Excerpt 1

Rome, 2018

SUNLIGHT STREAMED THROUGH the high windows, coaxing Sophie from her dreams. She cracked one eye open, groaning at the early hour on the travel alarm clock. How had she forgotten to close the shutters last night? Blame it on the jet lag of someone no longer used to international travel.

She turned her head to observe Matt’s sleeping form. His chest rose and fell in a calm, steady rhythm. A little sunlight seeping through the windows would never wake him this early. He was made of stronger stuff.

She turned back to the window, struck again by golden Roman light she’d forgotten after so many years away. Not at all like the diffused light back home. Sparrows swooped in graceful arcs across the cloudless, cerulean sky. As the sleepiness seeped from her eyes and her gaze sharpened, the bright, white blocks began to take shape. Her heart beat faster. The familiar but long-dormant sense of fear coursed through her body. She hadn’t been expecting to feel it so deeply after all these years away.

Closing her eyes, she took a calming breath and formed images of waking in her bedroom at home. The branch of the oak tree scraping the bedroom window, the twittering of the birds, the bold squirrel that peeked in her window most mornings, the creaks and groans of the old, converted farmhouse. Gradually, her heartbeat slowed, the fear seeped away. She inhaled deeply, counted to ten and exhaled.

She could do this.

She fixed a determined gaze on the grand palazzo, glittering white in the strong Mediterranean sunlight. Some of its brown shutters were open, others closed like sleepy eyes reluctant to yield to the morning light. She remembered all those useless afternoon battles against the Roman sunlight filtering heat and blinding rays into those great rooms.

At the palazzo’s upper edge, lithe young angels kneeled in rows, their flowing curls cascading down to their shoulders. Their pointed wings punctuated the cornice above, curving vines sprouted from their bodies in a riot of intricate swirls. The young angels were separated from one another by lush greenery, unrolling in a seemingly endless, elegant row. She’d always known the carving was there, but she’d never observed the details from this angle. Everything had been different from within. Despite the warmth of the early morning sun, she shivered.

Ignoring a mounting sense of dread, Sophie pushed herself up gently, careful not to rouse Matt. Sliding bare feet into beckoning slippers, she padded softly to the door, her back decisively turned to the noble home.

Excerpt 2

Rome, 1896

CLUTCHING THEIR PORTFOLIOS to their chests, Isabelle and Stefania spilled through the palazzo’s towering door, built more for a fairy tale giant than for mere mortals. They tumbled out into the sparkling spring sunlight that animated the Via Condotti. The two young women blinked into the bright light like a pair of moles freshly emerged from their den buried deep within the earth. And wasn’t that almost what they were, after hours trapped in the dusky art studio?

Stefania twirled around in joy, eliciting angry glances from the fashionable pedestrians. But Stefania cared little for what others thought. “I was so excited M. Lombard was to be away at the exhibition in Paris, so looking forward to M. Fauret substituting him for two whole weeks. He’s known for being a great admirer of the Impressionists, so I hoped we might have seen some sunlight in the studio. Imagine that! Maybe he would have even let us go outside to paint en plein air.” 

Isabelle cocked one eyebrow. “Don’t dream, Stefania. We may be approaching the twentieth century, but our art school is still mired in medieval times. Even M. Fauret knows to keep his position he must follow M. Lombard’s instructions.”

Stefania heaved a sigh. “Instructions to paint melons and grapes, with a spattering of breadcrumbs arranged artfully on the candlelit table? I can hardly see with those heavy drapes blocking out all the light. Doesn’t M. Lombard even know what modern art looks like?”

“You came in late. Missed his complaining. He refused to take part in the Paris exhibition because of the ‘radical’ Pre-Raphaelite paintings also on display. The movement’s been around forever. It’s hardly new! Rome’s charged with all the changes around it, and in our art classes we’re stuck centuries in the past.”

Stefania laughed. “There’s only one thing to be done about it. My treat. Coffee at Caffè Greco.”

Isabelle groaned. “If my aunt finds out, she’ll have my head. She thinks it’s a decadent society that gathers there.”

Stefania linked her arm through Isabelle’s. “And so it is. But only after we have made our daily appearance.” Her black eyes flashed. “How would your aunt even know? Didn’t she create her own coffeehouse to avoid having to mix with the lowly intelligentsia?”

“Has that news made its way around?”

“It’s in all the papers, how the princess is such a woman of culture and taste. How she’s anticipated the future of the noble palaces in Rome. A select world walled off from the rabble on the Roman streets. A park, a hunting villa, a gazebo for private concerts, and a coffeehouse of one’s own.”

Isabelle allowed herself to be ferried down the street and through the crowds. “If you think about it, not so very different from the cloistered nuns who lived there before us. Only more elegant. You can’t imagine the witty conversation taking place within those four, grand walls. Only last week, Signora Rossi told me over coffee she was worried for my soul in M. Lombard’s art classes.”

Stefania stopped short, a look of amusement on her already animated face. “Our souls? Oh, do tell! What untoward acts would M. Lombard commit to corrupt us? Slipping an opium pipe into our still life display to liven things up?”

Isabelle laughed. “Worse, I’m afraid. Signora Rossi has heard bawdy tales of innocent young women being herded together at their easels to paint Abyssinian males …” she lowered her voice, “in all their naked splendor.”

Stefania erupted into giggles. Her face turned red, tears streamed from her eyes. Elegant women turned to stare at her with distaste, and for a moment, Isabelle thought she should pull away to avoid association with such a public outburst. She quickly chastised herself for allowing Auntie Elizabeth’s harsh education to condition her in such a way.

Stefania gained her composure, and gulped out her words, “She … did … not! You’re making that up.”

Isabelle slipped her arm once again through that of her friend, and pulled towards the café, hoping to avoid additional, unwanted attention. “And coming from rotund Signora Rossi, no less. She said she would never, ever permit dear, innocent Carlotta to walk through the doors of such a den of depravity.”

Stefania looked ready to burst into a fresh burst of giggles. “Maybe a den of depravity would do Carlotta some good.”

Isabelle cocked one eyebrow at her friend. “And here we are, at the other locale the ladies of the exclusive Caffè Brancaccio find so distasteful.”