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The storm-clouds gathering on Enzo’s brow didn’t bode well in either case.
The duke smiled. “Then I look forward to your correspondence, Signor Fiore.”
~
With that, she arose. By then Enzo had contrived to pin a tight smile over his stormy features. He escorted his sister from the room.
“Do send for me if there’s anything we might do for him,” she stressed again on the library threshold.
Enzo managed a firm nod.
And at long last, Giovanna mercifully went on her way.
Enzo shut the door on her retreat and hastened back to his Fiore, who reached out to catch his hand in his own as he drew near.
“Please don’t say anything to her,” Fiore begged sotto voce. “It’s not worth it.”
Enzo heartily disagreed. “I won’t take her to task, but I’d still like to have a quiet word with her about assumptions.”
“I don’t want her to see me as an obstacle,” Fiore insisted, to Enzo’s surprise. “It’s bad enough that I’m here at all. It’ll be far worse for me if she thinks I’m coming between you and your family.”
Enzo recalled earlier conversations about what Fiore wanted versus what Fiore permitted himself to ask for. The thousand insufferable behaviors he nonetheless suffered to survive. Fiore had only just entered the aristocratic circle and already he’d understood its rules far better than Enzo had divined in the course of twenty-odd years.
“And besides,” Fiore added, drawing Enzo out of his bitter musings. “She does mean well. As you’ve said.”
“She does,” Enzo conceded. His mind ran on. He’d failed to protect Fiore from Nascimbene. Now he’d failed to shield him from the intrusive—if well-meant—demands of Giovanna. An invalid already exhausted by his ordeal shouldn’t have had to endure the further strain of entertaining a duke. Enzo ought to have considered it before it ever arose. He would make matters clear to his sister later. For the moment, he knew of no other way to begin righting his wrongs than by saying, “I’m sorry.”
~
Fiore stared at him. “Whatever for?”
“Everything,” Enzo replied.
Fiore’s encounter with the duke had exhausted all powers of polite conversation. He hadn’t the wit or the patience left to decipher riddles. “You’re going to have to be far more specific if you wish me to understand you.”
“I should never have brought you to the ball.”
Fiore knew not what he could mean by this besides the obvious. “Because you’re ashamed of me.”
“What?” Genuine horror struck Enzo’s features. “No, no, never that. I meant only—I exposed you to terrible danger.”
Now Fiore began to see what he was driving at. “Did you know Nascimbene would be there?”
The name grew easier and easier for Fiore to say with repetition—less of a haunting, unspeakable presence and more of a solvable problem.
Enzo didn’t feel the same way, judging by how he flinched from the sound. “I should have thought to ask.”
“How could you when I never told you his name?”
“I should’ve thought to ask that as well.”
Fiore scoffed. “Ridiculous.”
“I should’ve stayed with you at the very least.”
“You stayed the whole night.”
“I should’ve brought you back here with me afterward.” In reply to Fiore’s cocked eyebrow, Enzo added, “Or offered to.”
