Chapter 18
Signora Ruggeri’s declaration was delivered with the exact tremor of a stage actress used to seducing gentlemen, but I saw true fear in her dark eyes.
Sitting in a lighted window, visible from the courtyard below, was not the best place to repose if one was worried about being harmed, I mused, but nowhere else in the room could we be private.
“Please tell me why,” I said in a low but soothing tone. “Why should whoever killed Gallo fear you?”
“Because he trusted me.” Signora Ruggeri darted her gaze about the room. “We had to flee Padua because of his enemies, like the Carbonari, who believed he’d betrayed them …”
She named the bands of revolutionaries who worked to drive foreign rule out of Italian provinces.
“Signora.” I cut off her increasingly dramatic flow of words.
“The Carbonari are fighting mostly in Naples and the Papal States these days, and I doubt they worried about one confidence man from the Veneto making his way to France.” I grew stern.
“And why should an English actress from Manchester pretend to be a courtesan from Padua?”
Signora Ruggeri gaped at me, then her face became a blotchy red. “How dare you, sir?” she demanded, retaining her rehearsed accent. “Because I am woman, alone and unprotected, you accuse me—”
“My wife recognized you.” I indicated Donata, who was deep in conversation with her poet, feathers in her headdress bobbing.
“The play was called The Tender Foes, which Marianne tells me was very much derived from Sheridan’s The Rivals, and performed at Sadler’s Wells.
You were excellent as the mischievous daughter, my wife said. ”
Signora Ruggeri stared at me, torn between denial of her deception and flattery that Donata had praised her performance. I watched her debate between the two, before she bowed her head, her shoulders drooping as though in surrender.
“You cannot imagine how difficult it is to find work.” Signora Ruggeri’s words were a near whisper, any accent but her native one gone.
“When one isn’t in a regular company and has to move from place to place.
Thought I’d try my luck on the Continent, but no one wanted me here either.
I had to become Signora Ruggeri.” She raised her head again, her brown eyes soft with pleading.
“I had no choice. To take the protection of gentlemen like Signor Gallo and then the comte was the only way I could sustain myself.”
It was a touching declaration, one with some ring of truth.
“I imagine these gentlemen gave you a more comfortable living than one of an itinerant actress,” I said with understanding.
Signora Ruggeri shook her head, bitterness in her voice. “You do not know. You cannot know. No gentleman can.”
“I agree with you. I recall how much Marianne struggled before she became Mrs. Grenville. It is a difficult life for ladies who have no family to surround them.”
“You are trying to be kind.” Signora Ruggeri softened again, her change of emotions lightning swift. “But I am correct that you can never understand. We do whatever we must to survive. All of us, every woman in this room, take on different personas, depending on what we need.”
I glanced at Donata, her face lighting with laughter at whatever wit the poet was throwing at her.
“Except for my wife,” I said fondly. “She will be the same whether in finery or a chemise.”
I flushed at the last, my tongue getting the better of me, but Signora Ruggeri regarded me pityingly.
“Never believe it. Your wife might be an aristocrat, but trust me, she will change herself, depending on who she’s with.”
I did not agree, but I ceased arguing. Donata might have dissembled in the past, but by the time I’d met her, she’d learned to always be herself and let the world believe what they wished. I was still never certain why she’d decided to throw in her lot with me.
“I mean no censure for your choices,” I said. “I only wonder how you came across Signor Gallo, and why you decided to help him in his blackmailing scheme.”
Signora Ruggeri started to her feet in alarm. “You insult me, sir.” The words rang out, her faux-Italian accent in place once more. “I shall have you turned out of this house.”
“Sit down,” I commanded, not moving.
No one in the room turned at this display, every one of them more interested in Grenville, Donata, and themselves than in a little-known actress losing her temper at the window.
Signora Ruggeri noted their indifference and plopped sullenly to the chair again.
“I truly wish to help you, signora,” I said. “I agree that you are in danger, but you must be truthful with me if I am to assist.”
“You’ll run to the beaks.” She again reverted to the speech of her native city. “To the gendarmerie. I know you’re mates with them.”
“Hardly that. I’m more concerned with Gallo’s victims at the moment, because Captain Vernet might come across their letters, or whatever Gallo had, in the course of his investigation. We found a few things in Gallo’s rooms, but there must be more. Did he entrust them to you?”
