“Do you make it a habit of misunderstanding people, or is it simply an eagerness to understand me?” Niccolò mused, his tongue clicking softly against his teeth with the patient reproach one reserves for an unruly child rather than an equal.
There were few spectacles he treasured more than another man’s temper. Joy was a bird, swift enough to vanish at the slightest sound, but anger possessed roots; it burrowed deep into the earth of a soul, fastening itself around whatever wound had first nourished it. To discover what could summon that fury was to find the chain by which a man might be led. We imagine ourselves masters whilst calm, yet the hand that can rouse our wrath need not bind our wrists, for it has already slipped a leash about the heart.
“Miss Mercier sounds a remarkable lady, and you speak of your brothers with an affection that would make many families envious. It is admirable, my lord.” His elbows settled upon the table as he inclined forward, the corners of his mouth lifting into a smile that belonged more readily to the Cheshire Cat than to any gentleman. With unhurried satisfaction, he spread his cards across the polished wood. Another victory.
“I fear we are all poorer servants than we care to admit, for our hearts insist upon governing us whilst pretending to obey. You were not angered because I insulted those you cherish.” His eyes remained fixed upon the other man with almost scientific curiosity. “You were angered because you believed I might have. There is a difference. Affection reached for your sword long before reason had drawn its own.”
“No,” Niccolò replied, watching the gentleman depart with a string of inventive curses that seemed to improve with distance. He acknowledged the retreat with an almost courteous wave. “I believe they merely wish to shatter the mould into which society insists on pouring them. We may adore birds with our whole hearts, my lord, but if we truly love them, we must leave the cage door open.”
A thoughtful tilt of his head followed.
“You do not strike me as a gentleman who delights in surprises. Yet I suspect you would be astonished by the depth with which your brothers return your affection.”
Or perhaps they would one day greet him with daggers instead of embraces, as Rome had once greeted Caesar. Men had made an old tradition of betraying those they loved most dearly. Niccolò, however, had long abandoned the habit of mistaking possibility for certainty.
The answer drew him somewhere far beyond the gaming table. Memory was an unruly thing; it wandered where it pleased and seldom requested permission. He had shared no blood with Francesca or Vincenzo, yet there had been years when they had shared everything else. Bruises, stolen suppers, childish victories, impossible dreams, broken bones, missing teeth, impossible schemes—they had quarrelled with all the violence peculiar to children convinced the world ended at sunset, only to make peace before dawn could accuse them of their pride. They had lost one another a hundred different ways as life demanded its toll, and still each road, however crooked, had found its way back to the same crossroads.
Vincenzo remained in Italy, watching over the Salvatores as though duty had been stitched into the lining of his skin. Francesca… he decided not to wonder where she was. There existed questions whose answers possessed the inconvenient habit of arriving alongside catastrophe.
“I grew up beside two…” He paused, discovering that friendship had become too frail a word to bear the weight of years. “Cousins, though, truthfully, I have long since thought of them as my brother and sister.”
His smile softened, shedding some measure of its perpetual mischief.
“They have given me no small number of grey hairs. She lives in perpetual negotiation with the border separating brilliance from absolute madness, while he…” A quiet laugh escaped him. “If love asked for his life, I do not believe he would trouble himself to bargain over the price.”
His gaze drifted briefly towards the cards before returning.
“I owe you an apology for my earlier meddling. You reminded me rather too much of myself.”
Silence settled only long enough for him to gather the deck between elegant fingers. One more round. It was the sort of promise Aunt Lou had always taught him to make with a perfectly honest face, even when every soul in the room, including himself, knew it to be the favourite lie of gamblers and magicians alike. She had insisted that illusion was never born in the hands, but in expectation. Draw every eye towards certainty, and certainty itself would become the finest disguise.
“Feel free to do so,” Niccolò replied. Fairness, after all, demanded reciprocity, and advice was among the few gifts that always betrayed the character of its giver more faithfully than its receiver.
Mary Barnett. Dominic’s younger brother’s former betrothed.
How curious. The game had possessed his attention before; now it had earned his fascination.
“You flatter me,” he said, lowering his gaze to the fan of cards resting comfortably between his fingers, “but I have no ambition towards matrimony, and Miss Barnett strikes me as rather too young to be prescribed as the remedy for my inconveniences.”
A thoughtful silence lingered before he continued.
“Forgive my curiosity. She is neither your ward nor your dependent, and yet you speak as though her circumstances rest upon your conscience. I cannot help wondering why.”
One card slid lazily across the green felt.
“Suppose someone were to ensure she never wanted for comfort nor security, whilst allowing her to remain precisely where she wished. Would that satisfy you? Or is the difficulty altogether of another nature?”
The question appeared idle, although it was anything but. He had once entertained the notion of quietly settling the Barnetts’ debts, just as he had relieved several strategically chosen noble families of theirs. Charity, judiciously placed, often purchased loyalty more cheaply than coin ever could. He had imagined such a gesture might earn Dominic’s favor, instead, it had taught him the singular inconvenience of mistaken calculations. No matter. A wise traveller did not curse the road for bending; he merely altered his course.
The final hand ended much as the others had. Chairs scraped across the floor, defeated gentlemen departed with purses conspicuously lighter than when they had arrived, and wounded pride proved, as always, the heaviest thing any man carried from a gaming table.
Niccolò gathered his winnings with neither triumph nor apology before allowing himself to sink lazily into the back of his chair. His head rested against the carved wood as he regarded Dominic from beneath lowered lashes, looking less like a victor than a cat too comfortably fed to trouble itself with mice.
“A glass at the end of the evening,” he echoed, amusement ghosting across his features. “Though I ought to warn you, I make an abysmal drunk. Wine persuades me that every poor decision is, in fact, an excellent one.”
He swept the coins into their pouch with an absent motion, the other hand gliding idly across the tabletop until it rested between them.
“Would you care to know how I rid myself of stress?” He leaned forward, lowering his voice as though conspiring in some scandal. “Boxing.”
The smile that followed possessed only teeth.
“Would you like to fight me?”
