Page 4 of Vengeance in Venice (Murder in Moonlight #6)

God, it was like a madness, this fear of losing Elena to Giusti, whom she had once promised to marry. It was making him behave in a way guaranteed to disgust his wife, not win her over. And if word ever got back to her…

It would. Venice was a small city. Everyone would know by noon. He knew what he had to do for everyone’s good, for his own self-respect—what was left of it. He tapped on the door and went in to the dressing room. Walking through it, he knocked gently again and found himself in her bedchamber.

She was not in bed but sitting by the window looking out.

She turned to face him.

God, she was lovely. She was everything.

“Angelo.” Her voice was husky and welcoming and he went to her at once, took her hands, and held them firmly between his own.

He blurted it all out at once. “I want you to know I have behaved like a lunatic. I have been a little mad and I am ashamed. I will pay the bodyguard off in the morning.”

“Why?” she asked. She did not seem very interested.

“Because it is too easy to make use of them. And they are too stupid to be trusted. They abducted a foreign lady because they assumed she was Giusti’s mistress.”

Her expression never changed. “Was she?”

“No, but they brought her here as some kind of bargaining tool. I tried to send her home again, but Giusti had already led her husband to the back door. I will find him tomorrow and apologize.”

“I suspect he might find you first.”

“That works too. He will be quite within his rights to go to the authorities. I will smooth everything over, of course, but I don’t want this to hurt you.”

For an instant, irritation flashed in her eyes.

She gave a small tug as though to pull her hands free, then changed her mind and gripped his fingers more strongly.

“This… vengeance of yours hurts me,” she said.

“I don’t even know what you are avenging.

Let this be a warning, Angelo. Leave it, for both our sakes. ”

“You are right,” he said. “I don’t know how I let it go so far… But it will be different now, I promise. I will be a better man, a better husband.” He raised her hands to his lips, one after the other, and released them.

As he walked away, she said, “Are you not staying?”

He walked steadily on, blindly, for he had closed his eyes again. “Not tonight.” For he did not deserve her, not yet.

He returned to his own dressing room. He had paced there for some time before it struck him that, just possibly, he was punishing her for his own shame.

Where had all his mad joy in winning her gone?

Warped into a determination to win everything , into this stupid war of vengeance on Giusti for loving her first. For Elena loving him first.

This was no way to live, in a stupid feud with someone who had once been his friend. They had gone different ways, but the last thing he wanted was to alienate Elena, whom he loved with all the more passion because she was all he loved.

The war had made everything worse, of course. It bred hatred. But he should never have allowed that hatred to become so demeaning.

With a new spring in his step, he went back downstairs to his study, where he spent the next couple of hours pottering amongst the glass cases where he kept his collection of antique arms.

As usual, he paid particular attention to the Savelli dagger, a beautiful fifteenth-century weapon with a jeweled hilt and a razor-sharp blade.

It was the centerpiece of his collection, beautiful and deadly, a symbol of his family’s wealth and power stretching back through the centuries.

Dusting and polishing it returned him to a sense of peace and proportion.

He laid it carefully back in its case, conscious of an exciting sense of renewal.

As he locked the case and returned the key to his safe, he felt, finally, that he was leaving the past behind and facing the future with hope.

It was late but still dark when he finally returned, exhausted, to his dressing room. As soon as he relit the candle there, a stone thudded against the window, startling him.

*

The last fringes of her fright had vanished altogether by the time Constance left the Palazzo Zulian the following morning. After all, she was no delicate flower, by birth or experience, and there were other delicious attractions, namely making love with Solomon and reveling in his tender care.

And then there was Venice herself. Whether bright or cloudy or teeming with rain, there seemed to be some special quality to the light that enchanted.

Although it had rained a little earlier in the morning, by the time they left the palazzo in search of their favorite coffeehouse, the sun was out.

They walked arm in arm toward the nearest bridge, where they paused to watch some of the distinctively shaped Venetian boats go by.

Pointed at one end and built for maneuverability around the canals and the lagoon, they were known as gondolas to some.

A few belonging to the wealthy were very ornate, brightly painted and scattered with comfortable seats and cushions—like the one about to pass beneath the bridge now.

It held only one occupant, a prosperous, very correctly dressed Englishman whom she was sure she had seen at the opera the night before.

“There he is again,” Constance said, nudging Solomon. The man tipped his hat, meeting her gaze quite openly, as though he remembered her.

“Savelli?” Solomon said at once.

“No! The man who was at the opera. He does seem to be everywhere.”

The man and his boat vanished beneath the bridge and Solomon and Constance moved on.

“He bothers you,” Solomon remarked. “Do you think he was connected with what happened last night? Did you see him when the thugs seized you?”

“Oh, no. I think last night was a purely Venetian affair.”

“Unless he too has some tenuous connection to Giusti.”

“It’s more likely to be connection to my establishment,” Constance said dryly, referring to the very expensive and discreet house of ill repute that she ran in Mayfair. “He certainly looks rich enough to afford it. Though I don’t recall ever seeing him there.”

Of course, since meeting Solomon and beginning their inquiry business, Silver and Grey, she was at the establishment less often.

