When they broke apart, she struggled to catch her breath. “Now stop talking of remembrances and tell me where to find this book.”
Luca touched his free hand to his lips. His face was flushed and his eyes were bright. “My father believed the book was in Florence, the birthplace of the Order.” He dropped his voice. “But I can tell you for certain where to find the pages.”
“Where?” Cass asked. Around her, the prisoners’ moaning seemed to fade; the whole room fell quiet.
“Locked inside your family tomb.”
“What?” Cass wasn’t quite sure she’d heard him right. “The Caravello tomb?”
“Yes.”
“But why would your father put them there?” Cass asked.
“He didn’t,” Luca said. “Your mother did.”
six
“The truth is often different from what is perceived as truth, but only the latter is of any consequence.”
—THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE
What? Why would my mother—”
Heavy boot steps sounded behind her. The jailer was coming. Cass was out of time.
“The key is in the study at my family palazzo,” Luca whispered. “Hidden in the fireplace.”
Before Luca could explain further, the jailer took hold of Cass’s arm and hauled her back to her feet. “You must go now,” he said, prodding her roughly through the door that led back into the passageway.
Wiping the perspiration from her brow, Cass retraced her steps to the room with four doors, where she quickly exchanged her shoes and cloak with Siena.
“Let’s go,” Cass said. “I’ll explain on the way.” She towed Siena across the vestibule and down the stairs. A pair of noblewomen stood just inside the porta della carta, their handmaids hovering dutifully at their sides. Cass could feel all four sets of eyes burning into her back as she passed.
“Get everything you came for?” the shorter soldier asked as Cass slipped back into her chopines. She ignored him, heading quickly across the smaller part of the piazza to the lagoon, where Giuseppe and their gondola bobbed in the quay.
For one brief second, Cass allowed herself to replay the kiss, the prickle of Luca’s beard against her chin, his lips on hers. Softness. Pressure. How could he just tell her to forget him and find someone else if he loved her? Even if Cass were to be executed, she would want her husband to weep over her corpse, to declare her the great love of his life.
Without waiting for Giuseppe’s assistance, she wobbled her way into the boat. She instructed him to take them down the Grand Canal.
“Where are we going?” Siena asked, taking Giuseppe’s gnarled hand in her own as she lifted her skirt over the side of the gondola.
Cass yanked open the slats on the felze. “We have to go to Palazzo da Peraga, but first we’re going to pay a little visit to Donna Zanotta.”
Giuseppe obeyed wordlessly. He had been working for Agnese’s estate for more than thirty years and had learned not to question the whims of Cass or her aunt. It occurred to Cass for the first time that he must know many secrets about Agnese. She wondered what sort of stories he might be able to tell.
As they passed into the wealthiest part of the San Polo district, Cass balled her fists tightly in her lap. Hortensa had everything. What could Dubois possibly have promised her in exchange for her testimony? Had she done it just to be cruel, to be hurtful? Or had he threatened her to get her to comply?
Giuseppe slowed the boat to a stop in front of Palazzo Zanotta, a vast and ostentatious building with a façade made of brick and brightly painted marble trimming. Don Zanotta’s private dock featured a pair of mooring posts carved in the shape of knights wielding broadswords. Giuseppe tied up the gondola and helped Cass and Siena from the boat.
Cass glanced up as she stepped onto the dock. The sun had made its way across the sky. It must be late afternoon already. She adjusted her lace collar, which seemed intent on strangling her.
The front door of Palazzo Zanotta was made of carved wood and gold filigree. An ornate bronze doorknocker in the shape of a wreath was mounted at eye level. Cass reached up and knocked the circle of metal leaves, wincing when the foliage’s sharp edges pricked the skin of her hand.
No one answered. She knocked again, this time more insistently. Louder. More knocks. “It appears no one is home,” Siena ventured.
“Of course someone is home,” Cass said crossly. “Don Zanotta wouldn’t just let his palazzo sit empty, not even if he and the donna were away.”
Eventually the front door opened a crack and a wrinkled, pasty face appeared. “The don and donna are away in Florence,” the servant rasped.
Cass wasn’t even sure if she was speaking to a man or a woman. The door started to close and Cass jammed her foot in the crack. “When will Donna Zanotta be back?” she asked. “It’s important that I speak to her as soon as possible.”
“Not until the end of summer. They left yesterday at daybreak. You just missed her.”
How convenient. Hortensa Zanotta had given false testimony and then immediately fled the city. And to Florence of all places, where Luca believed the Book of the Eternal Rose to be. Could it be a coincidence? Or was everything somehow connected?
Cass nodded at the servant, and then she and Siena returned to the gondola. Giuseppe made quick work of rowing them through the network of smaller canals to Palazzo da Peraga. The whole place looked a little worn, as if even the servants were neglecting it. The shutters were fastened tightly and the mooring post was in bad need of a repainting.
It had been years since Cass had last visited Luca’s family home. Back then, her parents would always speak quietly to his parents in the study while she and Luca were either abandoned in the portego or ushered out into the tiny courtyard to “play.” For Luca this usually meant time to read. Sometimes he would pick out a book for Cass too. Then they would sit curled up in garden chairs for hours. Cass had found it dull, and even a little rude, that Luca spent so much time reading around her. Now she thought perhaps it had just been his shyness that kept him from speaking more.
The girls exited the gondola, and Cass stepped up to Palazzo da Peraga’s door and rapped sharply. Siena stood next to her, worry manifested in her posture, in the way she kept threading and unthreading her fingers.
Cass knew it should bother her—really bother her—that Siena was in love with Luca, especially if she was going to continue serving her after Cass and Luca got married. But right now, Cass was just grateful to have such a staunch ally.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Siena asked.
“A key.” Cass didn’t explain further, that the key unlocked her family tomb. She was still struggling to wrap her mind around that fact. Surely her parents hadn’t been members of any Order that included Joseph Dubois, but then how had her mother come into possession of the documents Dubois was so desperate to acquire?
The da Peragas’ butler, a tall lanky man with silvery hair and piercing brown eyes, opened the door. Though she had been just a child when she had last visited, he recognized Cass immediately. “Signorinas, do come in,” he said.
“Signore,” Cass said, trying to recall the man’s name, but failing. “I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”
Two men were sitting in the portego, sorting through stacks of crumbling parchment.
The butler noticed Cass staring. “They’re looking through the estate’s finances. We are trying everything we can to help Signor da Peraga during this difficult time.” The butler stumbled over the last couple of words.
“Do you believe he is innocent?” Cass said.
“Of course,” the butler said, looking shocked. “But sometimes it isn’t the truth that matters. It’s what other people think is true.” He sighed. “What can I do for you, Signorina?”