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It occurred to Bianca with no little irony that this time she would not be able to take. No matter how badly she wanted Alessio, she would not be able to take.
Tossing back the hair that had fallen forward over her shoulder, she pushed away the emotions that were pulling at her so insistently. She did not want to feel them. She did not want to think about them. She would not allow it, she told herself with arrogant pride. She would simply not allow herself to feel anything that would stand in the way of what she had chosen for herself.
The square tower of the villa appeared above the dark green cypresses. Suddenly desperate to be alone, Bianca spurred her mount forward.
Servants rushed to take their horses as they rode through the arch into the small, intimate courtyard.
Bianca tossed the reins of her mount to a groom. “See that you bring back Messere Alessio’s mount as soon as you attend to it. He rides back to Florence immediately.”
As her gaze brushed over Alessio, her eyes narrowed at his provocative smirk.
“Is there something you wish to say, Messere Alessio?” Her voice was low, furious.
“There is no need to prod me, madonna.” Alessio gestured with his chin in the direction of the stables. “Believe me, I seek no commerce—” he paused to emphasize the double meaning “— with women who sell their bodies for a palazzo and rich jewels and think they are better than those who sell their bodies for a piece of bread.”
Even as he said the words, his sense of fairness rebelled. How much choice had she really had? Maidens were supposed to accept with good grace the marriages arranged for them. But surely she, he thought sullenly, she, who had already flouted every existing rule regarding the behavior of an unmarried female of unsullied reputation, could have avoided a betrothal with Ugo. If she had wanted to.
“Thus, Madonna Bianca, I have no wish to linger in your company.” Even as he spoke, he felt the fire in his belly and knew he lied.
Now it was Bianca’s turn to curve her mouth in a taunting smile, for she had seen the fire reflected in his eyes. The fire that belied his words.
“No?” The smile paired with that single word was more effective than any insult she could have hurled at him.
“You mock me?” Like a half-wild horse straining at the bit, his temper flared.
“Is it only allowed that you mock me?” she demanded. “I wager if I were a man armed with a rapier, you would not dare insult me thus.”
“If you were a man, I would have no need to insult you,” he snarled. “Men do not sell themselves in marriage.”
Bianca slipped her hands, which she had curled into fists, into the folds of her skirt. She would not give him the satisfaction of goading her into losing her temper.
“Indeed, what you say is true.” She paused to make certain her eyes were squarely on his. “Men sell themselves to kill instead.”
Alessio well understood the inference to his days as aide to condottiere Giovanni delle Bande Nere. It crossed his mind to remind her that in their day and age war was considered an art and the profession of condottiere was an honorable one. Because he was, in essence, a just man, it also crossed his mind that she could remind him that it was considered just as honorable for a girl to be an obedient daughter as she would later be an obedient wife.
She stood there like a pagan goddess, head high, eyes flashing with temper, her midnight hair flowing down her back like an ebony waterfall, and he again felt that jolt of desire in his belly. But this time it was accompanied by admiration for her wit. Her clever remark had hit the bull’s-eye and, perversely, it amused more than irritated him that she had turned the tables so neatly. Giving in to the amusement, he laughed, his teeth very white against his bronze skin.
“Your logic is impeccable.”
Annoyed by his laughter when she had expected, no, wanted fury, Bianca frowned. “I’m glad my impeccable logic amuses you so excellently, although I must admit it was not so intended.”
“And well I know it.” He laughed again. “That, too, amused me. To blunt the point of your lance.” Because he wanted to touch her, to feel her skin vibrating with annoyance, with the exertion of the ride, with life, he busied himself with his gloves.
“You have a clever tongue, madonna. Take care that it not be too clever.”
His suggestive smile made Bianca forget that they had witnesses. She took a step toward him, her hand swung back. When she brought it forward, Alessio’s fingers closed around her wrist cruelly enough to leave marks.
“That is not a good idea, madonna. ” The laughter was gone from his eyes. “I am not one to turn the other cheek.”
“I do not fear you.” She spat the words at him like a furious cat. “Not you.” She threw up her chin in defiance. “Not anyone.”
“No?” His eyebrows curved up in question like the wings of a raven. “Perhaps it would behoove you to do so.”
“Behoove me to fear you?” Although a quiver crept along her spine, her mouth curled in derision.
“No, not me. I do not soil my hands with punishing capricious, spoiled children.” He shrugged insolently. “My brother, on the other hand—” He paused. “I suspect my brother will be less lenient.”
She opened her mouth to give voice to the sharp retort that lay on the tip of her tongue. Even as she began to speak, the world around her dimmed and blurred to an ashen mass.
In the midst of the grayness, the only spot of color was a huge bed with crimson canopy and curtains, its white sheets tangled by the man and woman who still lay entwined upon them. A noise that sounded like the cry of a wounded boar had them starting up, bewildered, spent from passion sated. A dark figure lunged forward to snatch the jeweled dagger that lay beside the bed. Their arms around each other, they remained frozen, immobile, as the figure lifted an arm and began to thrust the dagger into their bodies with an almost methodical bestiality.
