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that had ended up.
    “Not today,” I agreed. “We’ll try the arnica. What was it that made such a mess of you anyway? Did they use clubs?”
    He tried to ease his bloated knee below the water, but the tub was small, and he couldn’t stretch out completely. The motion brought a rush of pained breath. “I don’t know. The seizures . . . I never remember them. Sometimes I don’t remember the time before they happen. Sometimes it’s after I don’t remember. Hours sometimes. I lost a day once.”
    He was not unusual in that. “What do you remember about that night?”
    “Well . . . that’s the question, isn’t it? That’s what my father wants to know. Who I was with. What they saw.”
    “Have you any answers?”
    “I’d been on a binge for at least a week,” he said. “Let’s just say everything’s a bit hazy.”
    “A binge?”
    “Drinking. Opium. Women.” A challenging gaze. “From the moment I got the letter from my father about my imminent wedding.”
    “I see.”
    “The last thing I remember is a brothel in Rome. A woman with hair the same color as yours and breasts like heaven.” He smiled at my discomposure. “I’d gone with a few friends. Nero and I shared the girl.”
    “Nero?”
    “Nerone Basilio. The owner of this palatial residence. A name that goes back five centuries, and money that disappeared a hundred years ago. Rather like my bride. A good pedigree and little else.”
    “Did he see your seizure?”
    “I don’t think so, but I was very drunk. I remember leaving the brothel. Nero dodged down an alley to take a piss. After that . . . nothing but a few bits and pieces until I woke up in the hospital. I could have had the seizure then or an hour later. Sometimes I hallucinate before one. I could have been seeing things that weren’t there and not know it.”
    “Mr. Basilio never said anything to you about it?”
    “He never mentioned it,” he said. “Or maybe he did. I was in and out of consciousness when he visited me at the hospital. I hardly remember it. He telegraphed my parents and sent for Zuan to bring me here. I suppose you’ll be able to ask Nero yourself. He’ll be here soon. He’s just tying up some loose ends we left in Rome.”
    “Is he the one who brought you to the hospital?”
    Samuel shook his head. “They told me I’d been found on the street.” His voice turned bitter. “None of my other friends came to see me, so . . . perhaps they did witness it.”
    I heard again that resignation that told me it was no more than he expected. I wondered what it would be like, a lifetime of facing such repulsion, of friends turning away. But then, the secret had been successfully kept so far, or so the Farbers had told my father, and part of my task was to discover if it remained so. None of his friends supposedly knew, and there was no gossip of his condition in New York. But I’d seen even attendants turn in revulsion from epileptics more than once, and I wondered what Samuel had endured from his own family.
    “Or perhaps they didn’t see, and they didn’t know you’d been attacked,” I suggested.
    His smile was thin. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those idiots who believes the best of people.”
    “Hardly that,” I said.
    “Yes, I suppose it would be hard to be so optimistic when you look at madmen like me every day.”
    “You’re an epileptic,” I said. “Not a madman.”
    “Of course you’re right.”
    I’d meant to comfort him, but I saw I’d done exactly the opposite. I picked up his nightshirt from the floor and held it out. “You can get out now. I looked for towels, but I couldn’t find them. Just put this on and go back to your room. I’ll come with the arnica.”
    He rose, water sluicing off, and I kept my eyes firmly on his face, offering my shoulder for him to lean on as he came out of the tub. He stumbled, his knee giving way for one moment, falling into me, which made him gasp in pain. I grasped his arm to steady him,