The Defiant Mistress
The Defiant Mistress
Claire Thornton
A time for revenge…For eight years Gabriel Vaughan, Marquis of Halross, has believed he was duped by a clever, money-grabbing harlot. He has tried to forget the beauty who left him at the altar, and then an accidental meeting in Venice places her entirely at his mercy!Although Athena Frances Fairchild claims to be innocent, maybe this is just another of her deceptions. It's time to exact a little revenge. So when Athena needs a safe passage back to England, Gabriel sees his chance. Years ago he would have been proud to have Athena accompany him as his wife. Now Gabriel will insist she travel…as his mistress!
“The entire household believes I am your mistress.”
“There is a solution to your unfortunate situation,” Gabriel said blandly.
“What?”
“You could become my mistress in fact as well as reputation.”
She stared at him, her lips parted in shock. Then the color drained out of her face. Her mouth worked for a few seconds before she managed to utter a word.
“How could you?” she whispered. “I was good enough to be your wife. But now… No! Never!” She sprang to her feet, knocking over the stool. “Is this your idea of revenge? Because I will never let you humiliate me like that!”
“It’s my price for providing you with safe passage back to England,” he said. “That is what you want from me, isn’t it?”
Praise for Claire Thornton
Raven’s Honor
“Claire Thornton has written an exciting historical unlike anything I’ve read this past year. She hooked me within the first few pages and kept me hanging on the edge throughout the rest of this beautifully written love story…. I highly recommend this intoxicating love story.”
—Romance Junkies
Gifford’s Lady
“Claire Thornton is truly gifted in creating stories that are so unusual—with charismatic characters, intriguing plots and subtle humor. Her hero steps off the page and into your heart with his bravery and sensibilities.”
—Romance Junkies
“Thornton offers an inventive plotline and paints a vivid picture with her descriptions.”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub
“[Abigail] and Gif share a wonderfully tender and intimate love scene that’s one of the best I have read this year…. It’s a standout.”
—All About Romance
The Defiant Mistress
Claire Thornton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Author Note
The stories in the CITY OF FLAMES trilogy take place in Europe during the reign of Charles II. This was an era of great color, drama and variety. The king scandalized some of his subjects with his many mistresses, but his reign also saw the emergence of modern banking among the London goldsmiths. Actresses appeared for the first time in London theaters, while members of the Royal Society met every week to witness scientific experiments.
Athena Fairchild, Colonel Jakob Balston and the Duke of Kilverdale are cousins, but they’ve led very different lives. Athena grew up in England, Jakob in Sweden, and Kilverdale spent his childhood exiled in France as a result of the war between Charles I and Parliament.
The cousins’ romances take place in various locations, but London is at the heart of the CITY OF FLAMES trilogy. The cousins all meet the one they love in the city—although Athena’s happiness is destroyed almost before it begins.
Athena’s story, The Defiant Mistress, begins in May 1666 in Venice and the events span the rest of the summer. Jakob’s story, The Abducted Heiress, and Kilverdale’s story, The Vagabond Duchess, both begin in London at the start of September 1666. In the early hours of the morning of 2 September a fire in Pudding Lane will burn out of control….
While I was writing these books I fell in love with the characters and their world. I hope you enjoy reading their stories as much as I enjoyed writing them.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Prologue
London, June 1658
T onight a maid…tomorrow a bride.
Athena’s heart sang with expectation. Her mood was as sunny as the afternoon as she stepped lightly along Cheapside, slipping with practised ease through the crowds that thronged one of London’s grandest thoroughfares. Her route took her past some of the City’s most renowned silk mercers’ and goldsmiths’ shops, but she didn’t spare them a second glance. She had finished her own less exalted shopping and she was on her way home.
Tomorrow she would be Gabriel’s wife.
She experienced a brief frisson of tension as she contemplated her wedding night—she could not help but feel a little nervous at what some of her wifely duties would entail—but she loved and trusted Gabriel. Whenever he held her in his arms or kissed her he always tempered his male passion with exquisite tenderness for her innocence. In fact—she skipped out of the path of a sedan chair carried by two sweating porters—in fact, sometimes Gabriel was a little too tender. One of the chairmen turned his head to look appreciatively after her, but she was used to men’s admiring glances and she didn’t pay any attention. Her thoughts were too full of her coming wedding night. A quiver of illicit anticipation stirred deep inside her as she imagined how much more passionately Gabriel would kiss her when he no longer had to keep such a tight rein upon his desire. Tomorrow night she would find out.
She turned off the broad expanse of Cheapside into a narrower side street. Here, even in the summer, the houses with their projecting upper floors were too close together to allow the mid-afternoon sun to penetrate all the way to the ground. The shade provided a respite from the glare of bright sunlight, but only an illusion of coolness. The air was hot and still. Athena’s skin felt gritty with the grime of the city.
She pushed a strand of damp blonde hair away from her face and turned her thoughts to the supper she meant to prepare for her aunt. It was the last night she would spend under Aunt Kitty’s roof and Athena wanted to show her appreciation for the older woman’s generosity and kindness. She had already bought most of the ingredients she needed early that morning. This second shopping trip had been to fetch the few items she’d originally forgotten because her mind had been too full of Gabriel.
Well, for the rest of the afternoon and evening she would not let so much as one stray thought of Gabriel cross her mind. She would concentrate only on preparing the most splendid supper imaginable for Aunt Kitty—and her reward…her reward would be to lie in bed and think of Gabriel all night! Athena couldn’t suppress the saucy smile that tugged at her lips at the prospect. Her whole body hummed with happiness as she stepped into the passage that led to the small courtyard in front of her aunt’s lodgings.
‘Hello, Athena.’ A man’s voice spoke suddenly from the shadows.
She jumped, her stomach lurching with surprise, but at first she was startled rather than afraid.
‘You naughty girl,’ he said, chiding her in a repellently indulgent tone. ‘What a tease you are.’
Samuel?
Horrified disbelief held Athena immobile for several seconds. She recognised that hateful voice, but she’d hoped never to hear it again. Samuel didn’t belong in London. He had no place in her new life. How had he found her?
He moved into the light, his glittering eyes roaming greedily over her body. Her skin crawled at his lascivious interest.
‘Such a tease,’ he said thickly. ‘Have you been getting impatient for me to find you, sweetling?’
He reached towards her.
She jerked backwards, bumping her basket against the wall. The impact jolted her into action. She spun around, driven by a panic-stricken need to run as far and as fast as possible.
Samuel lunged forward. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her close to him.
‘Don’t run,’ he said, his breath scalding her cheek. ‘I’ve been patient, but now it’s time you came to heel.’
‘No!’ Athena desperately tried to break free. ‘Let me go! I won’t marry you!’
‘Yes, you will.’ He twisted her arm painfully, punishing her for her resistance. ‘It’s arranged. Your father approves. Your mother—’
‘Josiah Blundell is not my father.’ Athena continued to struggle. ‘He’s my stepfather. My real father would never force me to marry you.’ Her voice shook with scorn and contempt. ‘He would have protected me from you.’
Samuel hissed angrily. ‘Your fine father is dead. He was nothing. I am Cromwell’s friend,’ he boasted.
‘I doubt he even knows your name!’ Athena mocked him, too angry to be cautious.
Samuel’s uncle, and her stepfather, Josiah Blundell, was indeed Cromwell’s friend. She knew that Josiah did have some influence with Cromwell. But she was sure the same could not be said for the twenty-three-year-old Samuel. He was an indulged only son, and Josiah Blundell’s favoured only nephew, but he could not lay claim to any great achievement in his own right.
‘He does, you bitch!’ Samuel’s grip tightened cruelly. ‘And if you don’t mind your manners, you’ll find out how much.’
‘Leave me alone.’ She flailed wildly at him with her basket, ignoring the pain in the arm he held as she tried to kick her heels against his shins.
‘A woman should show more respect for her husband.’
‘I’ll never marry you,’ Athena panted. ‘I’m going to marry someone else.’
Samuel swore vilely and forced her along the passage and across the courtyard into her aunt’s lodgings. ‘Be quiet, or the old woman will pay,’ he threatened her.
Athena stopped struggling, appalled at the possibility Samuel might take his spite out on Aunt Kitty. He shoved her across the threshold and into her aunt’s parlour. Then he released her.
Athena stumbled forward, nearly tripping over her skirts. She righted herself and whirled around, frantically searching the room for her aunt.
‘She’s not here,’ said Samuel. ‘A little precaution I’m sure won’t be necessary. She’s come to no harm. As long as you behave yourself, she’ll be back here soon enough.’
Athena stared at Samuel. He had wanted her from the first moment he’d seen her, and all his life he’d been given what he wanted. Fright and anger jangled through her. She had done everything in her power to escape him. It seemed monstrous that he should have found her now, on the very eve of her wedding.
Most of Athena’s life had been lived in the shadow of the war between King and Parliament but, though she had heard dreadful stories of battles and sieges elsewhere, the conflict had not directly impinged on her childhood. That had changed in 1656 when she was fifteen. Her father had died and she’d discovered that her family’s situation was more precarious than she’d realised. Sir Edmund Fairchild had secretly sympathised with the royalist cause, but he’d trod a skilful path through the volatile rivalries of his predominantly parliamentarian neighbours. On Sir Edmund’s death, the Fairchild estate had passed to Athena’s younger brother, Luke, but the new baronet was only six years old. The Parliamentarian leaders of the county looked covetously upon Fairchild Manor.
To safeguard her family and preserve her son’s inheritance, Athena’s mother had remarried eight months after Sir Edmund’s death. She had chosen as her second husband one of their closest neighbours, Josiah Blundell. Josiah was a man of stern, puritan feeling—but there was no doubt he held Athena’s mother in stiff-backed affection. Upon their marriage he had promised to preserve the young baronet’s inheritance and protect the rest of the Fairchild family. So far he had been as good as his word—except in one respect. From the first he had been in favour of a match between his nephew, Samuel, and Athena.
Athena had done everything she could to change her stepfather’s mind. But Samuel only ever revealed his most charming face to his uncle, and Josiah could not understand Athena’s objections to the marriage. At last, in desperation, she had fled from her home in Kent to the bustling anonymity of London. She’d taken refuge with the widowed sister of her father’s brother-in-law, a distant family connection she was sure was unknown to Josiah and Samuel. To make it even harder to track her down, she had altered her name from Athena Frances Fairchild to the less memorable Frances Child and pretended she had no family apart from Kitty.
But now it seemed all her efforts to make a new life had been in vain. Samuel had found her.
She stepped back, moving her basket instinctively in front of her. It was a flimsy shield and an inadequate weapon, but it was all she had. She lifted her chin and forced words through her fear-tightened throat.
‘You can’t make me marry you,’ she said. ‘You can drag me to the altar, but you can’t make me say the words.’
‘Yes, I can.’ There was an expression of gloating self-satisfaction in Samuel’s eyes. ‘You will say the words willingly.’
‘Never.’ Fear chilled her. He was so horribly confident. She had to get away from him.
Athena backed up another step. Samuel stood in front of her. From the corner of her eye she could see the doorway on her left. She didn’t dare look in that direction in case she signalled her intentions to him. She took another hesitant step backwards, looking down at the basket she held in front of her. Suddenly she hurled it at Samuel and made a dash for the door.
She saw Moses Spink, Samuel’s friend, too late to avoid capture. She struggled wildly in Spink’s arms, hardly aware that Samuel was speaking to her. At last his words penetrated her angry, panic-clouded mind.
‘…unless you want to see Vaughan hanged for treason.’
‘What?’ she gasped, lifting her head to stare at him through a veil of untidy blonde hair. ‘What sick nonsense are you talking?’
‘Your noble bridegroom is a spy for Charles Stuart,’ Samuel informed her triumphantly. ‘I have one of his letters to prove it. He is a traitor—and here is the evidence that will hang him.’
‘You’re lying.’ But despite her bold denial, doubt crept into Athena’s heart. Gabriel Vaughan was the third son of the Marquis of Halross. As the youngest son he had to make his own way in life and he’d chosen to apprentice himself to a City merchant. But he’d once mentioned to Athena that, during the Wars, his father had fought for the King. A picture of Gabriel rose powerfully in Athena’s mind. He was so full of glorious male vigour, so high-couraged and honourable. Had he decided to follow in his father’s tradition and take up the cause of the exiled King?
‘See for yourself,’ said Samuel, as if reading her thoughts.
Spink released her. She stepped out of his reach with a proud toss of her head, but she couldn’t prevent her hands from trembling when she took the tattered fragment of letter Samuel held out. She knew Gabriel’s writing. He had composed a sonnet for her a month ago. He had presented it to her with a flush of hopeful male awkwardness, not quite at ease with the romantic gesture; but Athena had been so enchanted with him that soon he had puffed out his chest with pride in his lover’s skill.
Now she recognised his confident initials signing the letter and the sentences above that clearly proved his involvement in a plot to kill Cromwell and restore Charles II to the throne.
‘Your choice is simple.’ Samuel’s voice came to her from a distance, as if her head was underwater. She felt as if she was drowning. ‘Marry me tomorrow in place of your traitorous bridegroom—or Vaughan will hang.’
Athena looked into his eyes and knew it was not an idle threat. If Samuel showed this evidence to Josiah, her stepfather would go straight to Cromwell—and then Gabriel would die. One of Athena’s uncles had been hanged by the parliamentarians after the Battle of Worcester—simply because he had fought at the King’s side. If an officer in the King’s army could be treated so dishonourably, then a King’s spy would receive even less quarter if he fell into his enemies’ hands. Athena could not bear Gabriel to suffer a traitor’s death.
‘If I marry you, will you promise that no harm will come to Gabriel?’ she asked in an unsteady voice.
‘You used Vaughan to make me jealous, you minx.’ Samuel stroked her cheek in a gesture that was an obscene mockery of true tenderness. ‘A lively spirit is attractive in a woman. But you must know when to put an end to the teasing games. Vaughan is a fool twice over. For plotting against Cromwell and for not realising you only flirted with him to provoke me. But I’m the one you really want. If you come willingly to my bed tomorrow, I won’t accuse Vaughan of treason. Cromwell’s too well protected for the plot to succeed, and there’s no need to punish Vaughan for being vain enough to think he caught your heart.’
It was not the wedding day of Athena’s dreams. She’d left home to avoid marriage to Samuel. She had never once considered the possibility that there would come a time when she would willingly take vows with him.
She wasn’t willing now, but the image of Gabriel hanging limp in the hangman’s noose tormented her. No matter what the cost to herself, she couldn’t let such a fate overtake him.
After the brief ceremony was completed, Samuel took her to what she assumed was an inn. Athena hadn’t thought this far ahead. Samuel had made a pretence that there was nothing unusual about the marriage. Athena had slept in her own bed the previous night—though Spink had guarded the door. She hadn’t been able to sleep from fear and worry. She’d wondered where Gabriel was and what he was doing. She’d longed to send him a message to warn him, but with Spink on guard there was no chance of doing so. Besides, she was terrified that, if she made any attempt to contact Gabriel, Samuel would take cruel revenge.
In all her pacing and fretting she hadn’t allowed herself to think about what would happen after the wedding. It had been too dreadful to contemplate. And perhaps she’d hoped that by some miracle she would still be rescued at the last minute from her nightmare. But as Samuel led her upstairs her fears changed focus and became more acute. It was no longer Gabriel’s uncertain future that was at the forefront of her mind, but her own present predicament. The harsh reality of her situation threatened to overwhelm her. Did she truly have the courage to keep her end of the bargain with Samuel? What would happen to Gabriel if she failed?
She tried to speak, but her throat was so tight with fear she could barely force words past her cold lips.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she whispered.
‘In here.’ Samuel opened a door and pushed her inside.
Athena’s gaze locked on the large bed. Horror congealed in the pit of her stomach. This was what Samuel wanted. What he had wanted since he had first laid eyes upon her. This was why he had married her.
‘Remember,’ he said in her ear. ‘A willing wife in my bed or Vaughan dies a traitor’s death.’
The church had been stripped of all its ornaments. Even its name had been changed to satisfy the puritan dislike of idolatry. No longer St Mary’s, it had become simply a public meeting-place—but it still felt like a church. Whispers echoed beneath the high, vaulted ceiling.
Gabriel’s stomach clenched with tension. It was cool inside the building, but his palms were damp with perspiration. He laid his hands against his thighs and tried to ignore the increasing restlessness of his companions. He could hear the questions they asked one another, the growing doubt and disapproval in the softly muttered comments.
‘I said she was no good match for him!’ Lucy’s voice rose clear above the rest.
‘Hush!’ Lady Parfitt reprimanded her daughter.
Gabriel gritted his teeth. Where was Frances? Where was his bride?
The minister caught his eye and Gabriel forced his lips into a confident smile while his mind seethed with questions.
What could have delayed her? Was she hurt? His chest expanded as he dragged in a deep, anxious breath. He wanted to rush out of the church in search of her. It required all his self-control to remain still.
The church door banged open. Everyone turned to look. It wasn’t Frances. The new arrival was a nondescript stranger. He obviously had nothing to do with the wedding. The guests lost interest in him. They all focused their attention on Gabriel. He saw the curiosity, worry and, in some cases, morbid satisfaction in their faces.
Everyone in the church was there on his behalf. Only one member of Gabriel’s real family was present, but that didn’t matter. Gabriel had spent seven years apprenticed to the wealthy City merchant, Sir Thomas Parfitt. During the first two years of his apprenticeship Gabriel had lived in Sir Thomas’s household, treated almost as an additional member of the family. Then Sir Thomas had sent him to the Tuscan port of Livorno. For the next five years Gabriel had been trained to look after Sir Thomas’s trading interests in Italy. Now Gabriel was back in London, his apprenticeship complete. He was twenty-two years old, a member of both the Levant Company and the Mercers’ Company, and a freeman of the City of London. And he was getting married. Sir Thomas had made no secret of his disapproval of this improvident match, but he had not withheld his support from his young friend.
And now the bride was late. Very late.
Gabriel decided to send a messenger to her lodgings. Unlike him, Frances had no close friends or relatives in the city except for the aunt with whom she lived. If Frances was ill, her aunt would not be able to leave her. In her distress, perhaps the woman had not thought to send a message to the church.
Gabriel caught the eye of one of Sir Thomas’s younger apprentices, intending to ask him—
‘I have a message for Gabriel Vaughan!’ The stranger’s voice rang mockingly from the back of the church, startling everyone.
‘I’m Vaughan.’ Gabriel faced the man, his heart thudding with anxiety. ‘Have you come from Miss Child? Is she ill?’
‘Aye, my message is from the lady herself,’ the stranger confirmed.
Gabriel had no idea who the man was, but he expected the fellow would approach him to deliver the message. Instead, the stranger kept his station at the back of the church, grinning at the curious wedding guests. Gabriel started to walk down the aisle towards him.
‘Miss Frances begs your indulgence—but it’s not convenient for her to wed today,’ announced the stranger. ‘Just yesterday she had a better offer from a gentleman with a bigger purse and a bigger…’
The crude words rolled over Gabriel. He didn’t hear the gasps of shock and outrage from his friends. His confident stride faltered. For a few moments he was aware only that Frances had deliberately not come to the church. Frances didn’t want to marry him.
Stunned disbelief filled him. How could this be? Frances loved him. He knew she did. His unfocused gaze sharpened. He moved forward, intent on asking Frances’s messenger where she was. If he spoke to her, he was sure he could sort out the confusion. Frances was only seventeen. If she wasn’t ready for the serious commitment of marriage he would wait for her. He’d clearly been over hasty in his plans.
Then he saw that the stranger was backing towards the door, his lips still stretched into that same, unpleasant grin. Gabriel suddenly remembered and understood the full import of the message he’d been given.
Savage fury surged through him. ‘You’re lying!’ he roared and leapt for the stranger.
The fellow had anticipated Gabriel’s rage and fled through the church doors. Gabriel raced after him into the glaring sunlight. He seized the stranger just before he escaped into a narrow alley and slammed the man against the wall, his hands locked about a grimy throat.
‘Careful, lordling!’ the stranger croaked. ‘Squeeze harder an’ I’ll gut you!’
Gabriel felt the prod of a dagger against his belly. The blade pierced his clothes and cut his skin. He ignored it.
‘You’re lying,’ he said through clenched jaw. ‘Frances didn’t send that message. Where is she? What have you done to her?’
‘I haven’t done anything to her,’ the stranger replied. ‘My purse isn’t deep enough for the likes of her. But she’s found herself a nice rich protector now. He’s wealthy beyond her dreams—’ The man gasped as Gabriel’s grip on his throat tightened. He retaliated by pressing his knife harder against Gabriel’s stomach. ‘Not so tight, coxcomb. Your guts’ll make a nasty mess o’ those fine clothes of yours.’
Gabriel relaxed his grasp and shifted his weight as if he intended to step away. The stranger reduced the pressure on the blade. The next second Gabriel seized his wrist and spun him around in a shoulder-wrenching hold. He forced the man’s arm up behind his back and thrust him against the wall, grinding his face against the plaster.
‘Where’s Frances?’ he demanded harshly.
‘I’ll show you,’ the man choked. ‘No need to break my arm. I’ll show you.’
‘What is this place?’ Gabriel balked, looking around in displeasure.
From the outside he’d assumed he’d been led to an alehouse. From the inside it was clear that the building was both more sumptuous and a lot less respectable than he’d anticipated. He heard laughter and raucous voices behind one half-open door. Another door crashed open and a woman emerged, her head turned as she giggled teasingly at the occupant of the room. She was barely wearing her shift. The garment had slid down both shoulders, only her hands clutched to her breasts prevented it from falling off completely.
‘Frances isn’t here.’ Gabriel turned to leave. ‘You’ve brought me on a fool’s errand.’
His guide blocked his way, grinning with disagreeable self-assurance. Gabriel felt a stab of fear, not for himself, but for Frances. He’d been unwise to follow a stranger into an unfamiliar part of the City, but he was confident of his ability to extricate himself from trouble. Frances had grown up in the country. By her own account she had come to London less than a year ago to live with her aunt after the death of her father. She was still unversed in the many hazards of the sinful capital.
‘What have you done to her?’ Fear roughened his voice.
He made an involuntary movement towards the man and saw, just in time, the dull glint of the knife.
‘Upstairs, lordling.’
Gabriel’s heart thumped with apprehension as he mounted the narrow stairs.
‘In here.’ A thump between his shoulder blades directed him into a small chamber. ‘Now look here,’ said his guide in a low voice. ‘And keep quiet if you want to know the truth about your virtuous Frances.’
A spyhole!
Gabriel bit back a curse. What kind of fool was he being played for? He took a step backwards and felt a dagger against his side. He’d half-turned towards the man, intending to deal with his impertinence once and for all, when he heard a muffled voice he thought he recognised.
Shocked and disbelieving, he put his eye to the spyhole. Frances? Dear God, it was Frances!
Gabriel pressed his hand flat against the wall as he watched her accept a wine posset from a man he’d never seen before. Frances drank and handed the vessel back to her companion. The man made a show of turning the cup so he could drink from the very place her lips had touched. He spoke, complimenting her on her beauty and Frances smiled at him!
Gabriel’s hand closed into a fist, his knuckles pressing into the plaster as he saw Frances lift her face to be kissed. The man’s lips touched her cheek and then her mouth. Frances laid her hands on his shoulders, inviting his liberties.
A few moments later the man turned Frances and began to unlace her bodice. She allowed him to remove it and made no protest when he fumbled at the neckline of her chemise. The man exposed her breast and bent his head to lay his mouth against the soft flesh.
Gabriel broke free from his horrified paralysis. He reared up and around, nearly blind with outrage and the pain of betrayed love. So intent was he on confronting his traitorous bride and her lover that he’d forgotten his companion.
The man hit Gabriel neatly on the back of the head with the hilt of his dagger.
Gabriel’s awareness clouded. He struggled to remain conscious, but his knees sagged and he slid painfully into darkness. The last thing he heard was a woman’s mocking laughter.
Athena sat on a straight-backed chair in the dark, waiting with sick dread for Samuel to come to bed. Her cold fingers twisted and curled ceaselessly around each other as she thought of all that Samuel had done to her in the two weeks since their wedding day. Soon he would join her again. Waves of revulsion surged through her. She twisted her fingers against each other until her hands hurt.
When she had fled from Samuel ten months earlier, it had never occurred to her that her flight would eventually end with her back in Kent and married to him. But at least Gabriel and Aunt Kitty were safe. To Athena’s huge relief, Aunt Kitty had been restored unharmed to her home a couple of days after the wedding. Athena didn’t place much faith in Samuel’s integrity, but he had kept his promise where Aunt Kitty was concerned. She had to believe that he would also keep his word not to inform on Gabriel.
Samuel veered wildly in the things he said about Gabriel. Sometimes he claimed Athena had only allowed Gabriel to court her to provoke his— Samuel’s—jealousy. At other times he said things that indicated he did know that Athena really loved Gabriel. On those occasions it was easy to believe that Samuel had married her primarily to punish her for rejecting him, rather than because he wanted her.
Athena found a certain, terrible, comfort in her conviction that Samuel had married her to punish her. It meant that Gabriel was relatively safe from arrest. After all, if Gabriel was seized and executed, Samuel would no longer have any power over her. Athena had repeated that simple fact to herself over and over again during the past fourteen days. She was keeping Gabriel safe. It was the only thing that had enabled her to endure her new life. Her head jerked up, her breath catching in her throat, as she heard footsteps outside the door. She squeezed her fingers cruelly together in anticipation of Samuel’s entrance, then realised what she was doing and forced herself to fold her hands quietly in a semblance of serenity. She would not give Samuel the satisfaction of knowing how much she feared him.
