CHAPTER 9

Lucianna slid her arms around Sir Balduin’s neck just in time to prevent her knees from succumbing to the pleasure that threatened to buckle them. How long had it been since she had allowed him to kiss her? Weeks only, yet it had begun to seem like a distant dream that he had ever held her thus. This was why she had fought so hard to evade him, fear that her body would betray her in his embrace, just as she felt it doing now. The urgent twining of her arms, her ardent return of his kiss, the way her heart thudded so fervently he must surely feel its driving beat against his breast—she knew she must stop herself somehow, but all her traitorous soul did was melt her deeper into the flame of his love.

She resisted a moment when his hands moved to her cheeks. If he broke the kiss, he would break the spell that she wanted to lose herself in forever. Reality would rush back in, and she did not know if she could claw back the strength that had brought her to this chamber, a strength that had flowed away like water in his caress. It did not bolster her to see the exultant curve of his lips as they pulled away from hers.

“Lucianna! I thought I had lost you forever with that clumsy song of mine, but that was no kiss of farewell you just dealt me. That you should come seeking me thus, that you should forgive me— Oh, my angel!”

Her lungs constricted painfully. How could she find the will to do what she must do when he gazed at her with so much adoration in his eyes? She struggled to find breath to check him, to strike away his illusions, no matter how she shrank from shattering that glow, but a voice rapped first from the doorway.

“Your angel. My sister. I am shocked, signore, truly. I presumed you a man of honor, but I see that I mistook your character.”

Lucianna tore herself from Sir Balduin’s clasp and stared in horror at Serafino standing on the threshold. It took a moment through her dismay to realize he was not alone. Siri’s diminutive frame stood at his side.

Siri jerked at Serafino’s sleeve. “Come away. They are not children. Let them be.”

“I am afraid I cannot oblige you, signora. My sister may be, shall we say, a little beyond the bloom of youth, but she is still a maiden whose virtue I consider myself honor bound to defend.”

Lucianna saw Sir Balduin’s face redden even as she felt her own grow cold.

“This is not what it appears, sir,” Sir Balduin said stiffly. “I did not lure your sister to my chamber. I had no notion I would find her here. Why, you saw me yourself come from below stairs. I passed you and Lady Siri on the steps—”

“Si, quite cheerily, if I recall, and in such a hurry that you scarce paused to say buongiorno. Which only makes your villainy more audacious, knowing you were on your way to seduce my sister right under my very nose.”

Despite his words, Lucianna observed that Serafino looked more smug than outraged. Sir Balduin fell into a spluttering defense, but before he could organize it into any coherence, Serafino added, “There is, of course, only one way to make this right. I trust I need not speak more plainly, signore?”

Sir Balduin’s gray brows plunged down at the implied ultimatum. “You have completely mistaken matters, sir. I would never insult your sister’s virtue. But if you mean you expect me to marry her, then you may put your mind to rest. That has been the greatest desire of my heart for months. Now that she has forgiven me—”

Sir Balduin reached for her nearest hand, the one she still had balled into a fist. She flung it behind her back in a panic. “I have not forgiven you. How can you think I would ever forgive the way you humiliated me in the hall?”

He turned his head to gaze at her in bewilderment. He said in low tones she knew meant only for her ears, “But the way you kissed me just now.” He shifted his entire body to face her. “You kissed me like that the day I asked you to marry me. The day you said you loved me.”

Despite the murmured words, she felt Serafino’s gaze fixed upon them and knew how he strained to hear. How could she lie when Sir Balduin had tasted the truth in her lips?

