CHAPTER 8

“Kneel!” the knight shouted.

Yeah, I sounded all high and mighty and bravelike, but I closed my eyes as Paratore bent and received the swift strokes of the knight’s sharp blade. Vomit rose in the back of my throat. Had I really just ordered someone’s ears cut off?

Lia took my arm and rushed me down the steps and back toward the Palazzo Pubblico, Luca behind us, Giovanni and Pietro on either side of us. “You did what you had to, Gabs,” she said lowly. “I wouldn’t’ve had the courage, I think. It was us or him. If you’d killed him, we wouldn’t get the prisoners in exchange for him. And if you hadn’t shut him up, the whole city might’ve turned against us.”

The whole Us or Them thing again. “What’s happening to us?” I asked Lia, turning to face her in the dark hallway. Luca waved the men away to take up stations as guards a few paces distant. “When did we become capable of such things? Killing others? Maiming them?”

“When you dragged us back to this place that only understands that sort of justice,” she hissed.

I pulled up short in the face of her anger. She was right. We wouldn’t be in this mess if I hadn’t made her come back. I glanced at Luca, expecting him to be saddened by her harsh words, but he just looked caught between curiosity and protection. “Will they inquire further about Paratore’s accusations?” I was having visions of interrogation under a single bulb in a dark room, questions barked from the corners. Hands tied behind me. Waterboarding.

“No, you were wise, Gabriella,” Luca said softly. “Had you not acted, they might have. But you made questioning your story akin to an act of treason, one due swift punishment.”

Marcello came up then with Mom, and I rushed into his arms, not hers. He kissed my forehead, and I wished I could stay there, in his arms, forever. “Be at ease, Gabriella. You are well?”

“Now. I think.”

Mom studied us and Marcello immediately dropped his arms, looking like he’d just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. In this day and age, kids didn’t hang all over each other. In plain sight, anyway. “What happened?” she asked stiffly, bracing herself.

Voices were approaching. “I sent Paratore back to Firenze,” I said, turning away, not ready to see her How-Could-You look if I told her all of it. No one could give that look like my mom. The only expression that could kill me more was her I’m-So-Disappointed-in-Your-Decision.

I’d deal with her confusion, her anger, tomorrow. Tonight, I was spent. All I could think of was getting out of the gorgeous gown and climbing between my sheets. I wanted to shut out the day, all of it, even its high points. Even Marcello. I wanted to forget Lord Paratore’s cries and the sickening sound of the blade, his severed flesh falling to the ground.

I wanted my mind to be blank for a few hours, at rest. Not thinking of anything at all.

“Gabriella,” Marcello said, putting his index knuckle beneath my chin and making me look at him. He read my look in an instant. “I shall have you to your quarters momentarily. Stay with me.”

Stay with me. I wasn’t about to faint. Every sense seemed heightened, like I was feeling everything to the tenth power. At that thought, my knees got wobbly, and I started to falter.

“Gabi!” Mom cried, reaching out.

But Marcello already had an arm wrapped around my waist. He glanced back at her, giving her a look of encouragement, then back to me. “Come, beloved,” he murmured. “I shall get you to safety. All will be well.” He ushered me forward, down some stairs, then through a dark, narrow passageway.

Before us went Luca, lighting torches along the way. It seemed to be a secret passageway of some sort, beneath the piazza. I was embarrassed now. Look at the She-Wolves of Siena, sneaking about in the night. Hiding away. The deeper we went, the more we could hear above us. Muffled shouts and singing.

“They’re singing,” I said to Marcello. I liked that even though we had to walk single file now, he was holding my hand, pulling me forward.

“Singing? Yes. Over our victory.”

“A victory over a foe narrowly vanquished.” It was out before I had time to really think about it, and Marcello stopped and turned toward me.

“Narrowly?”

“Well, yes,” I said, shifting my weight to the other foot. He was frowning, searching my eyes. “Could not it have gone in the enemy’s favor if they had been the ones to have an army in hiding, waiting for their own signal?” I was hedging. I had no idea about what would happen if I told him something about the future. Like that Siena would face a plague within a few years. And that Florence would eventually rule them. What would happen if I let such things slip? All sorts of time/space continuum stuff might come crashing down. Or maybe it wouldn’t.

I should’ve watched more Star Trek as a kid.

I really needed to talk to Mom, really talk. Find out what she thought. She’d have scientific answers, logical answers, direction. I’d been so caught up in Marcello since we returned, and Mom had been so absorbed in taking in all she could of this forgotten world, that we’d barely been together.

