Betrayed by His Kiss

by Amanda McCabe

  But through the thick glass of the windows she could see the heavy iron bars outside. Were they there to keep enemies out—or her in?

  She ran her fingertips over the cool, damp glass and in her mind she saw again the image of the Underworld, and its dark lord. It trapped and attracted her all at the same time and she couldn’t decide what was happening to her.

  She jerked back from the window, letting the curtains swish back into place. Sleep was all she needed to clear her mind. Tomorrow she would be able to navigate this new world again.

  Tomorrow, mayhap she would even see Orlando again. She didn’t know if the prospect thrilled her—or frightened her to her very toes.

  * * *

  Lucretia walked with Orlando to the door of her palazzo, her hand light on his arm. From her salon, there was the echo of laughter, but Orlando couldn’t feel a part of it tonight. Everything felt as if he watched it at a great distance.

  ‘Must you leave so early, Orlando?’ Lucretia said. ‘We haven’t even begun to truly make merry yet!’

  Orlando laughed. ‘I fear I am in no merrymaking mood tonight, bella.’

  ‘Who? You, who could always dance and drink ’til the dawn?’

  ‘You do not need my help with that.’

  She gently laid her palm against his cheek, her beautiful eyes full of worry. ‘Does this have anything to do with your mysterious Isabella?’

  Isabella. An image of her flashed through his mind, of her sweet smile as she looked up at him in the cathedral. The wonder of her kiss, so innocent, yet so passionate it carried him out of himself.

  ‘Why would you think that?’ he asked lightly.

  Lucretia shook her head. ‘She has something to do with the Strozzi, yes? And though you have never said why—you are far too good an actor even for me—I know you do not like them. Are you going to use this Isabella against them in some way?’

  Orlando looked at her in shock. So devious. Why had he not thought such a thing? It would have been just like him, before. Before he saw Isabella. ‘Surely you would not think me so ungallant?’

  ‘You, Orlando? Ungallant? Never! ’Tis why my friends are all so in love with you. But Florence is so full of secrets. Everyone is using everyone else to their own ends. If she is a way to get closer to the Strozzi, who are so well guarded...’

  Orlando felt an unaccountable anger burn inside of him. ‘She is not,’ he said shortly.

  Lucretia studied him carefully for a long moment. ‘Of course. But you could think of my words. Perhaps this Isabella could banish your demons, whatever they are.’

  She kissed his cheek once more and pushed him off into the night.

  Orlando was glad to be alone again in the darkness. Only at night did he feel he could drop the layers of his masks, let all his anger free. Tonight another of the demons Lucretia spoke of seemed to follow him. Use Isabella, it whispered. She will get you near to the Strozzi.

  The man he had been only a few days ago would have certainly done it. Would have used any weapon at his disposal. But that was before he saw Isabella’s smile.

  She was a Strozzi, aye, but she was not of their dagger-sharp world. If he killed that innocence in her eyes...

  Orlando kicked hard at a loose stone in the road. He had done villainous things in his past, true enough, but could he do such now?

  He knew not where he was walking, yet somehow he found himself on the square where the Strozzi palazzo was the grandest structure. It was dark behind its thick stone walls, fortresslike in the night.

  Yet the square itself was coming to life. Courtesans of a much lower order than Lucretia and her friends were gathering around the fountain, the moonlight shining on their bare shoulders, their laughter loud. One of them called out to Orlando, beckoning to him.

  Maybe that was what he needed to exorcise this demon. To make him forget Isabella. Yet even as he smiled at the woman, started to answer her teasing words, something in him held him back.

  He tossed her a coin and turned away, back to the Strozzi house. A flare of candlelight went up in one of the windows, and, as if his intense thoughts of her had conjured her, Isabella appeared behind the bars and the glass.

  Her face was a pale blur, but the soft cloud of her loose black hair was unmistakable. She reached out and touched her fingertips to the glass, almost as if she saw him there. He opened his mouth to call out to her—then cursed himself for a fool. She could not see him, and even if she could he couldn’t go to her.

