Venom (40 page)

On the fourth day after Luca’s arrival, instead of Narissa’s gentle knock, Cass’s bedroom door was flung wide open without warning. Cass drew the covers over her head and pretended to be asleep.

“There you are.” Cass was surprised to hear Madalena’s voice. A second later, Mada yanked the covers from her head. “Oh, dear. Looks like we’ve got some work to do.” Madalena went to the armoire and began flipping through Cass’s dresses. She pulled out the topaz one Cass had worn to the tailor’s shop the previous week. With the dress draped over one arm, Madalena tossed Cass her cream-colored stays.

“What are you doing here?” Cass asked, reaching out to catch the stays.

Madalena gave Cass a dazzling smile. “Saving you. And your marriage, too, from the looks of it.” She turned around. “Slip that on. I’ll help you with the rest.”

Cass knew she should get up, that it was rude to loll around in bed when her friend had made the trip out to San Domenico just to see her. But the thought of putting on a full outfit, doing her hair, and sitting around in the portego making idle chitchat was positively excruciating.

“I’m so tired, Mada,” she said. “Can’t we just catch up here in my room? I’m sure the cook would fix you a breakfast tray as well.”

Mada wrinkled up her nose. “Since when have you turned into an invalid? Aren’t you going crazy cooped up in here?” She pointed at Slipper, who was scratching at the closed bedroom door. “Even the cat wants to escape.”

Cass gathered her covers around her. “Not me. I was thinking I might stay in here forever.”

“Not a chance. Have you forgotten my wedding is tomorrow? I won’t allow you to show up in your nightgown.” Madalena pulled the top cover from the bed with a vicious yank. “Besides, old Agnese threatened to send for the head physician if I couldn’t bring you out of seclusion.”

Cass groaned. Dottor Orsin was a brutish man who would fill her full of toxic-tasting herbal cocktails and watch with sadistic delight as leeches sucked the blood from her body.

“Fine. You win.” Cass stripped out of her nightgown and slid her arms into the stays. At least it would feel good to have fresh clothes on.

“Agnese wins, but doesn’t she always?” Mada said, her fingers crisscrossing the laces at Cass’s back. “Now what is this about exactly? You hate Luca?”

“I don’t hate him,” Cass said, lifting her arms so that Madalena could pull the laces tight. “I just don’t love him.”

“I see.” Madalena slipped the topaz dress over Cass’s head. “I saw him getting into a gondola the evening of your fitting. Marco and I were meeting Cristian for dinner. Old Luca has gotten quite handsome over the past three years, hasn’t he? Are you not attracted to him at all?”

“I—well, no. I do find him attractive…” Just saying that made
her feel uncomfortable, but she wasn’t sure why. She adjusted her skirts around her slim hips. “Wait a minute. You saw him in the city? Over a week ago?”

“I tried to get his attention, but he seemed to be in a hurry,” Mada said.

Cass thought back to the day of her fitting. Siena had mentioned seeing Luca at the market, but Cass had assumed she was mistaken. Why would Luca lie about his arrival in Venice? It didn’t make sense. Unless he had busied himself preparing for the wedding…She cringed.

Madalena fussed with the bodice of Cass’s dress. “And the reason you are not interested is…?”

Cass stared at her reflection. The golden dress brought out the red in her hair. “The thing is—” She paused for a moment. Maybe she should just tell the truth, or an abridged version anyway. Mada would understand that she had fallen for someone else. It was very dramatic, and Mada lived for drama. Cass took a deep breath. “The thing is, I met a boy.”

Once Cass started talking, the whole story just poured out of her. Falco, running into him again, spending time with him on the Rialto and in Tommaso’s studio. The conflicting feelings of desire and guilt and hopelessness. She told Madalena about everything except the murders, and seeing Falco and his friends stealing bodies.

To Cass’s surprise, Madalena listened to her whole story without interrupting once or getting distracted by juicy details like what kind of outfit Cass wore to the masked ball or which direction Falco’s smile tilted. Cass let all of her hopes and heartbreak and guilt spew forth like a venom that had been killing her from the inside.

Afterward, Mada was silent for a moment. Then she took Cass’s
hand in her own. Cass stared down at the beautiful golden rings Mada wore on her middle three fingers—one diamond, one sapphire, one emerald. “I’m surprised at you,” Mada said.

Cass lowered her head. Had she been foolish to think Mada might understand? “I figured you would be.”

Mada squeezed her hand. “No, silly. I’m surprised you let yourself fall for Falco in the first place.” She looked at Cass with wide, affectionate eyes. “It’s scary to give part of yourself to someone else. I know what it’s like to be terrified of pain. Of loss.”

“What do you mean?” Cass was startled; she was sure her friend was going to lecture her for her indiscretion.

“When my mother died, my father nearly went insane with grief.” Madalena toyed with the golden crucifix hanging from her belt. “And even though I was only ten years old, I couldn’t imagine ever letting myself love someone like that. Setting myself up for all that pain.”

“But Marco—” Cass started.

