by Venom (mobi)
He left her to fetch something from the armoire. She contemplated making a run for it. She could probably make it to the door before him, but she was beginning to calm down, and he was right that going anywhere in her condition wasn't practical or safe. Her head started to pound. She rubbed her temples. Maybe it was just the alcohol that had made her see those horrible things.
Falco returned with a brown glass bottle and a bowl of water from the tin basin. Holding her hand over the bowl, he poured some reddish-brown fluid across her broken skin. Tears formed in her eyes. Her hand was on fire. She looked down, not wanting him to see her if she cried. She focused on one of his shirt's metallic buttons.
"Sorry. I know it hurts," Falco said. Pieces of brown hair fell forward in front of his eyes as he bent to dip her hand into the bowl of water. The cool temperature partly extinguished the pain.
She could only watch in silence as Falco lifted her hand from the fluid and blotted each of her fingers with the untucked tail of his white linen shirt. "It's going to be sore tomorrow, but it should be clean. With any luck you won't end up with a fever."
Cass nodded. The motion felt strange to her. She closed and opened her hand a few times. She felt like a marionette, as if all of her joints were operating independently of the others. She let her head fall back onto a circular pillow. "I'm so tired," she said. The words seemed to take a long time to move from her brain to her mouth.
Falco's response also sounded distorted, his syllables breaking up and fading into the warm air of the studio. Cass felt her legs lifting up and then coming to rest on the soft velvet of the divan. A thin coverlet landed on her, its silky coolness a welcome contrast against her warm skin. She balled the fabric up in her good hand and curled onto her side. Cass knew she should throw the covers off, get dressed, and go home, but she couldn't move. As she succumbed to her fatigue, Cass thought she felt Falco's lips press against her cheek.
A numbness in her arm roused her from sleep. She tried to shake it to get the blood flowing, but it was trapped under something heavy. She yanked hard and her arm pulled free. Falco groaned. Falco! Cass sat up on the divan. Falco pulled the coverlet over his eyes to block out the light.
The sun was streaming through a high window she hadn't noticed the night before. She bounded off the divan and almost landed on the floor. Mannaggia. Why did her head feel like it had been used as a battering ram? "What time is it?" she hissed.
"Judging from the oppressive amount of light, I'd say late morning," Falco mumbled, burying his face in a pillow.
Cass rushed behind the wooden dressing screen and tugged at the neck of the model's costume she had fallen asleep in. "Why didn't you wake me?" she asked. She was shaking too hard to undo all of the tiny buttons. She gave the garment a hard yank, and a handful of pearl buttons hit the floor of the studio. She wriggled the costume down over her hips.
"Probably because I was also asleep," Falco answered, his voice still heavy with fatigue.
Cass grabbed her clothes, slipping her cotton chemise over her head. She skipped her stays altogether, because the only way she was going to get those cinched properly was with help, and she wasn't about to ask Falco. "You slept next to me all night?" She couldn't keep the accusing tone out of her voice.
"Yes. Is that a problem?" Falco asked.
Cass didn't answer. She stepped into her farthingale and pulled her heavy layered skirts up to her waist. They were still damp from last night's rain. She slid her arms into her bodice, twisting her neck as far as possible to try to thread the ribbons that would secure the garment around her chest. She gave up quickly. She'd have to hide her disarray beneath her cloak.
She was furious with herself. She was an engaged woman, and even if she weren't, what she had done was inexcusable. It didn't matter what had or had not happened. Women who were not courtesans did not go spending the night with men. What if people found out? Agnese would never forgive her. Luca would surely leave her. No other man would want her. She'd end up alone, her only choice to enter a convent or become a courtesan herself. What would Matteo think? If Cass disgraced the family name, her aunt's nephew might toss both her and Agnese out into the streets. Even the servants might be released to fend for themselves.
But she couldn't explain that to Falco. If he found out about Luca, he'd want nothing to do with her anymore. Cass was certain of it. And if she admitted to being worried about how others viewed her, he'd scoff and call her a caged bird again, tell her she would be better off without the heavy chains of nobility weighing her down. She couldn't win.
