“But you know that is not it. I love you because of your passion, your curiosity and wit, and because you inspire me every day, every moment I am with you. And I do think you are beautiful. Not fashionable, not handsome, not insipidly pretty, but full of beauty. You find the beauty around you and reflect it for me to see. You are yourself and”—his voice broke—“you are my Muse.”
They had stopped walking at some point in his declaration, and Jane rose onto her toes to meet him. Standing by the bank of the canal, they kissed. The space where one began and the other ended folded together like two strands of glamour weaving a single image. Jane felt nothing but the warmth of her husband, his fingers in her hair, and the tender shape of his lips against hers.
A gasp sounded in the canal behind them. “Are those men kissing?”
Jane and Vincent released their hold on each other. For a moment, Jane looked down at the passing gondola before recalling her attire. She had forgotten her bonnet and cape when they left the glass factory.
“I am wearing trousers.” They had been so present when she first put them on that she was stunned by how quickly she had grown accustomed to them again.
“And I find them very becoming. But perhaps we should walk apart. For propriety’s sake.” Vincent raised an eyebrow and glanced down at her trousers with a slow smile. “If you would walk in front of me, I shall follow from behind.”
Jane swatted him on the arm. “Rogue.”
“Muse.”
Heedless of the gondola in the canal, Jane resumed her hold on her husband’s arm as they walked. He cleared his throat. “Do you want children?”
“I do not know if that is a question about which we have much choice.”
“Well … there are—um … measures.” Vincent cleared his throat and tugged at his cravat. “To prevent conception, I mean.”
Of course he would know about such things. She bent her head to watch the cobblestones as they walked. It was not, she feared, a matter of preventing conception. “I meant … It has been two years. We have not been shy in our affections.”
“Ah.” That single, voiced exhalation was filled with the weight of his understanding. Her first—and her only—pregnancy had been within four months of their marriage. Then the miscarriage, and since then … nothing.
“I do not know if there was some damage, or if it is the glamour.” Jane lowered her voice, even though they were alone. To speak of this so directly was embarrassing, but the fact was that most doctors agreed that the exertion required to work glamour could harm an unborn child in the same way that running might. In Jane’s memory, she ran through a field of rye and felt a stitch in her side. She rubbed at the remembered ache. Had it been then? She shook her head to clear the memories. “My time has always been somewhat irregular, but when we are working heavily on a extensive project, it stops altogether.”
“I did not know that.” His voice was hoarse with suppressed emotion. “We could stop working for a time. If you wanted to try.”
She did not miss the fact that Vincent had said we. His art was his life. “I do not know if I want to give up our art.”
“It would not be forever.”
“How long would you be willing to stop? A few months? A year? Two?” Beside her, his pace slowed. She could feel him turning the thought over. “Let us say that there is nothing wrong with me that a cessation of glamour will not cure. Then we have a child. What then?”
“We can leave them with a nanny.”
She raised an eyebrow at his use of the plural and its suggestion of multiple children, but did not comment on it. The larger issue still lay before her. “But is that right? To have a child and then ignore him?”
“Most of my childhood was spent with nurses or tutors.”
“We had tutors and nurses, too, but my parents were always there and involved in raising us. I cannot imagine having a child and travelling as much as we do. It would have made me sad, as a child.”
“You had parents who loved you.”
“Yes.” Jane shuddered, recalling again the relief she had felt upon her miscarriage. “My parents wanted children very much. My fear … my fear is that I do not want to cause a child to suffer the isolation that you did.”
“I think there is little chance of that.”
“No?”
He laughed. “No. Melody did not feel abandoned, did she?”
“I was not a professional glamourist, then.”
“Should I offer to remain home during the child’s early years and let you go out to earn our living?”
“Be serious, Vincent.”
“I will be, in a moment. My point is that there is no reason that you cannot continue to work. Mrs. Kauffman was one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Arts, and her marriage did nothing to stop her from working. I had the privilege of taking a review of portraiture with her during her last visit to London, the year before her death.”
“Did she have children?”
He hesitated and shook his head.
In some ways, the trousers made it easier to discuss feminine matters with him, as though they were something unconnected to her. Still, her voice hitched as she pressed on. “I would have to stop working glamour for nine months. Perhaps more, to conceive again.”
“We have done very little work on this trip. After we finish here, we will be travelling for some months more. We could go to visit Herr Scholes and discuss theory. Show him the glamour in glass … But I am putting pressure on you. I am sorry.”
“No … no, this is helping. I do not want to give up our art, nor do I want to be an absent mother.”
He drew breath as though to speak, but paused instead, giving Jane time to work through her thoughts. Did she want a child? If it were possible to have both a family and her art, would she want that? With her first pregnancy, she had thought she would have to give up glamour and possibly Vincent … Jane’s stomach hurt with the memory. It had not been the child that she resented but everything she thought she would lose. And if she could have both? “I do not know what I want.”
“You do not need to know now.”
“I am thirty-one. We cannot wait too long to decide.”
