The Stargazer (7 page)

Ian reached out, finally, and pulled her onto his lap. She caught her breath as her thigh brushed against his aroused shaft, and again when his hand gently rubbed the underside of her breast. She lifted her face to his, and their eyes met and locked. What she read there during that split second filled Bianca with the longing to take Ian not only into her body, but into her soul. Then he pulled her head down, covering his lips with hers.

As their mouths touched Ian felt a spark leap inside of him, and her kiss seared through him in a way he had never before experienced. This was something more than mere passion, this burning sensation that threatened to take over his body. In a flash he knew that this woman of molten gold emanated a heat that could melt every reserve, every barrier, every layer of self-protection he had spent the past two years creating. She had already begun to turn his world topsy-turvy, why not let her continue? All he had to do was to drink her in, open himself to her, let her work her medicinal magic on him. He would feel again, laugh again, love again…and hurt again.

In a single abrupt motion Ian pulled his mouth away from hers and pushed her off of him onto the floor. “Go! Now.” He spoke with his head turned from her and his voice shaking with emotions he could not recognize. Stunned, less from the impact of her fall than from his horrible rejection of her, it took a moment for Bianca to react. “Go, leave me.
Get out!
” he repeated, more stridently this time, as he felt her reluctance to leave. He sensed she was about to speak, but he cut her off. “If you do not leave now, without a word, I shall have you arrested tomorrow.”

Trembling with embarrassment and rage, Bianca ran toward the door Ian had pointed out earlier. She paused with her hand on the doorknob and looked back at the figure reclined before the fire, his eyes squeezed shut, his jaw squared. Caught in the web of her own tortured feelings, she was oblivious to the pain emanating from him as she glared in his direction. “I hate you,” she said under her breath, just loud enough for Ian to hear, as she pulled the door closed.

He remained motionless for a moment after the lock clicked into place, then spoke aloud to the empty room. “You are not the only one.”

Only the intermittent chiming of the clocks and the feeble rays of light filtering in through the heavy curtains of the chamber alerted her to the passage of time. She sighed and uncoiled her body, realizing she should probably rise and dress, but found herself completely without energy to do anything. Perhaps if she stayed in bed, hid herself all day or all month or all year, perhaps the horrible emptiness and loneliness that had wrapped itself around her emotions would recede. She could leave this place, run away and live on her own forever.

But there was no running away, she reminded herself. Her leaving, if she could leave, would only be taken as a sure sign of her guilt by Ian. She refused to give him the pleasure of thinking he was right. She had to stay and vindicate herself. Then, when it was all over and Isabella’s killer had been punished, then she could run away. But for now she had a crime to solve.

She tried to focus her mind on the findings, or rather lack of findings, from her previous night’s investigations. Isabella’s apartment had been completely devoid of clues, curiously so, unless someone else had gone through it before her. She had been convinced that the murderer must have left some scrap of evidence behind, but she had found absolutely nothing. Even more than that, she had sensed that something was missing from the room, something that she half remembered from the day she found the body, but she could not recall what it was.

With her eyes closed, Bianca pictured the room as it had been when she first walked in. The far wall was taken up by a row of gothic windows, under which was a carved oak marriage chest. The bed with its elaborate hangings protruded from the right-hand wall, facing a bureau with a mirror over it. Bianca recalled that the mirror was curiously angled and wondered how anyone at the bureau could see into it, until it occurred to her that it was positioned to be seen from the bed. The thought made her blush and think of how wonderful it would be to both feel and see Ian’s sleek body on top of her at the same time.

“Santa Flora’s canine tooth, I have taken leave of my senses! This man is driving me mad.”

“It is funny, my dear Signorina Salva, but it seems you have the same effect on him.” The kindly voice from the doorway was unexpected but not unfamiliar. As Francesco and Roberto entered the room, Bianca sat up, glad that she had remembered to don a bed-gown the night before.

“Ian is in one of his moods again this morning, storming around the house ordering that the staff be beheaded one minute, staring quietly at a mote of dust the next. I haven’t seen him like this for years…” Francesco’s voice trailed off.

“Two years,” added Roberto quietly.

“Did he send you to make sure I hadn’t escaped or did you need something from me?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them, especially their tone. Francesco and Roberto had been all kindness to her and certainly deserved better than her petulant whining. “I mean, is there some service I might perform for you?” she rephrased, hoping she sounded more genteel.

“Yes and no. We were trying to perform a service for you, but we found ourselves in disagreement about how to please you. Yesterday you asked for a ‘nimble young boy’—those were the words, were they not, Roberto?” Francesco paused just long enough for Roberto, busy opening the window curtains, to turn and nod in agreement. “Roberto was convinced that you wanted this creature to run errands for you and the like, but Ian has teams of people on hand to do that, so I assumed you wanted someone for other, let us say, more companionable purposes. Certainly understandable, given the way Ian behaves.”

