Dane (25 page)

Several of her cohorts winced at her plain speaking, Serafina noted, but still listened avidly for her own reply. “Anna is treating him,” she said. “We expect a good result in the near future.”She hated the pitying looks she received. If only it had been Angelo who‟d spawned her son.

Then he surely would not have been impotent!

She glanced to the couch, hoping to divert attention from her family‟s ills. “Oh, look, Carmen‟s protégé has fallen asleep.”Standing, she went to the girl and adjusted her head at a more comfortable angle, then wiped the cream from her face. “Good, the cream has done its work.

See how pretty she is. A worthy gift for our goddess.”

Then she turned back to the others as they all draped their hair with the ceremonial veils. “Light the flames, ladies. We begin.”

14

Eva came awake to the sound of splashing water and conversation.

Pinot was filling the coal box and water was running into the porcelain tub in the lavatory off her bedchamber in preparation for her bath. It was morning.

“What kind of woman stays out half the night with a man?”

Odette muttered as she worked the pestle in the mortar on the bedside table, preparing Eva‟s morning powder.

“Humph!”said Pinot, heading for the door with his empty pail.

“Any kind. Her man‟s handsome, old lady! More handsome than most.

With a big one in his pants.”

Eva smiled into her pillow.

Odette reached out to swat at him, but he was too fast for her and scampered into the hall. “What do you know about that?”she demanded.

“My eyes are just the right level for judging such things. I know what he‟s got. Our Eva‟s a lucky one to have caught his attention, that‟s for certain.” Pinot raised and lowered his brows, then burst into laughter as he headed downstairs.

“He‟s right,” said Eva, letting Odette know she was awake. “It‟s the nature of the satyr to be carnal. Just as it is yours to be disapproving.”

Sitting up in bed, she downed the potion Odette handed her, trying to ignore the woman‟s glower. She rocked her lower jaw side to side gently. It was sore, a subtle reminder that last night with Dane had not been a dream. She stood, her lips curving in a soft secret smile, remembering the best parts of her time with him. There had been plenty of those.

Odette‟s lips tightened as she waved her toward the bath. “What you got to smile about? You got no husband. You gonna be a whore now instead, huh? Just like your mother.”

Eva stepped into the steaming water, sighing with pleasure as she folded herself obediently into the tub. “Umm, this feels nice,” she said, studiously ignoring the woman‟s foul mood.

“Lie down with dogs, you gonna get fleas,” Odette groused. “But we‟ll wash any fleas off you now, eh, and you forget about that man from last night. Think about securing a proposal from Signor Patrizzi.”

Such a proposal was the last thing she wanted to think about, but Eva nodded and leaned forward. Odette began to soap her back, just as she had every morning since Eva was a girl. “I meant what I said before, Odette. I can‟t do. . what I did last Moonful any longer.”

“You not have a choice, bebe. You maman‟s fault for mating herself to a satyr and getting you in her belly. But don‟t you worry, that Patrizzi gonna take care of you on such nights once you belong to him. Raise you arms now.”

Obediently, Eva raised both arms and the cloth swished under them each in turn, over her breasts, and down her belly. “I am an adult now and must make my own decisions. I‟m going to continue to see Dane,” Eva announced baldly. It felt good to say it aloud. “Just a few visits with him every month, is that too much to ask?”she rushed on before Odette could object. “If I can‟t have him, I‟ll be reduced to visiting the wall di fori, hoping for another of my own species to come along at random. Would you prefer that?”

Odette smacked the rim of the tub with the flat of one hand. “You stop that dirty talk! Where you hear about that?”

Eva rolled her eyes. “I‟m twenty-two—I hear things!”She wasn‟t about to mention she‟d learned about it from Dane himself.

“You gonna throw all your promises to Fantine away? Forget why we come here?”Odette accused.

Eva sighed. “I haven‟t forgotten. I‟ll wed Patrizzi if he asks. If he doesn‟t, I‟ll marry another human in order to keep all of us safe. But I‟ll spend my Moonfuls with Dane, if he‟ll have me. And maybe a few other nights besides that.”

