By the fog-wrapped canals of Venice, he waits....

The bleak life that Sarah Connolly has always known is finally showing signs of light, thanks to a friend who has helped her leave a past of desperate penury in London for a life of quiet servitude.  But in Venice, Sarah soon discovers there is a darker side to the family she has suddenly been thrust among, and walking just beyond her newfound hope is a shadowy figure.  What lurks behind his mask is a darkness that compels her...and a passion that makes her doubt everything she wants.

Sebastian Grimsthorpe, Lord Wortham, once enjoyed a carefree life, but it ended in an explosion of betrayal and violence.  Escaping death, he embraced the appearance of it, concealing himself in shadows and behind masks so that he can exact a pitiless revenge upon the man who so nearly destroyed everything he holds dear.  But his quest will take an unexpected turn when he is suddenly shaken by a woman whose tragic eyes mystify him — and seduce him into a world of secrets and deceptions.

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PRAISE FOR THE VEIL OF NIGHT

"Intelligent.  Passionate.  Filled with dark secrets and illuminating love.  This is what romance is about!" — USA Today Bestselling Author Robin Schone

"Anyone who has ached for the Gothics of the past shouldn't miss this book!" — Karen Harbaugh, Author of Dark Enchantment

"A powerful love story, compelling and beautifully written." — Alison Kent, Author of Larger than Life

PROLOGUE

He would not get away with it!

The thought surged through Sebastian Grimsthorpe, Earl of Wortham, as he leapt from the seat of his gig, tossing the traces to the hovering groom the instant his boots crunched down on the cobbles. 

"I won’t be long." He strode across the fog-stifled street to the discreetly elegant entrance of the Whitsun Club, his steps jerky with scarcely controlled rage.

He flung back the door, ignoring the polite protests of the porter behind his shining mahogany desk, and advanced straight through the vestibule into the dining room. Rich cherry tables dotted the room, modest under the ceiling’s embellishments of gilt and crystal that were the remnants of an earlier age. Today, Sebastian had no time to admire the atmosphere of aged dignity and cigar smoke. Today, he had only one thing on his mind.

Bertrand de Lint sat at his usual table just as Sebastian expected, laughing jovially with a friend over port and beefsteak. Sebastian had planned to confront him quietly, hustle him out of the back of the club, and . . . something. He hadn’t thought that far ahead.

But coming face-to-face with the criminal for the first time since Adela’s attack overwhelmed his discretion. Anger narrowed his vision until everything but de Lint’s complacent face was engulfed by darkness, his muscles clenching against the furious rush.

"De Lint, you bastard!" Sebastian scarcely recognized the roar as his.

Silence fell like an axe. Fifty pairs of eyes looked up from their quiet meals and focused upon Sebastian, but he ignored them all. In the startled hush, the clink of de Lint’s silverware against his plate and the muted scrape of his chair across the Aubusson carpet filled the room. The man stood unhurriedly, surveying his accuser with a quiet, sardonic quirk of his brows.

"Really, Wortham," he drawled. "If this is about that prank with that chit of yours again, this is hardly the place — "

"You lying bastard!" Sebastian drowned him out, not wanting to hear what new calumny de Lint had invented to smear his daughter’s name. For the first time in the dozen years that he’d known the man, a flicker of uncertainty showed itself in de Lint’s amber gaze, and Sebastian took a grim satisfaction in it as he plunged on. "That was a farce of an inquest. How you could have the audacity to come here — "

De Lint’s lip curled in contempt. "I said nothing but the truth, which surprised no one, knowing what her mother was. Blood will tell, you know, old boy. You might as well let it go."

"No!" Sebastian surged forward, closing the space between them in a heartbeat, his momentum shoving de Lint back until the shorter man crashed against the wall hard enough to shiver the china on the nearby tables. “She is a child, damn you. A child!”

De Lint looked down at his rumpled coat, clenched in Sebastian’s fist, then up to his attacker’s face. A hard light glinted in his eyes. “She wasn’t a child when I had her — "

Sebastian’s fist across the man’s jaw cut him short. The sudden, violent smack of flesh on flesh unfroze the rest of the room, and the watchers sprang into action. Hands hauled at Sebastian’s coat and collar, yanking him away from de Lint, hustling him across the dining room and toward the door. Sebastian fought on, splitting one man’s brow and giving another a sharp elbow in the sternum. 

