Mysterious Ways Read online

  “Wonderful!” She grabbed his hand abruptly and stood, pulling him up with her. “Come,” she said. “We have time before dinner to show you one of the most prized Venettis in our collection.” And with a laughing apology to her family she dragged him out of the room. Another astounding procession of hallways followed, and Jacob wondered how anyone could figure out the warren that was this house. Finally they arrived at their destination, a library that made him so dizzy with want that he felt like he needed to sit down and put his head between his knees. The Vatican might have a library like this. Maybe the British Museum. God above, he was glad he'd come here.

  Laughing at him, Cecilia smacked him lightly on the arm. “Snap out of it. You can explore later. Come. It's over here.”

  “It” took up practically the entire wall of a reading alcove at one end of the room. Massive, looming over him, framed in carved wood and gilt, it had to be the most extraordinary example of painting by Matteo Venetti he had ever seen. And he was considered a relative expert on the few publicly owned paintings there were out there.

  A spiraling mountain of fire dominated the center of the painting, garish flames rising into a cavern that was somehow infinite, even within the confines of the canvas. The levels of Hell were represented as ledges along the mountain, each one holding an explosion of activity that drew the eye. Every sort of sin was here, and every torment as well, painted in a fury of movement that made him reel. He could smell the brimstone. It made him sweat. And he knew he could stand here for hours and not see everything. He loved it.

  Every new angle gave him something else to see, something hideous and dark climbing out from every new crevice and crack. This was the thundering retribution of a Medieval God, the God of a boy who had grown up far from the city and had no knowledge of a more secular world until his father sent him to apprentice in Venice. It was brilliant. Looking at it, comparing it to the other works, Jacob experienced a moment of disorientation, of something wrong. It staggered him for a minute, and in the next he found Cecilia Miggliozzi holding his arm and peering at him in concern.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, and he nodded.

  “Yes, I'm sorry, I was just a bit dizzy.”

  “It's overwhelming isn't it? My husband hates it. He rarely comes in here. I rather like it, though.”

  “It's extraordinary.” Jacob paused, searching for what it was that bothered him. “It's only just...”

  “What?”

  Blowing out a frustrated breath, Jacob shook his head. “I'm not sure. It just seems unreal, that the same man who painted the portrait I'm working with did this.”

  “There's something for your scholarly journals then, mmm? Me, I just look at them and admire. We should get to dinner before Marco comes looking for me.”

  The feel of her hand on his arm warmed him, soothed the itch of feeling that niggled at the back of his mind. He could stand there all night and let her touch him, and Cecelia seemed as content as he, her fingers moving lightly on his arm, petting him unconsciously. Then his stomach growled, and they both started.

  “Come,” Cecilia said, “we should go to dinner.”

  She guided him out of the room, and he spent the rest of the night gorging himself on rich food and talking with his hosts. They were a fascinating group. The men were charming and well spoken, but they had an edge to them that reminded Jacob of a pack of wolves choosing a new alpha. They insulted each other with impunity, and were faultlessly polite to him. Cecilia flirted with her husband and chatted with Jacob and jumped in to make peace whenever someone looked ready to go for blood.

  The twins caught his attention over and over, especially when they retired to the drawing room after dinner, where yet another servant amused them with music on the piano and they drank brandy. Maybe it was because he had no siblings of his own, but he was endlessly amused by their jibes and pokes, by their small touches and their synchronized looks and speech. They seemed to have their own language that consisted of expressions and sounds and he could have studied them long into the night if they had not retired early, saying they were going out for the rest of the evening.

  The gathering broke up soon after, and Cecilia gave him the choice of a tour of the house or of an escort back to his room. He chose the former, wanting to spend more time in the lady's company. She beamed at him, and took his hand in hers, and led him through the house. She chattered amiably enough, but Jacob had no idea what she said. The feel of her skin made his heart pound, and all he could do was stare at her as she dragged him through a dizzying procession of rooms. Soon enough, Jacob realized that Cecilia had stopped talking, had indeed stopped walking, and was standing close to him, holding his hand in both of hers.

