"Couldn't you at least have provided some books to pa.s.s the time?" Of course she couldn't read in the dark. "And a candle or something?"

"I wouldn't have guessed you for a reader," he said dryly.The man was astounding! "And why ever not?" she shot back.

"Well... your past..."

"And what do you think I did at the orphanage if not read?" Books took her away for a few hours from that stifling atmosphere.

"Ahhh, the nuns." She could hear the smile in his voice. "So you read the Bible."

"I liked the Old Testament," she said, just to shock him. "All that smiting and lying together. That seemed real. The New Testament was harder to take, requiring belief in the power of transformation and all." She c.o.c.ked her head. "And what are your favorite books?"

"I like the Romans. Philosophers, but practical too."

"Cicero? Marcus Aurelius? Julius Augustus?"

"You p.r.o.nounce Cicero correctly," he said, surprised. "Most English use the soft s sound and not the ch sound."

"Wonders never cease." Just another sign of his arrogance.

"You've read them, haven't you?" It was an accusation.

"Rem acu tetigisti. After reading the Bible in Latin, it was a natural progression."

"I can't believe the nuns kept copies of Roman writers."

"Oh, so I must have stopped reading after I left the orphanage?" She shook her head, disgusted. "I just might have read other books as well." She didn't say she read so much because after she'd been scarred, she stayed much in her rooms. She often borrowed books from her patrons. Since most of them didn't care for books, they often gave her free run of their libraries.

"I stand corrected. Forgive me."

She would have expected a mocking tone, but none was in evidence. His apology was straightforward. If it wasn't Gian Urbano, she would have thought it was sincere. "Apology accepted." She cleared her throat. "I suppose you like the Romans because of your heritage."

"One likes that with which one is familiar." He paused. "My father gave me Cicero's diatribe against slavery and what it did to the Roman psyche. Cicero loved freedom."

"All the time he kept slaves, as I recall."

Urbano obviously didn't want to recall that fact. "I also read the British. Fielding, Shakespeare, Marlowe. Though I can't say I found Richardson sympathetic."

"A heroine who fades away rather than make the least push to escape her fate? I should think not." She stopped for a moment.

Would a Roman gigolo have read Clarissa, for heaven's sake? "And how are you familiar with British literature?"

She felt his smile as much as saw it.

"One likes that with which one is familiar. How do you think I got my green eyes?"

She sat up straighten "Mother or father?"

"Father."The one his mother loved. "A bored aristocrat making the grand tour?"

"Hardly." He chuckled. The sound was a warm rumble. It was the first humor she had heard from him.

"No doubt a soldier in one of the various armies that swept through here, a deluded idealistic aristocrat or a mercenary." She waved a hand, dismissing his father.

"Close enough. A soldier."

"But you knew him, so he must have deserted the army and stayed on to be with your mother. How romantic."

"Now you are being snide."

"Well, it is no wonder your English is so good," she said grudgingly. He was right. The snide comment had not been fair. Perhaps deserting the army wasn't the convenient or cowardly thing to do. Perhaps deserting had cost him something. In which case Urbano's father might really have loved his mother, or thought he did for a brief time.

"And the fact that you read Latin is probably why your Italian is so good."

"And my French and Spanish and my Romanian, since they share Latin roots. German was a little harder." There, let him take that. He was always so eager to dismiss her.

"Voi Vorbiti romaneste?" He spoke it with a strange, archaic lilt to his inflection.

"Destul de bine. Sunt putin a-si fi pierut obisnuinta. Not a language commonly spoken in Rome." She lifted her brows in question, not sure if he could see her face in the darkness.

"My mother was born there."

"I thought she was Italian."

"Now she claims Italy as her own. But she comes from an... old family in Transylvania." He sat up. "Enough about my parentage. You will meet my mother and judge for yourself. At the next change of horses, I will provide you with a book from my trunk. You can hold the shade and to let in enough light to read by. I have Byron's poetry, I believe, and Cervantes... but it is not a translation."

She looked at him over her brows.

"My apologies, of course you would not mind that. I believe I have one also from a British female writer, Miss Austen. Have you read her comedies of manners?"

"But they are so much more!"

"She knows the human condition," he agreed. "Indeed, my only reservation is that the principles of the French philosophers and the Revolution are nowhere in her works. Was she so cloistered that the most cataclysmic event of her time did not affect her?"

