“A magic touch,” she had said, as others had said before her.
The words stirred no pride within him. They came instead like the tolling of a bell heard through fog, summoning ghosts that had never learned the mercy of remaining buried.
He had been but sixteen then, swallowed whole by a habit of dark crimson whose sacred folds concealed nothing, not the terror coiled in his stomach, nor the child still trembling beneath the garments of a man. He remembered the weight of the axe resting in his hands with dreadful certainty. His fingers had tightened about the haft until splinters lodged beneath his skin, as though pain of his own making might purchase him some right to inflict another’s.
When at last the order came, he had shut his eyes, coward that he was, as though darkness could absolve him, as though refusing to witness the deed might persuade Heaven he had not committed it.
The descent of the blade announced itself not with triumph, but with a sound he had never escaped—a dull marriage of iron, flesh, and bone that haunted every silence thereafter. His stomach revolted. Bitter bile climbed his throat. Sweat trickled down his spine, though the morning had been cold enough to frost the stones beneath his feet.
“Do you wish to be forgiven?” The priest’s voice had floated somewhere beyond the ringing in his ears.“Then pray.”
As if prayer were a river broad enough to carry blood away.
“A magic touch,” the Pope had remarked afterward, clapping him upon the shoulder once the blood had been washed from his hands. He had stood beneath the crucifix, unable to lift his gaze from the dying Christ suspended above him, while his own hands trembled with such violence he feared the shaking would never cease. “I have never witnessed an execution so clean.”
Years later, Sofia had uttered those same words. She had lain with her head upon his chest, tracing idle circles against his skin while the evening drifted lazily through the open window of the apartment above her little modiste’s shop.
He had answered with silence. After a long moment, she had lifted herself upon one elbow and cupped his face with such impossible gentleness that it had frightened him more than any demon ever had.
“You do not quite know what to do when someone is kind to you, do you?” she had murmured, studying him with something akin sorrow. “You always look as though you’re preparing to flee.”
She had spoken no accusation, only truth. And truth, he had long discovered, possessed a sharper edge than steel. It was the last evening he ever climbed the narrow staircase to the rooms above her shop.
He gave a slight shake of his head, as though the motion alone might scatter memory like startled birds. It was a futile habit. The past possessed the persistence of ivy; tear it from one stone, and it had already found another to claim. There were recollections that clung not to the mind, but to the marrow, and no force short of death seemed capable of loosening their hold.
Braiding Lulia’s hair, at least, required no struggle. His fingers remembered the work almost without consulting him. He had relied upon the very same deception when Francesca had been a little girl too impatient to sit still.
“What is this behind your ear?” A coin! The first braid completed. “And whatever is hiding inside your sleeve?” A rose! The second.
Francesca had never ceased trying to discover how he managed it, convinced there existed some magnificent secret concealed within his sleeves, while he had delighted in inventing ever more impossible explanations simply to watch her argue against each one.
The tricks had never been his own, they belonged to Aunt Lou. She had claimed a hundred times over that Heaven had neglected to place within her even the smallest longing for children, and everyone had believed her, herself most of all. Yet whenever Anna found herself overwhelmed by the impossible task of raising a spirited little boy and the unruly procession of friends forever trailing through their home, it was Aunt Lou who appeared without invitation, pockets full of sweets, ribbons, impossible stories, and clever little miracles hidden in plain sight. She taught him that the finest magic was not in making things appear, but in convincing another soul, if only for the span of a heartbeat, that the world was gentler than it truly was. A flower from an empty hand, a coin from behind an ear, laughter wrestled from a child’s solemnity—those were enchantments worthy of mastering.
“All my thanks to the Queen!” Niccolò declared, clicking his tongue as though seized by the gravest of diplomatic concerns. “I fear we shall have to find her the most courteous werewolf gentleman in all England now. I have it on excellent authority that the rest of Europe breeds nothing but vampires.”
