Lady Midnight Read Free Page A

teaching me all you knew, all your secrets. You gave me freedom and riches...."
    "Freedom?" her mother whispered, sadder than Katerina could ever have imagined her. "Cara mia. A courtesan is the least free of all women. Even a nun in her cloister has more freedom."
    "But you always said that your career freed you from the mundane cares of married ladies! You had no household duties, no bowing and scraping to a husband, no dozens of brats clinging to your skirts...." Kate repeated the words she had heard hundreds of times from her mother.
    "I did not know the truth! I only knew the perimeters of my own life. It was truly full of jewels and fine things, but you do not know all that I did to earn them. A courtesan must be young and beautiful always. She must laugh and smile and be witty. She must never be tired or ill or make demands, or she would risk being accused by her men of being just like their wives. There is never true emotion, true conversation and meeting of the minds and hearts."
    Katerina stared at her mother, confused and fascinated. "I know that being amusing and charming is part of the role of courtesan. You taught me that well."
    "It is more than that!" Lucrezia cried sharply, causing Katerina to tremble anew. "Bonny Kate, you must listen to me carefully, for my time here is growing short. If you continue on the path you are on now, you will never have a family or a true home. I tried so hard to groom you for my own life. I even tried to convince myself that it was what you really wanted. But you were always so dreamy and romantic, always reading your poetry and your horrid novels. You saw only the surface of my life, not the reality of it. But now you must take this gift you have been given."
    Katerina wiped at her tears with the blankets. "What gift, Mother? What could possibly come out of this horrible thing?" She held out her arm, displaying the purple-and-blue bruises imprinted there.
    Her mother gave her a fond, rueful little smile. "You are not thinking clearly, my Katerina. And after those books you buried your nose in! Now—think. Everyone will believe you have drowned along with the rest of us. Katerina Bruni is dead. You must make certain that she stays that way.
    "You need only go somewhere new, far away, and begin a fresh life. Your father, God rest his soul, was English—perhaps London would hold some attraction for you. But anywhere would suffice for a different life."
    "Not go back to Venice?" Katerina remembered again her mother's palazzo. She remembered the wild, wondrous parties there during carnival, masked revelers packed to the frescoed ceilings, couples kissing furtively in the shadows, amid glimpses of naked limbs and bosoms and heated cries. She remembered how the laughter and the music and the champagne would go on and on until dawn—and how she would watch from the upstairs gallery, wondering, fearing, what it would be like to be in the midst of that party.
    "It is the only life I know," she whispered.
    "And that is my fault. I raised you in my own world. But there are other lives, better ones, more worthwhile ones, where you can find your own heart away from all the gilded rot. It is all there, just waiting for you to pick it up. Oh, cara, truly you are so much more lovely than I ever was, and more clever, too—clever in arts besides those of pleasing men. You can do anything you find that your heart desires."
    Katerina took in those words, rubbing at her aching temples. Her mind raced with a torrent of thoughts, dreams—and fears. Could her dream mother be right? Could a chance grow from this tragedy? A gift.
    She imagined the sort of new life her mother spoke of, a life with a home and family of her own, with love and security. Laughter and books, her body and mind belonging only to herself. A tiny hope bloomed slowly, reluctantly, in her most secret heart, like the rosebud of summer after a long winter. But... "How could I afford to travel to a new place, to buy a new home? All