His Rags-To-Riches Contessa

‘It will be my pleasure to be your guide.’

He smiled at her, and she forgot what she was about to say. Sightseeing, she reminded herself, that was what they were talking about, but her eyes were locked on his, and all she could do was stare, mesmerised. She wondered what it would feel like to be kissed by him, and he must have read her thoughts, because there was a gleam in his eyes that made her think he wanted to kiss her too.

The table was in the way, but she was on her feet now, and so was he. He had closed the gap between them. She was lifting her face to his. And then he muttered something, shook his head, stepped back, and at the same time she regained her senses and moved away.

‘In the morning, after breakfast,’ Luca said, his voice gruff, ‘we will draw up a plan of action.’

‘In the morning,’ Becky repeated, trying to regulate her breathing, ‘I will assume the role of your demure cousin Rebecca.’

He looked as relieved as she felt. She wondered if he was thinking the same as her, that it was for the best, since cousins couldn’t kiss.

‘But in the meantime, you must be tired,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she agreed gratefully. ‘Very tired. I will bid you goodnight.’

He took her hand, bowing over it with a mocking little smile, pressing the lightest of kisses to her fingertips. ‘Buona notte, Becky.’

‘Goodnight?’ A slight nod, and she repeated the words, enjoying the soft, sensual sound of them. ‘Buona notte, Luca.’

Chapter Three

Becky woke with a start. Completely disoriented by the comforting, heavy weight of the bedclothes, the softness of the mattress, the serene silence, it took her a moment to realise she wasn’t in her cramped garret in the rookeries. The room was cool, but nothing like the bone-chilling cold of a London winter morning. There was an ember still smouldering in the fireplace that would take only a moment to relight. Picking up some kindling from the basket on the hearth, it occurred to her that this would be the maid’s task, so she put it back.

A narrow shaft of light slanted through the gap in the curtains, but it was enough to allow her to get to the window from the fireplace without bumping into any of the clutter of chairs and occasional tables that littered the room. Gazing out, the canal was shrouded in a blanket of silvery-grey mist. She caught her breath at the sheer beauty of the scene, leaning over the little Juliet balcony to get a better view of the rows of gondolas bobbing gently on the canal banks, to breathe in the salty air, to drink in the utter stillness of the scene, like a painting or a world where she was the only person alive.

Nothing had prepared her for this. In London, no matter the time of day, there was noise, there were people, there was constant bustle. London was a city painted in shades of grey most of the time, the air tasting of the smoke which formed a grimy hem around the cleanest of petticoats. In London, the sky didn’t change colour dramatically like this, clearing and lightening to the palest of blue as the sun rose. The fast-running Thames was a muddy brown colour. Before her eyes, the Grand Canal was becoming bluer and bluer, the sunlight painting bright strips of gold on top of the turquoise. It was magical, there was no other word for it.

She watched, fascinated, as the canal came to life, the first gondolas with a lantern in the prow cutting elegantly through the waters, the oar of the gondoliers barely stirring the surface. Only when a man appeared on a balcony opposite hers and blew an extravagant kiss did she recall that she was wearing a nightgown, that her hair was down, that she was displaying herself on the balcony of the Palazzo Pietro like—Well, not like Luca’s demure English relative.

Closing the windows, but leaving the curtains drawn back, Becky retreated back into the warm, luxurious nest of her four-poster bed. She had no idea whether she should ring for the maid. No idea whether breakfast would be brought to her, or whether she should seek it out. Reality, long overdue, came crashing down on her. She truly was in another world, one in which she felt completely and utterly out of her depth. Yet she had to convince everyone, from the army of staff at the palazzo, to everyone in ‘society’, whatever Luca meant by that, that she was Cousin Rebecca, born and bred to all this.

Flopping back on to the pillows, Becky tried to calm the rising tide of panic welling up inside her. She’d been on the stage almost before she could walk, and she was an accomplished actress. Cousin Rebecca was just another role she had to play. She could master it if she worked hard enough. So what, if she was living in a palace and not just acting in front of a painted backdrop, acting was acting, wasn’t it? And if she thought about it, which she had better do right now, wasn’t confidence the key to her success with her card tricks? People only see what they want to see. She’d said something of the sort to The Procurer, and it was true. There was no reason, none at all, why the servants here would look at her and see a card sharp or even just a common Londoner.

