Bianca (13 page)

Agata was feeling poorly enough that she didn’t even suggest that Bianca let one of the housemaids chaperone her. She just waved her mistress off.

He asked after her about it, of course. “Where is your dragon?” he teased her.

“Ill, but not seriously,” Bianca said. She bent and patted Darius. “His coat is so beautiful. How do you keep him that way?”

“Krikor brushes him daily,” the prince answered and took Bianca’s hand in his for the very first time. Though she was startled by the warm fingers suddenly curling about hers, she decided she liked it and said nothing. Agata did not come with them again, and each day Amir took Bianca’s hand in his as they walked. But soon the weather would grow rainy and chilly with the late autumn. They would not be able to walk together, and the thought of it made Bianca very sad. It had been just over a year now since she had escaped her husband and come to Luce Stellare. She had grown to enjoy the prince’s company.

Then one day a sudden rainstorm swept in on them from the sea as they walked. They were too far from either villa. Amir quickly led them into the mouth of one of the caves that edged the beach beneath the low cliffs. They stood watching the rain pour down in a silver sheet. It had been chilly before. Now the rain made it seem colder.

Bianca pulled her cloak tightly about her, but she was unable to contain her shivering. He put an arm about her, drawing her close against him, and then he spoke, breaking the deep silence that hung between them. “Tell me why you fled Florence.”

And to her great surprise, Bianca found herself explaining to him her brother’s foolish actions that had caused Sebastiano Rovere to literally blackmail her father into giving her to the dissolute lawyer as his third wife. “When my mother was finally allowed to see me many months after the wedding, I told her of what I had suffered with Sebastiano. She immediately removed me from his house. My family hid me in Santa Maria del Fiore convent until they were able to spirit me to Luce Stellare, which had belonged to my paternal grandmother’s family. I have lived here for the past year while they have attempted to gain an annulment for me. My family warned me that they would not communicate with me until they had good news, for Rovere had put a watch on our palaz-
zo in the city,” Bianca explained. “I have heard nothing, and so I must assume that so far their efforts have come to nothing. I am certain he has used his kinsman Cardinal Rovere to block their efforts, but my mother’s family is not without influence with the Church. I know that my grandfather in Venice will be working to free me. Now you understand why I have been so cautious, Amir.”

“You have trusted me enough to tell me this,” he said softly, suddenly happy. He knew of Sebastiano Rovere by reputation. He was of unsavory renown. To think this exquisite girl had suffered at the hands of such a man was unbearable, and he now understood much more than he had previously.

“You have given me no reason not to trust you,” Bianca said. “But now that I have, my very life is in your hands. If you expose me, Sebastiano will surely kill me. He could hide my absence for a few months, but eventually it would have become public knowledge that I have left him and am seeking an annulment. And if he finds me, I will suffer greatly at his hands before the relief and release of death. He is an evil man.”

“I do not know him,” Amir told her, “but his character is that of ill repute, according to the gossip. He was jailed recently for a despicable act, but his victim died before she might testify in court against him. His cronies eventually saw to his release, as there was no witness remaining except those men themselves who, it is said, were all involved in the crime. The girl’s family was of a lesser guild.”

“I suspect I was gone from the city by then,” Bianca said. “What did he do?”

“It is not something that should be discussed with a decent woman,” the prince told her. “I will say the victim was an innocent virgin of a respectable family, kidnapped, and brought to your husband’s palazzo, where she was raped many times by his guests and others. There was talk of something else but it is not for your ears.”

“The little donkey,” Bianca whispered fearfully in spite of herself.

“Yes,” the prince said. “How do you know of such a thing? By Allah! He did not commit such a monstrous and savage act on you, did he?”

“He was considering it, but I escaped him just before the creature came into the house. He has a Moorish slave girl who is quite dissolute. Even more so than my husband. I am certain she was involved,” Bianca told Amir.

His arm tightened about her. No wonder she lived in terror of Sebastiano Rovere. He was a monster and did not deserve to live. Nor did he deserve Bianca. She, however, was bound by her Christian church’s law to the brute until she could obtain an annulment—or one of them was dead. The lawyer, however, was a slippery fellow. He could and would probably delay any bill of divorcement of his marriage until he could revenge himself on her. The rain continued to pour down.

Whom had Rovere married? She had told him all but her family’s name. He cudgeled his brain to remember.
The most beautiful girl in Florence,
it had been said at the time. Who was she? Who was . . . The silk merchant’s daughter! Of course! Bianca was the daughter of Giovanni Pietro d’Angelo. The family was a large one and beyond respectable. No wonder the man had panicked and sacrificed his eldest daughter to protect his own wife and other children. He would make it a point to learn more about the family when he went into the city next.

There was a rumble of thunder, and Darius whined.

