The Visitant: A Venetian Ghost Story (7 page)

“I should think it obvious,” he said too slowly, as if he were struggling to form his words. I had been gone perhaps an hour and a half, and he was drunk. Blurry-eyed, slurring, unapologetically drunk. I realized too that he’d planned it. He’d tricked me. The chocolate had been nothing but a ruse. Time enough for Giulia to bring the brandy and perhaps, depending on just how long it took, time for other things as well.

I was furious. Humiliated. Hurt. What was wrong with me that I could not see deception, even when I expected it?

He lifted the bottle as if in toast. “She brought me
petrolio
.” He brought it to his mouth again, gulping it.

I lunged for it, furious. Samuel jerked the bottle away from me. Giulia was still swearing as she climbed from the bed.

“Get out of here!” I shouted at her as I tried again to grab the bottle.

She spat something at me, and then, much to my surprise, she actually left, stalking from the room like an affronted cat. Samuel rolled onto his side, taking the bottle with him, so I had to climb onto the bed and reach over him to get it. I grabbed for it again and again, and he kept it just out of my reach, laughing at my efforts.

“It’s just brandy.” Slurred together
ishjusbranny
.

“You promised.” I reached for it again. This time, he elbowed me in the stomach, bouncing off my corset, no effect at all, and in the moment he waited for me to fall back, I did the opposite. I planted my hand firmly on his bare chest, and taking advantage of his surprise and his gasp of pain, I grabbed the bottle. I wrenched it from his hands, but before I could get off the bed, he threw himself at me, grabbing my wrists, forcing me back, rolling, until I was beneath him, his weight heavy, his good knee between my legs, pinning me to the mattress.

“Give it to me.” His fingers bit into the tendons of my wrist.

With all my strength, I jerked my arm from his grasp, throwing the bottle. It thudded to the floor and rolled across the carpet, what brandy that was left spilling as it went.

He swore, loud and vehemently, as he watched it go. Then he looked back at me. “What the hell did you do that for?”

“You aren’t supposed to have it.”

“I’d already drunk most of it. You could let me have the rest.”

“You
promised
,” I said. “You told me you would be good. You broke your promise.” I heard the hurt in my own voice and winced. I sounded like a child.

“You broke your promise too,” he reminded me.

“I am not going to read that stupid book.”

“Then I’m not going to cooperate.” He mangled the last word, his tongue not nimble enough to manage it.

I felt ready to cry with frustration. “Why must you make everything so difficult?”

“Do I? Perhaps you should punish me then.” The words all running together. “D’you want to whip me?”

The words were a shock, his lowered voice, the sudden flash of interest in his eyes.

“What a pretty little innocent you are,” he whispered, and then, before I could do or say anything else, he kissed me. I was so startled I didn’t try to stop him when he pressed my mouth open, his tongue exploring, tasting. His hands tightened on my wrists; his hips pressed into mine, and I felt the same kind of stirring I’d felt reading
The Nunnery Tales
, a snaking, sinking
something
that frightened and aroused at the same time.

Before I could think what to do, I heard him moan and then a gasp. He jerked back, rolling off me and at the same moment pushing me violently away. I fell off the bed, banging my elbow hard on the floor. Cold rushed into the room, a freezing, icy blast, there and then gone, and suddenly I was looking at him as if through water reflections, wavery, shifting, and he was staring at me in fear.
Fear.

“Since when have you taken to pushing women
out
of your bed, Samuel?”

The voice came from behind me, and with it a hand on my arm, gently hauling me to my feet. “Are you all right?” asked a man I’d never seen before. “That was quite a fall.”

Samuel blinked slowly, like a man waking. “Nero?”

Chapter 8

It took me a moment to restore myself, to realize that this man who’d helped me to my feet, and who was looking at Samuel with amused affection, was Nerone Basilio, Madame Basilio’s nephew and Samuel’s friend, and that he was speaking English very well.

Mr. Basilio was Samuel’s age, with dark curling hair, olive-toned skin, and dark eyes dancing with amusement. “No need to dream about me any longer, my friend. I’m really here. Only for you would I have left Rome to come to this decrepit, uncomfortable place. Why the hell did my aunt put you in
this
room?”

“You’d have to ask her.” Samuel climbed from the bed, misjudging the height of the floor, stumbling, loosening the already very loose belt of his dressing gown further as he gave his friend a quick embrace. “It’s good to see you.”

“How drunk
are
you?”

Samuel staggered back to the bed. “Quite.”

