look at him and reveal some secret. She didn’t look. She preferred him as a disembodied voice. The conversation had become far too...intimate. As if he had entered her mind, explored the landscape, and was now comfortably ensconced in an armchair in her favourite corner, stubbornly refusing to move on.
‘Are there?’ she challenged his assertion. ‘All too often there aren’t. Not for most women and even less for women like me.’ She gave a sigh of relief as the basilica came into glorious view. ‘Now, if you will excuse me...’
He ignored her pointed dismissal. ‘I’m coming in.’
She almost laughed at his determined tones, as if he was contemplating jumping into the Thames in January.
The silence that fell on them as they entered was as heavy and fluffy as an angora muff. She stood for a moment soaking it up, wishing this infuriating man would leave so she could enjoy it. Well, he would soon grow bored. She went to a bench by one of the great pillars where the light from the high windows around the cupola was stronger, and took out her book.
‘You are planning to read that. In here.’ His shock was evident and she couldn’t help laughing.
‘Why not?’
‘Why not?’
‘Careful, Lord Wrexham, your respectable upbringing is showing. Is there a better place to read the “stark naked truth” than a church?’
She opened the book and began reading. The rim of her bonnet shut him off from view but she knew he was still standing there staring at her. There was some pleasure to be had in shocking people, particularly people who appeared quite unshockable.
* * *
Well, this was a turn-up for the books.
Dominic had always been good at probabilities, which was why he was a fair gambler, but this was a combination he could not have predicted: standing in the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute watching the daughter of missionaries read a book about the happy life of a prostitute.
Not that anyone could tell. Miss Phoebe Brimford sat as stiff and still as if she held a book of sermons. Only the tip of her nose and a tendril of reddish-brown hair were visible past the rim of her plain straw bonnet with its jaunty ribbon.
He glanced down at the page, his gaze catching on a familiar phrase.
‘All my foundation in virtue was no other than a total ignorance of vice...’
Only yesterday he’d have presumed that statement was true of Miss Rosie Prim, but he rather suspected he’d misjudged her. She didn’t appear ignorant of vice, if only by exposure through her aunt’s hedonistic life. He’d watched Lady Grafton flirt outrageously with many of the foreign dignitaries currently populating the city, flaunting her wealth and her voluptuous curves. As far as he could tell she had a penchant for large, stocky men and had quickly become a firm favourite among the Russian diplomats and in particular a rather loud member of their lines, Prince Alexei Razumov. Dominic wondered if Lady Grafton knew that Razumov was far more interested in her jewels than in her. Or if she cared. Probably not.
He wondered if Rosie Prim cared. Probably. She was a cool little thing but her loyalty towards her aunt was unmistakable and he’d never detected any resentment on her part. Twice already he’d seen her aunt wander off with her new flirt and leave her companion to find her own way back to the palazzo, and both times Phoebe Brimford had done so with the resigned calm of many years’ experience.
Initially he’d assumed her calm was the result of being beaten down by years of neglect. But today had made it amply clear that, far from being beaten down, Phoebe Brimford was a force to be reckoned with. She was also a study in contradictions: the trappings of a governess wrapped around a sharp-witted spitfire.
He went to settle on a bench where he could watch her.
She’d mocked her plain looks but he couldn’t see it. It was true she wasn’t pretty like Lady Grafton, who was blessed with the looks of a black-haired china doll with a childlike mouth and large, dark eyes. But he’d never found mere prettiness interesting. He liked something with an edge to it. Something worth watching.
That was one reason he liked Venice. It wasn’t pretty. It was abrupt and demanding and alive with the tension between man and nature. Its beauty came in bursts of the unusual—a sudden garden blooming with pink and white oleanders, a bridge reflecting in the canal, the sleek line of a gondola cutting through murky jade water... Those moments would always make his heart expand.
This strange, anomalous woman was a surprising extension of Venice—layers of contradictions and raw contrasts and surprising twists and turns.
Alluring...
Her mouth was a case in point. He’d thought her thin-lipped but last night as he’d taunted her he’d noticed her lower lip was a lovely, pillowy curve above a very definite chin. He liked the line of her jaw, too—a lovely sweep from the ear peeping out from the unruly waves shoved under the bonnet.
And then there was her scent. He’d noticed that last night, too—faint at first but growing more definite as she stood in the cool stillness of the courtyard, like a flower blooming as darkness fell. It reminded him of the garden at Palazzo di Benedetti, where the old Contessa had brought bushes of jasmine and orange and lemon trees from Amalfi, complete with a boatload of earth. The orange blossoms had already fallen and the green pips were swelling into winter fruit, but the jasmine was in full bloom now, the tiny pink-white flowers unfurling into fragrant stars.
Was it a perfume she used? A secret vanity? Whatever it was, he liked it. The scent would likely be strongest just there, at that shadowed triangle beneath her ear, in the silky waves of her hair that she usually pulled back so brutally.
She hadn’t bothered this morning because he could see the waves peeping out from under her bonnet and about her face. He had a rather mad notion of slipping that ribbon loose and the bonnet off and watching that tawny-brown mass tumble over her shoulders...
Not thoughts for a church.
Not thoughts for anywhere. Certainly not for him, he realised with a twinge of surprise. It was merely that she was a puzzle and he had a penchant for puzzles.
He leaned back to stare at the cupola with its windows dulled with the grime of hundreds of years of incense and candle smoke. It might be quiet, but she really should be reading somewhere with more light, and a breeze, perhaps a chaise longue with some cushions under a pergola in a lush garden somewhere. A setting suited for reading erotic literature, caressed by light and air and the honeyed scent of oleanders.
