CHAPTER 11

“I must go with him,” Lucianna insisted. “Let me pass, carissima, so that I may gather a few things.” She would take only her embroidery and a few of her humbler gowns, just enough to feign respectability on the journey. Surely the heavens would not condemn her for clinging to one last fragile strand of pride, to return to Venice modest but comely, rather than with the open abasement her birth deserved of shabby skirts and tangled hair.

“Do not speak nonsense,” Siri said, firmly blocking Lucianna from exiting Sir Balduin’s chamber. “You are not going anywhere, least of all with that wretch that calls himself your brother. Besides, you promised you would stay until after the baby was born.” She crossed her arms with that stubbornness that had always lain beneath her soft beauty, resting them above her swollen belly.

Lucianna was spent with tears and had little energy left to continue this quarrel with Siri, but she had made up her mind and even weary, she could be stubborn too. “That was before today, before Serafino made me tell you my shame. I cannot stay now, you know I cannot.”

She had sat weeping on Sir Balduin’s bed at his abrupt departure from the chamber. She had known he would spurn her when he learned the truth and thought she had braced herself for the hurt. But the anguish she had suffered when she had made the decision to leave him paled at the agony of his rejection. He may as well have taken his dagger and ripped out her heart as have bolted from her presence in what could only have been disgust and loathing. Vincenzo’s desertion had stung, but it had not left her aching and throbbing as if from a physical blow. This day would obliterate all other memories in the future—Sir Balduin’s initial awkwardness at courting her, his persistence when she had sought at first to imperiously dismiss him, the surprising whimsy in his smiles that had gradually worn down her resistance, the way his kisses had beguiled her, his valiant attempts to learn Italian to please her even though the words tangled his tongue, the courage he had shown in defending Siri when faced with a half-dozen swords at his breast— Every action, every word, every expression that had made her love him, ruined now by the memory of this day that could never be wiped from her mind and heart because she would always know he had not wiped it from his.

She had dried her tears slowly, but at length they had ceased. It was hard to imagine ever finding peace, but if such a refuge lay anywhere for her, it did so in the abbey/nunnery where she could still nourish sweet reminiscences of her girlhood with Elisabetta.

“Lucianna,” Siri said, reaching across to take her hands, “nothing has changed about you in my eyes, not so much as a whit.”

Lucianna’s breast warmed with gratitude, even as the chill of inevitability ticked up her spine. “Perhaps not in yours. But in Don Triston’s and Signor Balduin’s . . . ”

“Triston will drub Serafino from the castle when he learns what your brother has done,” Siri declared, but Lucianna saw the way she faltered on the rest. “And Sir Balduin . . . I am sure he only needs a little time, to . . . to understand . . . ”

She trailed off, for Lucianna knew Siri had witnessed with her the anger in Sir Balduin’s eyes before he had stalked out of the chamber.

Siri’s fingers tightened on Lucianna’s. “Just stay till the baby comes,” she pled. “I still need you for that. Please.”

Lucianna choked back a hiccough of despair, but she refused to cry again. “Carissima, I do not see how I can. To live within the same walls as he for another three months—” Her voice broke in spite of herself. “Hide in my chamber I will not, but to walk the corridors, the hall, the garden with downcast eyes lest I glimpse him, fearing what he must think each time he sees me— I cannot bear that, however much I love you.” She swept Siri into her arms and kissed the pallor that had replaced the roses in the young woman’s cheeks. “Signor Triston would never let harm come to you. He will surround you with wise and comforting matrone (matrons). You are no longer a child, carissima, and you do not need me at your side as you bear your first babe.”

“I do,” Siri whispered, her shoulders shaking softly with tears of her own. “I do not want strange matrons around me. I want you.” Then she pulled away and wiped her wet cheeks. “But that is selfish of me, when I know how you hurt. I do know, Lucianna, I do.”

