Under a Gilded Moon(55)

Focusing back on his saddle—by now it had a coppery gloss—he steadied himself. “For the North of my country, Sicily is the nuisance, the island of trouble that Italy’s boot must kick away.”

She ran a finger down a length of girth on its stretcher. “What of the women?”

“Most often, left all alone to survive.”

“And you . . . ?”

Here it came. Her questions about Hennessy’s death.

She tinkered with the curb chain of a bridle hanging from a brass hook. “Did you leave a woman alone back in Palermo?”

Sal straightened slowly. The scent of leather and grain and magnolias filling the air.

A woman alone.

Sometimes in their boardinghouse just before sleep, Nico still whispered “Mamá. Mamá died.” Sal would kiss the child’s cheek then and murmur, “Buono. You made the full sentence.” Because there was too much else behind that to even begin.

“Our mother,” Sal said now, not looking up. “My younger brother’s and mine. She died. This was why Nic—Carlo needed to come with me to this country.” He did not meet her eye to see if she’d noticed the slip of his brother’s name.

“I’m . . . so sorry,” said Maurice Barthélemy’s daughter. “About your mother.” As if she meant it. Several beats passed. Her voice softer still. “And you had no girl you left behind?”

Sal pictured Angelina at the market. The red awnings angled over the street. The purple and black and green of the grapes mounded at her waist up to her chest.

Come back to me, Salvatore.

For a moment, Sal did not speak. Or move.

“There was,” Lilli Barthélemy whispered.

“Yes.” He turned back to buffing the saddle. “But she has married my friend.”

“Oh. How terribly . . . hard.”

He made himself lift one shoulder. “Five years. It is too long for a beautiful woman to wait.”

Five years.

She’d pulled that from him. Or he’d offered it, open palmed. Like a fool. She had proof now he’d been in the country the year Hennessy was killed. And proof he’d lied about the three years he’d told McNamee and Vanderbilt the day he’d been hired. Maybe this had been her purpose: to catch him in a lie. To ferret out who he was. What he knew.

After snatching up a currycomb and sliding the door of the nearest stall open, Sal entered. Each stall was surrounded by oak walls up to the horses’ shoulders, then topped with wrought iron bars painted a glossy black. Directing all the energy that would have him move closer to Lilli Barthélemy and press her to him, he ran the currycomb in hard circles on the mare’s neck.

“And your house?” she asked. “What was it like?”

Who could say what she was trying to draw from him now.

“It had the walls of stucco.” Flaking, he could have added. “And the roof of red tile.” As many tiles missing as were still on it—some blown off in storms and some pried off by thieves. But this he did not say out loud.

She glided to the edge of the stall, grabbing two of the wrought iron bars as she peered in. “Sounds enchanting.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

Because that was what she wanted to hear. But enchanting it was not.

He worked in silence for several moments, the only sounds the munch, munch, munch of the horses grinding grain between their teeth and the shush, shush, shush of the currycomb on the mare’s neck. And sometimes a louder percussion, the stomp of the occasional hoof on the wood shavings that covered the brick.

Maurice Barthélemy’s daughter ran the forefinger of a riding glove down the length of one of the bars. A kind of caress.

“I’ve been wondering, Marco.”

His whole body gone tight, his circular swipes became stiff. The mare turned her head to ask what he was doing, and why with so much force. Stroking her nose in apology, he moved to her barrel and flank.

“I’ve been wondering about the murder.”

He stopped brushing a moment. Frozen.

The one in New Orleans or the one here? he nearly asked.

“You know, Marco, there are people who think you did it.”

His heart pounded in his throat. His palms gone so sweaty he could hardly hang on to the hard wooden oval. Both arms dropped to his sides as he faced her. He knew by the look on her face that his expression must’ve gone dark.

Her voice dropped to a whisper, sultry and slow. “Though not me.”

Slowly, she let go of the iron bars. Stepped so close he could feel the warmth emanating from her body here in the chill of the stables. She tilted her face up to his. For a moment, she stood there, lips parting.

And him, looking down. Arms by his sides. Wanting to pull her to him.

He could not let himself move.

“Maybe I should tell you, Marco Bergamini, what I know for sure about you.”

He waited. Throbbing.

“I know”—she leaned in so close now that her cheek pressed into his, then her lips brushed his ear—“that for all your strength, you could never hurt anyone. Ever.”

Her right hand skimmed over his curls to the back of his neck. For an instant, she pulled his face closer to hers.

But now she leaned slowly back, eyes still on his. And swept out of the stables. In her wake, she left the scent of magnolias, here in the midst of leather and hay and the sweat that streamed down Sal’s back.