Courtesan's Lover (30 page)

***

“
Buongiorno, Signorine
,” he said to the two children, bowing.

They stood still and silent, and stared at him.

“Where are you going?”

No reply.

Carlo began to think fast. “Anywhere interesting?” he said, smiling more widely.

One of the little girls said, in a voice hardly louder than a whisper, “Desto's house.”

Not recognizing the name, Carlo fished for information, hoping that his hunch might prove accurate. “I saw you with him the other day, didn't I?”

Two identical nods.

“Is he expecting you?”

Two identical head-shakes.

Carlo breathed a silent sigh of relief. Possibility became feasibility. A brief pause. How best to accomplish what he wished to do? “He's not at home, just at present,” Carlo said, thinking fast. “I happen to know where he is though—I saw him earlier on. Would you like me to take you to see him?”

The little girls said nothing, obviously suspicious.

Carlo waited. “He said he'd love to see you, when I saw him just now. He was just talking about how much he likes your visits.”

At last, one of the girls nodded. “But we mustn't be long,” she said. “We have to be back before Mamma gets home.”

“Oh, don't worry, we won't be long,” Carlo said. “Come on, we'll go and find…
Desto
.”

He reached out and took one of each girl's hands. The smallness of their fingers in his palms surprised him. Looking down at each child in turn, he attempted another brotherly smile; they merely stared back at him, wide-eyed and solemn.

They all began to walk together toward the end of the narrow street.

Luca stows the oars along the length of the boat and stretches, hunching his shoulders and flexing his fingers. He smiles at me. The boat shifts up and down as it rides the beach-edge wavelets. “Well. We're here,” he says. “Shall we find somewhere to eat?”

“This is so beautiful, Luca,” I say. “Thank you. Thank you for bringing me all this way.”

He leans forward, one knee on either side of my legs, holds my face in his hands, and kisses me. “You don't need to thank me. Just enjoy it.”

He stands up, vaults over the side of the boat, splashing down into the shallow water, and scrunches the little craft up onto the gritty sand. Reaching out with both arms, he lifts me onto the shore. I stand back then and watch him as he tugs the boat a little higher still, trying to imagine how I would see him if I were a detached passerby. What would I think of him: this tall, dark, untidy-haired man, shirt half-untucked and doublet discarded, his hands strong and capable as he crouches and fastens the rope to a large rock on the beach? I can only imagine that I would see him as I see him now—with a giddy grasp of wanting making my insides dance.

“That should hold for a couple of hours,” he says. “The tide's almost on the turn.”

I reach back into the boat for the bag of food. Luca takes it from me.

“Come on,” he says, pointing. “That's where we're going.” And, holding my hand, he starts walking with me along a narrow, rocky path, away from the little inlet. The bag bumps against his leg on each step. We climb for a while, sometimes hand in hand, sometimes one behind the other, until the path flattens out and divides in two.

“Which way?” Luca asks.

“You've been here before—which way is better?”

“You choose.”

I am charmed by his gentility. “That way, then,” I say, pointing.

We take the left-hand path, which, within a couple of hundred yards, leads to a secluded grassy clearing. Heavy, tussock-tufted rocks loom up behind us, casting a pool of purple shadow across half the clearing; the other half is brightly sunlit. We are screened from almost all sides by thick, scrubby bushes, beyond which the hillside we have just climbed runs steeply down to the sea.

We could be the only two people in the world.

“Perfect,” Luca says. “You chose well.” He puts down the bag of food, and we sit next to each other on the scrubby grass. He has been rowing for over an hour—his hair is damp, his shirt is clinging to his back and arms, and now, sitting this close to him, I can actually feel the heat coming from him; he smells of sweat and sun and salt and sea.

“Happy?” he asks.

“What do you think?”

Luca rummages in the bag and brings out the waxed-paper package of pigeon breast, the bunch of grapes, the bread, and the wax-covered cheese, placing them all down in the narrow space between us. Opening up the packet of meat, he dips into it, picks up a small piece, and holds it out to me. I am irresistibly reminded of Vasquez, and a little worm of shame crawls into my belly at the memory. But I take the piece of pigeon from Luca directly into my mouth, holding his fingers with my own as he touches my lips. My gaze fixed on his, I reach between us for the bunch of grapes and pick one. This I hold up for him to take from me. Smiling, he lips it from my fingers. I offer him another. Murmuring his pleasure as he eats it, he tears off a piece of bread. Pulling it open, he tucks another slice of pigeon inside it, hands it to me and then repeats the process for himself.

For a moment we eat, saying nothing, each watching each other's face, each feeling the proximity of the other's body tugging like the irresistible pull of a lodestone.

Then, “Drink?” Luca says.

“Please.”

