The Daring Heart (The Highland Heather and Hearts Scottish Romance Series)

by Carmen Caine

  At Orazio’s barely imperceptible nod of reply, Liselle’s heart sank further. It was true. They were sending her back to Venice.

  “Very well then,” her older sister heaved a deep sigh. And then without another word or a backward glance, she left the room.

  Liselle waited until Nicoletta was out of earshot before turning to Orazio and demanding in outright alarm, “What ails her? Is she ill?”

  Nothing—even the threat of being sent home—was more important than her sister’s health and well-being.

  Her brother arched a dark brow. “Have you ever known anything to daunt her, sorèla cara?”

  His response was comforting. As maddeningly overbearing as Nicoletta was, life would be torture without her. But all warm, sisterly thoughts evaporated instantly upon hearing Orazio’s next words.

  “Pascal will escort you home on the morrow, Liselle.”

  “No!” Her anger returned full force. “I refuse! My abilities are far superior to Nicoletta’s, Orazio! You know this!”

  He tilted his head, looking down at her from the lengths of his long, angular nose before observing coolly, “Mayhap your skills are, but your judgment certainly is not.”

  “Simply because of Lord Gray?” Liselle exploded, her hazel eyes flashing with fire. “He did not touch me, Orazio! I swear it! Nor did he see my viper mark! He only discovered I was there the moment you burst in. Cà de dìa, Nicoletta was making such a racket! I heard her coming up the stairs and slid into his bed simply to aggravate her!”

  “Indeed, that is my point, cara,” Orazio replied softly, but his dark eyes held a glint of humor. And then the humor faded to an almost paternal kindness. “She speaks the truth, Liselle. Your passionate nature blinds you. You are too impulsive and impatient. You are not yet ready.”

  Struggling to control her temper, Liselle almost choked on her own words. “Ridicolóxo! Are you both truly that blind? The man is not what he seems! For Nicoletta’s own safety, I went to his chamber to see what he’s hiding!”

  Leaning down, Orazio placed a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Liselle, Lord Julian Gray is Nicoletta’s concern, not yours. You were to find Dolfino Dolfin, not to spy on a foolish Scottish lord.”

  She wanted to scream out of pure frustration. She had told them repeatedly that the old salt spy, Dolfin, had fled to England after his audience with Albany. And she knew very well that Orazio secretly believed her. Why else would they be in Sarlat, courting Albany’s favor in order to find out where in England the old man had gone?

  “Who is truly concerned with the fate of Dolfin any longer?” Liselle muttered rebelliously. “He is ancient in years and will soon be dead. And even if he were young, he is now exiled. He can no longer return to La Serenìsima to cause harm.”

  “He betrayed his own country,” Orazio indulged her with the reply. “You know well that he sold secrets of the salt trade.”

  “Salt!” Liselle rolled her eyes in contempt. “No man ever died by his hand. It is over salt, Orazio! Salt!”

  “Men will die soon because of it, cara,” her brother patiently explained. “Already, we have received the Pope’s blessing to take arms against Ferrara. Men will die to protect our salt trade.”

  “But—” she began.

  Orazio’s expression hardened. “Basta, I will speak of this with you no more. You were to find the man, not question the reason. You were to find him before he left France, and you failed,” he pointed out mercilessly. “The man’s trail clearly led to Albany, and you lost it.”

  Chastened, she sealed her lips. His words were true enough. She had lost interest in finding Dolfin the day Lord Julian Gray arrived in Sarlat. The Scottish noble had been a much more fascinating concern.

  Still, ferreting out information was a child’s task, and a note of irritation crept into her voice as she asked, “Why do you only give me useless tasks? I grow weary of decorating the arms of men and dining on partridges and sweetmeats simply to learn where an old man might be hiding."

  “And if you had found him, Liselle, can you surmise the next task I would have assigned you?” Orazio’s dark eyes gleamed with challenge. “Dolfin may be old, but his folly of selling our homeland’s trade secrets to our enemy of Ferrara has plunged us into war. There is vengeance to be had, dear sister. The man must pay for his foul deed!”

  A sudden chill hung on the edge of his words.

  Liselle blinked, taken aback.

