Starling (52 page)

you. Don’t follow me, just this once.” Her voice cracked. “It’s the
only thing I ask of you. If you care for me at all, do as I say.” There
was no more time to argue. She ducked through the back door and
raced across the kitchen, praying that Falco wouldn’t pursue her. She
followed the first-floor corridor and exited out onto the cobblestoned
street that ran alongside the Grand Canal.
She turned left and then right, her eyes searching for movement
among the shadows of the docks and mooring posts. There! Luca was
walking briskly away from Palazzo Domacetti. He had his arm
raised, attempting to signal a gondolier across the water.
“Wait,” Cass called, running to his side. “Luca, please don’t go.”
He spun around, his broad frame blocking the light from the lowhanging moon. “Don’t go?” he repeated incredulously. “I should stay
and watch more of that?”
“Luca. I don’t know what you think, but—”
“When I heard Donna Domacetti was having a party, I knew
members of the Order would be in attendance. I thought I might find
you. I even prayed I might find you. But I never expected you to have
an escort.” His voice broke apart on the last word.
Of course Luca would come looking for her there. He knew her.
He knew that if she were trapped and unable to return to the villa as
planned, her next course of action would be to find the Book of the
Eternal Rose on her own. Luca da Peraga knew her even better than
she knew herself.
“Do you love him?” Luca asked suddenly.
“I— What?” The words came out sharp and shrill. Cass was completely dumbfounded. “Why on earth would you ask me that?”
Luca thrust his shoulders back and crossed his arms, wincing as
he did so. The move made him seem even taller than he was, and
Cass felt tiny and insignificant in comparison. “When I first returned
to Venice, I saw you with him once,” he said. “I wasn’t spying. I’d
heard Cristian sometimes drank at the
taverna
on San Domenico. I
was watching the place when I saw you two leaving. I told myself it
didn’t mean anything, that you were just bored or lonely, that perhaps he was betrothed to one of your friends.”
Luca must have seen her the night she and Falco went to the Rialto
and rowed right into Sophia’s body in the Grand Canal. Cass’s face
burned as she remembered the steamy moment she had shared with
Falco in the batèla. “I can explain,” she said.
Even though she couldn’t.
Luca continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “But then after Cristian
attacked you, when I was feeling so horribly guilty, I started to receive strange letters from the messenger. Pages in your handwriting
detailing romantic trysts with a man who was ‘different from your
fiancé in every way.’”
Cass sucked in a sharp breath. Cristian had sent her journal pages
to Luca. That was why the book in her shrine was empty. “Those
were my private thoughts,” she said angrily, biting back tears. “I cannot believe you read them.”
She looked out at the dark water of the canal. A gondola floated
by. Cass could see two shadows snuggled together inside the felze. A
day ago, that was how she saw herself and Luca—entwined, connected.
Happy.
But now Falco was back, and Cass’s mouth was still burning from
his kiss. And Luca had read all sorts of unflattering things she had