He leans away from me, looks in the bag, and says, “Damn!”

“What?”

“No cups. How stupid—I forgot to bring any.”

“It doesn't matter. We can drink out of the bottle.”

“You don't mind?”

“Of course not.”

Luca smiles at me, his gaze flicking from my eyes to my mouth, and then, easing out the cork, he hands me the bottle. The wine is warm and strong, and I drink gratefully. But then, concentrating more on watching Luca than on what I am doing, my hand slips and wine splashes down my chin and onto the front of my dress. Cursing under my breath, I sit forward, holding the bottle away from myself and wiping my face with the back of my hand.

Luca pulls a linen kerchief from the bag; he reaches out with it and wipes the wetness from my chin. “There you are,” he starts to say, “no harm done.”

I look down at the stained front of my dress, feel it with my fingers, and then feel Luca's hand tilting my face back up. “Stop it. It doesn't matter,
cara,
” he says. “Don't think about it.”

I cannot take my gaze from his mouth.

It has to be now.

No one can see us.

No one will know.

Luca saw the color rise in Francesca's cheeks. The wine she had spilled was wet on her chin; it had splashed like a bloodstain down onto her pretty dress, and he could see her embarrassment flaring in her face. He pulled a cloth from the bag and reached forward to dry her face for her. She looked down at her stained bodice.

“It doesn't matter,
cara
,” he said, putting his fingers under her chin and tilting her face back up. “Don't think about it.”

But then it suddenly did matter.

She was staring at his mouth and her lips were parted and he could see the red-wine stain rising and falling as her breathing deepened and he knew that he was not going to be able to resist. Her tongue-tip ran along the edge of her lip as she lifted her gaze to his.

He had intended to wait. To do everything properly.

But now…

He did not think waiting was an option any longer.

As he sat up and leaned toward her, she lay back, eyes fixed upon his. He bent over her. She reached out and began to pull on the fastenings on his shirt; Luca let out a little noise of longing and slid one knee up and over her legs. Francesca undid his shirt and took it off. He held her by the upper arms and rolled, pulling her with him, until she lay above him. Her hipbones pressed into his belly, her knees gripped on either side of his legs. With her fingers and her mouth she began to move hungrily over his skin—across his chest, his arms, round the curve of his shoulders, up the side of his face, and into his hair, and he welcomed the greed of her touch, murmuring his pleasure as she worked.

She crawled back then, sliding off him, lipping and licking along the thin seam of dark hair that ran down from his navel, undoing his breeches as she went. Easing them open. Sprawled across his legs now, she twisted around and settled herself. And then he wound his fingers into her hair, closed his eyes, and abandoned himself to her.

***

She stopped. Too soon. Much too soon. Desperate now for her to complete what she had begun, Luca propped himself on his elbows and looked down at her. She lifted her head and gazed back at him, wide-eyed and wet-mouthed.

“Come here,” Luca said. He reached down and took her hands, pulling her back up toward him, and rolling with her again until she lay on her back and he was above her. He wanted her now. He pushed one hand around and under her back, searching for the laces of her bodice; the other moved down toward the hem of her skirts. The linen puffed and crumpled around his arm as his fingers began searching upward.

And then, with a sharp thrill of shock, he saw that she had tears in her eyes. He froze. “Oh—
cara
—why? What is it? What's the matter?”

She made no answer, but the tears swelled and began to spill over onto her cheek. She put her hands over her face.

A hot pulse of self-recrimination stabbed through him. He had rushed her. She had not been ready. He had pushed her into a situation she was clearly now regretting—what must she think of him? The first man she had kissed since the death of her husband and he had done this to her. He had been overwhelmed by his own feelings and had thoughtlessly coerced her into compromising her reputation, and now—oh, God!—she would be quite justified in never wanting to see him again. Cursing himself, dreading seeing rejection in her face, he pulled her into his arms.

She began to sob.

I only wanted to give him my very best. A courtesan's best. I just wanted him to believe himself to be the most fortunate man in Napoli: a man who, after so many lonely years, had found himself an unassuming “widow,” ripe for the picking, a woman who seemed in every way modest and respectable—but a woman who could nevertheless fuck like the king's prize whore. What more could he ask for?
But
it's happened…you've begun believing your own lies, you silly bitch. You're tricking him. That's all. Corrupting him. Don't fool yourself. The most fortunate man in Napoli? Hardly. Possibly only the most deluded. First the son, now the father. And you think him lucky?

I am so stupid.

I never used to cry. Until the night of the play, I think I could have counted on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have cried in the past ten years, but now I seem to find myself weeping at least two or three times every day. I'm like a hermit crab, pulled from the safety of its armor: soft and naked and vulnerable without its stolen carapace.

