One With the Shadows (9 page)

But Luigi had made no demur that his wife was named Maria. How had she known that?

“You were kind to ask after Maria,” Urbano said, wiping his mouth with the napkin.

Kate realized he must have heard the whole conversation.

“Did Sophia tell you about her and Luigi?” he continued. “They are quite in love, even after so many years. I am never quite sure if that is a mark of the lower classes. Love seems to be in short supply among the aristocracy.”

That was it. Sophia must have told her about Luigi and Maria. She had been so tired she had just forgotten. “In my opinion, love is an illusion altogether.” She had imagined that Luigi and Maria loved each other because she was weak and that’s what she wanted to believe. Ever since she was abandoned, even through the assignations Matthew had arranged for her and select “admirers” before the scar, she must have held on to a wish that there was such a thing as true love. There wasn’t, and she should get over such weakness immediately.

“It does exist,” he said, sipping his coffee, “though I have never felt it personally.”

He was just being contrary. “You take it on faith? I don’t mean infatuation,” she warned.

He looked up at her. She could barely make out his features in the shadow of the swaying coach. “My mother loved my father, and I believe he returned her love.” The pain that drenched his voice was palpable. Why would that give him pain? Unless he didn’t believe it, and was just saying that to try to make it true. With his next words, he deliberately lightened his tone. “He died long ago, of course. She knew he would. She always says it gave their love poignancy.” He snorted derisively. “No good came of it. Certainly not my birth. And it ruined her for anybody else. Personally, I think she would have been better off not loving him.”

What could she say to that? He apparently shared her cynical view of the world at least. “Did your father tell you he loved her in return?”

“He was not the type.”

“So you have only her word for it. People like to imagine themselves in love. Me, I never take anything on faith.”

“No faith…” he murmured. “Unusual in one who was raised with nuns.”

“Not as unusual as you would think,” she said grimly.

“You are sure there is no God?”

She wasn’t sure, and the question made her uncomfortable, so she deflected it. “And what do
you
believe in? Does it include God?”

He put aside his tray on the seat next to him and took a careful breath. When he let it out and leaned back into the corner, some of the arrogance seemed to be let out of him. “God? I’m not sure anymore. But I believe you must live as if God existed. I … believe in duty, I suppose … honor.”

“So you’ve said.” She let her voice reveal what she thought of that.

“I agree they’re little enough,” he said, voice tight. “Sometimes they’re all that’s left.”

She realized she had touched some painful point. They were like two hedgehogs set in a tiny box. They’d prick each other bloody at this rate. But there was nothing else to do but talk to him or sleep. And she had slept her fill. She threw up her hands. “Couldn’t you at least have provided some books to pass the time?” Of course she couldn’t read in the dark. “And a candle or something?”

“I wouldn’t have guessed you for a reader,” he said dryly.

The man was astounding! “And why ever not?” she shot back.

“Well … your past…”

“And what do you think I did at the orphanage if not read?” Books took her away for a few hours from that stifling atmosphere.

“Ahhh, the nuns.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “So you read the Bible.”

“I liked the Old Testament,” she said, just to shock him. “All that smiting and lying together. That seemed real. The New Testament was harder to take, requiring belief in the power of transformation and all.” She cocked her head. “And what are
your
favorite books?”

“I like the Romans. Philosophers, but practical too.”

“Cicero? Marcus Aurelius? Julius Augustus?”

“You pronounce Cicero correctly,” he said, surprised. “Most English use the soft
s
sound and not the
ch
sound.”

“Wonders never cease.”
Just another sign of his arrogance.

“You’ve read them, haven’t you?” It was an accusation.

“
Rem acu tetigisti.
After reading the Bible in Latin, it was a natural progression.”

“I can’t believe the nuns kept copies of Roman writers.”

“Oh, so I must have stopped reading after I left the orphanage?” She shook her head, disgusted. “I just
might
have read other books as well.” She didn’t say she read so much because after she’d been scarred, she stayed much in her rooms. She often borrowed books from her patrons. Since most of them didn’t care for books, they often gave her free run of their libraries.

