by Megan Chance
“You’ve promised.”
“And I’m not breaking my vow, am I? Even though I think you are not quite heeding yours. How much of The Nunnery Tales have you read, hmmm? Ah, not much, I see.”
“I’ve been too busy.”
“Or perhaps too frightened.”
“I’m not frightened.”
“Aren’t you? Be honest, Elena. You’re afraid you’ll like it. That it will make you . . . want things.”
“I think you’ve mistaken me for a different kind of woman.”
He grinned, the healing scar on his cheek creasing like a dimple. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
I hastened to change the subject. “If I were to allow you something warm and sweet, what would you like?”
His grin grew, and I realized what I’d said, and how he meant to take it.
I amended it hastily. “To drink, I mean.”
“How virtuous you are,” he said with a sigh. “The things you make me want to say—”
“If you say them, I’ll leave. Now tell me what you wish to drink.”
“Wine or chocolate. Either would suffice.”
I didn’t see how chocolate could hurt, and I had no reason to deny it, so I nodded. “Very well. I suppose they must have some chocolate in the kitchen. God knows there’s everything else.”
“My parents are paying well for my upkeep,” he said wryly.
So he knew. I felt a modicum of ease over the fact that he wasn’t being fooled. It meant I didn’t have to worry. If he knew he was feeding Giulia’s entire family, and did nothing about it, then I no longer had to concern myself.
I left him and went down to the kitchen, huddling against the snow that fell on my exposed neck and melted to trickle cold and wet down my collar. There was no one in the courtyard, and the kitchen was empty too, not even a pot of polenta or steaming water on the stove, though the table was laden with food: peppers and onions and garlic, raisins and eggs, cheese and sausage and a tangle of slippery purple octopi gleaming wetly in a bowl.
But no chocolate, though there was a pitcher of milk capped with a heavy layer of cream. I poured some into a pan and set it on the stove to heat, and then I went in search. I found cornmeal, beans and vinegar, flour flecked with bran. No chocolate anywhere.
I heard a hiss, and turned to see the milk boiling over. I caught it just as the scorching smell filled the air, along with smoke, and without thinking I grabbed the handle with my bare hand, crying out and dropping it, clattering, to the floor, steaming milk spattering everywhere.
I plunged my hand into a bucket of cold water. The burn was not bad, and the pain faded as I set about cleaning up the mess—the burned milk was nearly impossible to scrape from the pan. It seemed to take forever, and when I was done, I was tired and frustrated and cursing Samuel for asking for chocolate. Not that he was going to get it, because there was none anywhere, unless it was in the storage room.
Now that I’d had the idea, I had to look. Muttering to myself about men who should be content with mugwort tea, I went back into the swirling snow. There was no sign of anyone. It was eerie, how deserted it felt. The snow was beginning to stick now, and my smooth-soled boots were no good on it. Twice, I slid, nearly losing my balance the second time. I made my slow, cold, wet way across the short expanse of courtyard between the kitchen and the receiving court with its storage rooms. There, finally, among barrels of fermenting anchovy and kegs of wine and dangling ropes of garlic and drying herbs, I found a package—chocolate wrapped in blue paper. It was very thick, and hard to break. I had to throw it onto the floor before I got a chunk large enough to use.
This time, I watched the milk as it steamed and melted the chocolate. A cone of sugar wrapped in brown paper sat on top of a barrel, but I saw no sugar cutters anywhere. I had to hack at it with a knife and a spoon, cursing, until I had a small pile of it mounded on the table, and even then it wasn’t quite sweet enough. It was going to have to do. Already it felt I’d been in this kitchen for an eternity.
I poured the concoction into a bowl and threw the dirty pan into the wooden sink—let Giulia wash it. I was done with the whole thing. I was sweating from the heat of the kitchen, strands of hair escaped to dangle irritatingly against my cheeks and my throat. It was snowing harder than ever as I went back outside; the other wing and the courtyard stairs were just a dark blur. I held the bowl carefully, but it was steaming, and chocolate sloshed onto my skirt, snow melting into it as I tried to make my way to the stairs without slipping.
