“State your name and business,” said the man closest to me.
“Lady Gabriella Betarrini. Lord Vannucci sent me to speak to your master.”
The two knights shared a look. “Lord Vannucci, you said.” His eyes flicked toward my saddle, atop Forelli gold.
“Lord Vannucci,” I confirmed.
“You are alone?” His eyes moved down the road.
“I am now. But I am expected back at Castello Forelli by sundown.”
He stared at me a moment longer. “Come ahead, then.”
We rode up to the castle gates, a far steeper entry than Castello Forelli’s. But she did not boast as many towers as Marcello’s family’s home. Only two were visible from this side, but they looked formidable.
Heavy gates were cranked open, and we moved inside.
Lord Paratore was immediately striding toward me, a hulking knight and three others right behind him. I recognized them from the tombs and our battle the following day. “Ah, the lovely Lady Betarrini has at last seen the error of her ways and has come to seek shelter in a castle of real men.”
Yeah, I came because I thought you were so hot.
I stared at his green eyes, which were his best feature, avoiding his mouth, full of decaying teeth. I allowed him to reach up and assist me down, and I even managed to thank him.
“Lord Vannucci sent you?” he asked, as two of his men grabbed my arms.
“What—what are you doing?” I asked, struggling against them. But I could not free myself.
He stepped closer and slowly untied my cape, pulling it from my shoulders and dropping it to the stones at his feet. With wise eyes, he stared at my sheath a moment, then reached down to unbuckle it, sliding it from my shoulders and handing it to The Hulk. “My men returned with tales of a female Forelli warrior brandishing a sword. It appears they were telling the truth,” he said, lifting a delighted brow. He was pretty decent looking, except for his teeth. But the way he talked to me made me feel sticky with sweat. Ugh. This guy grosses me out.
I was already longing for the comforting weight of the sword on my back. It had been a long shot, hoping I could get in armed. But I still had—
“Check her legs.”
Inwardly, I groaned.
A knight guffawed over his good luck and bent to run his hands up my left leg and then down my right. When he reached my right calf, he paused and grinned up at me.
I stared straight ahead as he lifted the edge of my skirt and unhooked the other dagger sheath, strapped there. He was lingering, taking too long.
“Enough,” I said, putting my left foot to his shoulder and kicking him.
He tumbled to his rear, making the others hoot with laughter. He leaped to his feet, looking as if he wanted to slap me, but Lord Paratore held up his hand to halt him.
“You have my weapons,” I said. “Keep them. I’m here for one reason.”
Paratore smiled then, and I again concentrated on looking at his eyes instead of his wretched teeth. “You are beautiful, m’lady,” he said, tucking a knuckle under my chin, “but I must say I fished the fairest Betarrini from those Etruscan tombs. I have a special weakness for women with blonde hair.”
He did have Lia. My heart sped up, and I glanced around, as if I might spot Lia wandering the ramparts. “Where is she?”
“Resting,” he said. “Come, m’lady. We have much to discuss. If you give me what I seek, you shall see your sister this day.”
He offered his arm and the guards dropped their hold on me.
After a moment’s hesitation, I laid my hand on top of his and allowed myself to be ushered inside. As the doors closed behind me, I stifled the desire to scream. Why did I feel as if I had just made a fatal error in judgment? That I should have broken away and done my best to escape?
The other men floated away down two hallways, leaving us alone in a den. Maps of Firenze and Paratore land dominated one wall, the border clearly marked by the new path of the creek. I turned away from it to face him.
“Please, m’lady, sit.” He gestured to a generous settee and waited until I obeyed, then he took a chair with a high back directly across from it. He folded his hands. “You and I were not properly introduced. You have to understand that I thought you some sort of…loose woman, out in such odd clothing that day at the tombs. Our women wear nothing like it. I would’ve never attacked a noblewoman.”
My skinny jeans and top. There was no sense in arguing with him. He was trying to make amends.
“I see the Forellis have put you in proper clothing, as I’ve done for your sister.”
Lia. Just the thought of being with her again made my heart speed up.
“May I see her?”
“In time, in time. As I’m certain Lord Vannucci explained to you, there is only one thing I will trade you in exchange for your sister. Access to Castello Forelli.”
“And I will not even consider such a betrayal, until I know for certain that you have my sister and she is well.”
He smiled. “Oh, she is very well. I think you will find her quite content here.” He leaned forward. “We are not the monsters the Forellis make us out to be.”
“It is unfortunate when neighbors find themselves on opposites sides of a dividing line,” I said, trying to sound understanding, like he might win me over. “It is bound to cause much strife.”
“Much,” he said. He steepled his fingers in front of his face and peered at me.
I waited him out, determined to say nothing until I knew she was okay.
“I see that you are uncommonly resilient. Far more stubborn than your sister. She’s rather…” He played with the horsehair on his chair’s arm—“dovelike.”
Apparently, he didn’t know my sister that well yet. Still, I waited. If you have harmed even a hair on her head, I swear I’ll—
He rose and offered me a hand. “Come. I will show you the dungeon where your sister is kept.”
