Bronwyn Scott – Regency Surrender: Ruthless Rakes: Rake Most Likely to Seduce / Rake Most Likely to Sin (страница 16)

That was the last thing he wanted to do. The longer he was with Gianna, the further from sanity he slipped, and admittedly, he didn’t have the world’s tightest grasp on it to begin with. He needed distance and the card game would provide it. Just being in close proximity with her as he was now, breathing in the herbal scents of her toilet, rosemary and sage with a hint of lavender beneath, was enough to throw caution to the proverbial winds. Having already sat through a dinner, staring at her expressive face, watching her caress the pearl pendant at her throat, he thought caution might as well pack up and leave. It didn’t stand a chance.

Ignoring caution was by no means a rare occurrence for him, he was a risk-taker by nature and by trade, after all. Caution spelled doom. The moment a gambler started being cautious was the moment he lost. But his risks were calculated. Most of the time. He’d gone a little berserk at the Palio in Siena for a good cause, but that could not be the case tonight. He needed his wits. An idea started to form, his mind ran the calculations. His hand released the wardrobe door. ‘All right, we’ll go to the concert.’

He stepped back, distancing himself from the smell of her, the heat of her, watching her as she gathered her things. Gianna flirted and enticed for all the wrong reasons. He wasn’t about to take her to bed under those auspices no matter how tempting she was. As long as she used sex as a weapon, he had to be vigilant for both of them even if his body would prefer otherwise. Before that could happen, he needed her to recognise the power of the weapon she wielded. What would she do if he actually took her up on her offers? There might be a lesson for her in that. The sooner she learned it the better.

Still, Nolan was honest enough to admit that in the past twenty-four hours, Gianna had managed to get him to act not out of logic but out of emotion, not once, but three times. He was helping her because he empathised with her, not because there was any logical reason to do so. There was nothing logical about compassion. As long as he could recognise that, perhaps he wasn’t as far gone as he feared.

Tonight, he would convince her she didn’t want to be anywhere near him and that would buy him all the freedom he needed to keep his distance. He’d invest his time now for freedom tomorrow. If his plan went well, he wouldn’t need to see her at all tomorrow, except for the masquerade. And if that went well, she’d be gone the day after, out of his life, just another adventure that had come and gone. He merely needed to survive the next forty-eight hours. But he was good at surviving. He’d been doing it for years.

* * *

Downstairs in the lobby, Nolan hired a gondola to take them across the canal to San Giorgio Maggiore and whisked Gianna outside into the dark. The fewer people who saw her the better. There was a wide hood on her cloak, but Nolan encouraged her to leave it down. Hiding her face only sent the message that they didn’t want anyone to recognise her. Mystery bred attention.

‘Get in and sit down. No rocking the boat this time,’ he scolded her teasingly as he handed her in. ‘I have no desire for a swim tonight.’ He gave the gondolier their direction and ducked under the felze, taking his seat beside her as the boat pushed away from the pier.

‘Thank you.’ Gianna’s gloved hand squeezed his in friendly appreciation where it lay on his leg. It was an honest and spontaneous gesture devoid of her more sensual flirtations.

Nolan chuckled. ‘Oh, no, you’re thanking me again. That means you want something.’

‘It does not,’ she protested with a small bit of outrage and a large bit of defensiveness.

‘Yes, it does,’ Nolan insisted with a laugh, enjoying this particular argument. He covered her hand with his. ‘The first time you thanked me, you wanted to know why I was being nice to you. The second time you thanked me was followed up with a request to have me burgle your father’s home. So, you’ll have to excuse me if I’m a little suspicious.’

‘Stepfather,’ she interjected firmly. ‘I don’t know who my real father is, but it’s not the count.’

Touchy subject, that. But the count was also a subject about which Nolan needed, wanted, to know more. He was going to burgle the man’s house, he wanted to know what he was up against. And of course, there was the issue of knowing her. If he wanted to truly know Gianna, he had to know her past. Who was Gianna Minotti? That was the question that concerned him most as the gondola glided over the canal.

