“A pirate . . . an Italian scoundrel . . . an assassin whom I hired to kill people . . .”

He flicked back his hair with an excess of dignity. “Your servants have been sent away with severance pay.”

“What do you mean, severance pay? Did you cut off their hands?”

“No.” A shadow of disappointment slipped across her face, and he frowned. “I paid them. In silverware, mostly.”

Lady Armitage rose at once from her chair. “Surely you don’t mean my Garrard & Co. sterling silver collection, given to me by the Queen?”

“Given to you?”

“Absolutely. She wouldn’t have left it in her treasury guarded by only two soldiers if she hadn’t meant me to take it.”

“Fair enough. Yes, your sterling silver. But don’t waste too much energy being upset about that. I’m stealing your house next.”

She laughed. “What an entertaining fellow you are, Eduardo. Do you really think I have got to my age—er, that is to say, my position in life, without preparing for all contingencies? The steering mechanism of this house is locked, and the key is somewhere no man will ever find it.”

She glanced down, then up again through long, thick, false eyelashes at him. Her mouth tilted like a sword raised in challenge.

Signor de Luca smiled in reply. “No man at all?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Let me guess; many have tried, all have been poisoned.” He stepped forward and removed the fan from her grip, tossing it aside, where it sliced unnoticed through a statuette of Artemis the Huntress and wedged itself in the wall. He aimed Jacobsen’s gun between her eyes. “I do beg your pardon, madam, but I require you to kneel.”

Her smug expression wavered. “What? You jest!”

“I’m afraid not. Do as I ask, or I’ll shoot the legs out from under you.”

The smile was sweet and gentle beneath his cold, cold stare. Lady Armitage swallowed dryly. It was not so much the wicked pirate with a gun that she feared, but the likelihood of her knees giving out halfway down, leaving her flat on her face with her gown’s bustle bouncing above her. Perhaps Signor de Luca divined this, or perhaps he was a gentleman behind the weapon, for he offered her his hand to steady her descent. She took it gratefully, a little tremulously, and began to lower herself.

And then jolted forward, reaching with her free hand to take possession of his, er, personal jewels.

But he was less of a gentleman than he seemed, and he twisted her hand in his, almost yanking the arm from its socket as he pulled her off-balance and shoved her to her knees. Ruffles concertinaed around her. Something snapped in the scaffolding beneath her skirts. Lady Armitage deflated into a puddle of satin and injured dignity.

Down—but not out. Her view gave her a new idea. “It seems I am well positioned to suggest a renegotiation of terms,” she said eyebrows dancing suggestively (albeit briefly; she had to stop as one threatened to fall off).