Lopez smiled wryly. 'I prefer to think of it as a kindness on my part. Personally, I think forcing you to spend time with the formidable Francesca de Chevreuse is all to the good. It will give you something to do penance over, when we finally make our pilgrimage to the Holy Land.'
'Very long penance, I'm afraid,' mourned Diego. 'Her flesh I can resist easily enough. But the woman's mind--' He sighed. 'So tempting.'
* * *
'Why don't you tell me about it in the morning, Alessandra,' Kat yawned, looking pointedly at the door and then at her bed.
Of course, Alessandra refused the invitation to go and leave Madelena to undress Katerina. 'How could you, Katerina? We've got our reputation to consider! You spoke to that . . . that . . . puttana!' she spat. 'And how could Grandpapa go and join that throng around that cheap woman? Lucrezia was furious. Three of her cicebeos left her and went and hung about that . . . that . . . scarlet . . .'
'I doubt very much if Francesca de Chevreuse is 'cheap,' ' interrupted Kat, pushing Alessandra towards the door. 'And she seems nice--which, frankly, is not something you can say about Lucrezia Brunelli. Now, good night.'
'She's a slut!'
'And you and Lucrezia both seem to be jealous. Why? Now go away, do. I don't care.'
Chapter 46 ==========
There was, thank the Lord, plenty of light from the windows and walkways above to let Marco see where he was going, and to show him the footing on the ledge that led to the hole.
The fact was that he really didn't want to be here at all.
But for some reason that maybe only God knew, that strange scarred man had followed him out of the Jesolo after saving both him and Benito from the Squalos gang. And, presumably for that same reason, he had decided to set himself up as a kind of watchdog or bodyguard for the two of them. Marco felt a certain guilty responsibility for the man's well-being. They had abandoned him when Aldanto and Maria had come to their rescue.
So here he was, clinging to the ledge above the waterline, with a bundle and a message to deliver and only the haziest notion if the man was still in there.
If he hadn't been so nervous, he might never have noticed the stranger at all. But Marco was desperately afraid that his last escapade had drawn unwelcome attention to the entire Aldanto menage, attention that would have to include the Montagnards. And if anyone who had ever known Lorendana Valdosta got a good look at him-- well, there'd be no doubt whose kid he was.
So he'd been watching every shadow, and thinking out every footstep ever since he'd emerged shakily from his sickbed--and he'd seen the man ghosting along, fifty feet behind as he went to work one morning. And no matter how he'd changed his course, there the man was. Then he'd watch from the dirty window of the Ventuccio offices as the man shadowed Benito on his first run of the morning. He was ready to rush out to attack the man himself out of sheer terror when he moved across a patch of sunlight--
It was at that point, when he got a brief but very good look at the man's scarred face, that he'd recognized him as the mysterious stranger who'd saved them.
That night he'd spotted the man slipping into the foundation hole across the canal.
And now, when he watched carefully, he could catch the stranger at his comings and goings--and very rarely, at trailing them. He thought that after a few days the man would get tired of it and go away--loco folk from the Jesolo weren't known for long attention spans. But he hadn't, and Marco realized that he was going to have to do something about the fact that he was there, and was apparently not going to give up on his self-appointed task.
First--tell Caesare, so that Aldanto didn't kill the stranger, thinking he was a threat. That was easiest done in the morning, before Aldanto was completely awake and thinking.
Marco had planned his approach carefully the previous morning, waiting until Aldanto had gotten his first glass of watered wine and was starting his second before accosting him.
'Caesare,' he started hesitantly, 'there's something you should know.'
Before Caesare could do more than look apprehensive, Marco had plowed onward. 'That man I told you about? The one in the marshes? The one that helped Benito and me?'
Aldanto nodded slowly, putting the goblet down on the table and absently running a hand through his tangled golden mane.