“I am very clear about what I want.” Vincent raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them. “I want you to be happy.”
They had turned on to Calle Dietro Gli Orti. Ca’ Sanuto lay at the end. Jane traced his lips with her fingers. “Then take me back to the glass factory.”
Seven
Canals and Monkeys
Their work at the glass factory went more smoothly after they returned. To the best of their knowledge, they appeared to have laid the strands accurately for several Verre Obscurci, though it was impossible to tell if any of them worked until they cooled first. More significantly, Jane and Vincent had worked well together. She still thought of their time in Binché, but not with the same fear.
For the moment, they must wait to know if they had succeeded. Working at night as they were, it was impossible to know if the glamour in glass were working since it required full sunlight to make anything invisible. Until the glass cooled in a tempering chamber, they could not take one out into the sun to be certain. Depending on the temperature, it could take two to three days to cool enough to be moved without risk of cracking. Jane well remembered the frustration of waiting for that in Belgium.
Exhausted, but cautiously pleased, they returned to Ca’ Sanuto deep into the night. Letizia had left out a cold supper in their room, which Jane was almost too tired to appreciate.
The following day, they had no work planned at Querini’s. What had seemed an imposition was now something for which Jane found herself grateful. She and Vincent spent the morning refamiliarizing themselves with each other, emerging only when it became necessary to find something with which to break their fast.
Their second visit to the glass maker’s factory went more smoothly, but the glass from the first visit was still too warm to take home. Jane had to restrain hers
elf from expressing her frustration. The weather was cool, so it was naturally taking longer than she wished.
Over the next days, they settled into a routine of sleeping late into the day to conserve their energy for the time in the glass factory. Signor Querini, for all his bluster at the beginning, worked steadily and without complaint.
His apprentice, Biasio, turned out to be a glamourist whose skills seemed chiefly employed in creating draughts to stoke the fire. Rather than grumbling, though, the young man seemed utterly captivated by their work.
One evening during a pause, he brought Jane a glass of water.
She sat on a chair outside the glass factory enjoying what little breeze came down the alley. Her fingers ached from the tight, delicate work they had been doing, and she wanted the energy to stir the air more. Smiling at him, she took the glass gratefully. “Thank you.” It was exquisitely crafted of cristallo, with the stem in the shape of an aventurine-laced dolphin. “What a lovely glass.”
He blushed. “I made it.”
“Did you?” She took a sip of the water. Her shirt clung to her back with sweat.
Vincent lay on the ground beside her, heedless of the dirt, with his arm flung over his face. His breath had slowed from the ragged pace of the end of their session. He might almost be asleep. They were planning on attempting an interwoven glamour next, to see if the glass could reproduce more than one effect.
“May I ask a question, Lady Vincent?” The young man’s toe dug into the dirt.
“Of course.”
“The glass … is it—are you making a record of the glamour inside the glass?”
Vincent stirred and lowered his arm, looking up at the boy.
“That is … I was watching your folds, but they are so slight that I couldn’t see what you were weaving.”
Jane lowered her glass. “Did you look at the spheres?”
He nodded. “They have faults in them. But … but I don’t see that they do anything.”
“It is just an experiment.” Vincent sat up. “Nothing more.”
If Signor Querini was jealous of his techniques, they could be jealous of theirs. Privately, Jane saw no harm in answering the apprentice’s questions, but if he understood what they were after, then Querini would as well.
That evening, Querini reported that their first attempts at the glass spheres were finally cool. The Vincents wrapped them in velvet and took them back to Ca’ Sanuto. Jane thought that she would not be able to sleep, wondering if the spheres would work in the morning. She curled up next to Vincent, cradling her head on his shoulder. He turned his face toward her, but, in the next moment, gave a paltry snore like a kitten sleeping. A moment after that, Jane was asleep as well.
* * *
In the morning, she awoke to an empty bed. Vincent sat in the window of the palazzo, with his drawing-book on his knee. “Do not move, please.” A stub of a pencil worked across the page.
She blinked sleepily at him, content to lay in the bed for the moment and be his model. He still wore his nightshirt, unbuttoned at the throat and exposing the spot where his neck curved into his shoulders. His hair stood out from his head in a mad tangle. Though a line of concentration creased his brow, his countenance had none of the exhaustion that still claimed her limbs. “Feeling better?”
Still focused, he nodded, adding another scratching of shadow to part of the page. “You?”
“Tired.” She let her gaze drift to the spheres wrapped in velvet. “Are you going to let me up so we can try them?”
The corner of his mouth curled in a smile. He made one more mark and set the drawing aside. “Yes. It was all I could do to not look while you slept.”
“You could have woken me.” She sat up, stretching.
“I tried.” He stood, holding out his hands to her. Without effort, he lifted her to her feet, and then planted a kiss on her forehead. “So I hope you appreciate how very good I was in not peeking at them.”
“I am proud of you.” Jane went to the window and pulled the curtains back fully. The light showed that it was earlier in the day than they had been rising this week. She turned to face Vincent, who stood by the desk. A beam of sunlight stretched across the room, lighting the gilding on the mirrors and catching in their surface. Biting the inside of her lip, she nodded to him.