The room was suddenly illuminated by the flickering light of a single candle. Samuel walked across the room to stand over her.
‘Sitting in the dark? I’ve married an economical wench,’ he said sarcastically.
‘The light strains my eyes,’ she replied in a low voice.
‘You were thinking about your lover!’ he accused her. ‘Dreaming that he might come and claim you!’
‘No.’ Late at night, when Samuel slept, Athena yearned for such a miraculous rescue. But she’d already discovered how angry Samuel became when he thought of her with Gabriel. His charade that she’d only trifled with Gabriel to incite his jealousy had worn very thin.
‘You’re lying, you whore. You look so sweet and innocent, but beneath that beautiful face you have the heart of a harlot.’
Athena gazed slightly to one side of his face, trying to let his tirade wash over her. She was starting to learn how to survive his verbal abuse. Let him rant and rage and do as he pleased. Eventually he would go away, lose interest, or simply fall asleep. She could survive.
He hated it when she didn’t respond to him. What he had always craved most from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her was her attention—her smiles and favour for preference, but at the very least her attention.
‘He’s gone to Turkey!’ he jeered.
‘What?’ Athena’s eyes jerked to Samuel’s face.
‘Your faithless former bridegroom. He never turned up for the wedding, you know. I had him watched. If you’d failed to keep our little bargain, I would have had him arrested. But he doesn’t even know you jilted him because he never went to the church! He never meant to marry you!’
‘I don’t believe you!’ Athena could not—would not—believe Samuel’s cruel claim. Gabriel loved her. She knew he did.
Samuel laughed. ‘Did you really think you meant more to him than a pleasant interlude? He sailed in one of Parfitt’s ships for Turkey two days ago.’
‘Turkey?’ Athena whispered. She knew that Sir Thomas Parfitt’s trading interests extended to the Turkish empire and perhaps beyond. Gabriel had often talked about how much he’d enjoyed his years in Italy. Could it be true…?
‘You said he was plotting against Cromwell.’ She tried to make sense of how the letter incriminating Gabriel in the plot against the parliamentarian leader fitted with the news that he had sailed for Turkey.
‘Fickle noblemen. They treat everything as a game.’ Samuel dismissed Athena’s comment with a disdainful gesture. ‘You’re lucky I found you in time. Otherwise you’d have been left standing alone at the church. The whole world would have known you for a foolish maid, easily duped by a faithless cavalier. Come to bed, wife.’
Athena did not protest. Since their wedding day Samuel had required no more from her in bed than her passive acceptance of him, and it was over quicker that way.
Later she lay on her side, listening to him snore behind her, silent tears running down her cheeks. Until tonight she had still preserved a glimmer of hope that Gabriel might be looking for her. That somehow there was a way out of the nightmare her life had become. Of course such hopes were not logical. If Gabriel found her, it would put him at risk and her sacrifice on his behalf might end up being for nothing. But still she’d hoped for a miracle: that her love for Gabriel and his for her would triumph over Samuel’s obsessive desire to possess her.
But Gabriel had gone to Turkey. Despite her longing to believe otherwise, she was already half-certain Samuel’s story was true. She knew Sir Thomas Parfitt traded there. Gabriel was adventurous and ambitious. He would surely see this new venture as an exciting opportunity to improve his fortune. Besides, it had been Gabriel’s presence in England, his vulnerability to arrest by Cromwell’s agents, that had given Samuel his hold over her. Why would Samuel tell her Gabriel had left, and thus willingly relinquish his power over her if it wasn’t true?
Athena swallowed an anguished sob. All her efforts to protect Gabriel had been meaningless. By now he must be beyond Cromwell’s retribution. And he hadn’t even gone to the church to marry her. She had pictured him so many times waiting for her, worrying about her, trying to find her—and now it seemed he didn’t even know or care that she hadn’t turned up.
Her throat burned with stifled grief. It had all been for nothing. And now she no longer had the thought of Gabriel’s safety to sustain her in her nightmarish marriage. She had nothing at all. She opened her eyes and stared into the darkness at the bleak future ahead of her. Soon Samuel would destroy her spirit. She could already feel her self-confidence seeping away day by day. Soon she would be so browbeaten she would no longer have the will to resist.
She could not let that happen. Slowly her despair hardened into cold determination. Gabriel had left England. It made no difference to his safety whether she stayed with Samuel or not. She had run away before, she could do it again. And this time she would make sure Samuel never found her.
But…but…
A small doubt slipped into her mind. What if Gabriel came back to England after she’d left? Would Samuel inform on him just for spite? She bit her lip—no matter how inconstant Gabriel had proved, she couldn’t bear the thought he might hang. Before she left she would find and destroy the fragment of letter Samuel had shown her that proved Gabriel’s complicity in the plot against Cromwell. Then she would disappear.
And she would never again be any man’s dupe.
Chapter One
English Convent, Bruges, April 1666
‘W hat do you mean—she’s not here?’ the Duke of Kilverdale’s voice rose in angry disbelief.
‘Exactly what I said, your Grace,’ the Abbess replied. ‘I am afraid your cousin is no longer here at the convent.’
The Duke’s black eyebrows snapped together. ‘For the past seven years my mother has made generous contributions to your order,’ he said. ‘With the clear understanding that Athena would be free to live here peacefully under your protection. Why did you send her away?’
‘I did not send her away,’ the Abbess replied. ‘She chose to leave on an errand of mercy.’
‘To go where?’
‘Venice—’
‘What!’ Kilverdale leapt to his feet. At six feet tall he towered over the seated Abbess. He was dressed in the height of fashion in silk brocade and a magnificent black periwig, but his costly garments could not disguise the underlying power in his lean body. Nor could the profusion of black curls, which framed his face and tumbled about his shoulders, soften the somewhat predatory appearance of his hawkish features. The Abbess considered him a dangerous man and a far from suitable visitor to her convent, but in the circumstances she could hardly refuse to speak with him.
The Duke’s mother and Athena’s mother were sisters. Seven years ago the widowed Duchess of Kilverdale and her son had been living in exile in France. When Athena ran away from Samuel, she had made the perilous journey to France to beg for her aunt’s protection. In early 1659 the Duchess had brought her niece to Bruges, to live as a guest within the English convent. A year later Charles II regained his throne. The Kilverdales had returned to England, but the Duchess had continued to give generous donations to the convent and the Duke had come to Bruges at irregular intervals to meet with his cousin.
‘Kindly allow me to finish,’ the Abbess said, before Kilverdale could say any more. She disliked his obvious intention to intimidate her in her own quarters. ‘Mrs Quenell left here of her own free will as, indeed, she first arrived here.’
Kilverdale raised a sardonic eyebrow, clearly unimpressed.
The Abbess strove for patience and continued. ‘Several weeks ago the wife of one of the undersecretaries to the English Ambassador in Venice arrived in Bruges. The young woman was brought to us in great distress. We discovered she was urgently seeking to join her husband in Venice—apparently she had not been kindly treated by her husband’s kinfolk in his absence. Mrs Quenell was much moved by her plight and offered to accompany her to Venice as her companion and guide—’
‘Guide?’ Kilverdale exploded. ‘You allowed my cousin, who has not been outside the security of these walls for seven years, to go gallivanting across Europe with only a foolish wench for company—and you say she’s a guide! Where were your wits, madam?’
‘They are accompanied by the manservant the young woman brought with her from England and Mrs Quenell’s own maid. In addition, they are being escorted by a local gentleman of good family who is on his way to study at the university of Padua,’ the Abbess snapped, out of all patience with her noble visitor.
The Duke’s muttered response was barely audible, but supremely uncomplimentary.
‘Your cousin is a woman of great resource and common sense and I have every confidence she will reach her destination unharmed and without difficulty,’ the Abbess retorted. ‘Don’t forget she managed to make her way safely all the way from England to find your mother in France when she was only seventeen.’
‘She cut off her hair, dyed it brown, and pretended to be a boy!’
‘A sensible precaution for a woman travelling alone. She came to no harm. She has often entertained me with the story of her journey.’
‘Entertaining!’ Kilverdale snorted scathingly. ‘Yes, and it is very entertaining for me to come to Flanders to tell her that her husband is dead and it’s now possible for me to escort her back to England—only to find she isn’t here!’
‘She knows her husband is dead. She received a letter from your mother just before she left for Venice.’
‘She knows? Well, why the devil didn’t she wait for me to come and fetch her back?’
‘It is weeks since she heard the news,’ the Abbess said drily.
Kilverdale scowled. ‘I was preoccupied with other business,’ he said. ‘I’m here now.’
‘So you are.’ The Abbess watched as he took a couple of glowering circuits around the room.
He stopped and drew in a deep, annoyed breath. ‘I’ll just have to follow her to Venice and fetch her back from there,’ he announced. ‘Damned troublesome females!’
He strode over to the door and left without a backward glance. The Abbess allowed herself to relax a little. The mercurial Duke could be a most unsettling visitor. Less than thirty seconds later she heard his decisive footsteps once more approaching her room.
He stepped over the threshold and looked straight at the Abbess. For a few moments his penetrating gaze focused entirely upon her with disconcerting intensity.
‘It seems this is the last time we shall meet, madam,’ he said. ‘I thank you for offering your protection and hospitality to my cousin these past seven years.’
He swept her a deep bow, his every movement filled with proud masculine grace. Then he turned once more on his heel and departed without waiting for her to respond.
Venice, May 1666
‘Our bargain is complete, illustrissimo.’ Filippo Correr sat back and smiled with satisfaction. ‘The glass will look beautiful in your new house.’
Gabriel smiled at Correr, just as pleased as the Venetian merchant with the outcome of their bargaining. The two men had first met twelve years ago when they were apprentices in Livorno. They’d both worked hard to learn their respective trades, but they’d enjoyed themselves as well. Gabriel had many happy memories of his youthful exploits in Filippo’s company—but neither man had allowed sentiment to interfere with their afternoon of hard bargaining over Gabriel’s purchase of Murano glass.
‘I am sure it will,’ he said. ‘When you next visit London you must be my guest so that you can see it in place.’
‘I will be honoured,’ said Correr. ‘Is the house finished?’
‘The construction work should be completed by the time I return home,’ said Gabriel, stretching out his legs. Now that the business part of the meeting had been concluded, he relaxed as he discussed his newest project with his old friend. ‘The interior will still need furnishing and decorating. I have some ideas in mind, but I decided not to make any final decisions until I could walk through the rooms.’
‘Ah.’ Correr nodded, and then gave a sly smile. ‘You need a wife,’ he said. ‘Women enjoy that kind of thing.’
Gabriel laughed. ‘I don’t think so,’ he replied easily. ‘If I need assistance—which, after fifteen years in the silk trade, I don’t believe I do— I’ll consult an expert.’
‘But your “expert” won’t give you sons,’ Correr gestured expansively. ‘Children are a joy—’
‘Your children are,’ said Gabriel. ‘Not all men are so blessed.’
‘If you raise them right…they are like little seedlings,’ said Correr. ‘They lift their heads to the sun and grow straight and strong.’
Gabriel grinned. Filippo’s children were the only chink in the hard-headed merchant’s armour.
‘You think I am foolish and sentimental,’ said Correr cheerfully. ‘Just wait, my friend. The first time you hold your son in your arms you will feel exactly the same.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Gabriel, cautiously conceding the point. To his knowledge, he had no children, but he was certainly fond of his various nieces and nephews.
‘But first you need a wife,’ said Correr. ‘I know a sweet and modest maid—’
Gabriel threw up a hand. ‘I don’t need you to act as my marriage broker,’ he said. ‘And I’ve no wish to marry a Venetian.’
‘This lady is Florentine,’ said Correr, unperturbed by Gabriel’s objection. ‘The gracious sister-in-law of my cousin Marco Grimani. Very quiet. Very gentle and modest. Most skilled at housekeeping.’
‘No dowry?’ Gabriel raised an eyebrow as he noted his friend’s emphasis on the lady’s personal qualities.
Correr shrugged. ‘You do not need a wealthy woman,’ he pointed out. ‘You need a wife to make you a comfortable home and give you heirs. Giulietta Orio could do that.’
‘I certainly need heirs,’ said Gabriel, ‘but, with all due respect to the gracious sister-in-law of your cousin Marco, I’ll marry an Englishwoman.’
‘I tried,’ said Correr philosophically. ‘I will tell Marco I tried. Giulietta Orio is a charming lady but, on reflection, she might be a little too timid to begin a new life in London. We will have to look elsewhere for her husband.’ He glanced out of the window.
Gabriel followed the direction of Correr’s gaze. He saw that twilight was falling on the city, cloaking the canals and buildings in mystery.
‘It’s getting late,’ said Correr. ‘Let’s go and find my wife and the children. Will you eat with us?’
‘It will be my pleasure,’ Gabriel replied, and meant it. Gabriel had always appreciated Filippo’s friendship, even though he was less appreciative of the Venetian’s matchmaking tendencies. Gabriel knew he needed a wife, especially in view of the unexpected course his life had taken. He’d been very busy since the death of his brother, but when he returned to England this time he would seek out a suitable bride. A modest, well-bred lady who would understand the duties expected of his wife. He certainly wouldn’t repeat his youthful mistake of thinking himself in love with the woman. He would treat the marriage contract as he would any other business contract, and make sure his prospective wife understood the terms of their union.
‘Oh God, I hope he’s pleased to see me!’ Rachel Beresford muttered. She stared straight ahead, showing no interest in the extraordinary city that rose around her from the waters of the lagoon.
‘Of course he will be,’ Athena said reassuringly. She took one of Rachel’s cold hands between both of hers. ‘He may be a little surprised at first, but I’m sure he will be pleased to have you with him,’ she said.
‘I don’t know how I would have managed without you,’ Rachel said jerkily. ‘I am so grateful… Oh God! I’m so nervous!’ She pressed her free hand to her mouth.
‘It won’t be long now. Soon you’ll be safely together again.’ Athena devoutly hoped Edward Beresford would be pleased to see his young wife. If he wasn’t, she might find herself in the middle of a very difficult situation, but she didn’t regret her decision to travel with Rachel.
As soon as she’d heard the young woman’s story, Athena’s compassion had been stirred. She remembered all too clearly what it was like to be alone, far from home, and unsure of receiving a warm welcome. She’d offered to accompany Rachel for the rest of the journey because she understood and sympathised with Rachel’s obvious anxiety. But Athena was honest enough to admit to herself that she’d been growing restless within the confines of the convent—especially after she’d received the news of Samuel’s death. Rachel’s need for support had given her a legitimate excuse to leave. Unlike her companion, Athena had enjoyed their trip across Europe.
They had arrived in Venice just as twilight was falling. Despite her concerns on Rachel’s behalf, Athena was enthralled by her first glimpse of the city. She turned her head left and right in an effort not to miss anything as the gondola slid through the waters of the grand canal. She was almost sorry when they came to rest at the watergate of the Ambassador’s palazzo.
Rachel didn’t share her companion’s curiosity about their surroundings. Her hands felt icy cold as Athena helped her climb out of the gondola. It was clear she was thinking only of her imminent reunion with her husband.
A member of the Ambassador’s staff appeared before them on the steps. Pieter Breydel, the gentleman who had escorted them from Bruges, spoke to the servant, explaining who Rachel was and that she had come to join her husband. Athena checked that the rest of her little party was complete, and that their luggage was being attended to. Then she took Rachel’s hand. They followed Pieter Breydel and the embassy servant into the palazzo. Her maid and Rachel’s manservant trailed behind them.
They entered a large hall, which appeared to stretch all the way from the front to the back of the building. It was paved with alternating squares of diagonally laid white and red stone. It was a dark and forbidding place, especially since the lanterns had not yet been lit. There were doors on either side, but the page ignored them. He led the party straight through the palazzo and out into the courtyard behind the building.
Athena looked around, fascinated by her introduction to Venetian architecture. She was even more intrigued when she realised that to reach the Ambassador’s quarters on the first floor, they must climb an external staircase located in the courtyard itself.
They were ushered into a grand chamber which stretched the full length of the palazzo from the courtyard at the back to the grand canal at the front. Large windows overlooking the canal admitted what little daylight remained. Several men were present, standing with their backs to the windows, their faces in shadow.
Athena saw one shadowy man step apart from the others, heard his sudden, disbelieving, but welcoming cry of, ‘Rachel!’
Rachel released her convulsive grip on Athena’s hand and rushed forward to throw herself into her husband’s arms.
Athena didn’t need to see Edward Beresford’s face to know that he was overjoyed at his wife’s arrival. The way his arms closed around her as if he never intended to let her go, the way his head bent over hers, and his husky, urgent questions all told their own story.
Athena’s eyes unexpectedly filled with tears. She tried not to dwell on her broken dreams, but this was what she had once yearned for so desperately. She had longed to find Gabriel and fling herself into his arms. Have him tell her that everything would be fine. Everything would be just the way they’d planned it—but he’d left London without a backward glance…
She gave her head a small shake, annoyed with herself for indulging in such romantic nonsense, and gave her full attention to her immediate surroundings.
Pieter Breydel was introducing her to the Ambassador. She curtsied and smiled. It was her plan to return to England from Venice, but she knew she would need the Ambassador’s help in making her arrangements.
‘Since you have now arrived safely, I will take my leave,’ said Pieter in correct, but heavily accented English.
‘Surely you’ll stay tonight, at least,’ the Ambassador protested. ‘I must insist.’
‘I am expected in Padua,’ Pieter demurred.
‘You can leave first thing in the morning,’ the Ambassador assured him. ‘We would not want to keep you from your studies. But for tonight, please enjoy the hospitality of the embassy.’
Pieter hesitated. ‘Thank you,’ he said at last, bowing. ‘You are very kind. As you say, I can leave first thing in the morning.’
Athena bit back a smile. Pieter was a grave and studious young man. He’d taken his responsibilities to his travelling companions very seriously, but she suspected he was eager to get back to his normal routine. She held out her hand to him.
‘You made our journey very comfortable,’ she said. ‘I know Mrs Beresford is as grateful as I am.’ She glanced to where Rachel was still wrapped in conversation with her husband. ‘Thank you.’
He flushed and nodded. ‘It has been my pleasure,’ he said stiffly.
At that moment a member of the embassy household came to stand beside them. ‘My secretary, Mr Roger Minshull,’ the Ambassador introduced him to Athena.
She saw an uncomfortable warmth in the secretary’s eyes as he looked at her, and greeted him with reserved courtesy. She wanted to remain on good terms with everyone she met, but she did not need the complications of an admirer in the embassy.
The pre-dawn light was a blend of cool greys, blues and dark shadows. There was a chill in the air and a slight mist that would only burn away after the sun rose. When Gabriel touched the balcony balustrade the stones felt cold and damp beneath his hand.
Below him the early morning market was in full swing on the grand canal. The surface of the water was crowded with rafts and barges piled high with fruit and vegetables. The vessels jostled constantly for position as the vendors cried their wares.
The busy scene was familiar to Gabriel. He watched absently, his thoughts elsewhere. By all accounts there had been quite a stir at the Embassy the previous day. He’d returned late in the evening from Filippo Correr’s to find the entire household abuzz with excitement. Everyone he had encountered from the Ambassador’s chaplain to the most junior page had been determined to tell him the romantic story of the undersecretary and the devoted new wife who had followed him all the way from England.
Correr’s matchmaking attempt had already put the unsettling idea of marriage into Gabriel’s mind, and the story of Rachel Beresford’s loyalty made a painful contrast to Frances’s treacherous behaviour. By the time Gabriel had reached his temporary quarters in the Embassy, his patience had been in shreds. When his own valet had started to repeat the tale Gabriel had dismissed the fellow with a couple of curt words—but he couldn’t so easily dismiss the story from his mind. Dreams of Frances and the foolish hopes he’d had for their future had disturbed his sleep, until at last he’d risen from his bed to watch the market from the shadows of the balcony.
He tried to focus on the tasks that lay ahead of him later in the day, but his thoughts kept returning to the journey the undersecretary’s wife had made to reach her husband. The presence of a nun in the story puzzled him. Why in the name of all that was holy would a nun leave her cloisters to accompany a stranger halfway across Europe? Perhaps she was on a pilgrimage to Rome?
Annoyed with himself for wasting so much thought on the incident, Gabriel made a final decision to banish the whole matter from his mind. There had been a time when he’d been an idealistic fool who believed in love and fidelity, but now he prided himself on being a man who dealt in the here-and-now of solid reality, not romantic fantasies. And in the here-and-now he was hungry. He leant over the balcony and studied the produce on offer in the nearest barge. His choice made, he called down in Italian to the vendor. After a brief exchange they settled on a price, Gabriel threw down a coin and a loaf of cake-bread was tossed up to him in return.
By now all the nearby traders had noticed the well-dressed man on the balcony and they began to vie eagerly for his custom. Gabriel grinned at their efforts, but refused to purchase anything else. Eventually they gave up and turned their attention elsewhere.
He ripped off a piece of cake-bread and chewed thoughtfully as he planned the day’s business. When he’d eaten his fill he tossed the crumbs on to the balcony for the pigeons and turned to go inside.
Most Venetian palazzi had been built to a standard pattern, even though some dated back two or three hundred years and others were of more recent origin. The Ambassador’s residence was no exception. The first floor, known to the Venetians as the piano nobile consisted of a great chamber that stretched the full length of the palazzo with a series of smaller chambers opening off from it on either side. The large hall, which could be utilised for many purposes, was called the portego. The balcony overlooking the grand canal on which Gabriel currently stood was reached from the portego.
The Ambassador, Sir Walter Cracknell, had his own quarters on the piano nobile. Gabriel, as the Ambassador’s honoured guest, also had his quarters on the same floor. The second floor followed a similar layout and here less important guests and the Ambassador’s gentlemen staff were housed.
Just as Gabriel was about to re-enter the portego, the Ambassador joined him on the balcony. Gabriel was mildly surprised, Sir Walter was not known for being an early riser.
‘Morning, your lordship!’ the Ambassador greeted him. ‘Looks like it’s going to be a fine day, doesn’t it?’ He peered hopefully at the sky.
‘I believe so.’ Gabriel glanced over the balustrade. The floating market had dispersed until the following morning. The first rays of sunlight were beginning to give a hint of warmth to the air.
‘You missed a deal of excitement last night!’ the Ambassador exclaimed.
‘So I heard,’ Gabriel said.
‘Of course. Of course.’ Sir Walter nodded vigorously. ‘No need to tell you old news. But I wonder if I might ask a favour of your lordship—on behalf of young Beresford and myself?’
‘A favour?’ Gabriel raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘For your…undersecretary, is he not? Of course, if it is within my power—but what is your request?’
‘Shouldn’t cause you any inconvenience,’ the Ambassador assured him. ‘You’ll be returning to England in a week or so, will you not? I believe you told me you’d travel to Livorno and then take one of your own ships back to London?’
‘Yes.’
‘Excellent. Then I wonder if you would be kind enough to provide safe passage back to England for Mrs Quenell and her maid?’
‘Mrs Quenell?’ The name was completely unknown to Gabriel.
‘The gentlewoman who was kind enough to act as Mrs Beresford’s companion between Bruges and Venice,’ Sir Walter explained. ‘Mrs Beresford is full of praise for Mrs Quenell. She is sure she would not have managed the journey without her help. Mrs Quenell’s only request is that I might find her a safe escort back to England. It seems the least I can do. Young Beresford is almost beside himself with joy at having his wife with him once more. So, what do you say, your lordship? Mrs Quenell is a very quiet, modest woman. I’ll warrant she’ll be no inconvenience to you at all.’
‘Why does a Flanders nun want to go to England?’ Gabriel asked, puzzled by the request.
Sir Walter stared at him in surprise. ‘She’s not a nun,’ he replied. ‘She was a guest at the convent….’
Gabriel heard a soft rustle of skirts. He turned his head to see a woman being shown on to the balcony by a page. For a moment her face was hidden in shadows, then she stepped into the light.
Gabriel was standing still, but the shock of what he saw had the same impact as slamming into a stone wall. His lungs froze. He couldn’t breathe. Disbelief rang in his ears, blocking out all other sounds. His vision narrowed until he saw nothing and no one but the woman in front of him.
Frances?
It couldn’t be Frances, here in Venice. Surely the resemblance was just a trick of the morning light. Talk of Beresford’s devoted young wife had raised the ghost of another, less than devoted bride in his mind. Memories he’d tried to forget had disturbed his sleep. Somehow he’d now superimposed Frances’s face on to that of another blonde woman.
He deliberately closed his eyes for a few seconds. Remembered to breathe. Rubbed his temple. Opened his eyes. Stared at the woman.
She stared back, shock in her blue eyes. Her lips slightly parted. Colour drained from her face. There was recognition in her stunned expression.
It was Frances.
His blood began to pound sluggishly through his veins once more. The tempo of his heartbeat began to increase. He didn’t hear a word of Sir Walter’s introduction or explanation. He forgot the Ambassador was even on the balcony. His attention was locked on the woman who had betrayed him so badly.
She’d changed her hairstyle, but a single blonde curl had escaped to lie against her cheek, just as he remembered it. Her skin was soft and smooth, unlined by the passing of time. Her eyes were still an entrancing blue. The colour of cornflowers, he’d once claimed in a foolish poem. Her lips were full, her mouth a little wider than true beauty required. But there had been a time when he’s sworn her lips had been created for laughter—and for his worshipful kisses.
His gaze was drawn irresistibly lower. He’d once thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her waist was still as trim as he recalled. How he’d longed for the moment when he would remove her boned bodice and touch her warm, yielding flesh. Today she wore a simple blue gown with an elegance few other women could match. The full silk sleeves of her bodice ended at her elbows, but the soft white cambric sleeves of her chemise extended an inch or two further and were trimmed with a graceful fall of lace that reached almost to her wrists. Matching lace decorated the neckline of her bodice and the hem of her skirt.
