Chapter Eighteen
Isabella groaned as bright light sparkled just beyond her closed eyes, forcing her up out of the peaceful darkness of sleep. Her whole body felt so heavy and she wanted to sink back down into dreams again. Into memories of kisses...
She tried to roll over, to burrow down into the warm blankets, but a hand on her shoulder wouldn’t let her.
‘Isabella,’ someone called and it sounded as if the voice came from a very long way away. She moaned and shook them away, but they just called out to her again. ‘Isabella!’
She pried open her eyes and stared up at a low, whitewashed ceiling, criss-crossed with dark beams. An unfamiliar ceiling, not her small bedroom at home, or the embroidered hangings of Caterina’s house. Where was she?
Then it all came flooding back, memories tumbling through her mind. Orlando’s chamber, his hand hard over her mouth, the anger and grief and raw need. His body sliding over hers. And the wine that had made her so very dizzy...
The wine! That deep-dyed villain. He had put something into her wine and she had been the veriest fool to drink it.
Isabella sat up with a gasp. The blanket wrapped around her tumbled down and she saw she wore her rumpled masquerade costume. Its diaphanous cream-and-apricot folds looked absurd in the daylight. She jerked the blanket up over her shoulders and spun around to face the voice that called her name.
Orlando stood there beside the narrow bed she lay on. He wore his usual black garments, his hair brushed back from his brow. His jaw was darkened with morning whiskers, but otherwise he looked as austere and elegant as always—damn him. He watched her warily, a small frown on his lips.
Isabella quickly glanced around the room and found it was small and stark, with only one arched window, and a stool and washstand besides the bed. A flaking fresco of a Madonna with a bowed head, muffled in a pale blue robe, stared down at her from above the window.
Was this a prison of some sort? Had he locked her in here as punishment for what she had done? How dare he do such a thing, when he had driven her to such evil thoughts in the first place!
‘You drugged me,’ she cried. She pushed herself off the bed, too quickly, and a cold wave of dizziness broke over her.
Orlando reached out for her arm, his hand warm on her bare skin. She shook him away, but he wouldn’t leave. He gently made her sit back down on the bed, standing over her until she was even dizzier with the clean, citrus scent of him.
‘I am sorry, Isabella,’ he said, too quietly, too gently. ‘’Twas only an herb to help you sleep, nothing harmful. I could think of no other way to persuade you to come here with me and time is short.’
‘And where is here?’ Isabella said, her mind whirling with memories of all that had happened last night. Confusion over what was happening now. ‘What is happening?’
‘This is the convent of St Clare. I promise you, no harm will come to you here.’
‘Why should I believe you?’ She stared up into his eyes, trying to read the truth there. All she could see was how dark a green they were now, how solemn, and somehow that frightened her. ‘Why did you bring me here? To make me do penance for trying to kill you?’
Orlando gave a harsh laugh. ‘If anyone should do penance, it is surely me. I kept the truth from you too long, Isabella, and for selfish reasons.’
‘What is the truth?’ She felt she had lost it so long ago, the truth, and she did not know where to seek it now.
He held out his hand and gave a wry smile when she looked at it suspiciously. ‘Come, let me show you something.’
She stood up carefully. She ignored his hand and held the blanket close around her. She surely had no choice but to listen to him now. Things were never as they seemed in the upside-down world she had inhabited since she left her father’s house. Perhaps, just perhaps, his words could turn them right-side-up again.
If she dared to believe him, to even listen to him. Everyone had hidden things from her for too long. Why should now, here, be any different?
Yet she remembered last night, all too well. The feeling of such lightness, such strange safety when he held her in his arms. The truth she tasted in his kiss. The way nothing else seemed to matter for only that one hour. Surely that could not all be a lie?
And surely he would not lie now, in a sacred place like this, and endanger his soul further. Even villains could not do that.
