Read Online The Art of Waiting by Christopher Jory - Free Book Online

carnal intrigue. They drifted under a bridge into Rio del Palazzo, lowering their heads to avoid the low stone arch. To their left towered the back wall of the Palazzo Ducale, to the right the walls of the prison, and running directly overhead was the Bridge of Sighs, its name stolen from the laments of thieves and prisoners passing from their cells to the chamber of the state prosecutor and back again.
    â€˜I don’t like it in here,’ said Isabella. ‘I feel like I’m being judged.’
    â€˜Who’s judging you? I’m not.’
    â€˜Not yet.’
    A little further along the Canale di San Marco, Isabella indicated an insignificant backwater. ‘Up that way, just past that tower,’ she said. ‘Pull the boat over here, Aldo. There, just by that door. Tie it up to that jetty.’
    â€˜Tie it up?’
    â€˜Yes, tie it up. I want to get out.’
    â€˜You want to get out? Already?’
    â€˜Correct. I want to get out.’
    Isabella had already stepped out onto the tiny landing stage and was turning the key in a nearby door. She pushed it open and slipped inside. Aldo hesitated, assuming this unexpected turn of events signalled an abrupt end to his evening.
    â€˜Well, aren’t you going to come in?’ Isabella whispered, suddenly furtive.
    A moment later, Aldo was in the hall and Isabella was closing the door behind him. He felt her hand in his, then the tug of her as she led him up barely lit stairs. He was aware of grim portraits that glowered on the walls and a heavy chandelier hanging from the ceiling, its glass tears whispering together in an unexplained stirring of the air. On the landing lay a conspiracy of doors. One, slightly ajar, let in a pale light from across the canal and it streaked the floorboards with its watery beam. Isabella led Aldo down a dark passage and up a short flight of steps. She pushed open another door. In the half-light Aldo could make out a large bed and one or two heavy pieces of furniture, but the high-ceilinged room gave an impression of space. In the far wall, a window of gothic arches looked out on the thinning mist and the terracotta-tiled roofs of the buildings across the canal.
    Isabella took off her coat. The dress beneath was simple and dark and resembled the one she was wearing the first time he had seen her, seated next to her husband at the concert in the church near the Ponte di Rialto the week before. Now she stepped towards him and once more he felt her breath on his face, then again, closerthis time. Her lips parted and closed on his, just a brush at first, a glancing blow, then something firmer, more urgent. Her mouth opened wide now, an unhealed wound, pressing hard, the taste of her filling him. She lay down, drawing him onto the bed beside her.
    â€˜Touch me here, Aldo,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. You needn’t be shy . . .’ She guided him to her again. ‘That’s it, Aldo, yes. Yes, Aldo, don’t worry, I’ll show you how.’
    She smiled one of her many smiles, a momentary suggestion of vulnerability, then quickly hid herself away again beneath her cloak of irony. ‘Hold me the way you held your violin in the church last week. Run your bow across me gently now . . .’ She giggled, a curious delighted little laugh.
    Aldo could hear a boat now, out there beneath the darkened window, its sound fading as it slipped under the arch of a bridge, sending ripples pulsing across the water, gliding through the night and ever deeper into the heart of Venice. Isabella was all that mattered now, this world of hers, her body and his, locked together in the dark. And then the intruder, reality, separated time from space once more and Aldo and Isabella lay suddenly still on the bed, the heat of her body mingling with his own, then a chill on their skin as it shone pale in the night. She pulled him beneath the covers.
    â€˜Was that your first time, by any chance?’ she