He could see the merest hint of the soft swell of her creamy breasts above her bodice. His eyes locked on to that small part of her anatomy. The place he had seen another man kiss her on the very day planned for their own wedding.
For a few seconds he was back in the bawdy house, watching in agonised disbelief as she turned willingly into her lover’s arms. His hands clenched into fists at his sides. He heard again her mocking laughter as he sank into the painful oblivion of unconsciousness.
The slow chug of shock exploded into boiling rage. His lip curled into a snarl. Every muscle in his body tensed. Coiled to spring.
‘…and please allow me to introduce you to Lord Halross.’ Gabriel heard the Ambassador’s voice as if it came from a great distance. ‘As I mentioned to you last night, he intends to return to England in one of his own ships. I’m sure he can provide you with a safe passage home.’
Frances opened her mouth, but no words emerged. It was clear she had not expected to see him. Her lips were pinched and pale. Gabriel wondered if she was about to faint and thought savagely that it would be poor justice compared to his own humiliating fate eight years ago. He’d woken in darkness to find he’d been left lying in a stinking ditch outside the City walls. It was only by luck and God’s good grace he hadn’t been stripped of his clothes, and perhaps even his life, while he was unconscious.
And Frances had given the order for his degradation. She had laughed at the prospect of it.
His muscles twitched. Power surged through his body, but he didn’t move an inch. He had made a fool of himself once over this woman. He would not do so again. He drew in a deep breath. His lungs burned. It felt like the first breath he’d ever taken. He took another breath. Air seared through his throat like fire, but when he spoke his voice was harsh and cold as hoar frost. ‘Is it my protection you crave, madam? Or my indulgence? I—’
‘Neither!’ Frances’s chin snapped up. Hot colour suddenly burned in her pale cheeks. ‘I ask nothing of you, my lord. I am sorry to have intruded upon you.’
She whirled about in an angry swish of skirts, clearly intending to leave the balcony.
Fury speared through Gabriel when he saw the disdainful way in which she turned her back upon him. He would not allow her to dismiss him so lightly a second time. He took two long strides towards her, then reached out to seize her arm—
But he was thwarted in his intentions by the sudden appearance on the balcony of the Ambassador’s secretary. Roger Minshull stepped between Gabriel and Frances. He uttered appropriate greetings to Gabriel and Sir Walter but, to Gabriel’s disgust, it was Frances who occupied his attention.
‘Mrs Quenell, if you have rested sufficiently from your journey, I would be honoured to show you the sights of Venice,’ Minshull said, bowing ingratiatingly.
Athena hardly noticed when the secretary took her hand. She saw only Gabriel. Heard only Gabriel. Even when she turned her back on him, every fibre of her body was attuned to every movement he made.
Gabriel.
Lord Halross, the Ambassador had told her yesterday. She’d been prepared to encounter Gabriel’s brother this morning. She’d fretted over it all night. She didn’t want to meet any member of Gabriel’s family. But she’d calmed herself with the thought that she’d never met either of his older brothers. There was no reason for Lord Halross to know that she’d ever had an association with his younger brother.
But it was Gabriel who turned his head to look at her when she walked out on to the balcony. Shock seized her, paralysing her mind and body. But she’d been thinking about Gabriel all night. Wondering how to present herself to one of his brothers. It was a devastating but short step to understand that it was Gabriel himself who stood before her. In some distant corner of her mind she realised his brothers must be dead. There was no other way he could have inherited his father’s title. But that wasn’t important now. The only thing that mattered was that Gabriel was here—standing only a few feet away from her. She stared at him, hungry to look at the man for whom she had sacrificed so much.
He was as tall as she remembered. Perhaps even taller. She did not remember him as this grand, imposing figure. Eight years ago he had dressed soberly, as befitted his status and the austerity of Cromwell’s London. And in her memories he was much younger. A man certainly, but flushed with the fresh enthusiasm of youth.
The Gabriel who confronted her today was a male in the prime of his power. Sure of his authority and his strength. Arrayed in all the magnificence of a wealthy nobleman. His coat of burgundy velvet was edged with gold lace at the cuffs and on the front facings. His coat sleeves ended at the elbow to reveal a contrasting cascade of white lace that extended almost to his wrists. His cravat was edged in a deep band of heavy Venetian lace. His dark brown hair fell in rippling waves around his shoulders. The early morning sunlight gilded a few shining strands with an aura of gold, so that he seemed to be clad from head to toe in extravagant riches.
But the fine clothes could not conceal his raw masculine power. The man who wore the soft velvet was lean and hard-muscled. The fine lace beneath his chin emphasised the unyielding line of his square jaw. Hatred and fury burned in his amber eyes.
His hostile gaze sliced through her, deadly as a sword to the heart. Her very soul reeled beneath his silent assault upon her. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. She saw his body coil with furious intent and still she was held prisoner by the scalding fire in his eyes.
When he spoke, his voice was so laden with contempt she hardly recognised it.
She didn’t understand his anger or the significance of his question—he’d not cared enough to turn up at the church, so why was he angry now? Her first shock receded. Pride came to her rescue. She lifted her chin, found the words to answer him, and turned to leave.
She felt Gabriel’s sudden movement towards her, but then the Ambassador’s secretary stepped between them. She barely noticed the secretary take her hand. All her senses were attuned to Gabriel behind her.
‘Mrs Quenell?’
She jumped and looked at the secretary in confusion, then realised he had asked her a question and was waiting for her answer. She replayed his last few words in her mind.
‘I would be honoured to show you the sights of Venice.’
‘Oh. That is very kind of you…’ She couldn’t remember his name. Somehow she managed a semblance of a smile instead. ‘Sir, but I…if you don’t mind, I think I may…’
‘I’ll show you.’ Gabriel’s hand closed around her arm, just above her elbow.
Her heart jolted at the sudden contact. The anger thrumming through his powerful body almost overwhelmed her senses, splintering her thoughts. It was quite beyond her to frame a coherent response to the secretary or to Gabriel.
She saw the secretary’s eyes widen in surprise. Heard the Ambassador say something but didn’t catch his words. Then Gabriel compelled her to leave the balcony. He strode the length of the portego, his hold on her arm unrelenting.
Athena had no choice but to go with him. Her legs were unsteady with shock and she nearly stumbled. Gabriel hauled her mercilessly upright. He didn’t slow his pace and she was forced into a scrambling run to keep up with his long stride.
He propelled her out of the portego and onto the outside staircase. She tripped. If not for his iron grip on her elbow, she would have pitched headlong down the flight of stone steps.
Muttering furiously under his breath he clamped his arm around her waist and carried her unceremoniously down to the courtyard. Her heart hammered in her chest, but she was too confused and shaken to be angry at his astounding behaviour.
She could feel the barely controlled rage within him. This was not the Gabriel who had courted her so tenderly eight years ago. She didn’t know this man who threatened to erupt with fury at any moment.
He set her on her feet and hauled her through the ground floor hall.
Athena dug her heels in, her feet slipping on the smooth stone paving. ‘Let me go!’ She tried to wrench her arm out of his hold.
Without a word he picked her up and carried her through the watergate. ‘Get in,’ he ordered.
There were several gondolas floating in front of the palazzo. The one he directed her into was painted the customary black, but seemed far more luxurious than the vessel Pieter Breydel had hired yesterday to bring the small party to the Embassy. It possessed a cabin-like structure, which could be enclosed to protect the occupants from the weather—or to provide them with privacy. When she stepped into the cabin she saw it was furnished with a fine carpet and curtains. And the reclining seats were covered with black velvet.
She stopped short at the sight of those couch-like seats, her overstretched nerves jangling at the prospect of almost lying beside Gabriel in his present mood.
‘Sit down,’ he said in her ear.
She trembled at his proximity and did as he commanded, perching upright on the very front of the velvet cushion. The gondola rocked gently as Gabriel stepped into it.
‘Where are you taking me?’ She watched nervously as he sat down beside her.
‘To see Venice.’ His smile was all predator.
‘Halross? What are you about, man?’ Sir Walter shouted.
The Ambassador’s voice seemed to come from above. Startled, Athena looked up. The roof of the cabin hindered her view, but after a moment’s confusion she realised Sir Walter must have seen Gabriel’s gondola from the balcony.
Gabriel leant out of the cabin to reply. ‘Showing your guest the sights of the city. You will allow I am better qualified than any member of your household to do so.’
‘Humph. Oh. Yes. Your advice has been invaluable,’ Sir Walter acknowledged, disgruntled. ‘But is Mrs Quenell warm enough? Surely a moment to prepare herself before you carry her—’
‘She will be warm enough.’ Gabriel settled back on to his seat, clearly considering the exchange at an end. Already the swift-moving gondola was beyond comfortable shouting distance from the palazzo.
There was a gondolier standing at the back of the gondola and another one in front of the cabin, but Athena knew she could expect no help from the two men. She’d heard Gabriel give them curt orders in Italian. They were in his pay, they would do whatever he said.
He leant back in the seat, stretching out his legs in a semblance of relaxation. Athena sat upright, staring straight ahead, her hands gripped together on her knees. Gabriel’s casual posture didn’t fool her. She could feel the fierce emotion vibrating through his body, sense his angry gaze burning the back of her neck. She didn’t turn her head to look at him. Instead she glanced down and a little sideways. She saw his hand lying on his thigh. It was a large hand, with long, strong fingers. The last time she’d seen Gabriel’s hand he had stroked a finger tenderly across her cheek. As she watched, it clenched into a fist.
In the years since she’d discovered he hadn’t turned up at the church for their wedding she’d taught herself to accept he hadn’t loved her as she’d loved him. She’d forced herself to face the fact that, if they ever met again, he would treat her with indifference. Perhaps wouldn’t even remember her.
She’d never anticipated this hostility.
She waited for him to speak. He didn’t say anything. She took a breath. Her ribs felt as if an iron band had been placed around them and she had to force her chest to expand when she inhaled.
When she heard him take a harsh breath, she wondered dizzily if he had the same problem with his ribs.
She stared at his hand on his leg. Gabriel’s hand. Gabriel’s leg. The fine cloth of his breeches touched her petticoats. He was only inches away from her. And more distant than she’d ever imagined.
She knew he was watching her. She could feel the intensity of his gaze. Like a deer caged with a hunting lion she felt compelled to look at him. His eyes burned into hers. His visual assault was so devastating her body went slack with shock.
Athena swayed. The world swirled about her.
He caught her arm and pulled her back on to the seat beside him. A second later he loomed over her, his large body half-covering hers, pinning her in place.
‘Gabriel,’ she whispered. She lifted a trembling hand to touch his cheek.
He was real. The weight of his body on hers was real. The slight rasp of stubble on his smooth-shaven jaw was real.
‘Gabriel.’ Her eyes filled suddenly with tears. She touched his face with quick, fluttering gestures, hungry for more assurance of his reality. Stroked his hair, traced his dark eyebrow. ‘I wanted you so much.’ Her voice caught on a sob and she flung her arms around his neck, clinging desperately to him.
She buried her face in his shoulder, momentarily forgetting his hostility in the miracle of being once more able to touch him. But his hard body was unyielding as oak in her embrace.
She became aware of his silent rejection and began to pull away, shaken anew by his inexplicable anger.
He growled low in his chest, moving suddenly, forcing her back against the velvet upholstery. His action triggered memories of another man who’d used force against her.
‘No!’ Panic shot through her. She struggled wildly, pounding at Gabriel’s shoulders with her fists. Water slapped against the sides of the rocking gondola.
‘My God!’ He lifted his head a few inches.
‘No!’ she panted, twisting her face away from him, thrusting at his chest in an unavailing effort to shove him away from her.
His curse emerged as little more than a snarl.
‘How much will it cost to make you say yes?’ he demanded.
‘What?’
‘You thought you could play your tricks on some poor bastard who’d be fooled by your innocent face,’ he said savagely. ‘It must have been a shock to discover this particular pigeon has already been plucked.’
Athena stared up at him, bewildered by his accusation. ‘What? What pigeon?’
He laughed harshly and lifted himself away from her. ‘Save your breath, madam. I’ve seen you unmasked. I’ll not be duped again.’ He flung a curt order at the gondoliers. ‘I might have guessed you’d one day find your way to Venice,’ he said bitterly. ‘A whore belongs in the city of whores. You’ll fit in very well.’
The gondola stopped at a landing stage. In one lithe movement Gabriel sprang out. He issued another incomprehensible order to the gondoliers and turned to stride away across a large square.
‘Wait…’ Athena’s voice faded. Gabriel had already disappeared into the crowds. The gondola was once more gliding through the waters of the grand canal. Life continued all around her as if nothing of moment had happened.
She swallowed and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear with shaking fingers. Emotion suddenly threatened to overcome her. She propped her elbows on her knees and buried her face in her trembling hands.
Chapter Two
‘M y lord, the banquet is about to start!’ The young page bounced on his toes as he waited for Gabriel to pay off the hired gondola.
‘Banquet?’ Gabriel frowned. This was the first he’d heard of any banquet.
‘In honour of Mrs Beresford and Mrs Quenell,’ the page explained eagerly. ‘Come, my lord. Sir Walter sent me down to wait for your return. You are the most important guest!’
Gabriel bit off a curse. He had no desire to raise a glass in honour of Frances—but the meal would be over soon enough.
‘I’m likely the only guest,’ he said drily, striding beside the page through the andron, the ground-floor hallway that corresponded to the portego on the floor above.
Venetian citizens such as Filippo Correr were permitted to deal directly with foreigners, but the nobility refused to mingle with visitors to their city. The Ambassador was only able to meet with the Doge and other important patricians in the most restricted and formal of circumstances. Usually the embassy household had to rely on each other for companionship—though not necessarily for entertainment. Venice had many attractions for men in search of diversion. But it wasn’t surprising Sir Walter had seized on this excuse for a grand dinner.
‘Yes, my lord. But you are a very important guest,’ said the page.
True to his usual habit, Gabriel took the steps two at a time, arriving in the portego before the breathless servant. He paused just inside the door. The long chamber was crowded with members of the Ambassador’s staff. Roger Minshull, the Ambassador’s chief secretary, the two undersecretaries, one of whom was Edward Beresford, the chaplain, various young gentlemen who were supposedly being trained in the art of diplomacy…
Frances.
Gabriel’s eyes locked on to her immediately. But that meant nothing. She was one of only two women present. Naturally she drew his attention.
‘Halross! Splendid!’ Sir Walter spotted him. ‘In good time! We are having a banquet in honour of our gallant new arrivals.’
‘So I see.’ In Gabriel’s absence the portego had been transformed into a dining chamber with the addition of a large, magnificently laid table and finely carved chairs. ‘Most impressive.’
‘Yes. Yes. Come, my lord. You must sit on my right. Mrs Beresford on my left…’ The Ambassador immediately began to arrange his most important guests.
Gabriel saw that he was to sit almost opposite to Frances. He would be able to see her every move throughout the meal. She glanced at him, then looked quickly away. Her fingers fidgeted briefly with her closed fan, then her grip on the ivory sticks relaxed. She turned to smile at Roger Minshull who was sitting on her left. Minshull spoke to her and she replied in a light, untroubled tone. Gabriel saw that the ferret-faced secretary was already halfway to being besotted by his beautiful companion.
Frances’s composure grated on Gabriel’s temper. If she had any shame or conscience she would be begging him not to disclose her treacherous behaviour eight years ago. She must know it would take only one word from him to destroy her credibility with the Ambassador. For a few seconds Gabriel almost felt a grudging admiration for her obvious determination to brazen out the situation. There must be a backbone of steel concealed within her graceful feminine curves. Then his painfully acquired cynicism reasserted itself. In truth, it required no great courage for Frances to continue her masquerade. She was undoubtedly relying on his reluctance to reveal his youthful folly to the world. And she was right. He had no intention of providing any further entertainment for the embassy household. From now on he would treat her with the indifference she deserved.
‘It is a testament to the power of love,’ said the chaplain.
‘What?’ Gabriel’s head snapped around.
‘Mrs Beresford’s epic journey to rejoin her husband, my lord,’ the chaplain replied. ‘I have never seen two young people more truly matched. True love can overcome the greatest obstacles.’ He looked at Rachel Beresford with sentimental admiration. Gabriel followed the direction of the chaplain’s gaze.
Rachel noticed their attention was fixed upon her and blushed. ‘I could never have managed without Mrs Quenell’s help,’ she said. ‘I was so overset by the time I reached Bruges that I don’t know what I would have done if the innkeeper hadn’t taken me to the convent. After that Mrs Quenell took care of everything. I will never be able to repay her for what she has done for me.’
‘Nor I,’ Edward Beresford interjected. ‘I will always be in your debt, madam. It gives me nightmares, imagining what could have happened to my poor Rachel without your protection. And that of Mr Breydel as well, of course,’ he added. ‘I am sorry he was not able to attend this banquet.’
Gabriel hid his opinion beneath an impassive expression. The others might believe Frances’s story that she’d been a guest at the convent for a considerable time, but Gabriel knew better. She’d lied to him eight years ago, and it seemed she hadn’t lost her talent for telling plausible untruths. Frances had certainly been serving her own ends when she adopted the role of guardian angel to Rachel Beresford. No doubt she was between patrons and, just like Rachel, had taken temporary refuge in the convent. Now she was on the lookout for a new protector. The Ambassador must have told her he had a noble guest without mentioning Gabriel’s name. What a shock Frances must have had when she discovered the wealthy man she’d selected as her next victim was someone she’d duped already. Gabriel had no intention of playing her fool again.
Frances acknowledged Edward Beresford’s gratitude with a modest smile and a quiet word of thanks, but she continued her conversation with Minshull. She had changed her gown since that morning. The blue dress had been very becoming to her fair beauty, but the primrose silk taffeta revealed even more of her charms. The wide neckline showed off to perfection the graceful curve of her shoulders. It was trimmed all about with a broad lace collar more than six inches deep. A length of such fine, wide lace would have been expensive. Who was the man who had paid for the silk gown and costly lace she wore with such self-assurance? And why was she no longer with him?
‘Amazing coincidence, meeting Mrs Quenell again in Venice,’ the Ambassador remarked cheerfully.
‘What?’ Gabriel stared at the Ambassador. ‘You knew her before?’
‘Who? What?’ Sir Walter looked confused by Gabriel’s sharp question. ‘Not me!’ he exclaimed, his expression clearing. ‘I meant you, my lord.’ He laughed. ‘Must have been quite a surprise for both of you. Mrs Quenell was telling me.’
‘Telling you?’ Gabriel looked at Frances through narrowed eyes. She was even more brazen than he’d supposed. Perhaps it was time to call her bluff. ‘Indeed, yes. We were acquainted years ago,’ he said coldly. ‘But so long ago I confess I’ve forgotten the details. Perhaps you would be kind enough to remind me… Mrs Quenell.’
Her naturally fair skin grew even paler as he watched. He saw her swallow, then she looked directly at him. In that instant her eyes were the eyes of the girl he’d loved eight years ago—filled with hurt and confusion. Her unguarded blue gaze found an unexpected chink in his armour-plating of cold disdain. He looked away first, shaken by memories he’d tried so hard to destroy.
‘Of course. Your reunion this morning was cut short when you met one of your merchant acquaintances,’ said the Ambassador. ‘A very inopportune interruption.’
Gabriel realised the whole table had fallen silent. A quick sideways glance informed him that everyone was waiting more or less openly to hear about his previous friendship with Frances. He should have known his behaviour that morning would arouse curiosity.
‘Mrs Quenell,’ he challenged her, his voice deadly soft. ‘Your memory is obviously so much clearer than mine. Please. Remind me of our last meeting.’
The occasion when she’d laughed and consigned him to a ditch. He stared at her, daring her to admit her perfidious behaviour. As he watched, she summoned a smile to her lips that didn’t reach her eyes.
‘I fear I don’t remember our last meeting, my lord,’ she replied lightly. ‘But I do recall our first.’
‘Really? I made more impression on you at the beginning of our acquaintance than I did at the end? What a damning indictment of my address.’ He paused briefly. ‘But I believe I am harder to overlook now,’ he concluded, a diamond-hard edge to his voice.
‘You certainly appear grander than you did when serving behind the counter in the silk mercer’s,’ Frances snapped. ‘I vow, when I first saw you this morning decked out in velvet and lace, I scarcely recognised you.’
Further down the table Gabriel heard a gasp. Behind his back he was known as the Merchant Marquis, but very few men had the gall to call him that to his face.
Frances’s sharp response brought a feral smile to his lips—while at the same moment he felt the barest lessening of tension in his muscles. He remembered her occasional hot temper. So that at least had been real—even if everything else had been an act.
He recalled their first meeting in Sir Thomas Parfitt’s mercer’s shop. It was pure accident Gabriel had been present when Frances came in to make a purchase. Even as a young apprentice he had been employed in Parfitt’s warehouses, not in the shop on Cheapside. But as soon as he’d seen Frances he’d stepped forward to serve her—much to the amusement of Lady Parfitt, who kept the shop for her husband. And then he’d followed Frances home, just so he could arrange another, accidental meeting with her. God, what a young fool he’d been.
‘We both seem to have improved our condition in life,’ he said, his eyes on the wide fall of expensive lace about her shoulders.
‘You have certainly changed,’ she retorted. ‘Whether it is an improvement remains to be seen.’
The chaplain gasped. Someone lower down the table laughed and quickly converted it to a cough. A gleam of satisfaction suddenly appeared in Roger Minshull’s eyes. He moved so that he presented a subtle, but unmistakable shoulder to Gabriel and engaged Frances once more in conversation.
Athena barely heard a word Minshull said to her. She had forgotten her resolution to keep the uncomfortably attentive secretary at a distance because all her attention was focused on Gabriel. Her face ached with the effort of preserving an untroubled expression. She could feel Gabriel’s hard gaze upon her. He’d left her in no doubt of his contempt. His silent hostility threatened to suffocate her. They were separated by the width of the table, but every tiny movement of his powerful body flicked across her raw nerves. She forced herself to smile at Minshull while her thoughts whirled frantically this way and that. Why had Gabriel turned against her?
She forced herself to eat a little of the feast laid on partly in her honour, but the last mouthful stuck in her throat. She struggled to swallow. A wild image of choking to death at the Ambassador’s table danced in her mind. Her fingers closed desperately around her goblet. The wine helped. She took several sips, then set the goblet down. She dare not cloud her wits with the heady liquid.
She risked a fleeting glance at Gabriel. His amber eyes widened briefly when they encountered hers, then narrowed warningly. Athena felt the jolt of a sizzling connection between them. Her breath caught in her throat. Shaken, she ripped her eyes away from him, picked up her goblet with trembling fingers and put it to her lips. She closed her eyes as she drank, taking temporary refuge in the illusion that she could hide behind the goblet.
But there was no escape. Minshull was already asking her a question about the convent at Bruges. She composed herself to reply, astonished that her voice sounded so calm.
What had happened to Gabriel? She remembered so clearly the day they’d met. He had not been hard and angry then. He’d been tall and handsome and full of open-hearted vigour. From the second she’d entered the mercer’s shop her eyes had been drawn to him. When he’d stepped forward to serve her she’d been so overwhelmed that at first she’d forgotten what she wanted to buy. At last she remembered and stammered out her request, feeling foolish and embarrassed. But by then she’d seen the admiration and interest in his eyes. She was used to men looking at her with lust-filled intent—she’d fled from her childhood home to escape just such a man—but Gabriel’s male admiration didn’t repulse her. The fluttering of nervous excitement he aroused within her had been entirely pleasurable.
He still drew all her attention. He was more handsome and compelling than ever. She wished she could look at him to her heart’s content. Trace every change time had wrought upon him. From the corner of her eye she could see his hand lying upon the table. It was the same hand that had touched her so long ago. Yet it seemed somehow different. It was familiar in all its lineaments, but it almost seemed like the hand of a stranger.
‘What a lucky circumstance that you already know his lordship, Mrs Quenell,’ said the Ambassador suddenly. ‘It is so much more comfortable to travel with an old friend rather than a stranger,’ he continued.
His comment nearly destroyed the remnants of Athena’s composure. She’d been so overwhelmed by the shock of seeing Gabriel again she had forgotten he was to escort her back to England. She instinctively shied away from the prospect.
‘As to that, we have not yet discussed arrangements,’ she hurried into speech. ‘As I mentioned, his lordship met an acquaintance before we had a chance to do so. It may not be convenient—’
‘I am sure we can come to an arrangement that will be mutually satisfactory,’ Gabriel interrupted, a dark, enigmatic note in his voice.
Athena’s eyes snapped to his face. He tilted his head to look directly into hers. For several seconds she forgot to breathe.
‘If the arrangement is not to your liking we can make alternative travel plans for you, Mrs Quenell,’ said Minshull. ‘I will deal with it first thing in the morning.’
Gabriel turned almost lazily to look at the secretary. ‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ he said, his words a devastating command, not an assurance.
It seemed to Athena that she was not the only person holding her breath as she waited for Minshull to respond. There was no other conversation at the table. Gabriel held everyone’s attention.
‘I… I… Mrs Quenell?’ The red-faced secretary turned towards her.
‘Thank you for your kindness, Mr Minshull,’ she said, trying to give him a dignified way to back away from the confrontation. ‘But I have barely been in Venice a day. I’m not yet sure myself what arrangements I wish to make. You may be sure I’ll call upon you for help if I need to do so.’
‘Yes. Yes. Of course. At any time,’ he said.
A brief, cold smile curved Gabriel’s lips at the secretary’s words. Then he turned to say something to the Ambassador, quite clearly dismissing Minshull from his attention.