She wasn’t common; she was extraordinary. Luca had said so. Of course, she wasn’t really, it was just that he’d never met anyone like her. She wasn’t extraordinary, she was simply different, beyond his ken, as he was beyond hers. It would certainly explain the most unexpected end to the evening last night. Becky burrowed deeper under the covers, pulling the sheet over her burning face. What on earth had possessed her! Her only consolation was that Luca had seemed to be as shocked as she was by that inexplicable almost kiss. He could easily have taken advantage. She would not have resisted him, she was ashamed to admit. Thank heavens the pair of them had come to their senses in time. It must be that strangeness which drew them, two opposites attracted to each other like magnets. She’d simply have to work harder to resist, because the very last thing she wanted was to get burnt again.

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.’ Or indeed cheat while unwittingly playing cards with one of the King’s relatives.

‘My father,’ Luca said icily, ‘did not commit treason. Quite the reverse. It was a noble act born of patriotism. He preserved what belonged to Venice for Venice.’

Becky was about to point out that, whatever his motives, he had stolen the artefacts, but thought better of it. The man, in his son’s eyes at least, was obviously some sort of saint. ‘What was he planning on doing with all this treasure,’ she asked, ‘presuming he didn’t plan on keeping it buried for ever?’

‘They thought, my father and Don Sarti, that the Republic would be quickly restored, at which point they would return the treasures to the city. Sadly, they were mistaken. France gave Venice to Austria. Austria handed Venice back to France. Now, thanks to Wellington, we have lasting peace in Europe, and it looks like Venice will remain as it is, in the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, part of the Austrian empire once more.

‘Bear with me, Becky,’ Luca added with a sympathetic smile, ‘I can see you are wondering what this has to do with your presence here. All is about to become clear. You see, earlier this year my father came to the conclusion that the political situation was now stable enough to negotiate with the authorities for the restoration of the treasures on a no-questions-asked basis.’

Becky frowned. ‘Wouldn’t that be risky? Since he had committed treason, according to the law, I mean. Not that I meant to imply...’

‘No, you are right,’ Luca agreed. ‘It was a risk, but one worth taking, my father believed. For those who rule Venice now, it would be a very popular move, to have a hand in restoring what everyone believed lost. But it had been more than twenty years since the treasure had been hidden. Before he broached the idea with the powers that be, my father visited the hiding place, thinking to make a full inventory, only to find it gone. Stolen by the only other person who knew of its existence,’ Luca said grimly. ‘Don Sarti, his co-conspirator and best friend!’

‘Good heavens! But why? If Don Sarti’s motives were as noble as your father’s...’

‘They were, in the beginning, but it seems Don Sarti is in thrall to something which supersedes all other loyalties. Cards.’ Luca dug his hands into the deep pockets of his coat, frowning up at the cupid-strewn ceiling. ‘When my father confronted him, he confessed to having sold a few pieces each year to play at the ridotti, the private gaming hells which operate only during Carnival, hoping each time to recoup his losses.’

‘All gamblers believe their next big win is just a turn of the cards away,’ Becky said. ‘It is what keeps them coming back to the tables.’

‘I don’t understand it.’ Luca shook his head. ‘It is one thing to play with one’s own money, but to gamble the heritage of our city—Don Sarti knew he was committing a heinous crime. At first, my father thought that everything was lost, but Don Sarti told him he had only recently sold the bulk of the treasure on the black market with the intention of playing deep at the next Carnival, hoping to win double, treble his total losses. He swore it was his intention to gift his winnings back to the city.’

Luca cursed viciously under his breath. ‘Mi scusi, it is difficult for me to talk about this without becoming enraged. The perfidy of the man! To attempt to justify his behaviour, to think that he could atone for the loss of irreplaceable artefacts. My father could not believe he had fallen so low.’

‘I think,’ Becky said tentatively, ‘that he probably believed what he said. I’ve come across men like Don Sarti. It is a madness that grips them. They will beg, steal or borrow to ensure another turn of the cards, another roll of the dice. As long as they have a stake, they will play.’ She had always tried to avoid playing against such pathetic creatures. The memory of her time at the tables in the hells was shameful, tinged as it was with the memory of how she had been persuaded to play there in the first place, but that experience was precisely what Luca was paying for. ‘I presume,’ she said to him, ‘that Don Sarti refused to surrender the money into your father’s keeping?’

‘You presume correctly. My father informed him in no uncertain terms that he would do everything in his power to stop him, going so far as to say that he would make public the story of what they had done, risking his own freedom and his reputation, if Don Sarti did not hand over his ill-gotten gains. The treasure was gone, but what money was left belonged to Venice. Whether or not he would have carried out his threat I will never know, for Don Sarti decided not to take the risk.’

