I was relieved to learn of your release and trust you are regaining your strength after the unfortunate events of last evening.
The circumstances now surrounding your name are, as you know, delicate, and will require some time and care to be untangled. In such a climate, any appearance of undue intimacy between us can only serve to draw unwelcome attention and increase the risk of further misunderstanding.
I therefore believe it would be wisest for the present that our acquaintance be conducted at a proper distance. You may be assured that I shall follow your situation with the greatestinterest and will rejoice to hear of your complete vindication.
I remain,
Your most obedient servant,
E. Rothbury
No endearment. No reference to the balcony, to the kiss, to whispered declarations that had changed her entire world. Only “delicate circumstances” and “proper distance” and “most obedient.”
The sort of letter any honorable gentleman might write to any young lady in a scandal.
So he was withdrawing.
Her knight, her Ivanhoe, was lowering his lance and stepping back from the lists before the tournament had even begun.
“Bad news, miss?” Mollie asked carefully.
Venetia folded the paper very precisely, trying to hide her trembling hands.
“Mr. Rothbury believes it would be… imprudent to be seen with me,” she said. “Given the delicacy of my circumstances.”
Saying it out loud hurt less than she’d expected. Or perhaps she was simply numb.
“He can’t mean that in his heart,” Mollie burst out.
“I know what his heart felt like on that balcony,” Venetia said quietly. “But hearts are apparently no match for Venetian gossip and elderly counts.”
She pressed the folded letter briefly against her sternum, as if she could force some hidden meaning out of the ink. Was there a hesitation in the line where he spoke of distance? A pressure of the pen where he wrote “follow your situation with the greatest interest”?
If there were, it was too subtle for her shaking nerves to read.
He thinks this protects me, she realized. He genuinely believes vanishing is an act of chivalry.
*
Despite her flaggingspirits, she took Mollie with her to Madame Bertolini’s cramped little dressmaker’s shop off a narrowcallenear San Polo, ostensibly to have her gown mended after its adventure in the cells.
In truth, she had needed todosomething. Anything.
Madame Bertolini clucked over the crushed pleats and soiled hem, murmuring her sympathy and outrage.
“Such a scandal, signorina,” she said, pins between her lips. “Inmygown, too. The whole quarter is talking.”
“I imagine they are discussing the emeralds,” Venetia said coolly.
“There is talk, you know, of a certain gentleman who came to Venice not long ago with letters of introduction and an accent too contrived to be true, who calls himself Count di Montefiore.” Madame rolled the name in her mouth and her eyes gleamed. “Some say he also had a particular interest in emeralds. And in you.”
Venetia’s pulse had jumped. “Oh?”
“He appeared from nowhere, yet everyone is suddenly eager to please him. He spends a great deal of time at La Serafina’ssalon.” Madame’s tone transformed the word into something between admiration and disapproval. “When a gentleman wishes his secrets to be kept, he should not speak of them in a courtesan’s drawing room. But they always do.”
“La Serafina,” Venetia repeated. “The singer?”
Madame smiled thinly. “Once a singer. Now—more. She knows everyone’s business. Men forget themselves when they are flattered and comfortable. They speak of fortunes and quarrels and nephews cheated of their inheritance. They speak of English wills.” Her gaze sharpened. “If anyone knows the true history of Count di Montefiore, it is La Serafina.”
