Venom (41 page)

As though in response to her thoughts, Luca appeared from around the side of the villa. It was so like him not to use the servants’ door. Cass hadn’t seen her fiancé in days and had almost gone back to thinking of him as the awkward, bookish boy who left Venice to study in France. Now she was forced to acknowledge his transformation once again. Watching as the wind ruffled his thick blondish hair and blew his cloak back from his broad shoulders, Cass couldn’t deny that her fiancé had become incredibly handsome. The thought made her feel awkward and twisty inside, as if merely finding Luca attractive was a betrayal of Falco.

Falco. The boy she could never see again.

“Hello, Cass.” The words fell stiltedly from Luca’s lips. Cass had never heard him call her by her nickname before. He stopped several feet from her, probably waiting to see if she would bolt out of the garden and into the graveyard rather than be close to him. Cass smiled in response. She gathered her skirts and sat on one of two stone benches near the garden’s center.

Luca approached her. He walked stiffly, as if he were still getting accustomed to his long arms and legs. “Sometimes I think we use more water in a day for our gardens than peasant families use for a month’s worth of cooking and washing.”

Cass looked up at him. “Is there a water shortage I don’t know about?” She hoped he couldn’t tell she’d been crying.

“No.” Just the faintest French accent colored the single word. Luca reached out to examine the beginning bud of a ruby-colored rose. The bloom snapped off in his hand. He twisted it around in
his fingers. “I remember when you were a child. You used to have a nickname for all the flowers. You called the marigolds ‘fireflies,’ I recall, and lilies were ‘ladies’ purses.’”

“I can’t believe you remember that,” Cass said. “You hardly even played out here with me.”

“Remember how I used to hide things for you?”

Cass remembered. Before they were engaged, Luca would bring her little treasures, things he found when he was out wandering around. Once it was a string of green ceramic beads. Another time he left her a smooth stone shaped like a heart. He used to mark the hiding places with lilies stolen from Agnese’s own plants. Cass had forgotten about the game until Luca mentioned it.

“I liked that game,” Cass said. “I was sad when you got older and stop playing it. You practically quit talking to me.”

“I got nervous around you after our arrangement became official,” Luca said. “I used to watch you sometimes, though.”

“That’s kind of creepy, don’t you think?” Cass raised an eyebrow, and couldn’t help but crack a small smile.

“You stopped being just a little girl.” A red flush crept across Luca’s high cheekbones. “I wasn’t very good at talking to women. I’m still not.”

His shyness surprised her. Luca, the man, was proving to be so different from the boy she remembered. She thought of what Mada had said about growing to love somebody. She looked down at her hands and said haltingly, “My behavior has been inexcusable these last few days, so I won’t try to excuse it. I can only imagine what you must think of me.”

Luca finally dared to sit on the bench across from Cass. “It’s all
right,” he said, still twirling the rosebud in his big hands. “I guess your aunt sprang it on you, announcing our engagement so suddenly.” He smiled, but Cass could tell it was forced. Hurt still lingered in his eyes. “You know, most girls wouldn’t mind being Signora da Peraga.”

“I know,” Cass said. She could think of nothing else to say.

Luca said, this time with a warm smile, “But you are different from most girls, aren’t you, Cassandra?”

Her hands tightened around her journal. Somehow Luca managed to see something good in her, even where there was nothing good to see. And yet, his words reminded her of Falco’s.

“I’d prefer it if the idea of our engagement didn’t make you miserable,” Luca continued. “Does it?” he asked softly. “Make you miserable?”

A few days ago, all Cass had wanted was to escape from her obligation to marry, and now she felt Luca loosening the band around her neck, unlocking the door to her cage. But Cass couldn’t tell him the truth. She had already hurt Falco. She wouldn’t hurt Luca and Agnese too. Being with Luca made sense. Being with Falco was madness.

“I hate seeing you so sad,” Luca said after a pause. “I hate to think I may be the cause of your unhappiness.”

Cass hovered on the brink of tears again. “It’s not you. I’ve just been feeling…alone.” She swallowed. “Contessa Liviana’s death got me thinking a lot about my parents.” This was not a complete lie.

