Page 85 of Vengeance in Venice
He had forgotten her blunt, humorous way of speaking, the honest, brave way she faced everything. But she had unwrapped the parcel while talking and now spilled the jewels into her lap.
She regarded them in silence, unmoving except to stop her father’s ring from rolling off onto the floor.
He could not bear the quiet and rushed again into speech. “I did not mean to be here when you received them. It felt like rudeness and pressure, which I do not at all mean to inflict—”
“Why now?” she interrupted. “Because he is dead?”
“Yes,” he said miserably. Slowly, her gaze lifted to his and he couldn’t bear it. “Not because I imagine he left you destitute. Not even because there is no point if I can’t annoy him. Just because they are yours.”
She placed her father’s ring on the table beside her glass, which reflected the intense blue of the stone, and waved her hand over the little pile in her lap. “They were always mine.”
“And I should have returned them long ago. I meant to—except when he annoyed me with his demands—but…” He reached rather wildly for his glass and took a sizeable gulp.
“But what?” she asked, and he knew she would not leave it alone.
He met her gaze. “I was afraid that once I returned them, I would no longer have any excuse to see you.”
“You weren’t exactly using them as an opportunity. Have you decided you don’t want to see me after all?”
He shook his head. “It just all seemed so silly, so pointless. So…dishonest.” And God help him, the truth would out. “You broke my heart, Elena.”
She swallowed. “I think you broke mine too, over a longer period. During the siege, I stopped feeling. I felt I couldn’t and still survive. You and I caused all that. Angelo stopped it. He was safe, and I did love him.”
He closed his eyes, then opened them again because he couldn’t bear not to see her. “Safe love. I was never safe. I’m still not. But I am constant.”
“I wished you would find someone else and then you would stop all this.” She waved her hand over the jewels in her lap again.
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” she whispered. Her eyes were wet, and she let her eyelids fall to cover it. “Damn you, Ludo, don’t make mefeel.”
“Feeling is the point, Elena. All of it.”
Her gaze flew back to his, outraged and accusing.
He smiled crookedly. “You see?”
To his surprise—and unspeakable relief—she let out a breath of laughter. Once, he would have stayed to try to build on that instant of empathy, pushing his luck. Older and wiser, he rose to his feet.
“Thank you,” he said. He didn’t mean for the wine. He meant for that moment, for receiving him in the first place.
She did not stand with him, merely swiped something off the table beside her and held it out to him. Slowly, he stretched out his hand, and she dropped her father’s ring into his palm. “This is yours. It was my gift. Unless you are returning it.”
Although she spoke carelessly, without emphasis, he saw the vulnerability in her eyes. She was afraid he would refuse. Exactly what this meant, he did not know yet. He suspected neither did she. But it was a beginning, a renewal, an opportunity.
He put the ring in his pocket. “Arrivederci.”Until we meet again.
He felt he was walking on air. He reached his own house, it seemed, without engaging his brain, simply by his body’s memory. But once there, reality arrived back with a thump.
Foscolo was waiting for him.
*
In the afternoon,Solomon and Constance wandered into an old building with an open door and a large bill advertising an exhibition of paintings. It was a pleasingly normal thing to do after their “accidental” meeting with Foscolo at a coffeehouse, where he sat with them for ten minutes in casual conversation that was anything but.
Constance almost jumped at the paintings to distract herself from a plan she could not like, but which Solomon had already agreed to. Even so, she was not entirely surprised to see Domenico Rossi’s face beaming at them from the center of the room.
He detached himself from the group of obvious fellow artists around him and hurried toward them. He seemed to be sober, possibly because Adriana was in charge of distributing wine to the visitors. In spite of everything, the sight of the girl with bottles and glasses sent a shiver down Constance’s spine.
