“I was wondering what would have happened if I’d gone with my aunt to Florence or to Milan.”
Saturnino waited. She was struck again by his patience, by his restraint, his refusal to rush her answer even though he wanted to hear it.
“She wanted to take me to the coast where the marble is quarried, she wanted to introduce me to other sculptors, better teachers than she.” She shook her head. “But I stayed behind, and I never regretted it. Until now.” She gestured to the globe. “Looking at this, at this room, I’ve suddenly realized how big the world is and how little I know of it.”
“You aren’t missing anything,” Saturnino said flatly. “Everywhere is the same.”
“How can you say that?” Ravenna asked, bewildered. “You have proof on the walls that that isn’t true.”
“I was young once and interested in what the world had to offer. The experience taught me several things, but chief among them was that humanity is the worst sort of parasite on an otherwise pleasant landscape.”
Ravenna had never met anyone so jaded, and she had met hundreds of people filtering in and out of her life. An inner knowing spoke to her in a hushed voice: This was a man who had visited everywhere, but saw nothing. Who closed his eyes to wonder and the ordinary alike.
For some unaccountable reason, the thought saddened her.
“Maybe to you,” she said softly. “But I tend to think even the ordinary is fascinating. I have to, to sculpt hands and fingernails, the curve of someone’s jaw, the line of their gown. Every block of stone holds a secret, has a soul of its own that’s trapped within. I unearth something new every time I take a chisel to rock. It’s the slow reveal, the thrill of discovery that urges me to take a second look, and third, and then another. For example…” Ravenna straightened from the door and took a step closer to him. Then another. Saturnino stayed absolutely still, only his chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm. She peered into his face. “Your eyes aren’t brown.”
He dipped his chin in acquiescence, his attention fixed on her.
“They are a dark green,” she murmured. “Like the deep end of a pond.”
His breath fanned across her cheeks. “Well observed.”
She smiled, a bit self-conscious. “It was there all along. It only required a second look.”
Saturnino tilted his head, and that stubborn lock of black hair fell across his smooth brow. Ravenna felt a mad impulse to brush it back. A shadow of curiosity flickered in his expression. Then he turned, and she followed him, matching his long stride with two quick steps of hers. Ombretta slinked after them, silent and watchful.
Everything came back into sharp-edged focus.
His connection to the Medici, the way he had hunted her down outside of that inn, his role in her captivity. She must not lose sight of her circumstances ever again. Saturnino seemed to agree, because he didn’t say a word to Ravenna all the way down to the bowels of the palazzo.
As before, they traversed across the same cracked black-and-white tile, but they seemed to be taking a different route to the dungeon. Ravenna scowled at him. This was another one of his tactics. He was showing her that a veritable labyrinth existed below the palazzo.
“Are you trying to make sure I can’t find my own way down here?”
He gave her a quick grin over his shoulder, a flash of quicksilver that disarmed her. The long corridor stretched ahead of them, lined by craggy walls adorned only with torches set into bronze sconces. The guttering flames illuminated the space, casting long shadows as the two of them walked over the cobbled stone. The air smelled like dew clinging to leaves after a thunderstorm.
“This path leads to the grotto, and then out to the garden,” Saturnino said. “The other will take you to the cisterns where the rainwater is collected from above.”
Imelda had told her, but Ravenna pretended surprise. “There’s agrotto?”
“Man-made,” he said. The path split in two directions and he tilted his head to the right. “Through there. You’ll run into it first, but if you follow the path, it will lead you out into the garden.”
“Is the water cold?”
He arched a brow. “Why not try it for yourself?”
Ravenna looked at the descending path as they passed by. She thought again of the small lake by the locanda and how it was a place she ran to when she needed space to breathe. Whenever she had a spare moment, she’d disappear from the kitchen and its hot oven and blazing fireplace to escape into the water. She would let it sweep over her head, embrace the sudden quiet.
Ravenna would visit the grotto.
But swimming wasn’t the only reason why she would.
Why had Saturnino had given her another way out of the palazzo? It was a careless tidbit of information to reveal unless… A warning flitted through her mind, the quiet voice of her intuition whispering in her ear. She had only known Saturnino for a handful of days, but she understood who he was.
He liked to hunt; he liked to plan. He liked to win.
He wasn’t careless.
