Page 81 of Vengeance in Venice
Solomon went on with growing excitement. “It’s almost directly below the window we think was Savelli’s dressing room.”
“It must be the bodyguards’ dormitory.” Somewhere, Constance could see that was important and tore her gaze from the terrible face at the window, which was surely more important, yet…
“Did one of them summon Savelli outside from that window?” Solomon continued. “Throw something up at his window to get his attention, wake him, if necessary, without the rest of the household being aware? A trick any schoolboy knows… Constance?” Solomon finished in a suddenly high, frightened voice she had never heard before. “Are you ill?”
“No. No, let’s go home, I…”
She gazed at the back doorstep of the Savelli house where she had walked out of danger and into Solomon’s arms—some time after being dragged inside by the owner of that face at the window. She hadn’t seen it at the time, of course, only when Savelli had removed her hood. The face at the window had recognized her and still thought it was funny to frighten her…
Dragged away from Solomon while he was still in danger, blind and helpless and unable to call out… The rough, bruising hands of her captors and their alien voices babbling words she had not understood because she had been too afraid to think and hadn’t known enough Italian.
Days later, she knew quite a lot more. She had grown almost used to conversing in a mixture of English and Italian—with Elena and Rossi and the Palazzo Zulian servants, particularly Maria during her illness, and before that, with some people at the reception. Perhaps more importantly, her ear was now more attuned to the rhythm and speed of the local accents. She could recognize some Venetian words, but her abductors had not used any. One of them—that one at the window, Pellini—was not Venetian, so they had spoken to each other in more universal Italian. The memory of those sounds was in her head, repeating and repeating until they made sense.
Solomon was holding her hand, leaning forward to gaze anxiously into her face. She squeezed his fingers in instinctive comfort.
“…potremmo perdere i nostri comodi lavori per questo…”
…could lose our comfortable jobs over this…
“Starò bene. Potrei parlare con l’austriaco per te.”
I will be fine. I might speak to the Austrian for you.
She blinked, refocusing all her attention on Solomon. “The Austrian. ItisLampl. And thatishow it was done and why he needed rid of me. Pellini is Lampl’s spy, his tool within the Savelli house.”
Chapter Eighteen
Solomon was shakenby the sudden reminder of her recent illness. That right now her weakness was caused more by mental shock than physical exertion was not much comfort. His first priority was to get her home and safe and calm.
She paid no attention to what he was ordering and doing, until she seemed to notice quite suddenly that she was in bed, in her nightgown, with a tray of food on her knees and Solomon sprawled beside her, fully dressed, with a tray of his own.
“Oh, Solomon,” she whispered. “Have I made a fool of myself?”
Though he could have wept, he merely gave her the gentlest of elbow nudges and spoke with deliberate calm. “Hardly. You are still weak, and I let you do too much. Yet still you solved the case.”
She smiled a little. Perhaps she heard the glowing pride in his voice. “It was being there, seeing him at the window. Until then, I had only been asking myself what either of us could have said to Lampl to frighten him. But the bodyguards must have told him.”
“We should have thought of it before. We know the Austrians have spies everywhere. But this is more than spying. This was using a government spy to plan a personal murder.”
Of course, she had worked that out too. “Lamplmusthave known of Savelli’s planned attack on Giusti and taken the opportunity to blacken him and Savelli further in Elena’s eyesby abducting a woman off the street at the same time. Elena was meant to know about it. That’s why that Pellini and the other went alone by boat while the others were on foot. It might have been bad luck that you and I were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I doubt luck had much to do with takingsomeone.”
“And of course it provided more suspects to keep Foscolo busy and distracted from the truth.”
They ate for a little in silence. Then she said abruptly, “Are we just speculating again? A few hours ago, we believed implicitly that Foscolo was the murderer.”
“But this feels right. It fits.”
She nodded and reached for her watered wine. “But we still have no actual evidence. How do we prove it?”
“We’ll think of something. We have baited traps before.”
“And we have an ally in Foscolo,” she said more comfortably.
When her eyelids began to close, Solomon took the glass from her fingers and removed both the trays. As he returned to the bed, he saw that her eyes were open again, and smiling at him.
He rearranged her pillows so that she was lying more comfortably. Her fingertips skimmed across his cheek, and he paused. Her eyes were lethargic and clouded, her lips slightly parted. God, she was beautiful…
“It is terribly early to go sleep,” she said huskily.
