The Stargazer (39 page)

“Know it all, do you?” Cecco rose in his seat and made a fist at Ian, who turned his head slightly to regard him. “Did you know the blow you dealt killed my partner? Best damn friend a man ever had?” Cecco asked savagely.

“No,” Ian spoke into his lap, quietly.

Cecco brought his fist down. “Ha!” he said. “Never thought about that, did you? Did you know I had to hide, spend these two years locked in by my own choice, afraid to show my head in the streets of Venice?”

Ian raised his red-rimmed eyes to study the dwarf. As he shook his head in negation, it occurred to Ian that he and Cecco had a lot in common. They had both lost their best friends on the plains of Sicily. They had both spent the past two years locked away, afraid of Mora, afraid of what might happen to them if they showed their true face in public. And now they had both been given their lives back, freed from Mora’s curse, by Bianca’s final gesture.

Ian gulped back the lump that had been in his throat since he saw the flooded prison. The small man seated before him, glaring at him and drinking his grappa, suddenly became, as Bianca’s final legacy to him, very dear. He did not bother to keep his voice steady or to keep the misery out of his expression when he addressed Cecco. “I am sorry. I had no idea.”

Ian’s apology caught Cecco off guard. The glare left his face as quickly as it had come. “An’ if that ain’t the most unexpected thing ever. Thank you. You are some kind of man. But you don’t look so good. D’you want to hear the rest of your lady’s message now, or—”

“Yes,” Ian said with a wretched urgency that was painful to hear.

Cecco cleared his throat to ensure proper delivery. “She said to tell you it wasn’t her as done the murder but some Anzelo or Angelo fellow, a cousin of hers. An’,” Cecco made a face, but decided he owed it to the girl in exchange for the apology Ian had tendered, “she said to say she loved you.”

Still, Ian thought to himself. After all that. She still loved me. The realization sent a shudder up his body, sharpening the edge of his misery.

Cecco saw the dark mood descending on his companion with surprise. Surely the news that his betrothed wasn’t a murderess should be received gleefully. “I don’t know if you caught that first part. I was saying as how she said to tell you about her being innocent—”

“I know.” Ian cut him off grimly. “I already knew she was innocent. I knew it all along. But it hardly matters now that I have lost her.”

“You’re a fine one for giving up, then, ain’t you? I put her on that boat not more than two hours ago an’ I don’t reckon they up and aweighed anchor yet, not on a night like this.”

“What do you mean?” Ian asked, his heart suddenly starting to beat again.

“I see I was wrong about your ears. You people can’t understand a little plain language to save your lives, can you?” Cecco shook his head. “What I mean is that I put her on a boat not more than two hours ago and I don’t think it’s a-left yet.” He spoke the last words loud and slow, hoping that would overcome the gentleman’s hardness of hearing.

“How? She’s alive?”

“That wasn’t no corpse I went back and dragged through the sewer with me, I tell you that. Of course, I can’t say for positive she’s still alive, sometimes death is mighty sudden you know, but two hours ago, when I put her on that boat—”

“Why? Where to?” Ian spoke as he rose from his seat. “Why did she want to get on a boat?”

“Some nonsense about an unwanted betrothal, and trying to get out of the way or something. Believe me, she wasn’t in much better shape than you are.”

“She was running away from a betrothal?” Ian said more to himself than to Cecco. Bianca was running away and leaving him. But why?

It hit Ian like a thunderbolt. She must think he hated her after how he had treated her. Not only had he refused to believe in her innocence, as far as she knew, but he had gotten up and marched out in the middle of her murder trial without even so much as a look in her direction. He had behaved like the most despicable, unpleasant monster in all Italy. He could not blame her for wanting to get away from him. He would have to make it up to her, explain it to her. Certainly he could not allow her to go.

Cecco cowered low in his seat as Ian leaned over him. “Where was the boat going?” he demanded with a degree of animation that Cecco thought had to be unhealthy for at least one of them.

“I don’t know,” the dwarf answered plainly. “She didn’t tell me.” Ian, like a man possessed, was heading for the door. “But I am sure you’ll have no trouble finding it,” Cecco said helpfully to his broad back. “There can’t be more than a hundred galleons moored out in the lagoon tonight.”

