Secrets of the Eternal Rose 02: Belladonna

by Fiona Paul

  “You must be mistaken,” Cass said, taking another step back. “I don’t know you.” There was something disconcerting about the man’s piercing gaze. His eyes were too big, too dark.

  He reached out toward her, and Cass’s whole body went rigid. “I wasn’t looking for a friend. I was looking for the most beautiful woman in the room.”

  Cass began to turn away from him when she noticed he was wearing a ring—a six-petaled flower inscribed in a circle. Blood began to pound in her ears. Finally: the symbol of the Order of the Eternal Rose.

  She tucked her shaking hands into the folds of her gown. She couldn’t just ask about the ring. It might make the man suspicious. She cleared her throat and forced a smile. “My friends dragged me along tonight,” she said. It was, to a certain extent, true, although Donna Zanotta was certainly not a friend. “I do not even know who is hosting this party.”

  His eyes lit up. “You’re not familiar with Palazzo della Notte? Then perhaps you will let me show you around, Signorina… ?”

  “Livi,” Cass said. Her dead friend’s name had just come to her. She wasn’t even sure why she had lied. “And your name is?”

  “Piero Basso.” The way he smiled, and the clump of dark hair that fell forward over his masked eyes, once again reminded Cass of Falco. An ache bloomed inside of her.

  “I know that look,” Piero said.

  “Oh?” Cass scanned the room behind Piero, studying each masked woman in an attempt to locate Hortensa.

  “It is the face of a woman who deeply desires something.” He moved closer to let a pair of guests slide behind him, his hand reaching out to casually touch her arm. “Something I can give to you.”

  Cass wished it were that easy, that Piero could become Falco just because she wanted him to. She imagined his hand moving from her arm to her waist to her back, his other hand ripping off her bonnet and twining itself in her hair.

  Piero’s lips twitched, like he could read her mind. He signaled a woman in white. The woman floated over and curtsied. She handed him two glasses of a dark muddy liquid. Piero offered one to Cass.

  “I insist,” he said, pressing the glass into her hand. “It helps with the anxiety.”

  “Do I seem anxious?” Cass asked. She sampled the liquid hesitantly. It had a surprisingly sweet taste.

  Piero tucked a tendril of hair behind her left ear. “You seem enchanting.” His hand lingered at the area where her jaw became her neck. His fingertips were points of cool pressure against her flushed skin.

  “But you can’t even see my face,” Cass protested. She wanted to turn the conversation away from herself and onto Piero’s ring, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t think. She was losing control.

  Piero caressed the back of her neck. “Beauty isn’t simply one’s face. It’s much more than that.” He leaned in close to whisper in her ear. “I see all of you.” His lips grazed her earlobe and she trembled.

  For a second, the portego blurred before her eyes. The other guests melted into the wisps of smoke, and the room went dead quiet. For a second the whole world was her and Piero, with only the sound of their breaths whispering between them.

  Cass blinked hard and the room returned to normal. She took a step back from his touch and blurted out the first words that came to mind. “What do you do here in Florence?”

  “I’m a physician,” he replied. “A doctor in residence for a woman who lives just outside of town.” Piero’s pupils widened, and for a second Cass thought she might pitch forward right into his eyes.

  The wineglass trembled in her hand. “Is she quite ill,” Cass asked, thinking of Agnese, “to require a full-time physician?”

  “She is”—Piero paused—“a woman most concerned with staying well.”

  Before Cass could ask what that meant, she caught a glimpse of who she thought was Hortensa moving through the crowd. She was on the arm of a tall, broad-shouldered man with silky blond hair. He was definitely not her husband, Don Zanotta. Cass was torn. Piero was wearing the ring of the Order, but she couldn’t figure out how to subtly probe him for more information, especially when he seemed more interested in seducing her than talking. Hortensa, however, had most certainly lied in accusing Luca. And Cass would have no problem asking about that.

  “I’m sorry,” she said abruptly. “I must go.”

  “But—” Piero began to protest.

  “Mi dispiace,” Cass apologized again. She made her way across the room and followed Hortensa up another winding staircase.

