Читать книгу A Notorious Woman - Amanda McCabe - Страница 10

So. That was the famous Julietta Bassano.

Marc Antonio Velazquez stayed in his hiding place in the narrow space between two tall houses for a long time after Signora Bassano slipped into her home and out of sight. He watched as a faint golden glow of light appeared in the window of the first floor, the floor where her perfume shop did business. Watched as the light faded, only to reappear above, a welcoming beacon in the mist-shrouded chill of a Venetian winter morning.

She was not what he had expected. He had expected beauty, of course, beauty of the fashionable sort demanded in Venice: golden hair, azure blue eyes, rounded bosom and hips. A canvas that Florentine Botticelli brought to glorious, feminine life.

Julietta Bassano would never be mistaken for La Primavera. She was tall and very slim in the plain black-and-white gown that could be glimpsed beneath her enveloping cloak. There were no soft curves of bosom, hips and belly, as was desirable in these demanding days. There were only straight lines, long legs, narrow shoulders. The hair that escaped from her hood was black as the night around them, not the gold that ladies spent hours sitting in the sun wearing a crownless hat to achieve. He had not been able to see her face clearly, but it seemed as slim as the rest of her, a pale oval, with sharp cheekbones, sharp chin.

For all that, though, there was something—something enchanted about her. She carried mystery and sadness about her like a second velvet cloak, something palpable and so alluring.

Marc could never resist a mystery, a complication. It was his great downfall in life. Yet he would never have thought her to be Ermano’s sort of woman. There was not an ounce of giggling, golden softness about her. Just darkness, and hidden daggers.

No, not Ermano’s sort. But very much Marc’s.

Perhaps this task would be more enjoyable than he had ever anticipated. Enjoyable—until he had to destroy her. Very regrettable, indeed.