Chapter Three
One more thing I could have said about magic, Briony thought, is that it never lasts.
There was a tiny, childish part of her that wondered why he’d had to say all those horrible things about women just then. Why couldn't he have kept his mouth shut, let her have the magic of a beautiful night in Florence?
Another part of her was savagely grateful. It was always better to find out about people before you got to know them, before they let you down. Christ, what would have happened if she’d found he thought those things after she had spent a lot of time with him?
Briony was so lost in thought that she wasn't watching where she was going, and though she thought she was headed back to the mansion, she soon realized she was in another part of the gardens entirely. There was still some lighting along the path, but it had changed from the gaily-colored lanterns she had seen before. These lights were dimmed, more to provide illumination on a regular basis than for a party, and there was something menacing about them.
Briony would have turned back the way she’d come, but it occurred to her that if she followed the path, she was bound to return to the mansion, and if she entered through one of the servants' entrances, she wouldn't have to worry about cutting her way through the crowd.
Be honest, you just don't want to run into that man again, she thought, and that was true enough.
She lifted her skirts to keep them free of the entangling brush on either side of the path and pressed forward.
It seemed like such a good idea, and almost fifteen minutes passed before she realized she might have made a miscalculation. The lights had remained the same, suggesting she was still on the producer's property, but there was no sign of the mansion. Just when she was thinking of swallowing her pride and simply tracing her way back, she turned a sharp bend and found herself in the middle of a party of another sort.
There were three rough looking men seated around a small fire, and she could see they were passing around a dark bottle of something unlabeled. There was a moment of frozen surprise on all parts, and then one man rose up, bottle in his hand. He grinned at her, and there was something unsavory in his smile that made her take a step back. He waved the bottle at her, obviously wanting her to take a sip, but Briony took another step back. This seemed to make him angry, and he spat something in Italian.
I'm sure it's fine, I'm just being a dumb foreigner, Briony thought, but then her instincts came to her rescue.
When the man with the bottle took another step towards her, she spun on her heel and ran, pelting back along the path she had come from. She expected to hear laughter at her foolishness, but instead, a cry went up and there were three men crashing through the underbrush behind her.
Oh god, oh god, oh god, her mind chanted. Unbidden in her mind came the mysterious man's words that women couldn't protect themselves, that they lacked the power to do so. Well, she was going to show him wrong. She had to.
Briony would never have said that she was particularly in shape, but adrenaline gave her a burst of speed and desperation. She ran along the path, skirts hiked up past her knees, and with every step she took, she could hear her pursuers behind her. It felt as if any moment, they might simply fall upon her, but every moment that they didn't gave her an extra burst of hope.
The air burned her lungs as she gasped. As hard as she was breathing, there was no hope that they would overlook her, and that meant she simply had to keep running.
God, how far did I walk? Am I ever going to get back?
The idea of being trapped in the hell of crashing underbrush followed by men intent on catching her made her ill, but it only redoubled her desperation to get away. One foot in front of the other would get her out of this.
Briony was concentrating so hard on running that she managed to run right into someone without seeing. One moment she was flying headlong through the darkness, and the next she was ploughing face first into the arms of a man who wrapped his arms around her.
"No! No, I will not let you...!" she cried out, ready to squirm and fight, but then she realized it wasn't one of her pursuers. Instead, it was the man who she had walked away from before.
"What's the matter, what's wrong?" he asked, not releasing her, but then he glanced into the grove behind her. She could feel his body tense like a bowstring being pulled taut. To her surprise, he caught her in his arms and then with a gasp, he boosted her up onto a tree branch close by. One moment, she was on the ground, and the next she was seated in the branches of an olive tree, looking down at him.
"Stay still and quiet," he ordered. "I will deal with this."
She wanted to argue, but now that she was not running, her limbs were starting to shake. She had to hang onto the trunk of the tree to keep her balance, but she nodded, her teeth chattering.
Her rescuer stalked out of view, and after a few moments, she heard shouting of a different kind going up. There was some more shouting, and then some yelps of pain, followed by a silence that felt more than a little ominous to her.
What happened to him, she wondered. There were three of them and only one of him. Did he find that he bit off more than he could chew?
As the silence stretched on and on, she grew more certain that she was right.
I can't leave him there like this, she thought. I have to get help, I have to help him.
One plan after another presented itself, of her sneaking around to club one of his attackers, of tripping them and letting her rescuer get away. She knew they were ridiculous, but Briony could no more stay in the tree than she could forget how to swim or ride a bike. He needed help, obviously, and she had to go to him.
With a muttered curse that sounded far braver than she felt, Briony slipped and slithered her way down the tree. She could hear the beautiful velvet ripping as she went, but all that mattered was she get on the ground. She made it down soon enough, and she was just trying to decide which direction to go in when a dark form stepped out from behind another tree.
"If you think I'm going to let you hurt him, you're wrong," she spat, aware that he likely had no English.
The figure paused, and when he laughed, relief flooded through her. She knew that voice.
"Do you have any idea how fierce you look, standing there and ready to take on the world?"
"I know that I look like a shredded pincushion," she retorted. "But are you all right?"
Her rescuer laughed again, shaking his head. "Seriously, that's the first thing you ask me?"
She looked at him, and to her relief, though he looked a little rumpled, he was otherwise unhurt.
"Why wouldn't I?" she retorted. "You stuck me up in a tree and then went looking for trouble."
He shrugged. "Less trouble than you might think. After I taught the one in the lead a lesson in manners, the other two caved. I got a hold of Baldassare fairly quickly, and he was shocked by everything. He might be a bit of a blowhard, but he'll do the right thing, and he'll do it discreetly. I have a feeling that most people at the party won't even notice there's something amiss."
The thought of the party summoned up an entirely new fear in Briony's mind.
"It's a launch party!" she gasped. "They—they can't have any scandal, or maybe it'll hurt the market..."
Her rescuer cut off her panic by drawing her into his arms. It should have been condescending, but instead it simply felt right. She tilted her head against his chest, sighing a little as she felt a great deal of the stress and strain simply melt out of her.
"Hush. I promise you, I'm an old hand at this sort of thing, and Baldassare is too. Nothing unflattering or damaging will get into the papers, and those men will still be punished for their crimes."
Briony breathed a little easier, and she was finally able to glance up at the man who held her in his arms.
"What's your name?" she asked softly.
Under his dark mask, he grinned at her. "Marco. What's yours?"
She hesitated, torn. She wanted to tell him her name, but right now, she didn't even know who he was. What if this night's events got out, what if it somehow hurt Seanan's career?
Marco looked as if he understood her reluctance, and he reached out to touch the collar of her dress.
"Shall I call you Velvet? It suits you, as lovely as you are."
"I think I'm far less lovely than this dress," she said with a giggle. "But I suppose that works as well as anything else does."
"Well, that's something I would want to judge fairly," Marco said gravely. "I would have to have the two of you side-by-side so that I could make a proper assessment."
When Briony realized he meant to compare her dress with her own naked form, she couldn't stop herself from giggling again.
"You're awful," she said finally, and he grinned as if she had paid him a compliment.
"Very. Come, let me bring you indoors by the back route."
She followed him gratefully, and it occurred to her that he never once said he had told her so.