A Duke Never Yields (36 page)

Already the air was filling with light. It came from a door near the end of the corridor, left ajar, sunshine pouring from the wedge of open space. The nun came to a stop and beckoned her.

“Suor Leonora, she is in the garden.” She laid her finger on her lips. “Now is the time of her prayer, as the sun falls down in the sky.”

“How dramatic,” Abigail murmured. She peered through the doorway. A tiny square garden sat quietly in the sunlight, paved with old gray flagstones and rimmed in green. A lemon tree nestled into one corner; in the other, a golden cross fixed against the wall, above a small black-clad figure knelt in prayer. A gentle scent of lemon and eucalyptus drifted through the air.

Abigail waited for the nun to announce her, but nothing came. She craned her head and saw a black skirt whisking around the far corner, out of sight.

“Well! There’s hospitality,” she said, sotto voce, and at her words the kneeling figure stirred.

Abigail’s breath suspended in her chest. The figure rose slowly to her feet: not with the stiffness of age, but with a fluid deliberation. The folds of her wimple spread across her shoulders.

“Hello, there,” Abigail said, and then, hastily, “
Buon giorno
.”

“
Buon giorno
.” The woman did not turn.

Abigail cleared her throat. “My name is Abigail Harewood.”

“Abigail Harewood.” The nun tested the words. Her voice was clear, young, familiar with the English syllables. “I have been expecting you today.”

“Have you?”

“Is three hundred years. Is the first full moon after the Midsummer. You are the English lady, are you not?”

The air seemed to fall around Abigail’s face, in small soft pieces of light. “I am. You are Signorina Monteverdi?”

The woman turned, and Abigail gasped. She was extraordinarily beautiful, almost unearthly, with rich dark eyes and a face of impossibly delicate symmetry. She held out her arm, indicating a small stone bench. “I am. Sit, please.”

Abigail sat. What else could she do? Signorina Monteverdi settled next to her, like a lark into its nest. “So you are the one,” she said.

“The one?”

“The one who is sent to break this curse, my father’s curse.” Her voice remained steady and clear, conveying no particular emotion, no excitement.

“I . . . I don’t know. I have heard something of the curse. I don’t know if I can break it. I’m only . . .” Abigail took a deep breath. She could not quite believe that she was sitting here on a stone bench in a Sienese convent, speaking with this woman, with Leonora Monteverdi. The very air around her seemed to bend and warp with the unreality of it. “I’m only an ordinary woman.”

“But you are in love with the heir of Copperbridge?”

“I am,” Abigail said softly.

“And he loves you?”

“I . . . I think he does. As much as he’s capable of it.” Abigail wet her lips. “Is that all that’s required?”

The woman sighed deeply. She did not look at Abigail, but rather at the lemon tree, burgeoning with round yellow fruit.

“Signorina Monteverdi?”

“You call me Leonora.”

“Leonora, tell me what happened to you. I must know everything, if I’m to help you at all. All I understand is that you meant to elope with Copperbridge, that the pistol went off, that your father was killed. That he cursed you all.”

“It is so.”

“But then what? Did you flee here? What about Copperbridge?”

Leonora smoothed the heavy black cloth in her lap. She spoke so quietly, Abigail had to strain to hear her. “Yes, we flee. We take the horse, we ride all the night, here to Siena. My love, my Arthur . . .”

“Arthur!”

“
Si
. He have a friend at the cathedral here, who give us the peace, the protect . . .” She rubbed her fingers together impatiently.

“Sanctuary?”

“
Si
. The next day, my grandfather arrive, the Medici, the father of my poor mother, the friend of my father. He has his men, he surround the
convento.
He demand to see us, to have the revenge, but we are safe inside.”

“Hostages, though, in effect.”

She shrugged.

“Was there anything you could do?”

Leonora seemed lost in reminiscence. A bird sang out quietly from the lemon tree, in long, lonely notes. She stirred at last. “I beg my Arthur to leave, to go back to England. But he insist to stay, because of the baby.”

“The baby! Of course! You were with child.”

Leonora looked back at the lemon tree. “I was with child, and Arthur, he would not leave us, he vow to stay and protect. The months go by, and my grandfather take a house here with his men, and he wait and wait.”

