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But somehow, when Enzo dropped to his knees and gently took Fiore’s heel in hand to slip off his flat shoes and slide his foot instead into the unfamiliar aristocratic garb, Fiore found his heart fluttering in his throat.
The mock-up shoes fit as perfectly as they had yesterday. Enzo took Fiore’s hands in his own and drew him upright. Then he released him and withdrew with an encouraging smile. Fiore could only hope he wouldn’t disappoint him.
These hopes were dashed within his first few experimental steps. The ball of his foot clomped against the floorboards—far less graceful even than the thudding hooves of the horses that had carried him to the hunting lodge and back again.
Fiore turned to find Enzo looking thoughtful rather than disappointed, which he tried to take as a good sign.
“Step down heel first,” Enzo suggested. In hasty reply to Fiore’s skeptical eyebrow, he added, “The heel will bear your weight, I promise. Don’t be afraid to come down hard on it.”
Fiore had once beheld an aristocrat break off a heel in the street and hobble away amidst the laughter of their supposed friends. At least Enzo wouldn’t laugh at him. Probably.
Against his better instincts he took a few strides as instructed. He wavered but did not fall. The heels held up beneath him. Most importantly, he didn’t clomp. Instead his footfalls resounded with the same light click-click-click of Enzo’s own steps.
“Better,” Enzo said with a genuine smile when Fiore looked to him for approval.
Fiore took another turn about the room. It took more steps than he remembered; the heels had shortened his stride. Instinct bid him lean forward. He fought it and rolled his shoulders back, keeping his head high as if he had no doubts to his own prowess. From the door to the window, past an openly-appreciative Enzo, turn and return. Back and forth, back and forth, until—
Fiore set down all his weight on his left heel. It slid out from beneath him with a sharp hiss. His limbs windmilled. He fell.
But rather than striking the floorboards, his body landed in the grasp of two strong arms.
Fiore, suspended between wood and air, blinked up into Enzo’s fearful face. His own heart beat double. He told himself it was from the shock of almost falling. Yet even now, in Enzo’s firm-yet-gentle hold, his pulse refused to return to normal.
“I should have foreseen this,” Enzo muttered with atsk.
“My lack of grace?” Fiore guessed.
Enzo seemed far more alarmed than Fiore thought warranted at what had been a casual self-deprecating jest. “What? No, not in the least. I mean only—this is a known hazard with new heels. If I may…?”
At Fiore’s nod, Enzo steered him to the bed and sat him down. Only then did Fiore realize he’d missed the opportune moment to kiss him. He cursed himself bitterly.
Enzo, meanwhile, knelt before him again and slipped the shoes from his feet. He turned one over to expose its sole. Then, to Fiore’s astonishment, he whipped a pen-knife out of his waistcoat pocket and began slicing away at ball and heel. A tight pattern of scored cross-hatches appeared beneath the blade. Fiore couldn’t help noting that the confidence and speed with which Enzo wielded the knife resembled nothing sort of chirurgical precision.
“New heels are smooth,” Enzo explained when he glanced up just in time to catch Fiore’s raised eyebrow. “So they slide about. But if you give them a touch of rough, then…”
Fiore wondered if Enzo realized just how badly he wanted to give him a touch of rough. He couldn’t quite withhold his smile as he replied, “Then they won’t slip.”
“Precisely.”
“Slip and score,” Fiore murmured.
It was Enzo’s turn to look puzzled.
“Pottery,” Fiore clarified. “It’s how you attach one piece of clay to another. A handle to a pot or something like. You score the surfaces that need to connect, and smear them with slip—a mixture of clay and water, to make a sort of glue. But here,” he added with another smile, “we’re scoring not to slip.”
Enzo answered him with the same shy little smile Fiore had come to love so well in the last few months. “Indeed.”
To have Enzo bend to slip the shoes on for him a second time proved no less thrilling than the first. Likewise his pulse fluttered anew to let Enzo take him by the hands and gently bear him up to stand. Under Enzo’s watchful and appreciative gaze he resumed pacing. His gait grew surer with every stride. And yet Fiore couldn’t help feeling a touch disappointed that his heel didn’t slip out from under him again, if only to give Enzo another opportunity to catch him.
Furthermore, while his quarters served well enough for strolling back and forth, they hardly had room to do anything else. Fiore had had some dance lessons in the conservatorio. He’d also done a great deal of dancing on deck in his years aboard theKingfisher—particularly with sailors on leave. Still, he certainly didn’t object to practice. Especially with Enzo.
“If you do intend to teach me to dance,” Fiore ventured, “we ought to begin before the evening crowds arrive.”
Enzo’s face lit up to rival Phoebus.
Which made Fiore all the more melancholy to see him hide his handsome features behind his mask and beneath his hood before traipsing up on deck. Still it was something to have Enzo’s arm entwined within his own.
No revelers had arrived as of yet. Corelli and her sons comprised a disinterested audience, for which Fiore gave silent thanks.
