5 - Her Deadly Mischief Read Online Free PDF Page B

the gentleman might feel a fruit from a tropical isle might entitle him to. To make a long story short, he did as he was wont, I did as I’d been ordered, and who do you suppose squired La Samsona to the next masquerade ball?”
    Pamarino rocked slightly forward and back as he answered his own question. “The gentleman of the pineapple, of course, though La Samsona had shown no partiality toward him before. When she saw he fancied my mistress, she set out to captivate him. She succeeded for a few short weeks, but his ardor cooled rather quickly. I understand she at least managed to induce him to settle her milliner’s bill. It must have run a hundred—”
    Messer Grande cut him off with an impatient gesture. “Enough of pineapples and the price of hats. Get to the nature of this wager between Zulietta and La Samsona.”
    “Begging your pardon, Excellency, I’ll go straight to the point. The wager was based on this simple happenstance—both ladies had set their sights firmly on Alessio Pino.” Pamarino turned his head and spat, then rubbed a stubby hand across his mouth as if he could wipe the hated name from his lips. “Why don’t women see that only treachery can lay behind an exterior as handsome as his?”
    Beside me, Maestro Torani shook his head. “They see but cannot help themselves,” he whispered. “Poor creatures—the stories I could tell.”
    I made a mental note to worm some of these stories out of Torani as Pamarino went on.
    “My mistress and La Samsona constantly sang Alessio’s praises—a profile like Adonis, the grace of a dancing master, the shoulders of a galley slave. It was enough to make you heave up your dinner. Many mornings they met for breakfast, and over their coffee and buttered toasts, they would argue about which of them might capture his heart. La Samsona was convinced her outsized beauty would carry the day, but my mistress believed that Alessio appreciated finer things and would find La Samsona raucous and vulgar.”
    Messer Grande leaned forward on his bench. “Zulietta and La Samsona set themselves quite a challenge. I know Alessio Pino’s reputation. He’s famous for his austere principles, his moral rectitude. He puts in long hours at the family glassworks, rarely gambles, and though a string of women pant at his heels, he has always steered clear of romantic entanglements and kept his name as pure as new-fallen snow.”
    “Perhaps that is part of his allure,” Torani observed. “The more inaccessible the fruit, the sweeter its nectar.”
    Messer Grande shook his head like a dog emerging from a stream. “Please, we’re not going to discuss pineapples again, are we?” His gaze focused on the grieving dwarf. “Was that the premise of the wager, which woman would be the first to capture Alessio’s affection?”
    “As far as it went,” Pamarino replied after another swallow of brandy, “but they agreed that there must be some proof. After all, who can say what really happens behind closed doors? It was decided that only a public display of his patronage would do. I thought it was all nonsense, but I grew so tired of hearing them propose one intrigue after another—”
    The dwarf’s words seemed to catch in his throat, and his face contorted in a grimace of misery that made him look more like a gnome than ever.
    “God help me,” he cried in a gravelly voice. “I was the one who suggested the opera box. My tongue had barely given voice to the thought when they both hailed it as genius. After arguing over a flurry of details, my mistress and La Samsona settled on a firm agreement. They even called a notary to set it down in writing. The first to join Alessio at the rail of his box at the Teatro San Marco—not merely set foot in the box or join his party for an aria or two, mind you—but the first to sit beside him in a clear demonstration that he was enjoying her favors would win the wager.”
    “When did the women strike this bargain?”
    He thought a