Chapter Twenty-Four
Venetia sat on the bed, staring at the letter that had secured her release.
From accused jewel thief to free woman in under twelve hours.
Yet she’d been unable to leave her room for two days following her release.
No ordeal had sapped her of strength as spending the night in a dank, chilly cell, accused of something she had not done.
This was not the dark cupboard at her Aunt Pike’s that she knew was a temporary confinement.
This could have been forever.
And she’d been like an invalid, pretending to be asleep when Lady Townsend had knocked. Unable to face her English friends over meals.
The letter’s official seal bore Count Morosini’s coat of arms, and the elegant script promised his personal guarantee that she would remain free “pending no further charges.”
No further charges.
As if charges could not be conjured out of thin air by the right malicious tongue.
She folded the letter along its already-tired creases and set it aside.
Freedom, such as it was, allowed her to sit here instead of in a cold stone cell.
It allowed her to walk Venice’s labyrinthine streets, to return to Casa Bonaldi, to endure the whispered conversations that faltered when she entered a room.
And it allowed her, dangerously, to hope.
If this were Ivanhoe, she told herself, last night’s ordeal would be the trial before the triumph, the test of endurance that proved the lovers’ worth.
Edward would emerge more clearly than ever as her knight—her Wilfred—ready to break every injunction of class and prudence to vindicate her.
Their kiss on the balcony had felt like the beginning of that story: his mouth on hers, his hands trembling as if he knew there was no turning back.
That moment had been the most real thing she had ever experienced.
“Miss, you’ve no appetite at all,” Mollie fretted from the small table, where the bread and fruit sat untouched. “You must try something.”
“I’m not hungry,” Venetia said absently.
Her gaze drifted to the second letter on the coverlet. Not Morosini’s this time. The familiar, neat hand on the outside had made her heart leap when the errand boy delivered it.
Edward.
She picked it up again, though she could have recited it from memory.
Dear Miss Playford,
I was relieved to learn of your release and trust you are regaining your strength after the unfortunate events of last evening.
The circumstances now surrounding your name are, as you know, delicate, and will require some time and care to be untangled. In such a climate, any appearance of undue intimacy between us can only serve to draw unwelcome attention and increase the risk of further misunderstanding.
I therefore believe it would be wisest for the present that our acquaintance be conducted at a proper distance. You may be assured that I shall follow your situation with the greatest interest and will rejoice to hear of your complete vindication.
I remain,
Your most obedient servant,
E. Rothbury
No endearment. No reference to the balcony, to the kiss, to whispered declarations that had changed her entire world. Only “delicate circumstances” and “proper distance” and “most obedient.”
The sort of letter any honorable gentleman might write to any young lady in a scandal.
So he was withdrawing.
Her knight, her Ivanhoe, was lowering his lance and stepping back from the lists before the tournament had even begun.
“Bad news, miss?” Mollie asked carefully.
Venetia folded the paper very precisely, trying to hide her trembling hands.
“Mr. Rothbury believes it would be… imprudent to be seen with me,” she said. “Given the delicacy of my circumstances.”
Saying it out loud hurt less than she’d expected. Or perhaps she was simply numb.
“He can’t mean that in his heart,” Mollie burst out.
“I know what his heart felt like on that balcony,” Venetia said quietly. “But hearts are apparently no match for Venetian gossip and elderly counts.”
She pressed the folded letter briefly against her sternum, as if she could force some hidden meaning out of the ink. Was there a hesitation in the line where he spoke of distance? A pressure of the pen where he wrote “follow your situation with the greatest interest”?
If there were, it was too subtle for her shaking nerves to read.
He thinks this protects me, she realized. He genuinely believes vanishing is an act of chivalry.
*
Despite her flagging spirits, she took Mollie with her to Madame Bertolini’s cramped little dressmaker’s shop off a narrow calle near San Polo, ostensibly to have her gown mended after its adventure in the cells.
In truth, she had needed to do something. Anything.
Madame Bertolini clucked over the crushed pleats and soiled hem, murmuring her sympathy and outrage.
“Such a scandal, signorina,” she said, pins between her lips. “In my gown, too. The whole quarter is talking.”
“I imagine they are discussing the emeralds,” Venetia said coolly.
“There is talk, you know, of a certain gentleman who came to Venice not long ago with letters of introduction and an accent too contrived to be true, who calls himself Count di Montefiore.” Madame rolled the name in her mouth and her eyes gleamed.
“Some say he also had a particular interest in emeralds. And in you.”
Venetia’s pulse had jumped. “Oh?”
“He appeared from nowhere, yet everyone is suddenly eager to please him. He spends a great deal of time at La Serafina’s salon.
” Madame’s tone transformed the word into something between admiration and disapproval.
“When a gentleman wishes his secrets to be kept, he should not speak of them in a courtesan’s drawing room. But they always do.”
“La Serafina,” Venetia repeated. “The singer?”
Madame smiled thinly. “Once a singer. Now—more. She knows everyone’s business.
Men forget themselves when they are flattered and comfortable.
They speak of fortunes and quarrels and nephews cheated of their inheritance.
They speak of English wills.” Her gaze sharpened.
“If anyone knows the true history of Count di Montefiore, it is La Serafina.”
Nephews cheated of their inheritance.
Mr. Greene’s furious face rose in Venetia’s memory: the man who had believed Leonard Harrington’s fortune his by right; the man whose shock at its loss had been the talk of Derbyshire. The man who had tried to lure Caroline into a scandalous elopement when he’d still been in funds.
He has every reason to hate me.
If Greene had somehow encountered this so-called Count di Montefiore, if he had told his grievances to a man already skilled in deception…
“And the count?” Venetia had asked, striving for casual interest. “You say he visits La Serafina often?”
“Very often,” Madame said. “He has other names in other cities, I am told. A man of many masks. La Serafina entertains him because he pays well and is amusing, but my cousin’s husband”—she spread her hands—“he swears he heard him called by another name in Paris. A French name, not Italian at all. These gentlemen,” she concluded, making a neat little stitch, “they think changing their coat and title changes who they are.”
A man of many masks. A French name. A courtesan who collected secrets.
If anyone could discover whether Count di Montefiore had ever received letters from an embittered Englishman named Greene, perhaps it would be La Serafina.
And if what he knows could convict me, Venetia thought, then what she knows might save me.
Time, however, was not on her side. Captain Rizzi had not cleared her; he had merely let her out on a leash tied firmly to Count Morosini’s belt. The more time passed, the more opportunities her enemies had to arrange “new evidence,” to twist any bold step she took into proof of her depravity.
She could almost feel that three-year clause in Leonard Harrington’s will ticking in the background, like a bomb no one else could hear.
She could not wait for Edward. Not now. Not when he was muzzled and leashed by the very man who currently shielded her.
If this were Ivanhoe, the knight would defy his overlord and rescue her in a blaze of glory. But Edward had been ordered to stand down, and Edward obeyed orders.
So the maiden would have to find the courage and audacity to sneak her way into the enemy camp herself.