But right now, I was weary beyond belief. We reached the end of the tunnel at last, then climbed curving, narrow stairs to the top. There, Marcello knocked three times, and after a short wait we heard a crossbar lift, and the door opened, spilling golden candlelight onto our path.

Marcello pulled me forward, through a narrow guardhouse—manned by a couple of knights—and beyond it, a tiny apartment, with a couple of other knights snoring in their beds. Pretty clever, I thought, hiding it behind a teeny house. No one would ever suspect.

Luca paused, with his ear at the door, and waited for a group to pass by, then opened the door and peeked out. We were along the Via di Banchi, just steps away from the Palazzo Rossi’s stables. In moments, we’d entered the palace. Marcello reluctantly kissed my hand and bade me good-night. Then I quickly hugged my mother and sister, and we parted, separating to our private rooms. There were far more rooms and servants in Palazzo Rossi than in Castello Forelli. Here maids waited to help us undress, take down our hair, wash our faces, and help us slip beneath the covers.

It couldn’t happen fast enough for me. I barely spoke to the maid and was so glad to feel the rough silk of the sheet beneath my cheek and the feather-filled comforter over me. It felt clean and new. Safe. I closed my eyes and was asleep before my maid left the room.

I awakened, fully aware that I was not alone in the room.

I sat up fast, clutching my blanket to my chest and staring, trying to make out the dim figure barely visible in silhouette against the window. I cast an eye to where I’d left my sword, beside my bed, but now it was fifteen feet away, leaning against the door.

He looked over his shoulder. “You didn’t think I would be so foolish as to leave your weapon beside you, did you?”

Lord Rossi. Shorter than I, but powerful in his own way. I took a better grip on my blanket.

He turned toward me but remained at the windowsill. “Who are you, Lady Betarrini? Truly?”

His voice was deadly calm, light even. But I could hear the tone of threat behind it. He hadn’t liked that Lord Paratore’s accusation had caught him unawares. He was here to see if there was any truth to it.

“It is as I said. We are from Normandy. We came to find our mother and did so at last.”

He waited for five, six seconds. “A mother that not one of my men or contacts could find.”

“It was God Himself that finally brought us back together,” I said, invoking the Almighty in my desperation. “M’lord, your presence here is hardly appropriate—”

He strode over to me, faster than I’d thought possible. “Nay. What is inappropriate is you unseating my daughter as Marcello’s betrothed. Such humiliation has never been borne by a daughter of the Nine.”

“But Fortino—”

“It is fortunate for you that he regained his health and is the rightful Lord Forelli.”

I paused. “I am well aware of that fact. I never meant to come between—”

“But you did. A union that was decades in the making. Only Fortino could save my daughter’s reputation.”

“As I said…I never intended for it to happen, m’lord.”

It was his turn to pause. He raised his chin and strode back to the window. Not playing the tough guy. Giving me some space. I glanced to the door. Could I make it out? And call out to who, exactly? The lord of the place, one of the Nine, was in my room. Anyone that came to my aid would turn and run, pretending they’d seen nothing. Except Marcello. Or Luca.

But that’d just make matters worse.

“You shall tell me who you are,” Lord Rossi said, looking out across the vast, empty plaza, the bonfires dead and smoldering by now—I could smell the smoke on the slight breeze. “Out with it. The truth, please.”

I remained silent, for a time, considering my response. Wasn’t silence the best defense? At least, that was what I always heard in reruns of Law and Order.

“Lord Rossi, I am no threat to you,” I said, as gently as I could. “I only wish the best for your house, the house of Forelli, and Siena. I beg you to believe that.”

He eyed me over his shoulder for a long moment. “You shall not tell me, then? The truth?”

I swallowed. “I have told you all I can.”

“You shall tell me all of it, Lady Gabriella. Someday. When you are desperate. I shall refuse you aid until you give me what I wish to know. And if I discover anything”—he turned and shook his splayed hands—“anything that makes me believe you are a threat to me or mine, I will not hesitate to order your death.” He paused, and his lethal words hung in the air, taking form like subtitles in a foreign flick. “Do we understand each other, Lady Betarrini?”

“We do,” I said, hating the slight shake in my voice.

A knock came at the door, quiet but insistent. “Gabriella?”

It was Marcello, checking on me. Had he heard us?

