He slid me from his lap and placed me next to him on the bench. He asked if I would take my hands from my face. I did and I pressed it into the red of his sleeve instead. He laughed low and said, “Sióreta, Sióreta . . .”

We continued in this manner until the church bells began to chime again. We had repeated ourselves often because his Venetian was a shadow language. I understood the general shape of what he wanted to say but not the finer details.

When I told him that I had to return home, he asked when he could see me again.

“Tomorrow, here, at nine,” I answered.

He laughed low again and said, “Sióreta, Sióreta . . .”

Before I left, he kissed my hands, first the left and then the right. I felt the kisses on my ankles, as if his lips had touched me there.

Charles called me “Sióreta Cassimati” until the day he kissed me on the lips. I would say until the day I allowed him to kiss me on the lips, but I do not see the reason to tell an untruth.

Elesa, one day you will hear “kiss” and not suffer that flush of shame on your face. It is all the acts that follow a kiss that you must guard yourself against until matrimony. On Santa Maura I know you will be welcomed into a family of women. Your mother had told me that she was the youngest of eight sisters, but these women will not tell you what I will. Consider this ship your Padova, Elesa.

Put down your pen, my dear. What I will tell you now is for your ears only. Your mother, if she were alive, would want you to know the ways of men. Patricio will not need me to teach him. He will learn all of this in due time.

After the kiss, I was “Cara Rosa, Cara Rosa.” Charles always said it twice. He told me that it was the most beautiful couplet he had ever written. I asked him what a “couplet” was.

Our courtship followed a simple routine. We met on that bench every morning, except for Saturdays and Sundays, at the hour of nine. Then we met less often, but at the same hour, near the stables in the Fortezza in a small room where the shelves were lined with saddle soaps, chamois cloths, and brushes. The door to this room had a lock and Charles the key.

The first morning Charles took me to that room it was raining. He had waited by the Villa Venieri and signaled for me to follow him back up the street of villas and into the Fortezza via a side entrance that I had never used before. Our courtship on the bench was only in its second week, but I trusted him entirely. I trusted that to follow him was better than standing in the rain, in the church, or in the courtyard of the Villa Cassimati, staring up at the birds. Charles walked quickly, but I could not. I needed to keep a distance between us. My umbrella hid my face but could not hide that I was a woman.