  At the top of the stairs, Cass hung back behind a large potted plant. She quickly dumped the remainder of her drink into the soft soil, and then set the empty glass on the floor. The hallway was narrow, lined with three doors on each side. Cass watched as Hortensa and the man entered one of the far rooms.

  She inched her way down the hall. The door to the room remained open a crack. Cass pressed her face to the opening. Someone had lit the fireplace, even though the air was warm. Dancing orange flames illuminated the outline of two bodies in the dark. They stood in a loose embrace in the middle of the room, almost as if they were dancing.

  The man bowed, pressing his lips lightly to Hortensa’s wrist. She turned her back to him. Cass watched with fascination as the man reached out and began to undo the laces of Hortensa’s bodice. Hortensa held her hands out in front of her, and the man slipped the satin garment over her arms. His hands went to her waist, and Hortensa’s vivid scarlet skirts landed on the floor with a dull thud. The donna stood there in just her stays and her chemise.

  Cass felt a sudden surge of fear. She told herself she was overreacting. Hortensa was an adult, fully capable of deciding who she did and didn’t want undressing her. Cass couldn’t see the look on the donna’s face, but her body seemed relaxed, completely willing. As the man began to unlace Hortensa’s stays, Cass couldn’t help but think of the couple she’d seen at the brothel back in Venice.

  She’d been investigating with Falco, looking for the identity of a missing courtesan. Falco had left her alone for a moment, and Cass had gone exploring the dark hallways of the brothel. She’d stumbled into a room where a prostitute and a patron lay naked on a mattress. Cass had stood, frozen, watching their figures twist and rock together until eventually the prostitute had caught her spying and invited her to join them.

  Cass’s face burned. She shouldn’t be watching this moment, just as she shouldn’t have watched back then, but she couldn’t help it. The brothel in Venice had seemed so wild, so savage. Hortensa and the man here were different. Controlled, almost formal, as if they were strangers instead of lovers.

  Hortensa stood frozen in the center of the room, as if she were a doll someone had posed. She stared straight ahead as the man disappeared from view. He reappeared with a glass of the same muddy liquid Piero had offered Cass. The donna raised the glass to her lips and drained it. Her arm dropped to her side. The man’s hands had returned to her back. Cass held her breath as Hortensa’s stays fell to the floor.

  The man stroked Hortensa’s chin and jaw with one hand. As he tilted her head to expose her throat, he turned the donna slightly toward the door. She stared straight at Cass without seeing her. Her eyes were glassy, thick, as if she were drunk. Or drugged. Hortensa’s eyelids fluttered closed as the man kissed the side of her neck. As he caressed her, her lips parted and she sighed.

  Suddenly the donna’s body seemed to fold in on itself. She crumpled against the man. He steadied her on her feet, whispering something into her ear. Hortensa smiled dreamily. The wineglass fell from her fingers, shattering on the stone floor.

  Cass gasped. The man looked up and saw her standing outside the door. Lightning-quick, he lowered Hortensa to the floor and headed straight for Cass.

  She turned and fled, racing back down the hallway, making her way down the staircase in a couple of leaps, thrusting herself into the throng of masked revelers. She pushed her way roughly through the gyrating bodies and headed back toward the kitchen. The crowd had thinned some
what, easing Cass’s escape. Were there others tucked away in rooms, doing whatever Hortensa was doing? Cass’s heart battered itself against her rib cage. What had Hortensa been doing?

  “Signorina Livi.” Piero spotted her and called out, pushing his own way through the masked revelers.

  She didn’t stop. She made her way down the second staircase, tearing through the hallway and into the kitchen. She hit the back door running, the nighttime shadows reaching out for her as she fled into the street.

  Flinging her mask to the ground, Cass ducked immediately around the corner, heading toward the front of the house, toward the Arno, the direction from which she had arrived. She stopped. What if the man from upstairs was waiting for her there? She spun around, retraced her steps, and thrust herself into the alley that ran behind the mysterious palazzo instead. She’d cut back over to the main street in a couple of blocks, when she was a safe distance away from the blond man, and from whatever it was she’d witnessed.