His ears rang with remonstrances against his behavior, all the same old voices saying all the expected things, the things that he might have said himself before the events of the last month: "Quite abominable, old chap." "Not the thing at all, you know." "Really, Wortham, to assault a man in his own club — " In their voices, he heard echoes of what his fellows had said ever since he made the accusation on behalf of his illegitimate daughter, and despair welled up black and thick around him.

He stopped struggling.

Sebastian’s glare remained fixed upon his adversary as he was jostled through the door. De Lint straightened himself, pulling wrinkles from his clothes and brushing away the signs of their encounter, as if he could clean himself of the smirch of Sebastian’s accusations just as easily.

And, deep in his heart, Sebastian knew that as far as society was concerned, he already had. A punch thrown in a venerable and well-respected club — that was a scandal. But a bastard child of a debauched earl and a Spanish whore was nothing to the men of the Whitsun Club or any of their ilk. The rape of such a girl might feed the gossip papers, but she was outside the comfortable world of gentility, and so her fate could have no impact upon it. Not unless Sebastian forced it upon them.

"This isn’t over yet." Sebastian didn’t raise his voice, but it cut easily through the uproar that came in the wake of the altercation. "Adela will have justice one way or another. I swear it!"

De Lint simply lifted an eyebrow, and that was Sebastian’s last glimpse of him before he was pushed around the corner back into the vestibule.

"Go away," he growled at the men who crowded around him in the tiny space. His friends, de Lint’s friends — he didn’t know which, but now they could not be both. The men did not move, and so he turned toward the club’s entrance, dislodging the last of the hands that gripped him in the movement. "I am fine. I am leaving. Go."

They fell back as he pushed to the door. He stepped out and let it swing shut behind him as he paused on the stoop, turning his face up to the gray, dirty London drizzle that was just beginning to fall. It suddenly felt cleaner to him than anything he’d experienced in a long time, and that thought stirred a deep disquiet he was loath to examine too closely.

"You’ll be banned, you know," a familiar voice said casually at his elbow, and Sebastian gave a sideways glance. Stephen Holland had slipped out after him and was now standing by his side, concern in his eyes despite the way his hands were shoved carelessly into his pockets. A friend still, then.

"I don’t care," Sebastian said.

Holland shrugged, in response to the words or to the rain soaking his evening coat, Sebastian couldn’t tell. "I really don’t see what you intended to accomplish in there."

Sebastian’s frustration surged up again. "He’s going to get away with it. I cannot permit that."

Holland was silent for a long moment. Then he said lightly, "But therein lies the rub. De Lint may be a scoundrel, but he’s never been a liar. And he says there was no assault."

"By God, Holland!" Sebastian spit the words. "If you had been there — seen the blood, the bruises, the tears — you would have known that it could be nothing but a rape, a rape of the foulest sort. She is a child — " He realized he was shouting again, and he bit back the rest of that sentence. "Surely you must believe me."

Holland turned his head slowly and met Sebastian’s eyes, his expression troubled. "I’ve never know you to be a liar, either, Wortham. No more than de Lint. And that is all that I can say about that."

His meaning, the one Sebastian had heard echoed so often for the last month, was devastatingly clear: Sebastian’s life had been not one whit more irreproachable than de Lint’s. Without the benefit of witnesses beyond one young girl of no breeding and questionable morals and a nurse who hadn’t even been there, it became a matter of one man’s word against the other’s, and the accused should be given the benefit of the doubt.

Sebastian knew then how stupid it had been for him to seek the confrontation, as if he were some sort of knight out of an old romance defending a maiden’s honor in front of the world. As if that could absolve him of his part in her outrage. Considering it now, the foolishness of it was clear. But when that beggar boy had stopped him outside of his London agent’s offices and told him where he might find his enemy, he hadn’t stopped to think. 

Not trusting himself to utter the nonsensical niceties of leave-taking, Sebastian gave a curt nod, strode down the steps of the stoop, and took the traces of his gig from the waiting groom with the toss of a shilling. He didn’t look back as he flicked the reins, sending the horses into first a walk and then a trot. All he wanted to do was go galloping madly away, away from the club and de Lint and his own old life. But he kept the horses to an infuriatingly sedate pace as he wove though the crowded evening streets, leaving the devils that drove him to rage inside his head.