Luca leaned forward on his elbows. “I understand,” he said softly. “It’s been years, but I still feel my father’s death as if it happened yesterday. And I never told you this, but I lost a younger sister back when I was just a child myself. Diana. I think about her every day.”
He ducked his head, like the memory was physically weighing him down. “There’s no crime in still grieving your parents. You don’t ever have to get over them.”

Sympathy bloomed inside Cass. Even though she was grieving Falco more than she was her parents, it was comforting that Luca understood her for once. “I didn’t even know you had a sister.”

Luca looked up. His pale eyes darkened. “She’s—she would be a year younger than you. She died the summer before our parents introduced us. My mother can’t even bring herself to speak of her.”

“I’m so sorry,” Cass said. She reached out to squeeze Luca’s hand. “Was it fevers? Or the plague?” The Black Death, as Venetians often called the plague, had decimated the population.

“They called it a drowning,” Luca said abruptly.

Called it?
Cass started. “But you think otherwise?”

“Let’s just say my family is riddled with bad luck. Between Diana dying young and my father succumbing to the plague, my mother has gone half mad with grief.” Luca blinked, as though the sun were too bright for his eyes. “I wish I could do more for her,” he said, slipping his hand from Cass’s. He rubbed at a small scuff on one of his leather boots.

As he stood, a single red petal fell from his black velvet cloak. “I’m glad you came out of your room. I hope to see you at supper.” Luca unfastened the cloak from around his neck and handed it to her. “Here. It’s getting dark. You might get cold.”

Cass accepted the cloak and draped it across her front like a blanket. A square of white cotton fell out of the pocket and she reached down and picked it up. Luca’s handkerchief. Her fingers stroked the embroidered initials—LdP. She thought back to her conversation with Madalena about dropping handkerchiefs. It seemed like the
exchange had happened in another lifetime. She tucked the square of fabric back into the pocket of his cloak.

Luca smiled. “Thanks,” he said. “I manage to lose more of those than you can imagine.” He turned back toward the house.

The air turned cool as the stars came out, but Luca’s cloak kept Cass surprisingly warm. A blurry face appeared at one of the windows. Cass recognized Agnese’s favorite white cap. Cass gave her aunt a hesitant wave and the face vanished. Cass wondered if everyone had been worrying about her. She remembered the cautious way Luca had approached her, as if she were a wild horse that might spook and run off.

She ripped a blank page from her journal and started a letter to Falco.

I was wrong about who you are; I cannot possibly love a man such as you, nor can I see you again. It is not fair to either of us. Please do not try to see me or communicate with me in any way.

Cass knew that if she had the letter delivered to Falco, he would honor her wishes. Sighing, she tucked the piece of parchment inside the back cover of her journal. She couldn’t send it. Not yet, anyway.

Cass slipped inside the back door, where the cook was busy assembling cream-filled pastries in an otherwise empty kitchen. He wiped his hands on his apron and bowed in Cass’s direction. “Tell me the truth. It was my chicken broth that cured you, right?”

Cass laughed. “It must have been. Both Slipper and I enjoyed it.”

The cook gave her a severe look. “That little beast should be eating scraps.” But then he winked to show Cass he was joking.

When Cass entered the dining area, Agnese and Luca both beamed so brightly that for once the drafty, cavelike room seemed filled with heat and light. A pair of dinner servants stood at the far end of the table in their blue and silver uniforms.

“I’ll be right back,” Cass said. She hung Luca’s cloak over the back of a chair in the portego and then went to her room to put her journal away.

When she returned to the dining room, one of the servants pulled out Cass’s chair for her and the other placed an embroidered napkin in her lap. The boys stepped back from the table and stood against the wall, waiting to fetch empty plates or refill wineglasses as needed. Cass smiled hesitantly at her aunt, wondering if a lecture on manners would be forthcoming.

Agnese wore one of her finest gowns, a muted sea-green satin with a strand of dyed pearls to match. Siena had even helped her apply color to her lips and cheeks. Cass hadn’t seen her aunt look this vibrant in years. “I knew a visit from Madalena would raise your spirits,” Agnese said. She made no comment about Cass’s self-imposed seclusion.