Si, I love you,” she said, tears starting again in her eyes, “ but it changes nothing. I cannot marry a man so insensitive, so selfish, so—so oafish.” Nothing but cruelty could drive the wedge irrevocably between them. She gestured at the clothing strewn about. “And see! He is a slob as well, I will forever be picking up after him.” In truth, the disorder of his chamber had somewhat dismayed her. “No. I cannot bind my life to a man who will only make me miserable. Nothing has changed. As soon as Donna Siri’s baby is born, I—”

“But I’m afraid things have changed, cara,” Serafino interrupted. “I really cannot overlook the fact that I stumbled upon you and Signor Balduin intimately entwined in the middle of his chamber. Or perhaps it is not Signor Balduin’s character I misjudged, but your own, and perhaps this is not the first time you have been—er—entwined in his chamber. Can it be that my maiden sister is no longer a maiden?” Serafino feigned shock at the thought, but rushed on over Lucianna’s angry denial and Sir Balduin’s heated defense of her, “The Fabio name is a proud one, and I cannot have it sullied. I am still your brother and responsible for your reputation. The two of you must marry, and that in all haste, before word of this day flies all over the castle.”

Lucianna saw Siri’s eyes grow wide, as though the possibility that Lucianna and Sir Balduin might already be lovers had never occurred to her.

Lucianna felt her face grow fiery with indignation at Serafino’s slur. “We are not—”

But Serafino flung up a hand and again spoke over her words. “Stay, cara. You are right to rebuke me. As Donna Siri says, you are not a child and how you choose at your age to live your life should, perhaps, be none of my concern. If only you had been more circumspect, I might have agreed, however reluctantly, to look the other way. But the damage has been done, and there is no rectifying it now. Marriage is the only way to remedy this reckless indiscretion. It really is no use,” he added, cutting off her renewed protest, “to try to persuade me of your innocence. What other reason could you have for being in Signor Balduin’s chamber?”

Serafino’s gaze flicked for the barest instant to her fisted hand before returning to her face. He knew. He knew she held the ring concealed in her palm, and worse, that she had come here to hide it where Sir Balduin would find it. This must always have been Serafino’s plan, to plant the idea in her mind, then maneuver Sir Balduin to find her here. No wonder Serafino had “conveniently” come upon their embrace. He looked so self-satisfied she wanted to hit him.

She hissed, “Think what you like. Shout my ‘shame’ from the rooftops. I will not marry Signor Balduin.”

Serafino crossed the floor and touched her balled hand. “No?”

She raised her chin defiantly. “No.”

Sir Balduin cleared his throat rather loudly, as if to force their attention back to him. “I believe I have some say in this matter, sir,” he said to Serafino with a fierceness(?) that startled Lucianna. “Nothing could bring me more joy than to marry your sister, but to force upon her a union against her will, compelled by a false accusation? I am not such a villain as to agree to that. Your sister’s virtue remains unstained and I will not disgrace her before the world by allowing your vile suspicions to drive us to the altar. She will marry me for love and of her own volition, with the honor that is due her, or we shall part as she says she wishes.” He gazed at Lucianna with misery in his eyes and whispered, “Even if it breaks my heart.”

Serafino said in dry tones, “Your sentiments are laudable, signore, more than my sister’s behavior deserves, for if she did not come to your chamber to seduce you, I can think of no other reason for her presence here.”

Lucianna tore her gaze away from Sir Balduin’s hurt to meet Serafino’s challenge. From the glint in his eye, she knew he was determined to force her hand, but nothing he could do or say would make her yield to his desire.

He blinked away the glint and shammed his face into a slow dawning misgiving. “Unless . . . ”

She struggled to squelch the quivering in her belly. He trailed off, giving her a chance to stop him. Nothing will make me yield.

His gaze, wide with chagrin, fell to her fist. “Cara, tell me you have not succumbed to your old temptations?”

Nothing. Not even this.

Serafino turned towards Sir Balduin, as she had known he would at her silence, and uttered in tones shot through with consternation, “Signore, forgive me, but if what I suspect is true, truly, I have maligned you. Cara—” he stretched out his hand to Lucianna “—what are you concealing in your grasp?”

That lift of his auburn brows, a stern query to the eyes of those who watched him, but to her a grim threat that she had crumbled before too many times before. She knew exactly what he would say next if she did not crumble again. Every word still stung clear as shards of broken glass in her heart. They had driven Vincenzo from her in the spring of her life. They would drive Sir Balduin away now in her autumn, leaving her a cold, bleak, empty winter of a future.