Their laughter met one another as naturally as birdsong answering dawn and before he could guard against it, desire stole quietly into his heart. Not the feverish longing that had so often ruined wiser men, but something infinitely more dangerous.
He wished to become Lulia’s favourite person. He wished to be the gentleman to whom Lily’s grandparents entrusted their warmest regards without hesitation; the one whose arrival brought smiles instead of surprise; the one she instinctively sought beside her when rooms grew crowded. He wished, with a hunger so gentle it scarcely resembled ambition, to belong where she belonged.
To be her soulmate, as she had called him.
Foolish hopes were the last luxury of the damned.
He shifted Lulia more securely upon his hip as their laughter lingered in the air, bright enough to make the afternoon itself seem lighter. Could life truly submit so willingly to happiness? Could peace arrive without demanding blood in payment?
He could not persuade himself of it. Fortune had always resembled a wary bird; whenever it perched upon his shoulder, he found himself already bracing for the moment it would take flight. Some men expected blessings because they believed themselves worthy of them. Niccolò received them as a condemned prisoner might receive an unexpected kindness from his gaoler with gratitude profound enough to wound, and with the unwavering certainty that it had been bestowed upon the wrong man.
When the words “pretty please” fell from Lily’s lips, Niccolò very nearly loosened his hold upon Lulia altogether. There existed no earthly force capable of preparing a man for such a request uttered in that voice.
He feared there was nothing he possessed that he could refuse her if she asked so softly. It was monstrously unfair. A heart as weathered and ill-used as his ought to have been proof against sweetness, yet hers slipped through every crack in his armour with no effort.
“The… cabbage,” he repeated, clearing his throat. “Yes. The cabbage.”
Balancing Lulia upon one arm, he reached for the bowl containing the cabbage he had already sliced and offered it to Lily.
Their fingers met. It was scarcely more than the briefest brush of skin against skin, yet neither withdrew at once. The smallest of hesitations stretched itself into an eternity that no clock could have measured. Warmth travelled from that accidental touch, as though his pulse had mistaken her hand for its rightful destination.
He would not live long enough to taste the soup.
“Nicco!” Lulia exclaimed in what she no doubt believed was a whisper, though it possessed all the discretion of a church bell. She clapped both hands over her mouth a moment too late, her eyes gleaming with conspiratorial delight. “You’re as red as a tomato!”
She was Francesca made small again. The very same irrepressible mischief. The very same talent for exposing truths a wiser soul might have left undisturbed. He was beginning to dread the inevitable day those two spirits met one another.
“I assure you,” Niccolò replied with an exaggerated pout, inclining his head towards his self-appointed queen, “it is merely the overwhelming joy of having escaped beheading.”
He pressed one hand to his chest with theatrical gratitude.
“I find myself profoundly thankful for Her Majesty’s mercy.”
Supper unfolded with such unassuming warmth that, before Niccolò was aware of it, he found himself surrendering to it entirely. The soup was excellent in the way only meals prepared with affection could ever be. Conversation wandered without calculation, laughter interrupted mouths already full, and now and again someone reached across another’s plate without apology, as though such liberties were not breaches of etiquette but declarations of belonging.
He could scarcely remember the last occasion upon which he had eaten with a family. Not merely beside one, but with one. There was a distinction vast enough to swallow kingdoms.
No one measured his worth before offering him another ladleful. No one regarded him as executioner, nobleman, benefactor, or curiosity. For one fleeting evening, he had been permitted the impossible privilege of existing simply as Niccolò.
Afterward, when Lulia’s eyelids had begun their determined battle against wakefulness, he carried her to her room. Curled against his shoulder, she yielded to sleep with the unquestioning trust peculiar to children, her small hand still gathered in the folds of his coat as though she feared he might disappear if she released him. He paced the room in slow circles until her breathing deepened into peaceful rhythm, and only then did he lay her carefully beneath the blankets, smoothing an unruly curl from her brow.