‘That was why he had him killed?’ Becky whispered, appalled. ‘Oh, Luca, that’s dreadful.’

‘Si.’ He was pale, his eyes dark with pain, his hands clenched so tightly into fists that his knuckles were white. ‘Fortunately for me, unfortunately for Don Sarti, my father wrote to me in desperation as soon as he returned home from that fateful interview, urging me to return to Venice as soon as possible.’

‘So that’s how you know!’ Becky exclaimed, ‘I did wonder...’

‘But no. I didn’t receive the letter. Instead, as I told you yesterday, the summons which reached me was from my mother, informing me that my father had died. He had been dead almost two months by the time I arrived in Venice, in June. As far as I knew, my father had drowned, slipping on the steps of the palazzo in the early hours. He was the worse for wine, so the gondolier claimed, and there was a thick fog when it happened. Though the alarm was raised, help arrived too late to save him. When his body was finally pulled from the canal, he had been dead for some hours.’

‘How tragic,’ Becky said, aware of the inadequacy of her words.

Luca nodded grimly. ‘The summons my father sent finally reached me here in July, having followed in my wake from Venice to London to Plymouth to Glasgow and back. You can imagine how guilty I felt, knowing that I had arrived far too late. He had never asked me for help before, and I had failed him.’

Becky swallowed a lump in her throat. ‘But even if you had received the letter telling you of Don Sarti’s treachery...’

‘Ah, no, that letter contained no details, save to bid my urgent return. My father would not risk his post being intercepted. I was not exaggerating when I said there are spies everywhere. No, there was but one clue in that letter. My father said that he had acquired a new history of the Royal Navy, and looked forward to my thoughts on the volume. It was there, in that book in the library, that he had placed the papers relating the whole sorry affair, exactly as I have told you.’

‘What about your mother?’

‘She knew nothing, until I showed her the letter. She was almost as shocked as I. My father had been preoccupied in the weeks before he died, a delicate matter of city business, he told her, but nothing more. She didn’t even know he had summoned me home.’

Luca wandered over to the window, to gaze out at the narrow canal. Becky joined him. The houses opposite looked almost close enough to touch. ‘It’s a big leap,’ she said, ‘from learning that your father’s been betrayed by his best friend, to assuming the best friend has had him killed.’

‘It was only when I questioned the palace gondoliers and discovered that both of them had been suddenly taken ill that day, forcing my father to use a hired gondola, that I began to question events. I can find no trace of the gondolier described by Brunetti. And then there was the timing. It was, according to my major-domo, almost three in the morning when the gondolier roused the palazzo to tell them my father had fallen in, yet my father left the palazzo where he had been dining with friends at just after eleven.’

‘So you think that the gondolier waited to make certain that he was drowned?’

‘I don’t think he was one of our Venetian gondoliers at all. They are a tight-knit group of men, Becky. Hard-working and honest. If this man who brought my father back had been one of them, they would have known who he was.’

‘You think he was actually an assassin hired by Don Sarti and sent to silence your father?’

‘My father had threatened to expose him. Don Sarti would have been desperate to avoid that at all costs. Taking account of all the circumstances, I think it is almost certain, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid I do. Is there no way you can bring him to justice?’

‘If by that you mean getting the authorities involved, then no. I have no tangible proof of murder, and the only evidence that the treasure was hidden is my father’s letter which, if it was made public, would destroy his reputation. I have no option but to find some other way to hold Don Sarti to account. If my father had been less honourable, if he had not tried to prevent Don Sarti from losing everything they had tried to protect, then he would still be alive today.’ Luca took a shuddering breath. ‘If I had received that letter in time, perhaps he would be alive still.’

‘You can’t think that way,’ Becky said fervently. ‘Even if you had received the letter earlier, you still wouldn’t have returned to Venice in time to prevent your father’s murder, would you?’ Which was no doubt true, but for Luca, she understood, quite irrelevant. He would continue to torture himself with guilt until he had found a way to atone. Finally, she understood his plan. ‘You can’t bring him back,’ she said, ‘but you can prevent Don Sarti squandering Venice’s money, just as your father wished, is that it? You want me to win it back?’

‘Yes.’ Luca let out a long, heartfelt sigh. ‘That is my plan exactly. I want to reclaim the money for my city, and I want to see Don Sarti destroyed in the process. I want to use his vice against him. We will turn the tables on him, quite literally. We will indulge this passion of his until he has returned everything he took from the city. I have to do this, Becky. Per amor del cielo, I have no choice. Until it is done, my life is not my own.’