[Barbara Samuel] Night of Fire(Book4You) Read Online Free PDF Page B

were washing away some barely acknowledged miasma. "Your story, braggart!"
    "It is only very simple. And sad, too."
    "Melancholy makes a story sweet."
    "So it does. I am the third of three brothers. Giovanni was the oldest, five years more than me. Then Teodoro, my father's favorite. Then me, the favorite of my mother."
    "Poor Giovanni!" she said. "Left out."
    "Oh, no. Because he was the favorite of the ladies."
    "Ah! I see."
    "We grew up very rich, very happy. Giovanni was glad to be the heir, for he loved figures and counting and playing Count in his cape. Teo, though, he was very smart. With my father, he doubled our fortune, in times that were not good." He frowned. "He had no compassion, I fear, but he was a very good businessman."
    "A common coupling."
    "It is true of my father, as well." A quick, dismissing lift of a shoulder. "The first thing I remember is lying in a bed, listening as my mother read poetry to me by the light of a candle. Every night, she allowed me to open her book to any page I wished, then she would read aloud that poem." He spared a glance at her.
    "It was her intent to lull me to sleep, but often, she read three or four or five poems."
    Cassandra imagined him as a small boy, those dark eyes even more enormous in a child's soft face, the tumble of curls in disarray, and understood how a mother would find her favorite in such a boy.
    "This did not please my father. I do not know why he hated me, but I felt it even when I was small."
    "Hate?" Cassandra echoed. "Surely that is too strong a word.
    A slow shake of his head, a small frown. "No. It is true." A brush of his hand. "It did not wound me, I did not like him."
    Cassandra smiled. "You had your mother."
    "I did. She did not like to leave me in his care when she traveled, and since their marriage was not a happy one, she often traveled to Florence and Milan, and took me with her. We went to the opera and to the playhouse and lectures, and when it came time to decide what profession I should take, it was my mother who fought for me to go to university. I was very happy there, but my father wished for me to work with him, traveling for his interests." He gave her a bland look. "You do see where my story goes?"
    She nodded sadly.
    "The fever swept through the countryside like a scythe. My father fell ill with it first. Then Giovanni, then my mother, then Teo. My father was out of his wits for days and days, and could not think for a long time after. And when he awoke, all that was left of his family was the son he loathed."
    "Did you sicken?"
    He bowed his head a moment and sighed. "No. I had been in Venice on my father's business." He straightened, signaling an end to the tale. "It was a year after those terrible days that I read your essay and found there was laughter in me still." He smiled. "And I wrote that letter, so now I sit in the dark with you."
    "Have you mended matters with your father?"
    He stood to light a brace of candles in an iron candelabra. "We do not speak unless we are required. He must have an heir, after all, and there is no other but me." With a hand he encompassed the villa and courtyard. "This place he saved for Teo, and it burns that he was forced to give it to me, and that eventually I will also hold his other properties. But what can he do?"
    Cassandra remembered his bitterness in one of his letters, his rejection of his riches and the position of a noble. "Do you still loathe it so much?"
    Candlelight flickered over his brow, sharpened his nose as he looked toward the horizon, lost now in the darkness. "This land belonged to my mother. It was her dowry, so I am glad to keep it safe for her. And I loved my brothers. If I do not keep the trust, their lives will have had no meaning." He sighed and waved both hands in a gesture that brushed it all away. "Enough! I have no wish to think of sorrowful things this night. In payment for your good story, allow me to show you one of the Boccaccio manuscripts."
    Moving on an instinct