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She wanted to drink in that touch while she still could. She wanted to imprint it on her memory so she could take it out and remember it on the long nights ahead, when she was home and Venice and Luca was a distant memory.
The story built, the young lovers united at last, only to be forced apart by family.
She seemed more acutely aware of Luca than ever. The score was in Italian and, while she caught only a snatched phrase here and there, she understood the passion, she felt the pain and the torment.
How ironic, she thought, that he had brought her here tonight, to hear the story of a fallen woman for whom love was painful and hard won and ultimately futile.
Had he brought her here as some kind of lesson?
That life, as he had told her before they had left the palazzo, did not always have a happy ending?
The third act came to an end. Despite bursts of elation, bursts of happiness, Violetta’s death had always been a tragedy waiting to happen.
She felt tears squeeze from her eyes at the finale, wondering why this story affected her so deeply. It was just a story, she told herself, just fiction. It wasn’t true.
And yet she felt the tragedy of Violetta’s wasted love to her core.
Why?
When in a few days, little more than a week, she would be free to return home.
Free.
There was no chance she would end up like Violetta. She wouldn’t let it.
And yet, increasingly, she felt herself tipping, tripping over uneven ground, trying pointlessly to keep her balance and all the while hurtling towards that very same finale.
‘What did you think?’ he asked her as they rose to their feet, the audience wild, celebrating a magnificent performance. ‘Did you understand it?’
And she sniffed through her tears as she nodded and clapped as hard as anyone.
More than you will ever know.
* * *
That night sleep eluded her. She lay awake listening to the sound of Luca’s steady breathing, the sound of the occasional water craft passing and all overlaid by the tortured ramblings of her own mind.
In the end she gave up on sleep entirely, slipped on the jade silk gown and resumed her vigil at the windows, feeling strangely forlorn and desolate as she stared out over the wide canal, drinking in a view that would all too soon be nothing more than a fond memory.
And even though she tried to tell herself it was the opera that was to blame for her mood, she knew it was more. She knew it came from deep inside herself.
She sighed as the light curtains puffed in the breeze and floated around her. The evenings were distinctly cooler now, clouds more frequent visitors to the skies blocking the moon and sun, the wind picking up and carrying with it the scent of a summer in decline. She stood there at the open windows and drank it all in, building an album in her mind of the scents and sounds and sights that she would be able to pull out and turn the pages of when she was home.
Next week.
Anguish squeezed the air from her lungs.
Suddenly it was all too soon.
She heard a movement behind her. She heard a noise like something tearing and she made to turn her head.
‘Don’t turn,’ he instructed.
‘What are you doing?’
‘What I knew I had to do when I saw you standing framed in the window,’ he said, and something in his voice gave her a primitive thrill, a delicious sense of anticipation that made her turn her face back towards the darkened canal. ‘Keep watching the water, and the water craft.’
‘As you wish,’ she said, a smile curling her lips as she felt the heat at her back as he came close and joined her on the balcony, a smile that turned distinctly to thoughts of sex when she felt him hard and ready between them. She sighed at the feel of him. God, she would miss this. She put a hand to the nearest curtain, meaning to pull it closed.
‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘Leave the curtains. I want your hands on the balcony.’
And with a rush of sizzling realisation, his meaning became crystal clear. ‘But we can’t...not here...not on the balcony...with the boats.’
He dropped his mouth to the curve of her neck, kissing her skin, his teeth grazing her flesh, stoking a fire that burned much, much lower. ‘Yes. Here, on the balcony. With the boats.’
She gasped. ‘But—’
‘Keep watching,’ he said when she tried to turn, to remonstrate, but he was right behind her and she was pinned up against the cool marble balustrade, cool at her front, hot where he pressed against her back, as another craft chugged slowly by. ‘They can’t see us,’ he said, as she felt the slide of her gown up her calves, his fingertips tickling the sensitive skin at the back of her knees, making her shiver in her secret pleasure. ‘Even if anyone looks, all they will see will be shadows at a window. One shadow, where you and I join.’