Lucianna did not doubt her. She had stood witness to Siri’s own anguish in her long battle to win Triston’s love. Because Lucianna had withheld her approval of Triston at first had not made her ache the less for Siri’s grief, nor had she rebuked Siri when Siri had attempted to flee from her pain.

Siri said, her voice gruff but firm, “I will not try to dissuade you again. But do not go tonight and do not go with Serafino. Wait until I talk to Triston.”

“No, carissima, please. I do not wish Signor Triston to know until I am gone. He will be angry—”

“He will not!” Siri protested.

“Si, but he will. He will think as Signor Balduin does of me. You will try to defend me, and it will lead to a quarrel between you. I do not wish that. Just let me go in peace.”

“But you cannot go alone. Let me arrange an escort for you, and—”

A footstep cut Siri off. Lucianna’s face numbed at a fresh draining of blood, but before she could stop herself, her chin thrust up in challenge. Where had this headstrong/stubborn pride in her come from? Surely not from a lowly thief of a father. Had it been a haughty/proud loftiness of spirit that had prompted her mother to leave her helpless, if misbegotten child, on the doorstep of an abbey, rather than endure the shame of the babe’s existence?

Lucianna did not wish to be such a woman as that, yet a defensive pride was all she had left to cling to as she gazed into Sir Balduin’s eyes.

“We were just leaving,” she said, exquisitely aware in spite of her defiant posture of the embarrassment of being caught lingering in his chamber. “I thought I might make some order of this jumble before departing, but the task was impossible. Men! I suppose it says much about you that you choose to live amidst such disarray as this.”

She would have swept out of the room, but his tall frame blocked her retreat across the threshold.

“I went to your chamber, but you were not there,” he said. Something flickered in his grey eyes, but he glanced at Siri before Lucianna could try to identify what it signified. “You pardon, my lady, but may I speak to the Lady Lucianna alone?

Siri held fast to Lucianna’s hand and waited for Lucianna to determine her own response.

“I think there is nothing left to say between us, signore,” Lucianna said.

Sir Balduin’s gaze remained on Siri. After a moment, to Lucianna’s surprise, Siri’s fingers slid away and she moved towards the doorway.

“I will be right outside,” she promised. “You have only to call if you want me.”

Sir Balduin stepped aside and Siri slipped out of the room. He closed the door with a soft click behind her. Lucianna stiffened, astonished at Siri’s departure, but she told herself sternly there was nothing left to fear. He could not hurt her any deeper than he already had.

Sir Balduin wandered about the room, scooping up tumbled garments as he went. “I assure you, I am not always such a slob, as you put it.”

Her gaze caressed each familiar limping step, each dip and straightening of his muscular body, the faint ripple in his grey hair, the strong, stolid profile tanned and creased from his long soldier’s life. He bent to snag a green tunic with one finger. Surely it was only the dimming afternoon light that tricked her into thinking she saw his hand shake?

He hesitated, his arms filled with clothes, then crossed to the bed and dropped them in a heap. “Did I hear Lady Siri say she was arranging an escort for you?”

She shifted her gaze quickly to the window as he turned to face her. “Si. It is generous of her, but not necessary. I will be quite safe in my brother’s company.”

Sir Balduin muttered something beneath his breath. He rarely swore in her presence but the muffled word, though indistinct, bore such a blasphemous hint that it startled her into glancing at him.

“Your brother.” He spat it from his mouth as though the words fouled his tongue.

“Si,” she said sharply. “I will repeat it in Italian so that it does not soil your ears as well. Mio fratello. He is waiting for me. Siri has agreed that I might take my embroidery and a few travelling gowns, so I am not stealing from her and Don Triston. I must go gather them if we are to leave before nightfall.”

She started towards the now unguarded door, but Sir Balduin’s next words stopped her.

“Serafino has already left.” She turned to see Sir Balduin’s face scrunch up in disgust. “Serafino, sérafin. It mean angelic in both our tongues. His parents would have done better to name him Diable. Or how would you say it? Diavolo?”