I spilled probably a third by the time I got to the door. I nudged it open with my shoulder and stepped inside, but with my wet boots, the floor was just as slick as the courtyard had been, and so I was slow. I’d left Samuel in the sala, but now I heard laughter coming from his bedroom.
I rounded the edge of the door, and saw Samuel lolling on the bed, his dressing gown open, a bottle of brandy in his hand, while Giulia, her hair down and wild, giggled as she licked spilled liquor off his chest.
“What is this?” I cried, stepping inside. Giulia cursed in Venetian, her dark eyes flashing as she jerked away from Samuel, making him groan.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded. I put the chocolate down and said to Samuel, “What is she doing here?”
“I should think it obvious,” he said too slowly, as if he were struggling to form his words. I had been gone perhaps an hour and a half, and he was drunk. Blurry-eyed, slurring, unapologetically drunk. I realized too that he’d planned it. He’d tricked me. The chocolate had been nothing but a ruse. Time enough for Giulia to bring the brandy and perhaps, depending on just how long it took, time for other things as well.
I was furious. Humiliated. Hurt. What was wrong with me that I could not see deception, even when I expected it?
He lifted the bottle as if in toast. “She brought me petrolio.” He brought it to his mouth again, gulping it.
I lunged for it, furious. Samuel jerked the bottle away from me. Giulia was still swearing as she climbed from the bed.
“Get out of here!” I shouted at her as I tried again to grab the bottle.
She spat something at me, and then, much to my surprise, she actually left, stalking from the room like an affronted cat. Samuel rolled onto his side, taking the bottle with him, so I had to climb onto the bed and reach over him to get it. I grabbed for it again and again, and he kept it just out of my reach, laughing at my efforts.
“It’s just brandy.” Slurred together ishjusbranny.
“You promised.” I reached for it again. This time, he elbowed me in the stomach, bouncing off my corset, no effect at all, and in the moment he waited for me to fall back, I did the opposite. I planted my hand firmly on his bare chest, and taking advantage of his surprise and his gasp of pain, I grabbed the bottle. I wrenched it from his hands, but before I could get off the bed, he threw himself at me, grabbing my wrists, forcing me back, rolling, until I was beneath him, his weight heavy, his good knee between my legs, pinning me to the mattress.
“Give it to me.” His fingers bit into the tendons of my wrist.
With all my strength, I jerked my arm from his grasp, throwing the bottle. It thudded to the floor and rolled across the carpet, what brandy that was left spilling as it went.
He swore, loud and vehemently, as he watched it go. Then he looked back at me. “What the hell did you do that for?”
“You aren’t supposed to have it.”
“I’d already drunk most of it. You could let me have the rest.”
“You promised,” I said. “You told me you would be good. You broke your promise.” I heard the hurt in my own voice and winced. I sounded like a child.
“You broke your promise too,” he reminded me.
“I am not going to read that stupid book.”
“Then I’m not going to cooperate.” He mangled the last word, his tongue not nimble en
ough to manage it.
I felt ready to cry with frustration. “Why must you make everything so difficult?”
“Do I? Perhaps you should punish me then.” The words all running together. “D’you want to whip me?”
The words were a shock, his lowered voice, the sudden flash of interest in his eyes.
“What a pretty little innocent you are,” he whispered, and then, before I could do or say anything else, he kissed me. I was so startled I didn’t try to stop him when he pressed my mouth open, his tongue exploring, tasting. His hands tightened on my wrists; his hips pressed into mine, and I felt the same kind of stirring I’d felt reading The Nunnery Tales, a snaking, sinking something that frightened and aroused at the same time.
Before I could think what to do, I heard him moan and then a gasp. He jerked back, rolling off me and at the same moment pushing me violently away. I fell off the bed, banging my elbow hard on the floor. Cold rushed into the room, a freezing, icy blast, there and then gone, and suddenly I was looking at him as if through water reflections, wavery, shifting, and he was staring at me in fear. Fear.
