by Megan Chance
ALSO BY MEGAN CHANCE
Susannah Morrow
An Inconvenient Wife
The Spiritualist
Prima Donna
City of Ash
Bone River
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2014 Megan Chance
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477823033
ISBN-10: 1477823034
Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013922577
For Kany, who has always believed
CONTENTS
START READING
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Omnia Mundi Fumus et Umbra
All in the World is Smoke and Shadow
–Latin motto
PARIS—1878
Though it was only a few hours until dawn, it was not quiet. It never was in this part of town, which was not among the best in Paris. Talk and laughter from a nearby cafe murmured through my open window, along with the soft cries of whores calling from doorways as they tried to eke the last bit of profit from the night. Some things even two hundred years did not change.
I searched the shadows of the street below. He had not found me yet, but he would, and it would all begin again. He had learned too much in Barcelona, and I did not think he would give up now.
I didn’t know whether to welcome or dread his arrival. It had already been a year, much of which had been spent in darkness and shadows and fear, hiding from the world. Twelve months, and now, here I was, myself again, only to find I was no longer very good at living.
I sighed and turned away, leaving the window open for the scents of the city to drift inside. Sometimes it was only the smells that told me where I was—what place, what time. Whenever I stepped off a steamer or out of a carriage, I stopped and inhaled deeply. Ah yes, this is Paris. Or London. Or Madrid or Rome or Vienna. Though I would not have been able to describe before that moment what smells were uniquely theirs.
I took a deep breath of Paris now. It was not quite my home—there was no place I called that anymore, though Paris was as close as any, and this hotel belonged to my past and so was comforting, despite its cheap pretensions to grandeur. I was no longer accustomed to anything less than the best, but I’d wanted a place to heal after the months of hiding. This last incident had shaken me greatly, and I was exhausted at the thought of starting again, of seeing his face and knowing what he meant to do. To fight again—had I the strength for it now?
Slowly, I went to the flecked mirror near the bed and put up my hair, which was a thick and heavy brown with a great deal of red. My crowning glory, some said. Others had written poetry of my graceful neck and my smooth shoulders. My naked breasts graced dozens of canvases. Music celebrated my laughter and my frowns. Your beauty will be your fortune, my mother had said to me once, so long ago now I wasn’t certain it was my own memory, or just something I’d been told.
I undressed, and reached for my portmanteau, taking out the narrow razor case. The blade inside gleamed. I turned down the lamp to a tender glow, and then I stepped into the bath. I took my time, lowering myself inch by inch, sighing at immersion, letting the warm water lap my body for a moment, relaxing within it.
Then I raised my arm from the water. I glanced down at my wrist, at the thin pink scar that marked it already, the vein pulsing beneath it, a blue line beneath my pale skin making an easy map to follow. I brought the razor to my wrist and cut, wincing at the pain, waiting for—I don’t know . . . something, some feeling I didn’t know, something real even if it wasn’t new—as the blood bloomed beneath the blade, as I slit deep and long, tracing the old scar.
But there was nothing but pain and that familiar ennui. Even this was not enough.
Well, I’d known that would be so, hadn’t I?
I turned to the other wrist, cutting it just as deeply, and then I let the razor fall to the floor. The water stung as I submerged my arms again. I watched the blood wisping like smoke as it was drawn from my wrists, curling in beautiful patterns as it followed the weave and weft of the faint current set by my breathing and my pulse, and then there were no more pretty patterns; only clear water fogging into homogenous pink and then red. I embraced the lassitude when it came; I was weightless and strange, no longer myself but someone else, that long ago me who had watched a brilliantly bejeweled woman across the room and felt an unyielding, unhesitating affinity.
I heard her voice in my head still. I heard her laughter. I felt the way her breath trembled the hair at the nape of my neck, the way the diamonds circling her wrist had pressed hard into my arm. I remembered how I’d lost myself in their seductive, tempting sparkle.
What do you most desire, Odilé?
I looked down at the water, very red now.
I leaned my head back, and waited for the sunrise.
LONDON—APRIL, 1879
NICHOLAS
I cannot explain how it begins, or why it happens, what strange alchemy puts such things in motion. Whether it is a whisper on the wind or the whiff of a strange perfume that has people stopping in their tracks, caught by a curious caprice as they barter with merchants or test the firm heft of an orange, caught by a desire they’d never thought to have.
I cannot tell you how she does it, only that she does. She is the cause and the urge, and all things move to her pipe and drum. I have followed her for years, long enough to recognize when it happens, when everyone begins to talk of Paris, or all thoughts turn to Rome or Vienna or Madrid.