He led her to the small window and she went up on tiptoe to peer outside. She found herself looking down on a garden, a small, pretty, pale green space of neat pathways and stone statues of placid saints. Just beyond were the arches and covered corridors of a cloister walk, sunlight shimmering on the creamy-yellow bricks.
A group of nuns in their dark habits walked there, hands folded before them and their heads bent together as they whispered. Ahead of them skipped a little girl in a white dress. Her red-gold hair sparkled as she danced and spun. She seemed like a spirit of the light and air, landed in the dark, calm quiet of the cloister.
‘That’s the child I saw with you before,’ Isabella blurted.
She felt Orlando watching her. ‘You saw her with me before?’
‘At the palazzo.’ She remembered the way Orlando and the child smiled at each other. ‘Is she your daughter? Is that what you are telling me?’
‘My daughter? Nay. That is—Maria is my child now, I take care of her the best I can, for she has no one else. She is my niece. But I fear I must tell you her natural father was your cousin, Matteo Strozzi.’
Matteo? Shocked, Isabella’s gaze flew up to Orlando’s face. She read there only solemn stillness, only the truth. How was it Orlando took Matteo’s child into his care, treating her so tenderly, and yet he could kill her father? Why then...?
Why had Matteo never spoken of the child? She looked back to the little girl, who was picking a bouquet of flowers. Isabella suddenly realized the child’s hair was the same beautiful colour as that of Caterina and Matteo. She was so lovely, surely a prize any father could claim. Even bastard children could make alliances. Could be loved.
‘Tell me all,’ she whispered.
‘’Tis not a pretty tale,’ he said, his voice sad, wary.
‘Neither is anything that has happened of late,’ she said.
He gave a grim nod. ‘Very true. Maria’s mother was my younger sister. Our father betrothed her to a neighbour before he died, but she did not like her fiancé. She had—romantic dreams. And a trip to Florence before her wedding proved to be a terrible mistake.’
‘So she fell in love with Matteo?’ Isabella demanded, remembering the romantic poems Caterina read. How their tragic tales unfolded. ‘And you had to revenge yourself on him for stealing her from her hated fiancé?’
‘You have been reading much, I see,’ Orlando said. ‘And you are partially correct, but I fear the story is not so romantic. Maria Lorenza fell in love with Matteo. She had never been away from the countryside and she was dazzled by Florence, as so many are. Strozzi seduced her, and when she found herself with child he abandoned her. Laughed at her, she claimed. At the time he was betrothed to a lady of the Riario family, with connections to the pope. He would not ruin that for a country maiden. And my father denounced her as well, before he died.’
Isabella stared down at the beautiful, laughing child and tried to imagine the girl’s mother. Beautiful, young, despairing. Her life in ruins because she had trusted, loved, in the wrong place. Alone and frightened. It was too easy to picture. Could it be true?
‘What happened to her?’ she asked quietly.
‘She came to me for help.’
Isabella looked up at him in surprise. ‘She came to you? Her brother, who would surely want to avenge family honour?’
Orlando’s face was stark, unreadable, as he also watched the child. ‘We were friends as well as siblings. Maria Lo
renza was a sweet spirit who never deserved to be dealt with in such a foul way. Someone had to take care of her and her innocent child.’
‘And you did that,’ Isabella said doubtfully. How many men, so careful of their honour, would do such a thing? And yet...yet Orlando was not as most men were. She had seen ample proof of that.
‘Our long-dead mother’s aunt was abbess here then and I asked her to take in Maria Lorenza and help her bring the baby into the world.’
‘Is she here now? Maria Lorenza?’ Isabella asked, half-afraid she would be.
He frowned and, before he turned away, Isabella thought she glimpsed a flash of some deep, barely restrained emotion in his eyes. Anger? Sorrow? She, who was so used to reading emotions and putting them into paint, could not be sure with him.
‘She died soon after Maria was born,’ he said brusquely. ‘Even her baby could not tie her to life after what Matteo Strozzi did to her. Her heart was shattered. She took poison.’
