The Dark Heart of Florence by Tasha Alexander (ebook reader screen TXT) 📕

grounding in those ideas? As I said, I do not want to scare you, Mina. I consider you the heir to my ideas. Your father has never shown much interest in them, nor do your brothers. You alone understand and respond to them in the way I had once hoped they would. As a result, you will be the one responsible for guarding my legacy. I do not know what Florence will face in the future, only that there are bound to be as many disasters as there are triumphs. I would like to know that you will do whatever is necessary to ensure that these books will never be forgotten. Remember the words of Lucretius: Sic volvenda aetas commutat tempora rerum. / Quod fuit in pretio, fit nullo denique honore. So rolling time changes the seasons of things. What was of value, becomes in turn of no worth.”

“I will make sure that never happens, at least not in Florence. It is an honor to be entrusted with so noble a task,” I said. “I will do as you ask.”

“I know you will. There is one other thing. Do you remember this cameo, the one Lorenzo gave me long ago?” He pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to me.

“I do,” I said. “Minerva in profile, expertly carved.”

“Before I die, I will give this to a man I trust above all others. He is honest and good. Should you ever come under threat because of what I have asked you to do, he will help you. He will identify himself by showing you the cameo.”

“What is his name?”

“You don’t need to know that, not now. If you did, you might unknowingly put him at risk by mentioning it or by finding yourself startled should you happen to meet him.”

“But I won’t be able to reach him if I do need him.”

“Never fear, he will find you.” He rose, offered me his hand, and I stood with him. He embraced me. “You are the brightest light of my old age, Mina. Remember that, always.”

I walked him through the loggia and watched as he set off back to his own house, wondering how much longer I would have him in my life. The natural order demanded that he die before me, but what consolation was natural order? Losing him would gut me. His death, whenever it came, would lay bare for me the true depths of grief.

 Florence,

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Colin was gone when I rose the next morning, off to meet Darius somewhere. He’d left a letter he’d written to Kat, with room on the last page for me to add greetings. It read like a lighthearted travelogue. I scrawled a message at the bottom, thanking her for letting us use her house, but did not expand on her father’s fiction that everything was fine. She might forgive him for misleading her, but I was unlikely to receive the same treatment. I left it on a tray to go out with the afternoon post and collected the envelopes that had already been delivered. The day was unusually warm, so I decided to have my tea and toast in the open air of the roof terrace, with its sweeping views of the city. A missive from the boys had arrived, and I was reading it, laughing despite myself at Henry’s account of having tricked his brothers into joining him on a snipe hunt.

As your own dear friend Mrs. Michaels was the source of my information about this novel American tradition, I know you will not scold me for what I’ve done. The snipe is not real, Mama, so there was no danger that any of us would get shot.

The image of three armed (and preternaturally articulate) seven-year-olds would have terrified me if I’d not first read the other letter contained in the envelope, written by the gamekeeper at Anglemore Park, our estate in Derbyshire. He explained that the young master had asked for his help and that he’d agreed, thinking it was wiser to have the expedition supervised than not. He’d made sure the shotguns weren’t loaded and accompanied the boys on their trek across our land. Cook, he added, consoled them afterward with their favorite pudding.

Henry’s version of the events was decidedly more colorful. Richard, always the most likely of the three to believe any sort of legend, exhibited excitement unmatched by Tom, but he had been disappointed by his inability to find any information on the snipe in our library.

He considered it a great failing of our collection, never once suspecting the absence was due not to oversight but to the snipe not existing in real life. He wanted to send a wire to Papa before we set out, asking for books to be ordered. I stopped this foolishness not to spare my brother embarrassment but because if Papa replied fast enough it might have ruined the hunt. Please take note of my honesty in making this confession to less-than-gentlemanly motives. Tom proved an excellent tracker, following signs of an animal that turned out to be one of Papa’s foxhounds (I am certain it was Iphitos, but Richard wrongly insists it was Pollux. You shouldn’t believe him—he does not know the dogs so well as I). Both of them were angry when I told them they were hunting an imaginary animal but if they are man enough to acknowledge the truth, they will admit they enjoyed the excursion, even if I might be accused of laughing rather too much when I revealed I’d duped them. I expect to be in disgrace when you return home. I ask only that you remember I did not go so far as Americans do. They leave their victims alone all night, still trying to find a snipe. I told my brothers the truth once Richard’s loud attempts at calling the beast started to get on my nerves.

“What is so amusing?” Cécile asked, dropping onto the chair next to mine. She’d slept even later than I,