Twice Upon Time. Nina Beaumont

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СКАЧАТЬ she had remembered her fear of the stairs. They had both taken a tumble down the ladder from a hayloft long ago. Bianca had been back up the ladder moments later, and she had never quite forgiven her for it. “But I decided that I wanted to see what it was that kept you up here for hours.”

      “And did you?” She felt that her privacy had been invaded and her words were clipped, not hiding her irritation.

      “No. In the city you can’t sit still for five minutes of needlework. And here you stare outside where nothing moves but a few birds.” She didn’t add that when she had looked outside earlier that afternoon, she had seen plenty of movement on the beach.

      Not waiting for an invitation, Angelica sat down and smoothed her skirt of serviceable wool. “What happened to you today? You frightened me. I’ve never seen you faint in your life.”

      “Don’t you start in on me, too.” Bianca made no effort to hide the impatience in her voice. She’d come up here to be alone and not to listen to Angelica’s questions and platitudes. “Lia is bad enough all by herself. I really wish you would—” Bianca stopped, not quite understanding the sudden impulse to keep silent. It was not her way to check her tongue out of kindness.

      “Go away and leave me alone. Wasn’t that what you were going to say?”

      Bianca saw her sister cast down her eyes and finger the rosary that hung from her waist. A stab of guilt that those had been her exact words provoked her into giving her sister’s hair a light stroke in passing, but she did not deny the accusation. She was rarely in the habit of denying the truth, unless it suited her purposes.

      “Or were you putting on a little performance for Messere Alessio?”

      “What?” Bianca’s skirt belled as she turned to look at Angelica.

      “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 СКАЧАТЬ