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The words tasted bitter. In Florence, he had been needed at the farmacia, even without a formal chair in the business. His uncles had trusted his nose and his instinct for which blends would soothe or stir. Travelers had asked for him by name, caught by the way he spoke of lavender and chamomile in his accented English.

Here, he was ornament. An Italian novelty. The baron’s newly found nephew with foreign blood and a sunny manner.

Redundant.

“You are making a play of it,” Nicholas said, and for him the tone was almost kind. “Three months. Give yourself time to find a place.”

“Easy for you to say. You have a place. Miserable in it you may be, but you belong. This is your family, your country, your tongue. I am …” He hunted the word. “Forestiero … A foreigner. Always.”

“Half a foreigner,” Nicholas corrected, pedantic to a fault. “Your father was as English as I am. Until he let Italian influence in by marrying your mother.”

Angelo’s hands curled, then he made them open. Nicholas did not mean to cut. This was simply his way. Blunt to the edge of cruelty, unable or unwilling to wrap truth in kindness.

Compassion, Angelo told himself. He needed compassion, not heat.

Lorenzo felt the rise in the air and stepped in with his usual smoothness. “Perhaps what you need, Angelo, is a change of scene. London in February is enough to sink even a bright spirit. Gray skies. Gray stone. Gray folk. It is a wonder anyone lives through the winter without walking into the Thames.”

“A cheering notion,” Nicholas observed.

“I mean it,” Lorenzo insisted. “Angelo thrives on sun and warmth. Florence. Rome. Even Paris holds more light than this wretched island. No wonder the English took half the world. They were frantic to flee their own weather.”

In spite of himself, Angelo felt his mouth twitch. “I have known worse skies.”

“You say that to be civil. How English you have become.” Lorenzo stood and took up his pacing again. “What you need is purpose. Scopo. A reason to rise each morning beyond watching your brother make sheep’s eyes at his wife.”

“What I need,” Angelo said slowly, “cannot be had. I need the farmacia. I need the work I was trained for. That life is in Florence. I am here. There is no joining the two.”

“Why not?” Lorenzo spread his hands, face lighting. “Why could you not open your own farmacia in London? There must be a call for honest remedies made by a man who knows the art, not these English butchers who dose mercury for every ache from head to heart.”

Angelo blinked, caught short. “I … had not thought of it.”

“Because you are too busy lamenting your lot,” Nicholas said. “Though I own, the picture of you trying the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries has its entertainment. They would eat you alive.”

“They would not,” Angelo said, stung. “I know my work.”

“Your work, yes. The politics of English guilds, no. Licenses. Approvals. Seats in companies older than your precious Medici. And that is if they admit a foreign name at all, which I doubt.”

The spark Lorenzo had struck flickered and went out. Nicholas was right, hang him. Skill was not enough. A man needed friends in the right rooms, patronage, that odd English coin of respectability Angelo had not yet learned to spend.

Redundant. Superfluous. The fifth wheel.

“This talk,” Lorenzo announced all at once, “has grown intolerable. We are meant to lift Angelo’s spirits, not list the thousand ways English society is built to flatten a foreign hope.”

“I was only being honest,” Nicholas said.

“Honesty is overpraised. What we need is—” Lorenzo broke off, his attention snapping toward the door. “Do you hear that?”

Angelo tipped his head and listened. Steps in the passage, quick and sure. A moment later the door opened to admit Campbell, the butler. He carried a silver salver. Upon it lay a single letter, dark wax on cream paper. The seal was smeared at one edge, as if the rider had not waited for it to set. Angelo caught the faint tang of wet wool and horse as Campbell came near.

“Signor di Bianchi,” Campbell said in his careful, formal way. “A letter has arrived for you. It came by private messenger.”

Lorenzo crossed the carpet in three long steps and lifted the letter from the salver as if it might vanish. “A private rider? Sent from where?”

“Cornwall, sir. He said the business would not wait.”

Angelo watched color rise and fall in his friend’s face as the seal cracked and the sheet opened. Lorenzo’s eyes ran the lines. Confusion gave way to shock, then to a fierce, leaping hope.

“Santo cielo,” Lorenzo breathed. “Santo cielo e tutti i santi.”