“I know who you are now, Bianca. I will not betray you,” the prince told her.

She looked up at him, and he wanted to drown himself in her aquamarine eyes.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

Unable to help himself, he brushed her lips with his own, but when he sought to deepen the kiss she put two fingers over his mouth. “No,
signore
,” she chided him, her beautiful eyes meeting his. “Remember that I am a respectable woman. While I seek to free myself from Sebastiano Rovere, I am still, unfortunately, his wife. I will not add adultery to my sins.”

“You have no sins!” he declared passionately, catching her hand up and kissing it.

Bianca smiled.

“The rain is stopping,” she told him. “I must go now.” She gently removed the protective arm he had about her shoulders and felt a sudden loss. She had been so safe with that arm about her. Safer than she had believed in over a year. She gave Darius a pat, slipping from the cave’s mouth to hurry down the beach and up the path that led to her villa.

He stood watching her go, the taste of her still on his lips. He had two wives back in Turkey. Women taken at his grandfather’s request, but he had never been in love. He had no harem to satisfy his desires. It startled him to realize that he had fallen in love with the silk merchant’s beautiful daughter. He realized she was not a woman to fling herself into an affair, no matter how lonely or unhappy she was. She would never have him while Rovere remained her husband. Something had to be done about that.

One day, when she was free, he intended to take her home to his palace, which was set in the green hills above the Black Sea. He would keep her safe at the Moonlight Serai. He would never allow Bianca to be afraid again. “I love her, Darius,” he said to his companion dog. “I will love her forever, no matter what her people or mine say. I can but pray she will feel the same. She is the other half of my soul. I know that now.”

Chapter 7

“P
raise blessed Maria!” Agata said as Bianca entered the house. “I am so relieved you have returned. Where were you in this storm?”

“Standing in the entry to one of the caves below, for the rain caught us unawares,” Bianca answered her. “I thought it would never stop. Poor Prince Amir, for he has a farther distance to go before he reaches home, and the downpour has begun again.”

Bianca did not see the prince for several days, for the rains continued. It was better that way, she decided. That brief, innocent kiss had set her senses reeling. She had wanted him to continue to kiss her, but praise Santa Anna, to whom she prayed daily, she had managed to retain her sense of propriety when she hadn’t wanted to do so at all. Amir’s mouth had been warm and his breath fragrant. She had never realized that a simple kiss could be so sweet, so tender, so tempting, but his kiss had been just that. It had offered her far more than she had the right to accept at the moment. Would that ever change?

Sebastiano’s lips were cold, hard, his breath foul. Her husband’s kiss demanded she surrender everything that she was, so he might possess it. In the brief and delicious touch of the prince’s lips, there had been the mysterious promise of a shared ecstasy to come. Bianca wept silently into her pillow that night, and for the first time in her life felt desire for a man. If only her family could obtain the annulment they sought for her. If they did, she would be no man’s chattel ever again.

She would accept Amir as her lover, for his every action in recent days had told her that he wanted her. Did he love her? How nice it would be if he did, but it didn’t matter to her at all. She would gladly be his mistress, no matter what the world thought of her. But she would not have another husband, and no one would change her mind.

The next day, to her surprise and excitement, a messenger arrived from Florence with word from her family. The courier was not one of her family’s servants but rather in the service of the Medici, as his proudly displayed badge revealed. He accepted a hot meal from Gemma in the kitchens, and then told her he was off for Pisa, for he carried messages for the Medici bank there from Lorenzo himself.

Bianca called Agata to her so she might share whatever news there was. Breaking the red wax seal with her mother’s signet, the dome of San Marco, impressed into it, she opened the parchment and read aloud.

My dearest daughter,
it began in Orianna’s elegant and familiar hand.
The news is not what I had hoped to be able to send you after all this time, but all is not lost. The knowledge that you have left Sebastiano Rovere is now public, as is our quest for an annulment for you. Padre Bonamico has presented our request for your marriage’s dissolution to the Holy See itself, traveling to Rome to do so. Your husband has appealed to his kinsman, Cardinal Rovere, to block any such action. Your grandfather in Venice has countered with his own pleas to the two cardinals from his own city. Regretfully, these matters take time, and the bribes both of our factions have paid so far to gain the Church’s ear have been considerable. Unfortunately, more time is needed to gain a favorable result for our side. Lorenzo di Medici himself is sympathetic to your plight, and has offered his own courier to carry this message to you. But our family is not without its own resources, influence, and friends. Your husband carries on, as usual holding the orgies for which he has now become infamous, and appears less and less in the justice courts of the city. Honest folk have become distrusting of him. It is possible that his worsening and dissolute life will kill him sooner rather than later. Your father’s business continues to thrive, as do your siblings. Francesca will be thirteen in the spring, and I have decided to allow her to accompany me to Mass then rather than wait until next year. Your grandfather wishes her to marry into a Venetian family, and so would have her join him and my stepmother after she turns thirteen so she may become used to Venetian ways, and to Venice itself. I wish you were here to see her, my darling Bianca. She misses you greatly. Your father and I miss you also, but take comfort in the fact that you are safe at Luce Stellare. God bless you until we meet again. Your loving mother, Orianna Pietro d’Angelo.

