LITMIR.BIZ

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      Amanda McCabe wrote her first romance at the age of sixteen—a vast epic, starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class.

      She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including the RITA^®, Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Booksellers Best, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Holt Medallion. She lives in Oklahoma, with a menagerie of two cats, a pug and a bossy miniature poodle, and loves dance classes, collecting cheesy travel souvenirs, and watching the Food Network—even though she doesn’t cook. Visit her at http://ammandamccabe.tripod.com and http://www.riskyregencies.blogspot.com

       Previous novels by the same author:

TO CATCH A ROGUE^* TO DECEIVE A DUKE^* TO KISS A COUNT^* A NOTORIOUS WOMAN^{^} A SINFUL ALLIANCE^{^}

* Linked by character

^ Linked by character to HIGH SEAS STOWAWAY

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      Prologue

       Venice—1525

      He was there.

      Bianca Simonetti stared down from her narrow bedroom window, peeking through the merest crack in her curtain to the young man who stood on the narrow walkway far below. Though she could see little but his pearl-trimmed red velvet cap, the glossy fall of his dark hair on his shoulders, she knew it had to be him. Balthazar Grattiano.

      For no one else in all her fifteen years had ever made her heart beat as he did. It pounded now in her breast, the rush of nervous blood loud in her ears. Her very fingertips and toes tingled with hot, nervous life whenever she just looked at him!

      She knew that she was far from the only female in Venice he affected this way. His dark green-gold eyes, muscled shoulders and elaborate codpieces were the subject of many whispered, blushing confidences from patrician salons to two scudi brothels all over the city. Bianca heard much of it, for all those women, countesses and whores alike, came to her mother with their secret desires.

      Maria Simonetti, long a widow with her own household, was the most gifted fortune-teller and tarot-card reader in Venice. She could not practise her trade openly, of course; Venice was not the strictly religious enclave Madrid was, but no one wanted to court charges of witchcraft. So, the lower stories of their house were let to a dressmaker and a wigmaker, while Maria told her fortunes in a back room, discreetly draped and curtained.

      But everyone in the city knew, in their own unstated way, of Maria’s gifts. The women especially. They came seeking a glimpse of their future, assurances about their husbands or lovers or businesses. They came in tears, in hope, even sometimes in elation. And, very often, they came with anxious questions about Balthazar Grattiano. They never noticed Bianca, sitting so quietly in the shadows, and she heard them all.

      Balthazar was handsome, one of the most handsome men in Venice. That was obvious just to look at him, of course. He was rich, the only son of the fabulously wealthy and powerful Ermano Grattiano. He was also now nineteen, of an age to marry, to take on the responsibilities of a patrician gentleman. Yet he did not seem inclined to do any such thing, preferring to spend his time with courtesans, gambling, drinking, or, most shocking of all, watching the ships being built at the Arsenal.

      Bianca heard all this, heard the whispers of his great “inventiveness” in bed, his mystery and elusiveness. Heard the blushing pleas—would he one day marry her? Make her his exclusive mistress?

      But Bianca knew

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