“
Bianca!
” Ian started bellowing, in what was, by this point, a familiar pattern to Giorgio. “Bianca! Are you there? Bianca!”

Giorgio wondered if he should tell his master that since the wind and rain made it almost impossible for him, only three armlengths away, to hear Ian’s shouts it was highly improbable that anyone on a ship would hear them, but he decided against it, reasoning that anything that would alleviate the strange madness that had gripped his master was to be encouraged. They were pulling along the side of the large vessel when a head poked out of one of the lower portholes.

“What d’ you want?” an old sailor with a tanned face and a stark white beard demanded, not friendly. “We’re getting ready to lift anchor, and we ain’t got room for more passengers.”

“Do you have a woman on board?” Ian asked with such desperation that the sailor let out a whoop of amusement.

He flashed Ian a toothless conspiratorial grin. “You come all the way out here for a woman? You loony or something? There’s dozens, hundreds of ’em right back there in Venice. ‘The Paradise of Prostitutes,’ that’s what they call the city, and not for nothing. I can give you the address of such a one that knows a thing or two about feathers—”

“No.” Ian was shaking his head and struggling to get a word in. “I am looking for a particular woman. My,
ah
, my sister. She’s small, with a beautiful oval face, silky light brown hair, and eyes that glitter like molten gold when she is excited.”

“Don’t sound like you’re talking about your sister to me,” the sailor said with raised eyebrows, “but it ain’t none of my business. ’Specially seeing as how we ain’t got any merchandise of that quality aboard, I’m sure. What?” the sailor demanded of someone behind him. He turned back to Ian, said, “Don’t leave yet, you hear,” and disappeared into the interior of the vessel.

“We’d better move on,” Giorgio cautioned Ian after they had waited two minutes that felt more like two years in the freezing cold wind. “All of these boats will be making off as soon as the tide comes all the way in. That gives us less than an hour, and we still have about forty to see. I’m sure if you just leave your name, that nice sailor will send along the address of the feather woman.”

Ian struggled to decide whether to punch Giorgio or ignore him. He had just opted for punching, hoping it would relieve some of his tension, when the head popped back out of the window.

“Supposin’ that someone knew something about your,
ah
, sister,” the sailor rolled his eyes backward and motioned slightly with his head. “Why would you be looking for her,
eh?
”

“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” Ian confessed loudly to the man, “and I want to make it up to her. I must see her and speak to her.”

The man nodded, disappeared into the hole for a moment, then reemerged. “What do you want to say to her?”

“I will tell her when I see her!” Ian was exasperated. “Don’t play games with me, man. I must find her, even if it means sailing all the way to China. Is she there or isn’t she?”

The sailor gestured upward with his chin. Following his suggestion, Ian trained his gaze on the deck of the ship. There, among the two dozen sailors readying the vessel for departure, was Bianca. As she stood against the railing, her eyes alight, her hair being whipped about her by the wind, she looked like an ancient maritime goddess come to do battle with a mortal enemy.

Bianca was kicking herself. She had known she should not allow herself to see Ian, should stay as far from him as possible, but she could not help it. On first hearing him shout her name she had tried, but she did not have the power. Her traitorous heart had leapt up, racing with joy, thrilled by the sound of his voice. He had come after her. He had come to find her.

Or, her cool head told her, to drag her back to prison and punish her. To tell her to her face how he hated her. How sorry he was she had not died in her flooded cell. Her heart was beating so loudly with excitement and dread as she stood on the deck of the boat that she was sure it could be heard all the way back in Piazza San Marco. She struggled to keep her face expressionless, her voice noncommittal.

“You found me,” she stated intelligently to Ian, below.

Ian did not know what he had been hoping for, but the emotionless welcome he had just received turned his insides to ice. He had rowed all the way out there, purposely putting himself in the way of a blustery storm for the second time that night, risking pneumonia and worse, to tell her how his life would be nothing without her, how he needed her, and all he got was a frosty ‘You found me.’ His heart, now frozen, shattered into a thousand bits.

