Rose Red (13 page)

“Rosalinda,” said her mother in a bracing
way, “stop being silly. You will make Andrea regret that he knows
you.”

“I could never regret that, Madonna.” Andrea
could tell by the way Eleonora was looking at him that she was
wondering if he would break his word by revealing to Rosalinda any
part of their plans.

“I have obligations,” he said, trying to put
both mother and daughter at ease. “I cannot discuss them with you,
Rosalinda, but as soon as those obligations are discharged, I
intend to keep my promise to return.”

“Come,” Eleonora said. “It is time for us to
eat. I have given the kitchen staff the afternoon free so they can
join their families. If they are to finish their work in time, we
must take our midday meal early.”

Rosalinda went to the dining room reluctantly
and, once there, she ate little. However, after the meal she
appeared to recover a little and for an hour or so she sat at the
table in the sitting room, playing a board game with Bianca.

“You have not spoken to Andrea at all since
you learned he is leaving us,” Bianca observed in a quiet
voice.

“I do not care what Andrea does,” came the
whispered response from across the round table.

“If you regret this sulkiness after he has
left, it will be too late for you to apologize,” Bianca pointed out
with perfect logic.

“
He could
have told me before today what he was planning to do. He could have
been honest with me. Instead, he has avoided me for weeks. I
thought it was because he – well, you know why I thought he was
keeping his distance from me,” Rosalinda said. “Now it seems he was
not gallantly restraining his passion at all. He was hiding his
secret plans.”

“If a handsome man were as obviously
interested in me as Andrea is in you,” Bianca said, “you would not
find me seeking flimsy excuses to quarrel with him. I would be
thinking about ways to make him eager to return to me at the first
opportunity.”

“What if he cannot return? What if he does
not want to return?” Rosalinda bit down hard on her trembling lower
lip. If Andrea left and she never saw him again, she feared her
heart would break in two. Perhaps it had already broken, for there
was a constant hard pain in her chest and she could not swallow
past the lump in her throat.

“You knew that Andrea would leave at some
time,” Bianca said.

“I thought the time would not come until the
winter was over and all the snow had melted from the mountain
passes,” Rosalinda whispered.

“I know you well, dear sister.” Bianca’s hand
rested on Rosalinda’s. “You dared to dream that when Andrea left,
he would take you with him.”

“I should have known it was only a foolish
girl’s misplaced hope.” Rosalinda’s low voice was choked with
tears. “Mother will never permit either you or me to leave Villa
Serenita. And while Andrea may be fond of me, he does not care
enough to defy Mother.”

“Few people ever do dare to defy Mother,”
Bianca murmured.

“What shall I do?” Rosalinda asked.

“I cannot tell you how to do it. You have
more experience of private meetings with lovers than I.” There was
the faintest tinge of envy in Bianca’s whispered words. “But if I
were in your place, I would send my lover away knowing exactly what
my feelings for him were.”

“Come, girls.” Eleonora broke into this quiet
discussion. “You must have finished that game by now, and
whispering in front of others is rude, as you very well know.
Andrea has agreed to play the lute if the two of you will
sing.”

“Yes, Mother.” At once Bianca rose from the
table. “We will be glad to sing, won’t we, Rosalinda?”

After that there was nothing Rosalinda could
do but assent to her mother’s request. If she refused, she would
appear to be sulking as Bianca had accused her of doing.

The rest of that festival day, which should
have been a happy one, passed all too slowly for Rosalinda and at
the same time, all too quickly. While she ached to escape to the
privacy of her own room, which she knew her mother would not permit
until bedtime, Rosalinda was sadly aware that every hour brought
Andrea’s departure closer.

Even with Bianca’s whispered words of support
it was agony for Rosalinda to stay in the sitting room after she
finished singing, to play yet another childish game as if it were a
year ago at the same time, as if no changes had occurred since then
in her life or her emotions.

At last the short, midwinter day did draw to
a close and the first stars of evening began to sparkle in a
cloudless sky.