  The darkness seemed both wide enough to swallow her up and heavy enough to crush her, but Cass was more afraid of what she knew might be behind her than of the unknown lurking ahead. She squeezed herself into the inky space between a pale gray palazzo and its red brick neighbor, pausing for a moment to catch her breath.

  Leaves skittered past her ankles as she inched her way between the two buildings. She emerged onto a larger street and turned north toward the Piazza del Mercato Vecchio and Palazzo Alioni. She walked slowly, practically without breathing, praying that Falco was right and there were no such things as vampires.

  The thought of Falco calmed her, but just for a second. She knew that even if no one was waiting to drink her blood, plenty might be waiting to spill it. Thieves, or worse. The image of Cristian flashed before her. What had she been thinking, following Hortensa into that place all by herself?

  She hadn’t been thinking. She had just been so desperate to speak to Hortensa that she would have followed her straight into the mouth of hell if it had come to that. And for what? A lot of good it had done.

  Cass shook her head. She had been stupid, and reckless. Agnese would have a fit if she knew. Then she’d ask Cass the same thing she always did: What would Matteo say? Agnese was rather single-minded when it came to how she and Cass appeared to her late husband’s heir, even though Cass doubted the two of them ever crossed the boy’s mind. Under other circumstances, the thought might have made her smile.

  The southern entrance to the piazza should have been straight ahead, but instead Cass ran directly into a blacksmith’s shop. Fear bubbled up inside her. Suddenly, nothing looked familiar. The sharp angles of shops and palazzos cut into the night sky, stealing the bulk of the moonlight. Her blood began to pound in her ears. No. She needed to stay calm. Perhaps she had turned too soon. Cass continued along in the same direction, and a couple of blocks later she saw the piazza off to her right. She was relieved to see the statue papered with pasquinades and the peeling paint of the back of Palazzo Alioni.

  A burst of laughter from across the square made her jump. She went to flip the hood up on her cloak to hide her face and then realized she’d left it at the Palazzo della Notte. Swearing under her breath, she tucked her chin low, and then snuck a glance toward the laughter. A trio of boys were weaving drunkenly across the square.

  Cass was hoping they wouldn’t notice her walking all by herself. She must act confident. That’s what Falco would do.

  As soon as she thought of Falco, Cass realized one of the boys had dark hair that curled toward his chin. Hair that looked identical to Falco’s. It was as if Cass’s mere thoughts had conjured him from the air. She blinked, then rubbed her eyes, expecting him to transform into a university student, or for the whole piazza to become her dusty little room at Palazzo Alioni.

  But she wasn’t dreaming. There, just a few feet away from her, unmistakably, was Falco.

  “Lust, love, madness: the holiest trilogy of all.”

  —THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE

  fourteen

  Cass couldn’t move. She stood there, transfixed, speechless, letting her eyes wander over his whole body. The moonlight outlined his broad shoulders and the dark brown hair that had grown even longer since she’d last seen him, the ends of it brushing against his cheekbones and dangling below his square jaw. He broke away from his friends with a wave and began to cross the piazza toward her, the collar of his shirt flopping open to expose a triangle of muscular chest. Warmth bloomed in Cass’s cheeks. Her hands had been all over those muscles just a few weeks earlier.

  Falco’s jaw dropped slightly as he approached, his lips curving into the lopsided smile she had missed so much.

  “Starling,” he said. “I cannot believe it. Are you the product of too much wine or too many wishes?” He reached out, taking one of her hands in his own. “You feel real enough.”

  “Hello, Falco,” she managed to say. She felt as if she might explode. Only now did she let herself realize how she had missed every tiny detail of him. More than anything, she wanted to pull him into her arms, to press her lips to the tiny scar beneath his right eye, to bury her face in the warmth of his hair.

  Falco lifted her hand to his mouth, brushing his lips gently across her soft skin. It was an innocent gesture, but Cass could sense the urgency beneath it. He felt exactly the same way she did. She knew it.

  Pulling her close and cradling her face in his hands, he said, “I have visited Florence’s breathtaking cathedrals and reviewed the works of the masters, but you are the most beautiful thing I’ve seen since I left Venice.”

