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“Far more interesting than a duke’s courtesan going missing,” Fiore declared with more hope than confidence.
Artemisia hummed doubtfully.
The click of Enzo’s heels echoing down the hall announced his return. He appeared on the library threshold shortly thereafter. Fiore expected Artemisia to grow nervous again, but she sketched on in absolute ease, as if she were in her own studio rather than a duke’s palazzo. He realized, belatedly, that it was not Enzo’s rank or wealth that had unsettled her, but rather his own uncertain fate.
“Pardon,” Enzo said as he approached. “I don’t mean to intrude…”
“It’s no intrusion, your grace,” Artemisia assured him without looking up from her sketching.
Thus permitted, Enzo handed Fiore his zibaldone with the shy, handsome smile Fiore loved so well.
Once he had his zibaldone in hand, however, Fiore found he hardly knew what to do with it. He hadn’t possessed the strength or focus required to draw since his rescue. Ca’ Scaevola held plenty of beautiful compositions for him to capture—the architecture alone would suffice to fill several volumes—yet as he flipped through the leaves to reach a blank page, he found the last one he’d scrawled over. His rough draft begging Enzo for another chance. Heat flooded his face in echo of the humiliation he’d felt when Enzo discovered it, tempered by his own good fortune that Enzo had taken the lines in their intended spirit and, against all odds, realized the simple truth of how desperately Fiore wanted him.
And now, all Fiore wished to draw was—
“Does it meet with your approval, your grace?”
Artemisia’s voice jolted Fiore out of his lovesick musings. He glanced up from his zibaldone to find her presenting her sketch for Enzo’s examination.
Enzo’s soft smile and the wondrous gleam in his eye bespoke approval. “Resplendent.”
Fiore wouldn’t have praised it quite so high. Though he admitted Artemisia had a very skillful hand, and when rendered by her pencil his emaciated frame seemed not altogether so corpse-like as he’d feared. Perhaps there remained something for Enzo to desire after all.
And no doubt Artemisia knew as well as Fiore that so long as she kept him as her model she would have an eager patron for whatever works she created in his image.
Artemisia accepted her zibaldone back from Enzo, tucked it back into her satchel, and stood, thanking the duke for his hospitality and Fiore for his time. Having accomplished what she came to do—both overtly and covertly—she seemed disinclined to overstay her welcome.
“When shall we meet again?” Fiore inquired. “You did ask to sketch me in my ballroom suit.”
“You’re most welcome to return,” Enzo told her. He looked to Fiore. “Or if you’d prefer…?”
The implicit reminder sufficed to send a thrill through Fiore’s heart. He grinned at Artemisia. “I’m very nearly well enough to wander the city again, if you’ll suffer my return to your studio.”
A wry half-smile wound its way up her cheek. “Either would delight me. What should I tell Corelli?”
Fiore raised his brows. “That I’m alive and well?”
“About your quarters, I mean,” said Artemisia with more patience than he deserved. “And your plans therein.”
Fiore knew not how to answer her. While he didn’t intend to return there to dwell, he had left behind all his worldly belongings, only a fraction of which Carlotta had brought to Ca’ Scaevola. And he owed rent at the very least. He looked to Enzo. “When could I visit, d’you think? From a chirurgical perspective.”
Enzo shrugged. “Tomorrow, if you felt up to it.”
The thought of going outside so soon sent an unexpected thrill through Fiore’s veins. He turned to Artemisia with a grin. “Then you may tell her she will see me on the morrow.”
She replied with a smile and took her leave of them.
Now that Fiore no longer felt the need to preserve his posture or composition for her sketching, he caught Enzo’s eye and made a slight gesture of his hand. This sufficed to draw Enzo to him, like winding a thread, and soon Fiore had him snug beside him on the sofa just as he’d wished.
“It’s nice to know I’ve not been forgotten by the outside world,” Fiore observed.
Enzo looked more disturbed by this than Fiore thought warranted. “Who could forget you?”
“You’d be surprised,” Fiore mused. Though he supposed he wouldn’t know either way if those who’d abandoned his bed recalled him whilst wrapped in the arms of their lawful spouses. He worried the corner of his zibaldone’s page between his fingertips. Then, realizing that it remained open to the page of his failed script, and that Enzo couldn’t help but look over his shoulder from their present position, he hastily turned it to a blank.
“What do you wish to draw?” asked Enzo.
Perhaps Artemisia’s visit had emboldened him. Or perhaps the anodyne meandering through his veins dulled his better senses. Regardless, when Fiore intended only to shrug, he instead heard himself reply, “I dare not say.”