‘Poison!’ Isabella gasped in shock. ‘She did away with herself? Here, in this sacred place?’
Orlando’s mouth hardened. ‘My aunt managed to conceal it so Maria Lorenza could be buried in the sisters’ churchyard, but it surely was no accident.’
‘And you have taken care of the little girl ever since?’
‘Someone had to. She is innocent of her parents’ sins.’
Isabella looked back to the child and remembered how Orlando had held her tiny hand. How they smiled together. He was so tender with her, so gentle, and yet he had killed Matteo in the frenzy of the bloodlust that had erupted in the cathedral. She had come here to revenge that act. How could the two be reconciled?
She remembered her father’s books, his mutterings of honour and honesty, the teachings of the ancient philosophers that were meant to guide men’s path. How had Orlando come to be on this very path now, where he could find her? What was she meant to see? To know?
Her life had never prepared her for such a thing and she feared now to take a wrong step once again.
‘So you planned your revenge towards Matteo for so long?’ she said.
‘I did hate him, verily,’ Orlando admitted. ‘How could I not? But I wanted him to confess to what he had done, repent for it. He merely laughed, just as Maria Lorenza said he once did with her. She was as nothing to him, even in memory. He wanted to fight in the cathedral, as so many others did. So we fought.’
‘I saw you kill him,’ Isabella whispered. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw again that dagger.
Matteo had been her cousin, aye. Yet how much did she know of him? She pressed her hand to her lips as she tried to think, to remember. His careless laughter with his friends, Caterina’s worried eyes as she watched him.
Could he have done this terrible thing? Surely he could; men were capable of so much evil, as she had seen too well in Florence. But had he?
‘How can I know what is true?’ she said. ‘What is justice?’
Orlando removed a small parchment packet from within the folds of his cloak. Silently, he pressed it into her hands.
‘These are letters Maria Lorenza sent me. I once thought I would never show them to anyone, that I would burn them, but you deserve to know all of her tale,’ he said solemnly. He stepped back and gave her a sad smile. ‘One of the sisters will bring you fresh clothes and some food. I will leave you now. I have taken too much from you, I fear, and I beg you to forgive me.’
Isabella watched, stunned, as he turned and went to the door. As he reached for the latch, she cried out, ‘You are leaving?’ It hardly seemed true that he could be gone so quickly.
He didn’t turn around. ‘I must. You need to think about all of this for yourself, my sweet Isabella. I am sorry I had to bring you here like this, tell you of these tawdry things. If I could, I would have kept you always as we were for those moments in Florence—so sure of the beauty of the world.’
He glanced back at her then, with that sad, heartbreaking smile on his beautiful face. ‘You gave me the greatest gift, Isabella. You gave me a peace I had never known. I only wish I could have given you that in return. Know I am here for you if ever you need me. If ever you can forgive me.’
He left, shutting the door softly behind him. Isabella instinctively started to run after him, to demand he tell her more, but something in his very sadness held her back. She had never felt so lonely as she did in that moment.
She looked out the window again and saw the little girl sitting on a stone bench with one of the sisters, her head bent over an open book. Her fair hair glowed and she did look so much like Matteo in that instant.
Isabella turned away and opened the first letter in her hand. It was a short note, the ink blotted as if the writer had cried over it as she laboured to make the words. The letters were carefully formed, as if Maria had not been much educated. But her emotions were stark on the page as she poured out her heartbreak and fear to her only friend. To Orlando.
The tale was as Orlando had said, only sadder. More despairing. Isabella could feel the girl’s heartbreak. The letters looked real, felt real in every way. Surely they could not be forged, part of some elaborate plan.
Stunned by the sadness of it all, Isabella almost dropped the letters to the stone floor as remorse overcame her.
She ran to the door. She didn’t know where she was going, what she would do, she only knew she had to find Orlando. Throw her arms around him, tell him she would not doubt her own feelings again. That she would never let him go.
