Venice, Italy
“Domenico.” Elena stretched lazily across the mattress, like a cat before the fire. “Come back to bed.”
Buttoning up his waistcoat, Dominick Mercer leaned over to place a quick kiss on her bare back and groaned. Good God, a woman shouldn’t be so tempting.
“I’m already late,” he said regretfully in fluent Italian, as much to convince himself as her. “You know how Giuseppe gets when his apprentices arrive late.”
Of course she did. She was the man’s daughter, after all.
She rested her head on her folded arms and smiled up at him. “You could tell him that you were with me, making passionate love as the moon rose over the canal and losing all track of time.”
He lifted a brow. “Then I’d not only be a tardy apprentice, I’d also be a dead one.”
She laughed, a throaty sound that had him seriously considering crawling right back into bed with her and wasting away the evening the same way they’d spent the afternoon. Lately, he’d spent many afternoons that way, when he should have been at the studio, perfecting his brushwork.
“I’ll be back later.” When her full red lips pulled into a pout, he promised, “By midnight.”
“I will be here.” The self-confidence with which she made that declaration assured him that she’d still be spread delectably across his bed when the campanile’s bell tolled.
His chest warmed as he reached for the jacket tossed over the back of the chair that also held three canvases and a set of pencils. Everything in his tiny attic room that overlooked the old shipyard was connected to his art, right down to the smell of the linseed oil that he used to mix his paints. Including Elena, who was his latest model.
He shrugged into his jacket. Then he leaned down to give her one last parting kiss.
When he pulled away, she reached for his hand. “Domenico…ti amo.”
His heart stuttered, right before it lodged in his throat. Elena loved him. She could have had her pick of artists—of any man in Italy, if he were honest—and he could barely believe her words. He placed a tender kiss to her temple, breathing deeply the spicy perfume of her that now mixed with the musky-sweet scent of sex, and closed his eyes in utter happiness.
“I wish I could drape you in glittering diamonds and long ropes of pearls,” he murmured against her skin, “ones as beautiful as you are, and for no other reason except that it will please you.”
Because what he enjoyed most—perhaps second only to painting—was pleasing Elena.
Right now, though, he had only the small allowance his brother Timothy gave him under the terms of their father’s will, most of which went to purchase paint supplies and the bottles of wine he exchanged for lessons from other artists. He’d have asked his brother for more, but if Ellsworth ever learned that he’d spent it on spoiling his Italian lover—or, God forbid, on his art—he might just find himself stripped of funds completely and forced into a commission with the army. Or worse, a living with the Church.
He’d rather die than give up his art. His art was his life.
“Midnight,” he promised, then regretfully slipped away.
He hurried down from his garret flat to the footpath, then wound his way through the maze of alleys and canals. With each step, he bounced. For heaven’s sake, he bounced! He laughed—he’d never been happier in his life. And for once as he traced the familiar route toward Giuseppe Carracci’s studio near the Rialto, he didn’t want to paint. He wanted only to lose himself, heart and soul, in Elena.
Her image in his mind and the lingering taste of her on his lips distracted him as he moved through the city he’d come to love during the past two years that he’d been living here, ever since his father died when Dom was twenty-one, when he was able to move to Italy to pursue his art.
Someday, he would be a great artist, and his paintings would hang in palaces and fine houses. He’d make a good living then, independent of his brother’s marquessate, as a master with a studio and apprentices of his own. Il Maestro. When that day came, he could completely ignore Timothy’s warnings that Dom was risking raining scandal onto the Marquess of Ellsworth’s unblemished legacy. That dignified Englishmen did not create shocking paintings of nude women.
He laughed at the irony. In England, he had to keep secret his life as a painter, because being a painter was simply far too scandalous a career for a high-ranking gentleman. But in Italy, he kept hidden that he was the son of a marquess. Here, amid the centuries-old canals and stones, engulfed in the scent of saltwater from the lagoon, he could be the man he was in his heart. Domenico Vincenzo. Painter.
And now the man whom Elena Carracci loved.
“Maestro!” he called out as he bounded through the door of the studio on the small piazza. “Give me a brush! I’m ready to take on the world.”
“You are ready for nothing.”
The cold, accusing statement sliced through him, and Dom stopped, facing his old mentor.
Giuseppe stepped out of the shadows. Now into his sixth decade, the man possessed long gray-white hair that he kept pulled into a ponytail, hands always covered with dried paint and charcoal, and lines etched into his face from years of hard living.
But nothing could dull the sharp gleam in his eyes. Those looked at Dom now with a mix of anger, frustration, and disappointment. He’d worked closely with Giuseppe and knew the master’s moods as well as his own. This was one he’d never seen before.