  If he was truly gallant, as Lucretia claimed, he would never see her again at all. Yet he couldn’t turn away from the entrancing sight of her.

  And Lucretia’s words echoed in his mind. Use her...

  The man he used to be would have. But now, when he looked at her, he could see the truth of his own soul. He had changed, far too much. And that was a dangerous thing.

  Chapter Eight

  Isabella heard the revelry long before she could see it, a wild tangle of flutes and tambours, laughter, cries. She slowed down in sheer astonishment as they turned from the labyrinth of narrow lanes towards the meadow of the Prato, suddenly full of gladness at the sunny day.

  The merriment, the glimpse of bright banners snapping in the breeze, the smell of roasting meats and cinnamon-spiced almonds—it all reminded her of festivals in the village at home, where music and parties cut into the sameness of everyday life and lifted everyone up.

  As they stopped at the crest of a hill, Isabella glanced back over her shoulder to the stones and spires of the city. Her wide-brimmed velvet hat shaded her eyes from the sun that glittered in the clear turquoise sky. For an instant she fancied she could see Botticelli’s studio, smell the tempera on the warm breeze. She remembered the half-finished painting on his easel, the scene of the magical garden. It felt as if she was about to step into it in truth.

  ‘Isabella!’ Caterina called. ‘Hurry up, before all the strawberries have vanished.’

  Isabella laughed and looked ahead to where Caterina walked with Giuliano. She hung on to his pearl-strewn velvet sleeve, their two beautiful heads bent together. ‘We would never want that to happen!’

  Caterina held out her free hand and Isabella hurried to take it. ‘Just stay close to me, cousin, and all will be well,’ Caterina whispered. But she did not smile as everyone else did. Instead she looked distinctly worried.

  Isabella didn’t know what could go wrong on such a glorious day, but there was no time to ask Caterina what concerned her. Giuliano led them onwards towards the party. He was just as handsome as Orlando in his own way, Isabella thought as she watched him. His face and figure were all that was perfection. And yet there was nothing intriguing behind his eyes, as there was with Orlando. No mystery, no depth.

  The Prato was a vast green meadow near the banks of the Arno. Flowering trees and hedges blocked some of the sickly sweet smell from the river, adding splashes of pastel colours to the rolling green ground. But today the grass could hardly be seen for all the brightly clad revellers who crowded there amid the shade of silk pavilions.

  Isabella followed Caterina through an archway of green vines and white flowers, and emerged from its shade into a sunlit, magical day. A garden of Venus.

  Ladies in lustrous gowns of apricot, ochre-red, green, white, gold, their hair flowing free, twined with ribbons and flowers, danced in a lively, intricate circle on the grass. As their hands clasped, bells around their wrists tinkled, making them giggle. Around them moved a larger circle of men, even more elaborately dressed, with striped stockings and plumed caps. As Isabella watched, the two circles touched, meshed, then broke apart again. The music grew faster and faster, the colours blending together like a stained-glass window.

  As Caterina and Giuliano stepped from the arch, applause broke out and they were soon surrounded by boisterous admirers.

 
Isabella was separated from them for a moment, lost in a swirling sea of jewels and feathers and perfumes. But she didn’t mind. She searched each face, hoping she would see Orlando among them.

  She’d dreamed of him last night, when she finally found her sleep. Wild images of his handsome face, his pale eyes. His hand beckoning to her, summoning her, only to vanish into the darkness. She didn’t know if she wanted to find him, or if she should flee instead.

  But he wasn’t among the laughing crowds. She caught no glimpse of him at all, which made her heart sink a bit in disappointment.

  ‘Isabella!’ Caterina called. Isabella smiled, realizing she couldn’t search for her Hades now. How could she even explain to her cousin her fascination for a man she had only seen a few times? A man who had kissed her and then vanished.