“Foolish! Just like Fantine!”said Odette, fairly scrubbing Eva‟s skin raw as she launched into a rant.

“A human husband will not comprehend what I need at Moonful, don‟t you see?”Eva broke in.

Odette pursed her lips, obstinate. “You bespell him then, make him think he has you. This isn‟t a difficulty. You got other men to take care of you on such nights. Men with skin that shimmers, that you conjure with this,” she tapped a finger at Eva‟s temple. “All right now. Up.”

It was impossible to explain the subtleties of what she needed on Moonful nights, so Eva didn‟t try. She stood and let Odette pat her dry.

“You be careful! If they find out you satyr, they hunt you,” Odette went on. “Bad ones out there. Girls go missing. I hear things at the market.”

The weight of Odette‟s expectations and worries grew more oppressive as each day passed. Last night, Eva had tasted freedom with Dane. She wanted more of it. The need to break free from stale promises made in girlhood to two bitter, lonely women tore at her, but she only slipped into the dressing gown Odette held for her and went to the window. “Where are the girls?”

“At music lessons,” said Odette.

Nodding, Eva sought an outlet for her frustrations, and when her gaze settle on Fantine‟s journal, she found one. The question of her origins still plagued her, and she would put her mind to further investigation. She went to her desk, penned a note, and handed it to Odette. “Have Pinot deliver this and tell him to await a reply.”

When she saw the name on the letter, Odette grumbled something about a dog with a bone, but she did as Eva asked. And that very afternoon, having received a reply to her note, Eva arrived at the foot of Capitoline Hill at the northwest end of the Forum.

The second man on her mother‟s list awaited her there in the shade of the massive white marble arch of the ancient emperor, Septimius Severus. The Venetian painter Canaletto had depicted it in oils nearly one and a half centuries earlier when it was still half buried in sediment, before the excavations of the Forum had begun in earnest.

She circled the arch, wanting the light to throw itself across his face, not hers. Odette had accompanied her and now waited within view in a small patch of shade nearby.

“Signor Arturo?”Eva called out softly.

“Si?” The dapper, gray-haired gentleman turned her way. His eyes were green, like hers. And was his brow drawn in an arc similar to hers as well? Hope rose in her. Was he satyr? Was he her father? And if he were, would he admit to either?

“I‟ve so wanted to meet you,” she told him, her excitement mounting as she climbed closer.

“You‟re the one who sent the note?”He flicked an ash from his cigar and the gold ring on his smallest finger winked in the sunlight.

She nodded. “As I mentioned, I believe we have an acquaintance in common.”

“Oh?”

“Fantine Delacorte.”Eva held her breath, waiting, hoping.

His brows rose as recognition filled his face. “Now there is a name I haven‟t heard for far too long,” he said slowly. She stepped into the light then and let his gaze sweep her. When he raised his eyes to her face, they filled with shock. His aura blanched a split second before his face did, the mind slower to catch up to the soul‟s recognition. He stepped closer.

“Who are you?”

“Your daughter. And hers.”

He chuckled and took a long drag from his cigar. “I hardly think so.”

“What were you to my maman?”

“Her financier for a time. Her admirer. Never her lover, not for lack of trying on my part. I doted on her for almost a year and it came to nothing.”A faraway look entered his eyes. He flicked another ash. “She had a way with her, your mother. You‟re beautiful. Like her.”

Eva‟s fingers went to her hair. “She was blond.. ”

“And a notorious flirt. But your face, your shape—they‟re like hers.

So, what is it you‟re after, signorina? Money? I‟ve got plenty of that, for a pretty girl who‟s interested.”

“Interested in what?”she asked blankly.

An unhealthy attraction flared in him, tingeing his aura with bilious colors. “In earning it on her back, in my bed.”

She stiffened, repulsed. “You‟re old enough to be my father, monsieur!”

His green eyes narrowed against the tendril of smoke that curled from his cigar. “Thought that‟s what you came for,” he mocked. “A father.”

Eva gasped in affront. Turning on her heel, she scurried away fuming. His taunting laughter followed her. Well, that was another name she could knock off her list. What an awful man! Thank goodness he wasn‟t her father!

