by Megan Chance
He stumbled, catching himself again, advancing on me where I sat like a helpless bundle. I reached into my pocket for the knife Nero had given me, but it wasn’t there. I’d left it in my bedroom. So very stupid. Samuel stared beyond me and spat what sounded like invective. Then his tone changed to a plea, his eyes full of fear. He fell to his knees.
“Samuel,” I whispered, half afraid to call his attention, remembering too well what it had cost me the last time. But that look in his eyes, that raw anguish—I couldn’t let it stay. “Samuel, please. You can make it stop. You can. You must try.”
His gaze jerked to me. “Elena,” he breathed. For a moment, I saw him, a fleeting glimpse of Samuel, and then he was gone. His expression darkened. He got to his feet. I should not have called to him. My instinct to say silent had been right. Why didn’t I have the damn knife? Or morphine. I could sedate him. If I could just get to my room.
But he was coming toward me, angry and menacing.
I scrambled to my feet.
“Elena!”
Nero’s voice came from the hall.
I called, “In here! The bedroom!”
He was there in moments, Giulia running in behind him. She had obviously gone to fetch him, and I felt a rush of gratitude before Nero said sharply, “Samuel!”
Samuel’s head snapped around. Nero came in slowly, raising his hands, palms out. “It’s all right, amìgo.”
Samuel’s entire body stiffened. He lunged at Nero, falling on him so heavily Nero crashed into the wall. I heard the thunk of his head against the plaster, and then they were grappling. Samuel was shouting, garbled words now, no language at all.
“I’ve got morphine,” I said, making for the door.
Nero’s only answer was a terse, “Hurry!”
I pushed past Giulia, who stood wringing her hands, as I rushed to my bedroom. I fumbled to open the medicine case, everything spilling in my haste to find the morphine. There. I pulled it out, along with the needle and syringe in its small, hard leather case.
Giulia shouted, sounding panicked.
I opened the case and took out the pieces, screwing the needle to the plunger with trembling fingers. The cork of the bottle was stuck; finally, I pried it loose, set the syringe to it. The plunger froze. I could not get it to move. Careful. You can do this. I had done it a hundred times, calming hysterics.
I heard a crash. Giulia shrieked.
Finally, I had the syringe loaded, and I grabbed the knife for good measure, shoving it into my pocket as I ran back. Giulia had not moved. Nero and Samuel were on the floor, rolling, Samuel fighting him in earnest, meaning to do damage while Nero was working to avoid his blows and keep him contained at the same time.
“Try to hold him still!” I directed.
“I can’t,” Nero grunted.
I grabbed for Samuel’s arm, and he threw me off so violently I nearly lost the syringe. I jabbed the needle into his shoulder. He pulled away, dislodging it before I could get the morphine into him. He jammed his arm against Nero’s throat.
“Now,” Nero ordered in a strangled voice. “Do it now!”
I jabbed again, pressing the plunger in the same moment Samuel twisted away, but not before I got most of the drug into him. The syringe went flying, scattering droplets of morphine everywhere.
Nero was choking. For a moment I thought it wouldn’t work. It hadn’t been enough. But just as I thought it, Samuel shook his head, blinking, easing up. Nero gasped a breath. Then Samuel collapsed, unconscious.
I sat back in relief.
Nero pushed off Samuel’s limp body and sat against the wall with a heavy sigh, his curls falling into his face. “What was that?”
I glanced at Giulia, my gratitude gone now in my suspicion that she had caused his fit. “Why not ask her?” And then, before he could, I asked her in French, “What happened?”
She looked at Nero, a look heavy with some hidden import, before she answered. Reluctantly. “He likes sguassetto.”
“I told your mistress he wasn’t to have it.”
She shrugged as if my orders were of no moment. “You keep him like a child. He is a man.”
I ignored that. “What happened then?”
“The chair moved across the room.”
“The chair what?”
“Moved.” She walked her fingers in description.