Bianca laid the parchment aside with a sigh.

“
Well,” Agata said, “it is not what you hoped for, I know, but it could be worse.”

Bianca laughed. “No, it is not what I hoped for, but at least now we have an idea of where things are at for us.”

“We are stuck in the country, is where we are,” Agata grumbled.

“I thought you were finding a bit of distraction with Ugo,” Bianca teased her.

Agata colored.
“Signora!”
she said.

“I have eyes,” Bianca told her.

“Filomena talks too much,” Agata said.

“He is a nice fellow,” Bianca told her servingwoman. “If you decided that you wanted a husband, you could not do as well in Florence. I understand that Ugo has his own cottage.”

“With an old mother installed in it,” Agata said sourly. “I don’t believe he is a man for marriage at all.”

“Ahh,” Bianca said, “so there is the problem. Well, it will eventually solve itself, I am certain.”

The prince came to the villa early the next afternoon, riding down the beach on a large gray stallion with a black mane and tail. The animal clambered up the steep path to be stabled out of the rain by Primo. Agata noted how Bianca lit up as the prince came into her little library, where a fire now burned to take the chill off the day.

“Amir!” she exclaimed as he was ushered into her presence. He was carrying something beneath his arm.

“I didn’t know if you had a chessboard,” he said as the box he carried was opened to reveal just that. There was also a small box that held two sets of pieces, one in white marble, the other in red marble.

“You don’t know if I play,” she said to him. In truth, she was a talented chess player.

“If you don’t, I will teach you,” he replied. “I have no desire to travel into the city in such inclement weather, and I am bored alone with my servants. Are you not bored?”

She laughed. “Yes, I am,” she admitted.

They played several games of chess that afternoon, but when he noticed that the light was beginning to fade, he arose. “I must go before I am unable to find my way back home and my horse and I end up in the sea,” he told her. “I’ll come back earlier tomorrow if the rains continue. If the weather clears, we’ll walk together.”

“Your mood is better for his visit,” Agata noted with a smile. “He is a good man for all he is a foreigner. Gemma is disappointed she did not get to feed him.”

“When he comes next, I will invite him to dine,” Bianca replied. That night she fell asleep listening to the rain on the tiled roof beating against the shutters that had been pulled over her windows. Bianca was warm and cozy beneath her down coverlet. Jamila slept near her head, purring contentedly, lulling her mistress into a delicious dream state where she was free to be with her prince.

They began to ride together on the beach on sunny days and played chess on the days when the weather was inclement. The days grew shorter, the nights longer, and Bianca’s seventeenth natal day came. The year she had turned fifteen had been the first she had ever been away from her family. She had been in her husband’s house then. But last year and now this year she celebrated quietly at Luce Stellare. To her great surprise, Prince Amir brought her a gift.

“How did you know?” she asked him, eager to open the white silk bag he gave her. What was in it?

“A little bird mentioned it in passing,” he replied with a smile. Her delight was so pleasing to see. “Open your gift, Bianca.”

She did, pouring its contents into her palm. The rope of black pearls brought a gasp from her slender throat. She dropped the bag, letting the pearls extend to their length from her fingers. “Ohh,
signore
, they are beautiful!” she exclaimed. Then she sighed reluctantly. “But I cannot accept them, and you surely know the reason why,” Bianca told him. Picking up the bag, she went to pour the pearls back into it, but he took the rope from her hands. Standing before her, he slipped them over her head.

“Let me see them displayed once, as they should be,” he said to her. “I will defer to your honor, and keep them for the day you can accept them freely. I chose each pearl myself to be certain it was perfect and without blemish, as you are.” He stepped back to look at the necklace, and considered how it would look against her unclad body.

As if she could hear his thoughts, Bianca blushed. His gaze was far too warm, and his dark blue eyes lingered on the pearls where they brushed the swell of her breasts. She lifted the jewels off, and gently poured them back into the white silk bag, which she then reluctantly handed to him. “I do thank you for the thought,” Bianca told him. “I don’t believe I ever had anything as lovely.”

“Did not Rovere cover you in jewels?” Amir wanted to know.

Bianca laughed. “Other than a few large and ugly pieces, which I gladly left behind when I fled his house, no. He bought what was most expensive, not what was tasteful or beautiful. The jewelers all knew that. Anything delicately made, he passed over for large pieces that could be displayed to his advantage, not the wearer’s.”

