Regency Surrender: Ruthless Rakes: Rake Most Likely to Seduce / Rake Most Likely to Sin. Bronwyn Scott
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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.
The musicians took the small stage and the quartet settled into their chairs, giving their instruments a final tune-up. The audience went collectively still in anticipation. Silence filled the church and the music began, the plaintive strains of a lone violin announcing Vivaldi’s ‘Adagio in D’.
This was why he didn’t go to concerts. The music was too damn beautiful, too damn soulful. It made him feel, it eroded his edge. It was why he pushed music away, but not Gianna. The music drew her. Beside him, Gianna was enrapt, the willingness to give herself over to the music evident in her eyes, in the soft smile that lingered on her lips over the familiar tune.
She looked over at him and that soft smile became his. He knew a moment’s victory in that smile. He’d managed to steal it from the music. Her mouth began to move, to form words of gratitude. ‘No,’ he stopped her with a whisper and private smile. ‘Don’t even think about saying it, because I can’t imagine what you might want next.’
He had no trouble imagining what he wanted next, though. He wanted to make love to her, wanted to show her sex was so much more than a weapon. But not yet. First, he had to show her how dangerous it was to wield, especially for a purported novice in the arts. Was the count’s claim true? If so, it was all the more reason to protect her from herself and from him. Nolan nearly laughed out loud. There was a certain irony to the situation. In London, he was the man most likely to seduce, well, anything. Now, he’d become a protector of virgins.
The adagio ended and the quartet launched their full assault on his senses with their main presentation, the classic Four Seasons: forty-three minutes of mental lovemaking. Nolan did not try to fight it. He gave his imagination free rein. He wanted to pull the pins out of her hair to the languorous melodies of summer, wanted to watch her hair fall in slow accord to the violins’ indolent, lazy strains.
The quartet moved into the rousing melodies of autumn and he imagined dancing her up against the wall of the church, running playful kisses down her neck, over her breasts, kneeling before her and skimming her navel with his lips in a celebration of passion and life before he took her with hard thrusts, to the sharp, icy rhythms of winter, letting passion break over them with the force of an avalanche. He let his eyes slide in her direction. Did she have any idea of the thoughts running through his mind as she sat there? This was why he was dangerous to her, why she should have let him play cards tonight instead. She thought he was her assistant, that she had somehow manoeuvred him, when really he was winter’s wolf and he would ravish her with the slightest of invitations.
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