A life of whoring builds you a strong shell. It's never a pretty one—or a comfortable one—but it's tough. You shelter inside it or die. And now Luca has tugged me free of mine for good. I can't imagine ever being able to get back inside it.

The whole of the last ten years blatters at my head as I cling to him, and my tears are hot and slippery against the skin of his chest. A circle of leering, jeering faces surrounds me: every man who has ever paid to bed me is leaning over me and laughing at my pathetic attempts to leave my past behind me, and the tighter I curl myself up against their onslaught, the more completely do I find myself shut away from Luca.

He is muttering soft, soothing nothings as he holds me, one arm pulling me in against his chest, the other stroking my hair. He rocks a little, back and forth, as though I were a frightened child. “Shh, shh, shh, it's all right,” he murmurs into my hair and his words hiss hot on my scalp. “It doesn't matter. It was all too soon. It's my fault. It doesn't matter.”

Oh, dear God, but it does. Oh, Luca, you have no idea how much it does matter.

My sobs finally subside into shaky, wobbling breaths, and Luca cups my face between his hands, his thumbs stroking my cheekbones. I sniff, and press my fingers up under my nose. Without a word, Luca hands me his shirt. I wipe my face on it and a ragged breath hiccups in my throat. “I don't deserve you,” I say.

“Don't say that. How could you think such a thing?”

How? Because you deserve better than a soiled, secondhand, immoral trollop who has spent the last ten years doing little more than being fucked—by more men than she can remember. Including your son.

“You are so good and so kind,” I say, “and you deserve more than—”

“Stop it!” Luca says, putting his fingers over my mouth. “I'm not good and kind. I've made you cry. I
deserve
nothing. But I
want
a great deal. I want
you
. What can you possibly have done that could make you imagine yourself undeserving?”

I stare at him, unable to speak.

Luca gazes back at me for a full minute and then says, “Marry me.”

I hear the words, but I hear them as though I were eavesdropping on someone else's conversation. They cannot be meant for me.

“What?” I say, stupidly.

“Marry me.”

I continue staring at him.

“I've wanted to ask you to marry me since that day you first came to supper, but in the circumstances it seemed wrong to suggest it so soon. I thought then that it would perhaps be better to wait a while—to give my proposal at least a semblance of propriety. I didn't want to rush you. I seem to have spoiled that today, though, so I suppose there's no point in waiting any longer. So will you? After what I've just done—do you think you can still consider it?”

I feel numb.

How can I? How can I accept? If I marry him, I will be sentencing him to a life of shameful lies—if my past remains secret, that is—and if the truth is ever revealed, then I will be condemning him to the probability of being ostracized by everyone he holds dear—I can't do it. Oh, sweet Jesus, I can't bear it! How can this be happening? I am going to have to refuse him. I am going to have to turn away what I want more than anything I have ever wanted. Ever. It cannot be worse than this to stand on a pile of faggots, tied to a stake, with a bag of stinking gunpowder round your neck, watching someone walk toward you with a lighted torch. I open my mouth to say what I have to say, but nothing comes out of it.

Luca looks stricken as the silence stretches out. He stares at me for long seconds, and then looks down at his hands. He says to his fingers, “Do you think you might be able to consider it, at least, and give me an answer later, when it has had time to sink in?”

I manage to nod.

“Thank you.” He pauses. After a seemingly endless silence, he says, “Perhaps we had better go back to Napoli now. The tide will be turning soon, and it will be harder work rowing against it.”

***

Luca's knees keep bumping against mine. On the way out to Mergellina this sent a thrill through me each time it happened—a fizzing sense of expectation—but now it's just making me feel sick. I can't meet his eye. He is avoiding mine. I have no idea what to say to him.

He wants an answer.

But I don't know what to do.

I've never lied about who I am and what I've done, however terrible it's been. And it's been truly terrible at times…those first days on the streets at the age of seventeen, lifting my skirts and spreading my legs for pathetic handfuls of coins…being at the beck and call of the Duke of Ferrara—the paranoid and homicidal father of my twins—for the best part of eight years…and for the past two years I have been struggling up the ladder toward the coveted title of “
cortigiana
onesta
.” That's the word—“
onesta
.” I've always been honest about who and what I am.

Until Filippo made his suggestion a few weeks ago.

Of
course
I want to marry Luca. How could I not? I love him. But the horrible truth is that the woman Luca wants to marry is Signora Marrone. Not me. He doesn't know I exist. And unless he can ever truly want to marry Francesca Felizzi—with all her faults and her murky history—then I don't believe I can accept his proposal. How can I?

He has to know the truth, that's all.

I'll tell him when we get home.

Not here—not in the boat. I want to be in my house. I'll tell him everything. Then I'll know, one way or the other. Yes—as soon as we get home, I'll tell him.