Beyond Seduction (36 page)

she weren't so worried for her well-being. And she was worried. Truly, she was. She merely wished her impossible daughter had spared a second's thought for someone else.

Worst of all—or, rather, not worst but certainly very bad—the letters from Wales were starting to dry

up, almost as if whoever was sending them was trying to make them last.

"Didn't think about Isabel, did you?" Lavinia accused her daughter's maddeningly happy likeness.

But the painting could not answer, no more than it could tell her how to put Althorp off.

He'd had the gall to drop by the house that morning during breakfast. Geoffrey had not yet left for his club and was still lingering over his paper. Althorp accounted for his presence at that highly improper

hour by saying he'd come as a favor to Ernest, to see if some files he'd been missing had turned up.

When Geoffrey informed him—rather coolly, Lavinia thought—that he'd returned them the day before, Althorp simply laughed.

"So hard to keep track," he'd said with his butter-smooth bonhomie. "I wonder that you let your

daughter out of your sight. One never knows, after all, what one's family is getting up to behind one's back."

'Trust is always a risk," replied her husband, "but so is mistrust. A man must weigh the cost of both."

That, too, inspired amusement. 'Too true," Althorp had chuckled. He turned to go, squeezing her shoulder as he left. Casual as it was, the gesture was a clear, unspoken threat, a flaunting of his long-ago possession. I can unmask you, it said, in front of whoever I choose. Whether that meant the world or

just her husband she did not know, no more than she knew if Geoffrey had noticed the impropriety.

He had taken his leave soon after, studying her from the door as coolly as he'd studied Althorp. He appeared to be waiting for her to speak, possibly to confess. At the very least, he'd begun to question

her friendship with Ernest's father. Her pose of innocence would be harder than ever to maintain.

With a swallowed moan, she pressed her fists to her aching brow.

She had to act, had to get Merry back, as much for her daughter's sake as for her own.

Peter will help, she thought with a sudden burst of inspiration. Peter would do anything for his sister. She'd give him an edited version of the truth: that Craven had seduced Merry and that they had to bring her back before her father, and everyone else who mattered, caught wind of what she'd done. Lavinia was certain her son could manage one indolent artist. If not, well, she'd give him permission to tell his brothers. With luck—which, admittedly, had been in short supply—Lavinia wouldn't just rescue her daughter from that horrid Casanova, she'd return her to the arms of her future fiancé. They'd hush up everything,
everything
, and the world would go peacefully back to what it had been.

Fortified by decision, Lavinia stood. It was late, but Peter was a night owl. She'd go to him now,

before she lost her nerve.

She gave the painting one last, hard look.

"I'll save you," she vowed through clenching teeth, "whether you want to be saved or not!"

Sixteen

Just before
noon
, Nic went down with Mary to the dining room. There they found Sebastian and Evange-line, bleary-eyed and eating a silent breakfast. A cerulean glass chandelier hung above their

heads, one of the famous
chioche
of Murano. Neither of Nic's friends seemed to appreciate the way

its twisting branches cast gossamer threads of light around the peacock blue walls. Sebastian, in

particular, appeared to have lost his rakish spirits—either as a result of overindulgence or of having

failed to seduce Nic's lover.

Nic suspected a bit of both.

"Morning," said Evangeline, her nose buried in the paper. For his part, Sebastian waved a hunk of

toasted bread.

Since Mary seemed uncertain how to respond to their bad manners, Nic pulled out a chair for her at

the opposite end of the oval table.

"Relax," he said as he headed for the sideboard. "I'll fetch you a plate of something nice."

"That's right," Sebastian muttered. "Treat the match girl like a queen."

Before Evangeline could add her tuppence to this topic, Nic covered her open mouth.

"Enough," he said, "from both of you. The way you've been acting, Mary will think I'm a few bricks short for being your friend."

"We were only—" said Evangeline, then stopped to glance helplessly at Sebastian.

"—only making trouble," Sebastian finished with a grin that said he expected to be forgiven, though beneath the confidence he did not seem quite sure. "Hell, Nic, we both think she's adorable. Far better than that puffed-up Lady Piggot."

Sighing, Nic let his hands rest on Evangeline's shoulders. Mary watched with widened eyes from the

other end, clearly more intrigued than offended by this discussion.

"I am not your procurer," Nic said with a patience gained from a rewarding night in Mary's arms.

"What's more, it's been some time since the three of us did anything like that together."

"But we can hope," said Eve, her expression a twin of Sebastian's.

"No, you can't," Nic corrected bluntly, "not with Mary and not with me." His grin broke out without his willing it. This joy was so sweet, so new he could not contain it. Seeing his smile, Mary turned her own down toward her lap. She was adorable in her snug sea-green gown with her tidy little figure and her upswept curls ablaze in the morning sun. She looked up, her cheeks pink with pleasure, and mouthed a "thank you" for his eyes.

"Lord save us," Sebastian burst out, "if I weren't queasy already, watching you two bill and coo would

do the job."

