by Lia Lee
She turned again to the mirror and gasped. With her face covered up and her body bound by the green velvet dress, she looked like someone entirely new. Briony thrust her chin up as she had seen Seanan do in her movie, imagining a half-dozen cringing noblemen come to kiss her hand.
"No, I won't have you. I fancy something far finer," she said, imitating Seanan's line as best she could. She had done it before, of course, in the past and with different films, but this was the first time she had ever thought that she sounded convincing. In the mirror, she might have been another Florentine courtesan, commanding love like an army.
Maybe tonight wouldn't be so bad after all.
Chapter Two
Marco Bianchi arrived late to the party, but frankly, they were lucky to get him at all. Indeed, he might have stayed at the fundraiser he had left for the entire night if his friend Cosimo had not texted him.
You need to get out here, my friend. This is shaping up to be the event of the season. Would hate to see the prince of Florence get locked out of that.
He had snorted at Cosimo's joke, but he’d made his goodbyes to the fundraiser’s host and headed for the party in his savagely quick Ferrari. The party was on his schedule, of course, celebrating some popular film or other about Florence. It had sounded like a piece of nonsense to him, but the reviews were good, and he was always inclined to look kindly on people who loved his city.
The party was being held on the outskirts of Florence at the small mansion of one of the producers. It was an elegant place that Marco thought must have been hosting star-studded events like this one since the 1800s, and as he left his car with the valet and made his way to the rear garden where the festivities were being held, he smiled a little.
At the end of the day, we might not be as flash as the Venetians, but we know how to enjoy ourselves.
Before he could join the crush, a waiter blocked his path.
"Mr. Baldassare's rules," the waiter said apologetically. "This is a masquerade ball, after all, sir."
Marco looked at the masked waiter long enough to make the skinnier man squirm, but with a shrug, he finally took the mask that was offered to him. It was a simple domino, and when he put it on, he found that it was fairly comfortable, at least.
While most of the women were done up in Renaissance dresses and elaborate masks, most of the men had defaulted to masks and tuxedos. It took Marco some doing to find Cosimo and his wife Valentine, and when he did, they greeted him with cheerful grins.
"You two have already been enjoying yourselves, I see," he said as Cosimo clasped his arm and Valentine gave him the traditional French kisses, one on each cheek.
"No harm to it, my friend," Cosimo said with a grin. "Baldassare was kind enough to loan us a room, and now we can simply do as we please until we crawl upstairs to bed. Here, let me get you something..."
"That sounds nice, but I'm driving home. I should be on better behavior than that..."
He paused as a stunning woman in green waltzed past him, her dress fanning out as her partner spun her around the floor. He had a brief impression of long chestnut hair and a lovely, husky laugh. For some reason, that combination made his heart beat faster, and he had to shake his head to pull himself out of his daze.
"Though perhaps I might not want to be on my best behavior with all things... Who the hell was that?"
"Oh, it seems as if the prince of Florence has a crush," Valentine teased. "Is it Renaissance dress and some anonymity that draws your eye?"
Most of the time, Marco would have been pleased to flirt and tease with Valentine, but right now, he barely realized she was standing next to him. Instead, his eyes were searching the crowd, looking for that flash of chestnut hair and green velvet again.
"There's not much use to the mask if you are just going to announce my identity to the room," Marco remarked, still scanning the crowd.
"What a good idea," Valentine cooed. "Go, go walk incognito among your people and learn the identity of your lady in green."
"Lady in green? Was that a part in the movie we are celebrating, perhaps?"
It was Cosimo who answered with a shrug. "No one really knows. She arrived fashionably late, and ever since then, well, you see. She's had no end of people interested in who she is or where she comes from, but so far, no one's had any luck figuring it out. The best guess is that she's one of the actresses."
"I see," Marco said thoughtfully, and then he glanced with slight guilt at his friends. "I really did come to see you at least for a little while..."
Valentine laughed, slapping him on the arm. "No problems at all, Marco. You should take your time to enjoy yourself the way we've been doing all evening."
She turned back to Cosimo with a look of love that was completely undulled by the champagne she had consumed, and it made Marco shake his head with a grin before heading off into the crowd.
As much as Cosimo was sometimes pompous, and as much as Valentine was an inveterate flirt, you could search all of Florence and not find two people who were more well suited to each other. It was always good for him to spend time with people like that, who cared so much for each other's company.
While being the prince of Florence was mostly an honorary title these days and unrelated to the vast wealth and estates his family owned, Marco had to admit there was definitely some stress associated with the position. He wasn't sure he could remember the last time he had been able to just cut loose and enjoy himself without worrying about what everyone around him would say, without wondering whether that flirtation or that kiss was motivated out of interest in his position.
Marco touched the mask that shielded him from recognition with a slight smirk.
He owed Cosimo a drink before this was all over. Perhaps tonight he could be a little more himself than he usually got to be.
