21

The exit led us into a kind of nondescript courtyard, not really a courtyard at all, a semi-open space with a few afterthought wooden chaises that felt as if they belonged in a city housing-project playground, a couple of kids lounging on them while their parents consulted guidebooks.

“God, this is ugly,” I said. “Couldn’t someone have painted a wall or spray-painted graffiti so there’d be some sort of art here, some small segue from the Uffizi into real life?”

Alexandra looked at me with an unreadable smile, then leaned in and kissed me hard on the mouth, the tip of her tongue teasing mine before she pulled away.

I was pretty sure my face was registering surprise—and delight—but Alexandra looked guilty now, sucking her lower lip like a little girl. “I’m sorry…”

“I’m not.”

“I shouldn’t have done that… It was just all your talk about an entire class on Artemisia and having an art segue out here…” She shook her head. “Forget it.”

Not likely, I thought but didn’t say, though I could feel the smile on my lips.

“The library is open now,” she said. “You should go.”

“Trying to get rid of me?”

“No,” she said and softened.

“Okay then, let’s go back to the library together.”

“I can’t. I need to…take care of a few things…”

“Hey, if it’s about the kiss—”

“I don’t know what came over me. Can we pretend it didn’t happen?”

“Maybe you can,” I said and smiled.

“See you later,” she said, already heading down the ramp so fast I didn’t have time to ask when.

22

Alexandra hurried down the exit ramp. What was she thinking, kissing him like that?

Clearly, she wasn’t thinking at all. Or was she?

She put a finger to her lips as if she could still feel it, the kiss lingering.

But it was ridiculous. Too much. Too fast. She should go back and say something. But what? That would only make it worse, make her look even more foolish and reckless, something she rarely was and could not afford to be now.

She dared a look back when she was a couple of blocks away, not because she expected Luke to be following but because she had the feeling someone was. Silly, of course, and no way to tell. There were people everywhere—another tour group, Italians toting shopping bags, vendors selling maps and trinkets. She made her way quickly across the piazza and kept going until she was on a narrow side street that ended in a small square with an old chapel. On impulse, she went in—she was all impulse today.

Inside, the church was whitewashed and austere, with a series of beautiful frescoes in arches. Alex stopped to read a plaque that identified the chapel as the Oratorio dei Buonomini di San Martino, the fifteenth-century frescoes as depicting good works performed by the voluntary order whose chapel this had been. The frescoes were high above her head, but she strained to see them. In one, nuns tended to a woman in bed, the colors soft, the nuns’ expressions kind, the patient’s face pale and sickly.