Chapter Twenty-Two
The cell smelled of damp stone and old river water.
Venetia sat on the narrow bench, arms wrapped around herself, and tried not to shiver.
Her gown—embroidered silk that had seemed so splendid a few hours ago—was utterly inadequate against the creeping chill.
The cold seemed to seep up from the flagstones, through the thin soles of her slippers, into her bones.
She could still taste Edward.
That was the absurd thing. Her lips tingled faintly, as if his mouth had only just left hers, as if she were still pressed against him on the balcony with the night air on her neck and his fingers trembling at her waist. The echo of that kiss warmed her far more than the coarse blanket someone had tossed in her direction when they’d shut the door.
She swallowed a hysterical laugh. It caught in her throat and turned into something rougher. She pressed her knuckles to her teeth until the impulse passed.
Outside, somewhere above, bells tolled the hour.
She’d lost count. Time down here was a gray, unmeasured thing: the drip of water in a distant corridor, the occasional clank of keys, the muffled voices of guards.
No music, no light but the faintest smear seeping under the door and through a high, barred opening that gave onto blackness.
She stared up at that narrow window. A slice of sky, dull and starless. The lagoon lay beyond the walls, she supposed. Gondolas gliding like shadows. People laughing, drinking, dancing. Life.
Meanwhile, the English heiress sat in a cell, trying not to think about emeralds she had never seen and a will clause she had tried very hard, until now, not to dwell on.
The solicitor’s voice came back to her with painful clarity, as if he were reading in the next room:
“Within three years of my decease, should my chosen heir be convicted in any court of law of theft, fraud, or any crime of public dishonor, her interest shall cease and the whole of my estate shall pass to my nephew, Mr. Greene.”
Her stomach cramped. She curled forward slightly, hands gripping the coarse wool of the blanket.
Three years. It had seemed a remote threat at the time, a gloomy old man’s attempt to keep his fortune unsullied. She’d signed documents while her aunt sniffed and the solicitor droned on.
And now, a year later, here she was. Accused of theft. In another country, yes—but surely that wouldn’t matter. The condition didn’t specify English courts, did it? Just “any court of law.”
Any court, anywhere. Any verdict, however unjust, and it would all vanish.
Leonard Harrington’s careful provisions, the old house in Derbyshire, the London townhouse, the investments—gone. Back to Greene. Back to the man whose own behavior included attempted seduction and elopement with an heiress.
And if you lost it all, a traitorous voice whispered, then Edward would no longer have to fear being branded a fortune hunter.
The thought slid through her like a knife. Cold. Precise. She squeezed her eyes shut, furious at herself.
Yes, of course. That would be one way to solve his ethical quandary. Strip her of everything but a stained reputation, and he might finally feel virtuous enough to love her openly.
She couldn’t decide whether to laugh or sob.
“I don’t want to be an object of pity,” she murmured into the darkness. Her voice sounded small in the stone space. “I don’t want him to marry me because I’ve fallen.”
She wanted him to marry her because he loved her. Because tonight, when she’d put her hands to his face and said the words at last—I love you—she’d seen the answering agony in his eyes, heard his own confession tremble on his lips.
God help me, I love you beyond reason. You are my heart.
Her heart twisted. She could almost feel his hands again, warm against her cheeks, his hair rough beneath her fingers, the solid strength of his body anchoring hers. The way he’d kissed her—first wary, then with a hunger that had made the world fall away.
She pressed her fingertips to her mouth as if she might recapture some trace of that warmth. Her lips were dry and chapped from the cold.
Of all the settings for that long-dreamed-of kiss, she had not imagined a balcony that would, minutes later, become a crime scene.
Captain Rizzi’s voice intruded on the memory, brisk and satisfied: “An English lady in a gold diadem. You match the account I was given.”
An account. Someone had described her. Not a lady in a tiara, but the English lady in a very particular one. The realization had sliced through the glow of Edward’s embrace like ice.
Miss Bentley’s words echoed next, sharp and cruel. Common. Performing. Undeserved fortune. Grasping creature.
Venetia stared at the opposite wall, tracing the damp streaks with her eyes. She tried to picture Miss Bentley’s face as she’d spoken to Captain Rizzi, pointing, insisting. Had she looked triumphant? Righteous? Genuinely convinced?
Had the count been standing just behind her, murmuring encouragement? Or had he merely planted the ideas in the days before, with those soft, poisoned phrases about sudden wealth and hidden vice, then left Miss Bentley to carry them out alone?
It hurt more that Miss Bentley might have believed it. That a woman who had praised her embroidery and her “sweet nature” could, in the space of an evening, recast her as a scheming little thief.