No one but the worst kind of reprobate would host a bacchanal in the house in which he was sheltering an innocent young girl. And no one but Sebastian could so stain a girl by mere blood association so that her morals were immediately suspect. It was his fault she’d suffered from his benign neglect for so long while he’d congratulated himself on his generosity, his fault she was attacked, his fault the attack had not been believed. There was nothing he could do to expiate that guilt, but he could at least bring her attacker to account. He owed her that much.

With the conclusion of those thoughts, he discovered that he had reached the edge of the city, the road opening up near-empty before him. Until that moment, he’d given no consideration to his destination, but now he realized he had unconsciously steered toward Hartwald. 

At the thought of that quiet, pristine retreat, his heart warmed, and when he remembered that Daniel was staying there — Daniel, his cousin, the only friend who had shown not the least sign of doubt during the entire ordeal — Sebastian’s unconscious decision seemed doubly right. The horses sensed his eagerness through his handling of the traces; they arched their necks, their nostrils flaring, and he gave a flick of the reins that sent them down the road in an eager gallop.

The road stretched out in front of him, bare and invitingly uncomplicated. Nothing to do but make his mind equally empty and give himself up to the rattle of the wheels, drumming of hooves, and the whistle of the wind —

Then the rattle became a crack, and the horses whinnied in panic, and Sebastian was flying through the air. Even then, the peace of the road kept panic at bay, and as he flew toward the hard-packed earth, a corner of his mind thought distantly, "What a stupid way to die."

And then everything went black.
 
 
 
CHAPTER ONE

It was a perfect day to die.

From Sebastian’s bedroom window, the hills of Cornwall undulated in a calico of greens down to the jagged line of the flat, gray sea, visible for the first time in his long and stormy sojourn there. The sky was a fragile china blue, and the light that poured through the thrown-back sash had the sweet, ethereal quality of early spring.

Sebastian viewed it with satisfaction, as if it were some obscure sign that the fates were smiling upon his unorthodox enterprise. He closed his steamer trunk with a final thud and the certainty that he had folded his shirts wrong. Once it would have irritated him, for he had never packed for himself before. But he was not the man he once was, and dead men did not have valets.

"You’re going through with it, then." Daniel’s voice came from the doorway, and it was not a question.

Sebastian put a hand on the sun-warmed tin that covered the lid, the tangible evidence of his decision. "Yes," he said without looking up. 

The trunk was dark with oxidation and battered from a hundred other trips, more familiar to him then the countless bedrooms he had slept in over the past ten years. His fingers traced the family crest almost of their own volition; it had been a long time since he had paid it much heed. He had, in the various stages of his youth, thought it frightening, hallowed, dashing, or just another signal that he was a bloody important person. But now the swollen, posturing lions seemed a mockery, a twisted joke, and touching them was as automatic and futile as scratching a scarcely healed wound.

"You know how I feel about your scheme," Daniel said.

Sebastian tore his eyes from the trunk and turned around, his sigh strictly mental. The argument was so familiar that he could have recited it almost word for word. Nothing had changed since the last time they had tread the same tired ground. 

Now Whitby stood in the doorway, too. Perhaps Daniel thought he was calling in reinforcements, but Sebastian had never given much credence to the agent’s opinions.

"I know you cannot understand, but I must ask you to respect my decision." Sebastian’s smile held no humor. "The worst that could happen is that I would die in truth, and then you would find yourself as a permanent earl. I could think of worse fates."

Daniel’s expression was an attempt at severity, but he had inherited his father’s unfortunate chin so he only managed to look slightly harried. "I have no wish for your lands or your title. You should know that by now, Grimmy. You’ve always been a little reckless, perhaps — Uncle was right about that — but who isn’t? Still, I’ve never know you to be foolish. She’s a bastard, and you’d risk everything — "

Sebastian’s glare, which he had turned on Daniel at the mention of his father, now grew several degrees frostier. "She is my daughter," he said, slowly and precisely. 

He looked back at the flaking pictures of the gouty lions, smirking as they reared up on either side of the shield. He wanted to smash them in for all good they and what they stood for had done him. Between Adela and the sabotaged axle that had nearly ended Sebastian’s life, de Lint had much to answer for.

"Are my affairs in order?" he demanded of Whitby.

"Yes, your lordship," his thin, balding agent said. He hesitated, his silence laden with unspoken disapproval.

"You wish to make an observation?" Sebastian raised a brow, knowing from experience that he could not avoid the incipient lecture.

