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the two men in her life she’d truly loved: her father and her husband. “I will admit that Lurenze lacks their savoir faire. If a servant had spilled wine on Bellaci, for instance, he would have said something witty. Lurenze was thoroughly flummoxed.”
    â€œHe was embarrassed because it happened in front of you,” Giulietta said. “I felt sorry for him, yet I was amused, too. How precisely the servant aimed the wine! Almost I could believe he did it on purpose.”
    â€œI had the same impression,” Francesca said. “Whose servant was it, do you know?”
    â€œWho cares?” said Giulietta. “Did you notice his shoulders? Buon Dio. ” Though, after the long, rainy day, the night was cool, she fanned herself. “And his legs?”
    â€œOh, yes,” said Francesca. “I noticed.”
    She’d noticed that the servant was magnificently formed. She’d noticed his broad shoulders and long, muscled legs, well displayed in the breeches and stockings of his livery. She’d noticed the way he moved—smooth and lithe as a cat—and she’d thought, There isn’t a clumsy bone in that body. She would have noticed more, given a chance. The chance never came.
    â€œI wish I could have seen his face,” she said. “But it doesn’t do to light the box too brightly.”
    â€œNo, no, never bright,” Giulietta said. “We must have the shadows, to encourage the intimacy, the seductive words, the naughty jokes. It is too bad he did not come back, to let us study him more. To speak for myself, I would have liked to study him with my hands—and perhaps my mouth.”
    â€œIf he turned out to be ugly, you could put the towel over his face,” Francesca said. “Ugly or not, it was inconsiderate of him to fail to return. He was a most welcome distraction from the others.”
    â€œWhy is it the aristocrats never look like that?” said Giulietta.
    â€œBecause the aristocrats don’t exercise their muscles with hard work,” Francesca said.
    â€œI would let him exercise his muscles on me,” said Giulietta. “To keep them from going soft, you know.”
    Francesca’s mind produced an image of naked masculine limbs tangled with hers. Heat swarmed over her skin. “You are the soul of kindness,” she said, fanning herself. “Your heart is so charitable, you should have been a nun.”
    â€œI should have been a nun,” said Giulietta, “but the habit is so unbecoming. And all the praying is bad for the knees. No, no, it would not suit me. I was born to be a slut.”
    â€œAs was I,” said Francesca. Resolutely banishing lewd images of excessively virile servants, she waved her hand. “Look at this. Were I not a slut, I should not be in the midst of this, laughing with my dearest friend.”
    After midnight, when the theaters let out and the parties began, the lights of hundreds of gondolas danced over the canals and candlelight twinkled in the windows of the palaces. Here, where no coach wheels and horses’ hooves clattered over pavement, one moved in a quiet punctuated only by voices. Carried over the water, conversations ebbed and flowed around her, as though in a great drawing room.
    But this was better than any drawing room, Francesca thought. One needn’t play a part or make idle conversation. One might simply float upon the water, and on a clear night like this, lean out of the felze’s open casement and look up at thestars. One might, as she did now, hear voices singing and in the distance, the poignant notes of a violin. Even at its liveliest, Venice felt so much more peaceful than other cities.
    A form hurtled toward them out of the shadows, sprang into the gondola, and folded up at the feet of Uliva, the gondolier in front.
    It happened so suddenly that Francesca was too stunned at first to scream. Uliva reacted more quickly. But as he and Dumini, in