Bianca blinked at him for a second, wondering if it were just an accident of the wind or if she had heard correctly. Then, compelled by some supernatural force, she revealed the deepest, most private secret of her soul. “Because you don’t love me.”
“But of course I do!” Ian said with puzzlement. I have always loved you. “It is so obvious.”
“Obvious!” Bianca echoed. “Walking out of my murder trial before it is even over? Obvious?”
“I was practically thrown out. Besides, I had to…I had to check on something.” The excuse sounded lame even to Ian’s ears.
Bianca felt as if someone else had taken over her body and she was only being allowed to watch from the highest mast of the ship. Here was the man she loved, saying that he loved her back, but instead of throwing herself over the side and into his arms, she was arguing with him. “If you really do love me, why haven’t you ever said it?”
“Haven’t I?” Ian avoided meeting her eyes. “I’ve meant to.”
Bianca shook her head. “That won’t do. It’s not good enough. You have to say it. Now.” Bianca gestured at the preparations for departure going on all around her. “In a few days I will be out of Venice and likely out of Italy and then you will never have another chance.”
Ian stood and admired her, stunned once again by her beauty. Without realizing what he was doing, he raised his hands to her in a gesture of supplication. “Don’t go,” he begged rather than ordered. “Please, Bianca, don’t go.”
She wavered for a moment, still a proud goddess, then asked in a voice filled with anguish that could only be human, “Why? Why should I stay? I am giving you your freedom, Ian. I am canceling our betrothal. Don’t you understand? This is what you wanted all along. You never wanted to marry me, remember? You said it yourself. Now you are free to marry whomever you wish, whomever you truly love. If you married me without loving me, you would grow to hate and despise me. This is how it should be, how it must be—” Bianca had been so determined to say her piece that she had plowed ahead, heedless that Ian had long before responded to her first question.
“Because I love you,” he had said while she rambled on.
“What?” Bianca asked, startled, when she realized she had missed something.
“If you didn’t talk so much you would have heard it,” Ian scolded wryly, his heart beating so fast he could hardly keep up with it. “Now it’s too late.”
Maddening, she thought to herself, he was absolutely maddening. And sinfully handsome. “I would be much obliged, Ian,” she asked politely, “if you would tell me what you said.”
“I said that I love you, Bianca Salva,” he shouted up to her in a voice filled with joy and triumph. The work on the deck of the boat ceased as the sailors gathered along the railing to see better. “I said that is why you should stay. Because I love you.”
Bianca resisted the urge to fling herself into his arms. Before she took the potentially life-threatening plunge from the side of the boat, she wanted to be sure there was no mistake. “Do you think… Could you say that again?”
Ian cupped his hands around his mouth and addressed her. “I love you, Bianca. I think I have loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you. I love every devilish, murderous, obstinate, difficult, argumentative, brilliant, succulent, glorious bit of you. I love you with every muscle in my body, every breath in my lungs, every thought in my head. I love you and I want you with me forever.”
For centuries afterward, Venetians talked about that wonderful night at the end of 1585 when their great clock stopped and a goddess flew like a crane from the deck of a galleon into the waiting arms of her lover.
Epilogue
The March sun streamed in through the half-open drapes of the bedroom, dappling the couple lying on the bed with its rays.
Ian, sitting up and leafing through a book, nudged at the small lump lying beside him. “Come on, Bianca. You don’t want to be late for your own wedding.”
“Hmfph,” was the lump’s reply.
“Bianca. Don’t make this any harder for me than it already is.” Ian’s voice lacked even the faintest emotion as he continued to flip through the volume.
“Mlmfeh,” said the lump. It moved to resettle itself in the crook of Ian’s arm.
He tried a new tactic, though still studying to sound preoccupied. “Roberto and Francesco will never speak to either of us again if you let the dress they had made go to waste. Not to mention Nilo. He’s probably pacing up and down the aisle already.”
“Sphhhhln,” the lump began, then decided to give in. “All right,” Bianca said lazily. “If you are so eager to have me married off, I’ll get up and out of your hair.”
“Excellent,” Ian said with the air of a man who does not know what he is saying.
Bianca scowled at him and then at the book he was holding or rather, which was holding his attention from her. She moved around behind it and scowled at the cover, hoping for some clue to its identity, but all she saw was FOSCARI stamped in large gold letters on the spine. Ian was sitting distractedly reading a family history? That certainly had to be stopped. She moved and popped up over the top of the book to face him.
“Hello. I am going now. Leaving. To be married. This is your last chance to take me before I become an honest woman. Forever after I will be someone’s wife.”
“Mmmm,” Ian said, not moving his eyes from the page he was studying.