"You have obviously not read deeply enough..."

Chapter Six.

Urbano closed the door on the cacophony of drinkers outside the parlor of the osteria in the hotel where they had stopped.

Quiet descended on Kate. They were not to spend the night, but go straight through. Sleeping in a rocking carriage-ugh. His conversation had been surprisingly educated, even entertaining today, though he had grown increasingly fidgety throughout the afternoon. She hadn't had a conversation that challenged her intellectually since... well, since she'd argued with the visiting abbess about the concept of original sin when she was fourteen. She walked to the cheery fire burning in the grate and held out her hands to the heat. The evening was cool.

She felt his energy snake seductively along her skin. The vibrations weren't as strong as they had been, were they? It didn't matter. Even slow, they were a danger. Best she find some armor to protect against his effect on her. He came up behind her.

"I... I will return shortly," he said, his voice husky. "I've ordered refreshments."

She chanced a glance behind her. He did not meet her gaze, but turned abruptly and strode to the door. "We stay an hour.

Make what you will of it."

Was her company so odious to him? The door closed softly behind him. She frowned. Where was he going without even an explanation? That felt almost surrept.i.tious. And hadn't he looked a little guilty? If he was going to see to the carriage he might have said so. He might be going to wipe off the dust of the road. Had he bespoken a room for himself? He hadn't ordered one for her. If one had a room, one could do many things.

What was he doing?

She slid over to the door and cracked it open. He was in the taproom beyond. She could feel him. Where... ? She opened the door a little wider.

There he was. Talking to a serving maid. Only this one was no maiden. Nor was she even comely. Her features were coa.r.s.e, flat, and broad, with a nose too big and ears that departed from her skull at an alarming angle. There were no two ways about it.

She was plain.

But Urbano was staring at her as if she were the only woman in the room. That caused a little frisson of annoyance to pull Kate's lips downward. And the girl was staring back, no doubt hypnotized by his beauty. Men who looked like Urbano did not smile at a girl like that one. As Kate scanned the room, in fact, she saw every other woman staring at Urbano openly. Urbano leaned in to whisper in the wench's ear. The eyes around the room grew hard with jealousy. Kate was ashamed that she could understand the sentiment. Abruptly, Urbano headed for the stairs. Kate hastily shut the door. She knew what was going to happen. And she could hardly credit it. She cracked the door open once more after she felt him pa.s.s.

The girl gave Urbano barely a minute before she set her tray on the bar and trotted up the stairs. Kate shut the door and turned to lean against it as though she was keeping something out.

Fool that she was, she was trying to keep herself in.

But she couldn't. She was going to see what he was doing with her own eyes and put the last nail in the coffin of her opinion of this arrogant creature. He didn't value women enough even to care what he did. A homely girl like that would do anything just to feel for a moment that he wanted her, even if she knew it was a lie. He would give her a quarter hour, spill his seed, and throw her away like yesterday's newspaper, leaving her surer than ever that she was nothing.

b.l.o.o.d.y b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

Kate swung open the door, marched across the dining room and straight up the stairs. She didn't care if the people saw her scar.

Let them look. She had no fear that she'd get the wrong room. She'd be able to feel where he was.

At the top of the stairs, she paused, though. She wanted to catch him in flagrante delicto. In medias res, as Cicero would say.

She went still, going back in her mind to being nine, when she was sent to glide through the night, past locked doors into the bowels of a house that wanted plundering. She was air. She was shadow, silent shadow, sliding along the corridor. No one would know she had pa.s.sed, except perhaps as a tickle of breeze along the napes of their neck.

She focused on the third door to the right. He was there. And she would catch him out. She reached for the k.n.o.b. Would it be locked? That would delay her.

But it was not, He was that arrogant. She turned the k.n.o.b slowly. Would he hear the click when it opened? Inside she heard a moan. She pushed the anger down. It was the girl's moan. Poor deluded thing. She had to give herself to any stranger who asked, no matter how cruel he might be, because that was her only chance to experience an illusion of fulfillment other than what she achieved by her own hand.

That hurt Kate. How different was she? She had been with men. Matthew had seen to that. But she had not known a man in, what, nearly eight years now? She didn't miss their sweat, their grunting efforts, their moist mouths. Yet, sometimes, with one of the younger ones, it had been at least... interesting. It had held the possibility of... something. Something this poor ugly servant wench was searching for as well.

