Chapter 75: The Best Gift Is Loot

The three galleys rode low and heavy all the way home, carrying a cargo of coin, plate, and wealth lifted clean from two cities’ worth of nobility who had trusted the wrong friends from Italia.

The voyage took four days.

Candia came up through the haze looking exactly as a homecoming ought to look. The sun caught the old stone first, then the fondaco’s new walls, standing where a month of rubble and gulls had plainly been expected to leave them.

Marietta’s crane still turned against the skyline, exactly where he’d left her, Santina’s own frame beside her, and somewhere there his old carpenter was very likely complaining with some fresh piece of timber that had done nothing yet to earn the lecture.

The harbor had grown livelier than the one he’d sailed from. Dockworkers hauled nets with remarkable energy now, men who finally had enough wages to spend, while fishwives called out their prices instead of just hoping for them, and more than one idle soldier straightened at the sight of three war galleys.

Heads started to turn in twos and threes as the ships came into view, until the entire waterfront had turned to watch the fleet find its berths.

He’d missed the place more than he’d let himself admit, standing on a beach with nothing but a chart and a bad idea for company.

Then Caterina appeared at the head of her own little procession, with two guards and some servant girls behind her. The merry band all moved at a pace that was not quite a run, fooling nobody about how much she wanted it to become one.

Vito planted one boot on the rail while La Contessa still had way on, judged the gap, and jumped.

He struck the pier hard enough to rattle his teeth, stumbled twice, and turned the stumble into a run before Caterina had crossed the distance herself.

She had plainly prepared some little sharp opening.

"Vitale, you are five days late, and the books..."

He had her off her feet before she could finish, both hands around her waist, spinning her once while she made a cry too surprised to pass for any real protest.

"Is that any way to welcome a husband home from the wars?"

He grinned up at her, arms in no hurry to let go.

"A moglie weeps with joy, mia cara, and I’ve missed you telling me I’m impossible."

Caterina’s face went red from her throat clear up to her ears, faster and further than he’d ever managed to put it there before, and in front of considerably more people than he’d ever managed it in front of before too.

"Put me down this instant, Vitale, before the whole harbor starts inventing a wedding that never happened."

"You’ll come around, moglie mia. Give it time"

He set her down, laughing, and she smoothed her skirts with far more attention than they actually required, refusing to look directly at him for one entire breath.

"I’ve brought you a gift."

That earned him her sharpest look yet. "If it’s jewelry, keep it. I’ve no patience for another bauble I must insure against every pickpocket between here and the Rialto, and even less for whatever apology you think it represents."

Vito grinned broadly enough to make her suspicious, which was precisely what he wanted.

"Mia cara, do I look like a man who spent a month stripping two cities bare just to bring you a brooch?"

He let her a moment to wonder what he meant. "Three galleys, riding so low with silver you’d think we robbed the Doge on the way home. Coin, plate, hangings fine enough to shame a bishop, all of it taken from foolish traitors and enough to fatten your books till winter’s end."

Caterina froze.

The sharp composure caught between disbelief and the sums, and how much richer their whole venture treasure had just become.

Then she closed the remaining distance herself, drawing her body against his until the generous warmth of her chest pressed softly to his. Her fist curled into the front of his mantle, holding him there for a lingering heartbeat before she leaned closer and brushed her lips against his cheek.

"Marito mio."

Her mouth stayed close to his ear, low and entirely too pleased with herself, close enough that only he caught the endearment turned into some weapon. "Bring me a gift like this every time you sail off somewhere reckless, and I might actually start behaving like a wife."

For once, it was Vito who had nothing ready.

His own ears went hot before he’d even decided whether he minded it.

"I... sì. I can manage that."

He was still working out whether that had come out as smooth as he’d meant it to when a cough broke the moment apart, loud and entirely without accident.

Zaccaria stood a few paces away, with Orso beside him, broad enough to make half the crowd give him room without being asked.

Pellegrino stood a step behind, already working his medal between two fingers. Domenego brought up the rear, visibly happy to watch entertainment.

"Madonna mia."

Zaccaria shook his head, though the corner of his lips refused to help with the disapproval.

"And here I’d always thought the woman was the more composed of the two of you."

Orso grunted. "About time somebody spun her off her feet, I was beginning to think you two only argued for sport."

Pellegrino crossed himself with genuine feeling.

"San Marco, preserve us both. I’ve heard less scandal reported from an actual wedding night."

Domenego threw both arms wide, delighted far beyond reason. "Now here, Barozzi, at last, is poetry. A public dock, the whole Republic watching, love declared before God and every dockworker in Candia. I take back every unkind word I’ve ever spoken on you, there is real poetry in this, finally."

Only then did either of them properly notice everyone else.

Caterina’s guards were standing very stiffly and failing badly to hide their grins. The servant girls had hands over their mouth.

The dockworkers had stopped their work, and a good third of the company had done the same, all of them caught between delight and the poor manners required to laugh outright at a patrician and his own investor.

Both went red at precisely the same moment, which struck both to them as the only fair ending available.

Vito started, a little too quickly, reaching for the task like a drowning man reaching for a rope. "The cargo needs to be unloaded, and these men need looking after before they fall where they stand. Zaccaria, see it done."

Caterina’s voice recovered its edge considerably faster than her pale complexion. "And someone will have to count every crate before a single coin finds its way into a stranger’s boot. Pellegrino, I trust you at least to count honestly."

"Kyria Contarini wounds me with the doubt."

Neither waited to hear whether he meant it.

Both left the dock together, heading toward the Venetian Quarter. Whatever joke the harbor made of their departure, neither would ever admit to hearing it.

Behind them, the four officers and the entire watching harbor were left to make of the relationship whatever they pleased.