She headed over to the mirror and stopped short at the network of cracks and fissures radiating out in a spiderweb pattern from where she'd struck the mirror with her fist. She looked down at her swollen hand. Cass had had no idea she was capable of inflicting such damage. Slipping the collar of her fur-lined cloak around her neck, she fumbled with the clasp. Her bodice slipped down around her waist.
Falco sat on the divan, watching her with amusement. "Need help?" he asked.
Cass imagined Falco methodically threading the satin laces through each eyelet, his hands repeatedly brushing across her back as he worked. "I'm fine," she said curtly, pressing her arms tight to her sides to hold up her bodice.
"I can see that." Falco's brown hair was sticking up in clumps. Cass had to resist the urge to return to the divan to run her fingers through it. She considered her reflection in an unbroken section of the mirror. Her skirts were wrinkled and her bodice twisted crookedly to one side. She looked like a six-year-old who had tried to dress herself. The strand of amethyst stones still hung around her neck. She started to remove it.
"Keep it for now," Falco said, yawning. He leaned back on the divan like he wished he could fall back to sleep. "It looks good on you."
Cass stroked the necklace with her good hand. She flung her velvet cloak over her shoulders and wrapped it around her whole body. There. She looked almost civilized. She'd just have to hide behind her cloak until she got home.
"Do you remember what happened last night?" Falco asked.
"Some of it," Cass admitted. "I remember seeing things that weren't there." The weird flashes in the mirror stayed with her. Hallucinations, maybe, but for some reason they felt like warnings, like pushing them from her mind completely would be a very bad idea. Then a terrible thought hit her. Maybe she had imagined everything, even the kiss. She lifted a hand to her mouth. Her lips pulsed with their own heartbeat. "Did you actually ... I mean, we didn't really . . . ?"
Falco seemed to read her mind. He grinned. "No, that part really happened."
Cass's cheeks flushed with warmth. He was looking at her as if he wanted to kiss her again, like he'd be content to spend the whole day snuggled on the divan with his arms around her. Again, she fought the urge to tame his unruly hair with her fingers.
"I have to go," she said, heading toward the door. "If the servants realize I'm missing, they'll be frantic." And they'll tattle on me.
Falco stretched and rose from the divan. "I can come with you if you like. If you think you'll get lonely on the journey home." His blue eyes glimmered with mischief.
Cass imagined nestling beside Falco beneath the felze while a gondolier rowed them back to San Domenico. In was unlikely she would be able to resist his advances, and her own desires, during the ride across the lagoon. And she couldn't go kissing him during the day. Anyone might see. She shouldn't be kissing him at all. She was risking her whole future for this boy she barely knew. She needed to refocus on what was important—Livi. Mariabella. Keeping herself safe.
"I have a better idea," she said. "Why don't you go talk to the mask makers? See if you can find out the identity of the man in the falcon mask. And ask around a bit at the markets—see if you can find out anything about Angelo de Gradi, too."
Falco's relaxed demeanor seemed to cloud over for just a second, but then he smiled lazily and gave her a mock salute. "As you command, Signorina Avogadore. I'll come by the villa later tonight and let y
ou know what I found out."
"How about we meet someplace on San Domenico," Cass said. It wasn't smart to have Falco strolling the grounds of Agnese's estate. Just because Siena was going to keep her secret didn't mean the rest of the staff would be as discreet.
Falco didn't question her. "Come by Il Mar e la Spada. I'll even buy you a mug of their finest swill."
"Deal," she said, as he leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek. Her eyes focused on the scar beneath his right eye. "What happened?" she asked, running one finger over the slightly raised edges.
"A friend dared me to dive into the canals when I first came to town. I had no idea how shallow they were." He rubbed at the scar. "Obviously."
Cass smiled. It sounded like something she might have done as a child. She pressed her lips to Falco's just for a second, and then slipped quietly out the door.