Whitby drew himself up. "As the manager of your finances, I feel it incumbent upon my position to express the utmost disapproval of this endeavor. However much you believe in your cousin — and with no disrespect to Mr. Collins — it is most unwise to place all your worldly goods unconditionally in another’s hands."

Sebastian snorted. "And don’t I already, Mr. Whitby?"

The agent hemmed and hawed for a moment at the pointed question. "It is a matter of trustworthiness, your lordship, and of accountability. I have been your father’s agent since my own father died when you were scarcely out of breeches, and our relationship is spelled out in the most precise legal language."

"Whereas Daniel is only my cousin, whom I’ve known from the cradle," Sebastian finished for him. "I fail to see your point."

"I did not truly believe that you would, your lordship." Whitby sighed. "I have made contacts on your behalf with a very discreet agent in Venice, and I am assured that he will render all assistance that is required."

"Very well," Sebastian said, turning back to survey the flat stretch of gray sea, "then have the carriage brought around, and I’ll be off without further delay."

"Do be careful, old chap," Daniel said.

Sebastian smiled tightly, full of the anger that had grown inside him like a cancer for the past three months. His mind went through his meticulous plans, examining them for faults and finding none. Let the world think him dead, and then — then he could move without fear of discovery.

"I am not the one who needs to take care."

***

The ferry dipped and rocked on the choppy waves, its movements more queasily abrupt than the graceful rise and fall of the steamer they had left the day before. 

Sarah Connolly stood at the rail between Lady Merrill and Mr. de Lint, straining through the mists for her first glimpse of Venice as the lady’s granddaughter chattered with her friends, their backs to the gray view of the Adriatic. 

Venice. The name was pregnant with promise. Of Trieste, she carried only an impression of stuccoed houses in failing light as they were driven from the steamer to their accommodations, and their hotel had been disappointingly similar to the one in Southampton. But Venice — surely Venice would not, could not disappoint. Her imagination had feasted on the promise of La Serenissima since her employer first stated her intention of spending spring in that city, and Sarah’s quiet, half-desperate gratitude for such an opportunity allowed her to bear the delicate tortures of Mr. de Lint with greater composure then she had thought she possessed.

Sarah stared at the low smear of darker gray that stood as a divider between the undifferentiated expanse of sea, land, and fog. The shoreline looked no different than it had since they left Trieste, still a long, desolate flatland interrupted by the occasional ruin that shot up against the sky for a scant dozen feet before tumbling broken back into the marsh, and she began to wonder if they would ever arrive. Finally, she saw a break in the land ahead, and a few minutes later, the ferry was sliding between the narrow arms of two barrier islands — for she had not been watching the true shore at all, she realized as she watched the water open out in front of the ferry; at some point, it must have melted into the islets that guarded Venice’s lagoon. 

Now they were within, and Sarah strained her eyes for the first hint of the glorious city. Hummocks, hillocks, and sea reeds thrust through the silty water everywhere she looked, and between them hundreds of wooden posts were sunk into the lagoon bottom in a baffling pattern. In front of the ferry, sleek black darts pierced the fog, shallow boats sliding among the more wide-flung isles. 

For a hundred heartbeats, that was all, until finally, a bone-white mass detached itself from the unquiet waters in the mist-shortened distance, resolving as they approached into blocks of towers and colonnades in pale marble and red brick, cut through by avenues of the brackish lagoon.

It was beautiful. It was nothing like she had imagined, but it was beautiful, like some drowned mermaid’s city risen from the deep. She let out the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding, and her heart jerked a little inside her chest.

"Isn’t it a sight?" Mr. de Lint said with a display of heartiness that Sarah couldn’t quite believe was sincere, pulling her out of her reverie.

She did not know whether he was addressing her or his mother; he had used that trick before to embarrass her, so she simply nodded slightly, keeping her eyes fixed ahead.

"I’d wager you never pictured yourself here," he continued in the same too-easy tone.

Sarah looked up sharply to meet his amber gaze. Eyes that color should not be able to look cool, but his did, and they had a glitter that made clear that the reminder of her origins was neither accidental nor careless.

"I am pleased to go where Lady Merrill wishes, sir," she said softly, flushing.

"What virtuous meekness," he murmured, those hard eyes scouring her face, picking out each pock-mark that welted her skin with an expression that was almost hungry.

She jerked her head away, the deep brim of her unfashionable bonnet shuttering his view.

