Page 16 of Just for a Taste

I peeled myself out of bed and wandered into the hall without bothering to change out of my nightgown or put on slippers. The air smelled like freshly cut wood and dirt—like my pa used to when he came back from his workshop. I felt the prick of phantom splinters in my heels and quickly grabbed a pair of shoes to vanquish the echoes of childhood scoldings from the corners of my mind.

I followed the scent to an open door next to the aviary. It was the hall leading to the conservatory, currently illuminated by lantern light on account of its glass walls being covered with tarps. I had poked my head in before occasionally to admire the stained-glass ceilings, but the room had been in disarray, and I had the sense I should stay away. Obviously, there was little point in a vampire maintaining a sun parlor. But now things were different. I examined the scene of the crime: A pair of dirty boots, one on its side. A hammer lying beside a fan of nails, many crooked and deformed. A pile of wood chips in the corner, and beside it, a book left open, its pages sinfully touching the ground.

I approached what I expected to be the most illuminating clue but could decipher nothing. The text of the book was in Sicilian, and it lacked pictures. I stepped over it and followed a trail of scattered mulch, which led me into the conservatory itself.

The culprits came into view: a handmade garden bed, filled to the brim with potting soil. The wood was new, with a fresh layer of sawdust coating its surface. There was a large potting bench flush against another wall, complete with brand-new shears, trowels, pots, and just about anything else I could imagine needing for every step of the gardening process—empty pots, bags of soil, heat lamps, and supplementary lighting.

The room had been restored to its former majesty, and many steps beyond.

A familiar voice rang out from behind me. “Will it suffice?”

I hadn’t noticed Duca de’ Medici approaching. His clothes were as formal as usual; I recognized his white button-down and trousers with suspenders from the day he showed me his aviary. Nothing else about him appeared the same. His skin glistened with sweat; his sleeves were rolled up to reveal surprisingly muscular forearms. His face was crossed with lines of dirt where he had pushed his hair out of his eyes until it finally slicked against his forehead.

In those hands, those powerful hands that had gripped me so tightly, were a folded pair of gloves. He leaned against the doorframe, and I wondered why I had ever thought he was fragile.

It’s because of me , I realized, that he is able to stand so strong.

As bitter as the feeding had been, this realization made everything feel a bit more worth it.

“Will it suffice?” Duca de’ Medici repeated.

“I, uh—” I swallowed, moistened my lips, and caught my breath. I could barely look at him. “What is it?” I finally mustered.

He frowned and turned his head away. “You can’t tell?”

“N-no, I—”

“It’s a garden,” he said, voice sharp. For an instant, I wondered if he was actually mad until I saw the faint glow of a blush across his cheeks. Then, he added, almost inaudibly, “For you.”

Numerous variants of thanks swam alongside dozens of why ’s. I grasped into my psyche for anything to say, but all that came out after several seconds of dead air was an empty, “Oh.”

But by the time I could muster that single syllable, I was speaking to his back. Duca de’ Medici was walking off toward his aviary, and while his strides were even and confident, I saw the bright red tips of his ears.

He stopped for a second and said over his shoulder, “Feel free to take some cuttings from outside. There’s a map on the table. I’ll have Urbino remove the tarps.”

With that, he folded his arms behind his back and stalked off, leaving me to gawk.

I studied every corner of the room, feeling more and more overwhelmed by the second. Just as Duca de’ Medici had said, there was a folded piece of paper on the table—or rather, the potting bench—that contained a map of the abbey and its surrounding gardens. I had seen one of them many times when researching the Abbazia di Santa Dymphna. This map differed from the usual image, however, in that the tight, elegant scrawl of the Duca de’ Medici covered it. He had circled various areas and written on them:

Rosa x odorata

Soliel d’Or

Zépherine Drouhin

La France

And so the list continued.

It was an annotated map of the location of every rose cultivar in the abbey.

I crammed into my pocket and ran to the library. I flipped to the back of the logbook—the section Duca de’ Medici wrote in—and saw nearly a dozen books checked out on rose cultivars, rose horticulture, and gardening in greenhouses. All checked out within the last week.

So that was why I hadn’t seen him.

The text in front of me blurred, the pages developing several dark spots. I touched my fingers to my cheek and was alarmed to find them moist. When did I start crying? What could I even call the emotion pouring out of my eyes—relief, shock, gratitude, confusion? Maybe a strange mixture of all of this, and more. Regardless of what I should call it, the feeling burning inside me spurred me to drop the logbook and race back to Duca de’ Medici’s room. I burst through the door and looked around the dimly lit room, but the vampire was nowhere to be found.

I was hit with a flash of the other night and heard the echo of my own cries, but shook them and every other thought away. For the first time, I ventured further into the room, beyond the satin curtain I had seen him retreat behind so often.

“Duca?”

I couldn’t see him—or much of anything in such dim lighting, for that matter—but I still sensed his presence. I was not surprised in the slightest when I heard him reply, “Signorina. You realize our feeding is tomorrow, do you not?”

“Uh, yeah. Can I turn on the light?”

“There’s a lantern on the table in front of you.”

I touched my face again and found it sticky but dry. Hopefully, my eyes wouldn’t betray me. Squinting into the darkness, I discerned the faint outline of the aforementioned lantern and switched it on.

He was sitting on a bench, one leg drawn up with a notebook resting gently on it. And in front of him—“Whoa.”

