Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Present Day
Il Ridotto, Palazzo Dandolo
The Republic of Venice
Anthony Philips swirled the last of his grappa, shot it back clean, and smacked the bottom of his glass to his thigh. “A marriage in name only is a waste of a woman’s potential, wouldn’t you say?”
Kitty remained quiet where she stood apart from the fevered crowd.
In the two years she had traipsed about the Continent with Julian and his friends—self-named The Stoics when there was no temperance amongst the lot of them—she had learned that drunk men asked many questions and wished for no answers.
And when they were sober, men hardly spoke at all.
Breathing her fill of the darkly lit room, the perfumes and pomade, the singular scent of perspiration born of risking fortunes, Kitty moved farther from the crowd, to the balcony overlooking the Grand Canal.
The night was heavy with the scent of burning pitch and seawater.
Gazing across the torchlit waters, she studied the brightly clad figures strolling the square where the domed Basilica rose up in glowing splendor.
Through her mask, she watched a gilt gondola pass.
One of the men in the boat toasted his champagne to her.
She raised her own glass and watched the bubbles effervesce like the sorrow rising within her at the memory of Julian and a boat, when love had filled her sails.
But like the bubbles, her memory reached its end, fizzled, and popped into nothing.
She looked down the steep but survivable descent to the lagoon below. Impatient with her unhappiness, she knew it had to end, one way or another.
Two years married, as of tonight. Two years of gracious indifference Kitty had suffered from Julian through Paris salons and French gardens, Viennese balls, Roman ruins, and always, always, gaming rooms. Wherever they could be found. Which was everywhere.
She removed her bauta, the mask required for anyone who partook in the rich stakes offered at the ridotto, and sipped her champagne.
Her husband of two years treated her well.
Not like a wife, no, he had never as much as kissed her since rescuing her from Lord Staverton.
She was an obligation. He ensured she had the best rooms, gowns of silk and velvet.
Lace fichus and sleeves. Silk stockings and shoes.
Every month, from his winnings, he bought her a piece of jewelry and left it on her dressing table, unwrapped, without a note.
Her cold fingers traced the triple strand of pearls about her neck as she turned back to the salone centrale where the ridotto’s patrons mingled and gambled in black dominoes and white bautas under frescoes of exotic creatures and frolicking cherubs.
His bauta tucked under an arm, Julian leaned a shoulder to a frescoed wall near a basetta table.
Kitty studied him as a man, not her husband, not the person she had known since she was seven.
His profile was that of strength. His slightly hawkish nose and full, firm lips.
A stubborn chin and square jaw. His black hair was queued.
His white teeth flashed as he toasted to his friend, Jamie Fitzwilliam, who raked in a handful of markers at the table.
Was that what women adored about Julian? The strong man with the smile of a boy? It set Kitty’s heart pattering like a lovesick girl.
His dark eyes, deep-set beneath black brows flicked over the passing patrons, meeting a red-headed woman’s interested gaze.
He shifted his long limbs, muscled from his habit of daily Grecian exercise.
His elegant fingers wrapped around a crystal goblet of liquor as he sipped, looking away from the woman with an unsatisfied air.
Kitty was certain Julian hadn’t slept with another woman since they had married over the anvil in Scotland.
But he never threw a female off his lap if she happened to land there.
He seemed to have a limit as to how long a woman’s bottom could stay pressed against his hard thighs.
A minute, Kitty had reckoned. Because she counted each time while women graced him with a view of their bountiful breasts and purred in his ear and wrapped their fingers in his black hair.
And by the count of sixty, give or take how furiously Kitty counted, the women were on their feet and sent away.
That was Julian’s appeal. He did not appear to care one whit for a female’s attentions. It kept them coming back for more.
She acquired another glass of champagne amidst the strains of violins and repartee.
“Drowning your sorrows?” Anthony asked, too close to the truth for comfort. “Perhaps some opium to dull them?”
He tipped a few drops in his glass and offered her the blue bottle.
She looked at her friend, the one she might have married if not for her abiding love for Julian. How handsome he was. Charming. Alluring. And, she suspected, miserable.
“Are you regretting your decision to desert the lovely widow?” she asked. “I thought for certain she meant more to you than a conquest.”
His shoulder quirked. His grin vanished.
So he did regret it.
Her fingers plucked the bottle from his hand. It was dangerously tempting. To break from this hell of her making. But she had conquered the poppy’s numbing allure once, and if she returned, she might never escape.
She offered it back.
“Keep it,” he said.
Kitty thanked him and dropped the laudanum into her velvet purse.