  Giuliano and his boisterous friends led them to a pavilion that was set above the others on the highest hill, a beacon of shimmering white silk. Silver-and-green banners fluttered above it and soft silver cushions were scattered across the carpet underfoot and spilled out on to the grass. It was open on three sides, giving a perfect view of the dancing.

  Isabella sat down on a plump cushion next to Caterina. As she removed her hat and smoothed the skirts of her new peach-and-gold silk gown, she tried not to stare at everything wide-eyed, like a country-bred child, but it was very difficult. It was all so very fascinating—the music, the fountains of wine, the damask-draped tables laden with delicacies.

  Yet her Hades was not among them. She wondered, fancifully, if he lurked in his Underworld, listening to the human revels above him.

  ‘What do you think of our rustic revels, Isabella?’ Caterina asked.

  Isabella laughed. ‘Rustic? I have never seen such things on my father’s farm.’

  Caterina laughed, too, and her pale cheeks turned the faintest pink. ‘Don’t tell our young friends. They think their outdoor festivals are the perfect rendition of shepherds and shepherdesses. You see there? Simonetta even brought a lamb with her.’

  Isabella frowned doubtfully as she watched a lady in purple satin and a pearl-beaded hair caul stroll past, leading a protesting lamb on a golden cord.

  ‘We all need our little fantasies,’ Caterina said. ‘How else can we stand this world if not by self-deception?’

  Isabella turned those words over in her mind. It was hard to think ill of the world on such a day, but Caterina had said there were things hidden there, things that could not be seen.

  ‘Are you dispensing your golden wisdom, Caterina?’ Giuliano asked, suddenly appearing back at Caterina’s side, bearing a platter of glistening strawberries and grapes and a ewer of wine. More of his friends followed. Laughing, bowing, smiling. They were always smiling, unlike Orlando.

  What was their self-deception?

  ‘Are you in need of wisdom today, Giuliano?’ Caterina said. ‘I fear I have nothing to help you.’

  ‘On the contrary.’ Giuliano knelt beside her and offered her a perfect, plump, ruby-red strawberry. ‘You, my beauteous Caterina, have everything.’

  Caterina took the fruit and held it up. Its redness was bright, almost sinister against the white silk. ‘I was merely warning Isabella to be wary of young men bearing flattery. Especially on a beautiful spring day, when the light can so easily dazzle.’

  Cold disquiet touched Isabella as she studied the light-washed scene beyond their shaded pavilion. Was she merely dazzled by it all? Blinded by her sudden entrance into a world so very different from her own? By the outward beauty of it all?

  She watched a couple parade past, laughing together, a vivid peacock pair in blue and green. They twirled in a sudden, spontaneous dance step and it made Isabella dizzy to watch. They seemed happy, careless, as everyone else did. As if no ugliness or sadness could ever touch them, not in a joyous place like Florence.

  Isabella closed her eyes, suddenly confused. She didn’t feel like herself at all. In the flashing shadows behind her eyes, she saw an image of him. Orlando. She saw him again as he was there in the cathedral, when they were alone together high above the bright marble world.

  With him, she felt as if she caught a glimpse of deeper truths. A flash of raw, vivid emotion caught like the glint of a drawn sword in his eyes. But then it had been gone, lost in the laughter everyone here hid behind. And he had vanished himself, into the crowds of the cathedral.

  Was he even real?

  A burst of laughter broke over the moment of Isabella’s disquiet, the moment of her yearning for something she couldn’t even name. She opened her eyes to see Caterina shaking her head at Giuliano’s teasing. The studied laughter, the smell of strawberries and white flowers, the strong wine—it was suddenly all too much. She needed some fresh air.

  Isabella pushed herself to her feet, careful to keep a smile on her lips. ‘I will return in a moment, Caterina.’

  Caterina glanced up at her, surprise in her eyes. ‘Is something amiss, Cousin?’

  ‘Not at all. I just need a—a moment,’ Isabella answered, hoping perhaps Caterina would think she meant something rather indelicate and wouldn’t question further.

