milord,” he’d said quietly. “That’s just the way it is.”
Dell’este honor.
Dell’este responsibilities.
There was no running away from this. And he had learned, finally, the folly of running. Even Caesare didn’t run from problems—because he had taken on responsibilities. So there would be no “Doctor Marco” living canalside, helping the canalers and the poorest of the canalsiders.
Still . . . Doctor Rigannio, a kindly man, had been letting him be something of an assistant, in the past month or so that he’d been visiting Dorma. Now that he was here he spent more time with him, so long as it was within the House. And Rigannio’d been listening, carefully, to what Marco had poured out to him about Sophia’s cures. That information—slowly, carefully, and with no clues as to the source—was something Doctor Rigannio had taken to leaking back into the Accademia. It wasn’t heretical; and Marco had already seen evidence that it was coming back down to canalside, as the herb-hunters were pointed to new plants, and the results coming into the apothecaries. So he’d done that much good.
And there was something else. He’d been watching these aristocrats, and from the inside vantage point. No one thought any the worse of the Casa heads for having hobbies—some of them pretty odd. Old man Renzi cultivated entertainers. Bruno Bruschi studied Venetian insect life. Carlo di Zecchilo played the flute. Angelo Ponetti made lace, for God’s sake! As long as it didn’t obsess you, the way the Doge’s clockwork toys did, a hobby was actually considered genteel.
There was no reason why the head of an old Case Vecchie family like the Valdosta couldn’t indulge himself in a hobby of medicine. And .H