But now my timing seemed somehow off. Lately I found myself always a step behind, arriving always just after she’d left. I was not the most patient of men, and this inability to find her had me twisting with frustration. I could not afford to let her out of my sight for so long. It had already been two and a half years since Barcelona. The clock was ticking; she must make her choice soon. The k
nowledge was both the curse that had set me on this path seven years before and my solace now. She could not stay hidden for long. Her very nature forbade it. I would find her. All I could do was hope it wouldn’t be too late when I did.
I knew she was in London—or had been—and it was there I knew I would hear of her next step. But I’d heard nothing yet, and I was restless and short-tempered, for once abandoning the salons I frequented nightly to seek peace and solace in a city tavern. I was cutting into one of the heavy steak pies my countrymen consider to be edible when an old friend of mine, Giles Martin, an artist of little renown and less talent, happened in.
He seated himself at my table without delay, reached across the table for a chunk of my pie and shoved it into his mouth, his eyeglasses tipping crookedly on his long patrician nose. He straightened them automatically, saying excitedly as he did so, “I’ve had the idea, Nick. I know what I shall do next!”
“Who is it this time?” I asked wryly. “Have you finally convinced that pretty redhead at the fish market to take off her clothes for you?”
“Not yet,” he said, completely unfazed. “But she’s not to be, I fear. I’ve moved on. I’ve made a decision—I know at last what will make my career: plein air!”
I regarded him skeptically. “Landscapes? You?” Giles hated weather, preferring most of the time to shut himself up with his newest “inspiration,” which usually lasted only as long as it took him to get between her thighs.
“Not just any landscape, Nick. Imagine this if you will: picturesque decay. Crumbling buildings. Gorgeous poverty—”
“Gorgeous poverty? Here? Good God, what have you been drinking?”
“Not here,” Giles said impatiently, reaching for another piece of my dinner. “London’s exhausted her charms for me.”
“Then where? Paris?” I gave him the rest of the pie, which was only greasy shortcrust and gristle. He scrabbled at it with his fingers.
“Venice,” he said.
“Ah, Venice. And just how did you come to that?”
“It’s all anyone’s talking of lately. Whistler’s planning to go. I heard Duveneck might abandon his students in Vienna for it as well.”
That caught my attention. “Both of them?”
“They say now is the best time.” He stared out the tavern window as if he saw the Rapture. “You know, I’ve never felt so strongly about anything in my life.”
That look in Giles’s eyes—I knew it. Everyone talking; men abandoning their former plans to rush off. The hush in Giles’s voice when he uttered the word Venice, as if he were consumed with the thought of it, as if all the charms of the world—including that pretty redhead he’d been obsessed with only days before—were subsumed in its thrall.
My waiting was over.
I tempered my excitement. As casually as I could, I said, “Venice? You know, I wouldn’t mind going there myself.”
“Come with me,” Giles said. “Hell, we could get rooms together, share expenses, that sort of thing. I don’t see as how a poet might not gain as much inspiration from the city as an artist.”
“And no doubt there will be plenty of Venetian maids lingering in ‘gorgeous poverty,’ in need of a coin or two,” I teased.
He laughed, and I ordered another ale. Though I joked with him the rest of the evening, I was too distracted to remember later what we talked of. Venice. How had I not considered it before? The city of pretense and duplicity and decay. It was perfect for her. She was Venice personified, with her immortal agelessness and her beautiful, mysterious eyes that promised deliverance and salvation, her mouth that had spoken a hundred promises.
All of them lies.
It was the perfect place for the task I’d been given. I had heard of no new artistic geniuses, and no one was yet speaking of new works to inspire the ages, and so I believed she had not yet chosen. There were only six months left in this cycle—not much time, at least for her—but it meant I was close. The horror of the last time I’d made the attempt to destroy her still haunted me, but now I knew what to expect. Now I had a plan. This time, I would have what I wanted at last.
VENICE—SEPTEMBER, 1879
SOPHIE
Every book I’d read said that Venice was at her most beautiful come upon from the sea, at sunrise or sunset, and that we must see her first that way. So naturally we did not. My twin brother and I first encountered Venice in the dead of night, and not from any romantic gondola, but from the windows of the train racing across the railway bridge from dismal Mestre.
I leaned close to the glass, pushing the veil of my hat impatiently from my face to better see, but there was nothing to look at. The train itself seemed suspended in darkness. Sparks from the engine glowed bright and fleeing, fluttering away into ash, the only thing to show we were moving. I had the strange impression that we were completely alone in the darkness, only Joseph and me in our dimly lit compartment, floating on nothing, disappearing into nothing.
I said, “We’re almost there.”
