As I neared the palazzo, I noticed that light streamed from a great many windows; too many for such a late hour. Surely I could not have been discovered missing already?
It did not matter, I decided wearily. I had nothing left.
As I approached the servants’ door, I whirled around to see the cause of my anguish still trailing behind me. “Why are you still here?” I spat. “You have made your choice, now leave me in peace!”
Even as I spoke, the door suddenly flew open, banging against the side of the house with a hideous cracking as my father stormed outside.
He stopped abruptly when he saw me, his surprise quickly hardening into rage. “Here she is!” he cried. “How good of you, signorina, to deign to join us and save me the trouble of rousing the whole of Venice to find you!”
I watched as his eyes moved from me to Vivaldi, still standing several paces behind me. Every bit of me ached with this final defeat.
“So this is him, is it?” he demanded.
“Let me pass, Father,” I said, deliberately ignoring his question and trying to push past him. His hand came down and clamped onto my shoulder so tightly that I had to grit my teeth to keep from crying out.
“You will go nowhere until I allow it,” he said coldly.
“How do you know I do not have a pair of shears, Father?” I asked.
He released me instantly, fear flashing across his face.
“Coward,” I spat.
But he ignored my taunt. Instead, he was staring hard at Vivaldi. “You,” he said suddenly. “I know you. You are that man they speak of … the violinist. Il Prete Rosso.”
Without warning, my father turned and struck me full across the face. I cried out as my knees buckled beneath me, and I dropped to the wet, dirty cobblestones. “You brazen slut!” he shouted. “How can you possibly have been so wanton as to seduce a priest?”
He raised his hand to strike me again, but Vivaldi stepped forward and caught his arm, shoving him backward against the wall of the palazzo, and held him there with one arm across his throat.
I heard the door bang open again and turned to see Giuseppe. He quickly helped me to my feet.
My father managed a disdainful laugh at Vivaldi. “You would strike me, padre? You, a priest, would deal in violence?”
“In your case, I would consider it,” Vivaldi growled. “But I can promise you one thing: you will have to kill me where I stand before I will allow you to harm Adriana again.” Abruptly he released him, glancing at me where I stood shakily, Giuseppe supporting me. “And I am not much of a priest, after all.”
Yet my father recovered his bearings quickly. “How dare you,” he said. He stalked over to me, shoving Giuseppe roughly aside, and seized me by the hair. “Not only have you defiled my daughter, but you dare to speak to me in such a manner?”
“Release her, Enrico!” Giuseppe said, moving toward him.
“As you wish,” he said. He flung me away from him with enough force to send me stumbling to the ground, but Vivaldi stepped forward and caught me tightly in his arms, cradling me against his chest.
What little pride I had left demanded that I pull away from him, but I could not force myself to move. This would be the last time he ever held me in his arms, and I could not bear to ruin it with spite and pride. I closed my eyes and rested my head against his chest, breathing in his familiar scent and reveling in this one last, deeply flawed moment of intimacy.
Dimly, I could hear Giuseppe. “Leave her be, Enrico,” he said. “Sell her in marriage if you will—I cannot stop you—but this abuse must stop. And I warn you, I do not make threats in vain.”
As Giuseppe went on, Vivaldi brought his lips to my ear, whispering, “I will make it right, somehow, someday, mia carissima Adriana. I swear that I will, even if it takes my very life.”
He moved to release me, but my arms tightened around him. “Do not leave me,” I whispered, making my final, futile plea.
He did not reply, only gently extracted himself from my arms. “Take care of her,” I heard him murmur to Giuseppe, “for I cannot.” Then his footsteps began to move away from me, fading into the night.
I remained rooted to the spot, trembling, my eyes closed so that I did not have to see him leave.
“Adriana,” my father’s cold voice bit out. Slowly I opened my eyes to find that Vivaldi was gone, had vanished into the fog that had begun to rise off the canals, and that this awful, endless night had been all too real. “Get inside. Now.”
I swayed on the spot, remaining for a moment longer before obeying. As I turned to go inside, I became aware of moisture on my cheek. Touching my fingers to the damp spot, I realized that they were not my tears—they were his.