Twice Upon Time

“Well, were you?” Angelica sent her a sly, curious look from beneath her pale lashes.

“You ask me that? You?”

Because her emotions were so raw, the anger rose too quickly for her to control it, even had she wanted to. There was bitterness born of countless childhood hurts. There was fury at being suspected of doing something that was so far beneath her dignity that she would never have even considered doing it. There was fear because she remembered much too well the image that had caused her to faint.

“You, the one who never thinks of a man unless he has a ‘Santo’ in front of his name? You, the only one of us who has lived up to her name? You, the angelic one, while I, named for the color of innocence, I—” she brushed the tips of her fingers at the black curls that fell over her shoulders “—have black hair to match my black soul.” Words she had never meant to say aloud tumbled out of her mouth. “Wasn’t that what Papa always said?”

Angelica stared at her sister in openmouthed surprise. Anger from Bianca she was well used to, but where had this hurt, this bitterness come from? This fear?

“Bianca—” She rose and reached out, her plan almost forgotten.

“Get away from me, you hypocritical little goose. You spend your time on your knees and then you come with your eager questions.” The anger crackled around her like drops of water hissing on the surface of a hot stove. “I thought you were too chaste to notice what games men and women play.”

“Be fair at least.” Her spine as stiff as a poker, Angelica folded her hands at her waist. “It was not such a question that you can accuse me of prurience. If I had known you would revile me thus, I would have asked you instead what games you and Alessio were playing on the beach this afternoon.”

The heat of anger left her as suddenly as it had come, and in its place a chill enveloped her as if she had descended into a cold, damp cellar.

“So that’s why you came up here,” she said slowly. “To spy on me.”

“No.” Angelica lifted her hands palms outward as if to ward off her words. “No, truly. It was as I said. But then—” she looked away “—then I saw you galloping along the beach and I could not look away.” She said nothing of the razor-sharp envy she had felt, or of the idea that had taken root in her mind and bloomed.

“You watched us?” Bianca jerked Angelica around to face her. “The whole time?”

Suddenly afraid of the wild, unfocused look in her sister’s eyes, she could only nod.

“Did you see her?”

“Her?”

“The woman on the beach.” Even as she said the words, even before she saw Angelica shake her head, she knew it was for naught. Whoever that woman had been, ghost or real, she had been intended for her alone.

“Go away.” Bianca’s voice was dull as her fingers loosened from around her sister’s arm. “Go away and leave me alone.”

Angelica backed away. This Bianca of the blank, staring eyes was much more frightening than the Bianca emanating angry sparks could ever be. She turned and fled, forgetting everything, forgetting even that the steep spiral of a staircase frightened her.

Only when she had reached the bottom did she remember that she had not done what she had come here to do. She had not told Bianca of her plan. The plan that had been ripening within her all afternoon. She had not told her that for once in their lives she would have something Bianca wanted.

Up in the tower room, Bianca stood very still as her sister’s footsteps clattered down the stairs, faded and then were silent. Appalled at her own weakness but unable to fight it, she buried her face in her hands and wept.

Chapter Six

“I ask you not to burden me with more such errands in the future, brother.” Feeling an exhaustion that was more a weariness of the mind than the body, Alessio strode into his brother’s study without greeting. “They are not to my taste. Besides, I have better things to do with my time.”

Ugo lifted his head from his meticulously kept account books and eyed his brother critically. “Better things than coming to the aid of your brother who raised you?” His voice rose petulantly. “The brother who gave you far more than the younger brother’s share of the Cornaro fortune?”

“Per Dio, Ugo, if you throw your generosity up to me one more time, I will lay every last denaro back at your feet.” He snapped his gloves against his hand, sending up a cloud of reddish dust. “Or better still, give the money to charity.”

“So you’ve said before.” Ugo laughed mirthlessly, “And as I’ve said before, I’ll see you in hell before I let you give away a single fiorino of Cornaro money to parasites who live off the gullibility of a few pious souls.” He laughed again. “Although I’d hardly call you a pious soul.”

Ugo watched his brother pace, as elegant, as dangerous looking as a panther in his clothing of almost unrelieved black, and tasted the bitterness of envy.

“And what is it that you find so distasteful, if I may ask? Madonna Bianca is a beautiful woman. If I remember correctly, you showed some interest in her yourself.” He paused. “Before she was spoken for, of course.”

“What difference does it make?” Alessio moved his shoulders in a shrug as he splashed wine into a goblet of hammered silver that had been plated with gold and decorated with amethysts the size of thumbnails. He drank deeply once, and then again, and refilled the goblet.