I will lose him either way. Better one swift, searing break than to watch the long, slow withering of his love.

She opened her fist and held out the ring on its chain.

Relief flooded Sir Balduin’s face. “I have searched for that high and low today, this bedroom, the hall, even the garden. Lucianna, where did you find it?”

She longed to seize upon the lie he offered her, but Serafino said, in nearly the same instant, shaking his head in condemnation, “Ah, cara! What else have you pilfered from your beloved?” to which she blurted out indignantly, “Nothing!” before she realized how the word sealed her guilt.

Serafino heaved a great sigh. “I had hoped—nay, I had prayed that you had changed. Signore,” he said to Sir Balduin, “my apologies. I cannot tell you how awkward this is, how mortifying to confess myself mistaken, for as distressing as my first suspicions would have been had they been true, this, I fear, is far worse. My sister, I fear, has a long habit of—ahimè (alas)! I know no way to put this delicately. The embarrassing fact is that my sister has a long habit of taking things that do not belong to her.”

Sir Balduin’s gaze grew more puzzled as he studied the object in Lucianna’s palm. The question Serafino hoped to plant clearly drifted into Sir Balduin’s head, though to her gratitude, she watched his struggle to dismiss it.

“That is absurd. She must have found it somewhere and come to return it to me.”

But even as he said it, his mouth turned down in a frown. Why had she not brought it to him somewhere in the open? The hall, the garden, or stood knocking on his chamber door rather than slipping surreptitiously into his chamber? She knew she guessed his thoughts aright when he lifted his gaze back to her face.

“Lucianna,” he said softly, “I do not understand.”

“Signore,” Serafino said, “it pains me to tell you of this, but my sister is not what you think her.” The sweep of his eyes encompassed Siri now. “She is not what any of you have thought her. Everything about her, even her name, is a lie.”

Siri stepped to Lucianna’s side and glared angrily at Serafino. “I will not listen to any more of this. You may think to deceive Sir Balduin with these slanders, but I have known Lucianna all my life. The only one lying is you. I cannot think what you hope to gain by defaming her in this way, but whatever game you thought to play is over. Brother or no, you are no longer welcome here. Gather your belongings and leave before nightfall, or I will have my husband turn you out. And believe me when I say you will not care to be on the receiving end of his temper.”

Serafino answered with a shrug of one shoulder. “Certainly, signora, I would not expect to remain beneath your roof after this. But I do not think I will be the only one suffering your husband’s anger when he learns how my sister has deceived you all.” He lifted his brow at Lucianna. “Do you wish to tell them the truth, cara, or shall I?”

Lucianna’s blood pounded with bitter grief. Sir Balduin continued to gaze at her with devotion and confidence through his perplexity, while Siri glared more vehemently still at Serafino. But Lucianna knew what she must say. There was too much spite in Serafino’s face to hope he might be driven from Vere Castle without exposing her. But this time, she would not be the only one disgraced by the truth.

“Si, I will tell them!” she flashed. “I will tell them how I am the daughter and the sister of a thief!”

That brought a rush of satisfyingly agitated color to Serafino’s face. “Speak carefully, cara,” he said with quiet menace in his voice.

”Why?” she demanded. “If I am guilty, then we are guilty together. You are the one who should have been careful, Serafino. This is not Venice. You have no friends here and I am not afraid of you anymore.”

“That I see,” he acknowledged, the dangerous glint returned to his eye. “However, I am not the one holding a stolen gem in my hand, and my father died at peace in his bed, while yours gasped his last while he swung from a hangman’s rope.”

She heard the sharp intake of Sir Balduin’s breath and whirled towards him. “I did not steal this.” She slapped the ring into Sir Balduin’s hand, snatching away her fingers before his could close over them, as they sought to do. “But Serafino speaks true of my father.”

She did not know how she found the strength to meet Sir Balduin’s eyes as she said it. The only expression she saw there was more bewilderment. It was Siri who once more protested.

