Page 15

Viola looked straight at her now, and it was true, Bianca could see their mother in her face. Not just the physical resemblance, but the spirit, the strength, and the uncomfortably sharp intelligence. ‘What do you want to do?’ she asked simply. ‘No flannel, no pretty half-truths for fear of shocking me, no telling me what you think I wish to hear as your big sister. What do you want?’

‘Very well. It’s hard to be honest, but… This morning when he offered to throw me over the table and take me, even in anger, I wanted that and nothing else. Just mindless…’

‘Fucking. Mindless fucking. Till you can’t remember and don’t care who you are, who he is, what day it is…’ the Duchess said dreamily. Viola seemed to know exactly what she meant without further explanation, and Bianca could hardly imagine this was something she’d experienced with Edward. Richard had that look about him, she supposed. A dangerous edge. As did Xan, in her eyes at least, but he had always hidden it better, most of all from himself. As far as she could tell – no, she knew – it had only roared to life in Venice in response to her. She shivered, not with cold.

‘Yes. Good God, Viola, exactly that.’

Her Grace was silent for a long moment. ‘Then perhaps I was wrong earlier. As long as you truly, truly think there is not the least chance that he will hurt you, if it really is a case of mutual obsession… Maybe you should propose that to him, then. A continuation of your discreet liaison, for a limited time. It seems it’s what you both want, and – in terms of your own health – you could hardly find a safer man, as long as you take great care not to fall pregnant, which we can discuss later, in case you do not yet know the things that can be done to avoid it. But after all that you have told me, I expect you do already. A man who has only ever known one woman but you, and that his wife.’

‘Yes,’ Bianca said very low. ‘He told me that. They came to each other as virgins, neither knowing more than the other, finding their way together. He thought, of course, that we were equals in that respect, each having lain with only one partner before.’

Viola winced. ‘Does he really not know that you…?’

‘No. No, how could he? I was very careful not to let him know. I was supposed to be a widow. He’d never have laid a finger on me if he’d known that he was my first. And now he probably suspects that I am, God knows what… This morning, he called me a whore.’

‘The utter bastard. I wonder you didn’t slap him. My offer of Richard and revenge still stands.’

Bianca shook her head. ‘That’s not fair to him. I’m not a whore – what even is a whore, really, anyway? – but he doesn’t know that. He went on to say that he was a whore too, a whore for me. And I did lie to him. Our whole liaison was based on my lies.’

Viola began to laugh, looking a little shamefaced as she did so. At length she mopped her eyes and said, ‘I’m sorry, but you must admit it is excessively amusing, Littlest. So many men are liars – even Richard told me quite shocking untruths to win me, in the most underhanded way possible, and he was lucky that in the end I chose to forgive him – and yet you seem to have found the one honest man in England to tell your particular lies to. What a coil you have embroiled yourself in, and how in heaven’s name are you going to extricate yourself and him from it without any further damage, to yourself or anyone else?’

‘Vee, honestly, I haven’t the faintest idea.’

22

Bianca thought she must remain immured in Sabrina’s house for the rest of the day and the next, and for as long as her stay here should last, avoiding the garden in the square at all costs. To bump into Lord Dawbney again, or any other member of the household, was the last thing she wanted, and as time passed without any more visits from her to the Fairmount house, this situation would only get worse. The idea of simply vanishing, of disappointing and then confusing Adrian, who was expecting her to continue the portrait as normal on the morrow, did not sit easily with her, but on the other hand, she had not the least intention of walking to that house again unprotected. Xan – she must never forget that he was not just Xan, he was the powerful Lord Fairmount – could hardly be expecting her to return, after all he had said to her. To go back would be to confirm his ill opinion of her, as well as risking further danger – and further temptation.

But she did not have to make the awkward decision after all; a note addressed to her arrived that evening, borne by one of the familiar Challender footmen, who did not wait for a reply. She was alone when she received it, and tore it open with an eagerness she must recognise as pathetic; had she not known the green and silver livery of the messenger by now, she recognised the bold, masculine hand from their time together in Venice, with a painful stab of familiarity. But surely it would just be more distressing reproaches.

Lord Fairmount wishes to inform Miss Constantine that if she would be so good as to complete the portrait of Lord Dawbney that she has contracted herself to produce, in an expeditious manner, he will not be present on any of these occasions, neither in the room nor in the house.

Xan had chosen not to address her directly, but in this highly stiff and formal manner, every inch the Earl. Then, as if exasperated with himself and afraid she might not believe his chilly words, he had added in a hurried scrawl at the bottom of the sheet:

Madam, I give you my word as a gentleman that I shall not further disoblige you, nor even seek to see you. Please come and finish what you have started. And do it quickly, for the love of God; have some mercy, for my son if not for me. Fairmount.

