Isle of the Seventh Sentry
Page 18
Liana trembled with nervousness. She wished she didn’t feel so sick. To her heightened senses, the walls of the tiny church, already bulging ominously with age, seemed to shudder visibly every time Nicholas spoke.
His voice, so loud in contrast to the mumbling of the priest, made her jump. She looked up fearfully. Common sense told her she was being irrational, but, nevertheless, she half expected to see lumps of mouldy plaster come crashing down from the walls. Like the walls of Jericho. What was it made them fall? A voice, a trumpet? She could not remember, and anyway it isn’t important, she reminded herself, dragging her wandering attention back to the marriage service.
Nothing so dramatic as tumbling walls happened, and apart from Nicholas’s voice repeating the marriage vows, the only sounds were the rustling silk of her dress and the occasional scuffle and cough from the small congregation. Why, oh why, was it so difficult to concentrate, Liana wondered. It was important that she did; more than one life depended on it. But still her mind floated away. Restlessly her fingers smoothed the silk of her skirt, the shiny material slipping beneath her touch. Strange, she thought, this material was a parachute only a short while ago. Some Allied soldier came floating down into my part of Italy, his life dependent on this piece of silk. Now it is my wedding dress, and my life is dependent on it too, because I need this marriage. The gravity of the thought focused her mind, and she concentrated on the service.
“I’m nearly there, nearly there.” She repeated the words silently to herself as they clattered through her brain, keeping in time with the regular thud of her heartbeat. She felt impatient. The wedding service was dragging, and Liana was irritated with the old priest. Surely he could hurry it up a little? But at last he finished with the long Liturgy of The Word, and now began the actual Marriage Rite.
“Nearly there.” She relaxed a little, the pent-up tension escaping with a little hissing sigh from her lips. “But not quite!” The remark exploded painfully somewhere inside her head, and a sudden rush of panic nearly overwhelmed her. I’m going to be sick, she thought. But I can’t be sick, not here, not in the church. Not at my wedding, not now! Oh God, I’m not as much in control as I thought.
“But I will get there, I will, I will, I will.”
Liana’s head jerked up with the effort of reimposing her conscious will over her subconscious. The sheer silk of her wedding dress stuck to her limbs as a fine sheen of perspiration suddenly covered her body. A terrifying thought struck her. Had she spoken the words out loud?
She slid her gaze anxiously past Nicholas and the priest. Biting her bottom lip, she breathed a sigh of relief. It was all right, the words must have been in her head: no-one else had heard. They couldn’t have, because no-one was looking in her direction. Nicholas was still repeating the vows after the priest, and Charlie Parsons, the best man standing beside Nicholas, was looking bored, as was Hamish Ross, the officer who had given her away. She had nothing to worry about.
Straightening her back, Liana stared resolutely straight ahead, focusing her gaze on the walls. But no comfort was to be found there. Elongated eyes stared at her from all directions, each one filled with malevolent accusation. The eyes belonged to the faded frescoes of numerous saints. They seemed to jostle for space, as if each one wanted a better view. Liana felt another bout of quickening hysteria spiral in her stomach.
“What do you know? Eight hundred years on a wall doesn’t qualify you to denounce me!” The screaming came from far away, shrilling hideously with panic-stricken laughter. She recognized that shrieking voice hurling the words at the silent paintings—it was her voice. Although this time she knew she hadn’t spoken.
“Liana,” Nicholas hissing her name broke the nightmare.
Liana nearly wept with relief at the timely interruption, but her response to Nicholas was automatic. Turning towards him, she smiled and presented the serene exterior he knew so well. It was an effort, but somehow she did it. Dragging her mind back to the present, controlling the rigor that threatened to rack her body, she hastily subjugated the menacing thoughts. I must be vigilant, she thought fiercely. Now is not the time to go to pieces and lose control. Not now that I’m so nearly there.
She concentrated on the gnarled hands of the priest holding the dog-eared missal. He began to speak. “I do solemnly declare…”
Liana spoke after him. “I do solemnly declare that I know not of any lawful impediment why I, Eleanora Anna Maria, Baroness San Angelo di Magliano e del Monte, may not be joined in holy matrimony to Nicholas Peter Hamilton-Howard.”
There, she had said it, and it was the truth—almost. There was no lawful impediment to their marriage; not unless it counted that Nicholas was not a Catholic, and because of that, they shouldn’t be having the full nuptial mass. But what did that matter? The service meant nothing, just a jumble of words. Nothing, nothing mattered, except getting the wedding ceremony over and done with.
“I will.” Once again the voice of Nicholas interrupted her thoughts.
The priest turned to Liana. “Do you, Eleanora Anna Maria…”
Her eyes flickered derisively over the old man standing before them, and her lips curled with thinly veiled scorn. His withered frame was covered in a filthy soutane, stained with food and wine, the droppings of many meals—not all his own by the look of it. The soutane was much too large for him, and flapped loosely around his scraggy body. Probably stolen from some other less fortunate priest. A sham, she thought contemptuously, even you, supposedly a man of God. You don’t believe in God any more than I do. How can you? How can you be a priest and take a bribe? She knew Nicholas had paid him well for their wedding. Money bought everything in Naples. Even a civil and church wedding was possible with no questions asked. There was only one question, “Can you pay?”
But despite her disdain, an unexpected flash of pity caught at her throat. Who am I to judge the poor old devil? He is a walking cadaver underneath that all-enveloping soutane. Suddenly she felt guilty of her pitiless condemnation of the old man. He is no different from me, she thought, or to thousands of other Italians. We are all desperate. Like me, he has long ago jettisoned his principles in order to grasp at any chance to survive. No, I mustn’t condemn him, she told herself. Priests have to eat too.
“I will.” Liana’s voice gained in confidence.
Nicholas placed the ring on the missal. “May the Lord bless this ring which you give as a sign of your love and fidelity.”
As if on cue, a shaft of sunlight burst through the narrow chancel window. Like a spear it pierced the pages of the missal. The gold of the ring suddenly came alive, shimmering with living warmth. A good omen, thought Liana, and felt comforted. That shining circle of gold was the tangible evidence of a change in her life. For her, it was like an arrow. It pointed away from Italy, away from the past towards the future, their future.
Nicholas picked up the slim, golden band. “In the name of the Father,” he touched her thumb with the ring, “in the name of the Son,” the ring touched her forefinger, “in the name of the Holy Ghost,” now her middle finger. Then he slid the ring slowly on to the fourth finger of her left hand.
Liana heaved a silent sigh of relief, and the inner trembling she’d felt all day began to fade away. It was done at last. They were married. The schemes she had conceived only a few weeks ago were gradually coming to fruition.
Isle of the Seventh Sentry
Fortune Kent
A family inheritance, a forbidden love, and a faceless enemy—can Beth endure it all?
Lost at sea along with her parents as a young child, Beth Worthington shouldn’t have survived. Years later, she is returning to her family estate to claim her inheritance only to be appalled to discover what awaits her—a crumbling home, hostile people, and a violent uprising fomenting in the countryside.
Beth already cheated death once, but she knows with a sudden certainty that her life is once more at risk. Someone is trying to kill her. And number one on the list of suspects is the man s
he is beginning to fall in love with—her own brother!
This Retro Romance reprint was originally published in May 1974 by Pocket Books.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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Isle of the Seventh Sentry
Copyright © 2014 by Fortune Kent
ISBN: 978-1-61921-859-8
Edited by Heather Osborn
Cover by Angela Waters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Original Publication by Pocket Books: May 1974
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: February 2014
www.samhainpublishing.com