Twice Upon Time. Nina Beaumont

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