“Since when have you taken to pushing women out of your bed, Samuel?”
The voice came from behind me, and with it a hand on my arm, gently hauling me to my feet. “Are you all right?” asked a man I’d never seen before. “That was quite a fall.”
Samuel blinked slowly, like a man waking. “Nero?”
Chapter 8
It took me a moment to restore myself, to realize that this man who’d helped me to my feet, and who was looking at Samuel with amused affection, was Nerone Basilio, Madame Basilio’s nephew and Samuel’s friend, and that he was speaking English very well.
Mr. Basilio was Samuel’s age, with dark curling hair, olive-toned skin, and dark eyes dancing with amusement. “No need to dream about me any longer, my friend. I’m really here. Only for you would I have left Rome to come to this decrepit, uncomfortable place. Why the hell did my aunt put you in this room?”
“You’d have to ask her.” Samuel climbed from the bed, misjudging the height of the floor, stumbling, loosening the already very loose belt of his dressing gown further as he gave his friend a quick embrace. “It’s good to see you.”
“How drunk are you?”
Samuel staggered back to the bed. “Quite.”
“And who is this pretty thing you kicked out of bed? Given the violence you were doing her, I can only assume she must be a demon.”
Samuel’s expression darkened, again I saw that shifting fear in his eyes, rapidly dismissed. “No demon. At least not most of the time. My nurse, Elena Spira. ’Lena, Nerone Basilio.”
Basilio looked at me and said, “The nurse, eh? I begin to see what all the fuss is about.”
Nerone Basilio’s curls were, like Samuel’s hair, a bit too long, and his coat was of an older style, the fabric shiny in spots where the nap had been worn smooth, his cuffs fraying. There were no charms on his watch fob, no ornaments at all, and one of the buttons on his vest did not match the others. But he was scrubbed and polished, as if to distract from his general air of impoverished nobility. He was also as attractive as his friend. The two of them must have cut a swath through Rome. I tried very hard not to remember what Samuel had said about them sharing the girl with hair the same color as mine.
“I’m happy to meet you,” I said, managing at last to fully regain myself, wondering what “fuss” he meant, curiosity bringing me fully into the present. What had his aunt, and Giulia, told him about me, or about Samuel’s recovery, for that matter?
“How does your patient?”
“He would be doing better if he obeyed the rules,” I said, picking up the abandoned bottle.
Mr. Basilio made a face. “Petrolio. You couldn’t have found something tastier, Samuel? Like bilge water, perhaps?”
“Wasn’t particular,” Samuel said.
“I can see that.”
“A long dry spell.” Samuel put his hand over his eyes. “Told Giulia to bring whatever she could find.”
“Ah. Giulia.”
I could not read his tone; I had no idea what Nero Basilio thought of his aunt’s housekeeper, but I said to him in a low voice, “I’ve asked her to leave his care to me, but she’s very—”
“Accommodating, thank God,” Samuel put in with a laugh.
“A little too much so,” I said.
“What would you do, my frien’?” Samuel asked. “No laudanum”—stumbling over the words—“No wine. No sex. A veritable purg-purgatory.”
Basilio looked at me in surprise. “Really?”
“He’ll heal faster without those things,” I insisted.
“I would have thought laudanum, at least. He must be in pain. That was quite a beating he took.”
“You saw what happened?”
He shook his head. “He disappeared. I found him the next day after searching all the hospitals in Rome. And the taverns. And the morgue. Not something I wish to do again.”
“You see, ’Lena? He agrees that I should have laudanum,” Samuel said.
“It would be best not. His concussion was too severe,” I persisted, clinging to the lie. “And his father wants him well and sober by January.”
Basilio frowned, and then, “Oh yes, the wedding. I’d forgotten.”
“The reason for the bacchanal.” Samuel raised his arm as if he were flagging down wine-bearers. “Dancing and drinking and whoring before the beast is chained.”
