The Raven (The Florentine 1)
Page 48Raven’s cheeks flamed again and she avoided his eyes. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I was in trouble and you helped me. Thank you.”
She pushed her long black hair behind her ears. “I’m sensitive about my disability.”
William’s gaze dropped to her right leg. “Are you in pain?”
“Just a dull ache.” She flexed her foot and rotated her ankle, as if hoping the movement would soothe the discomfort.
It didn’t.
“Wait a minute.” She paused, examining him closely. “How did you know which of my legs was injured?”
“That is a very good question.” He gave her a knowing look.
“Are you going to answer it?”
“Perhaps.”
Raven was about to say something insulting but she caught herself. She tried to adopt a conciliatory expression.
“The man you mentioned, Maximilian, he asked me who my master was. He said something about blood.”
“I can explain that,” William said quietly. “And if you were to ask me politely why you lost your memory, I’d tell you.”
He gave her an expectant look.
She took a step closer. “I’m asking politely—please tell me what happened. I’ve been going crazy trying to figure it out.”
“As you wish.” He thrust his hands in his pockets.
He paused, as if he were trying to figure out where to begin.
“A week ago, I was downtown after dark. I came upon a young woman who was being attacked by three men. They’d beaten her and dragged her into an alley in order to rape her.
Raven gave him a censorious look.
He returned her gaze. “It isn’t my job to rid the world of such animals.
“This was different. I knew she was good. I knew she hadn’t led an easy life, but she’d led a brave one. Later, I would discover that the reason she’d been attacked was because she’d seen a homeless man being beaten and she’d intervened.”
Raven felt a piercing pain at the back of her head. The pain was so great and its onset so sudden, she failed to notice the strangeness of William’s claim to have moral perception.
But she would notice it later.
Raven heard the sound of quick, sure footsteps, which stopped about two feet in front of her.
“Are you all right?”
She rubbed the back of her neck. “My head aches.”
“Here.” He took her by the elbow and led her to the chair. “Do you want a drink?”
“No.” She sat down heavily. “What happened to the girl?”
“She was dying. They’d smashed her head against a wall and caused a brain injury.”
Raven fought back bile.
“Did they rape her?” she whispered.
“I killed them before that happened.”
An expression of horror flashed across her face. “You killed them?”
“Yes.”
“I have no use for police.”
“You didn’t have to kill them.” Her voice was unsteady.
William’s eyes glinted a cold, steel gray. “Would you have preferred I leave them to their next victim? Another woman? Another homeless man? Or a child?”
“No, but death is final.”
“In some cases.” He cast her a meaningful look.
Raven could see there was more, much more, that he wasn’t telling her. She felt her grasp on what she thought she knew begin to slip, like a lifeline being pulled out of her hands.
She gazed up at him, wide eyed. “How can death not be final?”
“Now is not the time for theological questions.”
William paced to her left and back again. “Faced as I was with a dying woman, I had to make a decision. I could let her die, I could hasten her death, or I could save her.
“I thought about ending her suffering.” He paused his pacing. “I couldn’t do it. She hadn’t done anything to deserve the attack. Her death would have been a tragedy.
“I brought her here, to my home. She nearly died in my arms. There wasn’t time to fetch a doctor, and in any case I doubted one could help her. So I did what I could.”
Raven shuddered. “And what was that?”
William turned to face the illustrations and she was treated to the sight of his back, his wide shoulders and narrow waist. He was quiet, as if he were reading the answer to her question in the drawings of Dante and Beatrice.
“I used—alchemy.”
Raven stared at his back. “Like turning metal into gold?”
“Not quite. It took time and care, but she recovered. She was now my guest. I’d taken care of her. I’d washed her, clothed her, fed her.” William turned toward Raven. “Do you understand guest friendship? The rules of hospitality?”
“Um, I think Homer describes it. Guest friendship is supposed to govern how a host treats the people in his house.” She clutched the sides of the chair, her knuckles whitening. “Since you’re my host, you’re supposed to protect me and keep me safe.”
William’s eyes seemed to glow in the darkness as they fixed on hers.
“Precisely.”
He ran his fingers through his blond hair, pushing the strands back from his forehead.
“What happened to your other guest?” Raven fidgeted in her chair.
William put his hands back in his pockets. “I returned her to her life. Because of her head injury, her memory was affected. I was confident she wouldn’t remember me or the attack and I thought that was for the best. Her body healed and her amnesia would allow her soul to heal.”
“There’s no such thing as souls.”
“Call it a mind, then,” he growled. “In any case, I hoped that, having been restored by my good deed, she’d live her life and that would be the end.”
“But it wasn’t,” Raven prompted, still gripping the armrests of the chair.
“No. The woman began to draw attention to herself—attention that would lead to me. I tried to put a stop to it, but she persisted.”
Raven blinked. “What kind of attention?”
“Going to the Palazzo Riccardi and asking for me by name.”
“But that was a coincidence! I learned your name from Professor Emerson. If I hadn’t been missing for a week, the police wouldn’t have questioned me. And I wouldn’t have gone looking for you, thinking you had something to do with the robbery.”