A grand piano, which certainly lived up to the title.

It was antique, so much so that the keys were genuine ivory, but beautifully maintained, without a speck of dust on it. The piano bench he sat on appeared to be made from the same wood and had the same detailed carvings, with the addition of velvet cushioning. A massive four-poster bed was directly perpendicular to it, along with a nightstand, upon which was a record player. The rest of the furnishings formed a crescent around the trio: a large desk overflowing with papers, a sofa, and a coffee table with a vase of dead roses.

Light flickered across Duca de’ Medici’s face, revealing an annoyed expression. He placed the notebook on the bench with a loud sigh. “What is it?”

What had I walked into? I took a deep breath and returned the lantern to its place on the table.

“Before today,” I said, “I thought you were mad at me.”

In response, the vampire tossed his head back and harrumphed. “Who says I’m not?” he replied with a glare as sharp as his tone. “ You came into my parlor unannounced.”

I folded my arms tightly over my chest, feeling the glow of embarrassment and indignation wash over my cheeks. “It’s not like I could knock!”

I stepped outside of myself and saw the scene before me. Once again, Duca de’ Medici had me stomping around like a child. My face grew hot.

“Look, I just wanted to say thank you for the garden, okay?”

He didn’t reply. Instead, he stared at me. I pivoted and was about to retreat from this failure of a conversation when I saw him rise in my periphery.

“Wait,” he said, taking a step toward me. “I’m sorry. You caught me off guard. I’ve been meaning to show you this place. I just wasn’t expecting to do so today.”

He set the papers in his hand to the side, sat on one end of the sofa, and patted the spot next to him. I joined him but positioned myself as far away as humanly possible, practically hanging off the edge. I hugged a pillow to my chest and mumbled, “It’s okay. I hate being interrupted too. I’m sorry I didn’t ask.”

“It isn’t just that. I must admit, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to speak to you recently. I’m ashamed of my behavior when I saw you last. My hand—I got carried away. I won’t let that happen again.”

“N-no, it’s my fault! I’ll sit down next time and be quiet.”

He eyed the space between us. Then, with a small sigh, he said, “I see. If that is what you wish.”

I scooted a bit closer to him to return the pillow to its original spot in the corner. “Thank you for the garden. I can’t imagine how long it took you.”

“As an excellent host, who would I be to deny my guest her hobby? We need our passions, or we’d go mad. One must fill their life with beauty to forget the ugliness of the world, correct?”

I bit my lip to hold in a grin and gestured to the piano with my chin. “Is that yours, then? Your passion, I mean.”

“Yes. Her name is Eulalie.”

“Oh, after the poem?”

He smiled at me so warmly, it was a wonder I’d ever thought he hated me. “I thought you’d know.”

I fidgeted with my skirt, growing hot. It was hard to converse casually when it had been so long, when I had been so confused. Most of all, when such beautiful eyes were regarding me. I did my best anyway. “I didn’t realize you liked poetry,” I said. “I thought you didn’t.”

“I always have. Poe and Dante are favorites, as you’ve likely gathered, but I’ve become quite fond of Petrarch. Of the sonnets he wrote for Laura.”

“You don’t have to say that.”

“I have yet to say anything for your sake. I don’t have it in me to mindlessly flatter you. Anyway, I wanted to read Petrarch again, to see what you saw. And I get it now, I think.” He leaned forward and craned his head to the side to meet my eyes with an inquisitive look of his own. “Do you think Laura ever existed?”

“No.” Yet another question I had always wished someone would ask me, had always wanted to answer. “I don’t think she ever really did—at least, not entirely. I think she was originally based on someone he barely knew, but eventually . . .” I returned his gaze steadily, studying his reaction to see if he agreed. As I should have known, he offered no clues.

That was, until he continued my thought for me.

“Eventually, through all those years of obsession and worship, she became something else. A homunculus formed from love and a corpse. That was what I missed before, Signorina Bowling. In my eyes, having such love for someone who never existed is far more tragic than, say, Dante and Beatrice. And of course, tragedy and beauty are lovers in their own right.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s tragic at all. I think Petrarch is lucky. How many people can say they’ve loved someone or something so deeply? I certainly can’t. I don’t pity him. I envy him.”

I was expecting a laugh, a riposte, some acute reaction—but there was none. Duca de’ Medici darkened and stared at the lantern on his table. After a long, painful silence, he finally said, “You shouldn’t. That sort of love devours everything around it.”

A chill snaked up my spine, crawling along my arms and legs, and conjuring goose bumps. I didn’t like this seriousness, this gravity threatening to suck in everything around it. I wanted to return to only moments ago, where we were talking so lightheartedly about his piano.

My eyes fell on the papers on the table beside us. “What’s that?” I asked.

Instantly, he brightened. “That would be my composition. Speaking of Dante, it’s based on his life.”

I grinned. “You’ll have to show me! I’d like to hear it.”

“No. I wouldn’t dream of sharing unfinished work. It’s only a few songs now, but it will be a symphony, eventually.” He leaned over, gathered the papers quickly, and crossed the room to place them on his desk. “Anyway, I don’t expect you’ll still be here for its completion. You may be my beniamina , but I’m not forcing you to stay.”

“Who knows?” I reached into my pocket and ran my thumb across my pen I had used since I started writing my thesis back in London. “I have quite a bit of reading to get through.”