Before anyone could stop him he had swept Sofia bodily into his arms, vaulted across the planking, and deposited her into the wicker car of the balloon. He jumped in after her, landing beside the startled French aeronaut.
“Stop them!” Morosini roared, voice breaking with fury. “No one shall speak ill of my granddaughter, the paragon of virtue who is to wed Count Bembo!”
“I will not be so humiliated!” Bembo bellowed, purple with rage. “Better she hang for theft than carry my name to shame!”
“Good Lord!” Miss Bentley squeaked somewhere behind Venetia. “What on earth is Mr. Rothbury doing? He has a knife! Dear heaven, he is not going to attack Count Bembo, is he? I always knew he was not to be trusted.”
“Good heavens, Catherine,” Lord Thornton murmured, “I think you attribute altogether too much bloodthirstiness to those who capture your interest—in this case, our very self-contained translator.”
Venetia’s heart lurched painfully. Knife? Edward? She craned to see.
There he was, moving with swift, purposeful steps along the edgeof the platform, the small blade glinting in his hand. For one terrifying instant, she, too, imagined carnage.
Then, quickly, Edward stooped and slashed through the thick rope tethering the balloon to its stake.
The great silk envelope surged upward with a mighty heave. The car rocked; Sofia gave a breathless laugh that carried faintly on the wind. Morosini leaped to seize the trailing rope, only to let it go at once as his feet left the ground. His weight was no match for the balloon’s soaring power. It wrenched free and climbed higher, the shouts of the crowd fading into a roar of astonishment.
Just as his power, Venetia thought, had proved no match for the combined determination of Sofia and Paolo.
“Oh my goodness,” she whispered, hands clapping together of their own accord. “Did you see? Edward must have colluded with them—and now he has given them their hearts’ desire. He has done this for them. No, for me,” she finished in astonishment as she realized the implications. “Oh, but what will it cost him—?”
Her question died as she saw Morosini wheel upon his translator like a striking hawk. He seized Edward by the lapels, dragging him close, his face contorted with rage.
“You will pay for what you have done!” the count snarled. “Captain Rizzi! Arrest this man at once!”
Rizzi stepped forward, hand going to his sword, eyes flickering between his employer, his superior, and the English guests. Count di Montefiore watched on with fascination. Miss Bentley clutched at her reticule, looking as if she were torn between horror and unseemly fascination. The marchese, Venetia saw, had gone quite rigid.
Then he moved.
With a speed that belied his age, the Marchese Valenti strode across the open space, shoving through the frozen ring of onlookers. He shouldered Morosini aside so forcefully the other man staggered.
A stream of rapid Italian poured from themarchese—his anger needed no translation. Rizzi hesitated, caught between two great houses. The crowd fell into an awed silence, watching the two old lions snarl and snap at one another while, far above, the balloon drifted over the lagoon, Sofia and Paolo silhouetted against the pale sky, their heads bent close in a kiss that even at this distance was unmistakable.
At last, Morosini’s bluster faltered. Whether it was the presence of Rizzi’s superior, the excited murmur of his guests, or the iron fury in the marchese’s eyes, something made him fall back a pace.
The marchese stepped into the space he left. In one decisive movement, he caught Edward by the wrist and thrust his arm up for all to see.
“Behold,” the marchese cried, his voice ringing over the square, “the Valenti signet upon the hand of my long-lost son, Eduardo—prince of his craft, given back to me by divine Providence—nay, by Sir Walter Scott himself. Behold my son and heir, the next Marchese Valenti!”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Fire was stillcoursing through his veins as Edward straightened from the severed rope.
He had meant only to give two desperate young lovers a chance at freedom. That the plan had actually worked—that the balloon now drifted, astonishingly, over the lagoon—felt like something from the pages he translated rather than real life.
Then rough fingers closed about his wrist and yanked his arm high.
Edward braced for a blow, for Rizzi’s shackles, for Morosini’s roar of triumph.
Instead, the old man in the velvet coat—Marchese Valenti—was staring at him, not with fury, but with eyes luminous with something so fierce that Edward scarcely recognized it as joy.
“Guardate!” the marchese cried to the crowd before dropping into English, his voice shaking. “Here it is. The ring. My ring. And on the hand of—” His gaze searched Edward’s face, traveling from brow to jaw, lingering on his eyes. “You are Isabella’s son. I see her in you. And I see the child I held before I was swept from your lives.” His breath hitched. “My son.”
The words fell slowly into Edward’s mind like stones into deep water, sending out widening rings of disbelief.
My son?
He had spent so long flinching from that question. Whose son? Whose shame? Now, under the pitiless Venetian sun, the answer was being shouted in front of half the city.