  “See, cara.” Orazio sighed, patting her sympathetically on the shoulder. “I gave you an important task. I merely asked you to find him first. Your next step would have been … different.”

  Liselle blanched. The thought of assassinating an old man was abhorrent, especially over salt, but she quickly buried the thought. She had been trained from an early age on the many ways to make a man die, but she had yet to actually use her schooling. Most likely, it would be easier to do when the time came.

  Glancing up, she caught her brother closely watching her face. Though she knew herself to be exceptionally skilled, she also knew he wasn't so confident in that.

  “Go home and wait a bit, Liselle,” he said with a compassionate smile. “Your time will come.”

  “When I am old and gray!” she countered, but without venom. The heat of her anger had inexplicably dissipated. There was an expression in his eyes that bothered her, something left unsaid, and she suddenly wanted the truth. “I left childhood several years ago, Orazio. And Nicoletta was younger than I am now when you sent her to the Scottish courts. Why do you hold me back?”

  He heard the sincerity in her voice, and his answer was long in coming. Finally, he replied, “You have the skills, Liselle, mi digo! You are even extraordinarily talented, but you haven’t the heart to truly be one of the Vindictam.”

  She recoiled in alarm. “What do you mean, Orazio!”

  “Be at peace, Liselle,” he said, reaching over to place a comforting hand upon her shoulder. “As the Magno Duce I have the authority to withhold you from missions until you are truly ready.” Nodding at her ankle, he added, “And you have yet to receive the final marking. There is still time for you to withdraw and take on a different role for the Vindictam. You are a dreamer, and … I believe you were made for … something else.”

  “Something else?” Liselle repeated, disheartened. “Pray, what do you mean?” How could she be made for something else when she’d spent her entire life learning the ways of an assassin?

  He took so long to reply that she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he murmured, “This past fortnight, I have seen the manner in which you have watched Lord Gray, and I would hazard to guess you are already in love with the man. You were meant to love, Liselle, not … destroy.”

  Liselle’s mouth gaped open. How could he misunderstand her so completely? “Absurd! He is nothing to me!” came the fervent denial, and never more genuinely felt.

  It was clear that he didn’t believe her. He just stood there, and then his eyes darkened with the soft inquiry, “Could you assassinate him then? To protect us all, could you take his life?”

  “Yes!” she swore without hesitation. How could her brother doubt her loyalty? Her voice caught a little as she added, “I am a di Franco first and foremost, Orazio! Nothing comes between blood bonds!Nothing!”

  Orazio watched her for a time, his shrewd eyes boring through hers, and then he simply said, “Then prove your loyalty and go home.”

  There was nothing she could say to that. Her shoulders sagged. Her dreams had just come to an abrupt end. Bowing her head, she turned on her heel and made her way down the stairs, caught between anger and sadness.

  How could Orazio doubt her loyalty?

  It did not take long to pack her belongings. And as the tantalizing whiff of rosemary and roasted meat filled the air, Liselle made up her mind. Joining the others for the evening meal would be preferable to spending the night alone with bitter thoughts, even if it meant risking another clash with Nicoletta.

  But the din
ing chamber was empty save for her cousin, Pascal, a tall, lanky youth with angelic looks and long, dark hair.

  He glanced up as she came in, and a scathing smile formed on his lips. “Bábia! As I predicted, the moment you thought yourself free you foolishly jumped into the flames.”

  Refusing to take his bait, Liselle sat down and helped herself to the rosemary suckling pig and red partridge before asking, “Where is Orazio? And Nicoletta?”

  If he was disappointed by her response, he didn’t show it. “Not here.” He shrugged, downing his goblet of wine.

  Liselle sent him a dark look. Of all her cousins, she cared for Pascal the least. And she knew the feeling was mutual.

  Absentmindedly, she ran her finger along the lip of her goblet.

  Soon she would be home again, aimlessly wandering in the Piazza San Marco, wearing the finest of gowns and a fortune in jewelry about her neck. Her days would be spent chatting with the merchants at the Rialto Bridge, smelling spices, inspecting silk, and bargaining with the jewelers selling pearls and precious stones.

  She expelled a heavy breath; it was not the life she wished for.