The day was uncharacteristically bright, forcing Cass to squint as she made her way down the marble staircase. She wished she had brought along a parasol the previous evening. She could almost feel new freckles sprouting on her cheeks. By the time she got home she'd look like a speckled goose egg.
When she hit the courtyard, she remembered how she had struggled to keep up the night before as they navigated the twisted network of alleyways. She had no idea how to get back to the Grand Canal. She looked up. The sun hovered almost directly above her, useless for determining which direction to travel.
Past the courtyard gate, smooth stucco walls rose three stories on either side of her. She couldn't even see water. She followed the walls, choosing randomly when she came to a fork in the road. The system of alleys seemed to go on forever, growing smaller with each turn. Cass felt like a prisoner, trapped within the Minotaur's labyrinth. Above her, faceless pairs of eyes peered down from random windows. Sweat began to form on the back of her neck. Her breathing accelerated. Just when she was about to lose hope, Cass saw a rickety bridge in the distance. Bridge meant canal, and canal meant it was only a matter of time before a gondolier came by.
As Cass stood at the crest of the wooden bridge, a thick ribbon of clouds passed in front of the sun, tinting everything gray. She fidgeted in her soggy clothes. A cluster of peasant children pushed past her, giggling behind their dusty hands. An older woman in a gray woolen dress and a white bonnet shushed them and glanced coolly at Cass as she shuffled by on the narrow walkway. It was as if the woman knew what she'd done the night before.
But Cass wasn't even sure what she'd done. She and Falco had drunk Tommaso's toxic liquor and kissed. That part wasn't foggy at all. But then the weird hallucinations had started, and her memory after that was fragmented, like the mirror. She vaguely recalled lying on the divan, with Falco cleaning her hand, but she didn't remember him curling up beside her. Had they kissed more? Had they done more than kissed? The image of the room at the brothel—the slick skin, the two bodies rocking together—flashed briefly into Cass's mind.
She shook the idea from her head as a sleek black gondola floated by in the water. No. She would remember if anything like that had happened. A wizened old gondolier in a colorful outfit nodded to her, and Cass signaled for him to pull over.
"I need to go out to San Domenico Island," Cass said.
The old man started to protest. Cass pulled a shiny silver coin from a small suede pouch. The gondolier looked unimpressed. "I'll pay the return fare too," she added with a sigh, pulling out a second piece of silver.
The man's eyes came to life at the sight of the second coin. He allowed Cass to board and then turned the boat around with a few well-placed strokes of his oar. The gondola began to cruise smoothly through the water. Just as Cass curled up in the felze, a soft drizzle started to fall. That was Venice in spring: brilliant one minute, raining the next. The gondolier muttered something under his breath. Cass watched the streaks of rain cut through the misty air. She fiddled with the necklace Falco had given her as the boat left the Rialto and headed toward the Giudecca.
As the gondola cut between the Giudecca and San Giorgio Maggiore, wind whistled through the slats of the felze, stinging Cass's eyes and skin. She wasn't cold, though. She might never be cold again. Touching her lips, she replayed Falco's kiss in her head, one delicious second at a time. His lips hovering near her face before coming to rest on her cheekbone. The indecision, the terror that gripped her heart as she decided whether to give in. The way she had every reason to turn away and only one reason to turn toward him—because she wanted to, almost more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.
What would have happened if they hadn't been interrupted by the other artists? She reclined against the back of the felze, trying to imagine Falco's weight on top of her, his mouth finding her neck, making its way down to her bare shoulder while she ran her fingers through his messy brown hair. She had no idea if it was all right for a woman to touch a man or if she was just supposed to let him touch her. She knew what Falco would say: Forget about what's appropriate. Do what feels right.
Cass closed her eyes. Kissing him had felt right. So right. But it shouldn't happen again. Couldn't. Luca would probably challenge Falco to a swordfight if he found out, even though neither boy struck her as the sort who had ever handled a weapon.
And so what if she wasn't thrilled at the idea of becoming Luca's bride? That didn't mean she wanted to be disavowed and turned out into the streets. And worse: see the same happen to Agnese and Siena. Even if he wanted to, there was little chance that Falco could take care of her, and no chance at all he could provide for her aunt and a maidservant.
