Well, that would fool Elyta. She"d think he was going north, either overland through Bologna or to Ravenna harbor on his way to Mirso. He"d go south, to Amalfi and the Sahara.
It was full-on night. Kate couldn"t make arrangements for carriages or outriders until tomorrow, her acquaintance in Florence not extending to stables that would take nighttime orders. And she couldn"t depend on the contessa, who would no doubt tell her son every detail of Kate"s plans. But first thing in the morning she"d be off. She rang for a bath.She thought the discreet knock on the door was Carina. But it was a footman with an envelope on a silver salver. "With il signor Urbano"s compliments, signorina." He bowed.
The moment he was gone she tore open the envelope to find the draft. She clenched her eyes shut. Twenty thousand pounds sterling and another thousand in hard currency for her immediate use. He"d more than kept his word. Her dream had come true.
Only that wasn"t her dream anymore. All the draft did was make her feel small. He wouldn"t be back to her room tonight. She knew that. By this draft he had fulfilled his obligation. He was now free of her.
But no... she still had the stone.
The scent of cinnamon and something else wafted over her, and she felt the electric energy outside the door. There was another knock.
"Come in." Her voice was steady. She was proud of that.
He stepped into the room. He was crisply dressed now, his unruly hair brushed back from his face severely. He hesitated then bowed.
"You"re here for the stone." She tried not to make it sound like an accusation.
He nodded. He had a pained expression. Was he so anxious to go?
She went to get her reticule.
When she returned, he had the little silver box out, and opened. That was right-he couldn"t touch it. She dropped the emerald into the black velvet lining. The emerald was practically screaming "desert." He appeared to be oblivious.
He nodded once. "Thank you," he said, voice hoa.r.s.e.
"For... everything. I hope you enjoy your village in England. If... if ever you require... anything, don"t hesitate to write to me."
Oh, that was rich. "I will certainly do so." He must realize that was a lie.
But he only nodded once, and let himself out.
She wouldn"t wait for his mother to escort her home. She didn"t want an escort. She didn"t want a single reminder of Gian Vincenzo Urbano, ever.
d.a.m.n him.
Kate sat in the carriage as it creaked and rocked, fuming. It was evening. In spite of her best intentions, it had taken her almost all day to hire a carriage and outriders on her own, to bribe a servant to carry her trunk quietly down to the small side door where the carnage waited, and to finally set off. It was fifty miles to the sea and Livorno, a small port city on the west coast where she might find a ship to England. She clutched her reticule with the draft, the money and her cards in it tightly.
And now she was having second thoughts. It was all his fault.
It was his fault because, as she thought about their time together, she realized he was the only person who had ever been generous to her without wanting something in return. Oh, he wanted the stone. He had made no bones about that, but he had paid her fairly for it. He had wanted to bed her, but she had got the better of that bargain without doubt. He had thought of her welfare by trying to get her to stay with his mother, and when she rejected that offer, he had offered to coerce his mother into escorting her. She opened her reticule and ran her fingers over the tarot deck. They represented who she was. A predator, a charlatan, self-contained and self-sufficient. The shadowy hills of Tuscany rolled by, the red poppies that blanketed the fields now closing in the fading light. The perfume of star jasmine was heavy and sweet in the air. She couldn"t decide what to think now. True, he had left her. But maybe that was only because his overdeveloped sense of honor demanded he discharge the duty he had promised. Was such steadfastness something to be despised?
And he told her he would return. If anyone kept his word, it was Gian Urbano. But she had been so afraid of being abandoned yet again she had taken fright. She was abandoning him first, without giving him a chance to prove constant.
So who was she hurting by refusing to wait for him?
He had never said he loved her. How could he ever love someone like her?
But he had said he would return for her.
What should she make of that? It occurred to her that she had not given him time enough to... to what? Grow attached?
Ridiculous. One look at him and anyone could see why he would never be attached to her. But didn"t she hate the way people judged her just by her appearance? Was she any different in the way she judged him?
Oh, this was just dreadful. He might be killed by Elyta. The final abandonment. He couldn"t... feel about her the way she felt about him. The most he wanted was a frolic in bed. She couldn"t imagine going back to tell his mother she was going to wait until he returned.
But she couldn"t run away from the one man she had ever cared for either. Maybe the one person. Even if he wanted only s.e.x, and did abandon her in the end, she might have a small amount (a week? Could she hope for a month?) of precious time with him.
All right. Then there was only one thing to do, no matter how it frightened her.
She didn"t have to stay at the Palazzo Vecchio. She could stay somewhere else in Firenze. She leaned forward and opened the small door in the opposite side of the carriage that gave on the box where the driver sat. "Return to Firenze," she called in Italian.
Kate ran up the shallow stairs from the courtyard to the great doors of the Palazzo Vecchio. She"d changed her mind about that too. It was full night now. There was just a chance he hadn"t left. She wanted to tell him she"d wait for him. She wanted to see him one more time before he left, just in case... in case the worst happened and Elyta waylaid him. Or in case he ended up in a dungeon, tortured to death. She wouldn"t think about that. She only knew she had to see him. What else could possibly bring her to confront his mother when she had left in such a surrept.i.tious manner without even thanking her for her hospitality?
