OK, I have now hit page 250 on the Venice book! Yippee! That always feels like a milestone, somehow, like I'm on the downhill slide and the end is in sight. Only now I have to pause in the writing to do a bit of research for the last half (if you know anything about Renaissance swordplay or Greek fire, let me know!).
Anyway, here is a bit where our heroine and hero, Julietta and Marc, arrive at a Carnival ball:
The Piazza San Marco was glorious in its festivities, ringed thickly on all sides by torches casting their glittering red-gold light on the equally bright throngs of revelers. Everyone was masked, clad in everything from plain black bautas to elaborate costumes of jeweled silks and gauzes. They swirled in the patterns of a giant, wild volte, faces of gold, silver, and ivory-white whirling past in a dizzying cavalcade. The tune rose faster and faster, ever more frantic, as the dancers called out "La volte!" and the men swung the women high in the air. Acrobats and players clad in tight, bright, beribboned garments gamboled at the edges of the dance, tumbling, miming, loud with bells and rattles.
Julietta took it all in, standing in the shadows, holding onto Marc's arm as the grand pageant played out before her, like a scene from some pagan fresco. It was all so--so wondrous. An enchanted dream. She had been part of Carnival before, of course. If a person lived in Venice, they could hardly avoid it. But usually she stayed closer to her home, dancing with her neighbors in her own calle. She seldom attended grand events such as this.
Especially not in the company of such an escort. Julietta glanced up at Marc, studying him in the torchlight. His face was expressionless, hidden beneath the silver mask, yet she could tell he watched the crowd intently. The muscles in his arm were tense and coiled beneath her arm.
As if he sensed her regard, he turned to her, a smile hovering at the corners of his sculpted lips. He leaned down to murmur in her ear, "It is like something out of Ovid, is it not? The pagan gods celebrating the feast of their gods."
Julietta smiled in return. "That is the sort of thing I was thinking," she said. Just then, a couple danced past disguised as Apollo and Aphrodite in swirling white and purple draperies. "Perhaps that is an even more apropos comparison than we thought, Signor Velazquez."
"Oh, come now. You can call me Marc, can you not? For this one night."
"I--suppose so," she murmured.
He leaned even closer, until she felt a cool, gentle breath of air stir the curls at her temple, and she shivered. "I suppose so--Marc," he prompted.
Against her very will, her desire to remain cool and aloof, safe, she swayed toward him. "I suppose so, Marc. Just for tonight."
He chuckled. "Va bene." He straightened the arm she held, until his hand caught hers and their fingers entwined. His were roughened, a bit callused, and she was again reminded that beneath his rich velvets he was a sailor, a man of the sea and wind. A man who was less and yet more than he appeared.
A man who suited this night of masks.
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