She spent a sleepless night after receiving this extraordinary missive, but it was plain that she must accept the assurance and go. Xan had risen above his anger and hurt to think of Adrian, and she – with far less reason for distress – could surely do the same.

Her lips and throat were unpleasantly dry, her hands not entirely steady when she presented herself at the house across the square the next morning, but inside everything was as it had always been. After a little initial unease and staring at the chamber door as if she feared it would suddenly burst open, which she hid as well as she could, she found herself able to converse with her subject in a natural manner, both while painting and afterwards, and the central figure was soon completed to her entire satisfaction. The background would be quicker since it was so much less detailed; it would all be done in a few days, and then she would never need to come here again. Probably she should leave London and put this painful episode behind her. That would be for the best; Viola’s idea of allowing herself to take up her liaison with Xan again was ridiculous, and extraordinarily perilous. She must put him and it from her mind completely. This was an easy resolution to make, but she suspected it would be much harder to perform.

23

VENICE

Mr Challender did not spend all of his days with Signora Rossi. That would be impossible, and most probably unwise. He avoided society, and most of all he avoided Lady Wellbeloved, and her chattering set, but when he was alone he explored the city and its environs, visiting all its monuments and gazing diligently upon its art – undoubtedly there was a great deal of art to be seen – admittedly the latter mostly because then he could discuss it with his lover afterwards, she knowing so much more about it than he ever could. His lover, his mistress – she was that, and he would be hard put to describe the sensations that such knowledge awoke in him. Arousal – always – astonishment, gratitude, excitement, shame, and underlying it all, suppressed anxiety for the future.

It was well on in September, and he was supposed to be in Rome, or possibly Naples, by now. He had made no plans to go to either place, or anywhere else. He knew he should leave, and that eventually he must, but he had not the smallest desire to do so. He could not delude himself that he had any sort of future with her – it was nigh on impossible to imagine her fitting into his life in England – but he did not care to contemplate one without her, either.

Xan was also aware that Bianca had been a little unsettled for a day or so, but he had not the least idea why. He was correspondingly on edge, but not excessively so. After all, they had not quarrelled. He did not think that she had tired of him, nor that the passion they shared had so swiftly waned; rather the reverse, because the last time he had seen her, she had made love to him with an intensity verging on ferocity that he would not soon forget. Perhaps she had had bad news from home – though when he ventured to raise the topic with some delicacy and circumlocution, she said not; that everyone was in the best of health, according to their most recent letters. Yes, that included her mama in Piacenza – actually, she was spending the summer and early autumn months up in the hills, with her cousins, where it was a little cooler, and was in fine spirits now that she was among the rural scenes of her youth.

Or perhaps Bianca was thinking about her husband.

That would be quite natural, though she barely referred to him, and seldom of her own volition; Xan had never once heard her utter his Christian name, or mention the place from where he came, or if he had any family living, or anything at all to do with their life together, or even the manner of his death. He had been a young man – Mr Challender assumed, though Bianca had never explicitly told him so – and therefore his unexpected illness and passing could only have been a most distressing time for her. No doubt such memories were still painful and raw, which he of all people could easily understand.

For his own part, he thought of Louise much more often than he spoke of her, and always with sorrow and regret. He wished things could have been different, though he could not easily see how that might have been brought about. It was not a topic on which he cared to dwell. He supposed he could have told her, ‘No, my dear wife, I do not love you as I know I should, but I want to.’ He could have admitted the shameful fact that he was afraid, afraid of what unruly passions might lie buried deep within himself, and that was why he failed her so. He could even have asked her to help him overcome his fear – but he had not known all this then, nor even suspected it, so of course he had not said it. And she might easily have repudiated him in any case; he would never know. Hindsight was a wonderful thing, but it was far, far too late for such repinings now.

Bianca’s circumstances must have been quite different from his, though. She had not been pressured into marriage by her parents or other relatives – at least, he did not think she had. He had always supposed, admittedly with very little solid cause for it, that hers had been a love match, and that this explained the uncomfortable sensation he occasionally experienced in her company that she was far away from him even when present in his arms. Perhaps she was sometimes seized with the bitter knowledge that she had lost her one great love, and Xan could only be a temporary and unsatisfactory substitute, except in the physical sense. Perhaps she sometimes even felt she was betraying the man who had loved her and died far too young, by lying swooning with pleasure in another man’s embrace, by allowing him liberties that most women would only allow a husband. Or – thinking of some of them – maybe not even a husband.

So Mr Challender did not ask very many questions, feeling he had no real right to do so. He was not precisely jealous of a dead man – that would be most unreasonable in the circumstances – but he certainly had no more desire to speak of the fellow than his widow apparently did. Sometimes they’d pass a lithe young gondolier or some other implausibly well-looking, liquid-eyed Italian, and Xan thought, but never said, ‘Did he look like that, your husband?’ But mostly, he put the subject from his mind, or tried to, just as he set aside all thoughts of the future.