Bianca’s eyes grew wide as her confusion gave way to comprehension and she grasped the meaning of Francesco’s words. Before she could offer an explanation, Roberto intervened.

“Not being in a position to decide, we brought you one of each.” As he spoke he opened a small door at the far end of the room that Bianca had yet to notice. How many secrets did this massive house have? she asked herself, as two young men entered her room.

They were about as unlike as any two beings could be. One was probably near Bianca’s age, tall, muscular, and very handsome. Bianca’s eyes traveled up the length of his taut body, trying to decide whether his clothes would be a viable substitute for those she had lost the night before. His swagger as he strode toward her and the leering glance he shot in her direction when he bowed suggested that he had mistaken Bianca’s appraisal of his clothes for interest in what lay beneath them. “Madam, I wait upon your pleasure,” he said, laying extreme emphasis on the final word.

In the wake of his openly seductive invitation, there was no good way to ask him to shed his clothes, Bianca realized. It was a pity because she was quite intrigued by his hose, of a design she had never seen before, using small clasps rather than laces at the waist. She allowed her eye to linger wistfully on them for a few moments and was only brought back to herself when Francesco cleared his throat directly in her ear.

“You appear,
ahem
, well satisfied with this youth. Shall I send the other candidate away?”

Bianca suddenly realized how her sartorial examination must have appeared, and blushed furiously. “No, actually I have no interest in this fellow, he is too mature for my pleasure.” Francesco’s eyebrows rose, and Bianca blushed even more heatedly at her poor choice of words. “Lucia’s eyes, what I mean to say is, I was in fact looking for an errand boy, not a…”

Her voice trailed off as she turned to focus on the second candidate. He could have been no more than thirteen, with a mop of curly brown hair hanging over two serious hazel eyes. While Francesco ushered the first young man from the room, the young boy stood apart studying Bianca intently. A flash of recognition crossed his face, and he moved swiftly toward the bed talking as quickly as he walked.

“I know who you are. You’re the doctor lady who fixed my aunt Marina. She was sick and everyone said she would die and that it was God’s judgment and then you came and made her better. ‘By Santa Agata’s breast,’ you said when you first saw her.”

It certainly sounded like something she would say, but beyond that his words stirred nothing in her memory. Bianca scowled at the child, trying to remember even the vaguest hint of the episode he described so vividly. Seeing her confusion, he added, “It was when Sebastiano Venier was still ruling Venice as the Doge. I would have recognized you sooner, but you were not so old then.”

“Neither were you,” Bianca retaliated warmly, before reminding herself that if she had to look older, she should also act it. She was trying again to place the boy, searching her memory for the dates of Venier’s dogeship, when the thought struck her. “Sebastiano Venier has been dead for more than six years! How can you possibly remember that far back?”

“I remember everything,” the boy said quietly. “I just need to see or hear something and then it is stuck in my head.”

“Everything? Really every thing you see or hear?” Excitement mingled with incredulity in Bianca’s tone.

The boy appeared almost hurt by her doubt. “We walked up exactly sixty-two steps to get here, plus one hundred forty paces that were not steps. There were thirty-two lamps lighting the way, and five dusty paintings, all of women. We passed through eight doors, six of them with locks, including the door to your room, which we had to open with a key. They key was brass and had four grooves, three on one side and one on the other. The first words I heard you say were: ‘Santa Flora’s canine tooth, I have taken leave of my senses! This man is driving me mad.’ Then this man said,” he paused to gesture toward Francesco, “ ‘It is funny, my dear Signorina Salva, but it seems you have the same effect on him.’ Should I keep going?”

Bianca, Roberto, and Francesco gaped at him, all momentarily at a loss for words. The child, accustomed to such reactions, was relaxed under their astonished gazes. Bianca was the first to recover.

“That was magnificent. What is his name?” She looked first at her chaperons and then again at the little wizard.

“May I present Master Nilo, Signorina Salva?” Roberto shed his reverie to make a proper introduction as the boy bowed solemnly. “He lives with his aunt at the arsenal, but she has agreed to put him at your service for a small fee. Hearing word of his remarkable talents, we thought he might be useful for your investigation.”

