Ethan was in love.
She returned his frank appraisal with one of her own, eyes casually skimming his person—lips, chest, thighs.
Heaven help his heart. It thundered beneath his sternum like a Highland waterfall after a summer storm.
“Your English is excellent,” he continued.
“As is yours,” she replied sardonically, ignoring his implied question as tohowshe knew English. “Though I cannot quite place your accent.”
“I am a Scot, madam.”
“Ah.”
A pause. Her lady’s maid joined the businessman in snoring.
The lady spared a sideways glance for her servant and then brought her cool, gray eyes back to his. Something about the movement struck Ethan as bizarrely familiar. As if he had been on the receiving end of her gaze before.
Surely that was impossible. He would never forget this woman’s face.
His sense of recognition had to come from Fate. That he and this unknown lady were intended to meet one another.
Perhaps they had been born under the same predestined star.
Och, that was rather good.
He penciled the romantic thought in his notes.
“And yourself, madam?” He lifted his eyes from his notebook. “From whence do you hail?”
“Venezia.”
“La Serenissima.” He stated Venice’s nickname—The Most Serene. “And your . . . husband?”
“Morto, I am afraid.” If she found her husband’s death a trial, her tone did not convey it.
“Ah, you have my condolences.” Ethan’s intonation implied the opposite of his words.
Her answering faint smile said she did not miss his meaning.
“What is your destinat—” he began.
“You are a writer then?” she interrupted, nodding toward his notebook.
“Sí. Un poeta,” he replied. His Italian wasn’t excellent, but he knew the basics, particularly words that were essentially English with an Italian flourish.
“A poet?” She spared a glance for his pen. “That explains much.”
Part of Ethan wanted to legitimize his work. To explain that he wasn’t merely an aspiring poet or some wealthy nobleman who fancied himself a wit with a pen.
No. He was Ethan Penn-Leith. The man one reviewer had recently described as, “the most celebrated poet since Milton.” A writer so well-known, he could scarcely walk down Bond Street in London without being mobbed by enthusiastic acolytes.
But he said nothing. He liked that this unknown Italian woman knew as little of him as he did of her. That his name would likely mean nothing.
“Do you like poetry?” he asked.
“Sì, mi piace. But I prefer Dante to your Shakespeare.”
“Is that so?” He raised his eyebrows in a challenge.