That did it. If he was already heedless of her propositions before their wedding, she shuddered to think what he would be like afterward. A vision of their life together—side by side, in bed, never talking, with Ian reading some big tome or another and her struggling to revive his interest—stretched before her like the road to Dante’s inferno.
“Ian, since you seem to be more fascinated by the author of that book than you are by me, perhaps you should marry him.”
“Her,” Ian corrected. “The book is by a woman.”
Bianca, spurred on by a mixture of jealousy and interest, pulled herself up next to Ian to get a better look.
“See,” Ian said, flipping to the title page and allowing her to study it.
“De Corporis Feminae Fabrica,” she read aloud, her eyes wide. “Why, it’s a book of the female anatomy. Someone did it before I could.” Bianca sounded momentarily sad, but then her tone brightened again when she added, “At least it is by a woman. What is her name?”
Ian was having trouble holding the book, not to mention his voice, steady. “You may know her.” He paused, as if searching the title page for the name, then read out clearly, “The Most Reverend and Illustrious, Bianca Salva Foscari, Contessa d’Aosto.”
Bianca looked at the name for a moment, confused. She repeated it to herself silently, then let out a cry. “Oh! Oh, my! That is… Ian, you have… Oh! That is me! This is my book!”
Ian’s smile stretched from ear to ear. Her reaction to his surprise was even better than he had expected. “Do you like it? Is it all right?”
“I…Oh, Ian…I really…I’m speechless.” Bianca threw her arms around his neck, pulling him close as tears quivered in her eyes. “This is the kindest, most generous thing anyone has ever done for me. Santa Agata’s finger, to have my book published!”
“Breast,” Ian corrected her.
Bianca pulled away slightly to look at him. “What?”
“Breast. Santa Agata’s breast. I learned that from your manuscript.” Ian was beaming at her like a schoolboy proud of his erudition. “Besides, my act was not completely selfless. The idea of rendering you speechless was rather appealing.”
Bianca’s smile turned to a smirk. She returned her attention to the volume, flipping lovingly through the pages. “How did you get my manuscript back from the judges? I thought they were going to keep it until they caught Mora and Angelo and they could hold a prop
er trial.”
“I have connections,” Ian said mysteriously. “Besides, the evidence against those two is plentiful enough to convict them without your drawings. If they are smart, they will stay well out of the Venetian Empire for a good long time.”
Bianca moved her eyes from her precious book to the scars still visible on Ian’s wrists. “They had better. I am well tempted to try my next anatomical experiments on them.”
Ian raised one eyebrow suggestively. “I’d rather you tried them on me.”
“Really?” Bianca’s smile was fiendish. “Fancy having your heart cut out?”
Ian grimaced. “Maybe nothing quite that severe, to begin with.”
Bianca nodded knowingly. “Actually, there is one theory I’ve been meaning to explore. I hear that complimenting a man on his adorable ears is the best way to his heart.”
Ian groaned. “Have you been taking lessons on seduction from Cecco again?”
“I think you are jealous,” Bianca declared positively with a playful grin. “You’d be amazed at some of the tips he’s given me.”
“Like what?” Ian was not sure he wanted to know what his diminutive new steward and his devilish fiancee spent so much time together talking about.
“Come here.” Bianca beckoned. Ian moved closer to her, carefully setting the volume on the floor. She pulled his head down to hers and began whispering something in his ear.
With dismay Ian felt his member growing hard, bucking against the sheet for attention. “I hope this isn’t what you are thinking of trying on Angelo,” he managed to get out with difficulty.
Bianca laughed, her breath tickling his ear. She moved her hand to his thigh and then up it, tickling him gently, without stopping her suggestive whispering. Ian groaned, willing her to stop talking or start caressing his beleaguered organ, but she did neither. He was on the point of begging for either mercy or extreme unction when she pulled away slightly.
Bianca studied her fiance with an appraising eye. “You’re performing very well as a subject,” she complimented him. “Better than I would have expected. I’ll have to use you in all my projects. I hope your wife won’t mind.”
“My wife?” Ian countered. “What about your husband? What if he objects to your experiments?”
Bianca shook her head. “There’s no chance of that. I am sure he will understand that, as a published scientist, it is my duty to devote myself entirely to the pursuit of knowledge.” As she spoke, she undertook a new experiment involving the tips of all ten fingers and the gardenia-scented oil she kept next to the bed. “Wouldn’t you agree, my lord?”
Ian, selfless crusader in the quest for scientific advancement, managed only to groan his approval.
>>
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Michele Jaffe, The Stargazer: The Arboretti Family Saga - Book One
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