The Companion - One With The Shadows Part 4

The thought struck her forcibly. She should be grateful to him. How dreadful.

But he had done it only because he thought she had the stone in some bank and he would need her to retrieve it. That thought made her relax. She didn't owe him anything.

"He is very... resilient," Paolo observed. "Still, I should go to him."

A woman appeared whose hair was just going gray under her cap and whose figure indicated a sincere and lasting love of pasta.

She was fully dressed, even at this hour. Urbano no doubt kept them up to attend his every need no matter how late he returned.

"Sophia, just see to Miss Mulroney while I go up to the master," Paolo said. "She's lost everything in a fire, and we're to provide.

A trunk must be packed and ready by five."

"He goes just before dawn?" Sophia asked, incredulous.

"Apparently there is no time to be lost." He bowed to Kate and trotted up the stairs.

Sophia surveyed Kate and threw up her hands. "My poor child!" she clucked. "Whatever has happened to you?"

Kate looked down at her dress, its ethereal gray now streaked with real smoke, and its hem tattered in one place by... by flames? Had the fire been that close? Thank goodness for Urbano's l.u.s.t after the stone, or she would have burned to death. She looked a sight...

Her scar! She raised her hand to her cheek to hide it. She hadn't noticed Sophia looking at it, and so had forgotten for a moment.

"Now, now, let's just take that nasty dress off and get you a bath." Sophia put her arm around Kate.

Perhaps a bath would be good. And Kate couldn't escape looking like this with no money, and no clothes and no... anything.

The enormity of her situation struck her. The stone couldn't be cut. It was no good to her even if she did escape. Urbano could take it back any time as long as she was almost a captive in his house. She felt her eyes fill. She sniffed. She couldn't be weak.

Weakness attracted predators.

"Things will look better after a bath. And perhaps a few hours 'rest."

Kate let the chattering woman lead her up the stairs. What else could she do?"It must be difficult working for such a master," Kate observed to Sophia, as she stepped into the steaming bath the servant girls had brought.

"In what way?" Sophia asked, handing her the soap.

"Well, he is so... arrogant... his callous disregard of your comfort..." She sank down into the water and let its warmth seep into her bones.

"Arrogant., yes, sometimes." Sophia chuckled. "I think he has not heard the word 'no' enough in his life. But he never disregards our comfort."

"But... keeping you up so late, just to attend to him at this odd hour..."

"Oh, we sleep in the day as he does." Sophia bustled about. She had procured a night rail from somewhere, made of very delicate linen covered with fine white embroidery. It did not belong to a servant girl. Sophia laid it out on the bed. Perhaps it was part of the services provided by a first-rate gigolo, "He pays us most generously to keep his backward hours," Sophia continued.

"He has bought Paolo and me a house in my village, so we may have a place when we are old. My mother lives there now, and he pays her as caretaker."

This was surprising. But no, he would have to buy their silence. His clients must be able to count on his discretion and that of his servants. Kate soaped her body, grateful to be clean again. "Does he stay up all night every night?" Such decadence!

"The poor man. He has an affliction. The sun burns his skin and hurts his eyes." Sophia sighed. "The Lord has made him pay a terrible price for his beauty. He has only the night."

That explained why he met his banker at midnight.

Kate stood and Sophia wrapped a towel around her. "Now just you stand in front of the fire to keep warm. You've had a shock tonight."

Yes, she had. Now she was in the power of a man who had threatened her at every turn. She was trapped in his power by her circ.u.mstances. She cast a glance over to where her reticule, lumpy with its precious burdens of the stone that would saves her and her tarot cards, sat upon the dresser. The stone was useless to her without him. Who else would pay her for it, when it drove men mad? She looked around, feeling trapped.

Sophia must have seen her look. "Now, now, child, the master will take care of you. You needn't worry. He is the kindest, most generous man. I know he seems arrogant. But put your trust in him. He will not fail you."

Kate was about to protest that he was the last man she would ever trust, when Sophia put a finger to Kate's lips. "I know what you are thinking, that he is taking you in a carriage all alone, but you need not fear for your virtue. He is a gentleman of honor."