At her invitation, Amir remained for the afternoon meal. Gemma served a lovely white fish broiled in butter and lemon, along with a dish of small pasta mixed with rice and flavored with olive oil and herbs. There were artichokes and a roasted capon that had been stuffed with sage and onion. There was bread, which they dipped in olive oil, and a delicious wine to drink. It was simple but surprisingly satisfactory. They were just finishing their meal when they heard the sound of horses’ hooves outside.

Bianca grew pale and jumped to her feet, calling for Agata. Had he found her? She had to escape the villa. She would not allow Sebastiano to force her back to Florence as his wife. “Agata! Agata! Where are you?” She was becoming frantic with her fear.

Prince Amir saw the terror in her eyes, in her face. Jumping to his feet, he said, “I will protect you, Bianca! I will protect you!”

Agata ran into the
sala da pranzo
.

“Tell Primo to saddle my horse,” Bianca cried. “I must get away! He cannot find me, Agata! He cannot! Hurry! Hurry!”

There came a loud knocking on the oak doors.

“See who is at the door,” Prince Amir said sternly to Agata.

“No! No! I must escape! I must!” Bianca sobbed now, thoroughly frightened.

The knocking resounded again.

“Go!”
The prince told Agata.

Pale herself, the servingwoman scurried off to do his bidding. Reaching the door, Agata pulled it open before her courage failed her. “
Signora!
Oh,
signora
! You have given us such a fright,” she said to Orianna Pietro d’Angelo, who stood before her. “Come in! Come in! Mistress! Mistress! Come quickly! It is your mother!”

Bianca flew from the dining room, running straight into her mother’s outstretched arms.
“Madre! Oh, Madre!”
And then she began to weep.

Orianna hugged her eldest daughter as the tears pricked the backs of her eyelids, but she would not let them fall. “Bianca, Bianca,” she murmured into her child’s dark hair. “I could not let another birthday pass without seeing you.” She kissed the tears from her daughter’s face. “I only wish I brought you better news.”

“Have you eaten,
Signora
?” Agata asked and then answered her own question. “Of course you haven’t. I’ll have Gemma fix you something immediately.”

“My men . . .” Orianna began.

“Primo or Ugo will have taken them to the kitchens. Their horses will be stabled, and they will sleep dry and warm in the barn,
signora
.”

Bianca ushered her mother into the dining room

The prince came forward immediately to greet her. “Signora Pietro d’Angelo, I am Prince Amir ibn Jem.” He politely seated her at Bianca’s right hand. “I am your daughter’s neighbor.”

Orianna was rarely surprised, but Prince Amir’s presence was totally unexpected. She sat down at the rectangular oak table. Surely Bianca hadn’t taken a lover.

“We walk together, we ride, and occasionally he can even beat me at chess,” Bianca said, smiling at the prince.

It was a warm smile that a woman gives to a man she is in love with, and Orianna heard in her daughter’s voice something she had never before heard.
Madre di Dios!
Do not let her have acted foolishly. “Is that all you do together?” she heard herself asking.

Bianca looked puzzled, not quite comprehending her mother.

The prince, however, did. “You have raised your daughter to be a moral woman,
signora
,” he said. “And I have no need to seduce her or bring shame to your name.” He went to Bianca, who suddenly realized what her mother meant. Mortified, she wasn’t certain what to do next. Amir took her hand up and kissed it. “Thank you for your hospitality, Bianca,” he told her.

“Will you come tomorrow?” she asked, looking up at him.

“The day after, perhaps. You have your mother for company now, and I am certain she has much to tell you or she wouldn’t have risked the journey,” the prince replied. Then he looked directly at Orianna. “Can you be certain you were not followed? You have possibly endangered Bianca’s safety by coming,
signora
.”

“Rovere is in Rome,” Orianna said. “My journey was planned in advance, and I did not depart from our palazzo,
signore
. I would never knowingly expose Bianca.”

Amir nodded, and then, turning on his heel, left.

“You were rude to him,” Bianca said quietly.

“Is he your lover?” Orianna asked bluntly.

“Of course not,
Madre
. I am a married woman, no matter the difficulties with Sebastiano. You did not raise me to be a loose woman,” Bianca replied indignantly.

“Then why is he in your house and alone with you?” Orianna demanded to know.

“Because he is my friend,” Bianca said. “It is my natal day, and he brought me a gift, which I, for the sake of my good name, was forced to refuse. I asked him to share my meal. I am never really alone with him. I am surrounded by my servants. There is nothing improper in our friendship, though I tell you I wish it were otherwise,
Madre
. He is kind, which the blessed Mother knows my husband has never been. He treats me with respect, which Sebastiano has never done, beginning with that travesty of a wedding night. I am a grown woman,
Madre
, not an innocent girl who is dazzled by a handsome man.”