“And you do understand,” Lord Rossi said, ignoring Marcello, sliding back to the edge of my bed and leaning over me, “that if you do anything to damage this new union between Fortino and Romana, that I shall also have no choice but to…move against you?”

Marcello was knocking again, becoming more insistent. “Gabriella.”

“I do,” I said quickly, wanting Rossi out, away. How did I ever see him as some sort of father figure, last time I was here? A guy that I now knew had to have been in on my poisoning? Who was threatening me now, to my face? Man, Gabi, you really must’ve been missing Dad.

He sauntered to the door, unlocked it, then glanced back at me as the candlelight from the hallway spilled inward and Marcello burst through, looking in confusion from me to Lord Rossi. Seeing me in my nightdress, in bed, he looked to the ground, then furiously at Lord Rossi.

“Highly unorthodox, I know, Sir Forelli,” Lord Rossi said stiffly. “But then so is this girl who has so captured you,” he said, looking over at me. “Tread carefully, sir. I fear this one is most…bewitching.”

With that, he left. Marcello rushed to my side and wrapped me in his arms. I clung to him, still trembling at Lord Rossi’s threat. I could see Luca’s shadow, shifting in the doorway as he stood guard.

“Gabriella, did he hurt you?”

“Hurt me? Lord Rossi? Nay. He merely threatened me,” I said with a humorless laugh. I pulled away and wiped my eyes. “I do not know why I am crying.”

“You’ve been through a great deal.” He knelt down beside the bed and wiped yet another tear, streaming down my cheek.

“Marcello, you shouldn’t be in here. If someone were to see—”

“Shh. Leave the palace gossip to me. I’ve lived with it all my life, remember?” He took my face with both of his hands and waited for me to look into his eyes. “What did he want, Gabriella?”

“He wanted to know who I was. Really,” I whispered. “After Lord Paratore’s outburst, he won’t be the last who wonders.”

Marcello shook his head. “Paratore is an enemy of the republic. And no one but one of the Nine would dare to ask you. Lord Rossi—he has other reasons.”

I nodded. Romana. Fortino.

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I tried to reassure him. But he’s concerned I might intervene between Fortino and Romana.”

Marcello let out a scoffing laugh. “With but a week before their nuptials? Why would you?”

I remained silent.

“Gabriella.”

“I do not trust her, Marcello.” I turned to meet his eyes, adding, “Do you?”

“Romana? Yes. Yes.”

“Even with the Fiorentini? Here? In this very house?”

He set his lips in a grim line. “It is the way of the Nine to seek peace as well as to fight for what is ours. It is what we need in our leadership.”

“At what cost?” I muttered. “Your brother’s happiness?”

I knew I was out of line to say it. The expression on Marcello’s face confirmed it. “It’s only that…” I paused, then went on. “After all he’s been through, Fortino deserves”—I gestured between Marcello and me—“this. What we have. Love. Not some sort of hand-me-down relationship, forged because it strengthens an alliance.”

Marcello leaned back and sighed. “Marriage is a sacrament, a blessed union. And I admit, it has become more a method of securing political gain than ensuring happiness for either bride or groom.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But it is what it is. Our parents’ marriage was much the same. In time, my mother and father grew fond of each other. Already, Fortino and Romana share such fondness. You’ve seen it for yourself, no? Might we not hope and pray that love might grow from those tender seeds?”

I gave him a sad, weary smile. “Mayhap. I suppose the perils of my own world,” I said lowly, “have made me suspect all. Half of our marriages end in divorce.”

“Divorce?” he said, bringing a hand to his chest as if I’d wounded him. “Half? Impossible.”

“Half.”

He paused, considering. “Your mother? Your father…”

“No, they loved each other. Really loved. More than I’d seen in most other couples. But my father died six months ago in an accident.”

“I grieve with you, beloved,” he said, drawing near again, touching the side of my head tenderly, then cupping my chin. “Do you think he would have blessed our union?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Then, “Believe me, m’lord, my mother will be far more difficult.”

His eyes narrowed, and he dropped his hand. “Why? Does she find me somehow…wanting?”

I snorted and shook my head. “Nay, m’lord. How could anyone find you wanting?” I sighed, not wanting to get into the whole mess of whether Mom would agree to leave everything behind so I could get hitched to Mr. Medieval. “Might we speak of it later? You really must steal out of here before someone sees you.”

He smiled into my eyes. “You are as wise as you are beautiful, Gabriella Betarrini. Come to the door after I am gone,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “Lock it behind me. No other visits shall you have before your maid, come morn. I shall stand guard myself.”