But she still cared about it. She had never wanted respectability—in fact, scandalous impropriety had worked very much in her favor—until she met Solomon, and even now it was for his sake that she sought a kind of rehabilitation.

His wife should not be a whore, a brothel madam.

And yet she would not give it up. Too many people relied on her.

Besides, there was no point. Her reputation would only follow her.

It was Solomon, seeing her torn between his world and her own, who had begun a kind of reformation for her reputation, reinventing the establishment as a charity in the minds of some rich and powerful people.

In fact, it had always been half charity.

She took a few—a pitifully few—endangered girls off the streets and gave them a choice of a safe place to ply their trade or help to enter a new one.

But Solomon had brought a handful of well-chosen friends to one of her nightly “parties,” inviting them to donate to her charity.

So now, the philanthropic and respectable gentlemen rubbed shoulders with those who came for the girls.

And if Constance would never be invited for tea with their wives, well, she did receive the odd distant nod of acknowledgment for her good works.

Plus, the establishment had considerably more money to contribute to the education and training of the women who wanted out of the old life.

Solomon still deserved better, of course. But he had chosen Constance, as she had so irrevocably chosen him. It still stunned her that she was his wife as well as his partner. Somehow, she was even his love, and God knew he was hers…

She caressed his sleeve as they walked on, and he covered her hand with his. This unique man, this unique city… Who cared about last night’s little fright? She breathed a sigh of utter contentment and knew from his posture, from his very silence, that he felt it too.

They drank coffee and breakfasted, seated at a table in the morning sunshine beside the water, talking idly and watching the world glide by, listening to the sounds of the birds and the gentle lapping of the water mingling with nearby laughter and the shouted conversation between a woman at an upper window and someone in a boat below.

She loved the musical sound of the language, though she recognized few words.

The Venetians had their own dialect, of course…

When they had eaten and drunk enough, they strolled back to the palazzo.

Constance opened the French doors of the drawing room and stepped onto the little balcony.

It had already become a particular pleasure to absorb the sights and sounds and smells of the city from here, while writing letters or reading.

When it rained, she simply moved into the doorway.

Solomon came out to join her, but did not sit down in the other chair. “I have a little business to attend to. I shall not be long.”

Her stomach tightened with a return of last night’s nerves. For while it was quite likely that Solomon had spotted some business opportunity in Venice, she knew it was not that kind of business he meant.

She reached behind her, catching his coat. “Sol—”

He detached her hand and kissed it. When she opened her mouth to remonstrate him, he bent and kissed her lips.

He said, “I have to speak to Savelli if we are to reconcile him with Giusti. And just at first, it has to be me alone.”

He was right, of course. She had to trust him not to pick a fight, but, remembering his barely contained fear and fury last night, that was not easy.

Her heart in her mouth, she watched him emerge into the street below and climb into the boat via the steps opposite their front door. He looked up, smiling, and lifted his hat. She waved back, as though all was well. But it was not. She knew it was not.

*

Solomon was not going to pick a fight with Savelli. But he absolutely would speak to him and leave the man in no uncertainty as to his opinions. Nor had he ruled out involving the Venetian police or the British consul, but exactly what he would do depended very much on Savelli himself.

He should have known Constance would not buy his “business” excuse. He had not meant to leave her with such anxiety, but it had to be done.

This time, Alvise tied the boat up at the front of the Palazzo Savelli, on the Grand Canal itself. And Solomon, almost with the ease of the native, stepped straight off and ran lightly up to the front door, where he rapped the large, ornate knocker loudly.

Even so, there was a short delay before the door flew open suddenly and a man stared at him. Not a gentleman, but then, he hardly expected the owner of the palace to open his own front door. Still, the slightly untidy specimen before him did not seem much like a servant either.

Solomon stretched out one hand with his card between two fingers. “Signor Savelli, per favore ,” he said, and walked straight past the man into the large, tiled foyer.

His footsteps echoed. So did the closing of the front door.

The manservant, or whoever he was, indicated a wooden settle with cushions and asked him to wait.

At least, Solomon gave him the benefit of the doubt, but in truth it sounded more like an order.

Solomon was prepared to wait, just not for very long. He sat.

He was not given long to examine the ceiling moldings and the frescoes that brightened the impersonal hall. It was not, he thought, a place where honored guests were left kicking their heels.

The servant had ambled up the staircase in a leisurely manner, but it was quite another man who came down only a minute later—a younger man of energy and determination who clearly felt no need to prove his authority to anyone, he descended at the run and strode across the hall, his hand held out.

Savelli? Solomon had no desire to shake Savelli’s hand.

“Mr. Grey,” the newcomer said briskly. Not particularly tall, he had brown hair and bright blue eyes that met his without a hint of subservience. “My name is Foscolo.”

Solomon deigned to accept the proffered hand, though briefly. “How do you do? My business is with Signor Savelli.”

“And what business, precisely, is that?” Foscolo asked.

“Signor Savelli is well aware.”

Foscolo’s steady eyes grew piercing. “Actually,” he said, “Signor Savelli is aware of nothing. He is dead.”