Twice Upon Time. Nina Beaumont

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      Chapter Five

      Bianca stood in the courtyard and stared after Alessio long after the dust his horse had raised had begun to settle. Damn him for his last words. Damn him for reminding her what price she would have to pay for the power she wanted. Damn him for showing her just how much she moved him—to passion, to anger, to violence. To tenderness. She let her eyes fall closed. Damn him most of all for showing her just how much he moved her, for touching something inside her she had not known existed. Something that threatened her and made her doubt things she had never doubted before.

      “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 СКАЧАТЬ