Just concentrate on being still, she admonished herself. The familiar energy hummed in the air, cycling up until it seemed to throb in her brain. She waited for long minutes until she heard what she thought was a moan of ecstasy. Well, the brute didn't waste time. She'd give him that. She held her breath. Imagining what she was most likely to see turned into a full feeling in her core. Her blood seemed to pool between her legs. She was as misguided as the poor serving wench who would be naked inside the room. Would Urbano be naked too?

She cracked the door.

The tableau that met her eyes was not horizontal, but vertical. Fully clothed, he leaned over the girl, the muscles in his back flexing in a most provocative way under his coat as he held her in his arms. His dark curls fell forward over his ears and neck.

The girl leaned back, arching her body into his in ecstasy. He was kissing her throat. The way he was fastened to it, he didn't care if he left a strawberry mark.

He pulled away. The vibrations that battered at Kate's psyche ramped down a notch. But he didn't let the barmaid go. She swooned in his arms, her eyelids fluttering.

"You have a secret charm every man values," he whispered. "Know that. Be sure of it. They will come to you because of it. And one day you will find one who worships you, in a place and time that will surprise you. Know this, and be sure of yourself."

What? Kate straightened, frowning.

He set the girl on her feet. She looked dazed, but happy. No. She looked... sure.

"Go," he whispered.

She turned to the door. Kate was about to step aside and run down the hall, when she saw it. Two tiny rivulets of blood trickled down side of the girl's neck from twin wounds. Bites?

"Wait!" he whispered. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, the embroidered initials clearly visible. GVU. He gently wiped her throat and then tied the snowy cloth around her neck. "A souvenir," he murmured. "Wear it for the next few days."

The smile that lit the girl's face was genuine. "When will I see you?"

His expression was wistful. "You will not, mi amante. I am only a pa.s.sing shadow on your life. But a grateful one."

The barmaid came to herself. "I should think so," she said archly. "Perhaps we will play together again if you pa.s.s this way."

Kate was confused. What had just happened? She melted into the shadows of the doorway opposite as the girl exited the room. Kate followed her silently down before Urbano could appear. She had expected to see seduction, even a quasi-rape. Is that what she had seen? His tenderness with her... his gentle encouragement... That didn't seem like rape. And what, for G.o.d's sake, were those wounds on the girl's neck?

Had he... bitten her?

Of course not. A man's bite would be a semicircle of even marks. Bruises perhaps, but they wouldn't puncture the skin like that.

To break the skin would require something sharp.

The girl must been bitten by some insect or some animal. His kisses had just opened the wounds. Hadn't they?

Kate was even more tired than hungry. She meant to remain rigidly awake in case Urbano joined her in the carriage. She had questions. But did she? What would she ask?

Some things were niggling at her mind. The wounds in the girl's neck, the strength of Elyta, her red eyes, the way Urbano slipped up on one without anyone seeing him, the fact that Elyta, Urbano, and the man from whom she had stolen the stone all seemed to be related by their scent, their vibrating energy...

And there was something about the story of his mother...

But it wouldn't come together. If he joined her, she wouldn't know what to say to him. That she was uneasy? He wanted to have that effect on women. And she wasn't about to give him any kind of satisfaction.

But then, he did not join her. That is a relief, she told herself. And she was so tired. She'd slept only a few hours at his house in Rome. Fighting off Elyta unsuccessfully, the fire, the tension of the carriage ride with Urbano, all had taken their toll. Before she knew what she was doing, she laid herself out on the comfortable upholstery of the carriage.

What did Urbano want with a stone you couldn't cut down and sell? It must cost a pretty penny to keep that town house and staff, to buy his servants cottages for their retirement... Didn't men like him always need money? Perhaps he wanted to give it to a "patroness" to curry favor. Somewhere between fussing about Urbano's patroness and her general dislike of men like him, she slipped off into oblivion, dead to the world.

She only woke when the carnage door opened. She sat up, disoriented. Once again she hadn't even noticed when the rocking movement stopped. Urbano swung himself up and into the corner of the carriage, and peremptorily pulled the blinds.

"Am I not allowed a stop?" she asked, querulous with sleep.

"Soon," he said shortly. "There is no inn hereabouts."

"Where are we?" She felt rumpled. Her mouth was dry and coated with dust.