He breathed shallowly. He was too old a hand to hold his breath in a situation like this. Tense the forearm, shake the knife down across his palm. A seven-inch blade, long enough to get through clothing and into a vital organ. Silent weapon. Silent death.
Laughter. The cadence and intonation of Italian. He was listening to the approach of some Baldoni. Soon enough he could recognize the voices. That was Cousin Tonio, who was too good-looking and confident to be quite reliable on a job. Maybe. Or maybe Tonio enjoyed playing the likable rogue. The English branch of the Baldoni’s well-respected and meticulously managed Banca della Toscana had not been placed in the hands of a fool.
The other voices must be Alessandro and the young Giomar.
They strolled past him, not seeing him. They were dressed in cloaks of invisibility themselves, the patched, secondhand garments of the poor. Groom, hod carrier, mason’s apprentice, bootblack, stevedore, butcher’s boy . . . they could have been any of those. They wore poverty and an exuberant vulgarity as if they’d been born to it. Anyone who saw them on Semple Street would know they were up to no good, poking and prying about, hoping for some trifles that weren’t nailed down.
But, if the Merchant saw them or heard them described, he’d never suspect them of scouting out the territory. All the cold intelligence of the Merchant, and he had no sense of humor. He’d never understand the Baldoni appetite for exuberant gestures.
They passed, laughing, talking about music, climbed the front stairs, and pushed into the house.
His opportunity. Any attention would be on them. He went over the high wall to the side of the house and into the garden. Ran to the back garden and entered a slice of shadow he’d picked out the last time he was here.
The Baldoni, enterprising crew that they were, left a lantern burning at the back of the house in the window beside the kitchen door. Somebody might want to get in, quietly, at an odd hour.
One of the household dogs scented a stranger on the wind and whuffed a warning but the boisterous entry to the kitchen and demands for food covered that up. It wasn’t repeated. Perhaps the dog was one of the ones he’d snuck food to earlier.
He breathed quietly and waited. Ten or fifteen minutes passed. Behind the brick and mortar, in the kitchen, voices lowered to sober conversation. A dog whined and Alessandro’s complaint quieted it. A woman’s voice spoke. The windows up and down the house stayed dark. They must be used to feeding their young men at midnight.
He remained undetected, but there was watchfulness in the Baldoni household, a sense of somebody awake besides those men in the kitchen. He’d snuck into army camps that were less alert. Whatever quarrels he might have with the Baldoni in the future, tonight he was glad Cami rested in her bed with a couple dozen dishonest, competent, cynical Tuscans between her and harm.
Upstairs, over the kitchen, one window was lit by more than the red light of a banked fire. Somebody’d left a candle burning in the window in the corner room at the far end.
That would be Cami, waiting for him. He hadn’t asked her to wait. He hadn’t expected to come to her. Yet, here he was.
A wooden shed backed to the house directly below the window. It was no challenge to hook his boot into a rough board and draw himself up to the shed roof, which was embedded with broken glass. Somebody’d spread a wool blanket over some of it. That could be some enterprising young Baldoni sneaking in and out. It could be Cami’s fine hand.
He scrambled across without noise, hands and feet spread to support his weight.
She’d thrown the sash up. A slit in the curtain showed a bedroom of tidy whitewashed walls and a dark, shiny wood floor, with a rag rug in front of the hearth. The dressing table would belong to a woman. The framed paintings on the wall, to a young girl.
The candle he’d seen from below was in a glass chimney on the dressing table. Another was at the bedside.
He pushed aside the curtain with the back of two fingers. Cami lay on her back in bed, eyes closed, her hands clasped behind her head on the pillow. She’d pulled the sheets and coverlet as high as her heart. Her breasts were covered in a chaste white night shift, made of linen so thin her nipples showed through. Her hair lay in curls on the white of the pillow like the first ink on clean canvas.
She showed she wasn’t asleep, and provided a reason it would be unwise to be a burglar entering this house, by opening her eyes. A knife had found its way to her hand that hadn’t been there an instant ago.
If he’d been less certain of his own skill, he might have thought he’d made some sound climbing up. He hadn’t. Cami just knew.
He pushed the curtain back all the way. “I was passing and I saw your light.”
“I hoped you would. I’m glad it’s you.”
“I’m glad it’s me, too. I’d be stepping over a corpse, otherwise.”
“Another man would have set the dogs barking.”
“Sausages.” He put his hands on the windowsill, swung across, and put his boots to the floor. “While we were eating, I slipped them sausages under the table.”
“Everyone slips them sausages under the table. Baldoni children in medieval Florence slipped sausages to the ancestors of those dogs.”
“They trust me because I smell like you, from kissing you over the last couple days.”
“They’re canny dogs.” She sat up as he crossed the room to her and dropped her knife carelessly on the bedside table.
I’m wearing more clothes than she is. I have to get out of them. He sat on the bed beside her and leaned to take her head between his hands. He kissed her, not reverently. Not like the prince waking Sleeping Beauty. He kissed her like a man taking his first drink of water when he’s dying of thirst.
She pulled herself upward and put her legs underneath her till she was kneeling on the bed, pressed against him, solid and urgent. Her lips tasted like mint pulled right out of the earth, still warm from the sun.
He said, “I have to get my coat off. I want to touch your skin with my skin.”
Her tongue came inside his mouth and he stopped worrying about what he was wearing or not wearing. The world closed in till it held one sensation, one thought, full of the knowledge of her mouth.
His cock, huge and sensitive, rose, moved of its own accord, demanded. He gave a little of his mind to controlling that. The rest, he gave to her.
She withdrew from his mouth. Her arms still around him, she laid her head to his chest and breathed onto his neck.
His. She was his. For this one moment, she was his.
He closed his eyes. This was what he wanted, no light, no color, no shapes and angles. Only the dark velvet of her breath against his throat. The silk of her hair under his chin.
Where did he put his hands on her? What did he touch?
I can get this right. I speak six languages like a native. I know how to fight. How to kill. How to march ten men across a mountain range in winter. Twenty-four years old and I don’t know where I can put my hands.
I’m supposed to know what to do next.
None of the books he’d read said anything useful.
He opened his eyes, looked down at her head, resting on his chest, and kissed into the tender, soft cluster of curls.
Touch her. That’s what she’s saying. She’s saying I can touch her anywhere. He put his hands on her shift, under her breasts, holding that soft curve. Her rib cage was full of breath and the fast pound, pound, pound of her heart. He held life, warmth, breathing, vibration, all the miraculous complex whole of her.
I will never hold a woman’s flesh again and not remember this.
He lifted her and she lifted herself, pushing down upon his shoulders till her little, perfect breasts were at his mouth, ready to be kissed. His cock held a hunger so huge it was pain. “I want to make love to you.” His whisper came out low and grating.