AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Then I must be a monster.”
Another silence fell.
The pain in Enzo’s eyes was unbearable.
Fiore looked away. The library loomed all around him. Vast. Historied. Beyond anything he deserved to witness, let alone dwell within.
“May I?”
Fiore glanced up sharp to find Enzo offering his hand, palm upraised.
Against all his better instincts and in service to all his most foolish desires, Fiore grasped it.
Enzo caught and held his gaze in return. A silent enquiry shone in his eyes. Only after Fiore answered it with a nod did Enzo raise his hand to his lips and kiss his knuckles. Then, when Fiore could not halt his hand from caressing Enzo’s cheek, Enzo pressed another kiss to the inside of his wrist. He met Fiore’s gaze again as he broke away to speak.
“Nothing you’ve said has altered your place in my heart by even one drop.”
An intelligent fellow would accept those words at face value. Fiore couldn’t stop himself from replying. “Yet you’re angry.”
Enzo shook his head. “I’m only angry with myself for not arriving sooner.”
Fiore had anticipated anger, but not like this. He’d anticipated blame and jealousy and rage and spite and perhaps if he was very lucky, forgiveness. He hadn’t dared dream of anything like this.
Instead of any of that, he heard himself say, “I’m just glad you arrived at all.”
Fiore hadn’t intended for his voice to break. But it’d broken all the same, and the sorrowful cast in Enzo’s eyes dispelled any hope that it’d escaped his notice.
Fiore’s gaze flicked to Enzo’s mouth and back again.
And to his infinite relief, Enzo indulged him with another kiss.
~
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The following fortnight of Fiore’s convalescence passed quietly.
While Fiore had enjoyed the pastissada de caval, sanguinaccio dolce, and many flavors of gelato served up by Ca’ Scaevola’s cook, he felt beyond ready to sample solid food at long last—even if it wasn’t the sarde in saor he wished for. (Enzo had vetoed that, saying the onions, raisins, and pine nuts would do his entrails no favors at this point in his recovery.) Instead he had eggs and ham cooked in butter, the latter a luxury he’d never even witnessed apart from the sculpture at the ball, much less tasted. It certainly felt rich on his tongue. Enzo insisted he required hearty fare to keep up his strength, and Fiore certainly wasn’t about to argue if it meant he could eat like a king. Better still, he sat upright at a table by the window rather than being forced to recline abed with a tray across his lap. How long he could stay upright remained to be seen, but for the moment, anodyne kept the pain at bay and his bandages kept his entrails in place. Likewise it was a delight to actually share a meal with Enzo rather than just have Enzo spoon-feeding him. Not that Fiore didn’t appreciate the spoon-feeding, but this was a wonderful relief for his dignity.
It was as they concluded this long-awaited meal that a distinctive knock fell on the bedchamber door.
“Carlotta,” Enzo said in reply to Fiore’s enquiring glance and went to answer her.
Carlotta herself did not enter the bedchamber. Instead her hands alone emerged, bearing two flat stacked boxes and a package tied up in brown paper. Her voice echoed in from the antechamber. “From the tailor, your grace.”
Enzo accepted them with thanks. She withdrew in total silence and vanished not unlike a ghost.
Fiore’s mind whirled with curiosity as Enzo shut the door on her departure and returned to the table. His bewilderment only increased when Enzo laid the packages out in front of him.
“For me?” Fiore asked. The words sounded stupid the moment they left his lips but he couldn’t catch them before they fell.
Enzo nodded with his shy and handsome smile—as if he were abashed to offer Fiore something paltry.
What Fiore found beneath the paper wrapping proved far from paltry. Slipping off the string and lifting just one corner of the first package revealed pearl-white gleaming silk. It unfolded into a pair of stockings, one of three, the other two wool knit almost as smooth as the silk. In the box beneath them lay three linen shirts—sewn to his own proportions rather than Enzo’s, whose shirt he now drowned in beneath a similarly voluminous wrapping-gown—and a pair of chestnut wool breeches almost identical to those lost to the filth of the catacombs, save their superior cut and cool-handed weave.
“This is just the beginning,” Enzo broke in with an apologetic tone. “I wasn’t sure what you might want for waistcoats. Or what other colors for breeches.”
Fiore knew he must say something. But in his weakened state the gift left him too stunned to speak. He hardly dared open the second box. His hands trembled as he raised its lid. Within lay two pairs of shoes; one identical to those he’d lost, the other a less-ornamented but no less beautifully-crafted match to his heels.