And then there was Count Morosini.
Would he lift a finger on her behalf? Or would he see only an awkward complication under his roof? An English scandal imported into his palazzo. A young woman whose very existence had upset his granddaughter’s expectations and whose affection threatened to distract his prize translator.
If he truly believed Edward was pursuing Sofia, then tonight’s scene on the balcony must have looked like confirmation of the worst kind of entanglement. A translator, a foreign heiress, disgrace, stolen jewels.
Perhaps he would do nothing. Perhaps he would simply step back and let Italian justice take its course, wash his hands of her and Edward both.
No. Edward. She forced herself to sit a little straighter.
Surely Edward would not abandon her. He’d been there when Captain Rizzi arrived, his expression thunderous, his body instinctively shifting between her and the officer. She had felt, for one dizzy instant, that he might actually fight the captain, grapple for her like some knight in a story.
Then he had remembered his reason, his position, his own precarious standing with Count Morosini. She had seen the calculation in his eyes. The fury. The hatred of his own helplessness.
He won’t let this stand, she told herself. He can’t. He’ll go to Lady Townsend. To Lord Thornton. Between them, they’ll—
What? Charm the emeralds back to their owner? Magically erase the fact that they’d been found in her tiara while she was kissing a man on a balcony?
She buried her face in her hands for a moment. The stone beneath her feet felt very solid. Unyielding.
A key grated in a distant lock; footsteps approached, then receded again. Somewhere down the passage, a man laughed coarsely. Someone coughed. The sounds of other lives, other miseries.
Her teeth began to chatter. She clenched her jaw, annoyed with her own weakness.
If she must sit in a cell, she should at least do it with some shred of dignity.
She would not give Captain Rizzi—or Miss Bentley, or Count di Montefiore, or whoever else was relishing this—the satisfaction of imagining her collapsed in hysterics.
“Miss Playford?”
The voice came through the little grille in the door, tentative, accented. Not Rizzi. Younger.
She looked up. “Yes?”
The hatch scraped open. A pair of brown eyes peered in, wary and curious. “You are cold, signorina?”
“I have been warmer,” she said, because if she started to list all the indignities of the evening, she wasn’t sure she’d stop.
He hesitated, then pushed something through the gap: another blanket, rough but thicker than the first. He glanced over his shoulder as if expecting rebuke, then added in a rush, “My sister, she says English ladies are very proud. But you”—he looked almost shy—“you do not shout. Or cry. You say ‘thank you’ when Rizzi is… not kind.”
She blinked. “You were there when he ordered me here?”
His mouth twisted. “The capitano, he likes when people are afraid. I think if you had shown you were afraid you might not have been sent here. He was angry that you were so… proud.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For the blanket. And for the compliment, undeserved though it is. I assure you, I am quite terrified.”
He gave a quick, sympathetic smile. “Maybe you are. But you do not look it. That is… brave.” He seemed to grope for the right English word. “Dignified.”
Dignified. That was something, at least.
“Will they keep me here long?” she asked, hating the thread of hope in her own voice.
He shifted his weight. “There is talk.” He lowered his voice.
“The Count Morosini, he speaks with the capitano. Important men do not like trouble in their houses. Sometimes trouble… disappears.” He realized how that sounded and flapped a hand.
“Not like that. I mean—they make a problem go away. Quiet.”
So Morosini was involved. Relief and unease tangled in her chest.
“Thank you,” she said again.
He nodded, and for a moment looked as if he might say more. Then someone shouted his name down the corridor, and he straightened. “I must go. Wrap your feet, signorina. The floor is worst.”
The hatch closed with a soft scrape. She spread the new blanket beneath her, tucked the other around her legs as best she could, and curled her toes into the rough wool. Her fingers had finally stopped shaking.
Count Morosini was negotiating. That could mean her release. It could also mean conditions and complications she could not yet imagine.
And Edward—would he have any say in whatever bargain was being struck? Or would decisions be made over his head, neatly severing the one bond that made any of this bearable?
Metal rasped again, closer this time. The turning of the key in her own lock.
Venetia drew in a breath and straightened her spine, forcing herself to stand as the door swung inward. Whatever waited beyond—freedom, further questioning, some new humiliation—she would meet it with what dignity she could muster.
She had survived Aunt Pike. She could survive Captain Rizzi. She would survive this night.
And when she saw Edward again—if she saw Edward again—she would do it on her own two feet, not as some object of pity, but as the woman who had kissed him on a balcony and refused, even in a prison cell, to let go of that single, blazing truth.
She loved him. And he loved her. Her fortune—or the lack of it—changed nothing.