The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fic - By Mike Ashley Page 0,100

her round the waist, and felt his manhood hardening. That hadn’t happened in a long time. He realized Cat was gazing over his shoulder and coughing. He turned his head to see what had distracted her. Katie stood in the centre of the hallway, a big grin pasted on her face. He had completely forgotten about her. Gently the two lovers pulled themselves apart, and Zuliani apologized.

“Not in front of your grandchild, I suppose.”

Cat shook her head in dismay.

“Has it not entered your thick skull yet? I just said I was pregnant when you left forty years ago.”

Zuliani frowned.

“Yes. I am sure you and your family did well for the child. But it’s too late for me to play the father now.”

Cat grimaced.

“It is. Agostino died five years ago of the plague.”

Zuliani was touched that she had chosen his father’s name for the child he never knew. But that was the point. He had never known the boy – or even the man. So how could he mourn? He reiterated his point about not being a father. Cat prodded his stomach.

“Yes, but not too late to be a grandfather, you ninny.”

Zuliani gaped at Katie, who stepped up to him and hugged her new granddad.

*

After the three members of the newly united family had eaten their fill, they sat back with some of that famous Dolfin wine that Zuliani had long envied. Over protests from Katie, Zuliani had insisted on watering the girl’s wine judiciously. He was taking his role as grandfather seriously. He was also revelling in the sight of his long-ago lover, who sat curled up in an armchair in a way that brought to mind the creature he had named her after. Cat may be a grandmother, but her body was still as lithe as any feline. He wondered if she might let him bed her later. But there was still one question that nagged at him, and he couldn’t resist asking it of Cat.

“Why have you hidden away from me for so long? And why did you have Katie hunt me out now?”

Cat eased back in the chair, considering her answer. She decided the truth was the best way forward.

“When I sat in this very house, pregnant with Agostino, and my father told me you had murdered someone and fled Venice, I was angry more than sad. I didn’t entirely believe him, but I was angry at you for leaving me in his clutches. I had to endure the ‘I-told-you-so’s’ for months. Then I was even angrier at you for forcing me to marry Pasquale Valier.”

Zuliani sat bolt upright.

“I forced you to marry rat-face Valier?”

“Well, what else could I do? He accepted your child as his own and gave him a name. You weren’t there to do that. You were enjoying yourself living the high life at the fabled court of Kubilai Khan.”

Zuliani thought to intervene and tell her just how hard life had been for him then. But he knew better than to set her straight just now. Uninterrupted, she went on.

“Pasquale was a good husband, and father. And our life in Verona was … settled.’

She stared pointedly at Zuliani at this statement, challenging him to protest. He bowed his head, and took the cheap shot.

“And now? Why now?”

“Because Pasquale died last year.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

She ignored his comment, as if she had rehearsed her story for a long time, and now nothing would stop her telling it.

“And because I yearned all those years to be back in Venice, but I couldn’t bear to come and see you, and not get to know you again.”

Zuliani stirred with excitement in his seat, but Cat held up her hand.

“Let me finish. That is why now, and also because Katie told me you had got embroiled in the conspiracy to overthrow the Doge. I could not bear the thought that I was free to see you again and you were once more risking being expelled. I persuaded my great-nephew Mario to pass on the news of the conspiracy to Gradenigo. And get you off the hook.”

Zuliani should have felt euphoria about his old lover caring so much for him that she had extricated him from the mad enterprise that had been the Tiepolo family’s conspiracy. But a very nasty thought was burgeoning in his head. He had been aware of Matteo Mocco’s look, when the avogador had inspected Francesco’s body. It had been one of sour displeasure. Until this moment Zuliani had imagined it was occasioned by the