The driver and the outrider set her trunk down with a disgusted thud. She paid them as though she had actually taken the entire journey, with a generous doucement into the bargain, and turned back to the imposing doors. The huge bra.s.s knocker was almost too heavy to lift. Did no servant hear the clatter of the carriage and come to see what was about?
As the knocker hit its strike plate one of the doors swung slowly open.
Kate stood there, wary. Inside the house was only silence. This was not good.
She pushed the door open. The tiled foyer was empty. Wait. No it wasn"t. The twisted body of a footman, his throat slashed, lay by the heavy chest that supported an epergne filled with flowers. Blood leaked onto the tiled floor in a pool. Oh, dear... Elyta.
Stand or run? Every instinct told her to run.
But if Gian was here he might be hurt... or worse. She swallowed once and tiptoed across the tile so that her heels would not click. Silent, she told herself. Be silent as you were as a child thief and pickpocket.The house was still. She glided toward the back and the kitchens. That"s where the servants would be, and she could use some help before she went upstairs alone.
A voice. It was coming from the kitchens, just across the yard in the outbuildings. Was it a servant, or an intruder? She kept to the shadows of the trees that cl.u.s.tered in the tiny yard. Water trickled over chubby cupids in a small fountain set in the center.
What was the voice saying? She drew closer to an open window that cast a channel of light through the foliage.
That was when she felt it-a burst of cinnamon scent and a feeling of vibrating energy. The contessa? Gian? She slid up under the window and peered in.
What she saw was most puzzling. A crowd of servants stood, gla.s.sy-eyed and still in the middle of the kitchen. She recognized Carina, and her groom. There were housemaids and cook"s helpers, the cook herself, the contessa"s major-domo, Bucarro.
They stared at a man whose back was toward her. He was the one vibrating with intensity. It wasn"t Gian. It wasn"t LaRoque, but it was one who shared their condition.
"You will obey my commands," he muttered. "And you will remember nothing."
Kate stood there, shocked. What, for G.o.d"s sake, was going on here? Were they in some kind of a trance? Kate backed away from the window. She had to get help.
Then she heard a moaning that cycled up into a m.u.f.fled shriek. She looked around wildly. It was a woman"s voice. Thank G.o.d for that. It wasn"t Gian. Then guilt flashed through her. No one should suffer. And whoever had made that sound was suffering.
A door of old and heavy wood, braced across with iron straps and bolts, stood open at the corner of the yard.
Stone steps led down into darkness. She hardly needed the next shriek to tell her that the sufferer was down those stairs. She was fairly certain that female voice would be the contessa. Gian must not be here. Or else he was already dead. He would never allow his mother to suffer so.
Kate stood, rooted in the middle of the yard. Her heart thundered in her chest. She could feel its throb in her throat. The moan died away and she heard other voices. She clenched her eyes shut. She wanted to run away more than anything. But she couldn"t. If Gian wasn"t here to go to his mother"s aid, she had to do it for him. Somehow.
Her decision surprised her almost as much as it would have surprised Matthew.
Kate took a breath and glided to the doorway. The voices echoed up out of the dark. The palazzo had dungeons, Gian had said.
"Where is your precious boy-child?" Elyta"s hiss did not surprise Kate. Who else could it have been? "And don"t try telling me he went to Mirso. My spies told me he took a horse out last night. We transported to the road north and waited. Going either by land or by sea, he must take that road. But he did not come that way, Contessa. Therefore, he did not go to Mirso."
Transported. What an odd turn of phrase. Gian had left last night while she was sleeping fitfully, waiting, all packed, until the dawn?
"I do not know where he went, if not to Mirso." The contessa"s voice was gasping but there was still a note of iron in it. ""You can feel the truth of that, since together you are strong enough to compel me."
What did they mean, "compel"?
"We must make certain."
Another shriek ensued. She put her hands over her ears. Whatever was Elyta doing to the contessa? Kate couldn"t bear it.
A male voice, cracked with hard use. "We are compelling her. She doesn"t know.""We"ll be certain our compulsion is enough when we"ve sucked out all her power."
Gasping, and another long shriek.
Kate had to stop this. She slid down the stairs. Her hand, steadying herself against the stone wall, expected to encounter damp.
But the stones were only cool and rough-hewn. Now as she descended into the stairwell, she could see a glow emanating from below where the stairs turned. The cinnamon and something else that marked one of Gian"s kind overlaid the dank smell of bas.e.m.e.nts everywhere. She peeked around the corner.
The room was large, its edges lost in darkness and its stone walls and packed-earth floor revealed in flickering light from a lamp set upon a small, crude table. Wine bottles, thousands of them, stood in racks off to her left. Three silhouetted figures crouched around the contessa who was rec.u.mbent on a rough bench. The scene looked like a painting of the death of Mary Magdalene.
Two were holding her down, and clearly male. Their eyes glowed red as though they were released straight from h.e.l.l. The third was Elyta, her back toward Kate, holding a cabochon ruby half the size of her fist in a small pair of silver tongs that looked like they should be set at the dinner table with a b.u.t.ter dish. The light from the lamp made the ruby glow like translucent blood. Even from here, Kate could see the rolling coils of the serpent inside it.