The gondolier tapped his oar against the side of the gondola and Cass realized with surprise that they were pulling up to Agnese's dock. Even more surprising was the fact that another boat was moored there, a wide blue vessel, with seating capacity for four or five people. Cass wondered who had come to the villa in such a luxurious watercraft. Maybe the boat belonged to someone visiting a tomb.
The old man secured the gondola across from the blue boat and happily accepted the double fare. He pocketed the coins and then stared at Cass for a moment, his thin lips peeling back to reveal a mouthful of rotten teeth. Cass realized her cloak had fallen open, exposing her sagging bodice and disheveled dress. She pulled the cloak tight again, but the gondolier continued leering at her as he helped her from the gondola with one of his bony hands.
"Grazie," she said, wrenching her hand away from his quickly as she stepped gingerly from the boat. As she hit the edge of the dock, she froze. Giuseppe the gardener knelt on the manicured lawn, pruning the shrubbery that framed the front of the villa. Just because the old man never spoke to her didn't mean he wouldn't speak about her to her aunt. If Agnese ever found out she'd spent the night away from the villa, she was as good as dead. Being dishonored and turned into the streets would pale in comparison to the punishment that the old woman would inflict upon her.
Cass's heart began to race. For now, Giuseppe had his back to the dock, but eventually he would have to turn around to clip the other side of the bushes. When he did, he would see Cass immediately, regardless of the path she took. She had no way of making it all the way to the house without being discovered.
There had to be some place she could hide.
Cass glanced at the blue boat. It bobbed in the water a few feet away from the dock. Staying low, Cass gave the rope a stern tug, but she wasn't strong enough to pull the boat close. Cass lowered herself off the edge of the dock, her chopines landing on a diagonal plank of wood used to reinforce the structure. She wrapped her hands around one of the end pilings, cringing at the slick feel of algae. Just when her cramping fingers threatened to give out and plunge Cass to the water below, she peeped her head up and saw Giuseppe disappearing around the back of the villa.
Heaving a sigh of relief, Cass pulled herself up from the water's edge, struggling to keep her clothing from snagging on the dock's splintered wood.
She cut a wide path around the outside of the villa's property. Half crouched, she sneaked around to the
back of the house and rested her ear against the door leading into the kitchen. When she was convinced the room was empty, she slipped quietly inside, closing the door behind her.
Just as Cass leaned against the door to catch her breath, Siena fluttered down the servants' stairs, frantic. "Signorina Cass!" She said, her voice just above a whisper, "Your aunt returned early from Abano and has been asking for you all morning. I didn't know what to tell her, so I said you had gone for a walk along the shore." Siena paced back and forth next to the long countertop. "Of course she was furious at me for letting you go anywhere alone. I was afraid she was going to send me away, so I told her you insisted."
Agnese was back? This was bad. Very bad. Cass unclenched Siena's hands, squeezing one of them gently. "It's okay, Siena. I'll handle my aunt." She didn't know exactly how she was going to accomplish this, but it felt like the right thing to say. "You did well." Guilt surged deep within her. Not only was she lying, but she was forcing others to lie for her as well.
Siena looked about five seconds away from bursting into tears. "When I woke up this morning and you weren't back, I thought maybe something terrible had happened. I thought maybe your Falco was a kidnapper after all."
"He's not a kidnapper." Cass leaned up against the counter, securing her bodice to her sides with her arms. But who was? Dubois? Angelo, the long-faced man? The stranger in the falcon mask? Were all the men of Venice dangerous? Even Falco might have lied to her. Certainly, he was keeping secrets. How quickly she had let that slip from her mind when they had ended up alone together. Cass bit her lip. She wanted to organize her thoughts in her journal, but first she needed to deal with her aunt, as promised. "Come on," she said, dragging Siena behind her as she headed up the stairs to the dining room. "You've got to help me change before my aunt sees me."
"Signorina Cass, wait—" Siena stopped at the end of the long table. Her hand pulled free from Cass's grip.