My brother gave me a sleepy smile, his dimples parenthesizing his wide mouth, stunning even in half sleep. “You’ve no need to worry, Soph. I promised it, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
He squeezed my hand. “This will work. We’ll have everything we want. You’ll see.”
I nodded and looked back into the abject darkness. It was too early for the moon. It was disappointing. I had so wanted to come upon Venice as in a novel, watching the campaniles and the top-hat chimneys come into view against a pink-and-lavender-tinted sky as I listened to the soft plashing of a gondolier’s oar. I’d read the Murray guidebook cover to cover, over and over again—it was within easy reach even now, shoved into the outer pocket of my carpetbag, which nudged gently against my feet. I’d described how it would be to Joseph a thousand times, though he’d just laughed at me and said, “Only pretty words. They’ll never show what my brush will.”
Once we had decided to flee New York City, I had thrown myself into travel preparations. I had made lists of everywhere we were to visit, all the things we should pay attention to, no matter that I knew such effort was pointless. Joseph had not opened a single book, and had only listened to my itineraries with amused detachment, but he would be the one who truly knew the city once we stepped foot in it. He would know it in that strange way he had of taking in everything, of seeing what was important, of finding things I did not even know to look for. All my words from Murray or Ruskin or Byron or Howells would be as naught.
But I couldn’t just leave it all to chance, could I? So much depended on this. Everything, as he’d said.
You’re not leaving it to chance, Soph. You’re leaving it to me.
It was true; Joseph’s talent and confidence had opened doors for us before. But I was never so easy as my brother, and I knew what lay beneath his confidence. I could not help feeling nervous and afraid. I wanted so much for him—Venice must be the answer we’d hoped for.
“You’re worrying,” he leaned close to whisper. I felt the warmth of his breath against the bare skin below my ear, and I turned to give him a quick kiss.
“I’m not. Truly. Or . . . not much. Oh, when will we be there?”
“Now,” he said, glancing toward the window, nodding for me to look. Then I saw it. Little pins of light that grew larger as I watched, a city that seemed to bloom from the darkness, spreading and spreading so that I couldn’t tell what was real and what was only reflection. But before I could truly grasp it, the train plunged into the station, and shuddered to a halt. A cloud of smoke fogged the window, momentarily obscuring everything, and then it was only bustle. Joseph rose, grabbing my bag and his own, teasing, “You intend to stay here all night?”
I followed him, grabbing on to his arm as he led us into the station, where people raced to and fro, jostling with luggage, and Italian officials in their worn gray-and-green uniforms called for passports. Joseph shifted both bags to one side and reached into his pocket for ours, which were offered and glanced
over so quickly we were moving on before I knew it, maneuvering around piles of trunks and luggage and carts, people squeezed in so tightly I did not dare release my grip upon my brother’s arm.
We were running a gauntlet now—porters and valets de place and men trying to get us to look this way or that, gesturing and shouting in Italian I barely understood—it sounded nothing as it had in Rome, though surely those were the same words? Joseph approached a porter—a small man with very large brown eyes and an official-looking badge—who asked us in perfect French where we would like to go, and I answered in kind before my brother could say a word, “The omnibus. We’re to look for the omnibus.”
The porter nodded and began to turn. But Joseph said, “No omnibus.”
The porter halted. I looked at my brother in confusion. “But the guidebook says the omnibus is cheaper.”
“We’re in Venice, Soph,” he said.
I stared at him, not understanding, and he said to the porter in French, “We’ll have a gondola.”
In a low voice, I said, “But Joseph, the cost—”
“You wanted to see it from the lagoon at sunset,” he said softly, for me alone. “Instead we’ll have it from the Grand Canal at night. Our first night in Venice, under the stars. It will be like one of your stories.”
How well he knew I would find such a thing irresistible.
“To where, monsieur?” The porter asked.
Joseph looked questioningly at me, and I knew a moment’s exasperation that he hadn’t remembered the name of the hotel. I said, “Albergo Beale Danieli.”
The porter nodded. He glanced at the bags Joseph held and asked if we had luggage, and Joseph motioned toward the small trunk we shared, sitting forlornly among the mounds of other trunks. I saw the way the porter looked at us again, askance this time, as if he knew we hadn’t any money. I felt myself grow hot, and it wasn’t until he arranged for the trunk’s delivery and led us through the crowd and out of the station, where the water of the Grand Canal lapped right up onto the steps and the golden dome of San Simeon loomed across, and the whole glittering, otherworldly spangle of the city burst into being, that I forgot to be embarrassed. I halted, jerking Joseph to a stop and causing the people behind us to stumble and curse.