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He murmured some polite response, a similar wish to her, he barely knew what, bowed, and continued on his way in the direction of Sant’ Elena, a place he had not yet been. This time, he exercised the most rigid of self-control and did not look back. He was, as she had justly reminded him, a fairly recent widower, and had no business feeling even the weakest spark of interest in any young woman, least of all one who seemed to know exactly who and what she was, and to be entirely content with her life, which was quite foreign to his own and could have no connection whatsoever with it, or with him.

9

Xan was staying in a magnificent, decaying palazzo on the Grand Canal, as one did. He had the piano nobile to himself, and was attended by his own servants, consisting only of his groom (currently underemployed in a city without horses) and valet. The grand building’s impoverished owners had removed themselves to some other, humbler floor and he saw little of them, which suited him very well, since he was not enormously sociable at the best of times – and this was not the best of times.

Mr Challender’s accommodation, and much else, had been arranged for him without the slightest effort on his part. His tour of the Continent was being managed by a discreet and efficient Swiss courier, Monsieur Beauregard, who had apparently come highly recommended, spoke many languages, and knew everything and everyone that should be known in every place. He was an unobtrusive, inoffensive person, and it was not his fault that Xan was swiftly coming to loathe his company and wish him elsewhere. Thank God, at least, that he had his own separate lodgings; if Xan had been obliged to live with him, one of them would be floating face-down in the Grand Canal by now.

Monsieur Beauregard had taken his current employer’s measure early on, and no longer even hinted at the more riotous sort of amusements on offer in each new place. If he was disappointed never to be asked to procure exotic and temporary companions, curious pets, strange drugs or any form of pornography, visual, written, or both together, he concealed this almost perfectly. Xan was privately convinced that Beauregard thought him a very poor creature indeed and a grave disappointment as an employer, with not the least real basis for this supposition.

There were certain persons of rank or standing on whom it was proper to leave cards in each city; Monsieur recommended them with exquisite correctness, and Xan sometimes called, and sometimes did not. In this respect, the Continent was very much like London: depressingly so.

Often these persons turned out to be old acquaintances of his father, and spoke with warmth of the late Earl’s legendary Grand Tour, some thirty-five years ago. That had been a very different sort of an affair from his own, Xan could not doubt. His own manner must be forbidding, his aspect prudish; at any rate, only the tone-deaf among the elderly gentlemen he met ever tried to regale him with scandalous tales of his parents’ exploits as a young buck in the previous century. Had his own rakish older brother the Viscount been here, they’d have been laughing uproariously, slapping each other’s backs and swapping brothel recommendations and dubious anecdotes after half an hour together. Xan wasn’t the sort of man to inspire this manner of seedy confidences. They probably thought him a poor creature and something perilously close to a eunuch, as Beauregard undoubtedly did.

Or perhaps not quite all of them.

He had been feeling newly restless, and this mood, which he absolutely refused to examine, led him, through a sort of murky mental labyrinth, to pay a call on Lady Wellbeloved, one of the few members of the fairer sex on Beauregard’s Venetian list.

She inhabited a small, crumbling palazzo not far from the Rialto, and he made his way there one afternoon. Gentlemen on their own did not as a rule visit unmarried ladies, but the dowager in question was so very venerable that convention could not be thought to apply in her case, and worries about propriety must be ridiculous. She had been, in fact, a contemporary of his grandmother, and told him so as soon as she laid eyes on him; they had made their come-out together in 1760, in those long-ago days before the poor King had married Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and set about filling the royal nursery with unsatisfactory goggle-eyed princes and unhappy, lonely princesses.

Her Ladyship had led an adventurous life in youth and middle age, and made her home in Venice for many years, enduring the French occupation unscathed as she had endured so much else. But she was no recluse even now; she still went about in society and had a wide circle of acquaintances of all nationalities, young and old and everything in between. Beauregard had told him as much. So after a few moments’ conversation in her cluttered salon, when Mr Challender asked her with elaborate casualness if she might happen to know a dark-haired young female artist he’d seen here and there about the city, she knew exactly who he was talking about, and swiftly drew certain unwelcome conclusions from the question.