  No, she longed to escape the confines of her prestigious family. She wanted freedom. She wanted to experience the world. She wanted to engage in a game of wits, to use the skills she had honed her entire life.

  “Pah! The best French wine is worse than the dregs of the vilest vats in Greece!” Pascal complained, draining yet another goblet.

  Liselle eyed him sourly. “Then why drink so much of it?” she muttered.

  Pascal’s carved lip lifted in a slight sneer. “Ciò, and what else am I to do? I’m to be sent home—yet again—because of you! It seems I am nothing but your donkey!”

  Slamming her goblet down, Liselle rose to her feet. “I’ve no reason to stay here and listen to your yapping.” Indeed, she would hear nothing but a litany of complaints all the way back to Venice. There was no point in subjecting herself to it more than necessary.

  Taking a baguette with her, she retired once again to her chamber.

  The amber glow of the candles was soothing, and after a time, she prepared for bed.

  Slipping out of her green gown, her eyes fell on the small coiled viper tattooed on her left ankle. She heaved a long sigh and knelt in the candlelight, slowly rubbing a finger over the small tattoo she had been given at birth.

  The viper. The assassin’s sign of the Vindictam.

  Her tattoo still lacked the tongue.

  “I’m hexed!” she wailed in a whisper and softly tapped her chest. “Sò falimènta, a failure!”

  She could only receive that final mark upon accepting her first mission. The mark of authority. The mark of no return. Once her viper had its tongue, she could only leave the Vindictam through death. But, she didn’t find that particularly troublesome. She had dreamt of receiving the full mark her entire life. There was no higher honor.

  She was a di Franco! The di Francos of Venice were wealthy and respectable salt merchants, powerful leaders in the European salt trade. But few knew the name they called themselves ... or what they truly were.

  The shadow of her family stretched far over the lands. They were a part of the Vindictam, a group of elite assassins.

  But the secrets did not stop there.

  Only the women in the Vindictam were given the assassin’s mark, the viper tattoo. And only the women were trained from birth in the many ways to kill a man, from poisons to strangulation, to the most effective use of the infamous, needle-pointed stiletto, their dagger of choice. Liselle even knew how to drown a man with mere drops of water.

  The men of Vindictam were the decoys, spies, and protectors. They dealt with those seeking the family’s services, issued the orders, and acted as escorts for the women as they went about their darker deeds.

  Liselle frowned at her viper tattoo. Never had an assassin taken so long to receive her final marking. Already, she had failed. All of her older sisters and cousins had been sent to royal courts throughout Europe in preparation for the day when their services might be required. But whenever she had asked for which country she was bound, the only reply had been to wait.

  Well, she would have to wait even longer now.

  With a resigned scowl, she rose to her feet, and quenching the candle, plunged the chamber into darkness. The stars were bright, and a chill wind blew through the open window as she struggled to latch the shutters closed.

  She would miss the town of Sarlat, and she would miss trailing Lord Gray. But there was nothing she could do now, save devoutly pray he truly was the fool Nicoletta thought him to be. It would be the only way her sister would be safe to use him as a dupe.

  With a heavy heart, she stumbled to her bed.

  * * *

  Liselle woke to the sound of rain pattering against the shutters mingled with Pascal’s curses outside her chamber door.

  With a surge of annoyance, she yanked the door open, preparing to scold her cousin, but one look at his face caused her stomach to lurch in alarm. “What is it, Pascal? What has happened?”

  “Nicoletta—”

  At the sound of her sister’s name, Liselle shoved him aside and flew down the passage towards Nicoletta’s chamber, colliding with Orazio halfway.

  “Nicoletta?” Liselle gasped, shaking his arm. “What has happened?”

  He held a finger to his lips and replied softly, “She’s ill, sorèla mia, but she will live. Do not fear.”

  Relief flooded through her at once.

  “She’s been struck with the ague,” Orazio explained, sliding his arm about her shoulders as he guided her towards their sister’s chamber. “But she has asked to see you … before you leave. She is weak, so speak quickly.” He paused, and then warned with a wry expression, “And control your temper, Liselle. She needs to rest as much as you need to leave.”

