Marco Valdosta, he who called himself Marco “Felluci” these days, had good reason not to own to the Case Vecchie family he’d been born into. His Ferrarese mother had made sure of that with her fanatical Montagnard beliefs, and the long-buried secrets that went with what she had done to further the cause.
Still . . . this wasn’t why he felt as if he must be one of the most pitiable sixteen-year-olds in all of Venice. He was looking miserable enough for Benito’s friend Claudia to comment on it. Claudia had told him to his face that he was drooping like a four-day-old leftover bunch of finocchio leaves, and had wanted to know the reason. He hadn’t dared tell her. He hadn’t dared tell anyone.
Although he really didn’t intend to be that way, his disposition wavered between sullen and terrified. He spent most of his time moping around like a moon-sick idiot. His brother had given up on him in disgust; Maria Garavelli and Caesare Aldanto only knew he was pining over a girl and being unusually peculiar about it.
Caesare was being more than patient, he was being condescending—which Marco was overly sensitive to just now. Maria, having failed to jolly him out of it, had taken to snapping at him frequently. They repeated the same scene at least twice a day. It usually started with him glooming about in her path, and Maria stumbling around him, until she finally lost her temper—
Then she’d explode, canaler’s cap shoved back on her dark hair, strong hands on hips, dark eyes narrowed with annoyed frustration—
“Dammit Marco, can’t you get the hell out of my way?”
Even the memory made him wince.
She snapped, he sulked, they both got resentful, and Caesare sighed.
The problem was they didn’t know the half of what he’d gotten into.
Marco, who was just home from work at Ventuccio’s booth on the Piazza San Marco, huddled in a soft plush-covered chair in Aldanto’s living room. He had lit one lamp, on the right side of the window tonight—that was to tell Maria that all was well—but had left the rest of the room in gray gloom. He was curled around the knot of anguish that seemed to have settled into his gut for good. Every time he looked up, the very room seemed to breathe reproach at him.
There was frost on the window—bitter cold it was out there. Here he was, warm and dry and eating good—he could have been out in the Jesolo marshes, freezing his butt off, but he wasn’t, thanks to Caesare Aldanto. He could have been shivering in Benito’s attic, or in their little barren apartment in Cannaregio—hell he could have been dead, but he wasn’t, again thanks to Aldanto.
Caesare had taken him and Benito under his protection. He had protected them and then taken them into his own home. He’d been feeding them and housing them and keeping them safe because the town was in a turmoil and that was the only way he could be certain they were safe. And now Marco had gone and compromised the whole damned setup and compromised Caesare himself.
Maria was right. He was an ingrate.
He was more miserable than he’d ever been in his life; more miserable than the time he’d hidden out in the marshes, because that had only been physical misery—more miserable than when his mother had been killed, because that was a clean-cut loss. This—this tangle of lies and half-truths he’d woven into a trap binding him and Aldanto—this mess had him so turned inside-out—that it was a wonder he even remembered what day it was.
Oh, Angelina, he thought mournfully, if only I’d never seen you.
It had seemed so innocent, sending that love poem to Angelina Dorma. She wouldn’t know who had sent it, so what harm could possibly come of it? But Angelina had assumed it had come from Aldanto, because she was in love with Caesare. Not surprising, that. Caesare Aldanto was a man, not a lovesick boy. Caesare Aldanto was urbane and sophisticated and, to top it off, tall, golden-haired—in a city full of short, dark folk—and as handsome as a sculpture of Apollo. No girl would think twice about Marco with Caesare Aldanto in the same city. Marco didn’t blame Angela—and truth to tell, he hadn’t really expected her to respond to the poems so strongly.