Kate could not help be feel bewildered. His servants' high opinion of the man seemed senseless in view of what they must know about his source of income. Paolo had been positively anxious for his welfare and this woman doted on him. Perhaps they didn't know him well. "How long have you been with him?"

"Twenty years and more." Sophia smiled, slipping the night rail over her head. "Now, you just tuck into bed here for a few hours." Sophia held back the richly embroidered linens and Kate crawled up into a bed layered with feather comforters. "I'll come to wake and dress you. Don't worry your head about packing." Sophia scooped up her burned dress, and turned down the lamps before she let herself out the door.

Well, that finished Kate's chance to escape for the moment. She couldn't go out in a night rail. She had very little money. She was so confused she didn't know if she should escape or be carried along by Urbano's plans. Which was the lesser of two evils?

In Rome, a woman wanted to kill her for the stone. If she could keep the stone from Urbano, to get it cut... perhaps his mother would even be her ally. A mother must know what he was. Her thoughts were becoming muddled. Jealousy that he knew his mother and felt he could depend on her wafted through Kate. Oh, well. She'd puzzle it out after she closed her eyes for just a moment...

" 'Ey! You there!"

Kate looked up from a garbage heap not so different from the one where she had awakened three nights ago. She wiped her mouth, ready to dart away. Too bad. This had been a good one. She stuffed the gristle left from someone's beefsteak into the pocket of her dirty pinafore and scrambled out of the moonlight.

"No, wait!"

She crouched behind the barrel set to catch rainwater by the tavern owner. The figure that accosted her was much smaller than those who had chased her off in the last days, its voice higher. It came into the moonlight now, approaching slowly. A boy. A ragged boy.

"I won't 'urt ye," lie said, holding out a hand.

Kate said nothing. She knew she should try to make it down the alleyway. She had bruises over her back and shoulders for tarrying once too long. But this was the first child she had seen. Well, he was bigger and older than she was. But he wasn't a grown-up.

"Ye're 'ungry, ain't ye?" He fished in his pocket. "D'ye like a bit o'sweet?"

He held out a misshapen and half-melted lump. "A little 'ores'ound?"

She shook her head, though she could smell the sugar of it from the shadows where she lurked quite clearly. It made her mouth water.

"I bet ye'd like some mutton and gravy and roasted nips," the boy went on, approaching.

Nothing had ever sounded so good. Kate's stomach rumbled. It began to rain again. Just when she'd been drying out.

"I knows a place where a nimble little one like ye. if ye're quick ta learn and eager ta please, could get a roof overyer 'ead and a warm blanket and three squares."

"Where is that?" Kate asked in a small voice.

"Sir'll take ye in."

The man they all called "Sir" was impossibly tall, and gaunt. His nose had a funny hook in it, but it wasn't that that made her afraid. Just now he stood in front of a coal fire that lit the cellar with flickering light. Children huddled in the corners under blankets, their stomachs full of the stew that still wafted its smell over the dank scent of brick walls underground.

But Kate's stomach wasn't full.

"Ye cain't eat till ye get me purse off me, gel."

Kate wanted to cry. She was so hungry she couldn't think. And he always caught her. She'd sidled up to him a dozen times and slipped her hand in the capacious pocket of his coat.

"If ye don't get it this time, it's out in the cold fer ye," he threatened.Tears welled. She'd spent last night in the cold, hovering outside the door, wet and s.h.i.+vering. She couldn't do that again.

She couldn't. She wanted whatever was left of that stew, and this dreadful man wouldn't give it to her, and she didn't even know who she was, or who might want her, so this man was her last hope. The other children wouldn't help her.

The boy who found her-his name was Ralph-was the only one who would speak to her at all. Today he told her about something called "hit 'n' go." She'd like to hit something. Sobs choked her. The man didn't understand that she couldn't get his purse if she couldn't think, and she couldn't think when she hadn't eaten in so long. The tears turned angry. Why didn't he just tell her how to do it? Maybe he was keeping the secret from her on purpose.

