Count Morosini stepped forward, clapping his hands for attention. His voice rolled over the assembled company, hearty and expansive.
“Signore e signori!It gives me the greatest pleasure to welcome you all to this magnificent celebration—” his hand swept toward Sofia and the dour-faced groom at her side “—to unite my beloved granddaughter, Sofia Morosini, with a husband worthy of her, the highly esteemed Count Bembo!”
Enthusiastic clapping erupted. Venetia joined in, though her hands felt stiff. Count Bembo bowed repeatedly, his fleshy lips stretched in a smug smile, his waistcoat straining over his stomach. He looked, Venetia thought with a shudder, precisely like a prosperous fishmonger dressed up in borrowed brocade.
Morosini raised his hand again for silence.
“As many of you know,” he went on, “I am a great admirer of the English author Sir Walter Scott. His works are as yet unknown to many in our beloved Italy, but soon you shall read them in our own tongue and be transported to worlds of chivalry and romance!” He thumped his chest with theatrical fervor. “At the request of my dear friend and my granddaughter’s godfather,il Marchese Valenti, I have commanded my translator to read a passage for yourentertainment.”
“Well, well, my dear, this is excellent,” Lady Townsend breathed in Venetia’s ear, her voice alight with excitement. “Edward is here. Look—there, mounting the steps. And there is the marchese just behind Count Morosini. Was it he who requested the reading? At Thornton’s suggestion? Perhaps last night was not in vain, after all.”
Venetia’s heart gave such a leap she thought she might be ill. But it was true. Edward had stepped up onto the dais, looking rather as if he would prefer to face a firing squad than an audience. Yet even as the crowd swallowed her, even as Morosini reached out to draw him forward, he seemed to know precisely where she stood.
His gaze swept the piazza and found her. For a fleeting heartbeat the world narrowed to the space between them: his dark eyes locking with hers, the quick flare of feeling he could not quite disguise, the slight inclination of his head that acknowledged her. Then he turned to his patron and bent respectfully.
He took the proffered book—an English edition ofIvanhoe—and another slim volume bound in Italian calf. The murmur of the crowd faded into an expectant hush.
“Signore e signori,” Edward said, his voice carrying clear and steady. “By the count’s command, I shall read first in the English, and then in our Italian, from the moment when the disinherited knight is at last acknowledged for who he truly is.”
A little shiver ran down Venetia’s spine.
He opened the English book, and began:
“Then threw the stranger from him his casque and plume, and the face of Wilfred of Ivanhoe looked forth, pale with wounds, yet bright with that high courage which no reverse could quell…”
Venetia shot a glance toward the marchese.
Sunlight slanted across his lined face, carving his features into planes of gold and shadow so that it was impossible to read his expression. Did the words Edward had just spoken touch any buried memory? Would he notice the elegant hands turning the pages—Isabella’s fingers. And the ring he had gifted her?
Her heart thundered. From this distance, there was no way of knowing. All she could do was hope and pray, while an unhelpful little voice in her head murmured that hope was a foolish thing for a woman in her position.
Not a romantic heroine, Venetia. Merely a girl one step away from ruin.
She barely had time to quell that thought before Count Bembo, pink and perspiring, lumbered to the front of the dais. His stout form dwarfed the slim figure of Sofia at his side.
“My friends!” he boomed, spreading his arms. “My deepest gratitude for your presence in making me the happiest of men, united with such a paragon of virtue—”
“Paragon of virtue?”
The words spoken in a clear male voice dripping with disdain sliced through the applause. The crowd gasped and turned as one. Bembo’s mouth snapped shut; he took a threatening step to the edge of the dais, searching for the speaker.
“She is a jewel thief!” the voice called again, louder. “She stole the emerald parure of the contessa. It is she who has kept all Venice awake at night, fearing the same will happen to them!”
“Arrest that man!” Count Morosini thundered, clapping his hands to summon the guards stationed below.
“He speaks the truth!”
This time the exclamation rang out even more clearly—and the shock that rolled through the piazza was almost tangible, for it was Sofia’s voice.
All heads swiveled. Sofia had broken from Bembo’s side. Color burned in her cheeks, but her chin was high, her pink gown fluttering in the breeze.
“It is true,” she cried, and when Bembo lunged toward her, hand outstretched as if to clap over her mouth, she ducked away. “I am the thief. I had the emeralds taken and hidden becauseit was the only way to escape my fate!”
A collective shiver of outrage and morbid delight ran through the crowd as her words were feverishly conveyed to those who had not heard. Venetia felt it as a physical thing, like the ground tremoring beneath her slippers. This, then, was the confession Sofia had promised—spoken not in some quiet corner, but here, in front of half of Venice.
Guards jostled the onlookers as they hurried toward the first speaker: a fair-haired young man with the look of an Adonis, fleet of foot and laughing even now. Venetia saw him weave away from reaching hands, dodge a soldier’s grasp and, in three astonishing bounds, leap onto the dais.
Paolo.
