time of year. He had embarked from England so late in the season, almost in winter itself, that crossing the Continent to Italy through France and the Alps was out of the question. He’d had no choice but to travel by sea, around Spain and Portugal and into the Mediterranean, until he’d become heartily sick of the company of sailing men like this one.
‘Once you’re at Venice, your Grace, you stay,’ the captain continued. ‘No more journey until spring. No Roma, no Napoli, no Firenze, no—’
‘Quite,’ Richard said, his impatience with the man’s company growing by the second. He didn’t need a list of every landmark city in Italy to know that he’d be winterbound in Venice. He was rather counting on it, in fact, given the pleasing female company that was waiting for him there.
‘But his Grace will find willing friends in Venice to warm him, eh?’ The captain winked slyly, studying Richard from his thick dark gold hair to the toes of his well-polished boots with obvious approval. ‘A great English lion like his Grace will have many ladies, eh?’
Richard said nothing, choosing instead to stare out at the water and let the rascal draw whatever unsavoury conclusions he pleased. His dear wife Anne had been not only his duchess, but his best friend and his dearest love, and when she had died, he’d sworn no other woman could possibly replace her in his life. That had been fifteen long years ago, and the pain lingered still.
‘I can tell you the house of the best courtesans in the city, your Grace,’ the captain was saying. ‘I know what you English lords like, eh? A woman who will bring you to such joy, such passion, such—’
‘Enough,’ Richard said curtly, the voice he always used with recalcitrant servants, dogs and children. Why did everyone on the Continent believe English peers were in constant rut, panting after low women in every port? ‘Leave me.’
The captain hesitated only a moment before bowing and backing away, and, with a grumbling sigh, Richard turned back towards the horizon. The sloop was drawing closer to the harbour now, the outlines of the city’s skyline sharpening in the fading light of day. Richard could make out the famous pointed bell tower of San Marco’s, looking precisely the way it did in the engravings in the books in his library at Aston Hall. There was much else beginning to appear from the misty dusk, of course, places Richard supposed he should have recognised as well, but his mind was too occupied with the coming reunion to concentrate on anything else.
He remained on the deck against the urging of his manservant to come below to ready himself for shore, and he ignored the same suggestion from the captain as the crew finally dropped their anchor. Soon he’d be hearing the merry laughter that meant the world to him, and feel the soft girlish arms flung around his shoulders in the embrace he’d missed so sorely these last months.
As the sloop entered the harbour proper, a flurry of small boats came through the mist towards them, odd long skiffs that reminded Richard more of the punts at Oxford than the usual longboats, with the oarsman standing high in the stern-sheets—or what would be the stern-sheets in an English boat. Foreigners had a different name for everything.
‘What are those skiffs, Potter?’ he asked his secretary as the man joined him at the rail.
‘Gondolas, your Grace,’ said Potter, supplying the proper word in his usual helpful manner. Like some small, bustling, black-clad badger, the secretary had ducked from the path of the sailors to join Richard, while the rest of the English party, Richard’s manservant and two footmen, saw to his belongings below. ‘Gondolas are the common means of travel throughout Venice, rather like hackneys in London.’
‘Then pray hail one for us directly,’ Richard said. ‘The sooner we’re off this infernal sloop and on dry land again, the better.’
At once Potter nodded, bowing over his clasped hands. ‘I am sorry, your Grace, but before we can venture into the city, we must clear customs.’
‘Customs?’ Blast, he’d forgotten that every last city and village in Italy considered itself its own little country, complete with a flock of fawning satraps who expected to have their palms greased. ‘Customs.’
‘I fear so, your Grace,’ Potter said. ‘That building on the promontory is the Dognana di Mare, the Customs House of Venice, your Grace, where we must go—’
‘Where you must go, Potter,’ Richard said. ‘You see to whatever needs seeing to, and pay whatever fees the thieving devils demand. I’ll proceed directly to the ladies.’
Potter’s expression grew pinched. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, but surely you must realise that the customs officers will expect you—’
‘They can expect whatever they please,’ Richard said, ‘I’ve more important business this night than to bow and scrape to their wishes. They may call on me tomorrow, at a civil hour, at the—the, ah, what the devil is the place called?’
‘The Ca’ Battista, your Grace,’ Potter said. ‘But if you please, your Grace, we—’
‘Ca’ Battista,’ Richard repeated the house’s name to make sure he’d recall it, and nodded with satisfaction. Though he’d no notion what the words meant, they had a fine, righteous sound to them. ‘Tell the drones in the Customs House to come to me there.’
‘I beg your pardon, your Grace,’ Potter persisted, ‘but Venice has a very poor reputation in its treatment of English visitors. Venice is a republic, and their officials have little respect for foreign persons of rank, such as yourself. It can be a place full of danger, your Grace. This city is not London, and—’
‘But I am not a foreigner,’ Richard said. ‘I am an English peer. Now a boat, Potter, one of your gondolas, at once. At once!’
Soon after Richard was, in fact, in a gondola, seated on a low bench against leather cushions, his long legs bent at an ungainly angle before him. Yet he couldn’t deny the swift efficiency of this peculiar vessel as it glided into one of the channels, or canals, that divided the city and served as a type of watery streets. On this evening, the canal seemed muffled in mist and fog and the endless lapping of the wavelets against the buildings, with the striped poles used for mooring like so many drunken demons lurching through the waters.
Without a city’s usual bustle and clatter from horses, carriages and wagons, the canals seemed oddly quiet, so quiet that to Richard the loudest sound must surely be the racing of his own heart. His long journey, and his waiting, was nearly done.
‘Ca’ Battista, signori,’ the oarsman announced as the gondola slowed before one of the grandest of the houses: a tall square front of white stone, punctuated with balconies and pointed windows frosted with elaborate carvings, which sat so low on the dark water that it seemed to float upon it. The gondolier guided the boat in place before the house’s landing, bumping lightly against the dock. Roused by the noise, a sleepy-eyed porter opened the house’s door and held up a lantern to peer down from the stone steps.
‘Stop gaping, man,’ Potter shouted as Richard clambered from the gondola. ‘Go to your mistress and tell her that the Duke of Aston is here.’
Still the servant hesitated, his face full of bewilderment. With an oath of impatience, Richard swept past him and through the open door, his long cloak swinging from his shoulders. The entry hall was a hexagon, supported by more of the tall columns and pointed arches. A pair of gilded cherubs crowned the newels at the base of the staircase, the steep steps rising up into the murky gloom. The floor was tiled, the walls painted with faded pictures, with everything dismally half-lit by a single hanging lantern.