I remembered Madame Basilio’s comments about Laura’s spirit moving the chair, wanting to be heard. I realized then that I would not get a straight story from Giulia, who was no doubt so encumbered by her mistress’s tales that she would not be able to say what she’d really seen. Nero had said she was his aunt’s creature through and through. I didn’t doubt it. “I see.”
“Then the drawers opened, and the handkerchiefs flew”—she raised her arms, fluttering her fingers with a meaningful glance at Nero, though I had no idea what meaning it was, and he did not even look at her—“and his eyes rolled back in his head and he began to sing. That is when I came to get you.”
I glanced at Samuel, his chest rising and falling steadily now, at peace—or as much as he could be in dreams.
Nero’s expression as he looked at his housekeeper was a mix of contempt and dismay. “That’s quite a tale.”
She shrugged again, staring at him insolently, as if daring him to contradict her.
“What was he saying?” I asked.
“He spoke Venetian,” she said smugly, again that challenge to Nero. “He sang ‘Un Ziro in Gondola.’”
Nero stiffened, his expression melting into one of incredulity. The name of the song sounded familiar, and I remembered that Madame Basilio had mentioned it. A favorite of her daughter’s. I understood then what Nero must be feeling, and my heart ached for him.
“He wasn’t singing when I saw him. And he can’t speak Venetian.” I looked at Nero. “Can he?”
“Not that I know,” he said.
“Of course. It was only babbling,” Giulia said, but there was something in her manner that told me she lied. “Nonsense words. Like a baby. Silly rhymes. Poems the washerwomen say.”
Nero stared at Samuel as if my patient held some confusing mystery.
“We should get him to bed,” I said, rising.
Nero nodded. He got to his feet, saying something in Venetian to Giulia, who frowned at him, but, thankfully, stalked off.
“Take his feet,” Nero directed, and the two of us lifted Samuel. He was very heavy, and I was breathing hard before we had deposited him on his mattress. I glanced about the room.
“I suppose I should clean this up,” I said.
Nero shuddered. “I’ll help.”
The two of us began setting things to rights. I was glad he was there, though we spoke little. The room seemed to discourage it with its oppressiveness. I felt almost as if it were pushing me to hurry, to finish, to leave. As if it could not wait for me to be gone.
I glanced at Nero, wondering if he felt the same. He squatted among the mess of handkerchiefs, which were blown about as if by a sudden wind. Squares of fine linen dangled from his hands, and he was staring at them with a heartbroken expression.
As if he felt me watching, he looked up. He gave me a tiny quirk of a smile, and held up a handkerchief. “Laura’s. I hadn’t realized Aunt Valeria kept them.”
“She had one for every gown, it looked like,” I said softly.
“They smell of her. She was the only woman in Venice who wore this perfume. They made it for her in this stinking little shop over on the Merceria. I could barely stand to go inside, but she loved it.”
“The scent is in everything. I get whiffs of it all the time.”
His expression turned quizzical. “Do you? This is the first time I’ve smelled it since she died.”
“Perhaps my nose is too sensitive. You should keep one with you. As a reminder.
”
“A reminder of what?”
“Her death was so sudden. Her perfume must be a comfort.”
“I’ve never liked the scent. Too sweet. I found it cloying. And I don’t want to be reminded of her death.”
“No, of course not. Such a terrible accident—”
“It was no accident.”
I wasn’t certain I’d heard him correctly. “What?”
“It wasn’t an accident.” He gathered up the handkerchiefs, one great ball of them, and shoved them almost violently into the open drawer of the dresser. “An accident is what we tell people.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She took her own life.”
He spoke the words so simply, bare fact, no embellishment and no emotion. But I saw in his eyes the same sorrow I’d seen when he’d shown me the purple canal. The same I’d seen in the cupola.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“She threw herself off the balcony,” he said.
“Dear God. How terrible. Why?”
He shrugged. “My aunt believes it’s because I didn’t try to make her happy.”
“Is that what you think?”
