Inamorata (29 page)

N
ICHOLAS

S
he was gone when I woke up. I went to the rooftop gardens, hoping that perhaps she’d gone there to take in the dawn. She was romantic enough to do so, I thought, no matter that the air was cold and a roseate fog obscured most of the city. I found myself standing at the edge of the roof, imagining her beside me, her dark hair falling over her shoulders, the brightness of her smile as she watched with me the gray shadows of the city emerge from that strange pink fog, and I thought,
there’s a poem in that
, which surprised me. I remembered the image that had come to me on the Lido, the words dancing just beyond my reach. I felt off balance and bemused.

It was not only the poetry sneaking into my head that made me feel so as I went back down the stairs to my darkened rooms. No other woman had left me in the middle of the night—well, none but Odilé—and I wasn’t certain what it meant, or if I should take it to mean anything. I told myself it was better this way. I had things to do, after all, and now I could be at Odilé’s before the morning expelled back into the streets her newest conquest. So I tried to put Sophie out of my mind and hired a gondola to take to my usual spot on the narrow
fondamenta
next door to the Dana Rosti.

The fog was even more chill than usual, and I shoved my hands into the pockets of my coat and wished for a hat—though I wanted Odilé to know I was there and watching, and I knew she never mistook my blond hair. The Dana Rosti was silent and still, and I found myself daydreaming about the soft heaviness of breasts in my hands, a lithe body twisting beneath mine, soft little pants in my ear. Words came into my head that had me reaching for a pencil and a notebook I had long since stopped carrying, and when I realized what I was doing, I was surprised at myself all over again.

Impossible. I hadn’t written a poem in years. To feel its stirrings now was bewildering—how could it possibly be? For the first time in forever I was sitting outside Odilé’s rooms and thinking of someone other than Odilé.

I struggled to keep my thoughts straight, to keep at bay the desire to rush to the Moretta. I must concentrate on the task at hand. It had been days since the street singer had met his fate, and I knew Odilé would need to feed. There was not much time left, only a little more than a week, and I felt certain she had not chosen. I felt a thrill at the thought—this time I’d been successful beyond my greatest hopes. Seven years, and it was almost over.

I heard a noise—the opening of the balcony door. I looked up to see her step out. She wore something silken and light, ivory-colored, trimmed in lace. Her hair fell in thick waves to her waist. She came out fully onto the balcony and rested her hands on the stone balustrade. The sun sparked off the gold she wore at her wrists, and I blinked away the glare. I waited for a man to follow her. But no one did, and she looked vibrant, not the least bit weakened. I knew she had fed, and that he must still be in those rooms behind her.

She looked down to where I stood, and came to the very corner of the balcony. She leaned over the balustrade, her dressing gown gaping so she looked ready to fall out of it. Her smile was flirtatious and taunting and it still had power.

“Hello, Nicholas,” she called. “How boring for you to always stand there. Perhaps you should find your own pleasures, instead of hoping to watch mine.”

I stepped to the edge of the
fondamenta
to see her better. “You look vibrant, my love. Who’s feeding you so well these days?”

Odilé laughed. It caught in the air, flung about in that way Venice had of muting and distorting sound, lost before it reached my ears though I knew that three
rii
away someone was pausing in their garden, peering up at the sky, wondering if angels were laughing in the clouds above his head. Her hair fell over her shoulder, trailing over her hand. “Oh, I do miss you, Nicholas. In fact, why don’t you come up? Let me drain you as I should have years ago.”

“As tempting as the invitation is, I think I’ll decline.”

“You’re so much more clever than you look. Go back to London. Venice in the winter is so disagreeable. And as pretty as you are, I confess I grow weary of seeing your face every day.”

“You’ve only yourself to blame for that,” I told her.

“Never say I did not warn you,” she said. “But now . . . as lovely as it’s been talking with you this morning, I am tired. I’m afraid I was up all night with another amusing man. Unfortunately, he fled before the dawn. How clumsy of you to be so late.”

I didn’t believe it. “Before the dawn? And you let him go? How clumsy of
you
, my love. But then again, you are looking a bit—oh, I don’t know—
monstrous
? Perhaps he caught a whiff of your poison. I cannot be the only one to smell it.”

I could not tell if I’d affected her or not. She only said coldly, “
Adieu
, Nicholas,” and stepped back inside with a shake of her head that sent her hair rippling down her back.