Lady Wellbeloved – her given name was Lettice, but she insisted on the more Italianate Letizia – had turned out to be a wizened little woman wrapped in gorgeous eastern silks, with no particular regard to current fashion nor to the formal hooped gowns of her youth. She looked at him sharply from under her embroidered turban and let out a startling croak of laughter that swiftly turned into a paroxysm of coughing.

‘Aha!’ she said once she had regained her breath. ‘That’s more like it, boy. I knew you were your father’s son, and a true Challender, despite your prim mouth and your sad eyes. I’m excessively glad to hear it; a man of your years, face and figure should not be living like a monk. To come to Venice and not set up a fine, dark-eyed mistress is so unusual as to be practically indecent, unless, of course, you should happen to prefer boys. But I conjecture from what you have just said, and even more the way you said it, that you do not, or at least, not exclusively.’

Mr Challender choked a little, momentarily rendered speechless. Her Ladyship seemed disposed to tell him no more to the purpose, certainly not to answer his question, and Xan – who was becoming accustomed by now to a state of almost perpetual embarrassment and confusion in this extraordinary city – gathered his scattered wits and said stiffly, ‘I have not the least idea what you mean, ma’am. I have encountered the young lady a couple of times, purely by chance, and she has piqued my interest, being apparently English, or at least partly so, and yet she seems as at home here as a native. I assure you I have nothing so disreputable in mind as you suggest, merely an idle curiosity. I beg you, forget that I have spoken of the matter; it is of no moment whatsoever.’

Xan was all too aware as he spoke that a depiction of his face, manner and words in this moment could quite easily appear under a definition of the phrase ‘protesting too much’, and nobody who saw could fail to comprehend. His hostess certainly did not.

Lady Wellbeloved’s button eyes twinkled and she let out a cackle of indescribable filthiness. ‘Piqued your interest, eh, sirrah? That’s what they’re calling it these days? I must be sadly out of touch. Well, since you are so innocently curious, I can tell you that the wench is indeed English, or at least grew up in England, but also has Italian antecedents, as must be obvious from her appearance. You have some claim to taste, young man, I’ll give you that. Of course I have seen her and marked her, though we have never exchanged two words. She is not one of those skinny, hollow-eyed, bony females the ton seems to be producing so many of these days; as well go to bed with a bag of sticks, I’m sure. No, a fine bouncing wench with a bosom and a rump, formed for a man’s pleasure and her own.’ Xan could only wish that the ground – or whatever bloody Venice was built on – would open up and swallow him this instant.

But still the old lady was not done. ‘A widow, too, and childless; most suitable. I hear her husband, who was Italian, one of their penniless, ramshackle gallants, I daresay, has been dead a year or two, so a hot-blooded girl of that age and shape will be looking around for a man to warm her bed by now. She will know what she is about better than some tedious green girl, she will not make unreasonable demands on you, nor you on her, I hope, and you will both have a pleasurable little affaire and move on, with neither of you a penny the poorer for it. Her name is Rossi, Signora Bianca Rossi, I believe. An ordinary sort of name and none the worse for that. Tell me, young man, is that what you came here to find out? I certainly cannot flatter myself you were pining for the delights of my company. Oh, I am quite distraught, I promise, and shall go into a decline immediately you have left.’

Xan opened his mouth to deny the accusation with great indignation, and then thought better of it. He need not be a hypocrite, whatever else he was. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said meekly. ‘Thank you.’

She sighed, and seemed to deflate all at once into little more than a bundle of discarded silks. ‘You make me envious. Don’t ask whether it’s of you or of her – why shouldn’t it be both? Close your mouth, boy; you’ll soon be catching flies at this season. Oh, I could tell you a tale or two that would make your hair stand on end, I promise you, and not just your hair. I can see that you’ve been wasting your precious time, these last few months and years, pining away for your wife; well, don’t do so any longer. Drink the wine, tup the girl. We’re a long time dead. What’s the old verse? “The grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace.” But I must warn you – you have competition. I confess I would quite enjoy seeing you succeed where that coxcomb Byron has so far failed. It would do his consequence good to have a set-down, whilst yours, plainly, could do with a boost.’

This was most unwelcome news. ‘Ma’am, do I understand you to be telling me that Lord Byron is pursuing this young lady with dishonourable intentions?’ Xan had not, before this moment, allowed his conscious mind to formulate the notion that he would like nothing better than to make love to Bianca Rossi, but now under duress he’d admitted it, and he seemed he wasn’t alone in his desire. Of course he wasn’t; she was quite lovely. He found himself grinding his teeth and shifting uncomfortably in his rather shabby brocade Louis XV armchair.

