The Stargazer (13 page)

Surveying the wreck of their storage space, Ian had to agree with Crispin. Because of the postponement of the munitions shipment to England, the Arboretti warehouse had been full to capacity of highly combustible ammunition. That quantity of incendiary matter should have caused an explosion powerful enough to level the entire arsenal, not to mention knock down the walls of the warehouse. But the front wall of the building was intact, and the adjoining wall was still partially standing.

Ian moved to inspect the two remaining walls from the inside, where he was joined by Tristan and Miles. He bent to study the black patterns left by the heat of the explosion, looking for clues to its cause and, even more, its partial failure. There were only two possible explanations for the latter. Either, the ammunition had somehow lost its potency, by exposure to some disabling agent; or there had been less of it in the warehouse than they had thought. While Ian had his professional pride and would not like to think that his product was less than perfect, he preferred the first solution to the second because the implications were not as troubling. The Arboretti were meticulous in their bookkeeping, especially when dealing with particularly precious or particularly dangerous commodities. Gunpowder being both of those, Ian oversaw the accounting for it himself. If the supply in the warehouse had been smaller than his records indicated, there could only be one explanation, judging from the explosion’s results: someone had stolen more than half of it, about seven hundred tons.

This was the unfortunate conclusion he had formed by the time he stood up again. When, jaw set, he announced it to the other Arboretti, there was a battery of questions. The most obvious, who was responsible? was followed by the most perplexing: why steal only part of the supply and leave the rest to explode? Why not make off with all of it? Because it was located on official Venetian property, the Arboretti were not allowed to employ their own guard for the warehouse and had to rely instead on the protection of the army. Tristan and Miles related their unsuccessful attempts to locate anyone who had seen anything strange around the building earlier that day, and Sebastian concurred. Even with an army of men, there was only the slimmest chance that the Arboretti would be able to find anyone who had seen anything and had not been paid off to keep his mouth shut.

“We do have one clue.” Miles cocked his head to one side and pushed his hair out of his face. “The fact that they did not take all the gunpowder. Perhaps they only had a market for a small quantity of it and had no place to store it, so only took what they could sell.”

“Or maybe they got interrupted,” Sebastian offered, his blue eyes glowing with anger at the insult to the Arboretti.

“Or maybe they only had a small boat.” Tristan’s comment, as usual, brought unwilling smiles to at least four of the cousin’s lips.

Ian’s forehead was wrinkled with concentration. “There is another explanation which does not require a stoop toward the comic. What if someone intended there to be an explosion? That would explain why some of the gunpowder was left behind, and also suggests a direction of inquiry. If we assume the explosion was premeditated, then we must assume that whoever did it bears some grudge toward the Arboretti.”

Tristan, unfazed by Ian’s dismissal of his earlier sally, looked skeptical and became uncharacteristically serious. “Under those circumstances, why take any of the gunpowder at all? Surely the larger the explosion, the more harm done to our operations.”

“While a larger explosion might have caused more buildings to tumble, I for one am not sure it could damage our reputation any worse than this one will.” Crispin’s limpid blue eyes looked melancholy “But what if whoever did this knew that, and therefore saw no harm in selling off a little of the gunpowder on the underground market, as Miles suggested. That way, in a single stroke, they could ruin us and make a profit.”

“Let us hope so,” Ian spoke solemnly, “because the only other possibility is that they have plans for another explosion. And I would hazard that we are the likely targets.”

Had it not been for the people still milling about the smoldering remains of the buildings near them, the Arboretti would now have been standing in absolute silence. The prospect of someone harboring the desire to destroy them was chilling, especially while they stood surrounded by a demonstration of the lengths to which that person would go. When they turned as a body and made toward the exit of the arsenal, even Tristan would have been hardpressed to conjure a smile out of any of them. Sebastian, whose keen investigative instincts and ability to extract information from anyone or anything made him the natural choice to head the investigation, looked grimmest of all.