  “You are tired, si? I should have let you go to bed.”

  “No. I, well, I suppose I am tired.”

  Yes, that was undoubtedly his best excuse, for in saying that he might escape the intensity of her extraordinary eyes. That color was no artist's convention. It was real, shifting and changing with the light, and with her expression going from concern to something he could not name, dark and somehow as hot as the flames of Venetti's Hell.

  “Then I will let you go and rest.”

  Cecilia let go of him, rather suddenly, and only after she summoned a maid and he was led away did Jacob realize his hand bore marks where her nails had dug into it. The maid was quiet, so Jacob was left alone with his thoughts on the long trek to his room. The door closing behind him sounded very much like a cell door clicking shut. Ridiculous.

  Feeling unsettled, Jacob sat at the writing desk in the sitting room and noted down his first impressions of the Venetti in the library, jotting down a few words about the notable resemblance of his hostess to the mysterious lady in his painting, as well as his extraordinary reaction to her. He wrote about the utterly odd feeling he'd had looking at the painting, and made a note to look more closely into Matteo Venetti's background Finally he was unable to keep his eyes open any longer, and he went to bed, settling deep into the feather bolster and dropping into sleep like a stone into water.

  Dreams came to him that night, dark unsettling, things that he couldn't remember clearly and was glad that he did not. Faces swam in and out of focus, people he knew, and many that he didn't. The images disturbed him in ways that he couldn't describe, and when he woke in the morning he was twisted in the sheets and smelled of old sweat. He was also achingly hard. More so than he could remember being in his usual morning routine. It embarrassed him somehow, even though he could easily explain it away as a typical male phenomenon. He slid out of bed and skulked to the bathroom like a guilty child.

  By the time he bathed and dressed, he had rationalized it all and was feeling up to facing the day. He was escorted to breakfast, which was a groaning English style buffet, and then to the “morning room” to see the lady of the house. Jacob was starting to feel like he was trapped in one of those Daphne du Maurier or Barbara Cartland novels his mother adored so much. This house was so full of bowing and scraping and my ladys that he could very well have stepped back in time.

  There was no casual flirting this morning. Cecilia was kind, but rather short. She had household work to catch up on, would he mind terribly if her brothers amused him until the Venetti expert arrived? He tried not to stare when she beamed at him when he said he didn't mind. She wore a silk shirt this morning, casual but elegant, and she smelled of citrus and flowers, just as he knew she would.

  He snapped out of his admiring stupor when she made a vicious jab at a letter with her little knife-like opener. So much for the sweet ladylike demeanor. Her brothers, Damien and Gianni (or was it Gianni and Damien?) chose that very moment to arrive, and she waved them away with a distracted smile, every inch the mistress of the manner, giving him no time to analyze his reaction to her, which was as strong as the night before.

  The twins shrugged and smiled in unison, and pulled him off, chattering amiably at each other in Italian, and occasionally in English to him. They re
minded him of the Siamese cats in a movie he'd seen when he was a kid, Lady and the Tramp, if he could trust his childhood memories. The cats had twined around each other constantly, finishing each other's sentences and looking at everything with bright, curious eyes. These two were exactly that way, and Jacob knew that if they wanted to, they could be nothing but trouble.

  He cleared his throat.

  “I'm sorry, but I expected the curator of the collection to be here today. I believe that's what the signore told me.”

  Another look passed between them and another smile. “Si, si. She's due in today, but...”

  “is not here yet.” One of them started, the other finished and if they didn't stop that, Jacob was going to get whiplash.

  “Please, could you not do that?”

  “Sorry,” they said, once again in unison, and Jacob sighed. He had a feeling it was going to be a long morning. He asked them for a tour of the house, noting that while the exchanged a surprised glance, they did not mention his previous nights’ tour. They were polite enough to nod and smile, and lead him off into the depths of the house. Jacob hoped this time he might actually see something, as he didn't have Cecilia to distract him.

