Leo suddenly leaned forward, and his lips brushed tentatively against hers, sending unexpected sparks of desire through her. She gasped, and when her lips parted he reached for her and deepened the kiss. His fingers tangled in her hair, holding her close. Her hands explored the shape of his collarbones, the arch of his neck, the rope-cord muscles up and down his back.
She had kissed a boy before—Revan, of course—in the experimental way of children playing at being adults, but never had she been kissed like this. Like a spark held to a gaslight mantle, once lit it would keep burning and burning, ever brighter.
Leo leaned back, pulling her along until she lay over him, and she could feel his heart measuring a rapid rhythm in his chest. She swept her curtain of hair out of the way and kissed his throat beneath the line of his jaw, eliciting a soft moan. One of his hands traversed the curves of her waist and hip, down to her thigh, and then—
Leo froze. Elsa, sensing something was wrong, pulled away and propped herself up on her elbows to look at him. “What?”
He fumbled in the pocket of her dressing gown, drew out the revolver, and squinted at it in the dim light. “That is what I think it is.”
Elsa rolled off him, snatched the gun from his hand, and tucked it away again. “I heard a noise in the middle of the night,” she said. “And the house isn’t exactly the impenetrable fortress I was led to believe it would be.”
He quirked one perfect brass eyebrow at her. “Were you planning to shoot me if I grew too bold?”
Elsa snorted. “You’re the one who’s excessively concerned with our respective virtues.”
“Someone has to be,” Leo said defensively. “This isn’t proper, this isn’t how it’s done.…”
“Your idea of ‘how it’s done’ is completely absurd.” She knew Porzia saw marriage as a matter of power and position rather than love, but now Elsa began to wonder if that was truly how Porzia felt, or if she was simply bending to the rules of her society.
Leo’s hands fisted in the bedsheets. “You’re not in the wilds of Veldana anymore, we can’t just—”
“The wilds?!” Elsa snapped. “Where we Veldanese savages rut in the bushes, I suppose?”
“That’s not what I meant—”
She stood. “I am sick of your world’s rules, and doubly sick of your superior attitudes!” Face hot with humiliation, she yanked her dressing gown tighter around her and stormed out of the room.
“Elsa…,” he called. “Elsa!” But she was already slamming the door closed behind her.
Having forgotten the candlestick in Leo’s room, Elsa stumbled down the hallway blind, one hand held out to the wall to guide her. How could she have been so stupid?
It is always the woman’s fault, Jumi recited in her mind. That’s the way men are. If you wanted it, you seduced him; if you didn’t want it, you denied him.
She should have known better than to let anyone worm their way into her heart.
*
Leo thought about chasing after Elsa to apologize, and then he considered smothering his stupid mouth with a pillow. But instead he elected to lie awake and stare up at the ceiling for a long while after Elsa left. If only telling the truth wasn’t so exhausting, if only it hadn’t come as such a shock to find himself with Elsa on his bed in a compromising position, if only the whole encounter hadn’t felt too strange and wonderful to be true—maybe then he could have managed to go one night without destroying something precious.
“Casa,” he said into the darkness, “Elsa’s room is awfully far away for her to have heard me.”
“Signor?” said Casa innocently.
“Did you wake her up?”
Casa paused. “It is important for you children to look after one another.”
Leo scowled. “You manipulative psychopath. Now everything’s ruined.”
“One must be a human to be a psychopath,” Casa replied, sounding perfectly self-satisfied. “And I would say things are progressing quite nicely.”
“She hates me now.”
“Hmph. We’ll see. She is a magnificent specimen, is she not?”
“You’re unbelievable!” Leo tossed his hands in the air and let them fall back onto the bed. “She’s not a specimen, and I’ve had enough of your interference.”
Smugly, Casa said, “I’m not the one who kissed her.”
*
In the morning Elsa skipped breakfast. Between the poison and Faraz’s cure, all those chemicals had left her stomach feeling unsteady, and the last thing she wanted was to face Leo while also fighting nausea. Would things be awkward between them now? Would he avoid her, or pretend nothing had happened? Her absence left her to envision Leo performing his usual brash confidence over cappuccinos and pastries, serenely unruffled, as if nothing ever touched him. She couldn’t stand that idea, and she needed desperately to find some diversion upon which to focus her attention. She had to get out of her rooms.
The library seemed the most logical destination. But when she pushed open the door, the library was not empty—there was a figure slumped over one of the reading tables amidst chaotic piles of open books.
“Porzia…?” Elsa said, disbelieving. “Are you well?”
The girl lifted her head off her arm with a groan and scrubbed her hands over her face. Elsa had never seen her looking so disheveled. Porzia let down her sleep-mussed dark hair and ran her fingers through it, working out the tangles. “I must have dozed off.”
Elsa narrowed her eyes in mock scrutiny. “Aren’t you the one always cajoling us to sleep and eat and whatnot?”
She shrugged off the question. “I thought I’d go over my research again, now that we know exactly who Garibaldi is. I’ve been trying to identify places that might be significant to him.” She shuffled through a pile of hastily discarded books at the far end of the table and pulled out a large atlas. Laying it open before Elsa, she said, “Here, have a look.”
The page was a map of southern Europe, showing the Italian peninsula carved up into four independent political units. The north, including Pisa and Firenze, belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia. A chunk in the middle around Roma was labeled The Papal States. Below that, the southern end of the peninsula was part of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, along with the island of Sicilia itself. The far northeast was labeled VENETO, including the city of Venezia, where Leo had grown up. Opposite the map was a loose sheet of paper Porzia must have tucked between the pages, cities and dates listed on it in her elegant cursive. Marsala—1860—father Giuseppe and brother Menotti killed. Venezia—1867(?)—establishes himself under assumed name. And so on.
“The atlas is in German, sorry,” said Porzia.
“That’s fine,” Elsa replied. “I read German.”
Porzia blinked in surprise. “How many languages do you know?”
“Veldanese, Dutch, French, and now Italian,” she said, ticking them off on her fingers. “I can also read English, German, and Latin, but haven’t had the chance to hear them spoken yet. Oh, and I’ve just started Greek, but I’m not very far along. That’s more your fault than mine, though, since none of you seem inclined to speak more than a word or two of Greek at a time.”