She stops. Looks up at me and waits.
I smirk and lift my shoulders, then let them fall.
She sighs and rolls her eyes, then moves onward.
“You are really annoying. I imagine they’ve all been sent over to the Vatican,” she says to herself, rendering me absolutely useless because she’s correct. Then finishes with a smug grin, “—since the papacy ultimately took over after the duchy. I bet Duke Fred had a mean collection.”
He did. I bite my cheek to stop myself from blurting out the number of manuscripts housed here and the famous editions that topped the list.
“These tiles,” she says, taking off her heels and sliding her feet on the floor like she’s ice skating. “I want them in my bathroom at home. Could you arrange that, sir?”
“Certainly, Signorina. Would you like the golden sperm as well?”
She smiles over her shoulder, brows lifted.
“Someone thinks very highly of himself.”
She disappears through the far doorway into the next room where seventy tiles are hung to replicate a famous frieze before I can finish laughing. And I follow. She studies the work, touches her face, chews on her lip, reaches out to trace the scene, stops, then moves on to the next exhibit. It takes everything in me not to point out the sequence of the bas relief—explain the years of restoration work that went into each piece. I’m torn between her and the art—the way her eyes shift and widen as she studies the portraits. The way her head tilts when she finds something interesting in the work.
She barely looks my way. But I know she’s aware of me by the color that dips beneath her neckline when I stare, the way she tilts her head when I stand behind her, the shallowness of her breath when I get too close.
Through five rooms of ceramics and ancient antiques, while she reads and thinks and breathes, I watch her in silence—study her as she studies the artifacts that I could describe from memory. She touches every Montefeltro eagle—traces every pilaster on every mantel. I could write a lecture on her—on the way she responds to the art around her.
By the time she steps foot on the grand staircase and looks back at me over her shoulder, all of the heat in my chest that I’ve convinced myself was anger has melted into something just as consuming and even more urgent. And I know I’m fucked.
VENTITRE
Ava
Holy. Shit.
Have you ever stepped out of a shower and ventured outside wrapped in a towel? Let the air dry you—caress your skin and pull the wetness up and away—felt every shift in breeze on every inch of you, leaving trails of goose bumps—making you want to drop the towel—until your body sort of sings with sensation. It’s glorious. And freeing.
I feel that way now. And James is the breeze.
His eyes—the silence. I’m drunk on it and I need out of this dimly lit space with all of the beautiful nude women staring down at me from the walls. They are telling me how good it feels to be naked. How glorious. How freeing.
It doesn’t help that I’ve dropped my heels in some dark corner and I’m walking barefoot through the boudoir like I’m a duchessa roaming her own halls.
“James,” I start, breaking the thick, prolonged silence that has tightened around us.
I touch my throat. My voice. It’s heavy and breathy. It hangs in the thick air as I turn to find him leaning in an archway, his arms crossed over his chest as he watches me. He lifts his brows, but doesn’t come closer. I want him closer. I want him here. Where I am. I just—want him.
And if I don’t get out of here, I’m not sure I can hide it anymore.
I try again, “James, is there a way outside—an exit?”
He straightens, the soft darkness of his eyes hardens, and lines dip between his brows.
“Are you okay?” he asks, moving closer like I wanted, but suddenly not looking at me the way I wanted. Concern replaces—whatever the hell was in his eyes a moment ago.
I nod. Swallow a few more times until my tongue feels up to task.
“I just need a moment. Some air. A break,” I say.
He takes me by the arm, his touch so warm around my elbow that I’m sure there’ll be a mark, and he leads me through one archway, then the next—it’s a labyrinth of art and vaulted ceilings and ornate mantels and tapestries and beauty. I’m Alice again. Every room of the palazzo a new world. Then he’s pulling a giant wood door with iron handles toward me and ushering me through the opening out into the night air. Even the humidity is less oppressive than the silent air that was making my skin tighten. I was a kernel in a microwave. Just about to pop.
“Is that better?” he asks, watching me from the darkness beneath yet another portico.
