Page 34 of A Dangerous Bargain

“You all right?” I finally ask.

He shakes himself a bit. His gaze rises, full of resolve. “Will you make a bargain with me, Lupa?”

The buzz becomes a roar. “You don’t make bargains!”

“I’m allowed to change my mind, aren’t I?”

Obviously. I have no right to tell him what to do. But a hot feeling swirls through me, uneasy and wrong. It feels like a bad idea—one I need to talk him out of. “Why now? How can you trust it’ll work?”

I gasp when his cool fingers trace my exposed bargain marks. “You trusted it would work. Over and over again.”

Gooseflesh puckers my useless scars. Perhaps I shouldn’t have, I want to say. “You didn’t answer my first question.”

His smile is sly, cajoling. One meant to make me forget. “Are you my mother now?”

“If I must be. Someone needs to talk sense to you.”

He stops walking, slipping his arm around Lupa’s shoulders so the half-conscious angel doesn’t fall. His smile sinks into a long, dark look that makes me swallow. “I promise this bargain will help us with the Medici commission, but you’ve got to trust me.”

’Tis not a question of trusting him. But how can I explain the anxious thrum rattling my bones? The horrible sense that this is somehow about me?

You know he’ll never tell if you keep asking him.

Curse his stubbornness. I cross my arms with a huff, hiding my feelings behind a defiant chin. “Fine! I hope you don’t regret it.”

Leonardo laughs softly. I can’t be sure, but I think I feel him brush my side as we start walking again. “I don’t think I will.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Easter in Florence always arrives with a bang. Quite literally.

The streets are packed with jubilant crowds as the Carro del Fuoco lurches from the Porta al Prato to the Piazza del Duomo pulled by its six white oxen. The wagon looks like a tiered cake, each gold-and-green layer more exquisite than the one below. Sparklers fizz along its sides, and plumes of red and green smoke ribbon from its very top, a hint of the dazzling fireworks display to come when it reaches the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore.

“Have you ever wondered,” Leonardo says as we weave through the packed piazza, “why we celebrate Easter by exploding a fancy wagon?”

“It’s not like the wagon explodes. Just the fireworks it carries.” Someone stomps on my foot, and I wince.

“Right, but why fireworks, specifically? Is there a bit about Jesus and fireworks in the Bible?”

“You really don’t pay attention in mass, do you?” Someone else bumps into me, and I stumble. Leonardo grabs my wrist. He doesn’t let go, even when I’m on my feet again. His smile is roguish and huge and only for me.

“C’mon, Virgil. The lecture isn’t the most interesting part of church!”

I think of all the masses we’ve endured squashed together thigh to thigh on a too-crowded pew and frown. I don’t think we’re talking about Jesus anymore. Wait. Cristo santo, he’s not… flirting with me, is he?

Of course he is. He flirts with everything that moves. My eyes flicker down to the fresh black line on his wrist. But things are different now.

No amount of wheedling will get Leonardo to reveal what Lupa promised him, even though I desperately, fervently want to know. For my own knowledge, of course. Not for any other reason. If he’s gained an edge that can help us win the Medici wedding portrait commission, I deserve to know. My family needs the money more than he does.

“It’s my own business, Virgil,” he said bluntly last night, turning away from our painting to face me fully. “Or are you the only one allowed to have secrets?”

I sulked under his lifted, prim expression but refused to let him bait me. “Lorenzo’s hand looks like he’s trying to strangle his bride. Can you fix the fingers?”

The nights leading up to Easter all ran together in a sfumato haze of layering sketches on the Medici wedding portrait panel. My fingers were still clumsy, artless sausages, but my eyes worked just fine, and I’d convinced Leonardo to paint Lorenzo and his bride in profile, him coming to the window of her room: the opposite of the journey she will make to him. Not a marriage but a welcoming.

“That’s good, I like it!” Leonardo exclaimed when I walked him through it. He didn’t sound surprised, but he did sound proud, and I turned away before he could notice my unexpected smile.

Leonardo stops us against a wall until the crowd surges past, following the Carro del Fuoco rumbling down the street just ahead. When he finally releases my hand, it feels cold.