The meal continued. Athena longed to escape to the privacy of her chamber, but she knew that if she did so it would arouse even more curiosity among the Ambassador’s household. So she smiled and nodded and exchanged inconsequential remarks until Sir Walter suddenly declared a desire to dance.
The table was moved, chairs placed against the walls of the portego and a trio of musicians struck up a lively tune. As the only two women present, Athena and Rachel Beresford were obliged to dance every measure. Athena guessed from the fixed smile on the younger woman’s face that she was as uncomfortable with the situation as Athena. Rachel wanted to be alone with her husband. Failing that, she wanted to dance with her husband. But since Edward Beresford’s career depended on the Ambassador’s goodwill, neither he nor his wife had any choice but to acquiesce to Sir Walter’s pleasure.
Athena had never in her life danced in public. She had never had occasion to do so. She gritted her teeth, tried to watch Rachel whenever she could, and did her best to move through the steps without making a total fool of herself.
Gabriel didn’t invite either woman to dance. At first he leant against the wall and watched, his gaze inscrutable. Athena took care not to glance in his direction, though her consciousness of his scrutiny made her feel flustered and clumsy. After half an hour she became aware of a sudden absence. She looked around and discovered that Gabriel had disappeared.
His departure left her with a sense of an anticlimax. It also seemed to lead to an increased exuberance in the mood of everyone else. The impromptu ball became more boisterous. At last Edward Beresford pleaded weariness on behalf of his wife after her long journey and they left the chamber.
Athena found herself alone among a crowd of increasingly inebriated gentlemen. Without Gabriel’s brooding presence several of them, most notably Roger Minshull, became more familiar in their advances. Gabriel’s treatment of her had undermined her status in the men’s eyes. The previous day they had been inclined to treat her as if her years in the convent had given her the untouchable sanctity of a nun. This evening they were more prone to cross those invisible boundaries.
Athena knew she couldn’t afford to linger. Even though she might have to endure no more than a lewd question or two about her past friendship with Gabriel, and perhaps an inappropriately intimate caress, any sign that she was complacent about such treatment would quickly undermine her reputation and her status.
She paid the Ambassador several graceful compliments about the dinner and the subsequent entertainment he had arranged and left the portego as speedily as good manners would allow. After the last exchange of courtesies with a persistent Minshull, she escaped on to the external staircase.
The cool night air felt like balm on her overheated face. The friendly darkness was a relief after the strain of maintaining her public composure for so long. She paused for a moment to enjoy the pleasure of being alone. A burst of laughter from the portego prompted her to climb a few steps to avoid any possibility of one of the revellers noticing her and perhaps deciding to join her on the privacy of the stairs.
She walked up another few steps.
Suddenly all her senses screamed a warning. She hadn’t seen or heard anything, but a dark shape swooped on her from the shadows. Strong arms wrapped around her in an unbreakable hold. Her heart thudded so loudly she hardly heard his soft-voiced command to be quiet, but she didn’t need to hear his voice to know it was Gabriel. Even in the darkness she recognised his familiar, once-beloved scent, and the feel of his hard body close to hers.
He swept her off her feet and carried her down the stairs. Athena thought of struggling, but their discovery was more likely to cause her embarrassment than result in her rescue. Besides, despite his undisguised hostility towards her, she knew Gabriel would never hurt her. And she had questions for him. As soon as they were alone she wanted some answers.
A few moments later she found herself once more seated in Gabriel’s gondola. This time the curtains were drawn, enclosing her in a black velvet cocoon lit only by a single lantern. Gabriel swiftly joined her. His tall, broad-shouldered frame made the small cabin seem even smaller.
‘Why are you so angry?’ Athena demanded, before he’d even had a chance to lean back in the reclining seat beside her.
‘What?’
‘You didn’t even turn up at the church!’ Furious indignation vibrated in her voice. ‘You sailed off to Aleppo two weeks later without a backward glance! How dare you treat me with such contempt!’
‘How dare I…?’ Gabriel half-turned on to his side so that he could stare directly into her face. His blazing eyes were only inches from hers. ‘Harlot! I saw you with your lover. Did it amuse you to know I watched? You laughed when that bastard knocked me cold! But I’m not the callow boy I was then. You won’t fool me again with your lies.’
His accusation was so unexpected that, for a few seconds, Athena could hardly think straight.
‘What lover? I never had a lover!’ She found her voice. ‘You’re the one who’s lying! If you never meant to marry me—’
‘In the bawdy house!’ In an instant Gabriel was stretched half on top of her, the tip of his nose almost touching hers. ‘I saw him drink from the very spot your lips had touched. I saw you smile at him and lift your mouth for his kiss. I saw—’
‘Samuel?’ Athena gasped. For a moment she was back in that hateful room, afraid and longing for Gabriel to rescue her. ‘You saw?’ Her memories disintegrated beneath a mist of red-hot fury. ‘You saw and you didn’t help me! How could you? How could you?’ She pounded her fists at him, hitting wildly at his shoulders and chest, catching him a blow on his cheek, fighting him as she’d never fought Samuel. Blind to everything but memories of the nightmare she’d endured for Gabriel’s sake and her sense of bitter betrayal that he’d seen and done nothing to help her. She didn’t hear the shouts and curses of the gondoliers as they tried to prevent the gondola from overturning.
Gabriel swore. He pinned down her flailing legs with the weight of his own body and seized her forearms in his hands. He pressed her wrists against the black velvet behind her head.
Athena glared up at him through the untidy mess of her hair. ‘You monster!’ she panted. ‘How could you be so cruel? How could I have been so stupid as to love you!’
Gabriel laughed savagely. ‘Love had nothing to do with it! You saw a likely pigeon and played me along until a richer prize came your way.’
‘Richer…?’ Athena stared at him. The pressure of his body forcing her against the reclining seat meant that at least one of the bones in her tightly laced bodice pressed painfully into her side, restricting her breathing. He held her arms prisoner above her head. But he hadn’t hurt her.
His hair was dishevelled. The lace at his throat was torn and she saw scratches on his chin where her nails must have caught him. There was a mark on his left cheek from the blows she had rained about his shoulders and head. But he hadn’t hurt her.
She’d never fought Samuel. She’d known instinctively that if she did he would beat her so badly she might not survive. Tonight, driven by long-held feelings of pain and betrayal, she’d struck out wildly at Gabriel—but he’d not made any attempt to retaliate. She must have known—even after everything that had happened—she must have known on some deep, instinctive level she was safe with Gabriel.
‘He told me you didn’t go to the church,’ she whispered. ‘He told me you didn’t even know I hadn’t gone.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Samuel. Samuel Quenell. My…’ She hesitated, hating even now to refer to Samuel in such terms. ‘My husband.’
‘Your husband?’
‘How could you have seen us? How did you know where we were?’ She searched Gabriel’s face for an answer. ‘Why didn’t you help me?’
‘Help you?’ he jeered. ‘You seemed more than satisfied with your lot.’
‘You did go to the church,’ Athena breathed. ‘He lied to me.’
‘Don’t think you’ll cozen me with your fairy tales,’ Gabriel said. ‘I have seen the evidence of your true character with my own eyes.’
‘Your eyes are blind if you think I was happy to be with Samuel!’ she flung at him, hurt and insulted anew by his scepticism. ‘How did you know where to find us?’
‘I’m getting tired of your evasions, Frances,’ Gabriel said harshly. ‘You know damn well you sent a messenger to find me in the church.’
‘A messenger? Who?’
‘You know, what with having his knife pressed against my belly and then grinding his face into the plaster to teach him respect, we never did take the time for polite introductions,’ Gabriel said sarcastically. ‘He had the last laugh however. He caught me unawares when…’ he paused and gritted his teeth ‘…when I saw you and your pimp.’
Athena gazed at him. The Gabriel she’d nearly married eight years ago had been honourable, occasionally hot-headed and always direct. The Gabriel holding her captive had not changed so very much in essentials. He had no reason to lie about what had happened. The truth was too damaging to his pride and self-esteem.
‘Samuel lied to both of us,’ she said bleakly.
‘I am impressed by your resourcefulness, madam. Not to mention your tenacity in holding to a story in the face of all the evidence against you.’
‘There was supposed to be evidence against me.’ Athena suddenly felt tired. Had everything Samuel had told her been a lie? She remembered the scrap of letter implicating Gabriel in a plot to kill Cromwell. That at least must have been real. She’d recognised Gabriel’s writing immediately. As it had turned out, there had been no need to kill Cromwell because he’d died of natural causes a few months later. After Gabriel had written the letter the plotters must have come to the conclusion that time would complete their task for them. That there were other, better ways to further the King’s cause.
‘The greatest evidence of all is your willing compliance in your pimp’s arms.’ Gabriel’s gritty voice cut across her reflections.
‘I had no choice—’
‘No choice? No choice but to offer your lips to him, allow him to mumble at your breast with his mouth like—’
‘Do you think I liked that? I wanted to rip his guts out!’
‘Words! Words!’
‘He told me if I didn’t marry him—’ She broke off staring at Gabriel’s flinty, cynical expression. The bitter sense of betrayal that he’d seen her with Samuel but hadn’t helped her still gnawed at her soul. His disbelief in her explanations wounded her deeply. She could not bear to admit she’d married Samuel to save Gabriel himself. Couldn’t make herself so vulnerable to him when he treated her with such disdain.
‘He caught me on the eve of our wedding,’ she said. ‘I was so sure I’d escaped him—but he was hiding in the shadows by the courtyard. He dragged me into the parlour and told me…’ she swallowed, remembering the sickening horror she’d experienced then ‘…told me he’d taken Aunt Kitty. She was…she was the guarantee that I’d marry him willingly. He wouldn’t hurt her if I did.’
‘And you just gave yourself up without protest. Without even trying to send for help?’ Gabriel said scornfully. ‘Do you think I’d have let him hurt Kitty if I’d known? Or you? How could you be so feckless?’
‘Feckless!’ To hear her sacrifice described in such contemptuous terms infuriated Athena. Even though she’d decided not to tell Gabriel that her primary motive had been to save his life, it still hurt that he dismissed her plight so lightly.
‘Get off me!’ She jerked her body in an effort to throw him off. The gondola rocked, but her efforts made no impression on Gabriel. She winced and caught her breath in sudden pain.
‘Why do you flinch? I’m not hurting you at all.’ He frowned at her.
‘A bone in my bodice has broken, you great lummocking bully!’ She glared at him. ‘It wasn’t intended for this kind of treatment.’
‘Hmm.’ He adjusted his position on top of her carefully. Athena didn’t realise until he released her hands and flipped her over beneath him that he’d been taking care he wasn’t kneeling on her petticoats. She found her cheek pressed down on the velvet upholstery.
‘What are you doing?’ Alarm skittered through her as she felt his hands at her back.
‘Relieving you of pain, madam harlot.’
‘What?’ An instant later she knew exactly what he was doing. ‘No!’ She braced her hands against the seat and tried to push upwards.
Gabriel held her still with his thighs around her hips and one firm hand between her shoulder blades. With his other he unfastened the bodice her maid had so diligently laced her into before dinner.
‘No. Please!’ she begged desperately, as the tight-fitting bodice fell away from her body. ‘Please God, don’t!’
Chapter Three
‘D on’t what?’ he purred. ‘Touch you?’
His free hand slipped inside the open edges of her bodice. Only her thin chemise prevented him from touching her naked skin. He stroked his fingers delicately from her waist to the nape of her neck.
She gasped and trembled. His caress aroused so many conflicting emotions within her she scarcely knew what she felt.
‘Please,’ she whispered.
‘Please more?’ he taunted her. His hand roamed freely over her back. Trapped beneath him as she was, she could do nothing to prevent his caresses. The rich velvet beneath her cheek was smooth yet slightly abrasive when she moved her head against the grain of the fabric.
‘No.’ She closed her eyes. She’d longed so many nights for Gabriel’s touch. But she’d never expected he would be holding her captive when he did so.
‘No?’ He put one hand on the seat beside her and carefully repositioned himself over her. He pushed her long curls aside, his fingers lingering on the smooth skin of her shoulder, then she felt him lower his upper body until his weight lightly pressed against her. For a few tantalising seconds his breath heated her skin, then he kissed her shoulder.
He took his time, tasting her with his tongue, teasing her with his lips. She quivered, unexpected pleasure shimmering through her body. During their betrothal he had kissed her chastely upon her hand and occasionally on her cheek. Once or twice he had stolen a kiss from her lips—but never with such unfettered sensuality.
For a few moments she lost herself in the illicit delight he gave her. She forgot her undignified position face down in the gondola. She forgot Gabriel’s hostility towards her and her own sense of betrayal that he had seen but not protected her from Samuel. She was acutely aware of the contained strength in his hard body as he hovered just above her. The lace of his cravat trailed teasingly across her bare shoulder almost as tantalisingly as his lips.
His powerful thighs gripped her hips, holding her prisoner. She was completely at his mercy. And at the mercy of the desire he aroused in her. She whimpered softly.
She heard a low growl in his throat. His teeth closed on the curve between her shoulder and her neck. He didn’t bite hard enough to hurt her, but he growled again, the sound vibrating through her body. Through her arousal-dazed senses she became aware of the change in his mood from passion to anger.
‘Do you take pleasure where you can find it, like any bitch in heat?’ he said against her neck. ‘Little harlot.’
‘I am not a harlot!’ Her denial emerged as a sob of frustration and self-disgust. ‘Get off me!’
‘That’s not what you want.’ His words burned against her ear. ‘You want me to haul up your petticoats and—’
‘No!’ The velvet upholstery swallowed her gasping scream, but she began to struggle in earnest beneath him. Jabbing backwards and upwards with her elbows, she heard him grunt as one sharp elbow connected with his ribs.
He cursed and rolled off her. As soon as she was relieved of his weight she scrabbled around to face him, clutching her bodice against her breasts and drawing her knees up in an instinctive attempt to protect herself from further assaults.
The gondola rocked beneath their shifting weights, and she heard the canal water slap against the sides of the elegant craft. The lantern swung from side to side before once more coming to rest.
Gabriel stared at Athena in the shifting light. ‘That’s twice you’ve inflicted injury upon me,’ he said, his eyes narrowing. ‘Your pimp did not treat you well.’
‘I never had a pimp! I had a husband. And, no, he didn’t treat me well!’ Athena panted with overwrought emotion.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘How convenient.’
‘He died a few months ago.’
‘And now you’re looking for a new patron. Did he pay for your silk and lace, or did you bewitch some other poor fool into giving it to you?’ Gabriel’s long fingers flicked scornfully at the broad lace collar around Athena’s neckline.
‘No one gave it to me!’ Athena spat. ‘I made it! I’m not looking for a man. I survived eight years without Samuel. Why should I put myself at any man’s mercy ever again? You only cause pain and misery.’
‘I caused you pain and misery? I think not, Frances—’
‘That’s not my name,’ she interrupted, without considering her words.
‘Not your name?’ He stared at her, then threw himself back on to the seat beside her with a crack of scornful laughter. ‘You tell a series of fairy tales, expect me to believe them—then tell me I don’t even know your name? Well, what could I expect from a born harlot? You never intended to marry me, so what did it matter what name you used?’
‘It is my name,’ Athena corrected, flushing angrily.
‘First it isn’t, then it is—’
‘I was christened Athena Frances. Before God I am both Athena and Frances. I was not marrying you under a false name because you knew me by my second Christian name, not my first. I would have made my vows before God in good faith, knowing that He knows who I am.’
‘God knows, but not your future husband.’ Gabriel stared at her. The hard light in his eyes softened by a few degrees as he studied her face, dwelling on each feature in turn. ‘Athena,’ he repeated under his breath. ‘Perhaps. But you will always be Frances to me.’
A sob rose unexpectedly in Athena’s throat. ‘Frances died when Samuel found me,’ she said.
‘Who the hell is Samuel? Why was he looking for you?’ Renewed suspicion appeared in Gabriel’s eyes.
‘Was. He’s dead,’ Athena reminded him. ‘He was my stepfather’s nephew.’
‘Your stepfather? You told me you went to live with your aunt in London after you were orphaned.’
‘My father died,’ said Athena. ‘My brother was only six. Several of our neighbours wanted to seize our house and estates. My brother was too young to defend his inheritance, so my mother remarried to protect us. My stepfather was—is—a good, upright man. But he favoured a match between me and his nephew. Samuel. When I could see no other way to avoid the marriage I ran away to London where I altered my name. I thought Samuel would never find me. He did. He found me the day before our wedding was meant to take place.’
For several long moments there was silence in the gondola.
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me that story before—when I asked you to marry me?’ Gabriel growled at last. ‘Did you plan to leave me forever in ignorance of your family?’
‘No. I was so happy. I didn’t want anything to spoil it…’
‘If what you claim is true, you were a stupid, heedless wench,’ Gabriel said brutally. ‘You deserved your fate.’
‘Never!’ Athena thought of all she’d endured to keep Gabriel safe from Cromwell’s executioner. ‘How dare you judge me so harshly. You know nothing. Nothing.’
‘If you’re telling the truth, I know more now than I did then. You lied to me in London. From beginning to end—you lied to me. You were even going to marry me without telling me your real name. How the devil did you expect me to protect you if I didn’t know you were in danger?’ he exploded.
‘Protect me? You watched and did nothing to stop Samuel—’
‘Before!’ Gabriel roared. ‘If I’d known before, do you think I’d have left you under the protection of one elderly widow woman? You could have had a place in Sir Thomas Parfitt’s household until the wedding. You didn’t think, Frances. You just danced through your days, expecting life to fall into your pretty lap.’
‘I didn’t dance,’ Athena whispered, hating the way he made her sound so heedless.
‘Yes, you did,’ he said flatly. ‘You danced and left the practical business of life to others.’
‘I don’t even know how to dance,’ she protested, remembering her awkwardness earlier that evening.
‘Your spirit danced.’ He stared up at the roof of the gondola, then laid his forearm across his eyes.
‘Oh.’ Tears trembled in Athena’s own eyes. ‘I was a foolish virgin,’ she whispered. They had gone on a picnic once, and she’d been so lost in thoughts of Gabriel she’d forgotten to pack the bread. He had teased her about the parable of the wise virgins who had filled their lamps with oil in preparation for the coming of the bridegroom, and the foolish virgins who hadn’t been so well prepared.
‘It would appear so,’ he said.
‘Well, I’m not—’ she began without thinking, then bit her lip to stop herself crying.
‘No.’
‘Foolish now!’ she snapped, lifting her chin defiantly, although he wasn’t looking at her and would not therefore be impressed by the gesture. ‘I may have been foolish once, but I am not foolish now.’
‘You arrived in Venice with no idea how you were going to continue your journey and had to beg the Ambassador to arrange your transport home! How much more damned foolish can one woman get!’
‘I was not foolish!’ Athena fired up. ‘Rachel needed my support. She was in such distress. Only someone with a heart of stone would have refused to help her.’
‘Another foolish wench. Has she any idea how much her presence here may hinder her husband’s career?’ Gabriel said derisively.
‘She didn’t come to hinder his career, she came to save herself from her lech of a brother-in-law! If her husband had left her better provided for, she wouldn’t have needed to come to Venice. Men always think they know best. They don’t know anything.’
‘What were you doing in the convent?’ Gabriel asked.
‘That’s where I ended up after I ran away from Samuel the second time,’ said Athena.
‘You ran away? When?’
‘Three weeks after the wedding.’
‘Three weeks!’ Gabriel swore. ‘If you had the resolution to run away then, why not earlier?’
‘Because earlier I didn’t know—’ Athena caught herself up before she revealed that it was only after Gabriel had set off for Turkey that she’d run from Samuel. ‘Circumstances changed,’ she said instead. ‘There was no longer any risk involved if I left him. My mother’s sister lived in exile in France. Her husband was a royalist who fought for Charles at Worcester. He was hanged when the Roundheads captured him after the battle. I went to her.’
‘To France? All on your own?’ Gabriel’s voice was redolent with scepticism.
‘Yes! I cut off my hair, dyed it brown and pretended to be a youth,’ Athena declared proudly. ‘I got all the way to my aunt’s without anyone seeing through my disguise.’
Gabriel looked at her in disbelief, his eyes resting on the womanly curve of her breasts.
‘I bound them and wore baggy clothes,’ Athena said impatiently. ‘And I practised walking like a cocky youth. I based my impersonation on you. People only see what they expect to see.’
Gabriel raised his eyebrows. ‘In my experience cocky youths usually walk straight into trouble in unfamiliar surroundings,’ he said drily.
‘Hmm. Well,’ Athena muttered, discomfited. ‘After certain incidents I concluded, upon reflection, that a more modest bearing might be advisable. But I reached my destination quite safely. I am not the only woman who has chosen the protection of male clothing when travelling,’ she pointed out.
‘And what happened when you reached your aunt?’
‘We decided, Aunt Eleanor and I, that the English Convent in Bruges would be the safest place for me to hide. One of her childhood friends is the Abbess there. She took me to the convent early in 1659 and I stayed until Rachel needed a companion on her journey here.’
‘Seven years in a convent,’ Gabriel mused, his expression unreadable as he looked her up and down. ‘You are certainly not dressed like a nun.’
‘I wasn’t a nun, I was a guest of the convent.’
‘Hardly a charitable case, by the look of you.’
‘My aunt made donations to the convent. But I also worked for them in the infirmary and sometimes the gardens,’ Athena said. ‘And I made my lace.’ She touched her bodice. ‘It fetches a good price, you know.’
‘Yes.’ His eyes raked her face. ‘It is a very plausible story,’ he said.
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘I reserve judgement.’
‘You have no right to judge me!’ Athena fumed.
‘It was judgement that separated the wise from the foolish virgins.’
‘It was common sense and foresight,’ Athena shot back.
‘Both of which you completely lack if this latest exploit is any indication.’
‘And you’ve lost your compassion. And your gallantry,’ she added, as an afterthought. ‘How could you treat me so rudely at dinner?’
‘Very easily.’ He moved suddenly, startling her into huddling back into her seat, but all he did was twitch apart the curtains a couple of inches to speak to the gondolier standing in front of the small cabin.
‘Oh, my God, they heard us?’ she whispered in horror, as Gabriel sat back again.
‘They don’t speak English,’ he replied indifferently.
‘What did you say to him?’ Athena still kept her voice lowered.
‘I ordered them to take us back to the embassy.’
‘Oh.’ Athena experienced a strange sense of anticlimax. ‘Then what?’
‘You may retire to your quarters and I will retire to mine.’
‘That’s it?’
‘What else would you prefer to do?’ His eyes glittered in the lantern light.
Athena clutched defensively at her bodice and realised she was still unlaced. ‘I can’t walk into the embassy like this!’ she gasped.
‘I could carry you in,’ he offered.
‘Certainly not!’ She bit her lip as she considered her options. ‘You may do me up,’ she decided, ‘but mind you touch nothing but the points and my bodice!’
‘You want me to do the work of a lady’s maid?’ he said. ‘For what hire?’
‘Nothing. You shouldn’t have undone me in the first place.’
‘Turn around,’ he commanded.
She did so, looking warily over her shoulder to see what he would do.
‘So suspicious,’ he mocked her.
‘No more than you.’ She held her breath as he pulled on the laces. ‘Not too tight. The bone is broken,’ she reminded him.
She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed that he did exactly as she’d asked. Despite everything, some small part of her still yearned for his caresses.
‘There. You may return to the embassy as respectably dressed as you left it,’ he said.
‘What did he do to you?’ Athena’s maid demanded the instant she entered her room.
‘Nothing.’ Athena had known there was little chance her interlude with Gabriel would go unnoticed, at least by Martha. Her maid had been given a pallet bed in Athena’s chamber.
Martha sniffed disbelievingly. ‘Richard saw him carry you off the steps. He said you didn’t even struggle.’
Richard was the manservant Rachel Beresford had brought with her from England. Martha hadn’t wanted to come to Venice, but she’d been partially consoled for the inconvenience of the trip by the friendship she’d struck up with Richard.
‘Did he?’ Athena sat down on a stool and brushed her hair wearily back from her face. It was hard to dredge up answers to satisfy Martha when she had so many unanswered questions of her own whirling in her mind.
‘I didn’t struggle because there was no point,’ she said. ‘Do you suppose anyone in this place would gainsay Lord Halross?’
‘No,’ Martha admitted grudgingly. ‘He has them all in thrall. And he’s in better standing with the Venetians than the Ambassador, by what I hear. Why did he take you? What did he do to you? Did he hurt you?’
‘To talk. No, he didn’t hurt me.’
‘Talk!’ Martha snorted in disbelief. ‘How do you know him? You never mentioned him before.’
The stool was close to the wall. Athena leant back gratefully. ‘I knew him before I was married,’ she said.
‘Were you his mistress?’ Martha sounded shocked.
‘No!’ Athena lifted her head in indignation. ‘I was to marry him.’
‘Marry him?’ Martha’s mouth fell open. ‘Why didn’t you?’
‘We had a small misunderstanding several years ago. Lord Halross wanted to clear it up this evening, that’s all,’ said Athena, trying to conclude the conversation.
‘It’s not all, by a long shot,’ Martha said grimly. ‘Richard wasn’t the only one who saw the Marquis carry you off. Sir Walter’s valet also saw you. By tomorrow morning everyone in the embassy will be sure Lord Halross has set you up as his mistress.’
An inn, Brussels
‘There is one other matter, your Grace,’ said Philpott, Gentleman of the Privy Purse to the Duke of Kilverdale.