  As it turned out, the twins were enthusiastic, if not always reliable tour guides. They showed him all of the main rooms of the palazzo: the grand formal drawing room with its soaring ceilings and the monstrous dining room complete with musician's galleries. They poked and prodded him through the hall of portraits, protesting that these were not their ancestors, but Marco's so how should they know who they were? He would have to come back later and look at the paintings, for some of them had familiar styles, and Jacob figured he'd find the names of great masters on them.

  They were great ones for touching, the two brothers, with no sense of personal space. One or the other, if not both, always seemed to have a hand on him, guiding him over to see this painting, or that bust.

  Some of the more casually displayed items made him sweat, but when he asked them about the wisdom of leaving something so valuable lying about, they shrugged. Yes, both of them. “But who is going to steal them?” Damien asked, clearly amazed at the question. “The servants? They are more likely to break them while cleaning.”

  “And besides,” Gianni finished, “they are, how would you say? Only things. They are nothing unless someone can see them, and enjoy them, no?”

  Only things. That was the difference in coming from a country that had only four hundred years of history at best, to one that had thousands. To an American, a piece of Roman glass was a priceless gem. To a Rossi, it was a pretty thing. Jacob shook his head. Only if he started getting used to that idea would he worry. Still, he eagerly followed them on their eclectic tour, soaking in the paintings by Renaissance celebrities and ornaments like a Cellini ewer and a Tang figurine.

  Somewhere during the time he spent with them that morning, Jacob found that he was not only fascinated with the twins, but he liked them too. They had a sly humor, and a sort of openness that he had to admire. He felt camaraderie with them, emphasized by their frequent physical contact and their brash familiarity. He could even make out most of what they said. It was almost a disappointment when lunch was announced and they were forced to break off the tour and join the rest of the family. Almost, because his growling stomach told him that it was nearly two o'clock in the afternoon, much later than he was used to filling his belly.

  Lunch was another buffet affair, relatively informal, and it was there that Jacob finally got to meet the Miggliozzis’ collection supervisor, Teresa Bonnell. She was American also, which surprised him. A tall, cool blonde with sharp gray eyes, whose business suit made him think more of lawyers than museum curators, Terri was polite, and willing to help him in any way, which made him wonder about her. Scholars generally guarded their pet projects jealously, and resented any intrusion into their little realms. To find on that was honestly willing to welcome another “expert” to the field was astonishing.

  After lunch, Jacob was eager to get to work, but realized that everyone else in the house, including Teresa, was taking the traditional siesta type relaxation period. He wandered around for a long while on his own, revisiting room the twins had whisked him through, and soon found himself back in the library he'd visited with Cecilia the night before. The Venetti called to him, and he walked over to stand before it, drinking in the minute details of it like a man dying of thirst. It was not a pretty thing. Not at all. It was profoundly disturbing. But it was unquestionably a masterpiece, one of the finest examples of Venetti's work, period. Jacob was dazzled. Taken as a whole, it was a vision from a child's nightmare of Hell. Then you moved closer and took each scene as it was, and you realized that no child could come up with anything like this. The levels of Hell, as he'd thought before, but also the sins, the seven deadliest, laid bare for all to see.

  “Eerie, isn't it?” came a voice from his elbow, and he jumped nearly a foot into the air. He turned to see Teresa, the collection curator, standing next to him. She smiled slightly. “Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you, but you were so engrossed.”

  His own smile was self-deprecating. “No problem. It is eerie. It's also breathtaking.”

  “I'm glad you think so. Not everyone likes Venetti. And very few of the people who do are clergy.”

  Jacob frowned. “I was under the impression that his relative unpopularity was because of a lack of access. So many Venettis are in private collections.”

  “Perhaps that's true of the general populace, but can you think of a painter during the Italian Renaissance that had no patrons within the Church besides Matteo Venetti?”

  Shaking his head, Jacob countered, “Well, no, but I'm not getting any resistance from the Church for studying him. And it's not like they don't own any of his paintings.”