"Sarah is quite the perfect companion," Lady Merrill said, oblivious to the tension that thrummed in the air. She patted Sarah’s white-knuckled hand on the rail next to hers.

"You are easy to please, your ladyship." Still rattled by Mr. de Lint, Sarah knew her words had a hollow ring. But it was true; Lady Merrill, for all her faults, was a remarkably undemanding mistress. Sarah would be more than happy to spend the rest of her life as a lady’s companion if she knew all her future employments would be as pleasant as this one. The lady’s flighty granddaughter and her fluttering friends Sarah could bear with equanimity. If only it weren’t for the lady’s son . . .

"Would you like to see the carnival, madam?" Mr. de Lint asked over Sarah’s head, dismissing her as if she had ceased to exist the moment his attention turned elsewhere.

"The carnival?" Lady Merrill asked. "Why, that’s three-quarters of a century dead!"

Her son laughed. "Oh, it never truly died, and with Venice’s glorious liberation from the greedy Austrian oppressors — ” He struck a pose. “ — certain elements of the Venetian youth have decided to revive its more notorious elements year-round. In private, of course, and with far more taste and discretion than was displayed in times past." From his tone, Sarah could not tell whether he thought that was a good thing. "Some are partisans of the new Kingdom of Italy; others wish to relive the days of the Republic. But their reasons hardly matter, for you would make a stunning houri in any of their masques, Mother. If I might be so bold." He adopted a tone of wild flattery.

Lady Merrill laughed merrily. "Oh, those days of mine are long over. I am done with shocking society! And besides, Sarah might die of humiliation if she were dragged along in the company of a seventy-year-old odalisque, never mind what Anna and her young friends would think."

“What is it, Grandmamma?” Lady Anna asked, turning from her conversation with the Morton sisters at the sound of her name.

Sarah said nothing as Lady Merrill explained, hoping that the girl’s interruption would deflect Mr. de Lint’s attention. But almost immediately, she felt his eyes light upon her again.

"Our Sarah might just enjoy the opportunity to hide behind a mask and veil," he said, ignoring his half-niece. There was no edge in his words, but Sarah could feel their malice biting into her.

I don't care, she told herself. But she did, and he knew it. No matter how many years stood between her and the filthy streets of the rookery, she would always carry the evidence of her origins on her face, bare for everyone to see. Her speech was now flawlessly correct, her education — if not her experience — as good as that of many peeresses, her bearing and etiquette without fault . . . but nothing could erase the smallpox scars that disfigured her cheeks and forehead. 

A century ago, those scars would have merely made her plain. But by the time of her birth, all but the poor and a few objectors whose wealth protected them were inoculated, and now that every child in England was required to be vaccinated by law, it marked her as one who had slipped through the cracks — who had a background such that it was possible for her to be invisible, and who had received none of the doctors’ various concoctions or treatments for preventing scars when she contracted the disease. 

Quite simply, she wore her life story on her face.

And so she would never be more than a lady’s companion, and she was remarkably fortunate to have been elevated to that position. It was far more than she had once dreamed of and far more than anyone of her past deserved, and so, she told herself, she would be content.

Resolutely, she shut out Mr. de Lint’s continuing acid-laced commentary and turned her eyes to the palazzi that rose from the murky waters like a pale dream.

***

It was he. There had been no mistake.

A black anger filled Sebastian as he stood in the shadows of the doorway of a draper’s shop near the Ponte della Verona, wrapped in an amorphous overcoat and in the swirling fog that now rose from the canals faster than the wind could tatter it. Three crowded gondolas and half a dozen wider batèle buranele rested in the oil-smooth water at the canal door of the palazzo, the wallowing batèle nearly gunwale-deep under the loads of boxes, trunks, and servants. 

Through the window of the first gondola’s felze canopy, Sebastian could see where de Lint sat with another passenger, his head bare and his chin raised with conceit that radiated across the water. Sebastian watched as the man ducked out of the door and leapt nimbly to the water stairs, much to the irritation of the gondolier, who cursed him roundly in the Venetian dialect as the boat rocked with his jump. His cloaked companion pressed her hands against the sides of the felze and said nothing.

It was obscene that the man could stand there, smiling down like a benevolent deity upon the gondolas that floated at his feet. Even through the distorted lens of Sebastian’s implacable anger, de Lint looked every inch the gentleman, from the top of his perfectly smoothed hair to his shining short boots. Nowhere did the filth lying under that veneer betray itself; he was a picture of refinement and moderation, and Sebastian’s hands balled into fists at the very sight of him.