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Claire Thornton
A time for revenge…For eight years Gabriel Vaughan, Marquis of Halross, has believed he was duped by a clever, money-grabbing harlot. He has tried to forget the beauty who left him at the altar, and then an accidental meeting in Venice places her entirely at his mercy!Although Athena Frances Fairchild claims to be innocent, maybe this is just another of her deceptions. It's time to exact a little revenge. So when Athena needs a safe passage back to England, Gabriel sees his chance. Years ago he would have been proud to have Athena accompany him as his wife. Now Gabriel will insist she travel…as his mistress!
“The entire household believes I am your mistress.”
“There is a solution to your unfortunate situation,” Gabriel said blandly.
“What?”
“You could become my mistress in fact as well as reputation.”
She stared at him, her lips parted in shock. Then the color drained out of her face. Her mouth worked for a few seconds before she managed to utter a word.
“How could you?” she whispered. “I was good enough to be your wife. But now… No! Never!” She sprang to her feet, knocking over the stool. “Is this your idea of revenge? Because I will never let you humiliate me like that!”
“It’s my price for providing you with safe passage back to England,” he said. “That is what you want from me, isn’t it?”
Praise for Claire Thornton
Raven’s Honor
“Claire Thornton has written an exciting historical unlike anything I’ve read this past year. She hooked me within the first few pages and kept me hanging on the edge throughout the rest of this beautifully written love story…. I highly recommend this intoxicating love story.”
—Romance Junkies
Gifford’s Lady
“Claire Thornton is truly gifted in creating stories that are so unusual—with charismatic characters, intriguing plots and subtle humor. Her hero steps off the page and into your heart with his bravery and sensibilities.”
—Romance Junkies
“Thornton offers an inventive plotline and paints a vivid picture with her descriptions.”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub
“[Abigail] and Gif share a wonderfully tender and intimate love scene that’s one of the best I have read this year…. It’s a standout.”
—All About Romance
The Defiant Mistress
Claire Thornton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Author Note
The stories in the CITY OF FLAMES trilogy take place in Europe during the reign of Charles II. This was an era of great color, drama and variety. The king scandalized some of his subjects with his many mistresses, but his reign also saw the emergence of modern banking among the London goldsmiths. Actresses appeared for the first time in London theaters, while members of the Royal Society met every week to witness scientific experiments.
Athena Fairchild, Colonel Jakob Balston and the Duke of Kilverdale are cousins, but they’ve led very different lives. Athena grew up in England, Jakob in Sweden, and Kilverdale spent his childhood exiled in France as a result of the war between Charles I and Parliament.
The cousins’ romances take place in various locations, but London is at the heart of the CITY OF FLAMES trilogy. The cousins all meet the one they love in the city—although Athena’s happiness is destroyed almost before it begins.
Athena’s story, The Defiant Mistress, begins in May 1666 in Venice and the events span the rest of the summer. Jakob’s story, The Abducted Heiress, and Kilverdale’s story, The Vagabond Duchess, both begin in London at the start of September 1666. In the early hours of the morning of 2 September a fire in Pudding Lane will burn out of control….
While I was writing these books I fell in love with the characters and their world. I hope you enjoy reading their stories as much as I enjoyed writing them.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Prologue
London, June 1658
T onight a maid…tomorrow a bride.
Athena’s heart sang with expectation. Her mood was as sunny as the afternoon as she stepped lightly along Cheapside, slipping with practised ease through the crowds that thronged one of London’s grandest thoroughfares. Her route took her past some of the City’s most renowned silk mercers’ and goldsmiths’ shops, but she didn’t spare them a second glance. She had finished her own less exalted shopping and she was on her way home.
Tomorrow she would be Gabriel’s wife.
She experienced a brief frisson of tension as she contemplated her wedding night—she could not help but feel a little nervous at what some of her wifely duties would entail—but she loved and trusted Gabriel. Whenever he held her in his arms or kissed her he always tempered his male passion with exquisite tenderness for her innocence. In fact—she skipped out of the path of a sedan chair carried by two sweating porters—in fact, sometimes Gabriel was a little too tender. One of the chairmen turned his head to look appreciatively after her, but she was used to men’s admiring glances and she didn’t pay any attention. Her thoughts were too full of her coming wedding night. A quiver of illicit anticipation stirred deep inside her as she imagined how much more passionately Gabriel would kiss her when he no longer had to keep such a tight rein upon his desire. Tomorrow night she would find out.
She turned off the broad expanse of Cheapside into a narrower side street. Here, even in the summer, the houses with their projecting upper floors were too close together to allow the mid-afternoon sun to penetrate all the way to the ground. The shade provided a respite from the glare of bright sunlight, but only an illusion of coolness. The air was hot and still. Athena’s skin felt gritty with the grime of the city.
She pushed a strand of damp blonde hair away from her face and turned her thoughts to the supper she meant to prepare for her aunt. It was the last night she would spend under Aunt Kitty’s roof and Athena wanted to show her appreciation for the older woman’s generosity and kindness. She had already bought most of the ingredients she needed early that morning. This second shopping trip had been to fetch the few items she’d originally forgotten because her mind had been too full of Gabriel.
Well, for the rest of the afternoon and evening she would not let so much as one stray thought of Gabriel cross her mind. She would concentrate only on preparing the most splendid supper imaginable for Aunt Kitty—and her reward…her reward would be to lie in bed and think of Gabriel all night! Athena couldn’t suppress the saucy smile that tugged at her lips at the prospect. Her whole body hummed with happiness as she stepped into the passage that led to the small courtyard in front of her aunt’s lodgings.
‘Hello, Athena.’ A man’s voice spoke suddenly from the shadows.
She jumped, her stomach lurching with surprise, but at first she was startled rather than afraid.
‘You naughty girl,’ he said, chiding her in a repellently indulgent tone. ‘What a tease you are.’
Samuel?
Horrified disbelief held Athena immobile for several seconds. She recognised that hateful voice, but she’d hoped never to hear it again. Samuel didn’t belong in London. He had no place in her new life. How had he found her?
He moved into the light, his glittering eyes roaming greedily over her body. Her skin crawled at his lascivious interest.
‘Such a tease,’ he said thickly. ‘Have you been getting impatient for me to find you, sweetling?’
He reached towards her.
She jerked backwards, bumping her basket against the wall. The impact jolted her into action. She spun around, driven by a panic-stricken need to run as far and as fast as possible.
Samuel lunged forward. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her close to him.
‘Don’t run,’ he said, his breath scalding her cheek. ‘I’ve been patient, but now it’s time you came to heel.’
‘No!’ Athena desperately tried to break free. ‘Let me go! I won’t marry you!’
‘Yes, you will.’ He twisted her arm painfully, punishing her for her resistance. ‘It’s arranged. Your father approves. Your mother—’
‘Josiah Blundell is not my father.’ Athena continued to struggle. ‘He’s my stepfather. My real father would never force me to marry you.’ Her voice shook with scorn and contempt. ‘He would have protected me from you.’
Samuel hissed angrily. ‘Your fine father is dead. He was nothing. I am Cromwell’s friend,’ he boasted.
‘I doubt he even knows your name!’ Athena mocked him, too angry to be cautious.
Samuel’s uncle, and her stepfather, Josiah Blundell, was indeed Cromwell’s friend. She knew that Josiah did have some influence with Cromwell. But she was sure the same could not be said for the twenty-three-year-old Samuel. He was an indulged only son, and Josiah Blundell’s favoured only nephew, but he could not lay claim to any great achievement in his own right.
‘He does, you bitch!’ Samuel’s grip tightened cruelly. ‘And if you don’t mind your manners, you’ll find out how much.’
‘Leave me alone.’ She flailed wildly at him with her basket, ignoring the pain in the arm he held as she tried to kick her heels against his shins.
‘A woman should show more respect for her husband.’
‘I’ll never marry you,’ Athena panted. ‘I’m going to marry someone else.’
Samuel swore vilely and forced her along the passage and across the courtyard into her aunt’s lodgings. ‘Be quiet, or the old woman will pay,’ he threatened her.
Athena stopped struggling, appalled at the possibility Samuel might take his spite out on Aunt Kitty. He shoved her across the threshold and into her aunt’s parlour. Then he released her.
Athena stumbled forward, nearly tripping over her skirts. She righted herself and whirled around, frantically searching the room for her aunt.
‘She’s not here,’ said Samuel. ‘A little precaution I’m sure won’t be necessary. She’s come to no harm. As long as you behave yourself, she’ll be back here soon enough.’
Athena stared at Samuel. He had wanted her from the first moment he’d seen her, and all his life he’d been given what he wanted. Fright and anger jangled through her. She had done everything in her power to escape him. It seemed monstrous that he should have found her now, on the very eve of her wedding.
Most of Athena’s life had been lived in the shadow of the war between King and Parliament but, though she had heard dreadful stories of battles and sieges elsewhere, the conflict had not directly impinged on her childhood. That had changed in 1656 when she was fifteen. Her father had died and she’d discovered that her family’s situation was more precarious than she’d realised. Sir Edmund Fairchild had secretly sympathised with the royalist cause, but he’d trod a skilful path through the volatile rivalries of his predominantly parliamentarian neighbours. On Sir Edmund’s death, the Fairchild estate had passed to Athena’s younger brother, Luke, but the new baronet was only six years old. The Parliamentarian leaders of the county looked covetously upon Fairchild Manor.
To safeguard her family and preserve her son’s inheritance, Athena’s mother had remarried eight months after Sir Edmund’s death. She had chosen as her second husband one of their closest neighbours, Josiah Blundell. Josiah was a man of stern, puritan feeling—but there was no doubt he held Athena’s mother in stiff-backed affection. Upon their marriage he had promised to preserve the young baronet’s inheritance and protect the rest of the Fairchild family. So far he had been as good as his word—except in one respect. From the first he had been in favour of a match between his nephew, Samuel, and Athena.
Athena had done everything she could to change her stepfather’s mind. But Samuel only ever revealed his most charming face to his uncle, and Josiah could not understand Athena’s objections to the marriage. At last, in desperation, she had fled from her home in Kent to the bustling anonymity of London. She’d taken refuge with the widowed sister of her father’s brother-in-law, a distant family connection she was sure was unknown to Josiah and Samuel. To make it even harder to track her down, she had altered her name from Athena Frances Fairchild to the less memorable Frances Child and pretended she had no family apart from Kitty.
But now it seemed all her efforts to make a new life had been in vain. Samuel had found her.
She stepped back, moving her basket instinctively in front of her. It was a flimsy shield and an inadequate weapon, but it was all she had. She lifted her chin and forced words through her fear-tightened throat.
‘You can’t make me marry you,’ she said. ‘You can drag me to the altar, but you can’t make me say the words.’
‘Yes, I can.’ There was an expression of gloating self-satisfaction in Samuel’s eyes. ‘You will say the words willingly.’
‘Never.’ Fear chilled her. He was so horribly confident. She had to get away from him.
Athena backed up another step. Samuel stood in front of her. From the corner of her eye she could see the doorway on her left. She didn’t dare look in that direction in case she signalled her intentions to him. She took another hesitant step backwards, looking down at the basket she held in front of her. Suddenly she hurled it at Samuel and made a dash for the door.
She saw Moses Spink, Samuel’s friend, too late to avoid capture. She struggled wildly in Spink’s arms, hardly aware that Samuel was speaking to her. At last his words penetrated her angry, panic-clouded mind.
‘…unless you want to see Vaughan hanged for treason.’
‘What?’ she gasped, lifting her head to stare at him through a veil of untidy blonde hair. ‘What sick nonsense are you talking?’
‘Your noble bridegroom is a spy for Charles Stuart,’ Samuel informed her triumphantly. ‘I have one of his letters to prove it. He is a traitor—and here is the evidence that will hang him.’
‘You’re lying.’ But despite her bold denial, doubt crept into Athena’s heart. Gabriel Vaughan was the third son of the Marquis of Halross. As the youngest son he had to make his own way in life and he’d chosen to apprentice himself to a City merchant. But he’d once mentioned to Athena that, during the Wars, his father had fought for the King. A picture of Gabriel rose powerfully in Athena’s mind. He was so full of glorious male vigour, so high-couraged and honourable. Had he decided to follow in his father’s tradition and take up the cause of the exiled King?
‘See for yourself,’ said Samuel, as if reading her thoughts.
Spink released her. She stepped out of his reach with a proud toss of her head, but she couldn’t prevent her hands from trembling when she took the tattered fragment of letter Samuel held out. She knew Gabriel’s writing. He had composed a sonnet for her a month ago. He had presented it to her with a flush of hopeful male awkwardness, not quite at ease with the romantic gesture; but Athena had been so enchanted with him that soon he had puffed out his chest with pride in his lover’s skill.
Now she recognised his confident initials signing the letter and the sentences above that clearly proved his involvement in a plot to kill Cromwell and restore Charles II to the throne.
‘Your choice is simple.’ Samuel’s voice came to her from a distance, as if her head was underwater. She felt as if she was drowning. ‘Marry me tomorrow in place of your traitorous bridegroom—or Vaughan will hang.’
Athena looked into his eyes and knew it was not an idle threat. If Samuel showed this evidence to Josiah, her stepfather would go straight to Cromwell—and then Gabriel would die. One of Athena’s uncles had been hanged by the parliamentarians after the Battle of Worcester—simply because he had fought at the King’s side. If an officer in the King’s army could be treated so dishonourably, then a King’s spy would receive even less quarter if he fell into his enemies’ hands. Athena could not bear Gabriel to suffer a traitor’s death.
‘If I marry you, will you promise that no harm will come to Gabriel?’ she asked in an unsteady voice.
‘You used Vaughan to make me jealous, you minx.’ Samuel stroked her cheek in a gesture that was an obscene mockery of true tenderness. ‘A lively spirit is attractive in a woman. But you must know when to put an end to the teasing games. Vaughan is a fool twice over. For plotting against Cromwell and for not realising you only flirted with him to provoke me. But I’m the one you really want. If you come willingly to my bed tomorrow, I won’t accuse Vaughan of treason. Cromwell’s too well protected for the plot to succeed, and there’s no need to punish Vaughan for being vain enough to think he caught your heart.’
It was not the wedding day of Athena’s dreams. She’d left home to avoid marriage to Samuel. She had never once considered the possibility that there would come a time when she would willingly take vows with him.
She wasn’t willing now, but the image of Gabriel hanging limp in the hangman’s noose tormented her. No matter what the cost to herself, she couldn’t let such a fate overtake him.
After the brief ceremony was completed, Samuel took her to what she assumed was an inn. Athena hadn’t thought this far ahead. Samuel had made a pretence that there was nothing unusual about the marriage. Athena had slept in her own bed the previous night—though Spink had guarded the door. She hadn’t been able to sleep from fear and worry. She’d wondered where Gabriel was and what he was doing. She’d longed to send him a message to warn him, but with Spink on guard there was no chance of doing so. Besides, she was terrified that, if she made any attempt to contact Gabriel, Samuel would take cruel revenge.
In all her pacing and fretting she hadn’t allowed herself to think about what would happen after the wedding. It had been too dreadful to contemplate. And perhaps she’d hoped that by some miracle she would still be rescued at the last minute from her nightmare. But as Samuel led her upstairs her fears changed focus and became more acute. It was no longer Gabriel’s uncertain future that was at the forefront of her mind, but her own present predicament. The harsh reality of her situation threatened to overwhelm her. Did she truly have the courage to keep her end of the bargain with Samuel? What would happen to Gabriel if she failed?
She tried to speak, but her throat was so tight with fear she could barely force words past her cold lips.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she whispered.
‘In here.’ Samuel opened a door and pushed her inside.
Athena’s gaze locked on the large bed. Horror congealed in the pit of her stomach. This was what Samuel wanted. What he had wanted since he had first laid eyes upon her. This was why he had married her.
‘Remember,’ he said in her ear. ‘A willing wife in my bed or Vaughan dies a traitor’s death.’
The church had been stripped of all its ornaments. Even its name had been changed to satisfy the puritan dislike of idolatry. No longer St Mary’s, it had become simply a public meeting-place—but it still felt like a church. Whispers echoed beneath the high, vaulted ceiling.
Gabriel’s stomach clenched with tension. It was cool inside the building, but his palms were damp with perspiration. He laid his hands against his thighs and tried to ignore the increasing restlessness of his companions. He could hear the questions they asked one another, the growing doubt and disapproval in the softly muttered comments.
‘I said she was no good match for him!’ Lucy’s voice rose clear above the rest.
‘Hush!’ Lady Parfitt reprimanded her daughter.
Gabriel gritted his teeth. Where was Frances? Where was his bride?
The minister caught his eye and Gabriel forced his lips into a confident smile while his mind seethed with questions.
What could have delayed her? Was she hurt? His chest expanded as he dragged in a deep, anxious breath. He wanted to rush out of the church in search of her. It required all his self-control to remain still.
The church door banged open. Everyone turned to look. It wasn’t Frances. The new arrival was a nondescript stranger. He obviously had nothing to do with the wedding. The guests lost interest in him. They all focused their attention on Gabriel. He saw the curiosity, worry and, in some cases, morbid satisfaction in their faces.
Everyone in the church was there on his behalf. Only one member of Gabriel’s real family was present, but that didn’t matter. Gabriel had spent seven years apprenticed to the wealthy City merchant, Sir Thomas Parfitt. During the first two years of his apprenticeship Gabriel had lived in Sir Thomas’s household, treated almost as an additional member of the family. Then Sir Thomas had sent him to the Tuscan port of Livorno. For the next five years Gabriel had been trained to look after Sir Thomas’s trading interests in Italy. Now Gabriel was back in London, his apprenticeship complete. He was twenty-two years old, a member of both the Levant Company and the Mercers’ Company, and a freeman of the City of London. And he was getting married. Sir Thomas had made no secret of his disapproval of this improvident match, but he had not withheld his support from his young friend.
And now the bride was late. Very late.
Gabriel decided to send a messenger to her lodgings. Unlike him, Frances had no close friends or relatives in the city except for the aunt with whom she lived. If Frances was ill, her aunt would not be able to leave her. In her distress, perhaps the woman had not thought to send a message to the church.
Gabriel caught the eye of one of Sir Thomas’s younger apprentices, intending to ask him—
‘I have a message for Gabriel Vaughan!’ The stranger’s voice rang mockingly from the back of the church, startling everyone.
‘I’m Vaughan.’ Gabriel faced the man, his heart thudding with anxiety. ‘Have you come from Miss Child? Is she ill?’
‘Aye, my message is from the lady herself,’ the stranger confirmed.
Gabriel had no idea who the man was, but he expected the fellow would approach him to deliver the message. Instead, the stranger kept his station at the back of the church, grinning at the curious wedding guests. Gabriel started to walk down the aisle towards him.
‘Miss Frances begs your indulgence—but it’s not convenient for her to wed today,’ announced the stranger. ‘Just yesterday she had a better offer from a gentleman with a bigger purse and a bigger…’
The crude words rolled over Gabriel. He didn’t hear the gasps of shock and outrage from his friends. His confident stride faltered. For a few moments he was aware only that Frances had deliberately not come to the church. Frances didn’t want to marry him.
Stunned disbelief filled him. How could this be? Frances loved him. He knew she did. His unfocused gaze sharpened. He moved forward, intent on asking Frances’s messenger where she was. If he spoke to her, he was sure he could sort out the confusion. Frances was only seventeen. If she wasn’t ready for the serious commitment of marriage he would wait for her. He’d clearly been over hasty in his plans.
Then he saw that the stranger was backing towards the door, his lips still stretched into that same, unpleasant grin. Gabriel suddenly remembered and understood the full import of the message he’d been given.
Savage fury surged through him. ‘You’re lying!’ he roared and leapt for the stranger.
The fellow had anticipated Gabriel’s rage and fled through the church doors. Gabriel raced after him into the glaring sunlight. He seized the stranger just before he escaped into a narrow alley and slammed the man against the wall, his hands locked about a grimy throat.
‘Careful, lordling!’ the stranger croaked. ‘Squeeze harder an’ I’ll gut you!’
Gabriel felt the prod of a dagger against his belly. The blade pierced his clothes and cut his skin. He ignored it.
‘You’re lying,’ he said through clenched jaw. ‘Frances didn’t send that message. Where is she? What have you done to her?’
‘I haven’t done anything to her,’ the stranger replied. ‘My purse isn’t deep enough for the likes of her. But she’s found herself a nice rich protector now. He’s wealthy beyond her dreams—’ The man gasped as Gabriel’s grip on his throat tightened. He retaliated by pressing his knife harder against Gabriel’s stomach. ‘Not so tight, coxcomb. Your guts’ll make a nasty mess o’ those fine clothes of yours.’
Gabriel relaxed his grasp and shifted his weight as if he intended to step away. The stranger reduced the pressure on the blade. The next second Gabriel seized his wrist and spun him around in a shoulder-wrenching hold. He forced the man’s arm up behind his back and thrust him against the wall, grinding his face against the plaster.
‘Where’s Frances?’ he demanded harshly.
‘I’ll show you,’ the man choked. ‘No need to break my arm. I’ll show you.’
‘What is this place?’ Gabriel balked, looking around in displeasure.
From the outside he’d assumed he’d been led to an alehouse. From the inside it was clear that the building was both more sumptuous and a lot less respectable than he’d anticipated. He heard laughter and raucous voices behind one half-open door. Another door crashed open and a woman emerged, her head turned as she giggled teasingly at the occupant of the room. She was barely wearing her shift. The garment had slid down both shoulders, only her hands clutched to her breasts prevented it from falling off completely.
‘Frances isn’t here.’ Gabriel turned to leave. ‘You’ve brought me on a fool’s errand.’
His guide blocked his way, grinning with disagreeable self-assurance. Gabriel felt a stab of fear, not for himself, but for Frances. He’d been unwise to follow a stranger into an unfamiliar part of the City, but he was confident of his ability to extricate himself from trouble. Frances had grown up in the country. By her own account she had come to London less than a year ago to live with her aunt after the death of her father. She was still unversed in the many hazards of the sinful capital.
‘What have you done to her?’ Fear roughened his voice.
He made an involuntary movement towards the man and saw, just in time, the dull glint of the knife.
‘Upstairs, lordling.’
Gabriel’s heart thumped with apprehension as he mounted the narrow stairs.
‘In here.’ A thump between his shoulder blades directed him into a small chamber. ‘Now look here,’ said his guide in a low voice. ‘And keep quiet if you want to know the truth about your virtuous Frances.’
A spyhole!
Gabriel bit back a curse. What kind of fool was he being played for? He took a step backwards and felt a dagger against his side. He’d half-turned towards the man, intending to deal with his impertinence once and for all, when he heard a muffled voice he thought he recognised.
Shocked and disbelieving, he put his eye to the spyhole. Frances? Dear God, it was Frances!
Gabriel pressed his hand flat against the wall as he watched her accept a wine posset from a man he’d never seen before. Frances drank and handed the vessel back to her companion. The man made a show of turning the cup so he could drink from the very place her lips had touched. He spoke, complimenting her on her beauty and Frances smiled at him!
Gabriel’s hand closed into a fist, his knuckles pressing into the plaster as he saw Frances lift her face to be kissed. The man’s lips touched her cheek and then her mouth. Frances laid her hands on his shoulders, inviting his liberties.
A few moments later the man turned Frances and began to unlace her bodice. She allowed him to remove it and made no protest when he fumbled at the neckline of her chemise. The man exposed her breast and bent his head to lay his mouth against the soft flesh.
Gabriel broke free from his horrified paralysis. He reared up and around, nearly blind with outrage and the pain of betrayed love. So intent was he on confronting his traitorous bride and her lover that he’d forgotten his companion.
The man hit Gabriel neatly on the back of the head with the hilt of his dagger.
Gabriel’s awareness clouded. He struggled to remain conscious, but his knees sagged and he slid painfully into darkness. The last thing he heard was a woman’s mocking laughter.
Athena sat on a straight-backed chair in the dark, waiting with sick dread for Samuel to come to bed. Her cold fingers twisted and curled ceaselessly around each other as she thought of all that Samuel had done to her in the two weeks since their wedding day. Soon he would join her again. Waves of revulsion surged through her. She twisted her fingers against each other until her hands hurt.
When she had fled from Samuel ten months earlier, it had never occurred to her that her flight would eventually end with her back in Kent and married to him. But at least Gabriel and Aunt Kitty were safe. To Athena’s huge relief, Aunt Kitty had been restored unharmed to her home a couple of days after the wedding. Athena didn’t place much faith in Samuel’s integrity, but he had kept his promise where Aunt Kitty was concerned. She had to believe that he would also keep his word not to inform on Gabriel.
Samuel veered wildly in the things he said about Gabriel. Sometimes he claimed Athena had only allowed Gabriel to court her to provoke his— Samuel’s—jealousy. At other times he said things that indicated he did know that Athena really loved Gabriel. On those occasions it was easy to believe that Samuel had married her primarily to punish her for rejecting him, rather than because he wanted her.
Athena found a certain, terrible, comfort in her conviction that Samuel had married her to punish her. It meant that Gabriel was relatively safe from arrest. After all, if Gabriel was seized and executed, Samuel would no longer have any power over her. Athena had repeated that simple fact to herself over and over again during the past fourteen days. She was keeping Gabriel safe. It was the only thing that had enabled her to endure her new life. Her head jerked up, her breath catching in her throat, as she heard footsteps outside the door. She squeezed her fingers cruelly together in anticipation of Samuel’s entrance, then realised what she was doing and forced herself to fold her hands quietly in a semblance of serenity. She would not give Samuel the satisfaction of knowing how much she feared him.
The room was suddenly illuminated by the flickering light of a single candle. Samuel walked across the room to stand over her.
‘Sitting in the dark? I’ve married an economical wench,’ he said sarcastically.
‘The light strains my eyes,’ she replied in a low voice.
‘You were thinking about your lover!’ he accused her. ‘Dreaming that he might come and claim you!’