“I parenti mal de denti,” Mr. Basilio said.
Samuel groaned. “God save me from your proverbs.”
“In this case, a true one,” Nerone Basilio said with a thin smile. “Relatives are toothaches. I will say you look much better than when I saw you last, amìgo. No doubt it’s due to your nurse.”
Samuel grunted and let his arm fall back to the blankets with a thud. “I’m glad you’re here. We c’n be bored together. Have you a liking for cold baths, Nero?”
“Cold baths?” Basilio looked confused, and a bit horrified. “In the winter?”
I wanted to strangle Samuel. I could not have Nerone Basilio wondering what cold baths might be for. Instead I said, quickly, “His regimen is very strict. I’m afraid he won’t be very entertaining.”
“Ah, I see. But kissing you is permitted?”
I stared at him helplessly, chagrined all over again. “I’m his nurse, Mr. Basilio. That wasn’t . . . what it looked like.”
A teasing, knowing grin. “If I had a nurse like you, I might delay healing.”
“He is very drunk,” I said. “And even with his injuries, he’s strong. I’d interrupted him with Giulia, you see, and—”
“She’s an innocent,” Samuel slurred sleepily from the bed.
Nero Basilio looked at Samuel with a frown. “A what?”
“I would like him to sleep now. If you wouldn’t mind . . .” I touched Mr. Basilio’s arm to lead him away, and he followed me docilely from the bedroom, waiting in the hall while I closed the door. “It would be best if you consulted with me before you visited with him,” I said quietly. “I don’t wish to keep you away, but . . .”
“You’re worried I might break the rules?”
“No, but . . .”
“Well, I might,” he said with a shrug. “It seems a bit cruel, you know, to keep him in pain. And a little drunkenness never hurt anyone. Especially here.” His gaze went to the ceiling, the empty, decaying hall. He shuddered. “God, I hate this place. Nothing but ruin. It’s enough to drive a man mad.”
I was surprised. I had felt such things, but I hadn’t expected it of the man who owned the palazzo. “But this is your home.”
“Imagine growing up here,” he said bleakly. “Everything falling around you and no money to fix it. I’m dragged back here periodically just to make certain it hasn’t fallen into the rio,
but other than that, I leave it to my aunt. God knows it suits her.”
“She seems—”
“Unhappy? Bitter? As if she breathes gloom?”
It was so dramatic—and true, now that he’d said it—that I laughed. “She hasn’t been unkind.”
“Is that so? But not . . . kind, exactly?”
“I know Samuel has been a burden.”
“Perhaps, but you shouldn’t be too forgiving. God knows she’s happy enough to take his money. He’s free to stay as long as he likes, or as long as he can bear it. But you say only until January.”
“That’s when his parents want him back. For the wedding.”
He gave me a sideways glance. “You know he’s unhappy about that.”
“It’s none of my concern.”
“His family seems very anxious to marry him off to this woman he’s never met.”
“She has a pedigreed name,” I told him. “Rather like your own. Old for New York, at least. And Samuel’s parents are”—I struggled to find the words—“rather too self-made for society’s liking.”
“Parvenus,” he provided.
“Yes.”
“Trading money for prestige.”
“You understand.”
“Marriage contracts here are a way of life, or they used to be. My own was negotiated when I was only eight. But Samuel tells me it is not the same in America.”
“When you were eight?”
“There’s a certain comfort in knowing your destiny. But enough of this. What must be must be. I’m more interested in you.”
“In me?”
“Please tell me you haven’t spent all your time in Venice hidden away with a foul-tempered invalid.”
“I haven’t been out of the palazzo,” I admitted.
“What?” he sounded horrified. “Surely you don’t have to spend every moment with Samuel.”
I did, of course, at least until the seizures were under control. “Perhaps when he’s a little better,” I said.
“You’re too young to be shut away,” he said. “And it’s snowing. You should see San Marco in the snow. I’ll take you.”