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marched out, his back ramrod stiff.
    "We are not making many friends here," Nicoletta observed with a
small smile. "Do you suppose they waited so long to send for us in hopes
it would be too late to save the
bambina?"
    "Nicoletta!" Maria Pia was shocked, her gaze wildly searching the
room as if she expected to see the don standing there listening. "I forbid
anymore of this talk."
    Nicoletta was happy enough to go to sleep. The child was warm in her arms,
and with the fire crackling nicely, the room seemed much more pleasant. She
snuggled down onto the bed and lay quietly. Within a matter of minutes, Maria
Pia was breathing evenly, indicating she had immediately fallen asleep.
Nicoletta was very tired, but she couldn't follow suit. Too many unanswered
questions whirled in her head.
    She was "different." She had been born with unique abilities.
Maria Pia called them gifts, yet she had to hide them for fear of being named
witch. She could touch an individual and "feel" the illness. She knew
instinctively which herbs or potions sick people needed to alleviate their
suffering and aid their healing. She could even communicate with plants. She
"felt" the life in them and knew what they needed to assist their
growth.
    Nicoletta could also aid in curing the ill with her soothing hands and
voice. From deep within her welled a healing warmth that flowed from her body
into that of her patient. Maria Pia, devout as she was, would never actually
call her a witch. She would never imply in any way that Nicoletta was capable
of magic. She never pointed out that Nicoletta came from a long line of
"unique" women and that more than one of her ancestors had been
burned at the stake, stoned, or deliberately drowned. Maria Pia guarded her
carefully and maintained the role of the "healer," keeping the
attention on herself rather than Nicoletta.
    The villagers, too, knew that Nicoletta was different, and they aided Maria
Pia in deceiving the
aristocrazia,
keeping Nicoletta far from the
palazzo and all who occupied it. They guarded her like a treasure, and she was
very grateful to them. But now…
    Nicoletta sighed. She went carefully over everything that had happened since
her arrival at the palazzo. She certainly had caught the attention of the don.
A shiver raced down her spine. Was it from fear? Or something else? Nicoletta
was honest enough to admit that Don Scarletti was an incredibly handsome man.
And power seemed to cling to him. She couldn't imagine trying to defeat such a
man. His dark eyes were piercing and seemed to see right past flesh and bone
into her soul. She shivered again and decided what she had felt was fear.
    He had looked at her with interest stirring in the depths of his eyes. No
one had ever looked at her the way Don Giovanni Scarletti had. He was no callow
youth but a grown man, a nobleman at that, rumored to head a secret society of
assassins. Others in power either left him strictly alone or vied for his
attention, coveting his loyalty. But more than all of that, his family was
cursed. No village woman, nor even many Scarletti wives, had survived long in
the
Palazzo delta Morte
—Palace of Death. And he had looked at her,
marking her as prey. The thought crept unbidden into her fanciful mind.
    A log in the fireplace burned through and collapsed in a shower of sparks,
flames flaring momentarily to cast an image of hell on the wall. Nicoletta's
breath caught in her throat as the heavy door swung slowly inward. A man
hesitated in the entrance.
    Nicoletta didn't believe in cowering beneath the covers.
"Signore?" She managed to keep her voice even, in spite of trembling
uncontrollably. "What is it?"
    "Scusa,
signorina, I did not mean to disturb you. I wanted to
see my daughter." Despite the natural arrogance in his tone, he was
extremely polite for an aristocratic. This was Vincente, the youngest of the
three Scarletti brothers. He had the same muscular build and confidence of his
older brothers, as befitted one born to