Chapter Thirty-Eight
Strangely, it was Ivanhoe’s grand internal struggles that steadied Edward’s mind.
All morning the words had seemed to blaze on the page: honor, sacrifice, impossible love.
The quill flew in his hand, scratching steadily across the paper while beyond the library windows, Venice shimmered in pale sunlight, but Edward scarcely noticed.
For the first time in days, hope had edged out despair.
Sofia’s confession—however self-pitying—had given him something solid: a name, a method, a chain of events that could, with care, be used to vindicate Venetia. Griselda. A stolen pair of emerald earrings. A desperate bargain made in a mending room.
It wasn’t much, but it was more than the blind panic he’d been floundering in.
If Ivanhoe could endure chains and wounds and still ride to his lady’s rescue, surely a mere translator could outwit a handful of conspirators.
I am not riding anywhere. I am sitting at a desk translating adjectives. But still.
He dipped his pen again, fighting the urge to race to Venetia with the news.
Timing, he knew, was everything. Sofia’s story was a double-edged weapon.
Wielded clumsily, it could cut Venetia as much as it sliced at Captain Rizzi’s assumptions.
He would have to find the precise moment—after the right allies had been prepared, after Griselda was put somewhere safe—to let the truth seep into the open.
And all the while, the clock ticked.
Morosini had not yet said as much, but Edward felt it in every tight line of the old man’s face: The scandal must be neatly contained before the end of the great balloon extravaganza that would celebrate Sofia’s betrothal to Count Bembo.
Venice would be watching that day. So, no doubt, would Rizzi. And Greene. And di Montefiore.
Three days. Perhaps four. A handful of dawns and dusks in which to untangle a web that had taken weeks—no, months—to spin.
His pen slowed as that thought settled. Then, deliberately, he bent again to the work. Ivanhoe on the page, Venetia in his mind, a plan unfurling somewhere between.
He was so deep in it—half in England, half in Palestine—that the first murmur of voices above barely registered. The upper gallery was where Sofia hid when she was painting. Servants did not linger there. A deeper tone answered, roughened by age.
The voices grew clearer as the speakers descended the iron spiral stair. Edward hunched instinctively over his pages, letting the tall ranks of books shield him. It was not eavesdropping, he told himself piously, if the conversation insisted on walking directly into his hearing.
“…say what you like, Moriso, Udolpho has the finest atmosphere of dread ever penned,” the stranger was saying in accented Italian.
“Mr. Scott writes nobly of chivalry, but Mrs. Radcliffe—ah! She understands the secrets of the human heart. And her villains are true villains, not merely testy Normans.”
Morosini snorted. “You sentimentalize corridors and moonlight, Alessandro. Scott gives us history. Nationhood. The clash of races, the making of a people. You speak of hearts—yet is not love of country the noblest passion?”
They emerged between the shelves—a stooped, gray-haired gentleman with a long beard that reached the worn velvet lapels of his coat. The stranger’s garments were rich but a decade out of fashion, as if he’d stepped out of a portrait and forgotten to change.
Edward dropped his gaze to his manuscript, pretending absorption.
“You demand much of your authors,” the marchese was saying, “but they cannot work fast enough.”
Morosini laughed. “You were a skeptic when you tasted the first chapters of Scott. Now you devour it like a glutton. Do not pretend otherwise. Whose idea was it to commission translations beyond Waverley and Guy Mannering? Mine? No. It was ‘the recluse of Valenti’ who cannot sleep unless he has a new romance by his bed.”
The marchese harrumphed, but without much heat. “A man must find consolation somewhere when condemned to exile on a damp rock with only gulls for company.”
“Exile you chose,” Morosini shot back. “Venice did not banish you.”
“I banished myself because there was nothing left to me when I thought the preservation of my life had been a blessed gift from God,” the marchese corrected. “Without my Isabella, it was a curse.”
Their steps slowed near Edward’s table. He felt Morosini’s glance slide over him—the momentary assessing pause. Edward glanced up to see the faint flicker of satisfaction in his employer’s eyes at seeing his translator bent dutifully over his task.
“Signor Rothbury,” the count said. “You are acquainted with the work of Mrs. Radcliffe as well as Mr. Scott, are you not?”
Edward rose, bowing. “I have read The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian in the original English, Excellency. On your order.”
“Just so.” Morosini turned to his guest. “Here is the magician who turns your beloved romances into Italian, Alessandro. At such speed that even your voracious appetite may be satisfied.”
The marchese’s eyes—dark, deeply set—rested on Edward for a fleeting moment before he turned away, muttering, “How young you are to bear such responsibility.” Then, turning back, he said from the doorway, “Tell me, do you find Scott equal to Radcliffe?”