‘No.’ Late at night, when Samuel slept, Athena yearned for such a miraculous rescue. But she’d already discovered how angry Samuel became when he thought of her with Gabriel. His charade that she’d only trifled with Gabriel to incite his jealousy had worn very thin.
‘You’re lying, you whore. You look so sweet and innocent, but beneath that beautiful face you have the heart of a harlot.’
Athena gazed slightly to one side of his face, trying to let his tirade wash over her. She was starting to learn how to survive his verbal abuse. Let him rant and rage and do as he pleased. Eventually he would go away, lose interest, or simply fall asleep. She could survive.
He hated it when she didn’t respond to him. What he had always craved most from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her was her attention—her smiles and favour for preference, but at the very least her attention.
‘He’s gone to Turkey!’ he jeered.
‘What?’ Athena’s eyes jerked to Samuel’s face.
‘Your faithless former bridegroom. He never turned up for the wedding, you know. I had him watched. If you’d failed to keep our little bargain, I would have had him arrested. But he doesn’t even know you jilted him because he never went to the church! He never meant to marry you!’
‘I don’t believe you!’ Athena could not—would not—believe Samuel’s cruel claim. Gabriel loved her. She knew he did.
Samuel laughed. ‘Did you really think you meant more to him than a pleasant interlude? He sailed in one of Parfitt’s ships for Turkey two days ago.’
‘Turkey?’ Athena whispered. She knew that Sir Thomas Parfitt’s trading interests extended to the Turkish empire and perhaps beyond. Gabriel had often talked about how much he’d enjoyed his years in Italy. Could it be true…?
‘You said he was plotting against Cromwell.’ She tried to make sense of how the letter incriminating Gabriel in the plot against the parliamentarian leader fitted with the news that he had sailed for Turkey.
‘Fickle noblemen. They treat everything as a game.’ Samuel dismissed Athena’s comment with a disdainful gesture. ‘You’re lucky I found you in time. Otherwise you’d have been left standing alone at the church. The whole world would have known you for a foolish maid, easily duped by a faithless cavalier. Come to bed, wife.’
Athena did not protest. Since their wedding day Samuel had required no more from her in bed than her passive acceptance of him, and it was over quicker that way.
Later she lay on her side, listening to him snore behind her, silent tears running down her cheeks. Until tonight she had still preserved a glimmer of hope that Gabriel might be looking for her. That somehow there was a way out of the nightmare her life had become. Of course such hopes were not logical. If Gabriel found her, it would put him at risk and her sacrifice on his behalf might end up being for nothing. But still she’d hoped for a miracle: that her love for Gabriel and his for her would triumph over Samuel’s obsessive desire to possess her.
But Gabriel had gone to Turkey. Despite her longing to believe otherwise, she was already half-certain Samuel’s story was true. She knew Sir Thomas Parfitt traded there. Gabriel was adventurous and ambitious. He would surely see this new venture as an exciting opportunity to improve his fortune. Besides, it had been Gabriel’s presence in England, his vulnerability to arrest by Cromwell’s agents, that had given Samuel his hold over her. Why would Samuel tell her Gabriel had left, and thus willingly relinquish his power over her if it wasn’t true?
Athena swallowed an anguished sob. All her efforts to protect Gabriel had been meaningless. By now he must be beyond Cromwell’s retribution. And he hadn’t even gone to the church to marry her. She had pictured him so many times waiting for her, worrying about her, trying to find her—and now it seemed he didn’t even know or care that she hadn’t turned up.
Her throat burned with stifled grief. It had all been for nothing. And now she no longer had the thought of Gabriel’s safety to sustain her in her nightmarish marriage. She had nothing at all. She opened her eyes and stared into the darkness at the bleak future ahead of her. Soon Samuel would destroy her spirit. She could already feel her self-confidence seeping away day by day. Soon she would be so browbeaten she would no longer have the will to resist.
She could not let that happen. Slowly her despair hardened into cold determination. Gabriel had left England. It made no difference to his safety whether she stayed with Samuel or not. She had run away before, she could do it again. And this time she would make sure Samuel never found her.
But…but…
A small doubt slipped into her mind. What if Gabriel came back to England after she’d left? Would Samuel inform on him just for spite? She bit her lip—no matter how inconstant Gabriel had proved, she couldn’t bear the thought he might hang. Before she left she would find and destroy the fragment of letter Samuel had shown her that proved Gabriel’s complicity in the plot against Cromwell. Then she would disappear.
And she would never again be any man’s dupe.
Chapter One
English Convent, Bruges, April 1666
‘W hat do you mean—she’s not here?’ the Duke of Kilverdale’s voice rose in angry disbelief.
‘Exactly what I said, your Grace,’ the Abbess replied. ‘I am afraid your cousin is no longer here at the convent.’
The Duke’s black eyebrows snapped together. ‘For the past seven years my mother has made generous contributions to your order,’ he said. ‘With the clear understanding that Athena would be free to live here peacefully under your protection. Why did you send her away?’
‘I did not send her away,’ the Abbess replied. ‘She chose to leave on an errand of mercy.’
‘To go where?’
‘Venice—’
‘What!’ Kilverdale leapt to his feet. At six feet tall he towered over the seated Abbess. He was dressed in the height of fashion in silk brocade and a magnificent black periwig, but his costly garments could not disguise the underlying power in his lean body. Nor could the profusion of black curls, which framed his face and tumbled about his shoulders, soften the somewhat predatory appearance of his hawkish features. The Abbess considered him a dangerous man and a far from suitable visitor to her convent, but in the circumstances she could hardly refuse to speak with him.
The Duke’s mother and Athena’s mother were sisters. Seven years ago the widowed Duchess of Kilverdale and her son had been living in exile in France. When Athena ran away from Samuel, she had made the perilous journey to France to beg for her aunt’s protection. In early 1659 the Duchess had brought her niece to Bruges, to live as a guest within the English convent. A year later Charles II regained his throne. The Kilverdales had returned to England, but the Duchess had continued to give generous donations to the convent and the Duke had come to Bruges at irregular intervals to meet with his cousin.
‘Kindly allow me to finish,’ the Abbess said, before Kilverdale could say any more. She disliked his obvious intention to intimidate her in her own quarters. ‘Mrs Quenell left here of her own free will as, indeed, she first arrived here.’
Kilverdale raised a sardonic eyebrow, clearly unimpressed.
The Abbess strove for patience and continued. ‘Several weeks ago the wife of one of the undersecretaries to the English Ambassador in Venice arrived in Bruges. The young woman was brought to us in great distress. We discovered she was urgently seeking to join her husband in Venice—apparently she had not been kindly treated by her husband’s kinfolk in his absence. Mrs Quenell was much moved by her plight and offered to accompany her to Venice as her companion and guide—’
‘Guide?’ Kilverdale exploded. ‘You allowed my cousin, who has not been outside the security of these walls for seven years, to go gallivanting across Europe with only a foolish wench for company—and you say she’s a guide! Where were your wits, madam?’
‘They are accompanied by the manservant the young woman brought with her from England and Mrs Quenell’s own maid. In addition, they are being escorted by a local gentleman of good family who is on his way to study at the university of Padua,’ the Abbess snapped, out of all patience with her noble visitor.
The Duke’s muttered response was barely audible, but supremely uncomplimentary.
‘Your cousin is a woman of great resource and common sense and I have every confidence she will reach her destination unharmed and without difficulty,’ the Abbess retorted. ‘Don’t forget she managed to make her way safely all the way from England to find your mother in France when she was only seventeen.’
‘She cut off her hair, dyed it brown, and pretended to be a boy!’
‘A sensible precaution for a woman travelling alone. She came to no harm. She has often entertained me with the story of her journey.’
‘Entertaining!’ Kilverdale snorted scathingly. ‘Yes, and it is very entertaining for me to come to Flanders to tell her that her husband is dead and it’s now possible for me to escort her back to England—only to find she isn’t here!’
‘She knows her husband is dead. She received a letter from your mother just before she left for Venice.’
‘She knows? Well, why the devil didn’t she wait for me to come and fetch her back?’
‘It is weeks since she heard the news,’ the Abbess said drily.
Kilverdale scowled. ‘I was preoccupied with other business,’ he said. ‘I’m here now.’
‘So you are.’ The Abbess watched as he took a couple of glowering circuits around the room.
He stopped and drew in a deep, annoyed breath. ‘I’ll just have to follow her to Venice and fetch her back from there,’ he announced. ‘Damned troublesome females!’
He strode over to the door and left without a backward glance. The Abbess allowed herself to relax a little. The mercurial Duke could be a most unsettling visitor. Less than thirty seconds later she heard his decisive footsteps once more approaching her room.
He stepped over the threshold and looked straight at the Abbess. For a few moments his penetrating gaze focused entirely upon her with disconcerting intensity.
‘It seems this is the last time we shall meet, madam,’ he said. ‘I thank you for offering your protection and hospitality to my cousin these past seven years.’
He swept her a deep bow, his every movement filled with proud masculine grace. Then he turned once more on his heel and departed without waiting for her to respond.
Venice, May 1666
‘Our bargain is complete, illustrissimo.’ Filippo Correr sat back and smiled with satisfaction. ‘The glass will look beautiful in your new house.’
Gabriel smiled at Correr, just as pleased as the Venetian merchant with the outcome of their bargaining. The two men had first met twelve years ago when they were apprentices in Livorno. They’d both worked hard to learn their respective trades, but they’d enjoyed themselves as well. Gabriel had many happy memories of his youthful exploits in Filippo’s company—but neither man had allowed sentiment to interfere with their afternoon of hard bargaining over Gabriel’s purchase of Murano glass.
‘I am sure it will,’ he said. ‘When you next visit London you must be my guest so that you can see it in place.’
‘I will be honoured,’ said Correr. ‘Is the house finished?’
‘The construction work should be completed by the time I return home,’ said Gabriel, stretching out his legs. Now that the business part of the meeting had been concluded, he relaxed as he discussed his newest project with his old friend. ‘The interior will still need furnishing and decorating. I have some ideas in mind, but I decided not to make any final decisions until I could walk through the rooms.’
‘Ah.’ Correr nodded, and then gave a sly smile. ‘You need a wife,’ he said. ‘Women enjoy that kind of thing.’
Gabriel laughed. ‘I don’t think so,’ he replied easily. ‘If I need assistance—which, after fifteen years in the silk trade, I don’t believe I do— I’ll consult an expert.’
‘But your “expert” won’t give you sons,’ Correr gestured expansively. ‘Children are a joy—’
‘Your children are,’ said Gabriel. ‘Not all men are so blessed.’
‘If you raise them right…they are like little seedlings,’ said Correr. ‘They lift their heads to the sun and grow straight and strong.’
Gabriel grinned. Filippo’s children were the only chink in the hard-headed merchant’s armour.
‘You think I am foolish and sentimental,’ said Correr cheerfully. ‘Just wait, my friend. The first time you hold your son in your arms you will feel exactly the same.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Gabriel, cautiously conceding the point. To his knowledge, he had no children, but he was certainly fond of his various nieces and nephews.
‘But first you need a wife,’ said Correr. ‘I know a sweet and modest maid—’
Gabriel threw up a hand. ‘I don’t need you to act as my marriage broker,’ he said. ‘And I’ve no wish to marry a Venetian.’
‘This lady is Florentine,’ said Correr, unperturbed by Gabriel’s objection. ‘The gracious sister-in-law of my cousin Marco Grimani. Very quiet. Very gentle and modest. Most skilled at housekeeping.’
‘No dowry?’ Gabriel raised an eyebrow as he noted his friend’s emphasis on the lady’s personal qualities.
Correr shrugged. ‘You do not need a wealthy woman,’ he pointed out. ‘You need a wife to make you a comfortable home and give you heirs. Giulietta Orio could do that.’
‘I certainly need heirs,’ said Gabriel, ‘but, with all due respect to the gracious sister-in-law of your cousin Marco, I’ll marry an Englishwoman.’
‘I tried,’ said Correr philosophically. ‘I will tell Marco I tried. Giulietta Orio is a charming lady but, on reflection, she might be a little too timid to begin a new life in London. We will have to look elsewhere for her husband.’ He glanced out of the window.
Gabriel followed the direction of Correr’s gaze. He saw that twilight was falling on the city, cloaking the canals and buildings in mystery.
‘It’s getting late,’ said Correr. ‘Let’s go and find my wife and the children. Will you eat with us?’
‘It will be my pleasure,’ Gabriel replied, and meant it. Gabriel had always appreciated Filippo’s friendship, even though he was less appreciative of the Venetian’s matchmaking tendencies. Gabriel knew he needed a wife, especially in view of the unexpected course his life had taken. He’d been very busy since the death of his brother, but when he returned to England this time he would seek out a suitable bride. A modest, well-bred lady who would understand the duties expected of his wife. He certainly wouldn’t repeat his youthful mistake of thinking himself in love with the woman. He would treat the marriage contract as he would any other business contract, and make sure his prospective wife understood the terms of their union.
‘Oh God, I hope he’s pleased to see me!’ Rachel Beresford muttered. She stared straight ahead, showing no interest in the extraordinary city that rose around her from the waters of the lagoon.
‘Of course he will be,’ Athena said reassuringly. She took one of Rachel’s cold hands between both of hers. ‘He may be a little surprised at first, but I’m sure he will be pleased to have you with him,’ she said.
‘I don’t know how I would have managed without you,’ Rachel said jerkily. ‘I am so grateful… Oh God! I’m so nervous!’ She pressed her free hand to her mouth.
‘It won’t be long now. Soon you’ll be safely together again.’ Athena devoutly hoped Edward Beresford would be pleased to see his young wife. If he wasn’t, she might find herself in the middle of a very difficult situation, but she didn’t regret her decision to travel with Rachel.
As soon as she’d heard the young woman’s story, Athena’s compassion had been stirred. She remembered all too clearly what it was like to be alone, far from home, and unsure of receiving a warm welcome. She’d offered to accompany Rachel for the rest of the journey because she understood and sympathised with Rachel’s obvious anxiety. But Athena was honest enough to admit to herself that she’d been growing restless within the confines of the convent—especially after she’d received the news of Samuel’s death. Rachel’s need for support had given her a legitimate excuse to leave. Unlike her companion, Athena had enjoyed their trip across Europe.
They had arrived in Venice just as twilight was falling. Despite her concerns on Rachel’s behalf, Athena was enthralled by her first glimpse of the city. She turned her head left and right in an effort not to miss anything as the gondola slid through the waters of the grand canal. She was almost sorry when they came to rest at the watergate of the Ambassador’s palazzo.
Rachel didn’t share her companion’s curiosity about their surroundings. Her hands felt icy cold as Athena helped her climb out of the gondola. It was clear she was thinking only of her imminent reunion with her husband.
A member of the Ambassador’s staff appeared before them on the steps. Pieter Breydel, the gentleman who had escorted them from Bruges, spoke to the servant, explaining who Rachel was and that she had come to join her husband. Athena checked that the rest of her little party was complete, and that their luggage was being attended to. Then she took Rachel’s hand. They followed Pieter Breydel and the embassy servant into the palazzo. Her maid and Rachel’s manservant trailed behind them.
They entered a large hall, which appeared to stretch all the way from the front to the back of the building. It was paved with alternating squares of diagonally laid white and red stone. It was a dark and forbidding place, especially since the lanterns had not yet been lit. There were doors on either side, but the page ignored them. He led the party straight through the palazzo and out into the courtyard behind the building.
Athena looked around, fascinated by her introduction to Venetian architecture. She was even more intrigued when she realised that to reach the Ambassador’s quarters on the first floor, they must climb an external staircase located in the courtyard itself.
They were ushered into a grand chamber which stretched the full length of the palazzo from the courtyard at the back to the grand canal at the front. Large windows overlooking the canal admitted what little daylight remained. Several men were present, standing with their backs to the windows, their faces in shadow.
Athena saw one shadowy man step apart from the others, heard his sudden, disbelieving, but welcoming cry of, ‘Rachel!’
Rachel released her convulsive grip on Athena’s hand and rushed forward to throw herself into her husband’s arms.
Athena didn’t need to see Edward Beresford’s face to know that he was overjoyed at his wife’s arrival. The way his arms closed around her as if he never intended to let her go, the way his head bent over hers, and his husky, urgent questions all told their own story.
Athena’s eyes unexpectedly filled with tears. She tried not to dwell on her broken dreams, but this was what she had once yearned for so desperately. She had longed to find Gabriel and fling herself into his arms. Have him tell her that everything would be fine. Everything would be just the way they’d planned it—but he’d left London without a backward glance…
She gave her head a small shake, annoyed with herself for indulging in such romantic nonsense, and gave her full attention to her immediate surroundings.
Pieter Breydel was introducing her to the Ambassador. She curtsied and smiled. It was her plan to return to England from Venice, but she knew she would need the Ambassador’s help in making her arrangements.
‘Since you have now arrived safely, I will take my leave,’ said Pieter in correct, but heavily accented English.
‘Surely you’ll stay tonight, at least,’ the Ambassador protested. ‘I must insist.’
‘I am expected in Padua,’ Pieter demurred.
‘You can leave first thing in the morning,’ the Ambassador assured him. ‘We would not want to keep you from your studies. But for tonight, please enjoy the hospitality of the embassy.’
Pieter hesitated. ‘Thank you,’ he said at last, bowing. ‘You are very kind. As you say, I can leave first thing in the morning.’
Athena bit back a smile. Pieter was a grave and studious young man. He’d taken his responsibilities to his travelling companions very seriously, but she suspected he was eager to get back to his normal routine. She held out her hand to him.
‘You made our journey very comfortable,’ she said. ‘I know Mrs Beresford is as grateful as I am.’ She glanced to where Rachel was still wrapped in conversation with her husband. ‘Thank you.’
He flushed and nodded. ‘It has been my pleasure,’ he said stiffly.
At that moment a member of the embassy household came to stand beside them. ‘My secretary, Mr Roger Minshull,’ the Ambassador introduced him to Athena.
She saw an uncomfortable warmth in the secretary’s eyes as he looked at her, and greeted him with reserved courtesy. She wanted to remain on good terms with everyone she met, but she did not need the complications of an admirer in the embassy.
The pre-dawn light was a blend of cool greys, blues and dark shadows. There was a chill in the air and a slight mist that would only burn away after the sun rose. When Gabriel touched the balcony balustrade the stones felt cold and damp beneath his hand.
Below him the early morning market was in full swing on the grand canal. The surface of the water was crowded with rafts and barges piled high with fruit and vegetables. The vessels jostled constantly for position as the vendors cried their wares.
The busy scene was familiar to Gabriel. He watched absently, his thoughts elsewhere. By all accounts there had been quite a stir at the Embassy the previous day. He’d returned late in the evening from Filippo Correr’s to find the entire household abuzz with excitement. Everyone he had encountered from the Ambassador’s chaplain to the most junior page had been determined to tell him the romantic story of the undersecretary and the devoted new wife who had followed him all the way from England.
Correr’s matchmaking attempt had already put the unsettling idea of marriage into Gabriel’s mind, and the story of Rachel Beresford’s loyalty made a painful contrast to Frances’s treacherous behaviour. By the time Gabriel had reached his temporary quarters in the Embassy, his patience had been in shreds. When his own valet had started to repeat the tale Gabriel had dismissed the fellow with a couple of curt words—but he couldn’t so easily dismiss the story from his mind. Dreams of Frances and the foolish hopes he’d had for their future had disturbed his sleep, until at last he’d risen from his bed to watch the market from the shadows of the balcony.
He tried to focus on the tasks that lay ahead of him later in the day, but his thoughts kept returning to the journey the undersecretary’s wife had made to reach her husband. The presence of a nun in the story puzzled him. Why in the name of all that was holy would a nun leave her cloisters to accompany a stranger halfway across Europe? Perhaps she was on a pilgrimage to Rome?
Annoyed with himself for wasting so much thought on the incident, Gabriel made a final decision to banish the whole matter from his mind. There had been a time when he’d been an idealistic fool who believed in love and fidelity, but now he prided himself on being a man who dealt in the here-and-now of solid reality, not romantic fantasies. And in the here-and-now he was hungry. He leant over the balcony and studied the produce on offer in the nearest barge. His choice made, he called down in Italian to the vendor. After a brief exchange they settled on a price, Gabriel threw down a coin and a loaf of cake-bread was tossed up to him in return.
By now all the nearby traders had noticed the well-dressed man on the balcony and they began to vie eagerly for his custom. Gabriel grinned at their efforts, but refused to purchase anything else. Eventually they gave up and turned their attention elsewhere.
He ripped off a piece of cake-bread and chewed thoughtfully as he planned the day’s business. When he’d eaten his fill he tossed the crumbs on to the balcony for the pigeons and turned to go inside.
Most Venetian palazzi had been built to a standard pattern, even though some dated back two or three hundred years and others were of more recent origin. The Ambassador’s residence was no exception. The first floor, known to the Venetians as the piano nobile consisted of a great chamber that stretched the full length of the palazzo with a series of smaller chambers opening off from it on either side. The large hall, which could be utilised for many purposes, was called the portego. The balcony overlooking the grand canal on which Gabriel currently stood was reached from the portego.
The Ambassador, Sir Walter Cracknell, had his own quarters on the piano nobile. Gabriel, as the Ambassador’s honoured guest, also had his quarters on the same floor. The second floor followed a similar layout and here less important guests and the Ambassador’s gentlemen staff were housed.
Just as Gabriel was about to re-enter the portego, the Ambassador joined him on the balcony. Gabriel was mildly surprised, Sir Walter was not known for being an early riser.
‘Morning, your lordship!’ the Ambassador greeted him. ‘Looks like it’s going to be a fine day, doesn’t it?’ He peered hopefully at the sky.
‘I believe so.’ Gabriel glanced over the balustrade. The floating market had dispersed until the following morning. The first rays of sunlight were beginning to give a hint of warmth to the air.
‘You missed a deal of excitement last night!’ the Ambassador exclaimed.
‘So I heard,’ Gabriel said.
‘Of course. Of course.’ Sir Walter nodded vigorously. ‘No need to tell you old news. But I wonder if I might ask a favour of your lordship—on behalf of young Beresford and myself?’
‘A favour?’ Gabriel raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘For your…undersecretary, is he not? Of course, if it is within my power—but what is your request?’
‘Shouldn’t cause you any inconvenience,’ the Ambassador assured him. ‘You’ll be returning to England in a week or so, will you not? I believe you told me you’d travel to Livorno and then take one of your own ships back to London?’
‘Yes.’
‘Excellent. Then I wonder if you would be kind enough to provide safe passage back to England for Mrs Quenell and her maid?’
‘Mrs Quenell?’ The name was completely unknown to Gabriel.
‘The gentlewoman who was kind enough to act as Mrs Beresford’s companion between Bruges and Venice,’ Sir Walter explained. ‘Mrs Beresford is full of praise for Mrs Quenell. She is sure she would not have managed the journey without her help. Mrs Quenell’s only request is that I might find her a safe escort back to England. It seems the least I can do. Young Beresford is almost beside himself with joy at having his wife with him once more. So, what do you say, your lordship? Mrs Quenell is a very quiet, modest woman. I’ll warrant she’ll be no inconvenience to you at all.’
‘Why does a Flanders nun want to go to England?’ Gabriel asked, puzzled by the request.
Sir Walter stared at him in surprise. ‘She’s not a nun,’ he replied. ‘She was a guest at the convent….’
Gabriel heard a soft rustle of skirts. He turned his head to see a woman being shown on to the balcony by a page. For a moment her face was hidden in shadows, then she stepped into the light.
Gabriel was standing still, but the shock of what he saw had the same impact as slamming into a stone wall. His lungs froze. He couldn’t breathe. Disbelief rang in his ears, blocking out all other sounds. His vision narrowed until he saw nothing and no one but the woman in front of him.
Frances?
It couldn’t be Frances, here in Venice. Surely the resemblance was just a trick of the morning light. Talk of Beresford’s devoted young wife had raised the ghost of another, less than devoted bride in his mind. Memories he’d tried to forget had disturbed his sleep. Somehow he’d now superimposed Frances’s face on to that of another blonde woman.
He deliberately closed his eyes for a few seconds. Remembered to breathe. Rubbed his temple. Opened his eyes. Stared at the woman.
She stared back, shock in her blue eyes. Her lips slightly parted. Colour drained from her face. There was recognition in her stunned expression.
It was Frances.
His blood began to pound sluggishly through his veins once more. The tempo of his heartbeat began to increase. He didn’t hear a word of Sir Walter’s introduction or explanation. He forgot the Ambassador was even on the balcony. His attention was locked on the woman who had betrayed him so badly.
She’d changed her hairstyle, but a single blonde curl had escaped to lie against her cheek, just as he remembered it. Her skin was soft and smooth, unlined by the passing of time. Her eyes were still an entrancing blue. The colour of cornflowers, he’d once claimed in a foolish poem. Her lips were full, her mouth a little wider than true beauty required. But there had been a time when he’s sworn her lips had been created for laughter—and for his worshipful kisses.
His gaze was drawn irresistibly lower. He’d once thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her waist was still as trim as he recalled. How he’d longed for the moment when he would remove her boned bodice and touch her warm, yielding flesh. Today she wore a simple blue gown with an elegance few other women could match. The full silk sleeves of her bodice ended at her elbows, but the soft white cambric sleeves of her chemise extended an inch or two further and were trimmed with a graceful fall of lace that reached almost to her wrists. Matching lace decorated the neckline of her bodice and the hem of her skirt.
He could see the merest hint of the soft swell of her creamy breasts above her bodice. His eyes locked on to that small part of her anatomy. The place he had seen another man kiss her on the very day planned for their own wedding.
