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Fiore hesitated.
“Perhaps,” Enzo suggested, keeping his voice low and gentle—for Fiore resembled nothing so much as a persecuted creature ready to bolt— “we might sit a spell on the balcony. You could refresh yourself in the cool night air. Catch your breath.”
Fiore stared up at him as he spoke. At first his eyes flicked between Enzo’s own. Then they settled, meeting his gaze and matching his steadiness. With every word from Enzo’s lips his breath slowed, until at last, when Enzo had finished, he seemed almost approaching ease.
“Yes,” Fiore replied. His smile had softened into something more genuine. “That would be lovely.”
Enzo withdrew his hand from Fiore’s rigid clasp and offered him his arm in its place.
Fiore entwined them together again at once in the grip of a drowning man.
They skirted the edges of the ballroom. Enzo indulged a quick dip into the banquet hall for a glass of sparkling wine which he thought might calm Fiore’s nerves a little. He’d supposed correctly, judging by the glance of frail gratitude Fiore served him up in reply when he handed him a fresh goblet. Then they slipped away out onto the first balcony Enzo could find.
The first breath of fresh air seemed to do a great deal towards restoring Fiore’s balance. Enzo led him to a stone seat beneath the rail overlooking the Grand Canal and the lagoon beyond. The moon had waned to the merest sliver, but the stars shone resplendent regardless.
Fiore looked more resplendent still, even in the midst of his horrors. It eased Enzo’s heart to see him relax, inch by inch, moment by moment. After a while his hand ceased trembling and he could accept the wineglass from Enzo’s grasp. A few sips restored him further. He broke off staring into the night and shot a pleading glance up at Enzo. Enzo swooped down beside him at once and, at another gesture—the slightest of shivers across Fiore’s shoulders—drew his tabarro cloak over them both. Under its shield Fiore’s trembling, at last, vanished.
“We can’t leave.”
The sound of Fiore’s voice—smaller and softer than anything Enzo had heard from him in all their acquaintance—startled Enzo like a thunderclap. The words themselves proved no less confounding.
“Whyever not?” Enzo rejoined, keeping his voice low to match Fiore’s.
Fiore stared up at him with a gaze that threatened to rend a heart of stone in twain. “Won’t the gentlemen on my dance card be insulted?”
Despite himself Enzo scoffed. “Their wounded pride is nothing to your security.”
A bitter laugh escaped Fiore. “Flattering their prideismy security.”
Enzo opened his mouth to argue the point—that of course Fiore’s feelings took priority—but before a single syllable dropt from his tongue, his mind flashed. Far from the ball and their present predicament, all the way back to a conversation early in their acquaintance regarding preferences, and the preference to be paid above all else, and how only repeated enquiry drew out what Fiore truly desired. In his mind’s eye he saw again Fiore wincing as he pushed off the wall to greet him in the piazza, pushing through evident pain with a smile to accompany Enzo on a stroll, and all that a mere echo of the pain he must have pushed through to accrue such an injury in the first place. What else had Fiore pushed through to make his coin—to survive? He hadn’t the fortune or the family connexions Enzo himself enjoyed, and while Enzo had a dim awareness of his own life’s advantages, he’d never yet thought of Fiore’s lack. How much Fiore must put up with from men like him day after day after day. How could Fiore afford to prioritize his own feelings when, in his own words—
Flattering their prideismy security.
“Enzo?”
A soft and gentle enquiry. Fiore’s voice sounded sweeter than birdsong. It nonetheless fell like another thunderclap upon Enzo’s ears and jolted him out of his horrific spiral. For Fiore to think of Enzo’s distress now—a mere drop of misery in the howling tempest of Fiore’s present predicament, with a monster from his past hunting him and him unable to retreat lest he lose his future hopes—
Aloud, Enzo replied, “To vanish mysteriously before the end of the evening would only serve to increase your intrigue and allure.”
Which was true.
Fiore studied him in silence. His dark gaze flicked between Enzo’s eyes. He worried his lip between his teeth. Then his hunched shoulders rolled back in resolve and he drew in a steadying breath. “Then by all means, let us go.”
Enzo withheld a sigh of relief. “I’ll have Carlotta summon the gondola. Won’t take me a moment to find her.”
Fiore tensed in his arms. In a voice Enzo now recognized as forced calm, he asked, “May I accompany you?”
“Of course.” For, loathe as Enzo felt to drag poor Fiore around the ball whilst he searched for his manservant, he well understood how badly Fiore wished not to be left alone. And while Enzo might not have been a very good man, he was hardly cruel enough to leave Fiore behind now.
Enzo stood and offered Fiore his arm again. Fiore accepted it with a hand that did not tremble. Together they re-entered Ca’ Grimaldi.
Their forward progress allowed Enzo to turn his mind to brighter thoughts. Fiore had agreed to leave. They were going together. All he had to do was find Carlotta and—
“Pray forgive my impertinence, your grace.”
Enzo knew from his years at university that it was impossible for the flow of blood to reverse its course in one’s veins. Yet he felt very much as if it did when the impresario’s voice rang in his ears. He turned—a gesture that appeared as though he meant to address the speaker, but which in actuality placed his own body between Nascimbene and Fiore. He didn’t speak. Best to let the mask do the talking. It was marvelous how often a stony, silent, stoic stare sufficed to send an unwanted supplicant on their way.
Tonight, however, Fortuna didn’t smile on his efforts.