The old woman snorted. ‘To be sure he is, or was. I daresay that man never saw a woman of any beauty or distinction that he didn’t want to ruin, including his own sister, if rumour is true. He’s like a dog in the street, for all his fine versifying. But you, I am sure, will have the common good manners not to give Signora Rossi a slip on the shoulder, which is more than one can say for him. Europe must be littered with his bastards by now. Careless, very careless; selfish, too. I admit he’s dangerously charming, but that means women should beware of him all the more. My money shall be wagered on you, sir.’

Mr Challender could only hope the lady did not mean this last comment literally. It didn’t seem possible to revert to casual commonplaces after this extraordinary conversation, so he took his leave as soon as he was able. He would have liked very much to beg his hostess not to pass on any of what he had so imprudently shared with her, having no taste for being the idle talk of Venice, but he could see that it was pointless. A person of her years would certainly share such a piece of titillating gossip with her circle of friends if she pleased. She owed him, Xan Challender, nothing, despite some remote connection with his family, and it would demean him even to ask for such indulgence.

Lady Wellbeloved would no doubt say that a gentleman should rise above scandal with superb indifference, as his ancestors would have done. Had done, with tedious frequency. And she was right – if he really was contemplating asking the young lady to consent to be his lover for a time while he was in Venice, why should he be ashamed that anyone should know it? He would not be betraying anyone living, and nor, it seemed, would she.

As he sat in the gondola that took him the short distance to his lodging, his blood was on fire, every part of his body sensitised, as it had not been for years; possibly ever. He’d led a very sheltered life, by circumstance and through his own choice, and suddenly he thought that this must change, or he would regret it forever. He had responsibilities awaiting him at home, to which he must soon enough return, but none in Venice. What better time than now, to live a little, and what better place than here?

10

Xan had no doubt that Lady Wellbeloved knew where Signora Rossi had her lodging, or that she could easily find out if she happened to be ignorant for once. But he was extremely reluctant to ask her and expose himself to more feminine ridicule, and most certainly he was not prepared to enquire of Monsieur Beauregard, who was similarly omniscient; he simply could not endure the thought of seeing that gentleman’s face change as he absorbed the import of the question, and took in this interesting new fact about his current employer, who he’d thought so sadly buttoned-up and respectable till now. His knowing approval would be just as unwelcome as his previous pity and imperfectly concealed disapproval.

In any case, a gentleman could not, he was quite well aware, knock boldly upon a lady’s door and ask her to become his mistress because he was obsessed with her. Or – one probably could, here of all places, as a simple, everyday business transaction, but she was not that sort of person, as she had made plain to him the very first time they had met, and for that matter, nor was he. Xan wasn’t even sure if that was exactly what he wanted (he could almost hear his wicked older brother laughing derisively at him when he formulated this thought). He only knew that he wanted, possibly needed, to see her again and get to know her better. A great deal better. He was pining for her company, whatever might come of it (that mocking laughter sounded in his ears again).

So he was in a quandary. But he took heart from what Signora Rossi herself had said – that Venice was the sort of place where one kept bumping into people unexpectedly. Mr Challender tried to facilitate such an accidental meeting by haunting the two places he had previously seen the lady working at her easel, but spent several days in this rather pathetic fashion and never laid eyes on her, nor even upon her disreputable little companion. He would have been prepared to engage the urchin in conversation, to risk his ribald mockery and enquire, with pantomime gestures, for la signora, but the opportunity did not arise.

This was discouraging, and he took stock, deciding to change his tactics. Florian’s was at the centre of things in Venice, he reasoned, and he’d seen her passing by there once before. If he sat and waited, perhaps…

He encountered her on the second day of his vigil. He’d realised with dismay that if she should be crossing the piazza at some distance – it was a large, impressive square by anyone’s standards – he’d have to chase after her to attract her attention, pushing through the crowds of locals and tourists before she disappeared, looking foolish and drawing general attention to himself as he did so. But he was prepared to endure this embarrassment, if it meant he could have speech with her; he was not quite himself just now, and he knew it.