The marchese’s arms closed around him in a fierce, shaking embrace. Edward stood rigid for a heartbeat, then something inside him simply… gave. His own hands lifted—awkward, astonished—and gripped the old man’s shoulders.
Over the marchese’s velvet-clad shoulder he saw Venetia pushing through the ring of onlookers, her face alight. No trace of doubt, no caution. Only radiant certainty.
“It’s true, Edward,” she said breathlessly, coming to his side as the marchese released him. “I saw the ring on Isabella Monteverdi’s hand in the portrait at La Serafina’s. And when we visited the marchese’s island last night, I saw it again. The same crest, the same design—only hers with the extra star.”
The Marchese turned to her, blinking as if remembering his surroundings. “You,” he said slowly. “The little English signorina in my library. Yes. You came with the other lady. You spoke of Isabella as if you… knew her. And you know this young man?” His gaze darted between them, wonder softening the harsh lines of his face. “You suspected? You knew he was my son?”
Venetia blushed as she lifted her chin. “I suspected,” she admitted. “When I heard the Venice gossip and remembered what Mr. Rothbury had told me—of his mother, and why he had come here. It seemed… more than chance.”
“Why did you say nothing last night?” the marchese demanded.
“Because why should you have believed me?” Venetia replied. “A stranger with a fanciful tale in your library? That would never have done. It had to be your own heart that recognized him.”
Edward caught her hand, almost without knowing he’d moved. He brought her fingers to his lips, needing the anchor of her touch. “You did this,” he said hoarsely, “for me?”
“And for me,” she said, her eyes bright with unshed tears and triumph. She curled her fingers firmly about his. “You insisted you were not worthy of me—that you were the bastard son of some nameless Italian. But I knew your worth, even if your name and estate were never restored. You are my Ivanhoe in spirit and in truth, Edward. No ring could change that. It only… makes the rest of the world see what I already knew.”
Something hot and fierce rose in his chest—joy, sharp as pain. For so long he had carried his birth as a brand of shame, the secret that barred him from the future he most desired. Now the weight of it slid away so that he almost staggered.
Illegitimate. Unworthy. Fortune hunter.
All the ugly words seemed to shrivel in the light of the marchese’s open pride, and Venetia’s unwavering gaze.
Around them, the crowd murmured, shocked and avid. Morosini glowered. Miss Bentley fluttered her handkerchief as if she might faint from sheer romance. Thornton and Eugenia stood side by side, faces alight with a satisfaction they were doing a valiant job of concealing.
Edward no longer cared who watched.
With no thought for propriety, he drew Venetia into his arms and kissed her—deeply, gratefully, as a man who had finally, unexpectedly, been handed back his future.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Eugenia gazed atthe gentle motion of the canal through the tall windows of the water salon, the light shivering across the ceiling in wavering bands. A faint breeze slipped in, bringing with it the cool, damp tang of autumn on the water, and she drew her shawl a little closer about her shoulders.
“Time to return to England, my dear Eugenia?”
She turned, her heart warming at the sight of Thornton framed in the doorway. His coat sat a little more loosely than it had when they’d first arrived in Venice, his hair threaded with more silver, but his eyes were as kind and shrewd as ever. He leaned on the lintel with deceptive casualness, as if he had merely chanced by and was not, in fact, watching her very closely.
“And why would you say that?” she asked.
He crossed the room and held out a hand to her. “Come here.”
She rose and let him lead her to the window. “Look there,” he said, nodding toward the bustle outside.
Across the canal, a laundry line snapped in the breeze. A gondola slid past, its prow garlanded with late roses; the gondolier began to hum a tune that had been played at the betrothal celebrations.
“Do you remember,” Thornton went on softly, “the first time we saw Venetia and Edward together on that very step? We thought ourselves such wise observers as we plotted their future.”
Eugenia’s lips curved. “We were very foolish,” she said. “And very smug.”
“Exactly so. And now our lovebirds have flown the coop, leaving us with nothing to supervise but our dreary selves.” He glanced sideways at her. “Our work is done. What, then, keeps us in this city of crumbling splendor?”
Eugenia let her gaze rest on the familiar scene a moment longer. It had been tugging at her for days—that sense of completion and, beneath it, an unexpected hollowness.
“Perhaps you are right,” she said at last. “Since that glorious day at the balloon betrothal, everything has changed. Venetia and Edward’s hearts joined as one, Sofia and her Paolo vanished into the clouds, like two characters from Sir Walter Scott himself. And the following day, Venetia exonerated. What else is there for us to do?”
She spoke lightly, but something in her chest pinched.
“Exonerated?” Thornton repeated. “My dear, she was not merely exonerated. She was triumphantly vindicated.” He ticked the points off on his fingers. “Sofia’s public confession, Captain Rizzi forced to admit that appearances can deceive, Griselda stepping forward with the missing emerald pendant and swearing—under Edward’s protection—to the truth of the matching emeralds in the secret compartment of the tiara worn by Venetia and loaned to her by Sofia… and let us not forget Count di Montefiore slinking away like a whipped cur once Greene’s letters were produced to prove that he had engineered the destruction of her reputation.”