But maybe Ralph had told her how to do it. She thought back to this afternoon.

And launched herself at the man. She just ran smack into him, even as she reached for his pocket. He lifted his hands.

She slipped inside the pocket and spun away.

The purse was somehow, miraculously, in her hand. She looked up, still heaving breath.

"Well, it's about time, I'd say," the man called Sir said. "Let me get ye some stew."

Kate opened her eyes on darkness. Sir had indeed taken her in. Maybe her anger had saved her. She ran her hand over the embroidered bed linens, as her surroundings thunked back into place. She was in a bedchamber belonging to a rich gigolo in Rome, not in the squalid streets of London. Twenty-three years had pa.s.sed since she'd gained entrance to that strange society of thieves, one of several times her life had taken a dramatic turn. Thank G.o.d for Sir. An irrational drunk, given to beatings when one didn't bring back the fancy, but without him she'd have starved on the street.

The door cracked open and Sophia poked her head in, holding a lamp.

"I'm awake," Kate said. She had a feeling her life was about to take another turn.

Chapter Five.

The carriage stopped on the outskirts of Rome as the sun was coming up. What was toward? Kate didn't peer out the window.

She didn't want to look like she cared. She pulled the light cloak of fine merino wool in a very becoming wine color about her more tightly. The sable of the ruff around the hood was silky against her neck. The traveling dress Sophia had produced was likewise wine-colored, a sophisticated l.u.s.tring with dyed Brussels lace lining its hem and its decidedly decollete square neckline.

It wasn't an appropriate color or design for a girl. But then neither was her usual gray, which made her look as though she was a year into mourning or some kind of a ghost already. The hat Sophia provided was a confection of sophisticated feathers. Kate had firmly refused the garnet-encrusted crucifix and earring drops, but she would wager they were in that trunk the footmen had tied up at the back of the carriage. Sophia had produced a wide ribband to conceal the bruises on her neck.

Kate pressed her lips together grimly. She was no doubt wearing a dress of Urbano's latest mistress. How humiliating to take another's leavings. But beggars couldn't be choosers. And she was a beggar, surely.

The only thing Sophia had not managed to procure was a veil. No mantilla, no sc.r.a.p of netting. Kate felt positively naked without something to cover her scar. At least she still carried her reticule with its precious cargo. What cared she that the gray velvet embroidered with silver did not match her fine new outfit? What counted was that the gleaming emerald still lay inside, tantalizing her along with her cards. Her dreams were so close, yet so elusive. Urbano could take the stone without paying for it at any time. And if no one paid for it, it was useless to her.

She heard him shouting to the driver. Urbano made her uneasy in ways she couldn't explain. His red eyes were only lenses.

There must have been a source for the reflected light. She still wasn't certain how he achieved that feeling of electric aliveness he shared with the woman called Elyta and the man from whom Kate had stolen the stone. And Urbano's disconcerting way of coming and going without one quite knowing how he got there... She set her lips. He must practice it carefully. He really had a most successful "man of mystery" act. No wonder women paid so much to keep him. She'd bet he had other services at which he was skilled... And that brought her to the other way he made her uneasy. She had not reacted to a man like she reacted to Urbano... ever, really. Even now, knowing he was just outside the carriage door made her conscious of her body in ways that she'd never been before.

She wouldn't think about that. Fruitless. He would never feel the same about her. She shook herself mentally. And what of Elyta? She shared Urbano's lenses and whatever he did to make himself seem so vibrant. But her strength... Kate shuddered.

That had been real enough.

The door to the carriage opened abruptly and Urbano swung up into the coach. The small s.p.a.ce immediately filled with the cinnamon scent he affected and that electric energy. Could he not leave off with his fraudulent ways, even when she was his only audience, and she'd already sniffed out his lay? He had been riding beside the carriage until now on a prancing dark bay stallion he called Piccolo. Piccolo was undoubtedly the finest piece of horseflesh Kate had ever seen, though altogether frightening to a city girl, and hardly deserving of a name that meant "little one." Urbano seemed recovered from his burns. How, even if she had been mistaken about the charred flesh she had first imagined? In the light of his foyer, the skin had definitely been red and blistered. He had been burned. She fidgeted in her seat.