The emerald had a mate.
As she watched in horror, Elyta held the ruby to the contessa"s breast. The contessa arched and shrieked again, a sound even more wrenching at close quarters. A visible aura glowed around the contessa, a corona of red light that swirled and then whisked itself into the ruby and seemed to be absorbed. It was just like her vision of Gian being tortured, except that the tongs had held the emerald and the light had been green. The contessa collapsed as Elyta withdrew the stone, light still trailing from it.
Kate covered her mouth with her hand to keep from shrieking herself. She couldn"t bear seeing someone hurt so.
"What... what do you want with the emerald when you have another stone from the temple?" the contessa gasped. Her voice was visibly weaker. A red weal stood out against her pale skin where the stone had pressed. It was one of several.
"I must control all the refugee stones if I"m to challenge Rubius." Elyta said it almost conversationally. "It wouldn"t do for the Elders to have reciprocal power."
"But you were well on your way to becoming a member of the Council yourself." The contessa was trying to keep Elyta talking.
"A member only." Elyta snorted. "Of a body that wants to rule a mountain and a monastery. They have no idea of what we could do with these stones. No, that would not have suited me. I have more vision than any of them. I should have been acknowledged as a leader."
"They... they will hunt you down."
"By the time they realize what has happened, it will be too late to stop me. Even if my little escapades come to Rubius"s ears, he will not want to believe ill of me. Old men can be quite foolish." As she turned Kate could see that her eyes, too, were red. They seemed to toss glittering color back and forth with the ruby. She was dressed, as seemed to be her wont, in purple. This time it was a riding habit of palest lilac. It did not make her look delicate or fragile though. Her face was hard. Kate wondered how old she was.
And let"s not forget strong. Kate felt so helpless. She was glad Gian wasn"t here. But he would not want to see his mother hurt.
And who was there to help her? There was no way Kate could overpower three of them. She looked around. Stone pillars with Romanesque arches held up the ceiling of the room. No weapon she could see. Not even any torches.
"Stop, Elyta. There is no point," one of the men said.
"Oh, but there is. Urbano is so smug. He betrayed me once. And now he deserves to be hurt in return. What better way than through his treasured mother? She who so dotes on him. She"ll live forever, her powers crippled, her pain permanent." Elyta laughed. "The gift of eternity might not be so precious after all."Eternity? They could live forever? Kate locked that thought behind a door in her mind. The important part was that the contessa would be maimed, and she had to stop it, for Gian"s sake if not for the contessa"s. How? How?
Then it came to her. She stood slowly as the implications washed over her.
She knew where Gian was.
And that was the only way she might be able to stop this thing happening to his mother.
Betrayal. There could be no other word for it.
Elyta held the stone to the contessa"s welted breast. The woman screamed and arched. Again the corona of red light spread and was sucked into the stone. It seemed fainter this time.
Kate"s mind raced. By what she was about to do she was ensuring that the vision of his torture would come true. They might kill him. Or they might not. She hadn"t seen him actually die. And there was time before Gian was hurt. It might still be prevented.
They might kill this woman no matter what Kate did. But she would be killed or harmed permanently from what Kate could gather, tonight, here and now, if Kate did nothing.
That made betrayal the lesser of two evils. Had she not always lived her life by choosing? Nothing was truly good, truly evil.
There was only the choice.
She stepped down the half-flight of stairs and into the room.
"I know where Urbano has gone."
Everyone in the tableau did an about-face and focused on her.
"Well, my disfigured thief, are you here?"
"Let her go." Kate pushed her fear into some cellar of her soul. "She doesn"t know."
Elyta drew herself up to her full height. She was an inch shorter than Kate. "We can compel you to tell me."
Again the mention of this "compulsion." Kate thought back. She was willing to wager it had something to do with the red eyes.
She swallowed, trying not to be frightened. "No need. As for the contessa, you have done your damage to her, and through her to Urbano." Kate hoped it hadn"t gone too far. The contessa seemed to have swooned.
Elyta smiled. "True. Release her." That didn"t mean the contessa was saved.
The two men stepped back, looking relieved. But the contessa did not move.
Kate took a breath. "He"s gone to Amalfi."
Elyta frowned. "Why Amalfi?"
"Because he has ships there, and the emerald wants to go home to the desert." She glanced to the ruby, and saw it shimmer in excitement. "Your stone does too."
"Nonsense. Stones don"t want anything. But Urbano is stupid enough to fall for your chicanery. That would explain why he was not on the road to Bologna. He headed south. But how do I know you tell the truth?"
"Compel me," Kate said.Elyta"s eyes went carmine. "I will need your help," she commanded the two men. "This one has a strong will." The others turned to stare at her. Their eyes, too, went red. Kate felt their hypnotic influence. Something wafted at the corner of her brain and beckoned her to unbar the door. She had felt that before, when Gian had first asked her for the stone and, again, when Elyta wanted to know where it was. And in both instances, it had been a fleeting illusion that could be easily broken. She suspected she could break even this stronger demand. But she did not. She let the three invade her mind.