I waited for a bit longer, trying to peer behind the windows, to see movement in the rooms beyond, but I saw nothing. It became clear that she was telling the truth—I was too late. There was no point in lingering.

I went to my room, impatient for time to pass, for the salon, where I knew I would see Sophie again. I pulled a book from the pile on the floor and lay on my bed, which still held the faint scent of her perfume, and suddenly I was thinking of violets in the sun and dark hair in candlelight, and I reached for a pencil, dismayed not to find one, nor paper either, confused by the force of the words spinning in my head, the intensity of their demand to be written down. How could it be? But still . . . the urge was irresistible, and finally I found Giles’s sketchbook and tore a corner from the page, a bit of charcoal, and I was scrawling, words tumbling, a single line. When it was done, I stared at it in surprise. It was decent enough, but how could it be even that? How could it exist at all? Odilé was still alive, and she held my talent fast. I crumpled the paper in my hand, letting it fall heedless to the floor, my sense of being off balance returning with a vengeance.

I left for the salon the moment it was possible. The Canal was cloaked with a thin layer of fog that shifted in wisps, blowing away like smoke with every movement. Dark gray clouds gathered in the distance, an impending storm. My feeling of vulnerability grew—Sophie Hannigan had a power over me I could not define, that even frightened me now in a Venetian twilight. I understood—or thought I did—why her brother felt he could not be without her. I felt the faint prickle of warning. I told myself not to fall so hard. It had been my undoing once before.

Yet the spell of her remained, and the salon did nothing to break it, because she wasn’t there, nor her brother. I had no idea why. I wondered if she were avoiding me, if I’d done something to offend her—well, of course I had—and that was why she’d left me this morning without a word. The very idea that it might be so made me nearly insane with apprehension and concern. I could not stay at the salon. I was too distracted to be anything but unsociable. I didn’t know if I was coming or going, and I was angry at myself for feeling so. I couldn’t keep the image of her from my head, the way I had pulled her into my side and urged her to lay her head upon my chest, how I’d threaded my fingers through her hair. She’d made a little sound, I remembered—a mewling, quiet sound, and then she had fallen into sleep, into soft, steady breathing, her hand curled near her face like a little child’s, and I’d looked down at her and thought I had never been so content nor so satisfied.

Not even with Odilé.

The thought startled me now, as did the realization that it was true. In that moment, everything—Odilé, my task, every obligation I had—seemed to melt away. Suddenly I was thinking of a future I’d never before contemplated. A home somewhere. Children. Poetry in my head, wanting to be written. Poetry about dark-brown hair that caught the sunlight on the Lido, about skin pale as milk, a beguiling mole like a star on a shoulder blade, and a name to break the spell I’d been under for years.

And I knew: I was in love with Sophie Hannigan, and everything had changed.

N
ICHOLAS

H
ow did one dismiss a seven-year obsession? I knew that I could not embark upon a future with Sophie until I’d put Odilé from my life forever. Only a little more than a week—it seemed both a small time to wait and forever.

The ominous clouds had spread over the city, covering the far-flung stars, bringing a spattering of rain that looked ready to turn into more. I hired a gondolier to take me from the Alvisi to the Ca’ Dana Rosti. This time, I paid him to wait with me. From the levered window of the
felze
, I had a perfect view of her entry. I watched her windows, catching movement here and there, shadows across the lamps. And then, just as the wind began to pick up, bringing with it the rain, her door opened.

I straightened, watching as her gondolier came out. He stepped into the gondola, readying it—ah, so Odilé was going out tonight. No doubt to meet her new victim.

She wore a cloak, its dark hood raised to hide her face. But even so, she had that particular grace no other woman seemed to possess, that made her recognizable no matter the disguise. She murmured something to her gondolier and disappeared into the
felze
.

The gondola slipped into the Canal. I called softly to my own gondolier, “Follow them. But don’t let them know it.”

“
Si, padrone
.”

I felt the boat rock beneath me as we moved out into the water. I could see the gimbaled light of her gondola before us, cast in a red shade. She was heading toward St. Mark’s and the Piazza. The rain smattered against the roof of the little cabin, spackling the water. A flash of lightning lit the sky, limning the shadow of her gondola, the hooded gondolier, so it looked eerie and foreboding, a funereal barge.

Well, it was, I thought grimly, as thunder crashed so loudly it seemed to shake the boat.