In fact, no one commented on Cass’s recent behavior. The servants brought each course to the table with their usual polite smiles. Cass’s appetite had returned, and she enjoyed a bowl of vegetable stew and a plate of broiled rosemary chicken.

Siena entered the room once, her blue eyes barely lifting to meet Cass’s gaze as she hurried past. Cass felt a flash of guilt, and resolved to apologize later for snapping at her. There was still no news of Feliciana, and Cass knew Siena was nearly crazed with worry. No wonder she had told Cass to count her blessings.

Agnese prompted Cass and Luca to talk to each other, but Cass
had said almost everything she could think of to say to Luca in the garden earlier. There was not much she could tell him about recent days without incriminating herself or Falco. She cut her chicken into smaller and smaller bits, chewing slowly so that she didn’t feel pressured to speak. Luca didn’t seem to mind the occasional awkward silences, jumping to fill them with stories about his life abroad.

After the servants cleared the plates, they filled the wineglasses again and served Cass, Agnese, and Luca each a pastry for dessert.

Agnese swallowed half of her pastry in a single bite. “Have you heard anything about the murder?” she asked Luca. “Dreadful, that poor maid floating up in the canal.”

Luca had the crumbling dessert halfway to his lips. He placed it neatly back on his plate and rubbed both hands on his napkin. His whole body seemed to tense up. Cass set her fork down. She stared at Luca as she waited for him to speak.

“I have actually heard rumors,” he said slowly. “There was some gossip in the city about it. There is talk of a gang roving the cemeteries at night…”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.

Agnese finished the second half of her pastry and chased it with a big swallow of wine.

“Satanists, if you ask me,” Luca added.

Agnese bobbed her head in agreement. “The girl was strangled and then cut up like a chicken, they say. I’m not even sure San Domenico is safe anymore.”

“I don’t see why everyone is suddenly so concerned,” Cass said. Even to her own ears her voice sounded strained. “Venice has always had more than her share of murders.”

“Drunken brawls and knife fights,” Luca said. He stared back at
her. Was it her imagination, or did she see a challenge in his eyes? “But not murders of this kind. And of innocent women.”

Cass’s throat felt as though she had swallowed a chicken bone. “Why so interested, Luca? Don’t you have other, more important duties to which you should attend?” She downed half a glass of wine in one swallow. Her mind flooded with terrible thoughts. Did Luca somehow know about Falco? Had he been spying on her?

“I consider it both my civic and domestic duty,” Luca said, smiling tightly. “I want to make sure that my wife-to-be isn’t troubled by any…
undesirable
company. The women of Venice are one of our most precious resources, after all. I want to be sure they are protected.”

Anger flared inside Cass. She couldn’t believe she had softened to him earlier—that she had, for a second, even thought she could be
happy
with him. “The women of Venice are far more capable than most men realize,” she snapped. If the room got any colder, Cass would have to ask one of the servants to bring her a cloak.

Agnese cleared her throat to speak, but to Cass’s amazement Luca cut her off. It was like he’d completely forgotten her aunt was at the table with them. His voice rose and his face reddened again, but this time not from embarrassment. “I am well aware that many women believe themselves to be stronger than they are. They might believe, for example, that it is a fully rational thing to go gallivanting around the city alone at night. They believe that they are playing a game—they have no idea how high the stakes really are.”

Cass had never seen Luca show this much emotion, and it was both fascinating and frightening. A chill zipped up her spine. Was he
threatening
her? She forced herself to maintain eye contact. “You are
not my husband yet,” she said softly, but with force. “And I do not have to listen to you.”

Luca’s fork fell to the table with a clatter. “Then you are a sillier girl than I thought,” he burst out. “And I would urge you to be more careful. Where
have
you been spending your time, Cassandra?”

“One might ask the same question of you,” she said. Both Siena and Madalena had claimed to have seen him on the Rialto. They couldn’t both be mistaken. Her eyes narrowed. “How long have you really been in Venice, Luca? You told me you had just arrived, but you were seen in the city more than a week ago! How do you explain
that
?”

“All I have done since arriving in Venice is attend to your safety.” Luca flung his balled-up napkin onto his untouched dessert plate. “What you don’t know
can
hurt you, Cass.” He pushed his chair back abruptly from the table.