  It seemed to work. Caterina nodded and went back to Giuliano, and Isabella ducked out of the pavilion and into the sunlight.

  She didn’t know where she was going, she only knew she had to get away, to find some place quiet where her whirling thoughts could be still. She held the hem of her fine new gown above the damp grass and found a pathway that wound around the edge of the meadow.

  Soon, the sounds of music and laughter were only a blur behind her. She climbed up the slope of a hill to find the shade of a grove of cypress trees at the crest. She leaned against the rough bark of the trunk, trying to catch her breath as she stared at the city beyond. From there, even the great, rose-red dome of the cathedral looked small.

  ‘I see you are hiding away again.’

  The words were quiet, touched with hidden laughter, but they made her heart leap. She spun around, startled and suddenly joyful, to find Orlando standing near the mate to her sheltering tree.

  His stance was careless, nonchalant, one hand resting on the tree, the other loosely wrapped around the jewelled hilt of the dagger at his belt. He wore black again, velvet and silk touched with flashes of dark blue that brought out the glints in his dark hair. But the look in his eyes was not brooding, as it had been at the cathedral. There was a sparkle there, a touch of teasing laughter that made her want to laugh, too. Before she knew what she was doing, she took a step closer to him.

  ‘’Tis you who always appear so suddenly, signor,’ she said. ‘And disappear just as quickly. I begin to think you are a spirit.’

  ‘Surely no spirit could do this, signorina.’ His hand suddenly reached out and took hers, his fingers warm and strong over hers.

  Isabella stared in wonder at their fingers entwining. The sun-browned, slightly callused elegance of his; her own pale, paint-spattered skin. The glint of an amethyst ring on his finger. She seemed to see it all in detail, like a painting, yet there was no cool distance. She could feel every emotion vividly.

  ‘I have never met a spirit, in truth,’ she murmured. ‘But I would wager it would not feel like this.’

  His hand tightened on hers, binding her to him. She wanted to be even closer. ‘How does it feel, Isabella?’

  She couldn’t tell him how it really felt when he touched her—as if she was lighter than air, free from the earth and soaring into the sky. As if she wanted to laugh and sob all at the same time. As if she wanted everything, only with him.

  ‘It makes me feel as if I could never get enough of it,’ she said.

  His eyes darkened and his teasing smile faded as he studied her intently.

  Isabella’s legs went weak under her and she swayed towards him. He held on to her tightly and it was as if he was all there was in the world, h
im and his wondrous eyes looking at her as if she was all he could see as well. That they were alone.

  No one had ever looked at her like that, as if they could see right down to her soul.

  She slowly reached up and touched his cheek. His skin was warm and taut as sun-bronzed satin, roughened by whiskers along the carved line of his jaw. She ran her fingertips over his lips, which parted slightly as if she startled him. They were so surprisingly soft...

  He lowered his head and touched those lips to hers.

  It was slow and soft as he brushed his mouth back and forth over hers, pressing tiny touches to her lower lip. Those slow caresses ignited something deep inside of her, some need she never even knew was there and yet now it was the most urgent thing in the world. She curled her hands into the soft velvet of his doublet and held on to him as she tumbled down into a new, magical world.

  He groaned deep in his throat, and suddenly the kiss changed, became deeper, more frantic. When she gasped, he slid inside, his tongue twining with hers.

  It was so very intimate. She could taste him, the sweet darkness of him. Her arms slid around him and through the layers of velvet and leather she could feel the shift of his taut muscles, the strength of his body. Through the sparkling haze that had fallen over her senses, she felt his hand slide down her back and pull her up against him.

  His lips slid from hers, along her cheek, tracing her skin as if he wanted to learn her. He nipped at a spot just below her ear that was shockingly sensitive. She sighed with the pleasure, which felt like a ripe summer fruit bursting, sweet and sensual, and she needed more.

  But there were voices echoing below their secret place and she realized where they were. The scandal she could bring on Caterina if someone saw them. He seemed to realize it, too, and tilted his head back. He drew in a ragged breath.