Raine. Elizabeth Amber
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The artist shot her a probing glance that sought to permeate her disguise, as though it had suddenly occurred to him she might actually possess feelings. Then he waved a hand as though to flick any concern for her away.
“And well you should,” he huffed. “I lower myself in doing this sort of work. Why, I’ve created portraits of the finest families in Venice! I’ve sketched the daughters of the Patricelli family. The sons of the Tuchero. Even descendants of the Medici!”
“Impressive.”
The artist nodded, then sighed and set about his task again. “But I’ll not be signing the revered name of Vito Mondroli to this day’s work, I can assure you of that.”
“One can hardly blame you,” Jordan agreed. The trace of levity in her voice went unnoticed. An artist at work was rarely a good conversationalist. She yawned and peered wearily from the eyeholes of her gilded bauta mask. She was exhausted.
Last night she’d had the dream again. As always, it had come to her in three parts. Not as connected acts in a theatrical play, but as three isolated and unrelated incidents.
First had come the long-eared brown rabbit.
Second, the droplets of blood splashed upon her thigh.
Then third and last, the ribbons had appeared. There were seven of them, in all the colors of the rainbow. They’d reached to her from a storm, beckoning like wild, elongated fingers. They’d come close to tease and caress her cheeks with their slippery, satiny smoothness. If she could only grab what they offered, they promised to pull her from the storm toward safety. Toward happiness.
The same dream had persisted every night for the past week, leaving her hollow-eyed today. She’d soon know what it all meant. Ever since she’d turned thirteen, such dreams—always in three parts—had come to her nightly, foretelling hints of the future.
It was late afternoon now, and Jordan wanted nothing more than to return home and seek her bed. But she had many hours yet to go here.
A dozen or so dramatic strokes of charcoal later, Vito Mondroli whipped the rectangle of vellum from his easel. With a twist of his fingers he flipped it toward her.
“There, what do you think?” He actually sounded like her opinion mattered.
Jordan angled her head, studying it. “I think my mama will most likely hang this one above the mantle in the grand salon facing the campo.”
Mondroli looked scandalized.
“I’m joking,” she assured him, rolling her shoulders and stretching her back. Really, the man had no sense of humor.
He pivoted his work back toward himself and scrutinized it. His eyes darted up to snag hers.
“You don’t fool me,” he said, scratching a finger along the bridge of his nose and leaving a trailing black smudge behind. “You may pretend you’re not ashamed to be cursed with such a body, but under that mask I’ll wager your cheeks are bright red.”
He was right. Jordan was ashamed. But not of her body. Only of the fact that it was on display in this way.
At least Mondroli wouldn’t have the satisfaction of seeing his barb had struck home, she consoled herself. He wouldn’t dare attempt to see her expression below the mask.
Before Signore Salerno had left them alone in the theater together, he’d made it crystal clear to the artist that he wasn’t to attempt to learn her identity or to take any liberties whatsoever with her person. Fear of losing a commission always kept the artists in line, were they tempted to touch.
Jordan rubbed her bottom and forced a jocular tone. “Only my rear cheeks are blushing I assure you, Signore Mondroli. But I imagine they’re only numb from that last sitting.”
This time the artist snorted in a manner that was almost a giggle, appearing as surprised to hear himself emit such a sound as she was. In the throes of amusement, his face contorted into unbecoming angles and his horse teeth were grotesquely exposed. It was most unattractive, and she vowed to herself not to make another jest in his presence.
Jordan surveyed the sheets he’d placed helter-skelter against the walls, standing them on edge along the oak plank floor of the stage as he’d finished. Each portrait captured a different angle of her.
Yet not one of them showed her shiny raven hair, which was cropped just above her shoulders, or her stubborn pointed chin, or the intelligent dark eyes that gazed from her mask.
“They’re good,” she told him honestly, for they were. “Considerably better than the artist Salerno engaged last year.”
Like the progeny of many other wealthy Venetian families, Jordan had sat for more than one portrait. In fact, every year of her life on the fifteenth of September, a series of sketches had been made of her.
However, unlike the portraits of other wealthy young Venetians, Jordan’s would never be hung in her family home. Or in a museum. Nor would it be sold in the Venetian piazettas where artists hawked their wares.
Her mother would never view the drawings she’d insisted Jordan sit for today. She wouldn’t even allow Jordan to speak of the events of this day. Though her mother might choose to ignore what happened here in this theater, Jordan didn’t have that luxury.
If her mother had asked, she could have told her that each year Salerno commissioned an artist to create her likeness, so the smallest changes in her body would be recorded. In the forthcoming months, he would take these portraits of her on tour to other lecture halls in other cities. The success of his business interests all rested on his exclusive access to the notorious creature he exhibited to the public every September—herself.
For as long as she could remember, her mother had told her in no uncertain terms that her birthday belonged to Salerno. It had been promised to him on the very day Jordan had entered the world as a babe, in exchange for his ongoing silence on an indelicate family matter only she, her mother, and he were privy to. Were this secret to get out, it would destroy all three of their carefully constructed lives in an instant.
“Bah, the creator of those other sketches was an incompetent,” said the artist, breaking into her thoughts. She turned to find him admiring his own work. “I apprenticed under a master before the French came. I enjoyed the patronage of the finest families in Venice and beyond.”
“So you said,” Jordan noted.
He clucked morosely and shook his head. “But Venice is poor these days. Patrician families are selling art, not commissioning it. I take such work as I can find. When Signore Salerno offered to hire me—”
His words drifted off as the sound of distant voices reached them. Both their heads swiveled toward the curtain, trying to hear beyond it to the seating area of the small theater.
The voices and accompanying footsteps grew louder.
Jordan’s eyes dilated. “They’re coming,” she whispered.
“Fretta! Affrettarsi! Up on the table,” Mondroli urged, fluttering both hands in distress. “I have one last sketch to complete.”
Ignoring him for the moment, Jordan went to the velvet curtains that separated the small stage where she and the artist were hidden from the rest of the dimly lit theater. She stroked a finger down the central slit where the two drapes met when closed as they were now. One of her dark eyes peered out.
As she watched, Salerno strode into the theater, looking important and successful in his white surgeon’s coat. It was an affectation. There would be no surgery today, only discussion. “A medical investigation” was the wording he had used on the notices he had distributed in order to advertise today’s event to barber-surgeons, hospitals, and other such establishments. The leaflets were effective, drawing learned men of science and medicine to see her, like flies to a carcass.
His coattails fluttered as he strutted down the corridor dividing the theater seats. His hair had thinned since