"Excuse my intrusion," he murmured.

"The carriage is yours, sir, the intrusion mine." She made her voice frosty to discourage any intentions he might have of fraternizing. Sophia and her husband were obviously besotted with him. Therefore Sophia's opinion that he was a man of honor was worthless. How could a gigolo have honor? And if Gian Urbano had any thoughts of... seduction... or rape...

Nonsense! What man would seduce a woman as scarred as she was? None. Not ever. It was just as well she had no veil. Let him constantly be reminded that she was unattractive. That was her protection. It just didn't feel like a fortunate thing.

He reached across her to pull down the window shade on her side, jerked down the shade on his side, and wedged himself into the farthest corner from her. She suppressed a shudder as his elbow brushed her shoulder. It was not a shudder of revulsion.

She truly hoped the man had no idea what effect he had on her. But she knew by his habitual arrogance that her hope was vain.

"I regret to impair your view of the pa.s.sing countryside, but I am sensitive to the sun."

"As you wish," she said, and pointedly closed her eyes, as though she could sleep a wink with him in the carriage not three feet from her, exuding maleness and making her almost vibrate in sympathy in places she dared not name.

"I thought you would accost me immediately about the bargain between us," he remarked in that baritone that wound around her spine. "Or question my intent in taking you to Firenze."

She opened her eyes. So that was where they were headed. Now he would tell her his despicable plan. Best face it head-on.

"You hadn't deigned to tell me our destination," she pointed out. "I a.s.sumed you had rethought your 'bargain.'" He was just going to take the stone and leave her somewhere on the road. She knew it.

He examined her, then turned abruptly away. "We could not tarry in Rome while Elyta Zaroff made new plans," he muttered.

"Firenze serves two purposes. My mother will lend you her protection and her banker will arrange with mine the transfer you require."

Kate narrowed her eyes. If he could just take the stone, why wouldn't he? He must want something else. In her case it could not be that he wanted use of her body. "You could just take it." She wasn't telling him anything he didn't already know. "Yet you say you intend to pay me. What else do you want?"He hesitated. "Do I have to want something?"

Kate racked her brain. Could he want her skills at deception? "People always do."

"Then perhaps I will surprise you."

This talk of paying her must be a ruse to keep her quiet on the journey. But why? Why didn't he just leave her in Rome? Even if he did have a mother in Florence, what mother would accept a light-skirt traveling alone in the company of a bachelor, even if that bachelor were her son? Especially if it were her son? If she didn't know about his profession, she would have aspirations for his marriage that did not include a penniless fake of no birth. If she did know, she certainly wouldn't want him to compromise his source of income by a.s.sociating with a ne'er-do-well. No, Kate was the last thing Urbano's mother would welcome on her doorstep.

"I see you don't believe me." He changed to English from Italian. He spoke with barely an accent and what accent he had was, of course, incredibly attractive. "Perhaps I was mistaken and you have a husband or a father to whom I may deliver you?"

He wanted to remind her of her orphaned state to make her feel powerless. Well, she would just show him how much that mattered to her. "I have neither, and I have never given it a thought. I once traveled with a man I thought was my father. It turns out he was not," she said with almost complete composure. She kept to the Italian, lest his speaking English was a condescension. He must not think her weak or vulnerable. "He admitted as much to me in one of his drunken rages. He bought me from an orphanage and trained me to use in his schemes. Apparently he also hired thugs to attack me when I was seventeen and leave me with this..." She swallowed. "This scar, so I could not even escape him by entering into a liaison with some gullible but wealthy young man. He died." She realized she had switched to English. d.a.m.n it all, it seemed as though he had won something. "And I am doing just fine without him."

His eyes widened for a single instant. Then he looked down at his hands. "So you are glad to be rid of him." He kept to the English.

She'd already let him win, there was no use going back to Italian. "Absolutely," she said, with only an instant's hesitation. "I was the talent of the operation."

"It must be... hard, with no one to care about you," he said, after a moment.