The Stargazer Read Online Free Page B

don’t have to sleep in there,” she gestured wearily toward her laboratory, “with that corpse. Anywhere else, and I promise not to complain when you lock me in.”
    Ian warred within himself. Part of him was seized by a sudden urge to cross the rug that separated them and sweep Bianca back into his arms. The other part wanted to turn quickly around and flee from her. Incapable of moving, he stood riveted to the floor, staring at her. She stared back at him, looking deep into his eyes, searching. They faced each other like two statues, until a clock on the floor below began to strike the hour. Soon another in a different part of the palazzo began and before long there were ten, each making a different sound but each harmonizing with the others perfectly. Bianca studied Ian as he listened to the chiming of clocks, struck by his ethereal beauty. She smiled at him and, more remarkable than anything else that had happened to her in the previous three days, he smiled back at her.
    “Beautiful,” she whispered in awe.
    “Yes they are, aren’t they?” Ian sighed with contentment. “My cousin Miles makes them. He is the finest clockmaker in Italy, I would bet on it, but he only makes them for me.”
    She hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should tell him that it was his smile and not his clocks that made her heart beat so quickly. “You are very lucky. I should like to meet him.”
    Ian moved away from her, suddenly acutely conscious of their dangerous proximity. “Perhaps you will, but certainly not until after we have spoken further about the murder.” His voice had regained its cold, formal edge. As he spoke, he closed the door on the corpse and locked it. He felt her eyes on his face, inquiring, scrutinizing, and led her quickly into the darker part of the corridor. Approaching the stairs down to the main living quarters, he saw that it would be more unnerving than he had anticipated to have this strange Salva woman under his roof. He would have to be as reserved as possible at all times. Reserved and cold. He would not let her manipulate him.
    “Until you have told me what I want to know, you will see no one.” He continued speaking as they walked. “Except your chaperons, of course. You may have as much commerce with them as you like, but be warned that they report directly to me.”
    “I can scarcely wait to meet these ogres. I suppose you will also have me sleeping in a dungeon?” Confused by Ian’s abrupt change in behavior, Bianca tried to match his chilly formality.
    “Of course. Where else would a murderer sleep?” Bianca thought she saw the corner of his mouth twitch again in that dangerous way and decided to stay quiet. They wound down a second staircase and through at least two ballrooms in silence before they stopped at a deep blue door. “This is the suite Francesco and Roberto instructed me to give you. It is not the richest one, but they selected it.”
    “Francesco and Roberto?” She looked the question at him.
    “The ogres—your chaperons, my uncles. They have their apartments over there.” Ian gestured across the vast central hall toward a set of doors along the other wall. He saw her puzzled expression and imagined what she must be thinking: two chaperons instead of one was unusual; that they were two men made it almost unseemly. He was about to explain how he had chosen them, but he remembered his earlier resolve.
    “I couldn’t ask one of my elderly aunts to share a house with a murderess, could I? Nor would I want some proper gentildonna with refined sensibilities interfering in my interrogations. No, one woman under my roof is enough.” He spoke the last words with a shudder of distaste.
    Bianca thought quietly for a moment. “Rather than protecting me from you, it seems they will be protecting you from me.”
    “You are, after all, the dangerous one, aren’t you?” As he spoke the words aloud, a voice inside Ian’s head whispered, You have no idea how true that is