She’s left us, boy. We aren’t enough for her, he’d mumbled. Our love isn’t enough.

Alec was devastated, but his father was in no state to offer any comfort. Edward Gresham was too wrapped up in his own grief and hadn’t been sober since she left. His clever, creative, funny father had been replaced with a ghostly shell of a man. One who drank day and night, and who couldn’t bear the sight of his own child, for fear of seeing even a shadow of his lost love. Within the year he would go to the grave nearly penniless, and Alec was told of his mother’s death a few weeks later. After that, young Alec had been carted between distant relations of his mother who wanted nothing to do with him until, strangely, Sir Alfred, an old school friend of his father’s, agreed to take him in.

Even to this day, Alec had no idea what possessed the man to do it. He could no longer tell if it had been the greatest blessing of his life, or if he was paying for the many sins of his parents.

“Do you like it?”

The question pulled him from his tangled thoughts. “Like what?”

Lottie arched an auburn brow, as if he was terribly slow. “Teaching.”

“Right.” He gave himself a shake. “Yes, I do. It’s nice to have a bit of purpose. To feel like I’m helping people.”

Her eyes lost some of their hardness. “Doesn’t your work for the Crown involve helping people?”

Alec shrugged. “Sometimes.” If he was lucky.

Espionage was an ugly business, and not one he ever would have chosen. But there was no need to bother her with his many regrets on that subject.

Lottie’s rosebud mouth parted slightly in surprise and immediately drew his gaze. Her lips seemed to tense under his observation. Nerves, maybe.

Or maybe not. Maybe it’s something else. Something more.

Alec had long prided himself on his ability to read people, women in particular, but he knew well before he set foot in Tuscany that he would never be able to read Lottie accurately anymore. There was too much history. Too much pain. His mind would see things it wanted to see, not what was truly there. Since the fateful morning when he had barged into Sir Alfred’s study and declared his intension to marry Lottie, Alec had learned to be cautious. To wait for the right moment. To uncover the right information. He credited this approach to his success in the field. Other men were far too cocksure, convinced of their own brilliance. But Alec tread carefully and he was rarely wrong.

“And what of living in Venice? Do you like that as well?” Her voice had gone a bit softer.

If he didn’t stop staring at her mouth, she would think him a lecher. “Yes.” He forced his eyes to meet hers. “It’s…it’s a lovely city.” And now he would get to show her. Something else sparked in his chest. “The closest thing to experiencing true magic is Venice at sunset.”