Ignoring both his companion and the gondolier, de Lint called up to a servant who had issued a challenge from an upper window of the palazzo. As the great wooden doors were opened in response to his reply, he waved his boat away and ordered the next gondola up, holding out his arms theatrically to a white-haired woman within — Lady Merrill, Sebastian saw when she turned towards him, recognizing her through the twining mist. He allowed himself a surge of dark satisfaction; his sources had proven correct thus far.

The lady flashed her son a dazzling smile and allowed herself to be helped up, laughing as he fussed over her extravagantly. As soon as she was shooed within the palazzo’s tall carven doors, he turned back to assist the second passenger. The pretty blonde who emerged was exactly whom Sebastian had expected, one who was as essential to his plan as Lady Merrill or even de Lint himself: Lady Anna Dutton, de Lint’s half-niece. 

The girl and the gondola were dismissed, and the final boat slid into place. Two more young girls — Melinda and Euphemia Morton, his sources had told him, friends and distant relatives of the family — were swiftly assisted out, followed by a third woman who had governess written in every line of her stout body. That conveyance, too, was rowed away, and Sebastian was about to turn aside when the first one pulled up again and de Lint held out an imperious arm.

It was only then that Sebastian realized that it still carried de Lint’s slender, cloaked companion. And no surprise that he had forgotten; as the woman stood, it became apparent she was a creature whose very meekness made her small body seem even smaller. Hunched shoulders, ducked head, all clad in a discreet black linsey-woolsey that completed her air of utter insignificance.

And yet . . . His eyes were caught by the tension that radiated through that frame, more like the string of a bow than a lute, threatening danger rather than breakage. Despite the servility of her posture, there was still something — in her movements? her air? — that spoke of strength and a deep, burning anger that was kept in check only by such elaborate displays of subjection, and Sebastian found himself wondering what would happen when that control finally snapped. 

She hesitated, standing in the gondola and radiating uncertainty. The deep poke bonnet that she wore was twenty years out of date, and it hid her features as effectively as a wall —

— until she looked up as if seeking an exit from de Lint’s too-pressing offer. Then Sebastian had a brief impression of a narrow, pale face before her incredible dark eyes lit upon him, capturing his own gaze with their force and sending a jolt of — what? — surging through him. It wasn’t alarm, exactly, or lust . . . something more like recognition, which was strange because he could not think of a single person who resembled that slender, tenuous girl in even the most remote way.

Sebastian realized that he had been unconsciously leaning out from the doorway in interest; now he jerked back, but it was far too late to hide in anonymous shadows. Those eyes, darker than any shadow, followed him, touching every line and plane of his face that was visible beneath his hood. 

For an instant, he felt as if some sort of link were formed between them through that intense scrutiny, boring into him and forging a connection by the sheer force of her gaze. Then she looked away, distracted by something de Lint said, and the illusion snapped. Released from the spell of her eyes, Sebastian saw for the first time the scars that marked her face. 

Another shock went through him, this more identifiable — mixed of vindication, fury, incredulity, and an instinctive sympathetic pain. The nurse’s wail when he had burst into the nursery echoed in his head: It was that pock-faced strumpet! She told me I was needed!

And now here was de Lint with just such a scar-faced woman in tow. The marks were not very deep nor were they truly disfiguring, but they were clear enough that there was no room for doubt. Sebastian brooded as de Lint picked her up by the waist — to the gondolier’s further curses — and swung her around once, acting for an instant as if he were going to tip her into the canal. Her hands tightened so convulsively on the man’s arms that Sebastian could see the knuckles standing out from her flesh, but if she uttered a sound, he could not hear it. Finally, de Lint set her down. He was laughing. But when the woman turned back toward the gondola, not a trace of levity showed on her face.

Two scarred women. Chance? Unlikely. Yet there was nothing of a whore in her expression as she looked at de Lint. She only looked frightened, shot through with an abiding anger that was so hopeless that Sebastian felt an instinctive mixture of pity and fascination.

Then her head came up: She was looking for him again. Wishing to avoid that disturbing gaze, he gripped the doorknob behind him and pushed, ducking into the draper’s shop behind him.

"Posso aiutarlo, signor?" the wizened shopkeeper asked from behind the counter — in perfect mainland Italian rather than the common Venetian dialect.

