Free Inamorata by Megan Chance

“Yours not the least of it. Is it what you felt as well, Hannigan?”
    “I wouldn’t call it idiocy,” my brother said reflectively. “But it was a dream that brought me here.”
    “A dream . . . like a wish, you mean? You’d always wanted to see Venice?” asked Mr. Martin.
    “A dream like a dream.” Joseph’s smile was sleepy and fine, the smile I loved best. “I was dreaming of Venice and thought I should come to see why.”
    It was a lie, of course. It was the kind of whimsy people expected of artists, and my brother was clever enough to be what was expected. But Joseph had never dreamed of Venice. He’d only listened to the talk of its salons held by expatriates and the sublimity of its light, and he and I had seen the opportunity we needed. Venice was the perfect place to escape to, a place to lick our wounds and hopefully find the fame and fortune Joseph felt we were destined for.
    But leave it to my brother to make our flight sound romantic and artistic.
    “Well,” Mr. Dane said. “I hope Venice lives up to the dream, my friend, and doesn’t turn into a nightmare instead.”
    “You think it could?” my brother asked.
    Mr. Dane shrugged. “I’ve seen it happen. There are those who will warn you not to stay very long here. They’ll tell you foreigners often discover that Venice’s legacy is despair.”
    “Look at poor Stafford,” Mr. Martin agreed.
    “That would never happen to Joseph,” I said ardently. “We’ve come here to escape despair, not to find it.”
    I felt my brother’s warning in the tightening of his grip, nearly painful, on my fingers.
    I tried to smile. “What I mean is . . . Joseph has a great deal of talent. No one with talent like that should ever despair.”
    “Nor should any lady so beautiful as yourself,” put in Mr. Martin a bit too earnestly. “Have you seen Venice’s Public Gardens, Miss Hannigan?”
    The change in subject, as well as his too-obvious compliment, disconcerted me. “Oh . . . oh no. We’ve been here too short a time.”
    “Nick and I promised your brother the best views in Venice, and the Gardens have several. It’s truly the only bit of green in the city. We’ve agreed to go tomorrow. I, for one, would be delighted if you would join us.”
    I’d meant to spend the day looking for a place to live. But Joseph squeezed my hand, and I knew what he wanted me to do. I looked at Mr. Dane. “You’ll be going as well?”
    “I’d thought to,” he said.
    Giles Martin said, “Perhaps there you’ll find the inspiration you’ve been searching for, Nick.”
    I said to Mr. Dane, “How is it that inspiration has eluded you in a place like Venice?”
    He gave me a languid look. “Who knows? Words are my trade, Miss Hannigan, but Venice sweeps them all away.”
    “I keep telling him he simply hasn’t found the right muse,” Mr. Martin said.
    Mr. Dane laughed shortly. “Oh, I’ve had enough of muses, I think.”
    He said it with a bitterness that told me he’d been unlucky in love, and no doubt recently. It was a bit dismaying, but not fatal. There was too much at stake to let it matter. We needed Nicholas Dane to like us. To like me.
    “Oh, but perhaps you’ll find one more to your taste in the Gardens,” I said.
    Nicholas Dane bowed his head slightly in acquiescence. “Perhaps so,” he said, but when he looked at me, I saw only politeness, and I thought of the bitterness I’d heard in his voice, my sense that he was a man who’d been thwarted by love. But love was not what I required from him.
    Don’t forget that. I could almost hear Joseph’s voice in my head. Any man can be led by desire, Soph. But desire isn’t love. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it is.
    I knew that better than most, didn’t I?

N ICHOLAS

    S he w as as stunning in person as his portrait had made her out to be. She was not quite beautiful, but there was something in her more interesting than beauty, than blue eyes and dark hair and pale skin. It was