For a few seconds he was back in the bawdy house, watching in agonised disbelief as she turned willingly into her lover’s arms. His hands clenched into fists at his sides. He heard again her mocking laughter as he sank into the painful oblivion of unconsciousness.
The slow chug of shock exploded into boiling rage. His lip curled into a snarl. Every muscle in his body tensed. Coiled to spring.
‘…and please allow me to introduce you to Lord Halross.’ Gabriel heard the Ambassador’s voice as if it came from a great distance. ‘As I mentioned to you last night, he intends to return to England in one of his own ships. I’m sure he can provide you with a safe passage home.’
Frances opened her mouth, but no words emerged. It was clear she had not expected to see him. Her lips were pinched and pale. Gabriel wondered if she was about to faint and thought savagely that it would be poor justice compared to his own humiliating fate eight years ago. He’d woken in darkness to find he’d been left lying in a stinking ditch outside the City walls. It was only by luck and God’s good grace he hadn’t been stripped of his clothes, and perhaps even his life, while he was unconscious.
And Frances had given the order for his degradation. She had laughed at the prospect of it.
His muscles twitched. Power surged through his body, but he didn’t move an inch. He had made a fool of himself once over this woman. He would not do so again. He drew in a deep breath. His lungs burned. It felt like the first breath he’d ever taken. He took another breath. Air seared through his throat like fire, but when he spoke his voice was harsh and cold as hoar frost. ‘Is it my protection you crave, madam? Or my indulgence? I—’
‘Neither!’ Frances’s chin snapped up. Hot colour suddenly burned in her pale cheeks. ‘I ask nothing of you, my lord. I am sorry to have intruded upon you.’
She whirled about in an angry swish of skirts, clearly intending to leave the balcony.
Fury speared through Gabriel when he saw the disdainful way in which she turned her back upon him. He would not allow her to dismiss him so lightly a second time. He took two long strides towards her, then reached out to seize her arm—
But he was thwarted in his intentions by the sudden appearance on the balcony of the Ambassador’s secretary. Roger Minshull stepped between Gabriel and Frances. He uttered appropriate greetings to Gabriel and Sir Walter but, to Gabriel’s disgust, it was Frances who occupied his attention.
‘Mrs Quenell, if you have rested sufficiently from your journey, I would be honoured to show you the sights of Venice,’ Minshull said, bowing ingratiatingly.
Athena hardly noticed when the secretary took her hand. She saw only Gabriel. Heard only Gabriel. Even when she turned her back on him, every fibre of her body was attuned to every movement he made.
Gabriel.
Lord Halross, the Ambassador had told her yesterday. She’d been prepared to encounter Gabriel’s brother this morning. She’d fretted over it all night. She didn’t want to meet any member of Gabriel’s family. But she’d calmed herself with the thought that she’d never met either of his older brothers. There was no reason for Lord Halross to know that she’d ever had an association with his younger brother.
But it was Gabriel who turned his head to look at her when she walked out on to the balcony. Shock seized her, paralysing her mind and body. But she’d been thinking about Gabriel all night. Wondering how to present herself to one of his brothers. It was a devastating but short step to understand that it was Gabriel himself who stood before her. In some distant corner of her mind she realised his brothers must be dead. There was no other way he could have inherited his father’s title. But that wasn’t important now. The only thing that mattered was that Gabriel was here—standing only a few feet away from her. She stared at him, hungry to look at the man for whom she had sacrificed so much.
He was as tall as she remembered. Perhaps even taller. She did not remember him as this grand, imposing figure. Eight years ago he had dressed soberly, as befitted his status and the austerity of Cromwell’s London. And in her memories he was much younger. A man certainly, but flushed with the fresh enthusiasm of youth.
The Gabriel who confronted her today was a male in the prime of his power. Sure of his authority and his strength. Arrayed in all the magnificence of a wealthy nobleman. His coat of burgundy velvet was edged with gold lace at the cuffs and on the front facings. His coat sleeves ended at the elbow to reveal a contrasting cascade of white lace that extended almost to his wrists. His cravat was edged in a deep band of heavy Venetian lace. His dark brown hair fell in rippling waves around his shoulders. The early morning sunlight gilded a few shining strands with an aura of gold, so that he seemed to be clad from head to toe in extravagant riches.
But the fine clothes could not conceal his raw masculine power. The man who wore the soft velvet was lean and hard-muscled. The fine lace beneath his chin emphasised the unyielding line of his square jaw. Hatred and fury burned in his amber eyes.
His hostile gaze sliced through her, deadly as a sword to the heart. Her very soul reeled beneath his silent assault upon her. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. She saw his body coil with furious intent and still she was held prisoner by the scalding fire in his eyes.
When he spoke, his voice was so laden with contempt she hardly recognised it.
She didn’t understand his anger or the significance of his question—he’d not cared enough to turn up at the church, so why was he angry now? Her first shock receded. Pride came to her rescue. She lifted her chin, found the words to answer him, and turned to leave.
She felt Gabriel’s sudden movement towards her, but then the Ambassador’s secretary stepped between them. She barely noticed the secretary take her hand. All her senses were attuned to Gabriel behind her.
‘Mrs Quenell?’
She jumped and looked at the secretary in confusion, then realised he had asked her a question and was waiting for her answer. She replayed his last few words in her mind.
‘I would be honoured to show you the sights of Venice.’
‘Oh. That is very kind of you…’ She couldn’t remember his name. Somehow she managed a semblance of a smile instead. ‘Sir, but I…if you don’t mind, I think I may…’
‘I’ll show you.’ Gabriel’s hand closed around her arm, just above her elbow.
Her heart jolted at the sudden contact. The anger thrumming through his powerful body almost overwhelmed her senses, splintering her thoughts. It was quite beyond her to frame a coherent response to the secretary or to Gabriel.
She saw the secretary’s eyes widen in surprise. Heard the Ambassador say something but didn’t catch his words. Then Gabriel compelled her to leave the balcony. He strode the length of the portego, his hold on her arm unrelenting.
Athena had no choice but to go with him. Her legs were unsteady with shock and she nearly stumbled. Gabriel hauled her mercilessly upright. He didn’t slow his pace and she was forced into a scrambling run to keep up with his long stride.
He propelled her out of the portego and onto the outside staircase. She tripped. If not for his iron grip on her elbow, she would have pitched headlong down the flight of stone steps.
Muttering furiously under his breath he clamped his arm around her waist and carried her unceremoniously down to the courtyard. Her heart hammered in her chest, but she was too confused and shaken to be angry at his astounding behaviour.
She could feel the barely controlled rage within him. This was not the Gabriel who had courted her so tenderly eight years ago. She didn’t know this man who threatened to erupt with fury at any moment.
He set her on her feet and hauled her through the ground floor hall.
Athena dug her heels in, her feet slipping on the smooth stone paving. ‘Let me go!’ She tried to wrench her arm out of his hold.
Without a word he picked her up and carried her through the watergate. ‘Get in,’ he ordered.
There were several gondolas floating in front of the palazzo. The one he directed her into was painted the customary black, but seemed far more luxurious than the vessel Pieter Breydel had hired yesterday to bring the small party to the Embassy. It possessed a cabin-like structure, which could be enclosed to protect the occupants from the weather—or to provide them with privacy. When she stepped into the cabin she saw it was furnished with a fine carpet and curtains. And the reclining seats were covered with black velvet.
She stopped short at the sight of those couch-like seats, her overstretched nerves jangling at the prospect of almost lying beside Gabriel in his present mood.
‘Sit down,’ he said in her ear.
She trembled at his proximity and did as he commanded, perching upright on the very front of the velvet cushion. The gondola rocked gently as Gabriel stepped into it.
‘Where are you taking me?’ She watched nervously as he sat down beside her.
‘To see Venice.’ His smile was all predator.
‘Halross? What are you about, man?’ Sir Walter shouted.
The Ambassador’s voice seemed to come from above. Startled, Athena looked up. The roof of the cabin hindered her view, but after a moment’s confusion she realised Sir Walter must have seen Gabriel’s gondola from the balcony.
Gabriel leant out of the cabin to reply. ‘Showing your guest the sights of the city. You will allow I am better qualified than any member of your household to do so.’
‘Humph. Oh. Yes. Your advice has been invaluable,’ Sir Walter acknowledged, disgruntled. ‘But is Mrs Quenell warm enough? Surely a moment to prepare herself before you carry her—’
‘She will be warm enough.’ Gabriel settled back on to his seat, clearly considering the exchange at an end. Already the swift-moving gondola was beyond comfortable shouting distance from the palazzo.
There was a gondolier standing at the back of the gondola and another one in front of the cabin, but Athena knew she could expect no help from the two men. She’d heard Gabriel give them curt orders in Italian. They were in his pay, they would do whatever he said.
He leant back in the seat, stretching out his legs in a semblance of relaxation. Athena sat upright, staring straight ahead, her hands gripped together on her knees. Gabriel’s casual posture didn’t fool her. She could feel the fierce emotion vibrating through his body, sense his angry gaze burning the back of her neck. She didn’t turn her head to look at him. Instead she glanced down and a little sideways. She saw his hand lying on his thigh. It was a large hand, with long, strong fingers. The last time she’d seen Gabriel’s hand he had stroked a finger tenderly across her cheek. As she watched, it clenched into a fist.
In the years since she’d discovered he hadn’t turned up at the church for their wedding she’d taught herself to accept he hadn’t loved her as she’d loved him. She’d forced herself to face the fact that, if they ever met again, he would treat her with indifference. Perhaps wouldn’t even remember her.
She’d never anticipated this hostility.
She waited for him to speak. He didn’t say anything. She took a breath. Her ribs felt as if an iron band had been placed around them and she had to force her chest to expand when she inhaled.
When she heard him take a harsh breath, she wondered dizzily if he had the same problem with his ribs.
She stared at his hand on his leg. Gabriel’s hand. Gabriel’s leg. The fine cloth of his breeches touched her petticoats. He was only inches away from her. And more distant than she’d ever imagined.
She knew he was watching her. She could feel the intensity of his gaze. Like a deer caged with a hunting lion she felt compelled to look at him. His eyes burned into hers. His visual assault was so devastating her body went slack with shock.
Athena swayed. The world swirled about her.
He caught her arm and pulled her back on to the seat beside him. A second later he loomed over her, his large body half-covering hers, pinning her in place.
‘Gabriel,’ she whispered. She lifted a trembling hand to touch his cheek.
He was real. The weight of his body on hers was real. The slight rasp of stubble on his smooth-shaven jaw was real.
‘Gabriel.’ Her eyes filled suddenly with tears. She touched his face with quick, fluttering gestures, hungry for more assurance of his reality. Stroked his hair, traced his dark eyebrow. ‘I wanted you so much.’ Her voice caught on a sob and she flung her arms around his neck, clinging desperately to him.
She buried her face in his shoulder, momentarily forgetting his hostility in the miracle of being once more able to touch him. But his hard body was unyielding as oak in her embrace.
She became aware of his silent rejection and began to pull away, shaken anew by his inexplicable anger.
He growled low in his chest, moving suddenly, forcing her back against the velvet upholstery. His action triggered memories of another man who’d used force against her.
‘No!’ Panic shot through her. She struggled wildly, pounding at Gabriel’s shoulders with her fists. Water slapped against the sides of the rocking gondola.
‘My God!’ He lifted his head a few inches.
‘No!’ she panted, twisting her face away from him, thrusting at his chest in an unavailing effort to shove him away from her.
His curse emerged as little more than a snarl.
‘How much will it cost to make you say yes?’ he demanded.
‘What?’
‘You thought you could play your tricks on some poor bastard who’d be fooled by your innocent face,’ he said savagely. ‘It must have been a shock to discover this particular pigeon has already been plucked.’
Athena stared up at him, bewildered by his accusation. ‘What? What pigeon?’
He laughed harshly and lifted himself away from her. ‘Save your breath, madam. I’ve seen you unmasked. I’ll not be duped again.’ He flung a curt order at the gondoliers. ‘I might have guessed you’d one day find your way to Venice,’ he said bitterly. ‘A whore belongs in the city of whores. You’ll fit in very well.’
The gondola stopped at a landing stage. In one lithe movement Gabriel sprang out. He issued another incomprehensible order to the gondoliers and turned to stride away across a large square.
‘Wait…’ Athena’s voice faded. Gabriel had already disappeared into the crowds. The gondola was once more gliding through the waters of the grand canal. Life continued all around her as if nothing of moment had happened.
She swallowed and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear with shaking fingers. Emotion suddenly threatened to overcome her. She propped her elbows on her knees and buried her face in her trembling hands.
Chapter Two
‘M y lord, the banquet is about to start!’ The young page bounced on his toes as he waited for Gabriel to pay off the hired gondola.
‘Banquet?’ Gabriel frowned. This was the first he’d heard of any banquet.
‘In honour of Mrs Beresford and Mrs Quenell,’ the page explained eagerly. ‘Come, my lord. Sir Walter sent me down to wait for your return. You are the most important guest!’
Gabriel bit off a curse. He had no desire to raise a glass in honour of Frances—but the meal would be over soon enough.
‘I’m likely the only guest,’ he said drily, striding beside the page through the andron, the ground-floor hallway that corresponded to the portego on the floor above.
Venetian citizens such as Filippo Correr were permitted to deal directly with foreigners, but the nobility refused to mingle with visitors to their city. The Ambassador was only able to meet with the Doge and other important patricians in the most restricted and formal of circumstances. Usually the embassy household had to rely on each other for companionship—though not necessarily for entertainment. Venice had many attractions for men in search of diversion. But it wasn’t surprising Sir Walter had seized on this excuse for a grand dinner.
‘Yes, my lord. But you are a very important guest,’ said the page.
True to his usual habit, Gabriel took the steps two at a time, arriving in the portego before the breathless servant. He paused just inside the door. The long chamber was crowded with members of the Ambassador’s staff. Roger Minshull, the Ambassador’s chief secretary, the two undersecretaries, one of whom was Edward Beresford, the chaplain, various young gentlemen who were supposedly being trained in the art of diplomacy…
Frances.
Gabriel’s eyes locked on to her immediately. But that meant nothing. She was one of only two women present. Naturally she drew his attention.
‘Halross! Splendid!’ Sir Walter spotted him. ‘In good time! We are having a banquet in honour of our gallant new arrivals.’
‘So I see.’ In Gabriel’s absence the portego had been transformed into a dining chamber with the addition of a large, magnificently laid table and finely carved chairs. ‘Most impressive.’
‘Yes. Yes. Come, my lord. You must sit on my right. Mrs Beresford on my left…’ The Ambassador immediately began to arrange his most important guests.
Gabriel saw that he was to sit almost opposite to Frances. He would be able to see her every move throughout the meal. She glanced at him, then looked quickly away. Her fingers fidgeted briefly with her closed fan, then her grip on the ivory sticks relaxed. She turned to smile at Roger Minshull who was sitting on her left. Minshull spoke to her and she replied in a light, untroubled tone. Gabriel saw that the ferret-faced secretary was already halfway to being besotted by his beautiful companion.
Frances’s composure grated on Gabriel’s temper. If she had any shame or conscience she would be begging him not to disclose her treacherous behaviour eight years ago. She must know it would take only one word from him to destroy her credibility with the Ambassador. For a few seconds Gabriel almost felt a grudging admiration for her obvious determination to brazen out the situation. There must be a backbone of steel concealed within her graceful feminine curves. Then his painfully acquired cynicism reasserted itself. In truth, it required no great courage for Frances to continue her masquerade. She was undoubtedly relying on his reluctance to reveal his youthful folly to the world. And she was right. He had no intention of providing any further entertainment for the embassy household. From now on he would treat her with the indifference she deserved.
‘It is a testament to the power of love,’ said the chaplain.
‘What?’ Gabriel’s head snapped around.
‘Mrs Beresford’s epic journey to rejoin her husband, my lord,’ the chaplain replied. ‘I have never seen two young people more truly matched. True love can overcome the greatest obstacles.’ He looked at Rachel Beresford with sentimental admiration. Gabriel followed the direction of the chaplain’s gaze.
Rachel noticed their attention was fixed upon her and blushed. ‘I could never have managed without Mrs Quenell’s help,’ she said. ‘I was so overset by the time I reached Bruges that I don’t know what I would have done if the innkeeper hadn’t taken me to the convent. After that Mrs Quenell took care of everything. I will never be able to repay her for what she has done for me.’
‘Nor I,’ Edward Beresford interjected. ‘I will always be in your debt, madam. It gives me nightmares, imagining what could have happened to my poor Rachel without your protection. And that of Mr Breydel as well, of course,’ he added. ‘I am sorry he was not able to attend this banquet.’
Gabriel hid his opinion beneath an impassive expression. The others might believe Frances’s story that she’d been a guest at the convent for a considerable time, but Gabriel knew better. She’d lied to him eight years ago, and it seemed she hadn’t lost her talent for telling plausible untruths. Frances had certainly been serving her own ends when she adopted the role of guardian angel to Rachel Beresford. No doubt she was between patrons and, just like Rachel, had taken temporary refuge in the convent. Now she was on the lookout for a new protector. The Ambassador must have told her he had a noble guest without mentioning Gabriel’s name. What a shock Frances must have had when she discovered the wealthy man she’d selected as her next victim was someone she’d duped already. Gabriel had no intention of playing her fool again.
Frances acknowledged Edward Beresford’s gratitude with a modest smile and a quiet word of thanks, but she continued her conversation with Minshull. She had changed her gown since that morning. The blue dress had been very becoming to her fair beauty, but the primrose silk taffeta revealed even more of her charms. The wide neckline showed off to perfection the graceful curve of her shoulders. It was trimmed all about with a broad lace collar more than six inches deep. A length of such fine, wide lace would have been expensive. Who was the man who had paid for the silk gown and costly lace she wore with such self-assurance? And why was she no longer with him?
‘Amazing coincidence, meeting Mrs Quenell again in Venice,’ the Ambassador remarked cheerfully.
‘What?’ Gabriel stared at the Ambassador. ‘You knew her before?’
‘Who? What?’ Sir Walter looked confused by Gabriel’s sharp question. ‘Not me!’ he exclaimed, his expression clearing. ‘I meant you, my lord.’ He laughed. ‘Must have been quite a surprise for both of you. Mrs Quenell was telling me.’
‘Telling you?’ Gabriel looked at Frances through narrowed eyes. She was even more brazen than he’d supposed. Perhaps it was time to call her bluff. ‘Indeed, yes. We were acquainted years ago,’ he said coldly. ‘But so long ago I confess I’ve forgotten the details. Perhaps you would be kind enough to remind me… Mrs Quenell.’
Her naturally fair skin grew even paler as he watched. He saw her swallow, then she looked directly at him. In that instant her eyes were the eyes of the girl he’d loved eight years ago—filled with hurt and confusion. Her unguarded blue gaze found an unexpected chink in his armour-plating of cold disdain. He looked away first, shaken by memories he’d tried so hard to destroy.
‘Of course. Your reunion this morning was cut short when you met one of your merchant acquaintances,’ said the Ambassador. ‘A very inopportune interruption.’
Gabriel realised the whole table had fallen silent. A quick sideways glance informed him that everyone was waiting more or less openly to hear about his previous friendship with Frances. He should have known his behaviour that morning would arouse curiosity.
‘Mrs Quenell,’ he challenged her, his voice deadly soft. ‘Your memory is obviously so much clearer than mine. Please. Remind me of our last meeting.’
The occasion when she’d laughed and consigned him to a ditch. He stared at her, daring her to admit her perfidious behaviour. As he watched, she summoned a smile to her lips that didn’t reach her eyes.
‘I fear I don’t remember our last meeting, my lord,’ she replied lightly. ‘But I do recall our first.’
‘Really? I made more impression on you at the beginning of our acquaintance than I did at the end? What a damning indictment of my address.’ He paused briefly. ‘But I believe I am harder to overlook now,’ he concluded, a diamond-hard edge to his voice.
‘You certainly appear grander than you did when serving behind the counter in the silk mercer’s,’ Frances snapped. ‘I vow, when I first saw you this morning decked out in velvet and lace, I scarcely recognised you.’
Further down the table Gabriel heard a gasp. Behind his back he was known as the Merchant Marquis, but very few men had the gall to call him that to his face.
Frances’s sharp response brought a feral smile to his lips—while at the same moment he felt the barest lessening of tension in his muscles. He remembered her occasional hot temper. So that at least had been real—even if everything else had been an act.
He recalled their first meeting in Sir Thomas Parfitt’s mercer’s shop. It was pure accident Gabriel had been present when Frances came in to make a purchase. Even as a young apprentice he had been employed in Parfitt’s warehouses, not in the shop on Cheapside. But as soon as he’d seen Frances he’d stepped forward to serve her—much to the amusement of Lady Parfitt, who kept the shop for her husband. And then he’d followed Frances home, just so he could arrange another, accidental meeting with her. God, what a young fool he’d been.
‘We both seem to have improved our condition in life,’ he said, his eyes on the wide fall of expensive lace about her shoulders.
‘You have certainly changed,’ she retorted. ‘Whether it is an improvement remains to be seen.’
The chaplain gasped. Someone lower down the table laughed and quickly converted it to a cough. A gleam of satisfaction suddenly appeared in Roger Minshull’s eyes. He moved so that he presented a subtle, but unmistakable shoulder to Gabriel and engaged Frances once more in conversation.
Athena barely heard a word Minshull said to her. She had forgotten her resolution to keep the uncomfortably attentive secretary at a distance because all her attention was focused on Gabriel. Her face ached with the effort of preserving an untroubled expression. She could feel Gabriel’s hard gaze upon her. He’d left her in no doubt of his contempt. His silent hostility threatened to suffocate her. They were separated by the width of the table, but every tiny movement of his powerful body flicked across her raw nerves. She forced herself to smile at Minshull while her thoughts whirled frantically this way and that. Why had Gabriel turned against her?
She forced herself to eat a little of the feast laid on partly in her honour, but the last mouthful stuck in her throat. She struggled to swallow. A wild image of choking to death at the Ambassador’s table danced in her mind. Her fingers closed desperately around her goblet. The wine helped. She took several sips, then set the goblet down. She dare not cloud her wits with the heady liquid.
She risked a fleeting glance at Gabriel. His amber eyes widened briefly when they encountered hers, then narrowed warningly. Athena felt the jolt of a sizzling connection between them. Her breath caught in her throat. Shaken, she ripped her eyes away from him, picked up her goblet with trembling fingers and put it to her lips. She closed her eyes as she drank, taking temporary refuge in the illusion that she could hide behind the goblet.
But there was no escape. Minshull was already asking her a question about the convent at Bruges. She composed herself to reply, astonished that her voice sounded so calm.
What had happened to Gabriel? She remembered so clearly the day they’d met. He had not been hard and angry then. He’d been tall and handsome and full of open-hearted vigour. From the second she’d entered the mercer’s shop her eyes had been drawn to him. When he’d stepped forward to serve her she’d been so overwhelmed that at first she’d forgotten what she wanted to buy. At last she remembered and stammered out her request, feeling foolish and embarrassed. But by then she’d seen the admiration and interest in his eyes. She was used to men looking at her with lust-filled intent—she’d fled from her childhood home to escape just such a man—but Gabriel’s male admiration didn’t repulse her. The fluttering of nervous excitement he aroused within her had been entirely pleasurable.
He still drew all her attention. He was more handsome and compelling than ever. She wished she could look at him to her heart’s content. Trace every change time had wrought upon him. From the corner of her eye she could see his hand lying upon the table. It was the same hand that had touched her so long ago. Yet it seemed somehow different. It was familiar in all its lineaments, but it almost seemed like the hand of a stranger.
‘What a lucky circumstance that you already know his lordship, Mrs Quenell,’ said the Ambassador suddenly. ‘It is so much more comfortable to travel with an old friend rather than a stranger,’ he continued.
His comment nearly destroyed the remnants of Athena’s composure. She’d been so overwhelmed by the shock of seeing Gabriel again she had forgotten he was to escort her back to England. She instinctively shied away from the prospect.
‘As to that, we have not yet discussed arrangements,’ she hurried into speech. ‘As I mentioned, his lordship met an acquaintance before we had a chance to do so. It may not be convenient—’
‘I am sure we can come to an arrangement that will be mutually satisfactory,’ Gabriel interrupted, a dark, enigmatic note in his voice.
Athena’s eyes snapped to his face. He tilted his head to look directly into hers. For several seconds she forgot to breathe.
‘If the arrangement is not to your liking we can make alternative travel plans for you, Mrs Quenell,’ said Minshull. ‘I will deal with it first thing in the morning.’
Gabriel turned almost lazily to look at the secretary. ‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ he said, his words a devastating command, not an assurance.
It seemed to Athena that she was not the only person holding her breath as she waited for Minshull to respond. There was no other conversation at the table. Gabriel held everyone’s attention.
‘I… I… Mrs Quenell?’ The red-faced secretary turned towards her.
‘Thank you for your kindness, Mr Minshull,’ she said, trying to give him a dignified way to back away from the confrontation. ‘But I have barely been in Venice a day. I’m not yet sure myself what arrangements I wish to make. You may be sure I’ll call upon you for help if I need to do so.’
‘Yes. Yes. Of course. At any time,’ he said.
A brief, cold smile curved Gabriel’s lips at the secretary’s words. Then he turned to say something to the Ambassador, quite clearly dismissing Minshull from his attention.
The meal continued. Athena longed to escape to the privacy of her chamber, but she knew that if she did so it would arouse even more curiosity among the Ambassador’s household. So she smiled and nodded and exchanged inconsequential remarks until Sir Walter suddenly declared a desire to dance.