“And who is this pretty thing you kicked out of bed? Given the violence you were doing her, I can only assume she must be a demon.”

Samuel’s expression darkened, again I saw that shifting fear in his eyes, rapidly dismissed. “No demon. At least not most of the time. My nurse, Elena Spira. ’Lena, Nerone Basilio.”

Basilio looked at me and said, “The nurse, eh? I begin to see what all the fuss is about.”

Nerone Basilio’s curls were, like Samuel’s hair, a bit too long, and his coat was of an older style, the fabric shiny in spots where the nap had been worn smooth, his cuffs fraying. There were no charms on his watch fob, no ornaments at all, and one of the buttons on his vest did not match the others. But he was scrubbed and polished, as if to distract from his general air of impoverished nobility. He was also as attractive as his friend. The two of them must have cut a swath through Rome. I tried very hard not to remember what Samuel had said about them sharing the girl with hair the same color as mine.

“I’m happy to meet you,” I said, managing at last to fully regain myself, wondering what “fuss” he meant, curiosity bringing me fully into the present. What had his aunt, and Giulia, told him about me, or about Samuel’s recovery, for that matter?

“How does your patient?”

“He would be doing better if he obeyed the rules,” I said, picking up the abandoned bottle.

Mr. Basilio made a face. “
Petrolio
. You couldn’t have found something tastier, Samuel? Like bilge water, perhaps?”

“Wasn’t particular,” Samuel said.

“I can see that.”

“A long dry spell.” Samuel put his hand over his eyes. “Told Giulia to bring whatever she could find.”

“Ah. Giulia.”

I could not read his tone; I had no idea what Nero Basilio thought of his aunt’s housekeeper, but I said to him in a low voice, “I’ve asked her to leave his care to me, but she’s very—”

“Accommodating, thank God,” Samuel put in with a laugh.

“A little too much so,” I said.

“What would you do, my frien’?” Samuel asked. “No laudanum”—stumbling over the words—“No wine. No sex. A veritable purg-purgatory.”

Basilio looked at me in surprise. “Really?”

“He’ll heal faster without those things,” I insisted.

“I would have thought laudanum, at least. He must be in pain. That was quite a beating he took.”

“You saw what happened?”

He shook his head. “He disappeared. I found him the next day after searching all the hospitals in Rome. And the taverns. And the morgue. Not something I wish to do again.”

“You see, ’Lena? He agrees that I should have laudanum,” Samuel said.

“It would be best not. His concussion was too severe,” I persisted, clinging to the lie. “And his father wants him well and sober by January.”

Basilio frowned, and then, “Oh yes, the wedding. I’d forgotten.”

“The reason for the bacchanal.” Samuel raised his arm as if he were flagging down wine-bearers. “Dancing and drinking and whoring before the beast is chained.”

“
I parenti mal de denti
,” Mr. Basilio said.

Samuel groaned. “God save me from your proverbs.”

“In this case, a true one,” Nerone Basilio said with a thin smile. “Relatives are toothaches. I will say you look much better than when I saw you last,
amìgo
. No doubt it’s due to your nurse.”

Samuel grunted and let his arm fall back to the blankets with a thud. “I’m glad you’re here. We c’n be bored together. Have you a liking for cold baths, Nero?”

“
Cold
baths?” Basilio looked confused, and a bit horrified. “In the winter?”

I wanted to strangle Samuel. I could not have Nerone Basilio wondering what cold baths might be for. Instead I said, quickly, “His regimen is very strict. I’m afraid he won’t be very entertaining.”

“Ah, I see. But kissing you is permitted?”

I stared at him helplessly, chagrined all over again. “I’m his
nurse
, Mr. Basilio. That wasn’t . . . what it looked like.”

A teasing, knowing grin. “If I had a nurse like you, I might delay healing.”

“He is very drunk,” I said. “And even with his injuries, he’s strong. I’d interrupted him with Giulia, you see, and—”

“She’s an innocent,” Samuel slurred sleepily from the bed.

Nero Basilio looked at Samuel with a frown. “A what?”

“I would like him to sleep now. If you wouldn’t mind . . .” I touched Mr. Basilio’s arm to lead him away, and he followed me docilely from the bedroom, waiting in the hall while I closed the door. “It would be best if you consulted with me before you visited with him,” I said quietly. “I don’t wish to keep you away, but . . .”

“You’re worried I might break the rules?”

“No, but . . .”

