“I’ve never done this before.”

“Nor have I.”

“I worry I will disappoint you.”

“You won’t.”

“Then yes?” he asked, his voice aglow with love and hope.

“Yes, my Nico. Yes, my beloved one.”

THE FLOOR WAS very hard beneath the thin wool pad, and the blankets weren’t quite heavy enough to keep out the drafts whistling through the window and under the door, but she was in the arms of the man who loved her, and she had never felt safer or more content. To lie so close to him, to listen to the soothing beat of his heart, to set aside her fears until the new day, was to welcome her first true, undiluted moment of happiness since the day her father had taken her aside at the casa.

“Are you asleep?” she asked.

“No. I’m too happy to fall asleep. I want these hours to last forever.”

“If only they would. If only we could wake up tomorrow and learn that the war is over. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

“It won’t last forever. It can’t.”

“And when it does end?” she asked. “If you could do anything, what would it be?”

“If anything were possible? I suppose I would like to go to university.”

“What would you study?”

“I think . . . I suppose it would be agricultural science. I know it doesn’t sound very exciting, but there’s so much to learn. How to improve the soil, increase crop yields, guard against disease. That sort of thing. I know so little—that one book on the dresser is as far as I’ve got—but I want to learn more.”

“I don’t think it sounds boring at all,” she said, and she hugged him a little tighter, just to underscore her words. They’d turned down the lamp a while ago, but she wished, now, that she could see his face properly.

“What would you choose to do?” he asked after a moment.

“I want to study medicine. To be a doctor like my father.” It was the first time she’d said it aloud to anyone other than her papà. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to think of it since she’d left Venice.

“You would make a wonderful doctor. You have that way about you. Patient and kind, but strong when you need to be. What sort of medicine, do you think?”

“I’m not sure. My father’s specialty was nephrology.”

“I know. Father Bernardi told me they met when he went for help with his kidney stones.”

“People used to come from all over Europe to see my father, but he had to close his clinic when the racial laws were passed. When he did see patients after that it was in secret, in their homes. Most of them were poor. I don’t really remember him being paid.”

“How did you live?”