Because the softness of Bianca’s skin made Alessio want to caress it, because he wanted to put his mouth on the pulse that beat so quickly, he let her hand fall. As he did, he saw her sway and begin to crumple.
“Bianca!” The same sharp panic that had flashed through him on the beach when she had slid off her mount streaked through him now.
Picking her up as easily as if she were a child, he carried her to the well that stood in the center of the courtyard and set her down on the wide step that ran around it. Keeping his arm around her shoulders, he knelt on one knee beside her.
“Water!” he barked, but a servant was already bending down toward him with a large wooden ladle in his hands.
The self-possession Alessio had learned as a soldier stood him in good stead now. His fingers were steady as he dipped them in the cool water and traced them over Bianca’s face and neck, but his heartbeat was not. It raced and pounded as he watched the last of the color leach out of her cheeks.
He would have known how to bind a battle wound, he thought, but he had no idea how to deal with a woman’s fainting spell. If they had been alone, he would have put his mouth on hers and brought her back to consciousness with his passion alone. Because they were not, he wet his fingers again and again and dribbled drops of water over her mouth.
When she finally opened her eyes, he saw the same confusion, the same fear he had seen in them on the beach, but only for a moment.
“Let me go.” Bracing her hands against the bottom rim of the well, she struggled to sit up straight. As suddenly as it had blurred, the world around her was back in focus. But the terrible, bloody tableau she had seen remained with her, as if it had been etched onto her mind.
Alessio’s arm remained around her shoulders, his touch reminding her that the lovers in her vision had had her face—and his. “Let me go,” she repeated, her voice rising hysterically as she pressed her back against the damp stone of the well.
Amid anxious cries and much fluttering of hands, two women rushed down the short staircase at one side of the courtyard.
“Carina, are you all right?” A pale-haired young woman in a simple gown of blue wool knelt at Bianca’s other side, only to be pushed away unceremoniously by an older woman, wearing a wimplelike headdress.
“Piccola mia.” She cupped Bianca’s face in her plump hands and saw both confusion and fear. She had cared for her since she had been but an hour old, she thought, and these were two emotions she had never seen in her charge’s eyes before.
Turning to Alessio, she cuffed him on the shoulder with a fist. “What have you done to her?” She cuffed him again. “Bestia!”
Bianca struggled up from the confusion and terror that swirled around her like fingers of a pernicious fog. If she could have plucked the image from her mind, she would have. Since she could not, she would deal with it. She swore silently. Later, when she was alone, she would deal with it.
It took her to the limits of her strength, but she managed to block the vision from her mind and sit up straight. “Don’t fret, Lia.” She took the older woman’s hands. “I’m all right.”
“What did this animal do to you to make you faint, child?” Lia demanded. “You’ve never fainted in your life. Nor have you ever looked like—”
Bianca gripped her nurse’s hands more tightly and gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. “What words you use to speak of my future brother-in-law,” she scolded lightly. “I apologize to you for my servant’s impudence, Messere Alessio.” She allowed her gaze to barely brush him. “I must have overexerted myself while trying out my new mount.”
Lia pressed her lips together to keep herself from reminding Bianca that she had seen her disguise herself as a one of her father’s couriers and ride from Florence to Pisa and back in one day.
“Oh, thank God, you’re all right,” the pate-haired young woman cried out as she crossed herself. “When I saw you fall—” She covered her face with her hands and began to sob.
“There’s no need to cry, Angelica.” Bianca tried to curb the impatience she heard creeping into her voice. “Come now.” She patted her sister’s shoulder.
Even as Angelica’s shoulders shook harder, she watched Bianca through her fingers and did not miss the quick heavenward roll of her younger sister’s eyes or the exasperated glance she exchanged with the nurse. Beneath the concealing hands, her lips thinned. It had always been the two of them against her. Always. From the very beginning.
“Take her inside, Lia,” Bianca instructed, “and give her a cup of wine.”
Alessio watched the scene, his annoyance growing in proportion to the color that returned to Bianca’s face. What kind of game was she playing? he asked himself. Now that the roses were back in her cheeks, he could almost believe that what he had witnessed had been a scene staged and played for his benefit. But why? Why?
When Lia had led the sniffling Angelica away, Bianca stood, ignoring the hand that Alessio held out to her.
“I thank you for your care, Messere Alessio.” Keeping her eyes lowered, she brushed at the wrinkles in her gown. “I do not want to delay your return to Florence.”
“Do not think that you can brush me away like a pesky fly, Bianca.” His tone was low and urgent as he stepped close enough to her so that no one could overhear them. “I saw you go as pale as a ghost and faint. And I will know the reason. And while you’re at it, you can explain what happened on the beach.”
She devoted herself to the creases in the scarlet velvet, as if that were the most important task in the world. “You presume too much.” She kept her tone light.
“I will have my answers, Bianca, I warn you.” Alessio shifted still closer to press home his words with his body.
It occurred to him to ask himself why he felt an almost physical need to have answers. He desired her, he told himself, and he despised her. Why did he feel compelled to know things he should not have cared a fig about?
