9

Immediately after leaving Mamma Zeno, Urbino went to see the Contessa in her boudoir.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “You’re not even dressed for dinner yet.”

She, however, was—in a silk dress printed with designs inspired by San Marco’s mosaics.

“Nothing’s the matter,” he said. “I just stopped by to be sure that you weren’t having any second thoughts.”

“Second and third and fourth! I hope you know what you’re doing! What you’re asking!”

He put his arms around her and kissed her forehead.

“You’ll be fine. You’ll see.” As he said it, all he could think of was what she was going to have to go through before everything was all over. He looked down into her frightened gray eyes.

“I take full responsibility—for you and everyone else,” he reassured her. “Just remember that I don’t want you to sit down at the table until I already have. Everyone will be there, as we agreed, won’t they?”

“Yes.” She disengaged herself from his arms and looked at herself in a mirror. She trifled uneasily and unnecessarily with her hair. “Even Oriana, although much help she’ll be! All she keeps moaning about now is that the ‘curse of the Ca’ da Capo’ must have followed Filippo. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

She turned to Urbino with a worried, quizzical look.

The only comfort he could give her—and a cold one at that—was “Ridiculous, yes. No one has left the Ca’ da Capo but Filippo himself.”