“I didn’t love him from the beginning,” Mada said. “He was kind and handsome, but I still found reasons not to like him. His hands were rough. He sometimes smelled of ship parts—of tallow and burning coal.” She shrugged. “But as you can see, he won me over.”

Cass bunched up her eyebrows. “So you’re saying I’ll grow to love Luca?”

Mada grinned. “I would. Did you see the muscles on that man? Toting all those heavy legal tomes around must be working in his favor.”

Cass smiled. She wasn’t sure if she believed Madalena, that loving Luca was just a matter of letting down her guard, but either way her friend had made her feel better.

“Anyway,” Mada added, a mischievous gleam in her eye. “Think of whatever happened with this artist boy as…practice.” She winked.

Cass blushed. “You’re shameless, you know that?”

Madalena ran her perfectly filed nails through Cass’s thick hair. Her hand snagged halfway through it. “And
you’re
a mess. Your hair looks like a bird’s nest. Let me fix it.”

“Fine,” Cass said, laughing. “Just for you.”

“And to keep Dottor Orsin away.” Mada smiled.

Cass sat at her dressing table as Mada ripped through her snarled hair with a silver-plated hairbrush, then twisted Cass’s hair back into a painfully tight topknot and pinned it with a pearl hair ornament. She flipped open the top of the heart-shaped jewelry casket where Cass’s brooches, bracelets, and necklaces lay all jumbled together. She untangled a heart-shaped jade pendant from the snarled mass. She fastened it around Cass’s neck. “Perfect. Are you ready to show yourself?”

The jade pendant felt cold against Cass’s breastbone. “Is Luca here?”

“Gone, I promise,” Mada said. “Some mysterious errands. Probably buying you flowers and fancy jewelry.”

Cass cringed. The last thing she wanted was for Luca to try to win her affection with presents. “I hope not.”

Mada glanced at the tangled ball of necklaces and bracelets. “Like I said before, you could use some new pieces. Ask for pearls. A girl can never have too many strands of pearls.”

As usual, Madalena’s mere presence had brightened Cass’s mood. There was still an ache deep inside her when she thought of Falco,
but it wasn’t the stabbing pain of the previous days. Maybe time would continue to dull the sharpness in her stomach, transform it into a smooth stone—heavy, but bearable.

For the first time in days, Cass let herself think about Luca. His shy smile, his light brown eyes, the warmth with which they regarded her. Could she be with him and not yearn for Falco? Cass didn’t think so, but she didn’t know everything. Maybe Mada was right. Maybe it was pointless to fight the natural order of things. Maybe she
would
learn to love Luca.

M
adalena stayed long enough to eat dinner and escort Cass on a walk around the grounds. After Mada left, Cass wandered through the middle of the garden aimlessly twirling a parasol, journal clutched under one arm, thinking about everything her friend had said. Agnese appeared to have relaxed the ban on Cass leaving the villa after the days she spent isolated in her room. In general, the whole villa just seemed happy to see her out of her room. Except for Luca—he was still gone on his mysterious errands.

The plants were arranged in semicircles: rosebushes in the very center, lilies and marigolds in the middle, and a ring of edible herbs on the outside. The arched trellis, providing partial shade for a pair of stone benches, stood at the back of the garden beyond all of the flowers. When the rosebushes grew heavy with blossoms, Giuseppe would take pride in stringing roses through the wooden slats.

The roses were just beginning to bud, but the marigolds were in full bloom: pale yellow, bright gold, fiery orange. Each plant blossomed bigger and bolder, trying to outdo the rest. An uprooted stem of the golden flowers lay among the mostly naked branches of
Agnese’s rosebushes. These marigolds were drying out, withering away, as the rosebuds waited to be born. Life juxtaposed with death. One thing ending, another beginning.

It made Cass think of Falco and the way he had talked about how life and death were interconnected, how one could not exist without the other. The image of Falco cradling a corpse flashed in her head. Again and again, she had asked herself the same question: Could there be some
reason
he and his friends were stealing bodies? Some greater good that Cass didn’t understand?

No. Even if Falco didn’t believe in heaven, the people he had stolen from their graves most likely did. Falco had robbed souls of their chance for eternal life. And if he was involved with whatever Angelo de Gradi was doing…Cass didn’t even want to think about that.

Cass wondered, not for the first time, if someone had buried her parents’ bodies. The thought of her mother and father being forbidden from entering heaven was almost unbearable. What happened to souls denied their afterlife? Did they wander the earth as spirits? Cass felt her throat clench. She wished her mother could be with her. She desperately needed her guidance. Cass closed her eyes and willed her mother to speak to her, to tell her what she should do.

But when Cass opened her eyes, no mystical signs glimmered before her. Only the sun hung low in the darkening sky. Her mother couldn’t help her.

Reaching down, she yanked the dying marigold from its spot among the roses, crushing the petals in her hand. She turned away from the trellis. The memory of her kiss with Falco hovered too close to the surface. She tried to lock it deep within her, to bury it. Mada had said it wasn’t about forgetting, just about accepting the way things
had to be. Cass needed to forget, though. If she couldn’t have Falco, she wanted to forget that he ever existed.