"Drink your coffee," Eve scolded and lightly slapped his arm.

Obviously not sorry, Sebastian kissed the air at her.

Nic knew an end to their interference was the best he could expect from them for the present.

Demanding they apologize to Mary would almost certainly be futile. Ignoring them both, he turned to

fill his and Mary's plates.

No one spoke until he sat.

"Signor Vecchi came by this morning," Sebastian said, his eyes wary, his coffee cradled to his chest.

"He said your servant arrived with your luggage and he put him in a room with the underfootman."

"My servant?"

"The boy who traveled with you."

"But Mary and I came alone."

Sebastian shrugged. "Perhaps it was an employee of the ship then, and signor Vecchi mistook his English. In any case, your luggage is here, waiting in the hall on the
mezzanino
until you tell the housekeeper what to do with it."

Nic rubbed the bridge of his nose. Should he bring his sketching things along when he and Mary went

out, or simply be a sightseer? The latter, he decided. He suspected she'd had more than enough of watching him sit and scribble.

"You should take Mary to the Basilica San Marco and the Dogé's Palace," Evangeline suggested.

"I'm sure she'd enjoy the Tintoretto."

"Not to mention," Sebastian leeringly put in, "the cell where they imprisoned Casanova."

His tone was almost its former teasing self, but Nic regarded him with reserve. "I'll do what Mary wishes," he said.

He didn't care that his friends both rolled their eyes. He had a feeling the message that Mary came

first had finally sunken in.

*  *  *

Vendors crammed the perimeter of the Piazza of San Marco: cafes, sellers of mementos, everything a tourist could desire—if only she dared to pick her way through the hordes of pigeons. Not for nothing

was this square called the drawing room of the world. Merry heard greetings exchanged in more tongues than she could name.

Despite these distractions, she was suitably awed by the grandeur of church and state. Getting lost with Nic after their tour, however, was even better. Venice was a small city. By a straight path, one could cross her in.an hour. Unfortunately,
La Serenissima
was not straight. She was a labyrinth of alleys and squares and narrow back canals that forced one to retrace one's steps or hire a boat. No matter how

they tried, they couldn't find Nic's favorite caf6 from his time at the Academy.

In the days that followed, the search became a game where the journey was the reward. This was a

city of traders, of jewelers and weavers and sun-browned boatmen. She never knew what they'd find around each timeworn corner. A market filled with shining fish? An ancient well with a rim of gargoyles? Perhaps a goldsmith would appear to delight them, or a binder of leather books.

She enjoyed the artisans best because Nic would go in to meet them. Without being told who he was,

the workers treated him as a member of their fraternity, a fellow maker of beautiful things. They could tell from his questions, and from the respect with which he listened, that he was a man of discernment. With Nic to help her, Merry's Italian improved by leaps and bounds. In all her time at finishing school, she hadn't learned half as much, nor been half as stimulated.

Her mind, it seemed, was coming awake as pleasurably as her body, not with effort but from their rambling exploration.
Gianduiotto
, a fabulous mix of chocolate and hazelnut ice cream, was her word from the Campo Santa Margherita, while history and commerce were the subjects at antique shops like Aladdin's caves. A spyglass from one was wrapped as a gift for Mr. Farnham and a pretty tea set for

Mrs. Choate. Every afternoon a new barcaro, or wine bar, welcomed them for a rest. The churches

were a revelation, the people a lesson in how to live every moment well. Sometimes, overwhelmed,

they simply sat on a mossy wall and gazed about, their shoulders brushing, their hands linked companionably in enjoyment.

Sebastian and Evangeline might have ceased to exist for all the notice Nic and Merry took of what

they did. The bubble that surrounded them was too perfect to be pierced.

Merry had never been this content, nor seen Nic so at ease within himself. She began to believe, tremblingly at first and then with greater faith, that they might live happily as man and wife. In spite of

the obstacles between them—not the least of which being the difference in their stations—they rubbed along too well for her to doubt they could succeed.

Ironically, this hope was the only shadow on her horizon. Once admitted into her heart, the desire to

bind herself to him grew to a passion she hadn't imagined she could feel. Even a child, which she

hitherto had no urge to bear, became inordinately appealing. She wanted to cuddle a baby with Nic's

eyes, to teach him to ride a pony, to give him brothers and sisters and a great big box of rainbow paints.

Seduced by the beauty of her daydreams, she would drift off even as the wonders of the city spread around them.

"Where has my Mary gone?" Nic would tease, and she'd have to invent a lie.

She told herself these longings were nonsensical. Love had softened her brain and she was turning not into her mother but into a mindless broodmare. She began to tense each time he brought out his French letters, even though, as he'd promised, they didn't diminish her pleasure in the least.

Despite his defense of her, despite his apparent—and probably temporary—commitment to fidelity, he had not said he loved her. No promises for the future had issued from his lips. In truth, all he'd done

was give her cause for hope.