Chapter 164: Nightly Exercise*

The chair creaked beneath them.

Caterina had hauled Vito’s tunic up, her fingers spread over his bare chest while her sleeves, still unpinned, trailed across his belly. The ink on her fingertips left gray smudges on his ribs, while Vito’s hands gently lay on her backside, warm through her gown.

When she kissed him, her mouth tasted of honey, raisins, and cask. She smelled of rosewater, and her bodice pulled tight across her bosom whenever she moved against him.

Behind her stood the table with its jug and warehouse key, while beyond the leaded windows the canal lamps shook on the black water. The voyage was over, paid for, and winter was about to close the sea to them.

Vito saw no reason to complain about any of it.

She said it into the hollow in his throat, unhurriedly. "Weeks of signing, marito, your poor hand, cramped like an oarsman’s over every leaf, no? And look at it now, tireless over my body. Such strength, and all of it hiding from me while you wrote your name two hundred times."

"Cramped, sì, cramped from dragging your figures across the Black Sea."

He flung it at the rafters, then spoiled the oratory by crushing her closer. "Ma va’, moglie, give the poor hand its due, it hauled a fleet to the edge of the world, and not one hawser, not one, ever had a stern like this."

"A hull, am I?"

She let the word hang between them, her smile against his mouth before it reached her voice.

"Flattery pays duty in this room, Vitale. One grosso a kiss, and the toll, the toll goes to me, eh."

"One? One grosso? Ostrega, this is robbery, mia cara! The Genoese would blush!"

He paid it all the same, taking his time, her lower lip held between his own.

"Entered."

She pronounced it, the flat of her hand resting against his chest. "The next costs two. For the hawsers, caro. A man who brings rope into my bedchamber pays double."

Then she drew out the second kiss, her nails digging into his shoulders, until the price seemed a small thing.

"Basta, basta, I will pay the whole account now, in one stroke!"

Both arms flew wide, nearly toppling the chair. "Every kiss from here to the grave, one great stamp upon the book, and we are settled, moglie. Free, you and I, like honest merchants!"

"Ah, no, no, no, Vitale."

One inky finger wagged beneath his nose, and she drew back an inch and not one inch more, her fingers still knotted in his tunic. "Lump sums are for debtors who mean to run. I prefer the payments that keep coming. Every day, without fail, until you are old and deaf and still owing."

Her palms rested against his chest, the gilded band on her hand cool against his skin, and her voice took on the tone she used for scripture and business, two subjects on which she rarely accepted an argument.

Caterina whispered. "Nine months, marito. Nine months and some weeks since the wedding, we crossed a sea no chart had even a name for, we paid every investor to the last grosso, we cleared every debt on this house, and all of it, all of it, is entered in ink."

A warm breath, and then the blow, delivered softly. "And still one column sits empty, Vitale, after all the nightly exercise we have put into it, all the faith, all the creaking."

Her voice stayed steady, though she could feel his heart beating faster beneath her hands.

"Empty?"

His thumbs brushed the insides of her thighs, his grin spreading wide. "Then there is an error in the book, moglie, a clerical error, and I will correct it by dawn. Three children. Four, if we round up for love, as a man ought."

"Three, if the Madonna is generous. Entered as two."

Vito clicked his tongue and laughed. "Twelve, I say, one for every Lion we flew into the Horn, Dio bon, each one named for a hull. A Contessa, a Zorzi, and a little Quinta who starts every war by dragging her anchor."

"Entered as two. La Quinta may go drag her anchor in another house, grazie."

Her ring pressed once, hard, against his chest, a seal stamped in wax. "But listen to me, Vitale. The night of the church, you told me, ’I mean to live here. Here, with you. Live.’ Those words I kept. I kept them like a deed in a locked chest. And now, marito mio, I come to receive."

"Moglie..."

His voice came out lower than he intended. "A house with a well, a roof, and a wife who audits the sea, eh? It is a house that wants... that must want..."

Caterina bit his lower lip hard enough to cut him off halfway through the sentence.

She kissed her way along his face, caught his earlobe between her teeth, then pressed her mouth to the side of his neck, teasing him with little bites until he shivered against her.

Her voice came like a tempting whisper. "Three jokes, marito, a whole fleet of children, and not one load delivered to my warehouse. Basta, Vitale. Deliver, or I void the contract. By the Madonna, I will void it."

"Ma va’, on this table?"

The crooked grin came back.

"The very table that is entered in the accounts? Then I will see it earn its keep, moglie, capisci?"

Vito stood with her in his arms, hands beneath her backside and her legs locked around his hips, sending the chair banging backward as he rose. He swept the jug and cups aside with his forearm, sending them skidding across the table while the warehouse key slid toward the edge.

Then he set her on the oak. The books lay open beside her at the season accounts, and Caterina pushed them out of reach with her fingers.

He pulled the pins from her coiled hair one at a time and dropped them onto the oak, each making a small, bright sound. Caterina counted them under her breath, because she counted everything, even when the counting was becoming difficult.

"Eleven... twelve... thirteen... Madonna santa, was that fourteen? Your fingers are stealing my numbers, Vitale, and I have never, never, lost one in my life."

"Then enter me as the thief, mia cara, and the pins as evidence."

The last pin fell, and her dark hair came loose, spilling heavily over his wrists and turning copper where the brazier’s light touched it.

Her gown slipped from one shoulder as the chemise loosened beneath it. He kissed the bare curve of her shoulder, then the little beauty mark just above her breast, his hands moving over her narrow waist and full hips before sliding down her thighs where the hem had crept up. He returned to her breasts, cupping them through the linen before slipping his hands beneath it to touch her bare skin, until her breath caught against his temple.

Caterina seized the hem of his tunic and pulled, stripping it over his head in one clean motion.

"Look at that."

She threw it onto the matting.

"The only thing in this house that has ever come off without a fight."

"The tunic’s a coward, moglie. Just wait until you meet the hose."

She met the hose, and her quick broker’s fingers made short work of the points, undoing one knot after another. Then her hand slipped beneath the linen of his smallclothes and closed around him, hard and hot, in one slow stroke that stole the breath from his chest.

Caterina caught his lip between her teeth again, breaking the laugh he began against her mouth, then nipped at his ear and whispered against it, words meant for him alone.

"Piano, Vitale... piano. Slower, I said... and lower. Ecco. There."

He obeyed, kissing her bosom as she pressed herself against him. Her third bite found the side of his neck, and he swore once, silently but with feeling.

"Cazzo..."

The table groaned beneath her, and beyond the dark windows winter settled over the lagoon. There was nowhere else they needed to be.

"Marito mio... if you keep on like this, I will... Dio, I will..."

"Say it, moglie."

"Vitale..."

"Mia cara... anima mia..."

Her thighs locked behind him, and her fingers stopped moving in his hair as Vito held her tightly against him, one hand spread across her back. The brazier gave a single tick in the silence.

"Give me a child, Vitale."

Her voice was plain now, without any ledger or joke left in it.

"Tonight. Here. All of you. I have wanted it since the church, caro, since the very church."

Vito looked at her for one breath, taking in her green eyes, her mouth swollen from his kisses, and the ring on the hand holding his hair.

"Sì, Caterina." His voice scraped low. "Sì, anima mia. Stay with me."

He did as she asked.

The table complained with a long, slow creak as the warehouse key slid across the wood, tipped over the edge, and landed on the matting. Neither of them heard it.