Lucianna remembered that he had heard her fling that epithet at a few of Siri’s early suitors who had courted her more in lust than in love. Lucianna had thrown it a few times at Triston, too, before he had won her trust.

She bristled, feeling Sir Balduin’s dart pierce herself alongside her brother. “And how should the nuns have named me? Lucianna means light. Perhaps you will prefer to remember me as Bugiarda or Ladra?” Liar. Thief.

“I do not know those words,” Sir Balduin said. “And from the fire in your face, I suspect it would be best to allow me to retain my ignorance.”

His mouth curved upward as he said it. How dare he mock her with a smile? She whirled towards the door and had her hand on the latch before she remembered the rest of his speech. She swiveled her head to glare at him.

“What do you mean Serafino has left? He would not leave Vere without me.” Surely not? He would be loitering about, hoping that Siri would heap Lucianna with parting gifts that he could seize and sell when they were gone.

“A pair of Sir Triston’s knights have escorted him from the castle. They will have seen him well clear of the manor by now.”

“You told Signor Triston?” She rounded on Sir Balduin, anger and bitterness flooding into her throat like bile. “You could not wait until I was gone before sharing my humiliation with him? Oh! Of all the things I ever thought of you, I never thought you spiteful!” She had resolved not to shed another tear, but her eyes burned again in defiance of her will. “I expected you to hate me, I deserve for you to hate me, but this?”

“Hate you?” Sir Balduin gasped.

Hurt and fury drove her on. “You know Signor Triston’s temper. He will fling me from the castle as he flung Serafino. I do not care for that—I do not!—but if he casts me out before I say goodbye to Siri it will break the last corner of my heart.”

“So it is only Siri it will grieve you to leave?”

Something edged Sir Balduin’s voice. She might have thought it bitterness, had she not known that to be impossible.

“The one person left on earth to still love me? Si, it will grieve me to leave her. But I do not expect you to understand.”

She set her hand to the latch again, but Sir Balduin’s palm slapped against the boards of the door holding it fast shut. Even knowing how swiftly he could move in spite of his limp, his sudden appearance at her side took her aback.

“Then do not go.” His voice fell in a gruff breath on her ear. “Stay here with Siri. With us.” His hand slid down the door until the found and lightly covered her fingers. “With me.”

The air tangled in her throat at his touch. “Do not mock me,” she whispered. “It is cruel.” Spiteful and now callous to her pain? How had he hidden such facets of his character from her?

“Mock you?” She would not look at him, but it sounded like his own breath caught. “In truth, you are the most befuddling woman. Siri is not the only one who loves you, and though I know I can never rival her in your heart, I will content myself with that unbroken corner you speak of if you will let me, while Siri helps you mend the rest.”

The burning tears leaked free as she struggled with his meaning. “It is not Siri who broke my heart. She is not the one who walked out on me.”

This time there was no mistaking his curse. “Serafino. But he is not worth your tears.” Sir Balduin’s hand brushed against her wet cheek. “He may be your brother, your only blood kin, but you confessed yourself that he never did anything but torment and manipulate you. Do not cry for a brute like him. You are well rid of him, I promise you.”

She shook her head, turning to gaze at Sir Balduin with widened eyes. Did he truly not understand? “I did not mean Serafino.”

He looked puzzled for a moment, then horror fell over his face. “Vincenzo? You still weep for him?”

Lucianna had learned to recognize jealousy when men had begun to swarm around Siri and vie for her favor at the tender age of thirteen. Jealousy was clearly the look that accompanied Sir Balduin’s horror, but she could not comprehend how that was possible.

It could not be. She banished the nonsensical thought with another sharp shake of her head. “Do I look like a foolish girl? I dried my tears for Vincenzo thirty(?) years ago. But that does not mean I forgot the lesson he taught me and that you affirmed to me this day.”

“That I—” Sir Balduin broke off, then gasped. “I did not walk out on you. Saints! Is that what you thought?”

