Free The Second Duchess by Elizabeth Loupas

thing is meant to be secret, it should remain secret. Will you chatter so blithely of my own private matters, the moment my back is turned?”
    Paolina had the grace to look down. “ Chiedo perdono, Serenissima ,” she murmured. Then she spoiled the effect of her pretty pardon-begging by adding, “But you will never truly appreciate Frà Pandolf’s genius unless—”
    “Enough. If the duke chooses to hide this portrait away, I am sure he has reason. Perhaps he believes it is not a good likeness.”
    Frà Pandolf stopped painting. “It’s a perfect likeness!” he cried. “Go and look for yourself, Serenissima . It’s at the top of the stairs past the bronze statue of Neptune, in the old gallery the duke has partitioned for his library. There’s a hanging in front of it, so most people don’t realize it’s there.”
    “It is the duke’s express order that no eyes but his gaze upon it,” Domenica said.
    The voice of reason. Naturally it did nothing but further inflame my desire to see the thing. How could I help but wish to gaze upon her face, the girl whose death had made a place for me here?
    “Thank you, Domenica,” I said. Say nothing more, Domenica. I have heard your warning and I will pretend to heed it, but of course you and I both know I will see that painting, one way or another. “Frà Pandolf, we will not speak of this matter further. In any case, if I were to leave you now, you would lose your light. Just as it—limns—my cheek.”
    He did not even blush. “Just so,” he said. “Ah, Serenissima, paint must never hope to reproduce the living gleam of your hair, just as the sun strikes it.”
    I did not respond. The Franciscan continued to paint, his expression once again fixed in a self-satisfied smile as if he were already anticipating the praise and gold he would receive for his efforts. Or as if he knew he had planted a poisoned dart of curiosity in my breast. Probably both. I held my pose and thought of the duke’s first duchess, and watched as little by little the squares of sunlight and shadow crept across the floor.
     
     
    AT THE END of the day I looked at the friar’s work, and even I must confess, it took my breath away.
    How had he done it? My face and the spill of my hair floated ghostlike on the canvas, with only the barest sketch of the rest of the figure; he would finish the costume and the background with one of my ladies to wear the red dress and sit for him rather than I myself. But in what he had done so far, he had caught me to the life: my eyes, my mouth, the shape of my face, my hair, light and shadow and luminous color, each touch of the brush vividly revealing. He seemed so slapdash as he worked, yet he had produced a portrait that looked more like the real me than I myself.
    A tall, slender woman, not young, sat next to a window with the sun streaming in upon her, limning—and yes, even I must confess that was the perfect term for the effect—the long but well-bred line of her cheek and jaw with light. Her hair was combed back from her high forehead with nothing but a narrow jeweled band to confine it, and it seemed to shimmer with lifelike color. Yes, her lower lip thrust out a bit, but in the painting it was sensual, soft, not a defect to be jeered at as the “Habsburg lip.” And her eyes! The color of cloves, clear and steady and full of secrets.
    “It is you, Serenissima,” Frà Pandolf said, leaning over my shoulder as I looked at it, close enough that I could feel the heat of his breath against my cheek and smell the scents of paint and turpentine and animal male upon his habit. I drew away. A genius the fellow might be, but as the duke had remarked, he was unpleasantly familiar in his manner.
    “It is very good,” I said coldly. “But it is for the duke to decide. You will wait upon him, Frà Pandolf, when it is finished.”
    “Yes, Serenissima,” he said. “Who could help but admire it, when it shows your very soul, your inner beauty, so