“I try not to think about it.” He closed the drawer with emphasis, as if he were putting a period on a sentence. “She was despondent. I was gone. There’s nothing else to say.”
Suddenly, I remembered the canal’s beckoning song as I’d stood on the balcony, my thoughts of falling, of drowning, my memories and my despair called back as if I’d smelled some truth in the air, as if understanding could exist in a whiff of perfume.
I realized he was watching me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should not have told you. It’s only that . . . those handkerchiefs . . . I was not expecting them.”
“It’s all right. I understand.”
“Do you? We had to tell the church something, or they would not have allowed her to be buried in consecrated ground. My aunt could not bear the thought of Laura bearing such a mortal sin.”
It made sense now, how upset Madame Basilio had grown at tea. Our talk of her daughter as a demon or an angel, my innocent words that she was with God. “Of course.”
“Samuel knows, but few others.”
“He does? He told me she fell. He said nothing of it being a suicide.” But now I remembered the careful way he’d worded it. “They say she leaned too far over and couldn’t catch her balance.” They say. Not really a lie, but not the truth either.
“I’ve asked him to be discreet. As I am asking you. My aunt’s distress . . . you understand.”
“Of course.”
His expression softened. He glanced about. “I think it’s clean enough, don’t you? How long will Samuel be unconscious?”
“I don’t know. Some time, I think.”
I followed him into the hallway. When the bedroom door was closed behind us, Nero said, “You didn’t use the knife I gave you.”
“I’d left it in my room,” I admitted. “I won’t do that again.”
“You should let me stay, Elena. If not for Giulia—”
I had forgotten all this in his story of Laura. Now my helplessness returned. The reasons to keep Nero away had not changed, but . . . but now, what did it matter? Samuel was mad, and I could not fix him, and everything I’d hoped for must now be given up.
“I think perhaps Samuel’s right,” I said softly. “Perhaps I should keep him sedated for a time. Until I can arrange to . . . send him home.”
“Send him home? So soon?”
“I don’t know what else to do,” I admitted. “I’ve done all I can. I think it’s just best to tell his parents he’s . . . not himself.”
“Not just the medicine then,” Nero said.
I shook my head. “I’ve never seen a patient react this way to it before.”
I started back to my bedroom. Nero followed me. At the door, I turned to him. “Thank you for your help. I won’t subject you or your aunt to any more of this. If you’ll just give me a few days to arrange things . . .”
“What happens then?” he asked.
“I suppose that’s for his parents to decide. He belongs in an asylum.”
He said, “Or . . . you could just let him go. It’s his life. Let him make the choice. In any case, you’ll be well compensated. He’ll give you whatever his parents have promised. Plus more. I’ll make certain he does.”
“He’s already offered that. I refused him.”
Nero frowned. “Why? Did you not believe he had the means? He does. He’s paid our entire carousing way for years, much to my embarrassment.”
I sighed. “It’s not the money that matters to me. Well, it is, but not for the reason you think. The other day, in the cupola . . . you asked if I was running from a scandal.”
It was so quiet I could hear his breathing. He was standing close, close enough that I should have stepped away. But it was reassuring to have him near. I wanted someone to understand. Samuel had not cared. Perhaps Nero would. I could tell him my story without revealing the truth of Samuel’s. There was no need to mention Glen Echo at all.
“One of my father’s patients promised to show me the world, and I wanted so to go . . . I convinced myself that I was in love with him.”
“So he seduced you and it was discovered. A familiar tale.” His voice was rough; I didn’t know why.
I shook my head, swallowing the lump that was suddenly in my throat. I could not look at him. “He had a weakness for opium and wine, and so he wasn’t allowed those things. My father was trying to break him of the habit. But he was in such pain, and he promised me he would not abuse it. He wanted only a few drops. I didn’t see the harm.”
“Elena, you don’t have to tell me this.” Nero’s hand came to my arm, fingers opened, lingering, tingling.
“I want to. You’ve told me your secrets. It seems only fair that you should know mine. The next day, they found him dead of an overdose. He had taken nearly the entire bottle.”