“I stand corrected. Forgive me.”

She would have expected a mocking tone, but none was in evidence. His apology was straightforward. If it wasn’t Gian Urbano, she would have thought it was sincere. “Apology accepted.” She cleared her throat. “I suppose you like the Romans because of your heritage.”

“One likes that with which one is familiar.” He paused. “My father gave me Cicero’s diatribe against slavery and what it did to the Roman psyche. Cicero loved freedom.”

“All the time he kept slaves, as I recall.”

Urbano obviously didn’t want to recall that fact. “I also read the British. Fielding, Shakespeare, Marlowe. Though I can’t say I found Richardson sympathetic.”

“A heroine who fades away rather than make the least push to escape her fate? I should think not.” She stopped for a moment. Would a Roman gigolo have read
Clarissa,
for heaven’s sake? “And how are you familiar with British literature?”

She felt his smile as much as saw it.

“One likes that with which one is familiar. How do you think I got my green eyes?”

She sat up straighter. “Mother or father?”

“Father.”

The one his mother loved. “A bored aristocrat making the grand tour?”

“Hardly.” He chuckled. The sound was a warm rumble. It was the first humor she had heard from him.

“No doubt a soldier in one of the various armies that swept through here, a deluded idealistic aristocrat or a mercenary.” She waved a hand, dismissing his father.

“Close enough. A soldier.”

“But you knew him, so he must have deserted the army and stayed on to be with your mother. How romantic.”

“Now you are being snide.”

“Well, it is no wonder your English is so good,” she said grudgingly. He was right. The snide comment had not been fair. Perhaps deserting the army wasn’t the convenient or cowardly thing to do. Perhaps deserting had cost him something. In which case Urbano’s father might really have loved his mother, or thought he did for a brief time.

“And the fact that you read Latin is probably why your Italian is so good.”

“And my French and Spanish and my Romanian, since they share Latin roots. German was a little harder.” There, let him take that. He was always so eager to dismiss her.

“Voi Vorbiti româneşte?” He spoke it with a strange, archaic lilt to his inflection.

“Destul de bine. Şunt puțin a-şi fi pierut obişnuința. Not a language commonly spoken in Rome.” She lifted her brows in question, not sure if he could see her face in the darkness.

“My mother was born there.”

“I thought she was Italian.”

“Now she claims Italy as her own. But she comes from an … old family in Transylvania.” He sat up. “Enough about my parentage. You will meet my mother and judge for yourself. At the next change of horses, I will provide you with a book from my trunk. You can hold the shade out to let in enough light to read by. I have Byron’s poetry, I believe, and Cervantes … but it is not a translation.”

She looked at him under her brows.

“My apologies, of course you would not mind that. I believe I have one also from a British female writer, Miss Austen. Have you read her comedies of manners?”

“But they are so much more!”

“She knows the human condition,” he agreed. “Indeed, my only reservation is that the principles of the French philosophers and the Revolution are nowhere in her works. Was she so cloistered that the most cataclysmic event of her time did not affect her?”

“You have obviously not read deeply enough…”

Six

Urbano closed the door on the cacophony of drinkers outside the parlor of the osteria in the hotel where they had stopped. Quiet descended on Kate. They were not to spend the night, but go straight through. Sleeping in a rocking carriage—ugh. His conversation had been surprisingly educated, even entertaining today, though he had grown increasingly fidgety throughout the afternoon. She hadn’t had a conversation that challenged her intellectually since … well, since she’d argued with the visiting abbess about the concept of original sin when she was fourteen. She walked to the cheery fire burning in the grate and held out her hands to the heat. The evening was cool.

She felt his energy snake seductively along her skin. The vibrations weren’t as strong as they had been, were they? It didn’t matter. Even slow, they were a danger. Best she find some armor to protect against his effect on her. He came up behind her.

“I … I will return shortly,” he said, his voice husky. “I’ve ordered refreshments.”

She chanced a glance behind her. He did not meet her gaze, but turned abruptly and strode to the door. “We stay an hour. Make what you will of it.”