Before taking his leave, he spoke quietly with Matei. “There is a physician,” he said. “Doctor Amadeo Pazzi.”
The recommendation came without hesitation. If anyone possessed both the brilliance and the obstinate compassion required for the task, it was Francesca. Since setting herself upon that impossible pilgrimage towards selfless love, she had abandoned all concern for payment whenever suffering stood before her. She would sooner empty her own purse than permit another to keep theirs.
He suspected she would scold him for announcing as much. He suspected, too, that she would prove him right.
He sought Ana next and made the very same request he had made of Lulia earlier. “You must all come to visit me. You have shown me a generosity I cannot hope to deserve. Allow me, at least, the chance to repay a little of it.”
Whether such debts could ever truly be repaid, he did not know. Some kindnesses belonged to that rare species which only multiplied when one attempted to return them.
Lily accompanied him to the door. The cool evening air drifted between them, carrying with it the fragrance of damp earth and distant woodsmoke. For one impossible instant, every unruly desire within him urged the same reckless course. The distance separating them was laughably small. He needed only to lean forward.
He wanted to kiss her. God, how desperately he wanted to kiss her.
Instead, he gathered her hand with all the care he could muster, bowed over it, and pressed his lips lightly against her knuckles.
It was the smallest affection he could safely permit himself, the greatest he dared.He released her before longing convinced him to forget himself. “I shall look forward to seeing you this weekend,” he concluded, offering the polite smile expected of a gentleman while every less respectable part of him begged to remain where he stood.
Then he turned his back before temptation discovered fresh arguments.
It should have ended there, although it did not. By the time he reached the boxing club, the gentleness of the evening had curdled into something darker, heavier, impossible to name. Every hope he had nursed throughout supper had become another weight pressing against the old conviction that happiness had mistaken its destination. Joy, he had learned long ago, possessed an alarming tendency to demand repayment.
When the first man stepped into the ring with him, Niccolò struck harder than necessity required. When the fellow staggered, he struck again and again. By the time Alastair wrenched him backward with both arms and enough force to drag him clear, the unfortunate boxer scarcely resembled the confident gentleman who had entered the ring moments before.
Silence returned all at once, so did shame.
Niccolò crossed the room immediately, apologizing with a sincerity no amount of money could imitate. He paid the injured man enough to compensate every bruise several times over, then insisted upon escorting him straight to Francesca’s apothecary. Before Alastair could object, he thrust an equally generous sum into the man’s hands as well, apologizing to him with the same earnestness.
He could mend broken noses, broken ribs, broken fortunes. Those injuries yielded, eventually, to time. The thing within himself that had demanded violence merely because it could not bear the weight of tenderness, that wound remained stubbornly untouched.
“‘The next time you decide to go feral on one o’ my lads,” Alastair said at last, once Francesca had finished tending the poor fellow’s injuries and declared, with far more patience than either of them deserved, that he would be perfectly sound again within a fortnight, “I’ll put a warnin’ shot straight through that fine pretend limp o’ yours. D’ye hear me, aye?”
“I hear you,” he answered, nothing but a hound with it’s tail tucked between his legs.
Whether Alastair intended ever to make good on the promise scarcely mattered. There were punishments far more accurate than bullets.
As he stepped into the night, the chill air failed to cool the fever beneath his skin. The warmth of Lily’s hand still lingered upon his lips like the memory of a prayer he had no right to utter, and that, more than the blood staining his knuckles, filled him with dread.
He had allowed himself to forget. For the span of a single evening, he had accepted a place at a family’s table, laughed with their child, carried her to bed, imagined future visits as though they were promises rather than fantasies. He had looked upon a home that was not his and, in some reckless corner of his soul, begun to wonder what it might feel like to belong there.
Such thoughts were dangerous, for they softened a man who ought never to be softened. He knew too well what dwelt beneath his own skin, it was not enough that he could charm a child into laughter or kiss a lady with perfect courtesy. Wolves, too, could move silently through forests without betraying the hunger in their teeth.
