Pushing back the bedcovers, Becky sat up to face the cold light of day. She’d learnt a bitter lesson with Jack. She’d given her soppy heart to Jack. Looking back, she couldn’t believe she’d been so gullible. All these years fending for herself, and she’d not once been tempted by any of the offers that came her way—though they’d been of the crude sort, and hardly tempting, she was forced to admit. While Jack—well, Jack was a charmer. He didn’t proposition her, he—yes, she could admit it, even if it made her toes curl—he had wooed her. Seduced her with compliments and promises, gradually taking more and more advantage as she fell for his weasel words and his false declarations of love. Only then, when she’d handed him her heart on a plate, did he start to use her for his own ends, so subtly she didn’t notice until it was too late. It made her blood boil, thinking of the fiasco at Crockford’s that might have resulted in the loss of her liberty, if not her life. There was a moment, when it was all tumbling down like a house of cards, when she’d turned to Jack, pleading with her eyes for him to rescue her. Instead of which, he’d turned his back on her and fled to save his own skin. Only then did she realise that it had all been a tissue of lies. Even now, thinking about it left a bitter taste in her mouth. What an idiot she’d been.
But look where it had brought her. Becky propped herself up on the mountain of pillows. If Jack could see her now! She tried to imagine his expression if he walked into the room to see her lying like a princess in this huge bed, but she couldn’t. She didn’t actually want to picture Jack here at all. In fact the very notion of him being in her bedchamber, seeing her in her nightgown, made her feel queasy, even though he’d seen her in her nightgown numerous times, and had been in her bed any number of times too. But she didn’t want to remember that either. Or his kisses, which she must have enjoyed at the time, though the idea of them now... Becky screwed up her face in distaste.
Luca now, she could happily imagine Luca standing here at the side of her bed, gazing down at her in that smouldering way of his. So very different from Jack in every way, Luca was. Kissing Luca would be like walking one of those tightropes acrobats used in the piazza at Covent Garden. Dangerous and exciting at the same time. Thrilling, that was what Luca’s kisses would be, because he really was from a different world. A world of luxury and sinful decadence, like the food she’d eaten, the silk sheets she was lying on, the paintings hanging on the walls and the dreamlike city outside her window. A world to be savoured, relished, as long as she remembered it could never be her world.
Outside in the corridor, she could hear the sound of servants going about their business. It was time for her to concentrate on hers. She had to transform herself into the Queen of Coins. She was to play the demure cousin. She was to make a man a pauper to avenge the death of Luca’s father. She didn’t know how he died or why, or if it really was murder in the first place. There were a great many questions needing answers before she could fully understand her various roles. If Luca’s father had been murdered, Luca was entitled to justice, wasn’t he? She’d be doing a good deed by helping him, and in the process helping herself by earning a substantial fee. With renewed determination, Becky slithered down from the bed and began to get dressed before the maid arrived with unwanted offers of help.
After breakfast they had retired to what Luca called the small parlour, and though to Becky it looked like a very large one, it could, she supposed, be described as small compared to the drawing room, measuring only about a quarter of the acreage. The chamber was situated at the back of the palazzo with a view out to a smaller, narrower canal. The walls were ruby red, and the ceiling fresco relatively plain, with just a few romping cupids and a smattering of clouds. The fire burning beneath the huge white marble mantelpiece, the well-cushioned sofa and chairs drawn up beside the hearth, the pot of coffee on the little table between the chairs where she and Luca sat facing one another, gave the room an illusion of cosiness—for a palace, that was.
He poured two cups of coffee. It was very strong, black and sugarless, almost chewy compared to the drink she was used to, and Becky wasn’t at all sure that she liked it. Luca, on the other hand, clearly relished the stuff, draining his cup in one gulp. ‘Carnival begins in earnest soon, and we have a great deal to do in preparation for it. But before we get down to business, I would like to sincerely apologise for my behaviour last night.’
‘Oh, please, there is no need...’
‘There is every need. I did not even think to ask if you were married, though I assumed you were not, else you would have mentioned it.’
‘And quite rightly too!’ Becky said indignantly. ‘What kind of wife would I be, to have encouraged you to—Not that I did kiss you, but...’
‘You did not encourage me,’ Luca interrupted, mercifully cutting her short. ‘I don’t know what possessed me.’
‘No more do I,’ Becky replied, her cheeks flaming. ‘Fortunately we both came to our senses. Despite appearances, I’m not that sort of woman.’
‘That much was obvious given what you told me last night. You left what I am sure could have been a very lucrative career on the stage precisely because you are not that sort of woman. I am extremely sorry if I gave you the impression that I am that sort of man however.’ Luca pushed his hair back from his brow, looking deeply uncomfortable. ‘You would be forgiven for thinking that I am just like all those others, seeking to take advantage of an innocent...’
‘But you didn’t, did you? Take advantage, I mean? And you could have,’ Becky said painfully. ‘The truth is, if you’d kissed me I doubt I’d have stopped you. But you didn’t. You’re not a bit like them. It didn’t even occur to me to compare you to the likes of them.’
‘Grazie.’
She was touched. He’d clearly been agonising over something that was just as much her fault as his. ‘I’m not an innocent, Luca,’ Becky said. ‘I’m not what you might call a loose woman, far from it, but I’m not a Cousin Rebecca either. I knew what I was doing.’
‘That is more than I did.’
She laughed, strangely relieved by this admission. ‘Shall we forget it ever happened?’
‘Easier said than done.’
‘Then why don’t we concentrate on the job in hand?’
His expression became immediately serious. ‘You are right. I will begin, if I may, with a short history lesson, for our city plays a pivotal role in the story. Venice, you see, was once a great city, one of the world’s oldest Republics, and one of the most beautiful. Her treasures were beyond compare.’
He began to pace the room, his hands in the pockets of his breeches, a deep frown drawing his brows together. ‘My family have always wielded power here. My father, Conte Guido del Pietro, along with his oldest friend, Don Massimo Sarti, were two of the most respected government officials in 1797 when our city surrendered to Napoleon and the Republic fell. Within a year, Napoleon sold Venice to Austria, but before he left, he ordered the city stripped of every asset. Our treasures, statues, paintings, papers, were torn down, packed away and shipped off to France. It was looting on an unprecedented scale.’
Luca dropped back into his chair, stretching his legs out in front of him. ‘But they did not steal everything. My father and Don Sarti acted swiftly to preserve some of our city’s heritage. Not the most famous works, that would have drawn unwelcome attention, but some of the oldest, most valuable, most sacred. And papers. The history of our city. All of these, they managed to spirit away before the French even knew they existed, to a hiding place only they knew of. It was a tremendous risk for them to take in order to preserve our city’s heritage. In the eyes of our oppressors, their actions would be deemed treasonable, and the penalty for treason is death.’
‘In England, the penalty for everything is death,’ Becky said, curling her lip. ‘Whether you steal a silk handkerchief or plot to kill the King.’