A prince would have to be restrained and dignified at anything resembling a gala. A prince would have to applaud as a beautiful woman danced by, too conscious of his position to impose or to give a young woman hope for some kind of favor.
Instead, Marco was simply himself, and he cut through the throng of dancers, coming to the woman in green and her companion in short order.
"Excuse me, but I am cutting in."
The masked man dancing with the beauty turned to him, ready to argue, perhaps, but then he took in Marco's lean but muscled form, his height, and the bright glint of sharp, white teeth. The man thought about it for a moment and then ceded the lady’s hand to Marco before stepping away.
Marco turned to the lady, ready with a suave line, but the shock that traveled from her hand to his as soon as they touched rendered him silent in surprise. It was a feeling of both intense heat and blessed coolness, and for a moment, all Marco wanted to do was experiment until he felt it again.
"Well, well," the woman said, getting in the first word. "How brave you are."
The music sped up, and with a slight shrug, Marco led her back into the steps of the dance. She moved with a kind of grace he hadn't expected. This was something he had taken classes on as a child, so he did well, but this woman floated through the steps of the dance with ease. Cosimo was probably right that she was an actress with the movie. He couldn't figure out why anyone else would be so good at an archaic art form.
"Brave, cara mia?" he asked, a slight smile quirking his lips. "I see no monsters here to fight, do you?"
Her laugh was a low and husky thing. Hearing it while she was nearly in his arms made Marco shiver. His body was responding to her in a way that only had a little to do with sexual arousal. There was something that drew him to her, and he had to fight down the urge to do anything foolish.
"No monsters, no, but it can be the hardest thing in the world to enter into an accord between two people, uncertain on whether you are wanted, trusting to courtesy and tradition to allow you in."
Marco snorted, raising an eyebrow slightly. Under her mask, her red lips curved, a sensual thing that he had to keep himself from leaning forward to taste.
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"Your last partner did not give way to courtesy and tradition." He snorted. "He gave way because I was bigger than he was and because he did not want to lose to me in a fight."
He had thought she would make some kind of remark about how arrogant he was, but instead, she only shook her head.
"You'll pardon me if I laugh," she said. "The idea that a man might want my company enough to fight for it sounds like the strangest kind of fairy tale."
"Why, do you think you are not worth fighting for?" he teased.
Any other woman he knew would have thrown it right back at him, laughed and made a joke about men and fighting. Instead, the woman's smile dropped briefly before she pulled it up again. She looked up at him for the first time, and he caught a glimpse of intoxicating blue behind the eye holes of her mask.
"I think I am very lucky to be here," she said at last. "I think I am going to ride this story as long as I can, but I won't be so surprised when it's time to wake up and go home..."
Almost against his will, Marco found himself leaning towards his partner as they danced. Perhaps another woman might have found it almost distasteful how close he had come without an invitation, but this one only tilted her face slightly as if considering him.
"And when this is all over, you'll return to your life among the cinders?" Marco asked softly. "Content to gaze on the dancing lights from afar and never approach again?"
"I do believe so," she said immediately. "Believe me when I say this is not my usual Saturday night's entertainment. It's all..."
She struggled for a moment to come up with the right word, shaking her head helplessly.
"Magical," she finally said with a half-laugh, and for some reason, Marco found himself enchanted.
"Tell me what else you have found magical in all your life," he said, spinning her through the motions of the dance. She danced as lightly as a fairy, as quick as a flash of light. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see other men watching her, envying him, and almost without thinking of what he was doing, he drew her closer to him, protective.
"You do ask for a great deal when you became my dance partner," she complained with good nature. "Magic, let me see..."
The dance ended, but Marco kept hold of her hand, guiding her off of the dance floor. He wondered if she would object, but instead she folded herself close to his side, letting him lead as if they had done this for ages. There was an olive grove behind Baldassare's mansion, the delicate, twisting branches holding up multicolored paper lanterns, and Marco led her along the path.
"Magic is waking up one day to discover that it is no longer winter but spring," the mysterious woman said softly. "That moment when you realize the cold is over and things will be well again. Magic is...the first time someone smiles at you, and you realize you have made a friend. Magic is the first breath of baked bread fresh out of the oven..."
"But those are quite ordinary things," Marco teased, and she gazed at him with a solemnity that seemed out of balance with the youthfulness of her features. He could see now that the woman who had enchanted him was young; her face was a perfect heart shape, her mouth as soft and tender as a new strawberry.
"Then I think you have not looked so closely," she said quietly. "What do you think magic is, then?"
The candid question caught Marco off guard.
"I don't believe in it," he admitted. "But if I did, hm. An honest politician? An unselfish cat? A woman of character?"
They had been walking along the path, but now the woman in green stopped short, gazing up at him. In the dimness of the lanterns, her eyes looked black.
"What do you mean by that?"
Marco shrugged, vaguely aware that he had made a mistake but unsure how. "A woman of character, a woman of integrity and respect. I do not mean anything by it..."