The water grew rough with the wind, splashing against the sides of the gondola, rocking enough that I wanted to be out of it. Another crash of thunder, and then a blast of such livid lightning it seemed to electrify the world—and as if in response, Odilé’s gondola turned into the Rio de San Moise.

I felt a moment of disconnect—strange that she should come here, where I had interests of my own. Just as I leaned forward eagerly to see what lights were on in the Moretta, hoping for a glimpse of Sophie as we passed, Odilé’s gondola stopped.

I thought it must be a mistake. Why would she stop here? I felt the sudden slowing of my own boat, and my heart dropped. I watched in disbelief as the palazzo door opened, and two figures came out.

Lightning struck, bleaching the narrow
rio
, flashing off the buildings, a bright and terrible illumination lasting only long enough for me to see one of the figures—hooded and cloaked—look up in wonder. I saw a pale face I recognized, dark hair, in that moment before it went dark again.

Sophie.

The other figure—obviously her brother—took her elbow and helped her into the gondola, following behind. Still, I could not believe it. Not when they’d boarded, and not when the gondola set off again.

God, no. Not Joseph Hannigan.
Please, don’t let it be him.

When her gondola reached the
fondamenta
of the Rialto, it stopped. Thunder cracked—so loud it seemed to rattle everything. I watched as the three of them disembarked; I heard male laughter and a little feminine shriek as the rain crashed down in earnest, and they were hurrying toward the shelter of an overhanging awning.

“
Padrone
?” asked my gondolier.

I lurched from the
felze
, saying tersely, “Let me off.”

I hurried after them down the slick, paved
calle
. Hannigan was in the middle, a woman on each side holding on to his arm. They were running through the pounding rain, ducking into the well-lit entry of the Teatro Goldoni’s square, marbled facade. I had no ticket for admission, but that was easily remedied. I bought entry to the pit, where I would hopefully be lost among the other patrons. But I didn’t want Sophie or her brother to notice me, so I hung back at the edges of the crowd, looking up into the boxes, where I knew they must be.

The Teatro Goldoni was small and ornate; the boxes, which ran along the sides in the Italian fashion, were all gilded, and the ceiling hung with a great gas chandelier. The gaslamps along the periphery made the whole place sparkle and glitter, refracting light. It wasn’t hard to see—or be seen—which was the rule in Venice. No one came to the theater to actually watch the plays. Most of the nobility leased boxes year round to entertain their friends—it was cheaper than paying for the gas and servants in their own homes, and now the theater was full of laughter and talk. Light glinted off raised opera glasses as the boxes began to fill.

She wouldn’t be in the lower tier of boxes—too close to the pit. The second tier was the fashionable tier, but I didn’t expect her there either. She was no part of society, and many of those boxes were already leased. So the third . . . I wished for opera glasses of my own as I strained to see. Some of the boxes had drawn rose-colored, velvet curtains for privacy—as I said, most weren’t here to watch the play. I didn’t think conversation was her purpose; though to be honest, I wasn’t certain what her purpose was. If she’d found Joseph Hannigan, that was one thing. But why entertain Sophie? Women had never mattered to Odilé.

I was just beginning to wonder if perhaps they hadn’t rented a box after all when I saw Odilé come into one. She put her hands on the rail as she had on the balcony of the Dana Rosti, and just as it had then, the light sparkled upon the golden bracelets sliding down her wrists. And then I saw Sophie come up beside her. I drew back farther into the shadows. There was no woman who could compare to Odilé—her beauty was astonishing—but Sophie looked fresh and vibrant, and my desire surged as fatally as ever.

Then Hannigan stepped up next to them. He and Odilé made a stunning pair, I had to admit. Mine could not be the only eyes watching them. Without thinking, I shoved forward, ignoring the men talking and gesturing about me, the smell of wet and sweat and the aniseed that was a favorite chew, the raucous laughter and smoke, unable to look away as Hannigan leaned to whisper something in Odilé’s ear. She smiled up at him, caressing his jaw with an intimacy that clearly marked them as lovers. I felt a sinking despair. How could she have found him? I’d been watching every moment, guarding him constantly, with no distraction—

Except that I
had
been distracted, I realized. Sophie had turned me all about. While I had been concentrating on winning her, Odilé had slipped, unnoticed, inside.

And now . . .
and now. . . .

Christ, what was I to do now?