Raine. Elizabeth Amber
born in Venice and raised here in the bosom of a well-off shipping family. Heir to the Altore fortune, he’d been schooled and expected to one day succeed his father at the helm of Altore Shipping.
However, at the tender age of thirteen, his life had taken a dramatic turn in a single afternoon. On that day his mother had admitted a long-held secret. That in fact he was not the son of the man he’d called father for thirteen years. Rather, he was the bastard son of the infamous Lord Marcus Satyr, whose randy exploits had been a source of titillating gossip throughout Italy while he’d lived.
Within hours, Raine had been banished to live out the rest of his years on the Satyr Estate in Tuscany. There he’d been raised under the guidance of his true father and had learned what it meant to be of Satyr blood.
In typical forthright fashion, Lord Satyr had bluntly informed him soon after his arrival that he was not entirely Human, but rather was a half-breed with the blood of both EarthWorld and ElseWorld coursing through his veins. He’d discovered that he had two half-brothers—Nicholas being older than he and Lyon being younger. The three of them were heirs to a dynasty that was far more affluent and far more indispensable to the survival of both worlds than he could have ever previously imagined.
He hadn’t set eyes on Venice, or on any member of the Altore family, since that horrible day fourteen years ago. His steps quickened to outpace memories he’d rather not retrace, and he started down another alley that was barely wide enough for two men to pass.
Achoo! Damn this disorganized, verminous city. Since Napoleon had been driven out, it had fallen into a calamitous state of disrepair and poverty through no fault of its current Austrian leadership. The poor were everywhere, sneezing and coughing. Yesterday he’d caught some of what they were spreading when he’d purchased a small gift for his sister-in-law Jane from a young ragazzo in the piazza. Within the pocket of his coat, he fingered the tangle of ribbons he’d bought from the ragtag boy who’d been peddling them dockside outside his hotel.
King Feydon’s deathbed plea had brought him here. He hadn’t wanted to come and begrudged this duty that had been foisted upon him to locate and wed one of the dying king’s FaerieBlend daughters. The harvest was underway on the Satyr Estate in Tuscany and there was much to do. But according to Feydon—who was not to be trusted—his three FairieBlend daughters were each in some sort of danger and time was of the essence. His older brother, Nick, had found the first of the daughters, Jane, on the outskirts of Rome in mere weeks. The threat to her had indeed proven to be real, but she was now safe on the estate and happily wed to his brother.
That left Raine with the task of locating the second of Feydon’s daughters. Twice he’d gone to Paris on wild goose chases. He’d wound up concluding he might not have been meant to find the daughter in Paris after all. That left the one here in Venice. It was just like Feydon to play such a cruel prank as to send him to this city, which held so many painful associations.
He turned a corner and his jacket flapped in the breeze that came off the canal. At last! He started across the Rialto Bridge, passing the shops that lined it without pause. Ahead on the far side, a barge was unloading its cargo of wine along the Riva del Vin.
The smells of sea and of silk, wood, candle wax, perfume, and bread from the shops were indiscernible to him. Without the use of his olfactory senses, he felt strangely cut off from the world around him.
“Are you here for the lecture, too, signore?” a nasal voice inquired from behind him.
Twelve hells! Raine whipped around to confront the man who’d spoken. Having someone sneak up on him was extremely disconcerting. Normally, his impressive beak of a nose scented the approach of everything and everyone within sight and beyond. Double damn this cold.
“You do not remember me?” the man who’d accosted him asked.
Now that he examined his assailant, Raine realized he was familiar—a clerical man of some sort if his robes were any indication. He wore the bishop’s violet-colored zucchetto—the skullcap. And the alb—a robe tied at the waist of his potato-shaped body with a corded cincture. Though built as oafishly as the roughest dockworker, he had a simpering girlish quality that sat strangely on shoulders so broad.
The man introduced himself as a bishop, pressing all ten of his well-manicured fingertips to his chest to emphasize his importance as he did so. A pair of close-set brown eyes peered from his doughy, unhealthy complexion, but they failed to smile along with his mouth, lending his face an expression of falseness.
“I’m stationed at the Church of Santa Maria Del Gorla,” he announced loftily, “not fifty miles from your estate. We met at last autumn’s festa della vendemmia—the festival of the grape harvest.”
Raine sneezed. Considering that an adequate reply, he then turned and continued on his way. The man two-stepped alongside him, his words and feet attempting to keep pace.
“As you may know, I attend the vines at the church. I expect to bring my vintage to the harvest festival as always next month. You’ll remember my efforts from previous years perhaps? But of course mine is a modest attempt, ever to be humbled by the lofty wines produced by you and your brothers at Satyr Vineyards. Ah! Such ambrosia!”
Raine never knew how to respond to social blather, so he simply didn’t respond at all. He normally left such niceties as social discourse to Nick and Lyon. Without his brothers to run interference, he was at the mercy of this man and anyone who wished to pass idle conversation with him.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the bishop seemed able to carry on a conversation for the two of them. “I assume you are here for the lecture? Naturally. Why else? I’ll accompany you, for I, too, am here for the exact same purpose. Not that the phylloxera had assaulted my vines. No, no, nothing of the sort. I assure you my grapes grow healthy and plump and bursting with readiness for the harvest.”
He drew the quickest of breaths, then continued on. “Imagine the coincidence of two men from the same region of Tuscany arriving for the same lecture in Venice on the same afternoon. We might have shared a conveyance and conversation on the journey northward had I known. Perhaps on the return?”
Raine shuddered at the very thought of traveling with this man’s constant chatter. Plus the bishop had an annoying way of eyeing him up and down as though he were famished and Raine were a delectable crostoli cake.
Quickening his stride, he left the bridge behind him, forcing his companion to hike his robes and break into a trot. Impervious to any subtle rebuffs, the bishop buzzed along at his side like some sort of annoying insect.
To his great relief, Raine saw the carved front doors of the lecture hall a short distance ahead.
“The lecture?” he inquired of the first attendant he came upon inside the building.
“Si, signore. You’ll find it upstairs in the theater on the right,” the elderly man told him, pointing upward. “Or is it the left? We have several lectures in session here today. I’ll summon an escort.”
“No need. I’ll find it,” said Raine.
“Si! Si! Signore Satyr and I will find our way,” the bishop assured the man, nudging him aside.
Raine’s long stride took the upward-curving stairs two at a time. The bishop followed in a mincing prance. “You’ll be returning to Tuscany soon I trust? To prepare your submission for the vendemmia festival?”
“I sincerely hope so,” Raine replied truthfully. His home at Castello di Greystone on the Satyr Estate was precisely where he should be now, assisting with the harvest of the family grapevines and attending to the racking and blending of fermented grapes already harvested and crushed in prior years. His work was his life, and he felt out of sorts when not attending to it.
But it was a lucky stroke that he’d happened to come to Venice in search of Feydon’s daughter just in time for this lecture. The phylloxera was of great concern to him and his brothers. Every possible cure for it must be studied and exhausted. In the end he feared that its origins might prove to be not of this world.
Deep