It felt as though they had been inside for days, but consulting his pocket watch, Ian saw it had been only four hours. There were no visible fires anywhere, and two crews had resumed their work on partially finished ships. Passing through the brick pillars of the entry, the exhausted Arboretti scattered, each in search of his gondola and, eventually, a midmorning nap. All except Ian. Refusing Crispin’s offer of a ride home, he directed his steps toward the Church of Santa Maria. The time had come, Ian decided, to wring Bianca’s neck.

It looked as if all the chaos previously taking place around the arsenal had been transplanted onto the porch of the church. The scene revealed to him as his eyes adjusted was horrible, blood all over, bodies littered everywhere. Ian wove his way through the maze of patients, narrowly avoiding a run-in with a ferocious-looking nun carrying a large tray of linen bandages. It was not until he had entered the church proper that he could identify the lithe figure with the large bandage on her head. The sight of her there, injured and barefoot, diminished the relish he had been feeling at the prospect of wringing her neck, but only slightly.

He walked up behind her and waited while she finished changing a dressing on the arm of a burly sailor. As she stood, he swung her around toward him. Her look of melting softness was met by his hard gray eyes, and she began to tremble in fear. At least, that was how Ian had concocted the scenario in his mind. But instead of melting softness, or even relief, the expression in her eyes was one of fury.

“Unhand me, d’Aosto.” Ian was even more startled by her use of his title than by the failure of his scheme. He let his hand fall, wondering if that was the cause of her strange response, and waited for her to explain herself.

But she didn’t. As he watched, she turned and walked away. It was too much to bear, even for the rational, controlled man Ian knew himself to be. This time, he not only grabbed her but, crushing her against his body, lifted her off the ground. Patients, nuns, and his uncles watched in disbelief as he carried the kicking, screaming, squirming figure out of the church. He did not stop until he had found one of his gondolas and stuffed Bianca inside the enclosed cabin. As he hastily gave orders for them to make off, foiling Bianca’s attempts to leap ashore through the door by firmly grasping her ankles, he saw his uncles rush out onto the porch of the church in concern.

“Do you know how to swim?” Ian asked her when they were under way. He refused to loosen his grip on her legs until she admitted that she couldn’t, but was tempted to tighten it again when she added that she would rather drown in the Grand Canal trying than share a gondola with a marauding kidnapper like him.

“At least,” Ian’s voice was cold as he spitefully hurled the word at her, “I am not a murderer.”

“Really, my lord?” Her voice was even colder. “No one died in that explosion? My most recent tally was twenty-five. That is about four people for every one of you Arboretti.”

The last word was spoken with such contempt that Ian’s insides curdled. Then he remembered the theory he had himself espoused less than an hour before and regarded her quizzically. She
had
stealthily left his house at the crack of dawn, but if she had been planning the explosion, it was unlikely that she would have either left a note saying where she had gone or remained at the scene of the crime. And yet, those two elements provided her with a perfect cover. Before he could stop himself, suspicion had again overtaken his powers of reason. “You hate us, don’t you? You started that explosion yourself to ruin us.”

Ian finally got the satisfaction of seeing Bianca tremble, but not with fear. Rage swept through her, a rage stronger than any she had ever felt, and the only thing that kept her from assaulting the man in front of her was that her hands were shaking so much she wasn’t sure she could hit him. She took three quick breaths and gave him the most glacial look she was capable of.

“I never would have guessed you could be so vile. You would worm your way out of your responsibility for this horrific disaster by blaming me? If I am the miscreant you seem so eager to cast me as, why would ruining the Arboretti have to be my goal? Why not the sheer pleasure of mending bashed skulls and listening to the agonized screams of burned children for hours on end?”

Ian ignored her sarcasm, already sorry that he had given vent to his anger, but damned if he was going to admit it. Instead, he turned her questions around. “What do you mean my ‘responsibility’? Surely even you don’t think I would set fire to my own warehouse?”