  Obviously warming to the debate, Teresa gestured for him to come with her. “Come, I'll show you to your work room. Now think about it, Father, the Venettis you have studied. How many of them were owned by the Church?”

  When he opened his mouth to reply, Jacob realized he couldn't think of a single one beyond the portrait he had so recently begun work on. He grinned. “Well I'm sure there must be some someplace. And what about the one I"ve been working on?”

  Pulling out a huge ring of keys, Teresa opened up a door he had not seen in before, and led the way down a utilitarian servant's hallway lit by fluorescent lighting. “Why do you think,” she said, “that you have been allowed to come here and study, Father?”

  “Please, it's Jacob.”

  “Jacob, then,” she nodded. “Why?”

  “Because the Church assigned me to the painting. Because I want to do a dissertation on the marked differences between Venetti's early work and his later pieces. I assumed it was because the Miggliozzis have a good relationship with the Vatican.”

  Her short, sharp laugh surprised him. “Hardly. It's because the Church wants the thing off its hands. They've offered to sell the piece to us. They didn't want to pull their prodigy's thesis out from under him though, so you got sent to us too. You will still have the option to finish restoration.”

  Finally realizing Jacob had stopped short, Teresa turned back to look at him. He stood and stared at her, stunned. “You can't be serious.”

  “Never more so,” she replied. “The Church has never owned a Venetti for more than a few weeks. They've always passed them on as soon as they could.”

  “You have documentation for this?”

  It was hard for Jacob to take in. He'd seen Venetti paintings in private collection catalogs and art histories while he was an undergrad, and the stark differences in the painter's methods had piqued Jacob's curiosity, but he'd never studied the man's work at a church institution, save the newest one, so it could very well be true.

  “Yes, of course. I'll make sure it's made available to you. Here we are.”

  They stopped outside a steel door, for which Teresa had a key, naturally. She let him in, and he found himself in a
perfectly arranged workroom, with everything he could possibly need to restore, authenticate, or test a painting. He was a bit overwhelmed.

  “Like it?” she asked.

  “Oh yes. Thank you Teresa.”

  “Terri. Your painting is over there.” She pointed to a drape-covered easel. “Enjoy. I'll show you the rest of the collection tomorrow. I'll have that documentation for you by then, too. Dinner will be at eight. Formal. Your jacket and collar will do fine. If you need anything between now and then just pick up the phone and dial 9.” With that, she left him to his new home and office.

  He explored. He had a sink and a worktable, several kinds of easels and all sorts of track lamps that simulated different light types. He had paints and solvents and sponges and brushes. He had drop cloths and drapes and smocks to cover his clothes. The list went on and on and Jacob started to feel as though he understood the term embarrassment of riches. He knew his inventory could only put off the inevitable for so long, though, so he finally went to what he was, sadly, thinking of as his painting and lifted the cover.

  The jolt was stronger this time, because he had the added recognition of a live double for this woman, whoever she was. His palms began to sweat, and his heart speeded its beat. Jacob studied the painting, trying, he realized, to find the differences rather than the similarities. That little crescent shaped scar next to her mouth, for instance. That it was the same was a coincidence, a remarkable one, but a coincidence nonetheless. How else could he explain it? Jacob sighed. The painting tingled in him, bringing hot blood to his face and, humiliatingly, to his groin. He wanted to deny it, he tried to keep his flesh as pure as he could, but he wasn't one for lying to himself. His mysterious lady resonated in him.

  Deciding to do something more useful, Jacob searched about until he found a sketchpad and a set of colored pencils. Then he set about making a drawing of the sea lion pendant on the necklace she wore. It had a look about it that made him think of family crests, and perhaps that would be his first step in the direction of finding out who she was. He noted it down with careful attention to detail, ignoring her modestly covered chest and the gentle swell of breast undisguised by the drape of fabric and hand. When he noticed his attention wander for about the fifth time to her neck or her waist where it disappeared under the damage to the painting, he decided to stop. Jacob checked his copy of the sea lion against the original and pronounced it good enough to research by. Then he gently covered the painting again, and headed back to the library.