"Is it so much easier for a man to have those things than a woman?" she asked softly. "Is there some circumstance where women are lacking such things?"
Marco frowned at her. "You must admit that women are very different from men, yes? The circumstances of the world are different, and women have to develop a very different set of skills just to survive."
"I'm afraid I do not understand what you mean. Are you telling me that, because women have different struggles, there can be no integrity or character in the choices they make?"
"Not in the standards that are used by men." It was perfectly self-evident to him. "If a woman is offended, she cannot strike a man down for the offense if she is so much slighter and less powerful than he. A woman's strength is not so much that she can work endlessly for a career. If a woman falls pregnant unmarried, she must beg the man to become a husband and father, as she cannot provide herself..."
The woman in green took a frosty step back from him. He had thought she was young and sweet before, but now he discovered that sweetness could have a razor edge.
"Despite thinking that you know a great deal of women, I find your conclusions are weak and flawed. I think we have nothing else to say to one another, sir."
Marco started to protest, but she stalked off into the night, her skirts trailing behind her.
Well, that could have gone better, he thought.
He might have been a rich man and a handsome one, but he certainly didn't expect every woman who walked past to fall into his arms. If this one disagreed, there were a dozen more at the party who might not, and his first instinct was to return and find one of them.
Why then did it feel as if his heart had been pulled out of his chest by a woman dressed in green?
Chapter Three
One more thing I could have said about magic, Briony thought, is that it never lasts.
There was a tiny, childish part of her that wondered why he’d had to say all those horrible things about women just then. Why couldn't he have kept his mouth shut, let her have the magic of a beautiful night in Florence?
Another part of her was savagely grateful. It was always better to find out about people before you got to know them, before they let you down. Christ, what would have happened if she’d found he thought those things after she had spent a lot of time with him?
Briony was so lost in thought that she wasn't watching where she was going, and though she thought she was headed back to the mansion, she soon realized she was in another part of the gardens entirely. There was still some lighting along the path, but it had changed from the gaily-colored lanterns she had seen before. These lights were dimmed, more to provide illumination on a regular basis than for a party, and there was something menacing about them.
Briony would have turned back the way she’d come, but it occurred to her that if she followed the path, she was bound to return to the mansion, and if she entered through one of the servants' entrances, she wouldn't have to worry about cutting her way through the crowd.
Be honest, you just don't want to run into that man again, she thought, and that was true enough.
She lifted her skirts to keep them free of the entangling brush on either side of the path and pressed forward.
It seemed like such a good idea, and almost fifteen minutes passed before she realized she might have made a miscalculation. The lights had remained the same, suggesting she was still on the producer's property, but there was no sign of the mansion. Just when she was thinking of swallowing her pride and simply tracing her way back, she turned a sharp bend and found herself in the middle of a party of another sort.
There were three rough looking men seated around a small fire, and she could see they were passing around a dark bottle of something unlabeled. There was a moment of frozen surprise on all parts, and then one man rose up, bottle in his hand. He grinned at her, and there was something unsavory in his smile that made her take a step back. He waved the bottle at her, obviously wanting her to take a sip, but Briony took another step back. This seemed to make him angry, and he spat something in Italian.
I'm sure it's fine, I'm just being a dumb foreigner, Briony thought, but then her instincts came to her rescu
e.
When the man with the bottle took another step towards her, she spun on her heel and ran, pelting back along the path she had come from. She expected to hear laughter at her foolishness, but instead, a cry went up and there were three men crashing through the underbrush behind her.
Oh god, oh god, oh god, her mind chanted. Unbidden in her mind came the mysterious man's words that women couldn't protect themselves, that they lacked the power to do so. Well, she was going to show him wrong. She had to.
Briony would never have said that she was particularly in shape, but adrenaline gave her a burst of speed and desperation. She ran along the path, skirts hiked up past her knees, and with every step she took, she could hear her pursuers behind her. It felt as if any moment, they might simply fall upon her, but every moment that they didn't gave her an extra burst of hope.
The air burned her lungs as she gasped. As hard as she was breathing, there was no hope that they would overlook her, and that meant she simply had to keep running.
God, how far did I walk? Am I ever going to get back?
The idea of being trapped in the hell of crashing underbrush followed by men intent on catching her made her ill, but it only redoubled her desperation to get away. One foot in front of the other would get her out of this.
Briony was concentrating so hard on running that she managed to run right into someone without seeing. One moment she was flying headlong through the darkness, and the next she was ploughing face first into the arms of a man who wrapped his arms around her.
"No! No, I will not let you...!" she cried out, ready to squirm and fight, but then she realized it wasn't one of her pursuers. Instead, it was the man who she had walked away from before.
"What's the matter, what's wrong?" he asked, not releasing her, but then he glanced into the grove behind her. She could feel his body tense like a bowstring being pulled taut. To her surprise, he caught her in his arms and then with a gasp, he boosted her up onto a tree branch close by. One moment, she was on the ground, and the next she was seated in the branches of an olive tree, looking down at him.