Julian donned his bauta and joined the basetta play.
His black domino thrown from his wide shoulders, his damask suit was midnight blue with a matching surfeit of embroidery and beading.
He shifted in his chair, his honed legs crossing.
His head cocked sideways as he studied his cards.
Long, blunt-edged fingers discarded one.
Where had his dreams of shipbuilding gone? He seemed thoroughly set on wasting his life.
He had expected Kitty to leave after they had married, though he had never demanded it.
She had remained with him and his London friends, knowing time would never wear him down or bring him back to loving her.
She took her penance, hid her shame with a ready smile, and when her smile faded, she waited for her suffering to bear fruit. To mean something.
A glittering blonde in ivory damask skimmed her fingers across Julian’s shoulders as she settled in the chair beside him. Without a mask, the woman could not enter the play. No. She set her sights on Julian.
Julian didn’t spare the woman a glance, but in the confines of his coat, Kitty saw him tense with awareness.
How long before he gave in to his male needs and took a mistress?
Tonight? Next week? She had fled England five years ago on that steel-grey day, and the reason, a lie not of her choosing, none of it her choosing, had been a cold one delivered by letter.
If she were to spill the truth, she would endanger not just her life, but the life of another very dear to her.
Because she was not supposed to be here, alive, at all.
“Madame Allard,” Anthony said, nodding at the blonde. “A courtesan from Paris.”
If Julian took the courtesan tonight, she could bear it. She would. Better to know where she stood than go on indefinitely in this state of blunted agony.
The courtesan locked eyes with Julian. Kitty gulped the rest of her champagne.
“You could be her,” Anthony said. “I would name you, Madame Féline. Stunning. An incomparable. A man could not help but want to hold you. Such light. Such delicacy. Such sensual appeal.”
She shifted in agitation. “You are drunk.”
“True.” Anthony grinned. “But I am also a man.”
She almost reminded him she was married.
“That necklace your husband in name only gave you,” he said, flicking his hand at her neck, “is nothing. You would have ten times its worth in a month. You could live in luxury off your jewels.”
“I do not want ten times its worth.”
“Yes. Yes. You want his love. But while you grow older, he grows colder.”
Her heart keened at the truth told in rhyme. Her eyes flamed, hot tears clouding her sight. She looked away.
“No, Kit, don’t cry. That was not my intention. Smile for me.”
Kitty lifted her face to the shadowy, ochre ceiling and came back with a smile.
“There.” Anthony sought her hand gripping her skirt. “You have a beautiful smile. But you should never grace a man with it unless he earns it. A man must have a challenge and a reward. And yours”—he tapped her chin—“will be your smile.”
“How can a courtesan not smile?” Was she really entertaining this? No. But she was curious.
“She does smile. But to only those who earn it.”
“But men expect women to be pleasing. Happy in their presence—”
“Do they?”
“Yes. They do.” A line creased Anthony’s brow, causing her to doubt her assertion. “Don’t they?”
“They expect many different things. Most of all, they want to be special.”
Special as in wanting a wanton woman, loose with her favors. A sinful woman who lifted her skirts for acts devoid of love. Love had been the basis of the physical acts she had shared with Julian long ago. Without love, there was no joy, no pleasure.
“Do you care for advice?” Anthony asked.
There was no need to answer. Advice was coming regardless.
“Forget about love,” he said. “Run away with me.”
Kitty rolled her eyes.
“I had to try,” he drawled, nudging her arm. He sighed. “Remind St. Clair what he is missing with you. The shortest path to a man’s affection is not through his stomach or his mind. That comes after.”
“If ever,” she said.
Anthony reached into his coat, proffering a folded paper between his fingers. “My advice, Saint Katherine.”
She took the paper, and unfolding it, reddened over the script. She stuffed it in her purse with the laudanum while Anthony chuckled.
Julian stood from the table. Instead of searching out Anthony or the rest of his friends such as Lord Greville in conversation with the enigma Adrian Blackwell, or Lady Sybil, Julian offered Madame Allard his escort.
The courtesan took Julian’s arm. Together, they turned to the salon door and were gone.
Kitty’s champagne dropped with a thud to the carpet.
She had imagined this moment so many ways.
A long, drawn-out flirtation over days with a beautiful woman.
Kitty sitting by as Julian conversed with another under candlelight, with heated glances and laughter.
Yet Julian hadn’t laughed, looked, or even spoken to the woman.
It had happened so fast. So unbearably fast.
“Excuse me,” she managed in a trembling voice.