Was her company so odious to him? The door closed softly behind him. She frowned. Where was he going without even an explanation? That felt almost surreptitious. And hadn’t he looked a little guilty? If he was going to see to the carriage he might have said so. He might be going to wipe off the dust of the road. Had he bespoken a room for himself? He hadn’t ordered one for her. If one had a room, one could do many things.

What was he doing?

She slid over to the door and cracked it open. He was in the taproom beyond. She could feel him. Where…? She opened the door a little wider.

There he was. Talking to a serving maid. Only this one was no maiden. Nor was she even comely. Her features were coarse, flat, and broad, with a nose too big and ears that departed from her skull at an alarming angle. There were no two ways about it. She was plain.

But Urbano was staring at her as if she were the only woman in the room. That caused a little frisson of annoyance to pull Kate’s lips downward. And the girl was staring back, no doubt hypnotized by his beauty. Men who looked like Urbano did not smile at a girl like that one. As Kate scanned the room, in fact, she saw every other woman staring at Urbano openly. Urbano leaned in to whisper in the wench’s ear. The eyes around the room grew hard with jealousy. Kate was ashamed that she could understand the sentiment. Abruptly, Urbano headed for the stairs. Kate hastily shut the door. She knew what was going to happen. And she could hardly credit it. She cracked the door open once more after she felt him pass.

The girl gave Urbano barely a minute before she set her tray on the bar and trotted up the stairs. Kate shut the door and turned to lean against it as though she was keeping something out.

Fool that she was, she was trying to keep herself in.

But she couldn’t. She was going to see what he was doing with her own eyes and put the last nail in the coffin of her opinion of this arrogant creature. He didn’t value women enough even to care what he did. A homely girl like that would do anything just to feel for a moment that he wanted her, even if she knew it was a lie. He would give her a quarter hour, spill his seed, and throw her away like yesterday’s newspaper, leaving her surer than ever that she was nothing.

Bloody bastard.

Kate swung open the door, marched across the dining room and straight up the stairs. She didn’t care if the people saw her scar. Let them look. She had no fear that she’d get the wrong room. She’d be able to feel where he was.

At the top of the stairs, she paused, though. She wanted to catch him in flagrante delicto.
In medias res,
as Cicero would say. She went still, going back in her mind to being nine, when she was sent to glide through the night, past locked doors into the bowels of a house that wanted plundering. She was air. She was shadow, silent shadow, sliding along the corridor. No one would know she had passed, except perhaps as a tickle of breeze along the nape of the neck.

She focused on the third door to the right. He was there. And she would catch him out. She reached for the knob. Would it be locked? That would delay her.

But it was not. He was that arrogant. She turned the knob slowly. Would he hear the click when it opened? Inside she heard a moan. She pushed the anger down. It was the girl’s moan. Poor deluded thing. She had to give herself to any stranger who asked, no matter how cruel he might be, because that was her only chance to experience an illusion of fulfillment other than what she achieved by her own hand.

That hurt Kate. How different was she? She had been with men. Matthew had seen to that. But she had not known a man in, what, nearly eight years now? She didn’t miss their sweat, their grunting efforts, their moist mouths. Yet, sometimes, with one of the younger ones, it had been at least … interesting. It had held the possibility of … something. Something this poor ugly servant wench was searching for as well.

Just concentrate on being still,
she admonished herself. The familiar energy hummed in the air, cycling up until it seemed to throb in her brain. She waited for long minutes until she heard what she thought was a moan of ecstasy. Well, the brute didn’t waste time. She’d give him that. She held her breath. Imagining what she was most likely to see turned into a full feeling in her core. Her blood seemed to pool between her legs. She was as misguided as the poor serving wench who would be naked inside the room. Would Urbano be naked too?

She cracked the door.

The tableau that met her eyes was not horizontal, but vertical. Fully clothed, he leaned over the girl, the muscles in his back flexing in a most provocative way under his coat as he held her in his arms. His dark curls fell forward over his ears and neck. The girl leaned back, arching her body into his in ecstasy. He was kissing her throat. The way he was fastened to it, he didn’t care if he left a strawberry mark.