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She laughed, deep in her chest. He felt the sound of it in his bones. She pushed a little away so they could see each other better. “I want you back.”

“I’d better set about seducing you.”

“Oh, yes.”

She was playing with his hair, drawing it through her fingers. An ache spread from his groin and filled his whole body. He was going to die of this. Practical matters. Deal with practical matters. “I need to take my clothes off but I don’t want to let go of you.”

“A problem.” Her face was bright with laughter. Lit from inside with it. Dancing with it. “I’ll help.”

She wriggled to a more comfortable position. Torment. He was rigid for her, hard and heavy with wanting her. He was going to . . .

No. He had himself under control. Deep breath. Another deep breath. “Don’t move. Give me a minute.”

“I will give you an entire night.” Her hands went to his cravat. She worked on that, her eyes downcast, absorbed in drawing the knot apart. “We’re in no hurry.”

His cock was in a hurry.

She wasn’t naked, but she might as well have been. The shift showed her breasts as if she were naked. He didn't need years of experience to tell him she was lovely.

I can live through this. He’d be inside her in a minute. Two minutes. Ten minutes. A century. “You have very beautiful breasts. I’ve seen many breasts and those are a fine example.” He was babbling.

So he held her shoulders, thin shoulders all bone and soft skin, and a body filled with fire. Fire like the first fire taken from the hand of Prometheus, clean, vital, unending. That was what he felt under her skin, inside her, where his hands rested on her shoulders.

She unwound the cravat from his neck and pulled it away, long and long, and tossed it over her shoulder. She didn’t look to see where it landed. She said, “You’re worried. You don’t have to be worried. I’m not a virgin.”

“That’s good.” His voice was hoarse. Thank God there weren’t two virgins in this bed.

“There were two men, back home in Brodemere. One, when I was seventeen. The other—”

“Doesn’t matter.” Another thought came, breaking through the madness that filled his brain. “Unless I have to kill somebody.” His hands tightened. “I can do it next week. Just tell me who.”

“You don’t have to kill anybody. They were fine men. I liked lying with them. It was . . . pleasant.”

“Pleasant. Good. I’m glad. Let me get some of this clothing off me.”

Pleasant wasn’t good. He’d have to do better than pleasant. His hands didn’t quite shake when he unbuttoned his vest, but they weren’t steady either. He pulled his arms from jacket and vest together and tossed them on the floor beside the bed. He managed to do that without dislodging Cami.

She said, “I think I would have liked lovemaking more if my lovers had not had to hurry so much. They always worried we might be caught.”

Sounds like a couple of selfish bastards. “I’ll try to go slow.” His shirt now. He’d get out of his shirt. He undid the buttons at the collar. “We might be caught. You have a house full of cousins. Uncles. Aunts.”

“I locked the door and wedged paper in so it won’t open. If anyone comes you can flee through the window as if this were a bad play.”

She was teasing him. Laughing. Everything that was Cami, all her spirit, all her courage, all her wild embrace of life, was under his hands.

He fell into her grin. He wanted that on canvas. He wanted everything of her. Everything of Cami. Wanted to draw it, taste it, see it again and again. He was caught by the planes of her face. He ran his fingertips there and there as if he were light falling on her.

She said, “Love me.”

He held her hips and pressed her down onto the raging hunger of his cock and kissed her. On the soft, pulsing temples, on her cheeks, under the curve of her throat.

She was the one to shudder now. The one to breathe faster.

Not her mouth. Not yet. That would have undone him.

He licked the curve of her ear. Took her earlobe and bit down on it and let himself drown in madness.

Forty-one

Seize the moment.

A BALDONI SAYING

They sat in rush-bottomed chairs in the kitchen in front of the long hearth—two old people, brother and sister. They were rich, back in Tuscany, in land, farms, and vineyards. Rich in power, which was more important.

If they chose to sit in the kitchen with their feet at the fire, if they dabbled in fraud and bamboozlement, if they raised a pack of noisy, larcenous grandchildren in London or, barefoot, in the big villa in Tuscany, it was because a wise man does not forget his roots.

“The boys”—Giomar, Tonio, and Alessandro—had eaten hugely, downed a pitcher of red wine between them, and gone off to bed.

Bernardo drank hot watered brandy. Fortunata, a tisane of mint and cloves from a flowered teacup. “He’s upstairs now,” she said.

“Admirably silent.” They’d heard no sound when he entered the window on the floor above. Bernardo cradled the terra-cotta cup between his palms. “An Italian would serve as well, a family from Piedmont or Sardinia. One of the Rossi in Milan. We could find someone who would not meddle in politics.”

“A milksop.”

“He would be more welcome.”

“Not to Sara.” Fortunata was very sure. Two brown dogs sat at her feet, alert but silent, knowing there was a stranger upstairs, sensing he was to be tolerated, intrigued by this.

“To give her to someone so far from home, on this cold island, among the English . . .” Bernardo said what he thought of the English with the sweep of one hand.

“It is familiar to her. Confess, Bernardo, you agree with me. In all ways, she’s better off with an Englishman who will command some respect and keep her safe, but who will play no politics in Italy.”

“Or play only to British interests.”

“Which are our interests,” Fortunata said comfortably, “in the long run. They have no imperial ambitions in Italy. Next year or in ten years or thirty, this man or his sons will help us oust the French and the Austrians from Italy. He has made his start with his band of killers and idealists in the mountains. We will shine in the luster of his exploits when it becomes known the daughter of the house of Baldoni married Il Gatto Grigio.”

They sat, listening to the still of midnight and the small sounds of an old house on a cool night. They were not so old they could not remember what a man and woman would do in bed.

“Is he worthy of Cesare’s grandchild?” Bernardo looked into the cup he held. “We know nothing of his family, or even if he has one. I will investigate.”

“Do so. Though it would be a pleasure to acquire a spouse for the family who does not come with a horde of rapacious relatives.”

Bernardo set his cup on his knee and looked into the fire. “He is a warrior. A subtle, cunning man. Even-tempered. Ruthless when necessary.”

“Almost a Baldoni.”

Bernardo smiled. “Almost a Baldoni.”

Forty-two

If one is not honest in bed, one is honest nowhere.

A BALDONI SAYING

Cami wanted him. Wanted him wholly, all the many virtues and lethalities of him. All of the man.

He was admirable in so many ways. There are sorts and degrees of adventurers. Some men were too wise to break and enter a dwelling inhabited by armed Baldoni. Pax took this risk in his usual imperturbable way.

She touched his hair where it fell over his forehead and the curve of his eyebrow, the sharp bone at the top of his cheek, wanting to memorize the bones beneath his skin. Or deeper than that—wanting to know the thoughts in his mind.

He said, “We have time. Time to taste each other.”