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said was, ‘She didn’t see the fireworks.’
    But Silvia squeezed his hand in sympathy for more than pyrotechnics.
    â€˜It’s natural,’ she said. ‘But so very, very dangerous.’
    *
    Beatrice di Chimici was lonely in the vast palace in Giglia where she lived with her oldest brother Fabrizio and his wife. It was all so different from what had been planned. Before the weddings – and the murders that would for ever be linked with them – she had been going to live with her father Niccolò, the old Grand Duke. It would have been in the same great palace, taken from the Nucci as a penalty for planning the massacre, but her life would have been so much more vivid and rewarding. Ever since her father had been killed in the duel in the palace gardens, Princess Beatrice’s life had felt drained of colour.
    The new Grand Duke was very close to insanity. Along with the title, he had inherited only six months ago a vast empire of wealth and influence and a position as head of the most important family in Talia. But he was only twenty-three and the weight of his responsibilities was almost too much for him. Although he was so recently married, memories of his wedding day were blighted by the massacre that had included the murder of his brother Carlo, and by early next year he hoped to be a father. The di Chimici dynasty must carry on.
    But Fabrizio was still in pain from the wounds he had sustained at the wedding. Carlo, who should have been living in the Ducal Palace across the river and bustling back and forth between the two homes along the special elevated corridor that Niccolò had built, was dead. And Gaetano seemed so far away, living in the old di Chimici palace, which had been home to all of them less than a year ago.
    After the duel, Beatrice had wanted to go and live with Gaetano and his new wife Francesca in the old palace but Fabrizio wouldn’t hear of it.
    â€˜I need you, Bice,’ he had said. ‘And so does Caterina.’
    And Beatrice had always responded to her family’s needs. Her brother’s plea carried more weight with her than if he had ordered her to stay with them. But ever since the terrible days after the wedding when she had nursed her two surviving brothers and Filippo Nucci as they recovered from their wounds, Beatrice had been restless.
    All her life, she had been proud to be a di Chimici, a member of the most important and wealthy family in all Talia. She was a born princess and lived with the confidence and authority that her background brought with it. Fine clothes and jewels, the best to eat and drink that Giglia could afford, the obedience of servants and deference of citizens: all these had seemed to be hers by right.
    But that had all changed in a few minutes in the Church of the Annunciation six months ago. It was all very well to know that a di Chimici cousin had killed a Nucci in Giglia a generation earlier. It was even possible for her sometimes to forget that young Davide Nucci had been stabbed and it was rumoured that her brother Carlo had wielded the dagger. But however much she might have tried to hide from the realities of bloody inter-family feuds, there was no escaping the truth in the Church of the Annunciation.
    Carlo dead. Camillo Nucci dead. Fabrizio and Gaetano in mortal danger. Other Nucci and di Chimici dead or wounded. And all that before her eyes, in a nightmare of shouting and drawn weapons, swords flashing through the air, daggers stabbing. Beatrice thought she would never forget the sight of four brides in blood-soaked wedding finery.
    And then the flood in the city and the slow nursing back to health of three young men, two she loved and one who was supposed to be her mortal enemy. That was when she had discovered that her feelings for the three were not so different. And as soon as he was well enough, Filippo Nucci had been exiled to Classe, forbidden ever to return to Giglia. She would never see him again.
    She