“What else should I think? You listened to my story in crushing silence, and at the end—”

“At the end, I left to hunt down that devil brother of yours, bloody his nose, and hurl him out of Vere. Triston is not the only one capable of losing his temper, you know. Serafino is gone, and he will never bully or threaten you again.”

Sir Balduin had been the one to throw Serafino out of the castle? She glanced down at his hands and saw the bluing bruises on his knuckles.

“Lucianna—” he spoke her name on a husky breath. “I know that I have disappointed you again and again. I cannot learn Italian, however hard I try. I am an abysmal poet. And apparently you are right in that I am pathetically slow to understand a woman’s feelings, though to be fair, the idea that you feared I might blame you for anything your brother had said or done was too incomprehensible to cross my mind.” He hesitated. “I believe that you still love me . . . ?”

He trailed off with the faintest question in his voice. Slow-witted, indeed, to wonder after the way she had kissed him earlier. She tried to speak, but found her lungs suspended by what he might say next, so she merely nodded.

He expelled a breath that might have been relief, but the lines in his face remained tense and anxious. “Yet in spite of that, I know how you have longed for your home in Venice. If you still wish to return there after Siri’s baby is born, I will not ask you again to stay. But I will not lie to you. I wish a thousand times over that you would remain and marry me instead.”

She searched his eyes, remembering the way they had blazed at the end of her recital of her past. “How can you wish that? I am not a lady. I am not even a merchant’s daughter. I am—”

He set a finger to her lips, then cupped her face between his hands. “How did Lady Siri say it? ‘You are my own dear Lucianna.’ How could you think any of the rest would have mattered to me?”

“It mattered to Vincenzo.” Her voice came out small, wary. If she had ceased to weep for him, the cut of his scorn had never faded. “He could not flee from me fast enough when he learned of my birth.”

“I am not a vain, selfish boy, too blind to recognize the worth of a priceless pearl. Lucianna.” He repeated her name, a warm caress of confidence now on his lips. “The nuns christened you most aptly. I thought myself resigned to slipping quietly into the winter of my life, until you came and brought me back the light of spring.”

“Not spring,” she said on a sigh. “I, too, am in the autumn of my years.”

“Two autumn hearts,” he murmured. His arms slid to encircle her waist. “But confess. When we kiss, it feels like spring again.”

She could not deny it, going so far as to giggle like a guilty girl when he bent to nuzzle her ear.

She felt a movement against the small of her back and craned her neck about to try to see what he was doing. He revealed the answer by finding her hand and sliding his emerald ring onto her finger.

“We are agreed, then,” he said with such cheerfulness that it emphatically swept away her lingering doubts. “You will cease the Italian lessons to please me, and you may chide me to your heart’s content when I forget to be home for dinner. I may shower you will silver needles if I wish to do so, and I shall spare you ears any more of my frightful songs.”

“But you have a very handsome voice,” she protested. “It should very much please me to hear you sing again. Only do not say my hair is foxy or that I have a milky smile.”

“Never!” he vowed. “Then the marriage bargain is struck. Now all we have left to do is to wed.”

“But Serafino—” joy squeezed out of her as she spoke his name. “You do not know him. He will come back when he learns we have married, he will demand that we pay him to keep quiet or he will spread my shameful birth far and wide. You will be humiliated among all who know you.” She broke from him, stamping her foot in frustration. Serafino would haunt her forever unless she stood firm against Sir Balduin’s temptations. “I will not let that happen, nor will I let you pay him a single denari(?) for my sake! No! I would sooner return to Venice and never lay eyes on you again then let him take such vile advantage of you.”

Sir Balduin threw back his head and laughed. “Ah, there is my tigress-love. Always seeking to protect first those you care for.” He paused and drew a husky breath. “And how I thank the Saints that you count me among their number.” He set a kiss on her brow between her eyes, his mouth lingering so sweetly there that her knees went weak. “We shall not see that black sheep brother of yours again. I only wish you had trusted me to crack his nose and blacken his eyes the day he rode into the bailey. I promise he knows that is what awaits him if he ever returns to Poitou.”