He lifted the cloth off the sculpture. As he walked around the pedestal, viewing it from every angle, his mind’s eye struggled to recapture a picture of the principessa in repose, lush and desirous. Instead, an altogether different image insisted on pushing in:a woman…tall and willowy of form…English elegance… Outraged eyes staring up at him from the ground, her skirts billowed about her…
Strangely, he found himself wishing the woman had accepted his hand to assist her to her feet. He wanted to peel away her kidskin glove and know the feel of that hand. The flesh. The sinew and bone beneath. Hers would be a slender, elegant hand possessed of steel, like the rest of her, he suspected.
He gave his head a clearing shake, dismissing the image and the woman. He’d come to Italy to escape her sort—English…proper. Now, he had but a mere six months before he would return to the soggy shores of his homeland and resume his rightful place in its hierarchy. He wouldn’t waste that time thinking about proper Englishwomen with blue eyes that sparked with fire and hair that shone platinum in the sun and whose curls only awaited a light breeze to become unruly.
No, he wouldn’t think about that woman at all.
Instead, he would attempt to bend a stubborn lump of clay to his will for a while longer, before closing up his studio for the evening.
Then he would try to make himself presentable for a gathering of his peers. He wasn’t sure he even knew how anymore.
He might have gone entirely to seed.
*
Well, perhaps notentirely gone to seed, Tristan thought as he stepped inside the contessa’s ballroom presently accommodating a few hundred of her closest friends. In fact, it might be possible that he cleaned up well enough for decency’s sake.
Still, he hadn’t felt this grouchy in a good number of years. Four and a half, to be exact—since he’d left England.
“Ripon, your smile is slipping,” said the Contessa di Mapelli, or Bianca as she preferred to be called. Her arm twined through the crook of his. “Walk the room with me.”
“I never did learn the knack of it,” he said.
“The knack of walking?”
“Smiling.”
This provoked a girlish laugh from the contessa. “You simply haven’t met the right woman.” She swept her closed fan in a wide arc. “Perhaps she is in this very room tonight.”
“Are you propositioning me, Bianca?” he asked, flirtatious. Perhaps he hadn’t gone to seed at all.
She gave his arm a light swat. “If I were a few decades younger, none of these other ladies would stand a chance. Now, paste a smile on your face. The Earl of Inesley promised funding for a mural restoration a year ago, and now we must shame him into turning promises into coins.”
As they wended their way through the room toward their quarry, Tristan couldn’t help noticing the way his countrymen and women observed him—like an escaped zoo animal who needed to be returned to his cage. But, really, could he blame them? After all, it had created quite the stir when his fiancée, Lady Sarah Locksley, had jilted him. Except…
Was it a jilting if the split happened three days before the wedding? He wasn’t sure, but that was how he referred to the event in his mind.The Jilting.Not that it hadn’t been amicable on his part—and a relief. Lady Sarah, however, hadn’t felt quite so sanguine.
The contessa located her prey and commenced her public shaming with a generous smile on her face. Tristan settled back and appeared entranced by her every word. As he had no intention of engaging in small talk this evening, he found monosyllabic grunts to be effective in staving off attempts.
In truth, he hadn’t been prepared for the sheer number of his compatriots in one room, many of whom regarded him with knowing cuts of the eye or sharp little smiles about their mouths. They were curious about him. Which was to be expected, for Lady Sarah had sullied his name to anyone who would listen, electing not to leave the reason for their split a mystery. Truly, thetonloved nothing more than to form their own interpretation of events that had naught to do with them, but she’d chosen the opposite course and branded him a knave.
Perhaps he was.
Yet he refused to bear her any ill will. After all, the whole kerfuffle was the impetus he’d needed to leave England and seek broader vistas on the Continent. Really, she’d given him the gift of four and a half of the best years of his life.
“Move with me, Ripon,” said the contessa.
“Are there others in need of a good shaming?” he asked.
The contessa’s mouth curved in a feline smile. “Always.”
As it was done in the cause of charity, Tristan didn’t mind being party to the contessa’s coercive tactics. There might not exist a stingier creature than the English nobleman.
As he escorted the contessa to another grouping, a vision of his very near future flashed before him. Of him navigating versions of this exact same soirée four nights a week for the remainder of his days once he returned to England.
His life would forever be divided into before, during, and after Florence. He wasn’t much looking forward to theafter. But he’d cut a deal with Mother, and he would honor it like the gentleman he hadn’t much use for being.
Frustration spiked through him. So, why was he currently in a Florentine ballroom full to bursting with English lords and ladies? Wouldn’t he be seeing these same bland faces in six months’ time anyway?