“It seems the storms are over for a while.”
Bartolomeo turned from the window to look from Eleonora to Andrea,
who was reading aloud from a book of Petrarch’s sonnets. “A
determined man might well make his way out of the mountains and
down to the Lombard plain before the snows begin again.”

“I have been watching the skies, and I think
the same thing,” Andrea responded, closing the book of poetry. “I
have no baggage to pack so, Madonna Eleonora, if you will lend to
me that sturdy riding horse you promised, I will be on my way early
tomorrow.”

Rosalinda stopped breathing, and beneath the
table where she sat with Bianca, she clenched her hands into tight
fists. How could Andrea say so lightly that he would be gone on the
morrow and out of her life forever? She did not believe he would
return. There was something in the way he looked at her mother and
at Bartolomeo that frightened Rosalinda. She watched her mother and
Bartolomeo exchange glances. Significant glances. Something more
was happening than Andrea’s departure. Rosalinda was sure of
it.

“Since you have all agreed that the weather
is clear,” she said, leaping to her feet so quickly that she almost
upset the table and the game board, “I am going to walk on the
terrace for half an hour.”

“It’s bitterly cold,” Bianca objected. “You
will freeze.”

“I cannot stay inside another moment,”
Rosalinda exclaimed.

“Shall I go with you?” Bianca asked, rising
to join her.

“No.” From somewhere in her aching heart
Rosalinda dredged up a tearful smile for her sister. “I know you
hate the cold, and I am poor company, I fear.”

“Wear your cloak,” Eleonora said in an
absent-minded way, as if she was thinking of something else
entirely. “And don’t forget your gloves.”

Out on the terrace, the cold almost took
Rosalinda’s breath away. She welcomed the scorching sensation in
her lungs when she drew in a mouthful of the icy air. She paced
along the terrace and down the steps to the well-trodden path
leading toward the stable.

“Who goes there?” A man-at-arms challenged
her, and Rosalinda knew she would have to get control over her
emotions so she could answer him.

“Giuseppe, it’s only me,” she said. “I want
some exercise.”

“Be careful and don’t slip,” Giuseppe warned.
Like all the men-at-arms, he was too familiar with Rosalinda’s
vigorous habits to expect her to remain indoors, however cold it
might be. With a brisk, “Good evening, madonna,” he continued on
his rounds.

Rosalinda reached the stable, intending to go
inside to see her horse. While Bianca loved doves and kittens and
puppies while they were small, Rosalinda had always preferred
full-grown dogs and horses. On this unhappy night she thought she
might find a little comfort in stroking her horse’s silky coat and
rubbing its soft nose. But when she pulled the small side door open
a crack, Rosalinda heard voices within. A man and a woman were
murmuring and laughing, their voices low and tender. Quickly,
before they noticed her, Rosalinda closed the door again. She would
not disturb lovers. Let someone else be happy, if she could not.
Having no place else to go, she headed back to the villa.

“Rosalinda.” A cloaked shape moved toward her
on the path.

“Andrea?” Rosalinda stood still, waiting for
him.

“I told your mother I would find you and see
you safe inside before you are completely chilled.”

“I don’t care if I freeze to death,” she
informed him with a childlike petulance she immediately
regretted.

She stood facing him in the starlight, while
their breaths formed misty clouds around them. Andrea made an
impatient movement. Rosalinda caught his ungloved hands and held on
tight, to keep him with her for a little while, at least.

“Why are you going away so suddenly?” she
asked. ‘Tell me, please. I must know. Perhaps, if I can put a
reason to what you are doing, then I might be able to bear your
absence.

“Forgive me,” she said when he did not
respond. “I know I should not speak this way. Mother would scold me
if she could hear. Perhaps I am only a silly girl, who read too
much into a few kisses and a single caress. Andrea, if our embrace
that day in your room meant nothing to you, then tell me so right
now. Do not leave me wondering what it meant to you.”

“You are unlike any other woman I have
known,” he said, pulling her hands to his chest and holding them
there. “No other lady would speak so directly.”

“I am neither mild-mannered nor dignified
enough to be considered a true lady.” Her breath caught on a
choked-back sob. This was not the way Bianca, who was a true lady,
would have handled the situation. Rosalinda was far more
straightforward than her sister. “Answer my questions, Andrea. What
am I to you?”

