The Dark Heart of Florence Tasha Alexander (novels for beginners .TXT) 📖

Florence? The loss of Nonno was something over which I had no control. Painful though it was, it fell neatly within the bounds of the natural order of things. Losing my son was altogether different. I had chosen that loss, chosen it because I was too young and too cowardly to face my sins. My grandfather was free from the suffering that comes with life, but Salvi was not. He would never experience the daily luxuries I took for granted. Instead of becoming a successful merchant, like my father, he would be apprenticed to a tradesman. He would never study humanism, never know the delights of art. His life would be defined by backbreaking work that might never bring him a decent living.

I sat up in bed and dried my eyes.

If Salvi showed an aptitude for art, in any form, he might not be destined for a miserable existence. Had not Brunelleschi himself apprenticed as a goldsmith and worked in that trade until he became one of the greatest architects of our age? Florence was not a city that required inherited wealth. Yes, it helped, no one anywhere in any century could deny that universal truth, but here a man was judged first on his merits. He could study with a famous painter or sculptor.

Did he like art? Was he drawn to it? If I could find out, I could ask Botticelli to teach him. He would not judge me for taking an interest in an orphan.

I sank back against my pillow. It was nothing but fantasy. I would never be able to find Salvi unless I used my half of the St. Anthony charm to identify us both. I was no longer so young as when I’d given him up, but I was just as cowardly, still unwilling to face the shame that would come from acknowledging my greatest sin.

 Florence,

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“You were engaged to Marzo?” I asked. Tessa was shaking. I poured a small glass of whisky from the decanter Colin kept in our room and pressed it into her hand. “Sip this. It will help calm you.”

She downed it in a single gulp. “My father is a shoemaker. He hired Marzo to make some repairs when our roof started to leak during a rainy spring.”

Lena had met him in similar circumstances, only her father had a leaky window rather than roof. Marzo’s work as a handyman certainly helped him make an impression on the girls. “How did you come to be engaged?”

“I was only ten years old then, so that didn’t happen for a long while. At the time, I thought him dangerously handsome. I greeted him at the door each day he came to work, and fetched him water when he was thirsty. When he was finished—he was with us for only a week or so—I did not see him again for eight years, but I clung to his memory. I compared every young man I met to him. He allowed me to adopt an impossible standard that no one else could ever meet. That should have kept me safe from a broken heart.”

“So you were eighteen when you renewed the acquaintance,” I said. “What happened?”

“I ran into him in the Piazza Santa Croce. Literally. I’d been doing errands for my mother and was carrying a load of parcels. I was more worried about keeping them balanced than watching where I was going. I smacked straight into him. The parcels went flying. He helped pick them up and carried them home for me. He hadn’t recognized me, but I knew him the moment I saw his face. I told him as much, and he was flattered that I remembered him. We started going for walks, my mother cooked for him, and before long everyone assumed we would get married. Me, especially.”

“And Marzo?” I asked.

“He never wanted to talk about the future,” she said. “We would take walks every week, going all the way to the Piazzale Michelangelo. There, with Florence below us, he would kiss me. It was frightfully romantic.”

“When did he propose?”

“He never did, not precisely, but we had an understanding. At least I thought we did. I wouldn’t carry on like that with a man unless I believed he was going to marry me.”

“Did his attentions, shall we say, go beyond kissing?”

“A bit,” she said, blushing furiously.

I would not press her further on the subject. “What brought the relationship to an end?”

“It was no one thing. Gradually, he called on me less frequently. We were both busy working, so at first I took it in stride, thinking he’d have more time at the end of his next job. I got very good at making excuses for him. Then he stopped coming around at all. I left messages at his mother’s house, but he never replied. When he got engaged to Lena, I heard it from neighborhood gossip. I suppose he found her more worthy than I.”

“Did you ever talk to Lena about Marzo?”

“No. We were never friends.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

A flash of concern crossed her face. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m trying to piece together as much as I can about her final days,” I said. “The fuller a picture I have, the more likely I am to figure out who killed her.”

She nodded. “I saw her at Marzo’s funeral. She sat in the front with his mother. I stayed in the back, not sure if I had the right to have come at all. When the family processed out behind his coffin, she looked at me, but I don’t think she remembered who I was. We grew up in the same neighborhood, but our lives were very different. I’m not the sort of person she would befriend.”

“Did you speak to her afterward?”

“No. When I left the church, her father was helping her into a carriage. She was very upset, signora. Couldn’t stop crying. I guess she did love Marzo, more than I thought.”

I sighed. “You will forgive me, Tessa, if I