“Lucianna, that is absurd. Your father was a merchant(?) who died when you were a babe. Mamma always said so, and so did Papà.”

Lucianna drew a breath that dragged painfully through her chest. She shifted her gaze to Siri, knowing that whatever she said next, she would find forgiveness there. She could not hope for the same in Sir Balduin’s eyes, and she could not bear to watch devotion shrivel into horror and disgust.

“Your papà believed it,” Lucianna said, “because your mamma told him it was so, carissima, as she had told her own father and everyone else we knew. But we made it all up together, she and I, in the nunnery, because we did not wish to be parted when her father summoned her home.”

Siri’s lovely mouth fell agape at these words. Lucianna wondered if Sir Balduin’s had done the same, or if disillusionment had begun to tighten his lips instead. She told herself that she hurried on for Elisabetta’s sake, that her daughter might not think too hardly of her.

“In your mamma’s defense and mine, we did not then know the truth. We knew only that I had been left at the nunnery as a babe, a nameless foundling. It seemed a harmless game to play, until Serafino found me.”

“I assure you,” Serafino said, “that I was shocked to discover I had a sister, and one moreover who was posing to a life her birth did not entitle her to. I kept mum only out of respect for your mother, signora. Again and again I turned my eyes when my sister—my half-sister—betrayed her father’s blood as she embezzled and defrauded to conceal her secret. I hoped she had changed, that an honest man—” he bowed towards Sir Balduin “—with his patience and love, might turn her to become an honest woman. But my hopes are dashed and once and for all, I wash my hands of you.” He struck his palms together twice in Lucianna’s direction, as though literally divesting them of something unclean. Then he turned to Siri. “I will be gone from here by nightfall. If my sister wishes to join me, I will escort her back to Venice. If not—well, I will attempt to defend her no longer. I leave her to the mercies of yourself and Don Triston.”

He spun on his heel, disdain jutting his chin in the air, and strode out of the chamber.

“I must go with him,” Lucianna murmured, “b ut not until I have told you the rest, carissima. May we—May we retire to your chamber?” Easier to confess it all to Siri and let her relay the story to Sir Balduin after Lucianna was gone. A coward’s choice, but one she grasped at all the same.

Siri flung her arms around her. “I do not care what your beastly brother says. You are my own dear Lucianna. That is all I need ever know. Nothing you could tell me could make me love you less.”

Lucianna had expected no less of Siri’s loyalty, yet her response swept fresh tears into Lucianna’s eyes. “Still, I must tell you, carissima.”

She thought she had whispered the words into Siri’s ear, but they must have rasped through the lump in her throat for Sir Balduin said, “I think I deserve to hear it, too.”

She winced at the sudden stiffness in his voice. She turned her head slowly to look at him. Ah! Just as she had feared. His lips were drawn tight in the depths of his well-groomed beard while his gray eyes no longer looked puzzled and devoted, but hard and grim. She wished Siri had been taller. She longed to shrink into the other woman’s embrace, nay, she wished she might vanish clean away! But she had no choice but to shake herself free of Siri’s protective love, wipe the tears from her cheeks, and nod her head. He was right. She owed him the truth before she went.

“Then let her sit as she tells us,” Siri said.

Lucianna had not realized that her face must be white until she felt Siri drawing her across the room to Sir Balduin’s bed and felt how weakly her knees gave way when Siri nudged her to sit on the edge. One more glance revealed that Sir Balduin had crossed his arms forbiddingly across his chest. After that, Lucianna kept her gaze fastened again on Siri.

Lucianna told her haltingly of befriending her mother in the nunnery, where Cosimo Gallo had sent his daughter to be educated in the hopes that some nobleman might overlook her origins as a merchant’s daughter and seek her hand when she reached marriageable age; of the sisterhood that had grown between her and Lucianna, and the plot they had woven to persuade Elisabetta’s father to welcome Lucianna into his home so that she and Elisabetta might not be parted.