“Like a spider,” Abigail whispered.

“He wait and wait, and at last my time is come. I feel the pain, and I come to the garden and the cross, and I pray.”

Abigail made a startled movement. “
This
garden?
This
cross?”

“
Si
. I pray for my Arthur, for my child. I say to the Lord, if you see them safe to England, if you watch over their days, I will take the curse upon me, I will do the penance. I will wait and pray, until our sins are redeem.”

“Good God.”

“The pain is great, and I go to my bed, and I labor in the night. The pain comes hard, and the nuns, they help me, but I bleed, I am desperate, I am near the death. I open my eyes, and I see the angel by the bed.”

Abigail could not say anything. She reached out and picked up Leonora’s hand, where it lay atop her black nun’s habit.

“The angel,” she whispered, “the angel, he tell me he will see my Arthur and my baby home to England, he will watch over their days, there to live a long and happy life. And I am to stay here at the convent, to pray and to wait for three hundred years, until the heir of Copperbridge return to pledge his faithful love before God. That is my penance.”

“Oh, Leonora.” Abigail’s eyes swam.

“The next morning, we are blessed with a boy, a son, strong and beautiful. I take him to my breast, I kiss his little head, so warm. Then I wrap him in the cloth, and I give him to the sister. I turn my head to the pillow so I do not see his hair, his small dark eyes that blink to me as he goes.”

She bowed her head. Abigail could not speak.

“Then I write a note to my Arthur, my Arthur who wait outside the room for me all the night, while I labor,” Leonora said at last. “I tell him he must go to England, to take our son with him, there to raise him. Arthur, he will not accept this, he pound on the door, he beg and he weep. I hear my baby cry in his arms, such a hungry little voice. But the sisters, they will not allow him in. So at last, he leave.”

“And you are left alone, for three hundred years.”

“No, signorina,” said Leonora. She laid her other hand atop Abigail’s. “I am not alone. There is my brother.”

Abigail gasped. “Your brother? He found you after all?”

“
Si
. He is my kind, my loving brother. He argue with our grandfather, he try to make him see the reason, but is no use. So he take instead the vow for the monastery. He help Arthur to leave with the baby, in the night, and he come to me. My brother, he will share my penance, he say. He will take on the curse with me, the two of us of one blood, until we are redeem together.”

“My God. And . . . and Morini, and Giacomo . . .”

She nodded her head. “They keep the castle.”

“Morini was your maid, wasn’t she? The one who helped you meet Arthur.”

“
Si
,” Leonora said quietly. “She is my faithful one.”

“And Giacomo?”

“Him, the manservant of my brother. They helped to pass the secret notes, you see. My father, he curse us all.”

“Well! That explains why Giacomo’s such a bitter old chap. And they have kept the castle, all these years? For three hundred years, they’ve watched over the travelers?”

Leonora nodded again. “Since my son first come to the castle, when he is a man. He go, his father send a bride, but is not enough, the curse is not broken. The love is not faithful, they are not happy in each other. When my son has a son, he send him, and still the curse, it does not break.”

“Good God,” whispered Abigail. A feeling of mortal dread began to insinuate in her chest. “Generation after generation, and none of them, not
one
, can break the curse? These lovers, they are all faithless?”

Silence settled between them, thick and warm and scented with lemons from the burgeoning tree. Abigail thought of Wallingford, waiting outside in the heat for her, so full of tantalizing promise, if only he knew it. Wallingford, telling the nun she was his wife. Wallingford, lavishing himself on her in the night, bringing her coffee in the morning. Wallingford, her lover, her love. Was it even possible that he, of all the descendants of Lord Copperbridge, should prove the one capable of true and faithful love?

“What happens if the curse is broken?” Abigail asked. “Do you . . . you turn mortal again?”

“So I have faith.” Leonora bowed her head. “I have faith that my life become real again, that I grow old and I die, that my time in purgatory is done here on earth, that I go to heaven to see again my love and my son.”

“And if it isn’t broken? Do you keep waiting?”

Leonora took her hand from Abigail’s. “Signorina, there is no more waiting. The angel, he has give three hundred years, no more. There is no more chance. We are redeem now, or we have this purgatory on the earth, until the end of the world.”