“So you want to be a great artist.” Giuseppe pointed to the easel where Dom spent his days learning new techniques and pushing his talents to the edge. “One to rival Caravaggio, Leonardo, Raphael…”
“Titian,” Dom added quietly.
“Not with work like that.” He waved a dismissive hand at the canvas. A view of the Grand Canal in the style of Canaletto. “Pezzo di merda.”
Dom clenched his jaw to bite back his anger. “There’s nothing wrong with—”
“Lifeless! A boring landscape no better than a worthless fruit bowl. Bah!” He shook his hands, then gestured them wide to indicate the entire studio. “Where is your passion? Where is your zeal?” He jabbed a paint-stained finger at the painting. “Not there.” Then he stepped up to Dom and jabbed him in the chest. “It used to be here. Where has it gone? Because it is not in your painting.”
He pushed past Dom, turning his back on him as he walked to the worktables lining the wall. He snatched up a bottle of wine sitting there and splashed some into a glass.
“I took you on as an apprentice because you have the most potential of any artist I have ever seen.”
Dom said nothing. Certainly not thank you. The maestro’s words weren’t a compliment.
“You have greatness in you, Domenico. The capability to be a true master.” He stared in cold disdain as he raised the glass to his lips. “You are wasting it.”
“I have been here every day, painting and learning from you and the others. For God’s sake!” He gestured angrily at the studio around them. “I’ve managed the assistants, worked with pigments, stretched canvases—everything you’ve asked of me.” Anger—and an odd sense of dread—tightened his chest as he dropped his hand to his side. “This is about Elena, isn’t it? Because you want me to stay away from her.”
“This isn’t about her. I would be fortunate to have you for a son-in-law.” Giuseppe’s gaze turned grim. “This is about you and how you have split your passion. Your art is suffering.”
“Nonsense.” If he’d suffered from a bit of a creative block during the past few weeks, that was understandable. Every artist’s career had its ups and downs, but he was still passionate about his work, even if Elena now took a good deal of that passion for herself. “I’ll work harder, reduce distractions—”
“You are lying to yourself.” The grimness in the old master’s eyes dulled into grief. “I was once like you, with so much talent.” He drained the wineglass and reached for the bottle to refill it. “I did not realize until too late that my art needed to come first. I missed my chance. But you still have yours.”
“You are a great artist.”
The master cast him a pitying look. “What would you do to appease your muse, Domenico? What sacrifices would you refuse to make for your goddess?”
“None.” He meant it. He would give Elena everything he possessed.
A dark intensity glowed in the man’s eyes unlike any he’d ever seen before. “And when even that isn’t enough to appease her? Would you then let her burn up your heart and consume you, until you have nothing left with which to create your art?”
“You’re exaggerating.” The master was overly dramatic at the best of times, but now, he was spouting nonsense. Yet a chill tightened his gut.
“Have you ever been in love, the kind that rips away your breath when you see her? That feels so joyous to be with her that it’s painful?”
“Yes.” She was waiting for him at that very moment.
Harsh accusation darkened Giuseppe’s face. “And that is why you will never be a great artist.”
Anger flashed through him. He’d never once contradicted the master, but this—this he couldn’t let stand. “An artist needs passion, you’ve always said so.”
“For his art, to create and recreate the world as he envisions it,” he corrected harshly. “To be great, you must surrender all of yourself to your art.” He shook his head in disgust. “You can never do that if you’re reserving even part of yourself for anything else.”
The damned old man didn’t know what he was talking about. A talented artist would never have to choose.
“Ask yourself this, my friend—when do you feel the most filled with joy? When are you most inspired and connected to the world? When do you gaze upon the face of God?” His eyes gleamed in the moonlight. “When you are making love to your woman…or making love to your art?”
Dom’s heart stuttered. He knew what he should answer. That he felt most alive when he was with Elena. That the moments when he lost himself and his singular focus became so intense that the world dissolved away happened when he was in her arms—
Damned lies. All of it.
He would never experience with her the same exquisite bliss as when he became so absorbed in his art that the brush transformed into an extension of himself. When each stroke of color came not from a conscious decision but from somewhere unknowable inside him.
“Your art must come first.” Giuseppe’s gaze pierced Dom in the shadows. “Always.”
His head swirled with everything his maestro was saying and with what he wanted most from his life. He couldn’t find the resolve to argue.
Giuseppe reached for a second glass, filled it with the last of the wine, and held it out to Dom in challenge. “Which has your heart, Domenico? Your art, or a woman?”