  Heat coursed from his fingers into her skin and the blood and bones beneath it. Falco’s hands smelled faintly of paint. Cass smiled. She couldn’t help herself. For a second the two of them were back on San Domenico, kissing on a bench in her aunt’s garden. For a second, desire budded and bloomed inside of her, as scarlet and fragrant as Agnese’s roses. Intoxicating. For a second nothing had changed.

  Only everything had changed.

  She stepped back from his touch, but the wanting didn’t fade. The air had grown warm, too warm. “I thought I might never see you again,” she said.

  “Here I am.” If Falco was dismayed by the fact that she had pulled away from him, he didn’t show it. “And what about you? What can you possibly be doing here?” He raised his eyebrows and held up a hand. “Let me guess. You’ve gotten yourself into more trouble.” Before she could respond, he continued. “Come with me. I know somewhere we can talk.”

  * * *

  “Somewhere” turned out to be the local taverna, a ramshackle building with candles burning behind thick panes of distorted window glass. Above the door, a wooden sign shaped like a wine goblet groaned as a slight breeze teased it back and forth. Cass couldn’t read the faded words until they were standing on the threshold. I Sette Dolori. The Seven Sorrows.

  “You’ll love this place,” Falco promised.

  She was a little surprised, but she didn’t know why. Did she think Falco was going to take her to his studio, or perhaps his home? Did she want that? She forced the memory of his kisses from her mind. She was here for Luca. Luca, who would die if she couldn’t find the Book of the Eternal Rose.

  Ignoring the leering glances from a group of men hovering just inside the door, Cass let Falco lead her to a table in the corner of the taverna.

  “So what are you doing in Florence?” Falco asked.

  Cass fumbled for a reply. She almost spilled the story of what she had seen at Palazzo della Notte, but suddenly she felt ashamed. Perhaps she had stumbled into a fancy brothel. She didn’t want to tell Falco what she’d been doing, and what she’d seen.

  He grinned. “Lured here by a dead body or a devastatingly handsome artist?” He pulled a dusty wooden chair from beneath the table. “Sit down. Have a drink. I promise to escort you safely back to your satin sheets once we’ve gotten reacquainted.”

  Before she could speak, Falco’s eyes settled on the diamond pendant that had worked its way ou
t from beneath her bodice. His face tightened. He reached toward Cass’s throat, but stopped just short of making contact. “Or maybe your husband is expecting you home,” he said, bringing his hand quickly to his side. “Enjoying all the trappings of married life, are you?”

  “I’m not married,” Cass said sharply, tucking the lily safely away beneath her high lace collar. “And Luca’s not in Florence with me.”

  Falco relaxed visibly, although he didn’t smile. “Then I insist on buying the beautiful signorina a drink.”

  Cass realized she shouldn’t have accompanied Falco to the taverna. Every second she spent alone with him, well… complicated matters. And Cass’s life was already complicated. Then again, what harm would one drink do? She had a thousand questions for Falco: how he came to be in Florence, and what he thought about the threats of vampirism. Perhaps he had seen Hortensa around the city, or had heard of the Order of the Eternal Rose. Freeing Luca was going to require all the help she could get.

  “Just one drink,” Cass relented. She tried to keep her face neutral so Falco wouldn’t know how happy she was just to be in his company.

  Falco signaled the barkeep, who brought over two mugs of ale. He dropped a pair of copper pieces in the man’s hand.

  Cass sat down, trying not to notice the way Falco’s hair fell perfectly over one of his brilliant blue eyes. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Remember how I told you I was hired on by a wealthy patron? She lives here, on the outskirts of Florence. She has commissioned me to do a piece of art for every room in her palazzo.” He smiled. “The work is mundane—portraits, rolling hills, more portraits—but she pays well and she knows everyone. I’m hoping that her friends will see my work and want to hire me on as well.”

  Cass could hardly believe she and Falco had ended up in the same place by sheer accident. Fate, a voice whispered in her head. She ignored it. Her fate was to marry Luca.