Edward shrugged. “How does one compare two such masters? Scott has the broader canvas,” he answered honestly. “Adventure. Romance. High stakes. But Mrs. Radcliffe has the keener eye for… fear. For what it is to be helpless and brave at once.”
Something flickered across Alessandro’s face—approval, or simply amusement. “A good answer.”
“A romantic answer,” Morosini said, half teasing. “Do you see? He infects even translators with his sentimentality. No doubt he will side with you over whether love should topple fortresses.”
“If love does not topple fortresses, what is the point of fortresses?” the marchese retorted. “You grow old, Morosini.”
“I am old,” Morosini said dryly. “And with age comes the knowledge that fortresses cost money to rebuild. Which brings us to the subject I wished to raise.”
Edward lowered his eyes again, but his ears sharpened as the two men turned and began to walk away, discussing the costs of Sofia’s betrothal event. Barely a farewell to the lowly translator?
“Was it necessary to conjure up a balloon?” Alessandro asked.
“The whole city expects a spectacle from me. Sofia’s betrothal must be celebrated with sufficient splendor that gossip about jewels and English heiresses will be flushed away like yesterday’s tide.
” Morosini’s tone held both pride and irritation.
“We will have music in the Marciana gardens, fireworks from a barge, and a balloon ascent from the Piazzetta.” His voice swelled with pride.
“And all created within weeks, out of nothing, employing the energy of hundreds. Nothing has been done to rival it. I have made sure of that. I have secured a French aeronaut, very reputable, who assures me it can be done with safety.”
“I’ve no doubt French aeronauts always assure one of that,” Alessandro murmured dryly. “Until they land in a chicken yard and break both legs. Who is to ascend? The fish-merchant groom?”
“Bembo?” Morosini gave a bark of laughter.
“You disrespect him. He bargained hard to get my Sofia, and I was reluctant at first. But he has a fat purse that will grant my granddaughter her most outlandish wish. She is that kind of young woman. She rails against the marriage, but she does not realize that the kind of love she dreams about appears only in sentimental novels like Ivanhoe. It is fleeting and will not last.”
The marchese made a growl of objection. “You mistake the very reason I am sustained by my Sir Walter Scott and his tales of love and chivalry. I think you never enjoyed the love I had with my Isabella, my angel, my muse. She still sings to me every night, you know. Sings me to sleep and in my dreams. Bah! I pity your granddaughter, who will never win her heart’s desire, even for a fleeting moment.
You are a cold man, Morosini, for all that we are united in a common love. ”
“And you are a lonely, bitter one divorced from reality,” Morosini said with equanimity as, halting by the door, he returned to his favorite topic.
“Ah, but the balloon was an inspiration visited on me by an Englishwoman. If she can do it, anyone can! The spectacle is the thing—the silken globe rising over the domes, the people cheering, Sofia applauding prettily from the basket beside Bembo. All Venice will look up, and cheer as they feast their eyes on the balloon, floating up above them all, festooned in the colors of the House of Morosini. I will be lauded and feted until my dying day.”
While poor Sofia chafes against the shackles of a marriage she does not want until her dying day, Edward thought grimly.
“The magistrate insists the city must see order restored before such an event,” Morosini continued.
“Rizzi wants a clean report for his files with the superintendent of the city returning the day after. If he cannot lay formal charges, he will settle for a confession and the requisite repentance. By the night of the balloon ascent, the matter of the contessa’s emeralds will be quietly resolved. ”
Three days. Edward shivered.
The marchese snorted. “You think spectacle will change what people whisper in private? You have always believed in the theater of politics, Morosini. I prefer my dramas on the page.”
“And yet,” Morosini said smoothly, “you will refuse an invitation to watch? Surely even hermits are not immune to wonder? Will you come? Or will you sulk on your island with your books while the rest of us look to the heavens?”
There was a pause. Edward could almost hear the old man’s reluctance.
“I will… consider it,” the marchese said at last. “Bembo’s presence offends me. Your granddaughter’s plight offends me more. You trade her like a parcel of land.”
“Do not quote romances at me again,” Morosini snapped. “You of all men know why I do as I must for my family. Leave me to my calculations, and I will leave you to your ghosts.”
From over his shoulder, Morosini sent a last glance at the pages on Edward’s desk. “Work quickly, Rothbury. A city waits on Mr. Scott. By the time my balloon touches the sky, I would have both Ivanhoe concluded and Miss Playford’s affairs… settled.”
“Yes, signore,” Edward said quietly.