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Artemisia sipped her coffee. “You have a beautiful house, your grace.”
Enzo demurred.
A tense silence settled over the library.
Artemisia set down her cup and turned to Fiore. “Pray forgive the intrusion, but I had wondered, in light of your absence from my studio, if I might sketch you today?”
A return to business was at least a return to the normalcy Fiore had greatly missed. Still, he had misgivings about his invalid appearance. He looked to Enzo. “Would it be chirurgically advisable?”
“Reclining poses ought to be safe,” said Enzo. “I’d caution against standing over-long. Or contorting.”
Much the same as the instructions Fiore had received after his appendectomy. To Artemisia, Fiore said, “How will you have me, then?”
“As you are now will do.” Artemisia cast a wary glance at Enzo. “If your grace has no objection?”
Enzo blinked. “None whatsoever.”
Artemisia produced her zibaldone from her satchel.
Enzo gave it a thoughtful glance and turned to Fiore. “Would you like to draw as well? I could fetch yours.”
Fiore felt as touched by the gesture as he did delighted in Artemisia’s evident if suppressed astonishment. To have a duke not only at his beck and call but also anticipating his needs was certainly a feather in his cap.
At his nod, Enzo left the library.
Fiore thought in Enzo’s absence Artemisia might behave more like herself. She did begin to draw. But even her sketching didn’t proceed as normal. Artemisia typically began her sketches with broad sweeping gestures to block in the angles. (Fiore did much the same when he drew, for it was she who’d taught him.) Today, however, she made a series of small scratches in the middle of the page, hunched over it all the while as though jealously guarding some secret.
Before he could question her on the point, she ceased sketching, straightened out, and turned the zibaldone to face him.
“What d’you think?” she asked.
The whole of the page was blank save for a single scrawled line across its dead center. In letters so small Fiore had to squint to read them, she had written the following.
If he is holding you against your will, tell me this sketch is beautiful.
“Hideous,” Fiore declared without hesitation. “Your worst one yet.”
She raised her brows. “If you insist.”
Despite himself, Fiore felt genuinely touched. “Your concern is appreciated.”
Artemisia shrugged with nonchalance, but a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Just thought I’d ask.”
She might have liked to pretend her heart was as much stone as the marble beneath her chisel. Fiore might have even believed her once. But he knew better now, and to know it made him smile, if softly.
“You have to admit,” she went on, having turned her zibaldone ‘round again, turned the page, and begun sketching in true earnest, “it all looks rather concerning from the outside. You attend the ball on the duke’s arm, only to vanish immediately afterward. Then the duke’s staff arrive to remove personal effects from your quarters. And the only hint of your survival is a pale figure sometimes spotted in the highest windows of Ca’ Scaevola.”
Fiore conceded the point.
“He’s looking after you well, then?” Artemisia asked, glancing up from her sketch to meet his gaze with raised brows.
“Exceedingly well,” Fiore assured her. Then, because he couldn’t resist needling, “Were you planning to mount a rescue if you found otherwise?”
Artemisia shrugged. “Maybe.”
If it weren’t for the ache in his wounded cheek, Fiore might’ve grinned. “What else have I missed in town?”
“Not much. Most of the gossip is about you. Though that might die out soon. Evidently Lady Zampieri’s latest novel is just Lord De Laurentiis’s marriage woes with the names changed. Tagliabue did the engravings. Supposedly based on Bissacco’s portraits of the not-so-happy couple—at the author’s instruction.”
