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his heavy cheeks to the
color of puff paste. Hard little eyes peered curiously upward while one podgy
hand held the horse in check and the other gestured to the man on his left.
    The
rider edged his horse nearer the duke's and bent his head to listen, and then
he too looked up; fragments of sentences filled my head as though someone were
whispering in my ear.
    "Short
like Duke Carlo... dark as he was... but with a square sort of face like a box.
And he has blue eyes...."
    But
I was too far away to see the color of Alessandro della Raffaelle's eyes.
    The
duke must have made some comment on the chattering women, because his bastard
son chuckled before he swerved away again, and I could see the sardonic
amusement in his face even from my high window.
    My
hair had fallen forward and hung like a curtain over the sill so that I had to
push it back to see more clearly; it was only as I impatiently tossed it back
over my shoulder that I became conscious of the third rider, standing as still
as a statue in the white dust of the roadway.
    He
sat on his horse unmoving, a somber black figure in startling contrast to the
vivid colors about him, the sun dazzling on his white gold hair. Unlike the
duke and his bastard, there was no laughter in his face, and his eyes were not
searching the house fronts for diversion—instead, he was staring intently
straight up at my window.
    My
stomach convulsed and cramped in inexplicable panic. I wanted to make light of
it, to laugh as the other women had done, but I could not. The rider's eyes
were narrowed against the sun, and there was something about him that reminded
me of a cat in front of a mousehole.
    With
a rumble and the clinking of harness, the procession moved forward again, and I
drew a long breath of relief as the tall rider spurred on alongside the duke.
My whole body was trembling; foolish girl, I told myself, there is nothing to
fear. I had done nothing but catch the eye of one of the duke's men, and most
likely he had not even seen me clearly—there was nothing in that to make me
sick and frightened. But I slid down from the window and bolted the shutters,
and when I heard the sounds of the procession returning, I shivered as though I
had escaped by a hairsbreadth from some threat.
    It
was early evening when Celia came back. I heard her voice in the courtyard,
then her footsteps on the stairs, and then the door swung open, and she stood
on the threshold, her hair tousled and her face fiery red with drinking. She
glared down at me belligerently.
    "Well,
you've played the fine lady long enough for one day. I come home to find the
servants have all gone off to stand and gape outside the palazzo in hope of getting
scraps from the duke's feast—that is what comes of trusting them. You'll have
to come downstairs and help — the world doesn't come to an end just because a
few great men are feeling pleased with themselves."
    I
got up silently, and she stared at me.
    "What
is the matter with you? Have your wits gone at last? You look like a mooncalf.
What have you been doing all day?"
    "Nothing."
I almost whispered it. "There was nothing to do."
    "Well,
there will be no more of that for the rest of the day! There are all the dishes
to clean and the tables to scrub—none of the other servants has done a stroke
of work while we were gone. You will have your hands full enough, my
girl."
    I
winced from the phrase "other servants," but it only confirmed what I
had known already; I was nothing to Celia but a hired pair of hands that she
had to lodge but would never acknowledge. I wondered whether I could remind her
that I had had nothing to eat all day; then I thought, wiser not, perhaps I can
get something while I pass through the kitchen. Better half-choking on a
pilfered crust of bread than having the salt side of Celia's tongue for asking
more than she was prepared to give.
    While
my hands were busy, my thoughts ran free, and I found them returning for the
hundredth time to that strange little