His eyes softened. “He can only truly dictate the romantic direction of his granddaughter,” he said. “It is your very liberty he controls.”
Liberty. Not heart.Thedistinction stung.
“Do you care only for my liberty, then—and not my heart?” she asked. The flash of pain that crossed his features made her instantly sorry and fiercely glad both at once.
“What is in your heart—or mine—my darling Venetia,” he said, voice low with feeling, “cannot be allowed to govern how I act. You are so far above me in station. I will not drag you down—”
“You confuse the matter entirely.” Her laugh came out shaky. “If there’s any dragging to be done, I assure you I would be the one doing it, Edward.”
He stared at her, torn between amusement and anguish. She wished she could reach inside his head, shake sense into all those noble principles and line them up behind her instead of against her.
With another quick glance to make sure Mollie was momentarily occupied haggling over oranges and that no one seemed to be paying them particular attention, Venetia freed one hand and brushed her knuckles lightly along his cheek.
“Were you, perhaps, concussed,” she whispered, “when I told you I would give up my fortune for happiness with you?”
His eyes closed for a moment, as if the touch hurt. “You would give it up in vain,” he said roughly. “You are in danger initially—and only my continued good standing with Count Morosini will keep his protection on you—” He swallowed, “—and your fortune safe. If I defy him, I cannot keep you—or your fortune—safe.”
He hesitated, then pressed his lips together as if deciding something. “This morning, Signorina Sofia told me who was responsible for stealing the emeralds.”
Venetia drew in a shocked breath. “She actually confessed?” The thought was at once shocking and vindicating. “That is dangerous… but very gratifying. At least you can be assured of my innocence.”
“Assured?” His mouth curved. “I have never,” he said gently, “doubted your innocence for a single instant. Not in this matter, nor in any other.” He drew a breath. “As to why she told me… reality has at last impressed itself upon her. She is to marry Count Bembo, not her Paolo. She was half wild with misery. In that state, she told me it was Griselda—the contessa’s maid—whom Paolo approached.”
He spoke quickly, giving her the essentials in low, urgent tones: Paolo’s pressure, and promises, the moment in the ladies’ mending room when Griselda had admired the tiara, taken it from Miss Bentley who’d held it while Venetia attended to an errant curl, and slipped the earrings into the hidden compartment.
“To be perfectly honest,” he finished, “I think there was little for Griselda to gain and much to lose if she refused. Paolo was obviously very persuasive.”
She pressed her lips together, thinking. “How does this work, then? If this is, indeed, the truth, how am I to be vindicated? Of course we can’t go to Captain Rizzi and tell him until we have irrefutable proof,” she said. But her body thrilled with hope. The truth was now known. By Edward. Not that his faith and belief in her needed any bolstering. She knew that, but still—
“Rizzi,” Edward said grimly, “is almost certainly in the pay of Count di Montefiore and Mr. Greene. If we go to him now and repeat what Sofia told me this morning, he will twist it to suit his employers, and we will be worse off than before. We must find the right moment, the right avenue. We need proof.”
“Perhaps,” Venetia said suddenly, “I should simply confess.”
His head jerked. “Good God, Venetia, what are you saying?”
“That I might be better off confessing to the crime and being stripped of my inheritance,” she said, hearing the wildness in her own voice and not caring. “Then my situation would be more equal to yours. If I were penniless, you might at last be inclined to give me my heart’s desire.”
“It might also see you locked in a dungeon—or worse,” he replied hoarsely.
But there was no mistaking the way herwords shook him. His hands tightened around hers, his eyes dark with terror and longing, and for an instant Venetia felt a fierce, reckless satisfaction.
Well, she thought,if reason cannot move him, perhaps the prospect of me cheerfully ruining myself in order to marry him will.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Venetia welcomed thereassuring squeeze of Lady Townsend’s arm as the young servant bowed them into La Serafina’s salon an hour later.
In daylight the rooms looked quite respectable. The crimson silk on the walls appeared elegant, the gilt chairs and carved tables seemed luxurious rather than decadent. A bowl of hothouse roses perfumed the air, not incense and wine as on the previous visit.
Of course, the last time she’d been here she had been one frayed nerve away from collapse—shaken from the cells, half mad with fear that she might spend the rest of her life in some Venetian prison for a crime she had not committed. In that state, the laughter and masks and candlelight had taken on monstrous proportions.
Mostly, though, it had been Count di Montefiore. His threats. His hand closing on her wrist.
Lady Townsend’s quiet, undemonstrative kindness since then had been balm to her disordered state. With her parents gone so early, Venetia had grown used to making do with neglect, to telling herself she needed no one. Having someone fuss over whether she had eaten, whether she slept, whether she was warm enough, had awakened an ache she had not known was there.
Perhaps that is why I love Edward so hopelessly, she thought wryly.If one is starved of care, one is always vulnerable to the first perfectly decent manwho offers it.
Not that Edward was merely decent. He was so much more than that. If ever a woman could feel blessed by friends and a husband both, it would be she, with Lady Townsend, Lord Thornton… and him.
