Bambino. Weren’t unexplained nausea and sickness amongst the first signs of . . . no, surely not. Why had it never occurred to me that a pregnancy could result from my encounter with Leo? Not just one time, surely? Not the first time? The only time? But then I remembered that I had not had my monthly visitor since—since July? I had never been the most regular, and this had not alarmed me, until now. But from what I had heard, pregnancy sickness was in the morning, wasn’t it? Not at odd times of the day.

This reassured me, but I couldn’t resist going over the bridge to the bookstore on the Street of Assassins and searching through manuals on pregnancy and birth. And there it was in black and white: Sometimes the sickness can present itself in the evenings. Old wives will tell us this is more usual if the woman is expecting a male child.

I came out of the bookshop and stood on the empty street. How well I could recall meeting Leo there. “Assassins have their own street?” I had asked.

And he had replied, seriously, “How else would you find them if you needed one?”

We had laughed.

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 28

Juliet, Venice, September 12, 1939

I stood alone in the deep shadow, not knowing where to go next. Not knowing what to do. I couldn’t tell Leo. But I had to tell Leo. He had a right to know, didn’t he? And then the dreadful, final realization: I couldn’t go home. I thought of my mother—pillar of the church, head of the ladies’ altar guild, in our little village where gossip was a major sport. The shame would kill her. And what about me? What would I do? I certainly couldn’t go back to teaching young ladies when a major boast of the school was a moral Christian upbringing. How would we live without my job? I knew Aunt Hortensia still had a small income, but would that be enough? I could picture Aunt Hortensia’s face—that haughty, horsey, perpetually surprised expression.

“I always knew the girl would come to a bad end,” she’d say. “Too much interest in the opposite sex even when she was young. And no judgement at all.”

Wouldn’t she be surprised to know that the one man she had warned me against was the creator of my ruin? Thoughts were whirling around in my brain, and I felt for a moment that I might faint. I put my hand against the cold stone wall of the nearest building, hoping to steady myself.

“All right,” I said. “Think, Juliet.”