‘You arrived in Venice with no idea how you were going to continue your journey and had to beg the Ambassador to arrange your transport home! How much more damned foolish can one woman get!’
‘I was not foolish!’ Athena fired up. ‘Rachel needed my support. She was in such distress. Only someone with a heart of stone would have refused to help her.’
‘Another foolish wench. Has she any idea how much her presence here may hinder her husband’s career?’ Gabriel said derisively.
‘She didn’t come to hinder his career, she came to save herself from her lech of a brother-in-law! If her husband had left her better provided for, she wouldn’t have needed to come to Venice. Men always think they know best. They don’t know anything.’
‘What were you doing in the convent?’ Gabriel asked.
‘That’s where I ended up after I ran away from Samuel the second time,’ said Athena.
‘You ran away? When?’
‘Three weeks after the wedding.’
‘Three weeks!’ Gabriel swore. ‘If you had the resolution to run away then, why not earlier?’
‘Because earlier I didn’t know—’ Athena caught herself up before she revealed that it was only after Gabriel had set off for Turkey that she’d run from Samuel. ‘Circumstances changed,’ she said instead. ‘There was no longer any risk involved if I left him. My mother’s sister lived in exile in France. Her husband was a royalist who fought for Charles at Worcester. He was hanged when the Roundheads captured him after the battle. I went to her.’
‘To France? All on your own?’ Gabriel’s voice was redolent with scepticism.
‘Yes! I cut off my hair, dyed it brown and pretended to be a youth,’ Athena declared proudly. ‘I got all the way to my aunt’s without anyone seeing through my disguise.’
Gabriel looked at her in disbelief, his eyes resting on the womanly curve of her breasts.
‘I bound them and wore baggy clothes,’ Athena said impatiently. ‘And I practised walking like a cocky youth. I based my impersonation on you. People only see what they expect to see.’
Gabriel raised his eyebrows. ‘In my experience cocky youths usually walk straight into trouble in unfamiliar surroundings,’ he said drily.
‘Hmm. Well,’ Athena muttered, discomfited. ‘After certain incidents I concluded, upon reflection, that a more modest bearing might be advisable. But I reached my destination quite safely. I am not the only woman who has chosen the protection of male clothing when travelling,’ she pointed out.
‘And what happened when you reached your aunt?’
‘We decided, Aunt Eleanor and I, that the English Convent in Bruges would be the safest place for me to hide. One of her childhood friends is the Abbess there. She took me to the convent early in 1659 and I stayed until Rachel needed a companion on her journey here.’
‘Seven years in a convent,’ Gabriel mused, his expression unreadable as he looked her up and down. ‘You are certainly not dressed like a nun.’
‘I wasn’t a nun, I was a guest of the convent.’
‘Hardly a charitable case, by the look of you.’
‘My aunt made donations to the convent. But I also worked for them in the infirmary and sometimes the gardens,’ Athena said. ‘And I made my lace.’ She touched her bodice. ‘It fetches a good price, you know.’
‘Yes.’ His eyes raked her face. ‘It is a very plausible story,’ he said.
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘I reserve judgement.’
‘You have no right to judge me!’ Athena fumed.
‘It was judgement that separated the wise from the foolish virgins.’
‘It was common sense and foresight,’ Athena shot back.
‘Both of which you completely lack if this latest exploit is any indication.’
‘And you’ve lost your compassion. And your gallantry,’ she added, as an afterthought. ‘How could you treat me so rudely at dinner?’
‘Very easily.’ He moved suddenly, startling her into huddling back into her seat, but all he did was twitch apart the curtains a couple of inches to speak to the gondolier standing in front of the small cabin.
‘Oh, my God, they heard us?’ she whispered in horror, as Gabriel sat back again.
‘They don’t speak English,’ he replied indifferently.
‘What did you say to him?’ Athena still kept her voice lowered.
‘I ordered them to take us back to the embassy.’
‘Oh.’ Athena experienced a strange sense of anticlimax. ‘Then what?’
‘You may retire to your quarters and I will retire to mine.’
‘That’s it?’
‘What else would you prefer to do?’ His eyes glittered in the lantern light.
Athena clutched defensively at her bodice and realised she was still unlaced. ‘I can’t walk into the embassy like this!’ she gasped.
‘I could carry you in,’ he offered.
‘Certainly not!’ She bit her lip as she considered her options. ‘You may do me up,’ she decided, ‘but mind you touch nothing but the points and my bodice!’
‘You want me to do the work of a lady’s maid?’ he said. ‘For what hire?’
‘Nothing. You shouldn’t have undone me in the first place.’
‘Turn around,’ he commanded.
She did so, looking warily over her shoulder to see what he would do.
‘So suspicious,’ he mocked her.
‘No more than you.’ She held her breath as he pulled on the laces. ‘Not too tight. The bone is broken,’ she reminded him.
She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed that he did exactly as she’d asked. Despite everything, some small part of her still yearned for his caresses.
‘There. You may return to the embassy as respectably dressed as you left it,’ he said.
‘What did he do to you?’ Athena’s maid demanded the instant she entered her room.
‘Nothing.’ Athena had known there was little chance her interlude with Gabriel would go unnoticed, at least by Martha. Her maid had been given a pallet bed in Athena’s chamber.
Martha sniffed disbelievingly. ‘Richard saw him carry you off the steps. He said you didn’t even struggle.’
Richard was the manservant Rachel Beresford had brought with her from England. Martha hadn’t wanted to come to Venice, but she’d been partially consoled for the inconvenience of the trip by the friendship she’d struck up with Richard.
‘Did he?’ Athena sat down on a stool and brushed her hair wearily back from her face. It was hard to dredge up answers to satisfy Martha when she had so many unanswered questions of her own whirling in her mind.
‘I didn’t struggle because there was no point,’ she said. ‘Do you suppose anyone in this place would gainsay Lord Halross?’
‘No,’ Martha admitted grudgingly. ‘He has them all in thrall. And he’s in better standing with the Venetians than the Ambassador, by what I hear. Why did he