“Santa Maria,” Nero whispered, obviously shocked.
I told him the rest, finishing lamely with, “It was my fault, and I should be brave enough to take the consequences, only I’m not. I can’t bear the thought of it. There’s not even a shop in Littlehaven. I’ll be buried alive there. Everything I’ve always wanted, gone.”
“Everything you’ve always wanted,” he repeated slowly. “Which is what? Ruin, perhaps?”
I looked up and fell into his gaze.
He whispered, “Come here.”
But I was already there, wasn’t I? A bare step away. His hand still on my arm, that caress turning me into liquid. My mind was a muddle; I was mesmerized, entranced.
“Come here,” he said again, the barest movement of his lips, and it was as if he commanded himself, because he was the one who took the step closing the distance between us. Then his fingers were beneath my chin, tilting my face to his. He kissed me as I gasped, my lips already parted, sucking the pulse of my breath into his mouth. But before I could really respond, he drew away. I nearly fell into him before I caught myself.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that. But I couldn’t resist.”
“Why shouldn’t you have done it?”
He laughed lightly. His finger swept my jaw. He brushed my lips with his own, the flicker of his tongue, a taste only, and then pausing only a breath away, so I felt the concussion of his consonants as he said, “I’m not a good man, Elena. Not like Samuel. I’m no prize. You should run from me.”
“I don’t want to run.” It may have been the bravest thing I’d ever said. Certainly, I felt a kind of vain and bubbling courage, a recklessness that felt very like the night I’d sneaked the laudanum for Joshua, such heady excitement, as if I were jumping off a very high cliff into the unknown, falling and falling without end and not c
aring, wanting only to keep falling, to be lost in ruin.
His expression became wistful again, and held too a kindness that made me understand that he was going to walk away. He was going to save me, when I had no desire to be saved.
“No,” I managed. “Please.”
“You’ll thank me for it,” he whispered, stepping back, into the hallway again. “Lock your door, Elena.”
I didn’t know who he thought a locked door would save me from. Himself, or Samuel.
Chapter 19
I sedated Samuel again before I went to bed, locking the door and putting the knife Nero had given me beneath my pillow. Still, I jumped at every little sound and settling, every echo from the streets or the canals. I could not get comfortable, and it wasn’t just the danger of Samuel or my uncertainty that made me so restless, but the things I’d felt with Nero, which seemed to squirm beneath my skin.
I must have fallen asleep eventually, because the last thing I remembered was the sky lightening with dawn, and then suddenly I opened my eyes, and the morning was full on. I heard laughter in the courtyard—male voices, muffled. No doubt Giulia’s family again, and Tomas, with his hard-edged stare that had seemed to see beneath my clothing. I rose and readied for the day, pausing at the sight of the morphine and the needle and syringe, and then deciding to bring them with me. I put the knife in my pocket, reassured by its heaviness against my thigh.
But Samuel was not in his room. Nor was he in the sala or anywhere else on this floor. Rising panic had me rushing to the door, out onto the landing of the stairs, and there he was. Below, in the courtyard, sitting on the wellhead beside Nero. The two of them were talking and smiling. I realized they had been the source of the laughter I’d heard earlier. There wasn’t a Nardi in sight. The sky was clear and blue, the chill, moist air smelling of salt and mud and smoke. They sat in a shaft of misty sunlight, which glinted on their dark hair, bringing out the red in Samuel’s, making Nero’s look even blacker.
I was stunned to see Samuel looking so like himself. After last night, I had thought to find him completely surrendered to madness. It seemed impossible that he should be otherwise today, that he should be sitting in the courtyard laughing with his friend, completely at his ease. At the asylum, patients had good days and bad ones, and I supposed that was all it was. I could not bring myself to interrupt the moment; it was such a blessing. Instead I pressed against the cast-iron rail and watched them, thinking how different things would be if Samuel were only healing from a beating, if there were no secrets, if this house were truly as bright and inviting as the courtyard looked in that moment.