“Well?”asked Odette, when Eva joined her where she waited on the periphery of the ruins along Via Sacra.

Eva shook her head. “It wasn‟t him. He‟s odious. How could Maman have consorted with him, even in passing?”

Odette shrugged. “Fantine loved men. And they all treat her nice, even if she didn‟t let them in her bed. Kept us in style. While it lasted.

What you gonna do now?”

“There‟s one final name to consider on my short list before I weigh the entire list again for possibilities I overlooked,” said Eva. “Angelo Sontine. But my inquiries about him have netted nothing thus far.”

“Best that way,” Odette snapped. “No good can come of you looking.”

“I disagree, I—“Eva stopped in surprise. Across the Via Sacra a distance away from them, Dane stood at the entrance to the Mamertine.

Alexa and her mother were with him.

Odette grabbed her wrist. “You not going over there to him. I‟ll pitch a fit if you try.”

“Of course not,” said Eva, tugging away from her. “He‟s otherwise engaged, and it‟s time to collect the girls at music instruction. But I will see him tonight,” she added pointedly. “There‟s to be another gathering, this one in Circo Massimo, if decent weather holds.”They strolled on, and Eva wondered what in the world Alexa and her mother could be about, speaking to Dane. In the ancient Roman prison, of all places.

“Signor Satyr?”

Dane clenched the railing on the porch in front of old Mamertine Prison, taking deep draughts of air into his panicked lungs. He‟d ventured down into the cells just now, and the tight, moldering quarters had made him drastically claustrophobic. He‟d only managed it for a few minutes, but that had been more than enough.

He was in no mood for company, but Gaetano Patrizzi‟s mother and sister were bearing down on him, taking the stairs up to the porch.

Serafina and Alexa. He‟d met both the previous night at the gala. Eva had introduced them. What the devil were they doing here?

The prison was on Capitoline Hill adjacent the Forum, near where he‟d been found garbed only in a loincloth and wandering that day a year after his abduction. He‟d come here today in search of answers.

An isolated prison seemed the perfect location to have held Luc and him at one time, perhaps in some subterranean chamber. Constructed over two and a half centuries ago, the prison was part cistern, with a spring at the lowest level near the cells where prisoners in ancient times had been thrown, and strangled or starved to death. It was connected to the Cloaca Maxima, the first well-developed sewage system in history, according to Bastian. Long ago, government officials had surreptitiously flushed the bodies of dead prisoners through it into the Tiber River.

Which he‟d thought might explain how the fey were winding up in the river now.

Yet so far, nothing here seemed familiar to him and he‟d found no evidence of any prisoners having recently been housed here. Nor had there been any anterooms off the main cells below, which might have held Luc and him all those years ago. Another dead end.

“May we have a private word with you?”asked Signora Patrizzi.

Dane shrugged and then gestured them inside the main chamber to sit on a bench along the wall. There was no one else here at this hour, and the room was clammy and uncomfortable. It had a grisly history and was no place for two ladies to visit. But they‟d come uninvited and he wasn‟t going to interrupt his investigation to bother moving with them to a more suitable location.

Serafina whisked dust off the bench with her handkerchief and then sat, motioning her daughter to do the same.

“Do sit,” Serafina invited him.

He folded his arms, eschewing the bench opposite them. “What do you want?”

Something about the woman disturbed and choked him as the cells had done, making him long to return outside into the fresh air. Her son affected him in the same way, but not the daughter. Alexa. He remembered her from last night. She‟d been livelier then, but her mother‟s presence today seemed to have a dampening effect on her charms.

Serafina removed her gloves and draped them artfully across her lap. “Very well. I‟ll go straight to the point, signor. I wish you to return to me the land you stole from my son at cards.”

He‟d expected as much. “I assume you refer to the grove and house your family stole from mine thirteen years ago?”

She shrugged. “I don‟t recall any objections from your parents at the time.”

Anger flared in him. “Because they were dead.” His parents had been brought down by the Sickness while he and Luc had been missing.

He‟d never seen them again after he‟d been abducted. “My brothers and I were young then, without money or power. But I warn you that‟s no longer the case.”