Page 18 of Vengeance in Venice
Though he knew she wouldn’t be asleep.
He also knew where her private rooms were. Roughly. Though it was difficult in the dark with one tiny candle, and he had never counted windows and doors.
It was the palest glow that gave her away in the end. More like a lighter shade of blackness beneath the ornate door. He went in as quietly as he could. Another dark room—a sitting room, he thought, from the brief waving of his candle. Its chief interest to him was the fact that a more definite light shone beneath another connecting door.
He caught his suddenly ragged breath. But he had come this far.
He walked carefully toward the light, and when he came to the door, he halted and listened for a long time. He knew instinctively she would not have a maid in the room. She would be alone. And he would terrify her.
Recklessness got one into all sorts of difficulties. Perhaps last night’s fight had dealt him one too many blows to the head.
It was time to leave.
And yet he didn’t. He turned the handle and opened the door.
And blinked in the sudden brightness.
She stood barely a foot from him, a tall, carved branch of candles in her hand. She wore a velvet silk dressing gown that covered her from neck to toe, but her raven hair was loose and she looked magnificent. Brave and angry and unafraid, shestared at him, no doubt taking in his disreputable cuts and bruises and the tears in his clothing from the climb.
Elena.Dizzyingly close after all these years.
“What are you doing here?” The faint tremble in her voice almost undid him.
“A call of condolence,” he said, and of course it came out wrong. It sounded brash, mocking, when all he really wanted was to be sure she was…what? Fine? Well? Coping?
“You were always an idiot,” she said contemptuously. “Get out of my house before we are both crucified for this.”
She was right, of course. This was beyond reckless, unforgivably so because it was Elena’s reputation he was risking. He turned away to obey, but her voice stayed him, husky and yet harsh.
“Ludovico.”
He waited, though he could not bring himself to turn back to her.
“Did you kill him?”
He shook his head. “Did you?”
There was silence. And then, flat and emotionless, “Then you didn’t come for absolution?”
He breathed again. And yet he wanted to throw things, even his candle, set the house and the whole world on fire.
“You are undoubtedly correct that I am an idiot,” he said between his teeth. “And perhaps there was a time I would have killed him for you. But after four years? When I can never have you anyway? Even I am not that big an idiot.”
He heard the catch in her breath, and abruptly, her manner changed.
“Isawyou, Ludo.”
Slowly, he turned back to face her. He did not ask, but she answered anyway.
“Last night. In the little boat your servants used to use.”
“No, last night I was in an Englishman’s fine gondola. We came to rescue the poor woman your husband had abducted.”
“She went home before midnight,” came the calm response, so clearly this was not news to her. “You were there at three o’clock in the morning, at the back of the house. I saw you.”
He lifted one side of his mouth. “Then you were also up at three in the morning.”
“Shall we tell on each other and see whom the police arrest?”