The monster remained a monster still. No amount of gentleness could erase the blood that had once answered so readily to his hands. No tenderness bestowed upon him could restore what he had forfeited long ago. Men such as he were not fashioned for hearths bright with candlelight, nor for children’s laughter echoing through familiar rooms. They were fashioned for darker places—for the certainty that every happiness they touched must eventually wither.
Liliana deserved a life untouched by shadows. A home that had never learned to fear the knock of ghosts. A husband whose hands had built instead of destroyed.
He deserved none of it. If there existed a future awaiting him, it was not one warmed by her smile or blessed by the affection of her family. It waited elsewhere, beyond mercy’s reach, where the fires he had spent a lifetime pretending not to fear burned.
And perhaps, he thought, that was the only future that had ever truly belonged to him.
Meeting Liliana again with his gloves restored to their accustomed place felt strangely unnatural, like lowering the gates of a fortress that had, for one reckless afternoon, forgotten it had ever been built. He preferred the barrier nonetheless. Better polished leather than bruised knuckles split open by violence. Better she should think him merely reserved than discover how swiftly tenderness and brutality coexisted within the same pair of hands.
Aunt Lou, naturally, had spent the better part of the morning fluttering about him with the relentless determination of a field marshal preparing an unwilling recruit for inspection.
“You will look respectable,” she declared, smoothing his lapels with brisk, practiced hands. “And for once, mon petit, simply be yourself.”
“I cannot accomplish both simultaneously,” Niccolò had replied, she answered by swatting his shoulder with a measuring tape and declaring him impossible.
Since Francesca had announced that every waking hour belonged to the training of her newly acquired secretary—a soul for whom Niccolò silently offered his sincerest prayers—Aunt Lou had inherited complete command of Liliana’s wardrobe and Niccolò was on measuring duty for the evening.
Accordingly, he had dispatched his carriage to fetch her, while he remained imprisoned within the dressmaker’s shop, where bolts of silk and linen multiplied across every available surface like blossoms after spring rain.
By midday they had settled upon twelve gowns. Four in rich shades of crimson, deep enough to rival garnets in candlelight. Four in blues that wandered from the softness of a cloudless sky to the shade of midnight. And four fashioned from delicate floral prints scattered across fields of cream and ivory, so light they appeared as though summer itself had been persuaded to weave cloth.
Aunt Lou pronounced the collection entirely sufficient. “Especially once they’re paired with the new stays, chemises, petticoats, stockings, and garters.”
“I should like to inspect them as well.”
“You most certainly shall not.” She scarcely allowed him to finish speaking before fixing him with a look so severe that even kings might have reconsidered their intentions beneath it. “I’ve no desire to have you standing in the middle of my shop imagining the poor girl in half her wardrobe before she’s even worn the whole of it.”
“I was going to protest.”
“Nino,” she sighed, folding her arms, “I’ve known you since you were scarcely tall enough to reach my worktable. I can tell the difference between an innocent question and the sort you’re pretending this one is.”
He had possessed neither evidence nor courage sufficient to challenge her accusation. The matter, therefore, was settled. He was forbidden from seeing the undergarments, and more cruelly still, he was forbidden from seeing the gown she would wear to the ball.
Aunt Lou guarded that particular creation with almost religious devotion, refusing even the smallest description.
“It is a surprise,” she insisted. For whom, Niccolò wondered, she had neglected to specify.
He suspected the greatest victim of the arrangement would prove to be himself. The anticipation had already begun weaving impossible visions through his imagination, and experience had taught him that reality, where Liliana was concerned, possessed the alarming habit of surpassing every one of them.
“But what if she truly wishes me to see it?” Niccolò protested with an aggrieved sigh. He was perfectly aware he sounded like a spoiled child denied a favourite toy, although he found he could not summon the dignity to care.
