“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?”
“Grazie ai santi, thanks be to the saints,” Lia exclaimed with a loud sigh. “Whatever it is, you still have your maidenhead.”
“How would you know?” Bianca narrowed her eyes. “Or have you suddenly developed the sight?”
Lia laughed and folded her hands on her stomach. “I know you too well. Do you think I wouldn’t see it in your eyes if you had lain with a man?”
“Go away, you silly old woman, and spare me your insights.” She turned away again, her mouth sulky. Just the thought of lying with Alessio was enough to send her blood racing.
“So that’s it.” Lia laughed again, the sound rich and bawdy. “You itch and he hasn’t scratched yet.”
Without turning around, Bianca made an ill-mannered gesture more suited to the fish market than a patrician villa.
Suddenly, despite the warmth of the afternoon, Lia felt a shiver slither down her back and she wondered if someone had stepped on her grave. Or Bianca’s.
“Don’t do it, child.” The words spilled out in one breathless rush. “Take him as a lover later if you must, but come to your marriage bed a virgin.”
She gripped Bianca’s arm with both hands. “If it was anybody else, I would help you.” Her voice lowered. “There’s more than one way to feign virginity. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to play games with Messere Ugo.”
Lia shivered again at the thought that her beautiful child would lie beneath that monster. How long would it take for him to break Bianca’s free, willful spirit? She herself had not had an easy life, she thought, but at least she had had a young and handsome lover to bed her the first time.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bianca grumbled, and, pulling away, wandered out of the courtyard to the portico that ran along the front of the villa, ignoring Lia, who followed her.
The grapevines that trailed up the redbrick columns and twined through the latticework above were already covered with tender green leaves. Bianca sat down on the low stone wall and looked out over the countryside, which spread out below her like a painting.
The road curved to the right at the bottom of the hill and then lost itself in the trees, but she could see a trait of dust just above the treetops. Alessio must be riding like the very wind to have gone that far already, she thought. Suddenly she felt impossibly touched, as if with that cloud of dust he had sent her a message.
But what message would he send her? she asked herself as the joy dimmed. He had left her with anger and desperation in his eyes. With contempt in his heart. Would he have despised her any less if she had surrendered to him?
But as her eyes followed the progress of that thin cloud of dust, she felt emotion blaze through her. It was not the soft, melancholy yearning she had felt earlier. No, it was as strong as a lightning bolt, filling her to overflowing with light and heat and a kind of power she had never felt before. She was his, she thought. Alessio had been right when he had said that she belonged to him. She would never belong to anyone else. Ever.
What was wrong with her? She threaded her fingers through her hair and fisted them, seeking the pain as confirmation that she was here and everything was as it had always been. But no confirmation came. Instead, images from the past hours drifted in front of her eyes and she knew that nothing was as it had been. What had happened to her? Was she going mad? Had she been cursed? Was she possessed?
“Do you believe in ghosts, Lia?” she asked abruptly, still staring out over the treetops but seeing the woman on the beach. “Do you believe that ghosts can just appear out of nowhere and bewitch you?”
“What are you saying?” The nurse crossed herself and then, with forefinger and little finger, made the sign against il malocchio, the evil eye, for good measure.
“Nothing.” Bianca lapsed back into silence. Said aloud, it sounded absurd. Besides, even if ghosts existed, surely they did not appear in broad daylight.
“Come inside, piccolina.” Lia stroked her hand down her charge’s wind-tangled black hair. “I will make you some spiced milk and a cool compress and you will rest.”
“I need to be alone. I need to think.”
“You can think inside. Come away now.” Lia frowned down at the trail of dust as if it were an enemy. He was a handsome man, Alessio was, she thought. And, behind the posturing that all males seemed to have in common, he had a good and noble heart. Under ordinary circumstances she would have spared no pains to bring him to Bianca’s bed. But she would kill him before she allowed him to bring misfortune upon the head of her beloved child. And he would, she thought. He would.
“Come now,” she repeated.
Bianca’s eyes widened as the image of the dark-clothed woman rose again. It grew until it filled her field of vision so completely