artist ignored her, intent on finishing his work. His fingers moved furiously, his strokes more hurried now that he knew his time at his task was drawing to an end.
Jordan watched him work between her legs, wishing he would slow his pace. She dreaded the examination that would certainly follow this portrait session. However, at the same time, she longed for an explanation for the changes that had taken place in her body over the past year. And Salerno and his medical cohorts could undoubtedly supply one.
Salerno’s voice rose, catching her attention and signaling the imminent unveiling.
She let the cloak drop away, revealing her nakedness. Pushing up on her elbows, she awaited what was to come.
“Gentlemen! I bid you behold—”
The curtain swayed as her tormentor tugged on its tasseled pull cord. The heavy velvet parted and swept back with a flourish. And Salerno’s gloating voice introduced her as…
“—the hermaphrodite!”
2
Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!
Lord Raine Satyr—the secondborn of the three wealthy and sought-after Satyr lords—sneezed in triplicate. Pigeons scattered as he stalked across the expansive Piazza San Marco toward the streets that would lead him to the theater where the lecture he planned to attend was to take place.
Behind him, a pair of bronze figures clanged their hammers on the great bell in the clock at the top of the Campanile.
Five o’clock. It couldn’t be. He pulled out his watch. It was.
By the seven devils, he was late! The afternoon lecture regarding the grapevine-destroying pest known as phylloxera would be well underway by the time he arrived. He disliked not being punctual. He disliked this cold. And he thoroughly disliked Venice at the moment.
Unsure as to how long his business might keep him here and not wishing to spend any more time in the city than necessary, he had taken rooms just southeast of Venice on the island of Lido. The palazzo hotel he’d chosen had once housed a wealthy family, but times were hard and they’d been forced to vacate when they could no longer pay their hefty tax bill. One of the Austrian interlopers, who’d come in the wake of the departing French, had bought the place and now rented its rooms to visitors who could afford such luxurious housing.
He’d left Lido an hour or so earlier and crossed the lagoon toward Venice in a private gondola. However traffic in the Grand Canal, the main artery of transportation through the city, had been congested because of some sort of accident farther ahead. So he’d chosen to disembark at San Marco and was now making his way on foot to his destination along the Riva del Vin on the far side of the Rialto Bridge. After the completion of his business, the gondola would await him at a prearranged location on the southeast bank of the canal near the terminus of the bridge.
Though he determinedly kept his eyes from straying as he walked, familiar sounds assailed him. Like vipers waiting to strike, memories lurked everywhere in this city. Crowding him. Reminding him of what he’d prefer to forget.
He’d been 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