“No, my lord, I am not daft. But you, who know so well the dangerous potential of the gunpowder you manufacture, decided to store it in the center of the most densely populated part of the city. How could you be so negligent, so careless about the lives of other people? Don’t tell me that with your vaunted intellect, you never thought about it. Don’t tell me that the convenience of having your stores so close by blinded you to the murderous danger you created. Even a woman could see that a disaster like this was inevitable.”

When Ian did not respond, she railed on. “Would you store this volatile substance in your own house? Would you?”

“No, of course not. The city would not allow it. You know that explosives of all kinds are prohibited in our quarter of Venice.”

“Why are the lives of some of Venice’s inhabitants more valuable than the lives of others? Why does wealthy Widow Falentini deserve protection, while the widows of the men who build and fight for the Republic deserve nothing?”

Ian was at a loss how to respond. She was absolutely right, he was culpable because of his sheer lack of consideration. His culpability, however, was not the issue he had planned to discuss, he remembered with relief. Leaning back into the gold velvet cushions that lined the enclosed cabin of the gondola, he strove to assume an attitude of aloofness as he moved to change the topic. “I fear that when you became party to a murder, you forfeited your right to judge the behavior of others. Neither my conduct nor the conduct of the city of Venice are subject to your censure,
carissima.
” The sarcasm was back with added force, an effective diversion. “Your behavior, however, that is a worthy topic of discussion. What made you think you could just caper off this morning, without asking for permission, without taking an appropriate guard? Surely you can’t pretend there was no one on hand, as you had so coyly coerced me into sharing your bed with you. Or perhaps you thought that after last night you could bend me to your will?”

The throbbing pain in her head, the scratchiness in her throat, the exhaustion in every corner of her body, were nothing compared to the complete despair that then took hold of Bianca. Ian’s accusations about their previous night’s intimacy stung her far more than all of his other allegations about her character. She harbored no illusions that it had been as special to Ian as it had been to her, but to hear it reduced to the level of petty manipulation was too much. She had been honest with him, she had given herself to him, willingly and entirely. And he had taken her, without any sign of restraint, whispering hot words, compliments, endearments, at the height of his pleasure. How could he pursue his delusions about her, even after that?

When she spoke, her voice was calm and measured, betraying none of her inner torment. “In the space of ten hours, my lord, I have lost my virginity, miraculously delivered a baby, been buried under a collapsed building, set up a hospital, bandaged two hundred burns, set fifty broken bones, removed a burst appendix, and sewed a leg back on a young girl’s doll. While I am flattered at your conception of my capacities, I’m afraid I cannot also take credit for having maliciously seduced you. Not only do I not know how, I simply did not have time.”

She sighed and went on. “As for leaving your house without permission or a guard, I was not aware either were needed. And even if I had known, I probably would have neglected it because I departed in such a rush. Had I been delayed even another five minutes, a woman and her baby would have died. Would you really put your rules before their lives? Really?”

There was neither challenge nor malice in her voice when Bianca asked the question, just curiosity. Nor did her gaze, leveled squarely and openly at Ian, contain anything to make him defensive. In the absence of her hostility, he admitted to himself that he had overstepped a boundary, accusing her of orchestrating a seduction he had himself spent hours planning. What he would have called anger only minutes before, he now recognized as a messy mixture of emotions, remorse, uncertainty, despair, confusion, pain. There was of course also some anger, but the emotion most prominently filling his breast at that moment was relief, relief that she was safe, relief that she had not abandoned him. Or rather, he corrected himself hastily, that she had not escaped.

“You will not leave that way again.” Ian stated it, but Bianca chose to interpret it as a question.

“I cannot make that promise, my lord. Perhaps if you could explain what right you have to ask me for an accounting of my movements?”

“Even if I did not have the right of the law on my side—which, as your betrothed, I do—it would be obvious to the greenest observer that you are not fit to take care of yourself.” Ian swept his pointed look from her bare feet and legs, to her missing hemline, and finally brought it to rest on her bandaged head.