“Then she may show you herself,” Aunt Lou replied serenely, not even lifting her eyes from the seam she was finishing. “And afterward I shall throw the pair of you into the street, mon cher.”
He laughed despite himself. There were few people in the world who could threaten him so matter-of-factly and still be rewarded with his affection.
Aunt Lou’s boutique reflected its mistress perfectly. Elegance announced itself there without the least inclination to boast. Sunlight poured through the tall front windows, awakening silks that shimmered like still water and velvets rich enough to swallow the light that touched them. Gowns stood upon polished mannequins with the confidence of queens awaiting presentation, each stitch so exact that one might have mistaken needlework for sorcery. Nothing within those walls had been fashioned for haste or economy. Every gown was an heirloom awaiting the family worthy of inheriting it; every commission demanded a purse as generous as its maker’s talent. Ladies crossed counties for the privilege of wearing Aunt Lou’s creations, and many departed lighter in coin than they had intended, though never in satisfaction.
Niccolò had scarcely resumed pretending to be patient when the distant clatter of hooves reached the windows.
Before thought could temper instinct, he was already moving. He descended the staircase with such reckless speed that the polished wood protested beneath his boots.
Behind him came Aunt Lou’s horrified cry. “Nino!”
He ignored it. Had anyone asked afterward, she would no doubt have lectured him for half an hour upon broken necks, shattered banisters, and the disgrace of a gentleman behaving like an overeager schoolboy. She would have been entirely correct.
At that moment, however, there existed only one truth capable of governing him: Liliana had arrived.
Everything else surrendered before it. For who could say how many such moments Providence still intended to grant him? Time possessed a cruel talent for carrying away the things a man cherished before he had learned to call them his own. One day, perhaps sooner than he dared imagine, another gentleman would stand where he longed to stand. Another home would receive her laughter. Another name would follow hers before God and man.
She would have the happier future she deserved. He prayed she would.
And the prayer broke his heart even as he offered it.
The question died unfinished. Niccolò had already stepped forward, one gloved hand extended to assist her from the carriage, every intention of behaving as a gentleman firmly in place.
Then the carriage door swung open. His hand remained where it was, though his thoughts did not.
For one suspended instant, language deserted him altogether because she had left her hair unbound. Dark curls tumbled freely about her shoulders, gathering the afternoon light until each seemed touched by a softer radiance than the sun itself could bestow. They framed her face with such grace that no jeweller’s art, no seamstress’s skill, no earthly ornament could hope to rival them. There existed in her countenance that rare and terrible beauty which did not merely invite admiration, but compelled reverence. She seemed less a woman stepping from a carriage than one of Heaven’s happier imaginings, wandering absent-mindedly into a world too coarse to deserve her.
He wondered, not for the first time, whether the heavens had fashioned sunsets simply to prepare mankind for the possibility of beholding her.
Had the clouds dissolved above their heads, had the earth itself cracked open beneath his feet, had the stars abandoned their appointed courses and fallen blazing into the sea, Niccolò believed he would still have found words only for her beauty.
The end of the world might command his attention for a moment, but Liliana would command it forever.
“You…” he managed at last, his voice quieter than he intended. “You look like a dream.”
It was an absurdly inadequate sentence. No language known to him possessed the generosity required to describe her faithfully. His heart, traitorous thing, had already surrendered before she had so much as taken his hand.
He bowed slightly, offering the one he had been holding out all along. “Would you do me the honour of accompanying me?”
Together they crossed the threshold of Aunt Lou’s boutique, the little bell above the door chiming with its customary sweetness before surrendering once more to the hush that seemed forever to inhabit the place. Somewhere deeper within the shop came the soft rhythm of scissors meeting cloth, the murmur of assistants at work, and the faint fragrance of lavender lingering among fresh linen and beeswax.