“He did.”
Her answer surprised me, but I strove not to betray my reaction. “That is good news. If you will give them to me, I can destroy the papers and save many people much trouble. If you wish to protect yourself, you will let me do so, and be free of the web Gallo wove.”
“It’s not that simple.” Signora Ruggeri regarded me limply.
“He did hide his things at the house where I stayed when I first came here, the one the comte let me use in the Presqu’?le.
But they ain’t there now. I looked. As soon as I knew Gallo was dead, I went back to that house to find them, to destroy every paper, to ensure no one was harmed by them.
” Her eyes moved sideways as she spoke, telling me her intentions had not necessarily been as pure as she claimed.
“But they were gone. Every single last letter and document. Vanished utterly.”
I did not necessarily take Signora Ruggeri’s word for the disappearance of the papers Gallo had hoarded. She was an accomplished deceiver. However, she’d spoken with frustration, so I did not dismiss her claim entirely.
I let Signora Ruggeri be after that, assuring her I had no interest in exposing her true identity—most in this room would likely already know it, in any case. I also advised her not to sit with her back to an exposed window if she feared for her life.
Startled, she allowed me to escort her to a chair on the other side of the room, where I procured a brandy for her. I then joined Marianne, who presented her friends to me. None had much interest in me beyond the fact that Donata and Grenville championed me, but they were polite.
Signora Ruggeri had not revealed to me exactly why she thought she was in danger, but if she truly had been assisting Gallo, then she was right to be cautious. Gallo’s victims might believe, as I had, that Signora Ruggeri knew where the papers lay and might make use of them herself.
Signora Ruggeri remained quietly in the corner as the soiree wound on, but I made my excuses and departed, wanting to retire after another day jaunting across Lyon.
To my surprise, Donata accompanied me home, sitting next to me in the hired coach. Grenville had remained with Marianne, ready to continue the evening’s entertainments.
“The amusements of this city are soon taken in,” Donata said as we rolled from the Croix-Rousse toward the river. “Especially this late in the Season. It is a fine place, but has nothing on London or Paris.” She dismissed the passing scenery with a wave of her hand.
“The quiet suits me,” I said.
“And sometimes suits me.” Donata rested her head on my shoulder. “When we are in Oxfordshire or at the Breckenridge estate, I do keep earlier hours, as you know.”
“Yes, indeed,” I answered warmly.
I treasured the fleeting summer weeks we spent in the country each year, when Donata and I shared a bed most nights and took our meals together.
Though she never did rise with the sun, as I preferred, we walked, dined, and conversed far more than we did in London, where we each had our own pursuits.
Donata stretched a foot in a leather shoe, her fine beaded slippers in a box held by Jacinthe, who rode with the coachman. “In fact, I believe early to bed tonight would be agreeable to me.”
I was not certain what prompted her sudden intimacy—perhaps watching my tete-a-tete with Signora Ruggeri?—but I did not question it. I tipped her chin toward me, and assured her without words that a night together would also agree with me.
I was up early the next morning, leaving Donata to rest in the warmth of my bed. As I sipped coffee in the rear salon, windows open to admit soft summer air, I perused the correspondence that had arrived while I’d dressed.
Happily, I found a note from Gabriella. I’d written to her yesterday, in the hours between my discussion with Donata and Grenville and our jaunt to the soiree. I’d promised Gabriella that her marriage to Emile would go forward, and bade her inform me whether she and Emile were well.
Gabriella, with a pluck that filled me with pride, wrote with obvious indignation that she did not intend to let Emile’s family sabotage their happiness.
Whatever transgression they thought I had caused was nonsense, and she would talk sense into the older members of Emile’s family if need be.
I was not to worry about her, she said, as she could hold her own.
She’d instructed Emile not to capitulate as well.
I smiled as I folded the letter and drew forth pen and paper to reply.
I ought to have known Gabriella would be strong-willed about this.
After all, she’d defied Donata and Lady Aline Carrington, two of the most formidable women in London, when they’d tried to make a match for her, declaring she’d marry Emile instead.
Likewise, Major Auberge and Carlotta had not been able to dissuade her from her choice when they’d first tried.
Gabriella had decided on Emile, and that was that.