Again, the sweet silence, the slow stir of the afternoon air. The lark spoke again, and this time Abigail saw him, hopping from one branch of the lemon tree to another, cocking his head and watching them with a steady black eye. Abigail looked down at her hands, and saw they were shaking in her lap.

“I will do my best, Leonora. I will do whatever you ask. I’ll marry him, if I must. I will pledge myself to him faithfully.”

“Oh, signorina.” Leonora lifted her head. Her glittering eyes seemed to hold all the sadness of the world. “Is not for you to do. Is not you who can break the curse. Is not you who redeem us.”

“It’s not?”

“No, signorina. Is the heir of my love, my lord of Copperbridge. Is the heir of our blood, of our curse, of Arthur and Leonora. Is he alone who redeem us.”

TWENTY-ONE

T
he interior of the cathedral was dark and cool, a different world from the stone-baked heat outdoors. Wallingford paused for a moment in the entrance, waiting for his eyes to adjust from the blinding glare of the afternoon sun.

An extraordinary building, this cathedral, planned by some extravagant Gothic architect in alternating stripes of black and white stones, like a great holy zebra. He remembered visiting it once, several years ago, touring about the Continent with his brother one year, though he had spent as little time as possible inside. He had never quite liked cathedrals. The immense space, the cool, profound quiet always made him uneasy.

Why, then, had a strange yearning seized his heart, at the sight of that ambitious black-and-white tower against the vivid blue sky, as he wandered about the nearby streets, waiting for Abigail? He had found himself on its front steps without even realizing where he went.

He was not alone here. A few dark figures knelt among the pews, heads bowed and covered. A small group of tourists lingered underneath the dome, gesturing upward and speaking in low tones, red Baedekers flashing from their hands. Above him, between the crisscrossing ribs of the ceiling, a thousand gold stars twinkled from a rich blue sky.

He walked slowly around the back of the nave, to the left, his shoes clacking on the inlaid marble. So much decoration, such a glorious profusion of art and color on the floor and walls, and yet his eyes traveled continuously upward to the soaring ceiling, the immense cavern of the dome. What had inspired the medieval imagination to such impossible heights? Mere men, sinners all, facing the same earthly temptations as he did. But still they looked to heaven, still they raised their eyes to their Creator. Each man of clay found hope in the sublime.

The black-and-white columns passed by, one by one. Ahead lay the white marble pulpit; to his left, a small chapel, bright with gilding. On a whim, he entered, and saw that it was consecrated to John the Baptist; a fine bronze statue loomed above the back of the chapel, and a baptismal font sat in the center. Near the altar, a man knelt praying.

Not wishing to intrude, Wallingford took a step back, but the man rose and turned to him. He was dressed in a friar’s robe, brown and woolen, belted at the waist by a plain length of rope. He pulled down his hood, and it seemed like a greeting.

“
Buon giorno
,” Wallingford said guardedly. The hair stirred at the nape of his neck.

“
Buon giorno
, signore. You have come to pray?” The friar gestured to the altar.

Wallingford held up his hand. “Oh no. Merely a tourist.” He paused. “You speak English well, sir.”

“I know a little. Come, sit. Is a beautiful chapel, no?”

“Beautiful.” Wallingford made a polite circle, taking in the elaborate decoration, the Renaissance font, the statue at the back.

“The statue, he is by Donatello,” said the friar.

“It’s magnificent.” Wallingford walked forward a step or two, as if to examine it more closely. His heart, he realized, was beating rapidly.

“You have come to Siena alone, signore?”

“No. I’m visiting with . . . with my fiancée.”

“Ah! You are to marry! Is good, signore. A wife, she bring great joy, she has the price above rubies.”

Wallingford turned, amused. “And how would you know this, my good man?”

The friar was smiling. A handsome young fellow, really, though his hair was cropped close and his ears extended boldly from the sides of his head. “I see many men in the confession, signore, and the one who has the good wife, he sin less. Is happy.”

Wallingford turned back. “You must hear a great many extraordinary things in confession.”

“I hear this and that. But the sin, it is all the same. We are all men, we all face the same temptation.”