The table was moved, chairs placed against the walls of the portego and a trio of musicians struck up a lively tune. As the only two women present, Athena and Rachel Beresford were obliged to dance every measure. Athena guessed from the fixed smile on the younger woman’s face that she was as uncomfortable with the situation as Athena. Rachel wanted to be alone with her husband. Failing that, she wanted to dance with her husband. But since Edward Beresford’s career depended on the Ambassador’s goodwill, neither he nor his wife had any choice but to acquiesce to Sir Walter’s pleasure.
Athena had never in her life danced in public. She had never had occasion to do so. She gritted her teeth, tried to watch Rachel whenever she could, and did her best to move through the steps without making a total fool of herself.
Gabriel didn’t invite either woman to dance. At first he leant against the wall and watched, his gaze inscrutable. Athena took care not to glance in his direction, though her consciousness of his scrutiny made her feel flustered and clumsy. After half an hour she became aware of a sudden absence. She looked around and discovered that Gabriel had disappeared.
His departure left her with a sense of an anticlimax. It also seemed to lead to an increased exuberance in the mood of everyone else. The impromptu ball became more boisterous. At last Edward Beresford pleaded weariness on behalf of his wife after her long journey and they left the chamber.
Athena found herself alone among a crowd of increasingly inebriated gentlemen. Without Gabriel’s brooding presence several of them, most notably Roger Minshull, became more familiar in their advances. Gabriel’s treatment of her had undermined her status in the men’s eyes. The previous day they had been inclined to treat her as if her years in the convent had given her the untouchable sanctity of a nun. This evening they were more prone to cross those invisible boundaries.
Athena knew she couldn’t afford to linger. Even though she might have to endure no more than a lewd question or two about her past friendship with Gabriel, and perhaps an inappropriately intimate caress, any sign that she was complacent about such treatment would quickly undermine her reputation and her status.
She paid the Ambassador several graceful compliments about the dinner and the subsequent entertainment he had arranged and left the portego as speedily as good manners would allow. After the last exchange of courtesies with a persistent Minshull, she escaped on to the external staircase.
The cool night air felt like balm on her overheated face. The friendly darkness was a relief after the strain of maintaining her public composure for so long. She paused for a moment to enjoy the pleasure of being alone. A burst of laughter from the portego prompted her to climb a few steps to avoid any possibility of one of the revellers noticing her and perhaps deciding to join her on the privacy of the stairs.
She walked up another few steps.
Suddenly all her senses screamed a warning. She hadn’t seen or heard anything, but a dark shape swooped on her from the shadows. Strong arms wrapped around her in an unbreakable hold. Her heart thudded so loudly she hardly heard his soft-voiced command to be quiet, but she didn’t need to hear his voice to know it was Gabriel. Even in the darkness she recognised his familiar, once-beloved scent, and the feel of his hard body close to hers.
He swept her off her feet and carried her down the stairs. Athena thought of struggling, but their discovery was more likely to cause her embarrassment than result in her rescue. Besides, despite his undisguised hostility towards her, she knew Gabriel would never hurt her. And she had questions for him. As soon as they were alone she wanted some answers.
A few moments later she found herself once more seated in Gabriel’s gondola. This time the curtains were drawn, enclosing her in a black velvet cocoon lit only by a single lantern. Gabriel swiftly joined her. His tall, broad-shouldered frame made the small cabin seem even smaller.
‘Why are you so angry?’ Athena demanded, before he’d even had a chance to lean back in the reclining seat beside her.
‘What?’
‘You didn’t even turn up at the church!’ Furious indignation vibrated in her voice. ‘You sailed off to Aleppo two weeks later without a backward glance! How dare you treat me with such contempt!’
‘How dare I…?’ Gabriel half-turned on to his side so that he could stare directly into her face. His blazing eyes were only inches from hers. ‘Harlot! I saw you with your lover. Did it amuse you to know I watched? You laughed when that bastard knocked me cold! But I’m not the callow boy I was then. You won’t fool me again with your lies.’
His accusation was so unexpected that, for a few seconds, Athena could hardly think straight.
‘What lover? I never had a lover!’ She found her voice. ‘You’re the one who’s lying! If you never meant to marry me—’
‘In the bawdy house!’ In an instant Gabriel was stretched half on top of her, the tip of his nose almost touching hers. ‘I saw him drink from the very spot your lips had touched. I saw you smile at him and lift your mouth for his kiss. I saw—’
‘Samuel?’ Athena gasped. For a moment she was back in that hateful room, afraid and longing for Gabriel to rescue her. ‘You saw?’ Her memories disintegrated beneath a mist of red-hot fury. ‘You saw and you didn’t help me! How could you? How could you?’ She pounded her fists at him, hitting wildly at his shoulders and chest, catching him a blow on his cheek, fighting him as she’d never fought Samuel. Blind to everything but memories of the nightmare she’d endured for Gabriel’s sake and her sense of bitter betrayal that he’d seen and done nothing to help her. She didn’t hear the shouts and curses of the gondoliers as they tried to prevent the gondola from overturning.
Gabriel swore. He pinned down her flailing legs with the weight of his own body and seized her forearms in his hands. He pressed her wrists against the black velvet behind her head.
Athena glared up at him through the untidy mess of her hair. ‘You monster!’ she panted. ‘How could you be so cruel? How could I have been so stupid as to love you!’
Gabriel laughed savagely. ‘Love had nothing to do with it! You saw a likely pigeon and played me along until a richer prize came your way.’
‘Richer…?’ Athena stared at him. The pressure of his body forcing her against the reclining seat meant that at least one of the bones in her tightly laced bodice pressed painfully into her side, restricting her breathing. He held her arms prisoner above her head. But he hadn’t hurt her.
His hair was dishevelled. The lace at his throat was torn and she saw scratches on his chin where her nails must have caught him. There was a mark on his left cheek from the blows she had rained about his shoulders and head. But he hadn’t hurt her.
She’d never fought Samuel. She’d known instinctively that if she did he would beat her so badly she might not survive. Tonight, driven by long-held feelings of pain and betrayal, she’d struck out wildly at Gabriel—but he’d not made any attempt to retaliate. She must have known—even after everything that had happened—she must have known on some deep, instinctive level she was safe with Gabriel.
‘He told me you didn’t go to the church,’ she whispered. ‘He told me you didn’t even know I hadn’t gone.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Samuel. Samuel Quenell. My…’ She hesitated, hating even now to refer to Samuel in such terms. ‘My husband.’
‘Your husband?’
‘How could you have seen us? How did you know where we were?’ She searched Gabriel’s face for an answer. ‘Why didn’t you help me?’
‘Help you?’ he jeered. ‘You seemed more than satisfied with your lot.’
‘You did go to the church,’ Athena breathed. ‘He lied to me.’
‘Don’t think you’ll cozen me with your fairy tales,’ Gabriel said. ‘I have seen the evidence of your true character with my own eyes.’
‘Your eyes are blind if you think I was happy to be with Samuel!’ she flung at him, hurt and insulted anew by his scepticism. ‘How did you know where to find us?’
‘I’m getting tired of your evasions, Frances,’ Gabriel said harshly. ‘You know damn well you sent a messenger to find me in the church.’
‘A messenger? Who?’
‘You know, what with having his knife pressed against my belly and then grinding his face into the plaster to teach him respect, we never did take the time for polite introductions,’ Gabriel said sarcastically. ‘He had the last laugh however. He caught me unawares when…’ he paused and gritted his teeth ‘…when I saw you and your pimp.’
Athena gazed at him. The Gabriel she’d nearly married eight years ago had been honourable, occasionally hot-headed and always direct. The Gabriel holding her captive had not changed so very much in essentials. He had no reason to lie about what had happened. The truth was too damaging to his pride and self-esteem.
‘Samuel lied to both of us,’ she said bleakly.
‘I am impressed by your resourcefulness, madam. Not to mention your tenacity in holding to a story in the face of all the evidence against you.’
‘There was supposed to be evidence against me.’ Athena suddenly felt tired. Had everything Samuel had told her been a lie? She remembered the scrap of letter implicating Gabriel in a plot to kill Cromwell. That at least must have been real. She’d recognised Gabriel’s writing immediately. As it had turned out, there had been no need to kill Cromwell because he’d died of natural causes a few months later. After Gabriel had written the letter the plotters must have come to the conclusion that time would complete their task for them. That there were other, better ways to further the King’s cause.
‘The greatest evidence of all is your willing compliance in your pimp’s arms.’ Gabriel’s gritty voice cut across her reflections.
‘I had no choice—’
‘No choice? No choice but to offer your lips to him, allow him to mumble at your breast with his mouth like—’
‘Do you think I liked that? I wanted to rip his guts out!’
‘Words! Words!’
‘He told me if I didn’t marry him—’ She broke off staring at Gabriel’s flinty, cynical expression. The bitter sense of betrayal that he’d seen her with Samuel but hadn’t helped her still gnawed at her soul. His disbelief in her explanations wounded her deeply. She could not bear to admit she’d married Samuel to save Gabriel himself. Couldn’t make herself so vulnerable to him when he treated her with such disdain.
‘He caught me on the eve of our wedding,’ she said. ‘I was so sure I’d escaped him—but he was hiding in the shadows by the courtyard. He dragged me into the parlour and told me…’ she swallowed, remembering the sickening horror she’d experienced then ‘…told me he’d taken Aunt Kitty. She was…she was the guarantee that I’d marry him willingly. He wouldn’t hurt her if I did.’
‘And you just gave yourself up without protest. Without even trying to send for help?’ Gabriel said scornfully. ‘Do you think I’d have let him hurt Kitty if I’d known? Or you? How could you be so feckless?’
‘Feckless!’ To hear her sacrifice described in such contemptuous terms infuriated Athena. Even though she’d decided not to tell Gabriel that her primary motive had been to save his life, it still hurt that he dismissed her plight so lightly.
‘Get off me!’ She jerked her body in an effort to throw him off. The gondola rocked, but her efforts made no impression on Gabriel. She winced and caught her breath in sudden pain.
‘Why do you flinch? I’m not hurting you at all.’ He frowned at her.
‘A bone in my bodice has broken, you great lummocking bully!’ She glared at him. ‘It wasn’t intended for this kind of treatment.’
‘Hmm.’ He adjusted his position on top of her carefully. Athena didn’t realise until he released her hands and flipped her over beneath him that he’d been taking care he wasn’t kneeling on her petticoats. She found her cheek pressed down on the velvet upholstery.
‘What are you doing?’ Alarm skittered through her as she felt his hands at her back.
‘Relieving you of pain, madam harlot.’
‘What?’ An instant later she knew exactly what he was doing. ‘No!’ She braced her hands against the seat and tried to push upwards.
Gabriel held her still with his thighs around her hips and one firm hand between her shoulder blades. With his other he unfastened the bodice her maid had so diligently laced her into before dinner.
‘No. Please!’ she begged desperately, as the tight-fitting bodice fell away from her body. ‘Please God, don’t!’
Chapter Three
‘D on’t what?’ he purred. ‘Touch you?’
His free hand slipped inside the open edges of her bodice. Only her thin chemise prevented him from touching her naked skin. He stroked his fingers delicately from her waist to the nape of her neck.
She gasped and trembled. His caress aroused so many conflicting emotions within her she scarcely knew what she felt.
‘Please,’ she whispered.
‘Please more?’ he taunted her. His hand roamed freely over her back. Trapped beneath him as she was, she could do nothing to prevent his caresses. The rich velvet beneath her cheek was smooth yet slightly abrasive when she moved her head against the grain of the fabric.
‘No.’ She closed her eyes. She’d longed so many nights for Gabriel’s touch. But she’d never expected he would be holding her captive when he did so.
‘No?’ He put one hand on the seat beside her and carefully repositioned himself over her. He pushed her long curls aside, his fingers lingering on the smooth skin of her shoulder, then she felt him lower his upper body until his weight lightly pressed against her. For a few tantalising seconds his breath heated her skin, then he kissed her shoulder.
He took his time, tasting her with his tongue, teasing her with his lips. She quivered, unexpected pleasure shimmering through her body. During their betrothal he had kissed her chastely upon her hand and occasionally on her cheek. Once or twice he had stolen a kiss from her lips—but never with such unfettered sensuality.
For a few moments she lost herself in the illicit delight he gave her. She forgot her undignified position face down in the gondola. She forgot Gabriel’s hostility towards her and her own sense of betrayal that he had seen but not protected her from Samuel. She was acutely aware of the contained strength in his hard body as he hovered just above her. The lace of his cravat trailed teasingly across her bare shoulder almost as tantalisingly as his lips.
His powerful thighs gripped her hips, holding her prisoner. She was completely at his mercy. And at the mercy of the desire he aroused in her. She whimpered softly.
She heard a low growl in his throat. His teeth closed on the curve between her shoulder and her neck. He didn’t bite hard enough to hurt her, but he growled again, the sound vibrating through her body. Through her arousal-dazed senses she became aware of the change in his mood from passion to anger.
‘Do you take pleasure where you can find it, like any bitch in heat?’ he said against her neck. ‘Little harlot.’
‘I am not a harlot!’ Her denial emerged as a sob of frustration and self-disgust. ‘Get off me!’
‘That’s not what you want.’ His words burned against her ear. ‘You want me to haul up your petticoats and—’
‘No!’ The velvet upholstery swallowed her gasping scream, but she began to struggle in earnest beneath him. Jabbing backwards and upwards with her elbows, she heard him grunt as one sharp elbow connected with his ribs.
He cursed and rolled off her. As soon as she was relieved of his weight she scrabbled around to face him, clutching her bodice against her breasts and drawing her knees up in an instinctive attempt to protect herself from further assaults.
The gondola rocked beneath their shifting weights, and she heard the canal water slap against the sides of the elegant craft. The lantern swung from side to side before once more coming to rest.
Gabriel stared at Athena in the shifting light. ‘That’s twice you’ve inflicted injury upon me,’ he said, his eyes narrowing. ‘Your pimp did not treat you well.’
‘I never had a pimp! I had a husband. And, no, he didn’t treat me well!’ Athena panted with overwrought emotion.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘How convenient.’
‘He died a few months ago.’
‘And now you’re looking for a new patron. Did he pay for your silk and lace, or did you bewitch some other poor fool into giving it to you?’ Gabriel’s long fingers flicked scornfully at the broad lace collar around Athena’s neckline.
‘No one gave it to me!’ Athena spat. ‘I made it! I’m not looking for a man. I survived eight years without Samuel. Why should I put myself at any man’s mercy ever again? You only cause pain and misery.’
‘I caused you pain and misery? I think not, Frances—’
‘That’s not my name,’ she interrupted, without considering her words.
‘Not your name?’ He stared at her, then threw himself back on to the seat beside her with a crack of scornful laughter. ‘You tell a series of fairy tales, expect me to believe them—then tell me I don’t even know your name? Well, what could I expect from a born harlot? You never intended to marry me, so what did it matter what name you used?’
‘It is my name,’ Athena corrected, flushing angrily.
‘First it isn’t, then it is—’
‘I was christened Athena Frances. Before God I am both Athena and Frances. I was not marrying you under a false name because you knew me by my second Christian name, not my first. I would have made my vows before God in good faith, knowing that He knows who I am.’
‘God knows, but not your future husband.’ Gabriel stared at her. The hard light in his eyes softened by a few degrees as he studied her face, dwelling on each feature in turn. ‘Athena,’ he repeated under his breath. ‘Perhaps. But you will always be Frances to me.’
A sob rose unexpectedly in Athena’s throat. ‘Frances died when Samuel found me,’ she said.
‘Who the hell is Samuel? Why was he looking for you?’ Renewed suspicion appeared in Gabriel’s eyes.
‘Was. He’s dead,’ Athena reminded him. ‘He was my stepfather’s nephew.’
‘Your stepfather? You told me you went to live with your aunt in London after you were orphaned.’
‘My father died,’ said Athena. ‘My brother was only six. Several of our neighbours wanted to seize our house and estates. My brother was too young to defend his inheritance, so my mother remarried to protect us. My stepfather was—is—a good, upright man. But he favoured a match between me and his nephew. Samuel. When I could see no other way to avoid the marriage I ran away to London where I altered my name. I thought Samuel would never find me. He did. He found me the day before our wedding was meant to take place.’
For several long moments there was silence in the gondola.
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me that story before—when I asked you to marry me?’ Gabriel growled at last. ‘Did you plan to leave me forever in ignorance of your family?’
‘No. I was so happy. I didn’t want anything to spoil it…’
‘If what you claim is true, you were a stupid, heedless wench,’ Gabriel said brutally. ‘You deserved your fate.’
‘Never!’ Athena thought of all she’d endured to keep Gabriel safe from Cromwell’s executioner. ‘How dare you judge me so harshly. You know nothing. Nothing.’
‘If you’re telling the truth, I know more now than I did then. You lied to me in London. From beginning to end—you lied to me. You were even going to marry me without telling me your real name. How the devil did you expect me to protect you if I didn’t know you were in danger?’ he exploded.
‘Protect me? You watched and did nothing to stop Samuel—’
‘Before!’ Gabriel roared. ‘If I’d known before, do you think I’d have left you under the protection of one elderly widow woman? You could have had a place in Sir Thomas Parfitt’s household until the wedding. You didn’t think, Frances. You just danced through your days, expecting life to fall into your pretty lap.’
‘I didn’t dance,’ Athena whispered, hating the way he made her sound so heedless.
‘Yes, you did,’ he said flatly. ‘You danced and left the practical business of life to others.’
‘I don’t even know how to dance,’ she protested, remembering her awkwardness earlier that evening.
‘Your spirit danced.’ He stared up at the roof of the gondola, then laid his forearm across his eyes.
‘Oh.’ Tears trembled in Athena’s own eyes. ‘I was a foolish virgin,’ she whispered. They had gone on a picnic once, and she’d been so lost in thoughts of Gabriel she’d forgotten to pack the bread. He had teased her about the parable of the wise virgins who had filled their lamps with oil in preparation for the coming of the bridegroom, and the foolish virgins who hadn’t been so well prepared.
‘It would appear so,’ he said.
‘Well, I’m not—’ she began without thinking, then bit her lip to stop herself crying.
‘No.’
‘Foolish now!’ she snapped, lifting her chin defiantly, although he wasn’t looking at her and would not therefore be impressed by the gesture. ‘I may have been foolish once, but I am not foolish now.’
‘You arrived in Venice with no idea how you were going to continue your journey and had to beg the Ambassador to arrange your transport home! How much more damned foolish can one woman get!’
‘I was not foolish!’ Athena fired up. ‘Rachel needed my support. She was in such distress. Only someone with a heart of stone would have refused to help her.’
‘Another foolish wench. Has she any idea how much her presence here may hinder her husband’s career?’ Gabriel said derisively.
‘She didn’t come to hinder his career, she came to save herself from her lech of a brother-in-law! If her husband had left her better provided for, she wouldn’t have needed to come to Venice. Men always think they know best. They don’t know anything.’
‘What were you doing in the convent?’ Gabriel asked.
‘That’s where I ended up after I ran away from Samuel the second time,’ said Athena.
‘You ran away? When?’
‘Three weeks after the wedding.’
‘Three weeks!’ Gabriel swore. ‘If you had the resolution to run away then, why not earlier?’
‘Because earlier I didn’t know—’ Athena caught herself up before she revealed that it was only after Gabriel had set off for Turkey that she’d run from Samuel. ‘Circumstances changed,’ she said instead. ‘There was no longer any risk involved if I left him. My mother’s sister lived in exile in France. Her husband was a royalist who fought for Charles at Worcester. He was hanged when the Roundheads captured him after the battle. I went to her.’
‘To France? All on your own?’ Gabriel’s voice was redolent with scepticism.
‘Yes! I cut off my hair, dyed it brown and pretended to be a youth,’ Athena declared proudly. ‘I got all the way to my aunt’s without anyone seeing through my disguise.’
Gabriel looked at her in disbelief, his eyes resting on the womanly curve of her breasts.
‘I bound them and wore baggy clothes,’ Athena said impatiently. ‘And I practised walking like a cocky youth. I based my impersonation on you. People only see what they expect to see.’
Gabriel raised his eyebrows. ‘In my experience cocky youths usually walk straight into trouble in unfamiliar surroundings,’ he said drily.
‘Hmm. Well,’ Athena muttered, discomfited. ‘After certain incidents I concluded, upon reflection, that a more modest bearing might be advisable. But I reached my destination quite safely. I am not the only woman who has chosen the protection of male clothing when travelling,’ she pointed out.
‘And what happened when you reached your aunt?’
‘We decided, Aunt Eleanor and I, that the English Convent in Bruges would be the safest place for me to hide. One of her childhood friends is the Abbess there. She took me to the convent early in 1659 and I stayed until Rachel needed a companion on her journey here.’
‘Seven years in a convent,’ Gabriel mused, his expression unreadable as he looked her up and down. ‘You are certainly not dressed like a nun.’
‘I wasn’t a nun, I was a guest of the convent.’
‘Hardly a charitable case, by the look of you.’
‘My aunt made donations to the convent. But I also worked for them in the infirmary and sometimes the gardens,’ Athena said. ‘And I made my lace.’ She touched her bodice. ‘It fetches a good price, you know.’
‘Yes.’ His eyes raked her face. ‘It is a very plausible story,’ he said.
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘I reserve judgement.’
‘You have no right to judge me!’ Athena fumed.
‘It was judgement that separated the wise from the foolish virgins.’
‘It was common sense and foresight,’ Athena shot back.
‘Both of which you completely lack if this latest exploit is any indication.’
‘And you’ve lost your compassion. And your gallantry,’ she added, as an afterthought. ‘How could you treat me so rudely at dinner?’
‘Very easily.’ He moved suddenly, startling her into huddling back into her seat, but all he did was twitch apart the curtains a couple of inches to speak to the gondolier standing in front of the small cabin.
‘Oh, my God, they heard us?’ she whispered in horror, as Gabriel sat back again.
‘They don’t speak English,’ he replied indifferently.
‘What did you say to him?’ Athena still kept her voice lowered.
‘I ordered them to take us back to the embassy.’
‘Oh.’ Athena experienced a strange sense of anticlimax. ‘Then what?’
‘You may retire to your quarters and I will retire to mine.’
‘That’s it?’
‘What else would you prefer to do?’ His eyes glittered in the lantern light.
Athena clutched defensively at her bodice and realised she was still unlaced. ‘I can’t walk into the embassy like this!’ she gasped.
‘I could carry you in,’ he offered.
‘Certainly not!’ She bit her lip as she considered her options. ‘You may do me up,’ she decided, ‘but mind you touch nothing but the points and my bodice!’
‘You want me to do the work of a lady’s maid?’ he said. ‘For what hire?’
‘Nothing. You shouldn’t have undone me in the first place.’
‘Turn around,’ he commanded.
She did so, looking warily over her shoulder to see what he would do.
‘So suspicious,’ he mocked her.
‘No more than you.’ She held her breath as he pulled on the laces. ‘Not too tight. The bone is broken,’ she reminded him.
She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed that he did exactly as she’d asked. Despite everything, some small part of her still yearned for his caresses.
‘There. You may return to the embassy as respectably dressed as you left it,’ he said.
‘What did he do to you?’ Athena’s maid demanded the instant she entered her room.
‘Nothing.’ Athena had known there was little chance her interlude with Gabriel would go unnoticed, at least by Martha. Her maid had been given a pallet bed in Athena’s chamber.
Martha sniffed disbelievingly. ‘Richard saw him carry you off the steps. He said you didn’t even struggle.’
Richard was the manservant Rachel Beresford had brought with her from England. Martha hadn’t wanted to come to Venice, but she’d been partially consoled for the inconvenience of the trip by the friendship she’d struck up with Richard.
‘Did he?’ Athena sat down on a stool and brushed her hair wearily back from her face. It was hard to dredge up answers to satisfy Martha when she had so many unanswered questions of her own whirling in her mind.
‘I didn’t struggle because there was no point,’ she said. ‘Do you suppose anyone in this place would gainsay Lord Halross?’
‘No,’ Martha admitted grudgingly. ‘He has them all in thrall. And he’s in better standing with the Venetians than the Ambassador, by what I hear. Why did he take you? What did he do to you? Did he hurt you?’
‘To talk. No, he didn’t hurt me.’
‘Talk!’ Martha snorted in disbelief. ‘How do you know him? You never mentioned him before.’
The stool was close to the wall. Athena leant back gratefully. ‘I knew him before I was married,’ she said.
‘Were you his mistress?’ Martha sounded shocked.
‘No!’ Athena lifted her head in indignation. ‘I was to marry him.’
‘Marry him?’ Martha’s mouth fell open. ‘Why didn’t you?’
‘We had a small misunderstanding several years ago. Lord Halross wanted to clear it up this evening, that’s all,’ said Athena, trying to conclude the conversation.
‘It’s not all, by a long shot,’ Martha said grimly. ‘Richard wasn’t the only one who saw the Marquis carry you off. Sir Walter’s valet also saw you. By tomorrow morning everyone in the embassy will be sure Lord Halross has set you up as his mistress.’
An inn, Brussels
‘There is one other matter, your Grace,’ said Philpott, Gentleman of the Privy Purse to the Duke of Kilverdale.
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Claire Thornton
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A time for revenge…For eight years Gabriel Vaughan, Marquis of Halross, has believed he was duped by a clever, money-grabbing harlot. He has tried to forget the beauty who left him at the altar, and then an accidental meeting in Venice places her entirely at his mercy!Although Athena Frances Fairchild claims to be innocent, maybe this is just another of her deceptions. It′s time to exact a little revenge. So when Athena needs a safe passage back to England, Gabriel sees his chance. Years ago he would have been proud to have Athena accompany him as his wife. Now Gabriel will insist she travel…as his mistress!