Read Online Your Scandalous Ways by Loretta Chase - Free Book Online

would be the first time he’d been told only part of the story.
    They always made it sound so simple— Get the letters —and it always turned into un mare di merda, a sea of excrement.
    He scanned the immediate vicinity. “No sign of the would-be killers or rapists or thieves or whatever they were,” he said. “No sign of their boat, either. With any luck, they’ve drowned.”
    He didn’t tell her it wasn’t good luck.
    He didn’t tell her he should have taken more care.
    He should have used another method to immobilize the one he’d pulled off her. He should have made sure to keep him alive, to hold onto him and question him. James would have enjoyed the interrogation.
    But there was the swine, chortling while he tortured her, choking her slowly and grinding his groin—doubtless crawling with vermin and disease—against her.
    James had charged in like a mad bull.
    So that one had got away—or, equally likely, was dead—and the other was either sinking to the bottom of the canal or had got away, too.
    Clumsy work. Not setting a good example for Zeggio, going off half-cocked like that, a bloody damned Sir Baconhead, saving fair maidens from dragons.
    Still, it was done and couldn’t be undone.
    James tensed as two heads popped out of the water. Then he recognized Uliva.
    â€œAh, here are your fellows,” he said. “I guessed they’d be along soon enough.”
    The episode had taken a minute or two, start to finish.
    He’d sized up her gondoliers the other night, and understood they were men to be reckoned with. The attackers probably hadn’t known that.
    Whatever the villains knew or didn’t know, James couldn’t leave it to the gondoliers to rescue her.
    As it was, he might have reached her too late. It took no time at all to kill somebody, as he well knew.
    He watched her two stalwart boatmen climb into the gondola. “Get the lady into the house, quickly,” he told them in Italian. “Make sure to pour some brandy into her.”
    He moved to the side of the boat. It had drifted a ways from their respective domiciles, but not so very far, and this was not the Grand Canal but a rio, a smaller side canal. He was already wet. He’d a short, easy swim home ahead of him. The cold water would do him good.
    He needed to get away. He wasn’t happy with his performance this night. He’d had everything planned: their meeting and how he’d manage it.
    He prepared to dive.
    â€œWhere are you going?” she cried. “Where’s your boat? You’re not going to swim, surely? Wait! I don’t even know who you are.”
    He turned and gazed into her white, frightened face. He remembered the arrogant sway of her backside as she’d abandoned him in the Florian. He remembered the laughter, promising sin, and the smile, the devil’s own smile.
    He felt a stab, as of loss, though he’d lost nothing, though he had nothing to lose. Yet he turned away from the water and, with wry resignation, toward her.
    â€œI’m the fellow across the way,” he said.
    An hour later
    Francesca’s neighbor was taller than she’d estimated, based on glimpses of a silhouette in a window. She could not have guessed how splendidly made he was.
    At the moment, the leanly muscled body was not so plainly on display as it had been a short while ago. The recollection, however, was burned into her mind, and it made her go hot and cold again as, clean and dry and freshly clothed, he sauntered into the small parlor she reserved, usually, for her close friends.
    He wore a curious combination of articles borrowed from the largest of her servants. The shirt and coat were too short in the sleeves, the waistcoat was too loose, and the breeches too baggy. The shoes were neither too large nor too small, but her discerning eye told her they did not shape properly to his feet. Yet he wore the ill-fitting hodgepodge with