"No, no, I am just looking," Sebastian muttered back in the same language, turning toward a stack of silk bolts and trying to show signs of interest. His head was spinning. He had assumed that the anonymous whore had long escaped his grasp, but here she was, just as the nurse described.

And yet, was it she? In that moment when those deep, dark eyes had met his . . . Sebastian shook off his doubts as superstitious imaginings. For there to be one pock-marked woman with de Lint at Amberley Park and a different one here in Venice — that was pushing credulity to the breaking point, even taking into account de Lint’s skewed tastes.

That she was here was felicitous. His scheme was complete without her assistance, but it wasn’t her help he wanted. It was vengeance, and that required a new plan. She almost as much as de Lint had been responsible for what Adela had suffered.

His eyes slid past the tables of fabric to an assortment of outrageous costumes on the back wall, and an idea flashed into his mind. 

"What are those?" he demanded, though he was more than half certain he knew.

"Disguises, signor, for the masquerade parties that are so popular now. My wife makes them," the man replied eagerly. "Would you like to see?"

"Yes," Sebastian said, his eyes narrowing. "Oh, yes."

***

Sarah jerked away from Mr. de Lint the instant he released her. Automatically, she turned to search for the man who had been watching them. Watching her, for she was certain that his eyes had been fixed on nothing else. But he was gone. Half a dozen Venetians loitered around the bridge, but there was no sign of the tall man with the hooded overcoat and shadowed face.

Lady Anna’s incredulous laughter rang out from the interior of the palazzo. “The kitchens are on the ground floor!”

“What, did you expect them to be below the waterline?” came Miss Morton’s scathing reply. 

“Let’s pick out our rooms!” Miss Effie interrupted the incipient squabbling.

Their footsteps echoed fleetingly as they went deeper into the interior, and Lady Merrill’s voice rose above them, made indistinguishable by distance and echoes.

“It seems we are alone,” Mr. de Lint said slowly as behind him, a dozen servants and oarsmen began to unload the wide, blunt boats that held the luggage. Sarah ignored the patent falsity of that statement just as she tried to ignore the way his eyes were searching her face again. He laughed, and she knew she had failed. Again. “You had better hurry inside or they’ll be wondering if you aren’t testing your wiles on me, defenseless man that I am.”

“You are blocking my path, sir,” Sarah pointed out as neutrally as she could manage.

“Am I? I beg your pardon.” He moved a scant two inches from the center of the water landing toward the yellow wall of the building, then watched her with frank interest. Sarah swallowed against her sudden queasiness. Always before, she had taken care never to be cornered by Mr. de Lint without his mother’s presence. She had forgotten her caution this time, and she would pay for it. Though she knew he had no true interest in her, he was the kind of man who enjoyed tormenting the defenseless, and she was as defenseless as anyone could be. 

McGarrity, Lady Merrill’s maid, cast Sarah a look of pity behind Mr. de Lint’s back as she scuttled into the palazzo with a stack of hatboxes, but Sarah knew better than to expect any help from that quarter. And indeed, the rest of the servants studiously ignored her as they unloaded the boats. If she had been one of them, maybe the butler would have said a word or two in Lady Merrill’s ear. But she wasn’t one of them — she would never be one of them — because she had come from too low and climbed too high.

The sickening mass in her stomach turned hot and hard so suddenly that for a moment, she could see nothing at all but the black wall of Mr. de Lint’s coat front, mocking her with her impotence. Without willing it, she took a jerking step forward and rammed into his chest. He lurched against the wall, wrapping a hand around her waist and pulling her with him so that she was pressed against his body. 

Her anger was gone in an instant, replaced by too familiar fear.

“Why, Sarah.” He chuckled, leaning his face down toward hers. He was handsome, very handsome, but her body’s small, involuntary reaction to his touch only magnified her disgust.

“Let me go, Mr. de Lint,” she said, the words crisp over the tremor that she couldn’t quite contain. If she could only fight back — hit and scream and bite. But she was a servant; she could do nothing, or she would lose the only thing she had ever earned.

To her astonishment, he released her, so abruptly that she staggered back and one heel struck the edge of the landing. Catching her balance at the brink, she lurched past him and darted into the cool darkness of the Palazzo Bovolo, trying to bury in her hatred of him the cold, sick certainty that their encounter was not at an end.

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