Nolan moved his thumb the length of her hand in a slow caress through the leather of their gloves. ‘And your mother? Where is she in all this?’ A low, quiet voice, the soothing motion of his thumb, the privacy of the gondola all made for a most intimate atmosphere conducive to sharing secrets, and he would take advantage.

She looked down at their hands, her voice quiet. ‘My mother has been dead these last five years.’

She’d been alone with only the count to guide her into adulthood. She’d been seventeen? Sixteen, maybe? On the verge of being presented to society. What sort of effort or commitment would the count have made on her behalf? Nolan had no sisters, but he had cousins and he’d watched them prepare for their débuts. Mothers were essential. What did fathers know of gowns and parties and navigating society when one was a young girl? Boys simply threw themselves on society, their wildness, their wilfulness, their mistakes tolerated as the sowing of oats. But girls had no such luxury. One mistake was fatal, like go risotto.

‘Do you have any aunts nearby?’ He knew before she answered that she did not. She would not have stayed with the count otherwise. But he was unprepared for the leashed vehemence in her response.

‘My mother had no friends, not females friends at any rate. She was a high-class courtesan who managed to marry a nobleman before her looks went. So, no, I don’t have any aunts, or any of the extended family Italians pride themselves on. The count does, of course, but there is no use in me accessing any of them even if they would acknowledge me.’

‘There is just you?’ Nolan traced circles on the back of her hand, feeling some of the tension go out of her. That gave rise to innumerable scenarios. A young woman alone, under the care of a guardian who had no compelling reason to look out for her best interests. The situation was ripe for all nature of scandal and the abuse of power. But it wouldn’t last for ever, would it? Nolan thought about majorities and coming of age. ‘At some point, you will outgrow the count’s power. Is that what the other night was about?’

‘He didn’t think he’d lose. He meant only to use the wager as leverage to blackmail me into marriage.’ Her voice was quiet.

‘With whom?’ A suspicion started to lay down roots in his mind. If she came of age the count would no longer have control over her. To some that would be a boon, a welcomed burden removed. Nolan would have thought the count would be overjoyed to be free of the obligation. Unless the count didn’t want to lose control of her.

‘Preferably with him,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘You do see why I can’t go back to him now. Going back would be a rather permanent arrangement.’ Of course it would be. She had something the count wanted and every man and legal system in Europe knew the best way to control a woman and her property was through marriage.

‘What is the item we’re going to get tomorrow night?’ It must be of great value if she’d risk walking back into the count’s house. He’d seen her shudder earlier. Now he better understood what going back meant to her. It must also be the item the count wished to control through her.

‘My mother’s jewel case,’ she said simply. Too simply. Nolan stopped caressing her hand. He didn’t quite believe her. She’d told him more in this boat ride across the canal than she’d told him all day and while the atmosphere certainly prompted confidences, he had to wonder about the last. He didn’t doubt that it wasn’t true, only that the truth wasn’t quite complete. She was still hiding something.

The gondola bumped against the pier at San Giorgio Maggiore and Nolan handed her out, keeping a hand at her back as they made their way into the church. The crowd was negligible. There were grander festivities all over Venice tonight. A few folding chairs had been set out and they found two on the far side of the aisle where they’d be out of the direct light. All the better for the lesson he wanted to teach.

He’d learned a great deal about this woman tonight, but he wasn’t certain it had advanced his plan of convincing her how much distance she needed to keep from him. If anything, it had done the opposite and drawn him closer. A woman’s physical beauty was something he’d disciplined himself to understand as a superficial characteristic and if need be to resist. But physical attractiveness coupled with a sharp intelligence that sparred with his wit, that defended her secrets—well, that was nigh on irresistible. It didn’t help that his body was so keen on remembering the way her hands had felt and less keen on remembering why she’d done it. She’d wanted him distracted. Her gamble had been one-part genius and two-parts desperation. As such, it had and hadn’t worked. He might have stopped her from seducing him, but her strategy had also succeeded in stopping the conversation.