  Liselle scowled, and shrugging away from her brother’s embrace, placed her hands on her hips to confront him. “How can you ask me to go home when she is ill? I will stay—”

  Orazio silenced her with a look and then asked, “Will you ever listen, Liselle?”

  She would have protested further had not they already arrived at Nicoletta’s door. And then she was stepping into her sister’s room filled with the heavy fragrance of lavender to ward off the bad air.

  Approaching the bed, Liselle saw her sister huddled beneath the coverlet, shaking with chills, puffy-eyed, white-lipped, and with dark circles under her eyes.

  “You are strong, Nicoletta,” Liselle said, her voice catching a little as she knelt at her sister’s side.

  “I’m sorry, sorèlina cara,” Nicoletta apologized with a feeble smile. Wisps of damp hair framed her face, and her eyes were bright with fever.

  “No. I am sorry,” Liselle replied quickly. “I beg forgiveness for my rude words yesterday—”

  Nicoletta gave a weak humph and rolled her eyes. “I’m not speaking of that! I speak of Albany and Scotland. And for what you must do now in my place.” The expression on her face was one of genuine regret.

  Liselle caught her breath. Could it be? Had they changed their minds? A ripple of excitement washed through her, even as she worried for the health of her sister. Choosing her words carefully, she managed to answer in an even tone, “I would do anything for you, Nicoletta. You have only to name it.”

  “You must be cautious,” Nicoletta replied, managing to look stern even as she shook with fever. “And you must be wary.”

  “Always, Nicoletta,” Liselle replied, torn between exhilaration and worry.

  Her sister grabbed her arm. Her grip was surprisingly strong. “And you must guard your heart. If you see Lord Gray, do not even speak with him! Do you understand? Not one word!”

  Liselle’s eyes widened. Were they truly sending her in Nicoletta’s place?

  “Orazio, fradèl mio.” Nicoletta lifted a frail hand. “I fear for her so!”

  Crossing the room, Orazio leaned down to cover her hand with both of his. “
She is strong, Nicoletta.”

  “Che scalògna! Why has ill-fortune touched me?” Nicoletta wailed, turning once again to Liselle. “Remember, cara, beauty can be the deadliest weapon when used well.”

  "But beauty fades," Orazio inserted skillfully, glancing over to meet Liselle’s eyes. "Live by your wits. And remember, you have passed every test of stealth and cunning, but you still fail in patience."

  Liselle held still, too stunned to respond. There was no doubt now. They were sending her out.

  Dimly, she heard Nicoletta continue to fret. "But she is too young!"

  Her brother responded in consoling tones, but Liselle did not hear his words.

  And then Nicoletta’s fingers dug into her arm once more. “I have something for you, Liselle. A gift.” She lifted a fragile hand to pat Liselle fondly on the cheek.

  “A gift?” Liselle repeated numbly, still in shock.

  “Give them to her, Orazio!” Nicoletta whispered, shaking with chills.

  “I will,” he promised, gently squeezing her shoulder. “But now you must rest. Say your farewells as Liselle must leave straightway.”

  Liselle scarcely heard Nicoletta’s words of advice as she bade her farewell. She only saw her sister’s resigned face as she fell back tiredly into the pillows. Nicoletta had clearly accepted her fate, and for some reason, Liselle found that sobering.

  And then Orazio drew her from the room and guided her to another.

  “Will she live, Orazio?” Liselle asked, consumed with worry. “Oh, Orazio! She cannot die!” Sudden tears filled her eyes.

  “Hush, mia cara, she will not die. She is strong,” Orazio assured, pointing to a carved rosewood box on the surface of a small table. “’Tis Nicoletta’s gift. You must take her place until she is well. And you must leave at once.”

  It was difficult to concentrate on his words at first, but gradually excitement won over the anxiety of Nicoletta’s illness. After all, as Orazio had said, Nicoletta was strong.

  “Then, I’m truly not returning home?” Liselle asked suddenly.

  Orazio laughed a little and reached over to tousle her head as if she were still a child. “You are going to England with Albany,” he repeated in amused tones. “You will accompany Albany until he delivers you to the Scottish court. So you will have much time to perhaps learn from him just where in England Dolfino Dolfin is lurking.”