But as she swung open the door, she found a startled nun standing there with a plain blue-wool gown over her arm. Isabella realized she could not go dashing around a convent dressed as she was, so she submitted to a quick toilette from the smiling sister. Yet she fidgeted, filled with so very many questions, so many doubts and emotions she could not make sense of it all.
When she was finally respectably dressed, she dashed down to the garden, only to find the little girl gone. Orlando was nowhere to be seen. Only the letters she clutched in her hand proved he had been there at all.
She ran to the edge of the garden and peered down the pathways. He wasn’t there.
‘Are you Signorina Isabella?’ someone asked softly.
Isabella whirled around to find a shyly smiling young nun. ‘I am.’
She held out a folded letter. ‘Signor Landucci left this for you. I was meant to wait to give it to you, but you look as if you need it now, I fear.’
Isabella took the note and the nun melted away as suddenly as she had appeared. Isabella broke the wax that sealed the note and read it quickly. Surely he had written it before he even brought her there, for the wax had hardened, the ink dried.
My beautiful Isabella,
My secret is in your hands now, to do with as you must. You have truly given me a great gift in a life I fear has been misspent. You gave me peace and beauty, the vision of a true life. Now I give it back to you and beg you to take it. The sisters will see that you are taken safely back to your father’s house, as I am taking Maria to safety now. If you still wish to take your revenge, then I will return for your answer soon.
My life is yours.
Orlando
Isabella crumpled the note, choking on a cry that would not escape. He was gone now. He had given her his secret, his very life, and that of his child. He trusted her. But how could she now trust herself?
* * *
‘Where are we going, Uncle Orlando?’ Maria asked brightly as he lifted her into the boat that would carry them away from Fiencosole.
Home, he almost answered. Yet where was home for them? He could not go back to Florence, to the empty life he had led there. His revenge on Matteo Strozzi was complete, yet it was naught but a hollow shell. Isabella had changed everything, had changed the whole world. And now he had to try to find a way to remake it all over agai
n, without her.
‘We are going on an adventure, my little one,’ he said, making himself laugh so she wouldn’t realize anything was amiss. He had to take care of Maria now and she looked at him with far too much worry in her eyes for such a little girl. ‘Won’t that be grand?’
Maria clapped her hands and giggled. ‘Like in the stories Sister Benedicta reads to me? About the knight who seeks his princess, his one true jewel, even through enchanted forests and stormy seas?’
‘That does not sound like something a nun like Sister Benedicta should be reading,’ Orlando said as he loaded Maria’s cases after her. Indeed, it sounded as if the good sister shared a love of romantic poetry with Lucretia. The prince’s one rare jewel, which he sought after in vain all his misspent life.
Orlando looked back to the white towers of Fiencosole, rising over the thick walls that lined the river. He did leave a jewel there, the one thing that might have truly redeemed him.
He had left his life, and Maria’s, too, in Isabella’s paint-stained hands. Now his quest had to begin again. Once he saw Maria safe, perhaps he could go questing again, and his jewel would hold out her hand to him in forgiveness.
If that hand did not hold a dagger instead. Orlando smiled wryly to remember how fierce his gentle, artistic Isabella could truly be. How fiery in her passion.
Aye—his quest was not yet ended.
‘Come, Maria,’ he said, swinging himself into the boat. ‘Adventure awaits!’
Chapter Nineteen
‘In a short time passes every great rain; and the warmth makes disappear the snows and ice that make the rivers look so proud...’
‘You have much improved, Veronica,’ Isabella said as she bent her head over her sketchbook, trying to capture and hold the last light of the day.
She glanced up and saw her father’s villa in the peachy sunset of a late summer’s day. The green shutters were thrown open and maidservants leaned out of the windows, laughing together in the calm moment before they had to finish making supper. Everything looked lovely, pastoral—familiar.
Betrayed by His Kiss Page 18