His Rags-to-Riches Contessa by Marguerite Kaye

Author:Marguerite Kaye
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-07-04T16:01:55+00:00

* * *

Cousin Rebecca accompanied her aunt to Contessa Benzon’s salon the following evening. As they entered the room, which was stifling hot and bustling, Becky was assailed by a wave of boredom. Most of the faces looked familiar, some from Contessa Albrizzi’s salon, but most from the many calls Rebecca had paid with her aunt Isabel in the intervening ten days. Calls when she had drunk endless cups of insipid tea, for the Venetians could not understand that the leaves must be given time to infuse. She had smiled endless vapid smiles, listening to endless tedious conversations. She tried, when she returned from these excursions, to recall what had been discussed, but it was all a jumble of who was wearing what and tittle-tattle. None of Isabel’s acquaintances seemed to do anything, save pay calls and gossip endlessly. This life of leisure and luxury, which would have been beyond her own wildest dreams only a month ago, Becky was finding not only wearisome but inexplicable.

‘Don’t they mind that they serve no purpose?’ she’d asked Isabel earlier, as Chiara pattered to and fro with a selection of gowns for Cousin Rebecca to choose from for the coming evening.

Isabel’s brittle laugh made her realise how insulting she had been. ‘I didn’t mean you,’ Becky had added swiftly.

‘But you make a valid point, Rebecca. Another thing I shall endeavour to change when you are no longer with me.’

Which had brought a lump to Becky’s throat. When she was with the Contessa, she increasingly forgot her own sordid history and felt herself truly to be Isabel’s friend. She was deluding herself. Though the regal woman in whose wake she was currently trailing was not her friend Isabel, but Contessa del Pietro. ‘Contessa Benzon, it has been too long,’ she was saying to the statuesque woman who must be their hostess. ‘May I introduce you to my niece from England, Signorina Rebecca Wickes.’

Contessa Maria Querini Benzon had once been a famous beauty renowned for courting scandal. She had, Isabel had informed Becky earlier, danced virtually naked around the Tree of Liberty, wearing only a brief Roman-style tunic during the fall of the Republic. A song inspired by this outrageous act was still a favourite with the gondoliers twenty years later. Her latest scandal had been to marry her lover after thirty years together, but her notoriety had more to do with her passion for food than for her husband. The Contessa, a true Venetian, loved polenta so much that she would not leave her palazzo without a slice of it tucked into her bosom. The gondoliers called her The Steaming Lady.

As the introductions were made, it struck Becky yet again what a topsy-turvy tangle were the rules and the morals by which these upper-class Venetians lived. A bride must be a virgin, yet a wife was expected to take a lover. Fidelity, that most fundamental virtue in her eyes, meant nothing here. She, who had been true in every way to the man she’d

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.