Niccolò scarcely noticed any of it. His attention, faithless thing, had fastened itself entirely upon the woman walking beside him. Her curls defied every sensible arrangement, springing loose about her shoulders with a life that seemed wholly their own. They caught the light whenever she moved, wild and untamable, as though no hand had ever truly mastered them. More than once he found his thoughts lingering on them longer than they ought.
He wondered how they would feel slipping between his fingers, whether they were as soft as they appeared, whether they would catch lightly against his calloused skin. He pictured absently winding a curl around his finger while she laughed at some foolish remark of his, her smile bright enough to make him forget the conversation entirely.
His mind, less obedient than his conscience, wandered further. He imagined gathering those dark curls into his fist, drawing them gently back until her spine arched beneath his touch, her breath catching as he murmured, Do you feel me here too?
Then, almost guiltily, the fantasy softened again. He imagined brushing the unruly strands from her brow with a tenderness he scarcely dared acknowledge, or sitting beside her before a crackling fire on some quiet evening, patiently weaving those rebellious curls into careful braids, only to watch them spring free the instant she turned her head, as though they refused to belong to anyone, even him.
Such thoughts belonged to the domestic dreams that visited lonely men in unguarded hours, whispering of ordinary happiness as though it were the rarest miracle Heaven had ever devised. He loved them all the more because they were impossible.
“I have a surprise,” he murmured. Before she could protest, he lifted his gloved hands and gently covered her eyes. It was, he admitted to himself, a shameless excuse.
Standing behind her placed scarcely an inch between them. The warmth of her back reached him even through the layers of their clothing, and the faint perfume carried in her hair surrounded him so completely that, for one dangerous instant, the rest of the world seemed to dissolve into silence.
He ought to have stepped away. Instead, he lingered a heartbeat longer than propriety advised.
“Trust me,” he murmured. Guiding her with careful hands, he led her through the boutique toward the rear, where finished commissions and freshly arrived deliveries awaited their owners. Boxes stood neatly stacked beside garment bags draped in protective linen, while bolts of untouched fabric rested upon shelves that climbed almost to the ceiling.
Aunt Lou watched their slow progress with unmistakable amusement. Chuckling beneath her breath, she quietly retreated a pace, leaving the moment to unfold without her interference.
“Are you ready?” Niccolò’s voice had softened almost to a breath by the time the words reached her ear. “They’re here.”
His hands slipped gently from her eyes to rest upon her shoulders. As Liliana opened her eyes, the first thing in her line of sight would be Aunt Lou stepping into view. The older lady inclined her head, a knowing smile already playing upon her lips. “I am Louise Sinclair,” she curtsied. “The one responsible for your gowns.”
She gestured toward the collection with pride before turning that perceptive gaze upon Liliana.
“And you must be Miss Liliana, the young lady my nephew has praised with such remarkable constancy that I confess I arrived at the conclusion I knew you before we had ever met.” The smile she directed toward Niccolò deepened with unmistakable mischief. “I can only hope you find as much pleasure in my dresses as he appears to find in speaking of you.”
Niccolò closed his eyes for the briefest instant. There were trials Heaven sent to strengthen a man, then there were Francesca and Aunt Lou. He opened them again only to discover Aunt Lou looking entirely pleased with herself. From the corner of his eye he caught her expression—that infuriating look shared by elderly women who had already planned three generations of a family before the couple themselves had managed a proper courtship.
Had the matter been entrusted to Francesca and Aunt Lou, he suspected the wedding breakfast would already have been ordered, the banns announced, and half of London invited before sunset.
What an unspeakably cruel destiny that would have been for Liliana. To awaken one morning and discover herself forever bound to a man whose soul had never quite succeeded in escaping its own darkness.
“Please pay no attention to my dear aunt,” Niccolò said with a long-suffering sigh, though affection betrayed itself beneath every syllable.
Only then did he realise his thumb had begun, almost unconsciously, to trace the faintest reassuring circle against Liliana’s shoulder. The discovery startled him. He withdrew his hand at once, as though waking from a dream. “We should very much like to know what you think of the gowns.”