“Yes, he will be quite an asset.” Bianca was wondering how much Francesco and Roberto knew about her investigation when Roberto’s words triggered something in her memory. Of course! Six years ago she had spent the bulk of her infrequent trips from Padua to Venice ministering to the needs of the poor prostitutes the city kept in dormitories for the shipbuilders at the arsenal. The idea was that if there were women easily available nearby, the shipbuilders would never need to skip work to have their libidinous needs met and Venice could continue to boast of producing an entire warship every day. An efficient system, Bianca thought wryly, and one clearly designed by men. She remembered how stunned she had been by the conditions in which the women and their families lived, and by the stories they told about lying with ten or fifteen men in one day. To her that seemed a feat comparable to the construction of a warship, but it was not one the city chose to brag about. Undoubtedly Nilo’s aunt was one of these hardworking, miserable women. She looked at the boy and wondered whether his fine memory was a blessing or a curse for one who had grown up in such a place.

Before she could be too deeply occupied with such thoughts, a clock began to strike the hour, and then another, and then another. Their harmonious if noisy marking of the passage of time reminded Bianca of the immense task before her. One hundred and forty-six hours left, she calculated, rising from the bed.

“Thank you both very much for finding me such a treasure.” Her smile moved from Roberto and Francesco to Nilo, who looked quite pleased at being described that way. “Indeed, I find I have a job ready for him right now. If you gentlemen will kindly excuse us…?”

Congratulating themselves on a job well done, Francesco and Roberto were in search of a celebratory libation when a uniformed servant rushed over to them with an urgent summons from Ian. Ordering the man to follow shortly with a bottle of prosecco, they made their way downstairs to Ian’s library. One wall of the room was almost entirely glass, and overlooked the courtyard of the palazzo, while the remaining three walls were crowded with volumes in fine leather bindings, save for the space occupied by an immense marble fireplace. The ancient Persian rug given to Doge Foscari a hundred years earlier still covered the floor, now supplemented by a thick sheepskin, removed from one of Crispin’s English flock, placed in front of the fireplace. Unlike the libraries of many of Ian’s wealthy contemporaries, both the room and the books it contained were often visited by its owner, who used it as an office and a sanctuary.

Roberto and Francesco found the stormy head of the household seated at his ivory-and-walnut desk, glowering at something near the windows.

“We were just about to toast… My heavens, whatever is that?” Francesco exclaimed, noticing the strangely twisted plants arrayed before the glass for the first time.

“Crispin’s newest acquisition. An amazing find, some rare species of flowering plant brought from the Mongol Empire, or so he told me. To me they look like dead sticks from my villa at the lake, but we know how bad I am with living organisms.” Ian’s rancorous tone told his uncles that his mood had not lightened since the morning.

He turned his glower from the Mongolian rarities to his beaming uncles. “I have been searching the length and width of this whole bloody palace looking for you two this morning. Where have you been?”

“We had an errand to do for your charming betrothed.”

Ian snorted. “Charming. Like one of Satan’s minions. You think she is saintly like those women she always swears by, but I tell you that girl is most likely a murderess, or at least some kind of criminal.”

“So you say,” Roberto spoke quietly, “but we know how bad you are with living organisms.”

Roberto’s quiet and unexpected remonstrance earned him an extra glare from Ian.

“Your judgment about women is not exactly above reproach,” Francesco added, coming to his partner’s aid and sending Ian into a fit of muttering.

“Just wait, you will see my maligned judgment vindicated. You think you know her better than I do? What about this?? Look what she tried to use on me!” Ian pushed the strange instrument he had liberated from Bianca the previous night across the desk toward his uncles.

“Surely not.” Roberto shook his head vehemently. “No, certainly, you must be mistaken. She would never use this as a weapon. For one thing, it is broken. For another, it must be her prize possession. It was given to her father by King Henry the Third when he passed through Venice, and it’s all she has left of her father’s tools. That’s correct, isn’t it, Francesco?”

“Oh yes, the rest were auctioned off by her brother. There’s a bad one for you, that brother of hers. If you are looking for someone with the Salva surname to suspect of murder, I suggest you try him.” Francesco picked up the scissors and eyed them wistfully. “I would say this is the only tool not accounted for in the inventory. It’s a lovely piece, but it is a pity that it is broken. How did that happen?”

Ian goggled at his uncles. Surely they could not have been so quickly swayed to Bianca’s side that she could persuade them to tell a lie of that complexity.

“So she told you that story too, and you believed it?” Seeing Roberto again shake his head, Ian challenged, “How else could you know all this?”

Roberto spoke slowly, hoping his measured tone would help penetrate Ian’s thick skull. “We learned the story when we were lucky enough to be the highest bidders for her father’s instruments, shortly after his death.”

“And the scissors are quite famous. They were left to her in her father’s will, so they could not be sold with the rest of the lot, although they would have fetched far more than all the other tools combined. Look at this workmanship.” Francesco extended them for Ian’s admiration but he just pushed them aside. “You didn’t say how they got broken…?”