Vincent unwrapped one of the spheres. As the cloth fell away from the glass, Jane found that she had stopped breathing. For a moment, it lay in the shadow still, but then the sunlight caught it.
Vincent vanished. Jane gasped.
“May I take it that it worked?” His disembodied voice sounded on the edge of laughter.
Jane nodded. Even knowing what they were attempting, even having seen it work before, she could not help but be filled with wonder that the sphere worked. Without either of them touching so much as a strand of glamour, the glass remembered the pattern that they had created in the glass factory. The twist of glamour had marked its passage through the glass and left a record there that light followed as willingly as it obeyed a glamourist’s hands.
The desk had vanished as well, which meant that this Sphère was somewhat larger than the previous one they had created. A Sphère Obscurcie, in the hands of a glamourist, was a thin twist that reflected light back outward. Spun at a gossamer weight, it hid everything within it from sight while bending around objects that intersected its perimeter so that they remained visible, such that the floor would stay in view but the desk would not. A Verre Obscurcie was the same effect, captured in glass.
“We have done well, love.” Jane tilted her head, studying it. “Shall we test the size of this one or look at the others?”
The desk melted back into view. “Test this, I think.” Vincent’s voice was closer.
Jane waited till he appeared. “Hold.”
He halted with a grin. Jane answered his smile. She was fully within the Sphère’s influence now, and could see everything within it clearly. Vincent stood perhaps seven paces in front of her. She took a step back, and he vanished again.
Forward once more into the circle. “This is larger, is it not?”
“I believe so.” He rolled the sphere in his hand. “I wonder how large we could make one.”
“Is it dependent on the glass, or the weave we encase?”
“Shall we look at the others to see if we can find an answer?”
The rest of the morning was spent in happy examination. Not all of the spheres had been successful, but they had managed to create four of the Verres Obscurcis in various sizes. The effect appeared to be related to the size of the glamour when they wove it, but with such a small sample, that was by no means certain.
* * *
After a morning spent studying the spheres, Jane declared the desire to do something in celebration. At Vincent’s suggestion, they took a gondola into Venice with the intent of spending the rest of the day as tourists before returning to work with the glassmaker. The Basilica Di San Marco, with its mosaics and glamours, was to be a principal destination. They engaged a gondolier and set off. Jane leaned back in the little cabin with Vincent’s arm around her. The gondola slid into the Grand Canal, which was full of traffic. She watched her husband out of the corner of her eye and was pleased to note that he showed no ill effects from being on the water.
She was able to relax, then, and enjoy the sights as they followed the canals of Venice. Pleasure craft vied for space with merchants floating rafts of goods to their warehouses. Gondoliers slipped through the spaces between, ferrying passengers about the city.
In the midst of this, a man swam towards them.
Vincent sat up. “Is that—?” In a moment, he had the door to the cabin open and had clambered out onto the bow of the gondola. It rocked with his movements, but did not seem to trouble him. Jane slid forward on the seat, unable to discern what had caught his attention, until he raised his hand and waved. “Byron! What the devil are you doing?”
In the middle of the Grand Canal, Lord Byron stopped and tr
eaded water. “Vincent? I should have thought that was obvious. I am swimming.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Racing, actually, but I seem to have left the others behind. Still … I should continue on.”
Vincent turned to their gondolier. “Can you accompany this gentleman without interfering with his movement?”
Jane could not hear his response, but a moment later the gondola turned and began to pace Lord Byron, who changed to a sidestroke, which kept his head above water.
He carried on his conversation as though they were in a drawing room. “I expected you weeks ago. What held you up?”
“We have been here for almost two weeks. Your landlord said you had left town.”
Byron cursed with an easy fluency. “Signor Segati must have realized that I have been seduced by his wife. This is the first time he has interfered. I am sorry that you were the recipient of his mischief.”
“We may have met his wife as well … Are you still in her favour?”
“Ah—oh. You arrived on that day. Truly, I am sorry. She is sweetness embodied at all other times.”
Jane had her doubts about that.
Vincent cleared his throat. “I take it she said nothing about us?”
“Truth be told, she said that some friends of mine had come begging. I should have realized that it was you, but—well … we had to repair our relations, and that is always such a sweet duty.”
“Fortunately, there was no harm done. We—we had the opportunity to meet a local gentleman on the way here and have been staying with him.”
“Speaking of ‘we,’ is that the famed Lady Vincent I see behind you?”
“It is.” Vincent turned with a rakish grin. “Jane, may I present Lord Byron.”
Jane climbed forward to sit in the door of the gondola cabin. “How do you do, sir.”
“Generally very well, I have been told.” Water cascaded down his arm as he pulled himself through the canal. It imperfectly veiled his form, which appeared to be dressed in nothing more than—Oh. He appeared to be dressed in nothing at all. The saucy look he gave her reminded Jane of why he had been called “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”
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