before her face creased into another huge smile. She nodded again and then encouraged me to lie back once again.
At first I found it hard to recapture my earlier mood, but before long, my thoughts escaped my tight leash and I began to wonder what I had done to my body. I rested the back of my neck against the rim of the tub, my eyes half open, my flesh submerged in perfumed water and relished being tended to by such experienced hands. I wondered what Dante would think of me, like this, naked and clean, being so fussed over and smelling of lavender. My imagination spilled into realms of longing and my budding laugh was rapidly smothered.
A spray of water in my face shocked me back into the present.
Hazefa waggled a finger at me and shook her head. She’d caught me retreating into territory that I could not afford to go. She really did understand.
More importantly, Hafeza, the Morokan slave, was right. What good did dwelling on Dante do? He was dead. Cane was dead. Pillar was as good as dead. And as for Katina … I had no-one I could trust, no-one to turn to – not anymore. No-one except the Maleovellis. I had to bury my thoughts, my feelings and my fears deep inside – if I didn’t, they would rise and betray me. If not today, or tomorrow, then sometime in my unclear future. Dante would not want that, even if I wasn’t sure I cared what happened to me anymore. I had to harden myself. I had to harden my heart.
I took a deep breath and, as Hafeza began washing me in earnest, exhaled and let myself relax. I pretended that every time the soap or sponge touched my body, it was removing traces of the old me – the unkempt candlemaker’s apprentice – the pretend boy who dared to test his powers and failed. I would not be him any longer. I couldn’t afford to be.
Everything I now did, everything I would become, would be for Dante. For what we could have been if we’d been able to be together.
After all, how can you forget someone who is a part of your very soul?
As for those who had shattered our future … they would pay. I didn’t know how or when, but I knew that somehow, some day, I would make sure they did … and dearly.
IT TOOK ALL BAROQUE’S CONCENTRATION to remain still. He’d been standing in Signor Ezzelino Maleovelli’s study for so long, answering question after question, every muscle in his body ached and weariness such as he’d not known in a long time made him feel heavy – in his heart as well as his mind. He wanted to sit down, to collapse in one of the empty chairs, shut his eyes and hasten the forgetfulness that only an exhausted sleep could bring. But he had to wait to be invited and, now that Signorina Maleovelli had entered the room, that particular overture was unlikely to be forthcoming.
He glanced at her now. A barely repressed excitement attended her, arousing his curiousity. Something was afoot. Baroque could feel her loathing of him emanating from every pore as she sat, twisting in her seat, so she didn’t have to face him. The fact that she needed his services, that her father insisted on using them, only intensified her antipathy. If he hadn’t been so fatigued, he would have enjoyed the effect he was having. But the last few days had wrested their toll. That the Maleovellis had taken his briefcase, the one containing his precious journals, had almost broken him. His dreams of accruing wealth and walking away from his jeopardous double life never mind the hasty promise he’d made to the Bond Riders, had dissolved as quickly as they’d formed. He glanced at where his briefcase now sat, atop papers on Signor Maleovelli’s desk. For a brief second, hope that they had not discovered the false bottom where the books were hidden flashed through him. His eyes slid to his property again. No. It stood as nothing but a monument to his failure.
‘Why don’t you sit down, Signor Scarpoli?’ said Giaconda.
Trying to hide his surprise, Baroque did not wait to be asked again. He slowly eased himself into a chair, clutching the arms as he sank into the tired fabric.
‘Tell me, Baroque,’ said Signor Maleovelli, reaching for his pipe and continuing their discussion. ‘From the time you spent in the taverna talking