“Well, I might,” he said with a shrug. “It seems a bit cruel, you know, to keep him in pain. And a little drunkenness never hurt anyone. Especially here.” His gaze went to the ceiling, the empty, decaying hall. He shuddered. “God, I hate this place. Nothing but ruin. It’s enough to drive a man mad.”

I was surprised. I had felt such things, but I hadn’t expected it of the man who owned the palazzo. “But this is your home.”

“Imagine growing up here,” he said bleakly. “Everything falling around you and no money to fix it. I’m dragged back here periodically just to make certain it hasn’t fallen into the rio, but other than that, I leave it to my aunt. God knows it suits her.”

“She seems—”

“Unhappy? Bitter? As if she breathes gloom?”

It was so dramatic—and true, now that he’d said it—that I laughed. “She hasn’t been unkind.”

“Is that so? But not . . . kind, exactly?”

“I know Samuel has been a burden.”

“Perhaps, but you shouldn’t be too forgiving. God knows she’s happy enough to take his money. He’s free to stay as long as he likes, or as long as he can bear it. But you say only until January.”

“That’s when his parents want him back. For the wedding.”

He gave me a sideways glance. “You know he’s unhappy about that.”

“It’s none of my concern.”

“His family seems very anxious to marry him off to this woman he’s never met.”

“She has a pedigreed name,” I told him. “Rather like your own. Old for New York, at least. And Samuel’s parents are”—I struggled to find the words—“rather too self-made for society’s liking.”

“Parvenus,” he provided.

“Yes.”

“Trading money for prestige.”

“You understand.”

“Marriage contracts here are a way of life, or they used to be. My own was negotiated when I was only eight. But Samuel tells me it is not the same in America.”

“When you were
eight
?”

“There’s a certain comfort in knowing your destiny. But enough of this. What must be must be. I’m more interested in you.”

“In me?”

“Please tell me you haven’t spent all your time in Venice hidden away with a foul-tempered invalid.”

“I haven’t been out of the palazzo,” I admitted.

“What?” he sounded horrified. “Surely you don’t have to spend every moment with Samuel.”

I did, of course, at least until the seizures were under control. “Perhaps when he’s a little better,” I said.

“You’re too young to be shut away,” he said. “And it’s snowing. You should see San Marco in the snow. I’ll take you.”

I tried to ignore the tight little longing that came at the thought of St. Mark’s in the snow.

“We’ll have Giulia watch over him,” he went on.

“No!” I said, and then, at his surprise, “I’ve already told you. She doesn’t follow my orders.”

Thoughtfully, he said, “Does it matter so much? Granted, the
sciampagnin
is deadly. I would not have suggested it. There’s a reason people call it
petrolio.
He’ll have a foul head in the morning. But a little wine or laudanum, what could it hurt? Why make his recovery a misery? Let him play a little in these last days before his family marries him off.”

“His family wants him sober, and I’ve agreed to deliver him that way,” I said, disliking how prim and proper it made me sound.

“How dedicated you are.” He looked at me as if I were an entirely new thing, and one he did not completely understand. “But I’m certain no one wishes you to deny pleasures of your own for Samuel’s sake.”

“They are paying me to do just that. What kind of a nurse would I be if I abandoned my patient to see a church in the snow?”

“That you can call it ‘a church’ proves that you must see it.”

“You’re very kind, but . . . no. Thank you. I—”

The hard, sharp click of heels stopped me. Giulia, returned, and now I was going to have to dismiss her again in front of Mr. Basilio, and look even more like the priggish nurse he no doubt already thought me.

But it wasn’t Giulia. It was Madame Basilio who turned the corner and appeared at the end of the hall. I felt Nero Basilio stiffen, and his aunt looked like a fire poker, so rigid was she, everything about her hard and metallic and sharp.

“Nerone,” she said, blunt and snapping. And then a stream of Venetian, every word clipped. It was an order and a scold; even I understood that.

I heard him swallow. He said something back to her.

What came into her eyes then startled me. It was hostility of a kind I’d never seen before, almost venomous, and I couldn’t fathom why it should be there, not for this easy, charming man.

He turned to me with a thin smile, all amusement gone. Instead, his eyes looked haunted. “Pardon, Miss Spira. It seems my aunt has need of me.”

“Of course,” I said.

He made a small bow and went toward her, then passed her, the both of them so careful not to brush that they nearly careened comically into the walls. She followed him without a word or a look at me, as if I hardly existed, but in the wake of that stare she’d given him, the hallways felt suddenly frigid with unease and anger. The disease of the Basilio, desolation and despair, seemed to mock me. It was in the very walls. How did anyone escape it?