“Has she no family that cares what she does?” Tonio whispered. “And what would they think if they knew she sent such a gift to a…” But again he broke off, holding the little portrait in both hands now as if it were dreadfully fragile.
Guido could not help but smile.
“Tonio,” he said softly, “she is an independent young woman, and lives her life as we do ours.” And softening his tone even more, he asked, “Must I be the one to give you away again?”
PART VI
1
AS SOON AS HE HAD taken his final bows, Tonio forced his way through the suffocating backstage press to his dressing room and, telling Signora Bianchi to send Raffaele’s coachman away with polite regrets, quickly changed his clothes.
He had sent his note to Christina after the second intermission, and the remainder of the performance had been something of an agony for him.
Finally as the last curtain came down, Paolo had put her answer in his hands.
But it was not until he was fully dressed as himself again, his hair still a tangled mess, that he tore open the note:
The Piazza di Spagna, the Palazzo Sanfredo, my painting studio on the top floor.
He was unable to do anything for a moment. It seemed Guido had come in with some momentous news about an Easter season in Florence, and the insistence for the first time that they play every major house in Italy before going away.
“They’re going to need an answer very soon on this,” Guido said, tapping the scrap of paper in his hand.
“But what is it, why do they need to know now?” Tonio murmured.
Signora Bianchi came in, shutting the door with difficulty. “You must go out only for a few minutes,” she said, just as she did every night.
“…because it’s this Easter we’re talking about, forty days after we close here. Tonio, Florence!” Guido said.
“Right, yes, I mean of course, we’ll talk about it, Guido,” Tonio was stammering, trying vainly to comb his hair.
Had he folded her note and put it in his pocket? Guido was pouring himself a glass of wine.
Paolo slipped in, red in the face, and collapsed with exaggerated relief against the door.
“Go out there, Tonio, now, get it over with!” said Signora Bianchi. And turning him, she shoved him towards the crowd.
Why was this so difficult? It seemed they all wanted to touch him, to kiss him, to talk to him, to take his hand and tell him how much it had meant to them, and there was the feeling with all of them that he did not want to let them down. Yet the more he smiled, nodded, the more they talked, and by the time he had made his way inside again, he was so frantic he took the wine from Guido and drank all of it.
The usual flowers were being brought in, great bouquets of hothouse flowers, and Signora Bianchi whispered in his ear that Count di Stefano’s men were outside.
“Damn,” he said. He felt Christina’s note in his pocket. It had no signature, but he took it out quite suddenly and while Guido and Paolo and Signora Bianchi stared at him as if he were a madman, he burned it completely by the candle flame.
“Wait a minute,” she said as he turned to go. “Just where are you off to? Tell me and tell the Maestro before you go.”
“What difference does it make!” he said crossly, and when he saw the secretive smile on Guido’s face, the feigned superiority to the childish passion, he was silently enraged.
As soon as he stepped into the corridor, he saw Raffaele’s men. These weren’t servants. These were the Count’s bravos.
“Signore, His Excellency wishes to see…”
“Yes, well not tonight, he cannot,” Tonio said quickly and started for the street.
For one moment it seemed the men were not going to let him pass. But before he reached for his sword or did anything equally foolish, he made an icy refusal again. Obviously they weren’t prepared for this, and confused as to what to do, did not have the courage to force him into the carriage waiting outside.
But as he climbed into his own carriage, he saw they had mounted their horses, and telling his driver to take him to the Piazza di Spagna he made a small plan.
At the Palazzo Sanfredo the carriage slowed to a crawl. It was at the second alleyway beyond that, the little coach all but scraping the walls, that Tonio slipped out, shutting