“I certainly did!” His tone pierced her like glittering shards of ice. “Did you really think you could simply up and leave, just like that? Need I remind you that you are a fugitive from justice and technically under my care?”

Bianca’s heart seemed to drop through the deck and into the lagoon below. So that was indeed why he had come. He had come not out of love but only to win himself the prestige of having found a fugitive. His tone, his expression, told her clearly that he felt nothing for her but disgust. She bowed her head, hoping he was too far away to see the tears welling up in her eyes. “I had forgotten. How careless of me.”

Hearing her voice, so cold, so uncharacteristically devoid of emotion, confirmed Ian’s worst fears. She had fled because she did not want to marry him. She enjoyed him physically, but there it ended. The prospect of spending her life with him was distasteful to her, even hateful. But she had said…

The words came out before he knew he was speaking, his voice no longer a voice of ice but a voice of pain. “Why won’t you marry me? You said you loved me.”

Bianca blinked at him for a second, wondering if it were just an accident of the wind or if she had heard correctly. Then, compelled by some supernatural force, she revealed the deepest, most private secret of her soul. “Because you don’t love me.”

“But of course I do!” Ian said with puzzlement.
I have always loved you
. “It is so obvious.”

“Obvious!” Bianca echoed. “Walking out of my murder trial before it is even over? Obvious?”

“I was practically thrown out. Besides, I had to…I had to check on something.” The excuse sounded lame even to Ian’s ears.

Bianca felt as if someone else had taken over her body and she was only being allowed to watch from the highest mast of the ship. Here was the man she loved, saying that he loved her back, but instead of throwing herself over the side and into his arms, she was arguing with him. “If you really do love me, why haven’t you ever said it?”

“Haven’t I?” Ian avoided meeting her eyes. “I’ve meant to.”

Bianca shook her head. “That won’t do. It’s not good enough. You have to say it. Now.” Bianca gestured at the preparations for departure going on all around her. “In a few days I will be out of Venice and likely out of Italy and then you will never have another chance.”

Ian stood and admired her, stunned once again by her beauty. Without realizing what he was doing, he raised his hands to her in a gesture of supplication. “Don’t go,” he begged rather than ordered. “Please, Bianca, don’t go.”

She wavered for a moment, still a proud goddess, then asked in a voice filled with anguish that could only be human, “Why? Why should I stay? I am giving you your freedom, Ian. I am canceling our betrothal. Don’t you understand? This is what you wanted all along. You never wanted to marry me, remember? You said it yourself. Now you are free to marry whomever you wish, whomever you truly love. If you married me without loving me, you would grow to hate and despise me. This is how it should be, how it must be—” Bianca had been so determined to say her piece that she had plowed ahead, heedless that Ian had long before responded to her first question.

“Because I love you,” he had said while she rambled on.

“What?” Bianca asked, startled, when she realized she had missed something.

“If you didn’t talk so much you would have heard it,” Ian scolded wryly, his heart beating so fast he could hardly keep up with it. “Now it’s too late.”

Maddening, she thought to herself, he was absolutely maddening. And sinfully handsome. “I would be much obliged, Ian,” she asked politely, “if you would tell me what you said.”

“I said that I love you, Bianca Salva,” he shouted up to her in a voice filled with joy and triumph. The work on the deck of the boat ceased as the sailors gathered along the railing to see better. “I said that is why you should stay. Because I love you.”

Bianca resisted the urge to fling herself into his arms. Before she took the potentially life-threatening plunge from the side of the boat, she wanted to be sure there was no mistake. “Do you think… Could you say that again?”

Ian cupped his hands around his mouth and addressed her. “I love you, Bianca. I think I have loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you. I love every devilish, murderous, obstinate, difficult, argumentative, brilliant, succulent, glorious bit of you. I love you with every muscle in my body, every breath in my lungs, every thought in my head. I love you and I want you with me forever.”

For centuries afterward, Venetians talked about that wonderful night at the end of 1585 when their great clock stopped and a goddess flew like a crane from the deck of a galleon into the waiting arms of her lover.