“I await your answer.” The twin lines between Ugo’s black eyebrows and the lines that bracketed his mouth deepened. “Or is there a reason for you not to give me one?”

Alessio tamped down on the surge of guilt. He had not acted on the desire that tormented his body at the mere thought of Bianca. He had not acted on it before she had been betrothed and he most certainly had not acted on it since. If he had, he told himself, he did not doubt that she would have fallen into his bed like a ripe plum. And if she had given herself to him, then, by God, he would have found a way to prevent this damnable marriage.

Annoyance that he felt the need to justify himself before his own conscience left a sour taste in his mouth and he tried—unsuccessfully—to purge it with another generous draft of wine.

“Well?” The fingers of Ugo’s good hand tapped an impatient tattoo against the intricate floral pattern in lapis lazuli, jasper and malachite that was inlaid on the marble table.

Because he wanted to spin around on the heel of his boot, Alessio slowly turned to face his brother. Because he wanted to fling the goblet at the next wall, he set it down with utmost care. Because he wanted to slap his hands on the table and lean over until he was eyeball-to-eyeball with Ugo, he remained standing so straight that his back could have been a measuring rod.

“I am no longer the little brother eager to give you exactly the answer you wish to hear, Ugo. No longer the little brother eager to fetch and carry.” With insolent grace he tucked his thumbs behind his belt. “I think it is time you learned that.”

He watched Ugo grip the carved armrest of his chair and push himself upright. The surge of compassion at his brother’s disability died as Ugo’s face contorted with fury and he bellowed, “Answer mel!

“Come to think of it, I was never eager,” he continued, ignoring his brother’s command. “I was simply too young and too weak to do other than what you expected, what you demanded of me.”

“Alessio,” Ugo shouted, already regretting that he had stood and put himself at an even greater disadvantage, “I order you to answer me.”

“I have reached that happy state, Ugo, when I need take only those orders I choose.” The corners of his mouth tilted marginally upward. “But I will tell you this. Madonna Bianca may have the face and body of a woman, but she is a spoiled, willful child.” His beautiful mouth curved in a derisive smile. “I wish you much joy of her.”

Yet as he spoke the words, Alessio felt the need flare in his belly and, with it, the rage that it was his brother who would taste the pleasures she offered. For a moment he wondered that the words did not turn into serpents in his mouth.

“Ah, do not fear, Alessio.” Ugo smiled, his fury forgotten as quickly as it had risen. “There is more than one way to tame a willful woman. I may be a cripple, but my male rod is a reliable instrument and my good hand can wield a whip well enough if need be. Or a dagger.”

Alessio felt a jolt deep inside him, as if two parts that had been separate had suddenly linked. Although he was aware that Ugo was still speaking, his voice had become an indistinct, faraway murmur. Although he was aware that he faced his brother in a dark-paneled room lined with ledgers and books, his eyes saw another chamber.

The image was blurred. He narrowed his eyes to better see it, but the image remained stubbornly misty, as if it were shrouded in layers and layers of white gauze. But it mattered not. He knew. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, he knew that on the other side of the mist were he and Bianca, wrapped around each other as only lovers can be.

As a fire burns its way through dry pine needles, the knowledge seared its way through him to lodge in his belly. Yes, he knew. He knew that they lay body to body and skin to skin. He knew that they lay soul to soul, essence to essence.

Something—barely perceptible at first—shifted inside him, opened. Like a pebble rolling down a mountainside suddenly turns into an avalanche, so this small movement sent him tumbling out of himself, tumbling head over heels until—

Needing to see, to understand, he raised his hand to tear the barrier away, but his band passed through it and it remained as diaphanous as before and just as unyielding. Then, without warning, color seeped into the white—a trickle first, a trickle that quickly became a flood until the curtain between him and the chamber was a bright crimson. A single, hideous scream turned the blood in his veins to ice.

“What was that noise?” As Alessio spoke, the image dimmed and disappeared so quickly, so completely that the only thing to remind him of it was the icy trail along the length of his spine.

“Noise? There was no noise.” Ugo’s brows drew together, unsure of what to make of his brother’s odd behavior. Within a single moment his gaze had turned as glassy as if he had taken a drug and he had flailed his arm as if warding off a demon.

“What’s wrong with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Alessio fought off a desperate need to reach for the wine goblet and empty it to the dregs. “Ghost?” he said, amazed that he could speak at all. “There was no ghost. I don’t think a ghost would dare show itself in your well-ordered household, Ugo.”

Discreetly, he drew a deep, cleansing breath. But while the air filled his lungs, it turned his stomach, for it was as fetid with the coppery smell of blood as a slaughterhouse.