Jimberley spends an afternoon at Dena's family home on the outskirts of La Città Dipinta, taking tea, strolling the paths of the gardens, playing genteel card games, watching more than listening as Dena's hands fly confidently over the spinet's keys, playing a number of respectably popular airs.
Their friendship is not what it was. Jimberley is cooled and set apart; they both feel it keenly, and Dena has the thread of tension in her — subtly but constantly watching watching watching — that means Jimberley will later discover a black origami rose at her dead drop.
She begs off staying for dinner, takes herself instead to a dingy taverna, gets a little in her cups before using the evening's shade to slip into the ruined church, descend the narrow wind of stairs to the once-cellar, fumbles behind the particular loose brick.
She twirls her Mysterious Benefactor's paper flower between her fingers for long minutes, then sets it to her candle's flame, watches it smoulder and wither; replaces its ashy corpse in the dead drop, goes home, and sleeps like the dead.
"Is there something I've done?" Dena says, in the daylight, beneath a white parasol, hand extended to tenderly examine the bloom of a tall garden flower.
"I don't understand," Jimberley lies steadily.
"You seem disappointed in me, lately."
Jimberley's heart bubbles with the injurious ferocity of a blacksmith's glowing workpiece, newly plunged into water.
"Nothing of the sort," she says, without elaboration. She sounds curt to her own ears.
Another black paper rose. This one has a fancy-cornered scrap of card attached to it with a loop of heavy thread; lettered as elaborately as if a masquerade invitation, a single word.
Please.
She should burn this one, too; burn however many it takes for them to stop, and hope that Dena maintains a desire for her friendship through however long it takes Jimberley to stitch closed and numb the wounds in her heart.
Instead, of course, she holds it in her trembling hand as she mount the endless spiral of the clock tower, dressed to perfection as the harlequinade rogue, sick to her stomach.
Her Mysterious Benefactor is, for once, not languidly seated at her arrival; standing straight-backed at the stained glass face of the still and silent clock, one hand lightly pressed to its rear surface, gazing out through its misty colours; turning to her as she arrives. A salacious caricature of old-fashioned propriety, black layered skirts and wicked scarlet mouth.
"I've done everything you asked," Jimberley says drearily. "And you've done everything you said you would in return, I know, and it's ungrateful of me — but I can't, Signora. No more, I beg you, I can't."
Her Benefactor frowns, beckons her, and Jimberley takes two steps before she masters her own feet and sways to a stop. "Signora," she pleads, and then her breath catches as the woman bends her head and reaches for the ribbon fastening her lace-trimmed masquerade mask.
Jimberley catches her wrists before she's conscious of having dashed the remaining distance. Her Mysterious Benefactor is pressed against the glass, silhouetted, hands pinned either side of her head, eyes wide, startled and dark; Jimberley pressed against her front, breathing her perfume.
"No," Jimberley breathes. "Signora, no."
"Why not?" Her Benefactor murmurs huskily.
"That's not a mask you can put back on, Dena," Jimberley says. Her Benefactor swallows convulsively; and, distracted by the sudden movement of her pale throat, it takes a moment for Jimberley to realise her mistake.