“I warn you.” His patience tore like a frayed rope and he circled her wrist again with his fingers.
“You warn me?” Temper made her careless and she lifted her face toward him.
The bloody image slipped past the block and into her consciousness. Her eyes grew unfocused as she saw Ales sio’s face, not as he stood before her, but as he had been in the vision, holding her while a madman raised the dagger again and again. “Perhaps I should warn you, Alessio.” Her voice began to slur, but she did not notice. “Warn you that you will—”
The color had washed out of her face again, bringing back the nameless panic that cut off his breath.
“Bianca!” He shook her, no longer caring what answers she gave him and what she kept secret. He only wanted these bizarre happenings to stop.
But even as he called out her name, her eyes focused and her color returned so quickly that for a moment he doubted what he had seen.
She looked down at her wrist, which he still held. Slowly, his fingers loosened and let go.
Alessio stared at the imprints on her wrist, which were already beginning to darken. The words of apology froze on his lips as he looked at her and found her mouth curved in a mocking smile.
She flicked a glance at her wrist, where his gaze had rested a moment before, and looked back at him, half expecting the horrible vision to appear again. When it did not, she released a small sigh of relief.
“I thank you for your care, Messere Alessio,” she said tauntingly echoing her words of just moments ago. “I think it is past time that you go now.”
“Yes, perhaps you are right: ”
It was easy to step away from this woman whose mouth was curved with a coldly mocking smile that was echoed in her eyes. And yet he remembered that this was a woman with secrets. Secrets that made her vulnerable. Secrets that could turn an artful seductress into a soft lover. Which one was she? Which one? Even as he asked himself this question, he knew.
Something shifted within him. He did not recognize it, and if he had, he would have denied it. But love took root in his heart and began to grow.
“I send my thanks to my betrothed for the gift of the mare.”
Bianca’s words brought him back to reality, that softer, gentler moment already forgotten. Anger bloomed again, but it had a desperate edge.
“I will relay madonna’s message to my brother.” Alessio stepped closer and bowed over the hand that Bianca extended. “Remember what I said to you about being ridden. Perhaps the symbolism of my brother’s gift will not escape you then,” he murmured.
She said nothing, but the way she jerked her hand away from his gave him an unreasonable amount of satisfaction.
He bowed and swung himself onto his mount, his short cape flaring out behind him. Without looking back, he spurred his horse out of the courtyard.
Chapter Five
Bianca stood in the courtyard and stared after Alessio long after the dust his horse had raised had begun to settle. Damn him for his last words. Damn him for reminding her what price she would have to pay for the power she wanted. Damn him for showing her just how much she moved him—to passion, to anger, to violence. To tenderness. She let her eyes fall closed. Damn him most of all for showing her just how much he moved her, for touching something inside her she had not known existed. Something that threatened her and made her doubt things she had never doubted before.
“What’s wrong with you today?”
Bianca heard the worry clearly in Lia’s voice, although it was disguised with impatience.
“Nothing. I told you—” she began.
“You lied.” Lia interrupted her with the ease of long familiarity. “You cannot fool me.”
“Taci, be quiet,” Bianca remonstrated gently. “You keep to your business, old woman, and leave me alone with mine.”
“You are my business and have been for nigh on seventeen years.” Lia’s voice softened. “I know you better than I know myself, and I have never seen you as you were today.” She slid her arm around Bianca and rubbed her hand in circles on her back. “Tell me, piccolina, what is it?”
“There’s nothing to tell.” She shrugged off Lia’s hands. It would be much too easy to turn her face into her nurse’s plump shoulder and let everything spill out. Every mystic fying, terrible, wonderful thing.
“You know there is nothing you cannot tell me. No trouble I would not help you with.”
Bianca only shook her head. She had to deal with this and she alone.
She had to deal with the visions that had been sent to her or that she had conjured up.
She had to deal with her attraction to Alessio. Attraction? She almost laughed aloud at the mild word. Desire, hunger, need. None of them even came close, she realized.
And she had to deal with the fact that she was going to marry his brother—with his wealth, his deformed body and, so rumors whispered, his cruelties.
Needing to do something, she walked over to the well, dipped the wooden ladle into the pail that hung from the decoratively turned wrought-iron tripod and sipped at the water she did not want. She knew that Lia was not going to give up even before she heard her footsteps behind her.
“Look at me, child.” Lia’s grip was gentle but firm as she turned Bianca around to face her. “Is there trouble between you and Alessio?”
“I told you to leave me alone.” Bianca turned aside and tossed the dipper back into the pail with a splash.
“Is there trouble because of Alessio?”
Bianca gave no answer.
Used to Bianca’s willfulness, Lia, with the stolid doggedness of a Tuscan peasant, took the girl’s chin between thumb and forefinger and drew her back so that they were face-to-face.
Halfheartedly, Bianca slapped her nurse’s hand away, but it was a matter of pride that she did not turn her gaze aside as the older woman scrutinized her.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she demanded testily. “Have I sprouted horns? Turned into a Hydra?”