He had yet to see her hair in anything but a schoolmistress’s bun or tucked away beneath a bonnet, but his active imagination was equal to the task and unravelled long tresses over her now bare shoulders. He smiled at the image, enjoying the perverseness of placing Miss Rosie Prim in that sybaritic setting. She would likely hurl that book at his head if she knew what he was thinking.
He spent a moment assessing her figure. It was neither slim nor voluptuous. Her dress was doing its best to mask her form, but he rather thought she had a pleasant figure, certainly one that would do well on the damask chaise longue with nothing but her hair and her spectacles between her and the Venetian breezes. After all, she wouldn’t need much in the warm privacy afforded by his imagined garden; she might as well be comfortable.
She glanced up, her eyes a shimmering golden-brown, like sunshine cutting through amber. He frowned a little as he realised she wasn’t wearing her spectacles now.
The image of her in his garden popped and fizzled. Pity.
‘What is so amusing, Lord Wrexham?’
‘Oh, life.’
‘I am impressed you still think so. You must have drunk more this morning than is apparent.’
Out of long practice he held his smile through the flash of resentment, but she must have seen something because she looked down and closed her book.
‘That was uncalled for. And mean. I apologise.’ She stood abruptly and made a strange gesture with her hand. He stood as well, disarmed by her evident regret. Besides, he told himself, it was facetious of him to resent it when people believed the fiction he’d toiled so hard to create.
‘Don’t waste your apologies on me, sweetheart. I won’t remember them any more than I will the insults.’
Her eyes narrowed, regret replaced by the intent look he’d seen her wear often—weighing his words. Weighing him. Not with the condemnation or the covetousness he was accustomed to, but with...interest. Curiosity. As if he was a puzzle to be unlocked. Then her gaze fell and the silence of the church became filled with all the sounds that had been there before yet hadn’t. The echoing of footsteps, the creaking of the chains holding the incense lanterns, the cooing of doves high up in the cupola.
‘I shall be returning to the palazzo now, so you may give me my packages, Lord Wrexham.’
‘You are done here?’
She shrugged. ‘I might as well be. I find it hard to concentrate when I am being inspected like a weevil by a naturalist.’
So do I, he almost said, but remembered his role and smiled. ‘Not a weevil, sweetheart. My images were far more...pleasing.’
She gave a snort. ‘Pray don’t strain yourself. I’m not a fool, Lord Wrexham. And you have nothing to gain by charming me.’
She stalked out and he followed, pricked by a twinge of remorse. Which was foolish. She was right, he had nothing to gain by charming her. If she’d been an heiress or the bored wife of one of the local potentates, then perhaps. But impoverished companions to lesser members of the English nobility definitely didn’t justify expending his personal resources.
Still, she managed to do something few people had done in the four years since he’d left London for Venice. She amused him. That was something, wasn’t it?
At the entrance to the alleyway to the palazzo she stopped. ‘Thank you. I shall carry the package from here. Good day.’
He handed her the package without a word and watched until the courtyard door shut behind her.
Chapter Four
‘Did you hear? The carnival thief has struck again. A fabulous pearl and amethyst necklace was stolen from a palazzo in Cannaregio.’
Phoebe kept her eyes on her book, but her attention swivelled towards where George Clapton and Rupert Banister were playing cards and gossiping.
‘Where did you hear that?’ Clapton demanded.
‘My valet heard it from the maids. He said the servants think it might be one of the Italian rebels. The Austrian empire might be firmly in control here, but they are especially unpopular after they came down so hard on the uprisings in Piedmont and Naples last year.’
Rupert’s voice rose with his enthusiasm for the topic. He’d confessed to Phoebe that if he had his way he would join the Foreign Office and travel the world. Unfortunately, Phoebe suspected he was unlikely to have his way until his mother was removed from it, which was a pity.
‘Did the thief leave a card again?’ she asked.
‘He did, the prince of hearts.’ Rupert’s voice was dreamy, which didn’t surprise Phoebe in the least. No doubt the thought of a dashing corsair appealed to someone of his romantic disposition.
‘Prince of knaves more like,’ Clapton sneered. ‘Those Carbonari rebels are nothing more than a nuisance. They haven’t a chance against the might of the Austrians. If he is a rebel, my father says they’ll hang him twice when they catch him.’
‘If they catch him,’ Mr Hibbert interjected, joining the two men. ‘He’s been rather lucky thus far.’
‘Of course they’ll catch him,’ Clapton dismissed. ‘It’s a matter of pride for Herr von Haas. Especially now so many dignitaries have descended upon Venice ahead of the Congress in Verona next month. Von Haas isn’t the kind of man to stand idly by while his rule is undermined.’
‘Since when has the prince of pomposity von Haas been made Viceroy?’ interjected Lord Wrexham. ‘I thought d’Inzaghi was the Emperor’s top local puppet.’ They had none of them noticed his entrance. Occasionally he moved with a degree of stealth that would have been impressive for a man of greater sobriety and lesser inches.
‘D’Inzaghi is the governor of the whole region of Veneto,’ Banister clarified with earnest patience, quite as if Lord Wrexham were half his age. ‘But everyone knows it is von Haas who controls Venice. They say he reports directly to Chancellor Metternich.’
‘Poor d’Inzaghi, then,’ Lord Wrexham said as he sprawled on the chaise longue Phoebe’s aunt had recently occupied. ‘Can’t be easy having to cede the Queen of the Adriatic to that stuffed shirt von Haas.’
He hung his leg over the low arm rest and plumped a pillow under his head, settling back with a sigh of pleasure. It was a pose hardly suited for a men’s club, let alone for a drawing room presently occupied by two gentlewomen.