“You are all the world, and more,” he said.
“You are my heart, the blood that flows in my every vein. You are
the air I breathe. You are the very breath of freedom, of sunshine,
of warmth and goodness, of innocence in a wicked time.”

“If that is so, why are you leaving me?”

“Because I must.”

“But why?”

“The reason is a secret,” he said.

“What secret? Andrea, are you leaving here to
return to another woman? Are you betrothed? Is your wedding day
set? Is that why you are so eager to go?”

“There is no other woman than you to whom my
heart is pledged,” he said. ‘‘That has been so since the first
moment I saw you riding among the mountains as if those peaks and
valleys belonged to you alone.”

He fell silent and Rosalinda waited, sensing
that there was more he wanted to say. Finally, he asked, “Can you
keep a secret?”

“Tell me anything you want,” she said. “I
will not repeat a word of it, not even to Bianca.”

“I hear someone in the barn. Let us walk, so
no one can overhear us.” He drew her along the path and into the
garden, until they stood in an open space. “Rosalinda, give me your
word of honor that you will never reveal what I am about to
say.”

“You trust the word of a mere woman?”

“I trust your word. Swear to me, Rosalinda,
knowing that my life, and yours, may depend on keeping your
word.”

“I do swear that I will repeat to no other
person what you say to me now,” she said solemnly.

He put his arm around her, drawing her close,
so they stood as one figure. Rosalinda’s head rested on his
shoulder while Andrea spoke softly into her ear.

“I have nothing in this world to call my own,
except my dagger,” he said. “Even my brother has been taken from
me.”

“I did not know you have a brother.”

“He is dead.” Andrea’s voice was bleak. “The
two of us were with a dear friend. I became separated from the
others. Later, while I searched for them, I discovered a
blood-encrusted dagger on the path. It was my brother’s dagger. I
think he fought for his life, and was killed. When the murderer
took his body away or concealed it, the dagger was left behind. I
searched, but could find no other sign of brother or friend, either
alive or dead.”

“Oh, Andrea, I am so sorry.” Rosalinda could
not bear to think of what she would feel should Bianca be taken
from her by violence.

“I vowed on that bloody dagger to seek out
and punish my brother’s killer,” Andrea went on. “As I said, I have
nothing, no property, no funds, not even a horse of my own.”

“Why should that be?” Rosalinda asked. “You
are plainly a nobleman.” She was going to ask about other family
members who might be willing to help him when Andrea interrupted
her thoughts.

“Why it is so is unimportant to this story,”
he said. “Rosalinda, do be quiet and listen. We may not have much
time before your mother sends someone to look for us.”

“I won’t interrupt again.”

“Your mother has asked me to carry a letter
for her, to Luca Nardi in Monteferro. In return for this favor,
which she says is an important one, Madonna Eleonora will ask
Signore Nardi to grant a loan to me. With that money to live upon
and to use as payment for information, I will be able to search out
my brother’s murderer. I am hoping that Signore Nardi will also
provide recent news on the whereabouts of certain people whom I
suspect of complicity in the deed, news that will make my search
for the actual killer easier.

“You must understand, Rosalinda, that until
this final obligation to my brother is fulfilled, I cannot give
myself to any other purpose.”

“I do understand,” she said. “But why must
the search for your brother’s killer be a secret?”

“For reasons of her own, your mother does not
want it known that she is helping me. Both she and Bartolomeo
insisted that I should swear an oath of secrecy before they made
any offer of aid to me.”

“I know why they did that,” Rosalinda said.
“It was to keep the secret of where we are living. Mother is afraid
that someone who means harm to us, perhaps an agent of the Duke of
Aullia, whom she believes is the source of all our troubles, will
discover our whereabouts.”

“The Duke of Aullia is dead,” Andrea said in
a harsh voice.

“Yes, I know. Luca told us last autumn that
he was assassinated. But I think Mother fears that someone attached
to him, perhaps even the notorious Niccolo Stregone, will still
want our lives.” She stopped because Andrea’s arms had tightened
around her.