Dungeon? I rose, ready to attack, but he laughed, and I caught the glint of teasing in his green eyes. “Come along,” he said over his shoulder.
We moved to a grand staircase that curved up one side of the grand salon and then down a hallway to the last room. The floor had thick Persian carpets and Danish tapestries lined the walls, much as they did at Castello Forelli.
He knocked at a massive, ornately carved door. Was this a game? I held my breath.
“Yes?” came a feminine voice from the other side. Lia.
“M’lady, it is Lord Paratore. I have a visitor with me whom I think you would like to greet.”
She opened the door, then, and her blue eyes went wide with excitement when she saw me. Was she real? Or was I dreaming? I pulled her into my arms, never more happy to see my sister than I was in that moment.
She was here. With me.
Which was both good and bad news.
“Might we…might we have a moment, m’lord?”
“Please,” he said, gesturing into the room. “But come and speak with me in an hour, will you?” He gave me a look that told me not to argue.
“An hour,” I confirmed.
He closed the door behind us, and I drew Lia deeper into the room. She enjoyed far more sumptuous quarters than I had been given, but then, Lord Paratore apparently did not have a potential bride in one wing. At least, that I knew of…
“Where have you been?” Lia asked me.
“I could ask the same of you!” I said in a hushed whisper. “I arrived a week ago. Yet I heard that you arrived only two days ago?”
“Right. I landed in that tomb, but you were nowhere around. I wandered over here to the castle.…” She gave me a sorry look. “It took me a bit to put it together. I claimed that I’d had a bump on my head.”
Hearing English again was like a hug from home. A
step closer to being there! “You told them…you were from the future?”
She nodded, looking embarrassed at her foolishness. “Lord Paratore told me he’d seen you, but you’d been taken away by those terrible Forellis.”
“Terrible? No, they’re wonderful. I—”
“But Gabi, how did you get here so far ahead of me?” she asked, shaking her head in confusion. “We were together, our hands on those prints, and then you were gone a second ahead of me. It was as if you became dust before my eyes. And then when I arrived and you weren’t with me—I thought I’d lost you for sure.”
I shook my head, remembering that moment. “I think it has to do with when we pulled our hands from the prints. My split-second ahead of you was the equivalent of days, almost a week, here.” I grasped her hand. “We need to get back to the tomb, Lia. I think we both need to be there. If we put our hands on the prints again, maybe we’ll fast forward, back to our own time.”
“Or…will we go deeper? Into history.” She shivered and crossed her arms. “I don’t know about you, but this is about as deep as I want to go.”
I smiled. “Can you imagine Mom here? Dad, had he gotten the chance?”
“Oh, they’d go crazy,” she said.
I nodded and my smile faded. “We have to try, Lia. To get back to Mom.”
She nodded too. “You’re right, of course.”
“So how can we get you out of here?”
She frowned. “Get me out? Let’s just tell Lord Paratore we are heading out on a stroll, and make our way down to the tombs.”
“I…don’t think it’s going to be that easy. He’s made you feel a guest in his home. But he is using you as a pawn, Lia. He wants me to betray the Forellis in exchange for your freedom.”
She frowned. “Then we must escape. Right away.” She rose and looked back at me.
I nodded, but couldn’t seem to move.
It took all of two seconds for her to figure out my reason for hesitating. “Oh,” she said, grabbing my hand and sitting again. “You met someone.”
“No. Yes.” I looked at her. “Not anyone I can have, on a hundred different levels.”
“The unattainable. Always the most attractive. He is a knight at Castello Forelli?”
“He is likely to become Lord Forelli in time,” I said miserably.
She sucked in her breath, bringing her fingers to her mouth. “You really gotta stop aiming so high, girl.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
“But it began?”
“Before it began.” I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It made me feel sad and weepy, to finally come so close to finding someone I might fall in love with, and then to have to let him go—
“How did you talk him into letting you come here, to his enemy?”
I gave her a sad smile. “You’re my sister. He has a brother. He understood.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Gabs. If I hadn’t come, maybe you would’ve lived happily ever after with him.”
“No, no.” I pretended to whack her across the shoulder. “Stop with the schmaltzy romancy stuff,” I said. “You know I never go in for that.”
“You didn’t,” she pressed, staring at me. “But there’s something different about you, Gabi. Something’s changed.”
“Yeah, we jumped through some time continuum,” I deflected. “It’s gotta change us somehow.”
She lifted her chin, and for the first time, I saw how her cheekbones and jawline were very much like mine—exactly as Lord Vannucci had said. I always thought we were so different, her as blonde as I was brunette. Her straight hair to my curls. I had four inches on her. But we did share the same facial structure.
“You have a lot more connecting you here than I do,” she said. “I’ll gather my things, and we’ll be off. I’d like to meet your lord, anyway, before we leave him behind forever. It will help me spot the right kind of guy for you in our real time.”
I stared at her. “Lia, you still don’t get it. We are in the middle of some of the toughest Sienese-Florentine relations in history. Do you remember what year Siena fell?”
She shook her head. “I never really listened during those tours. I was too interested in the art.”
“Me neither,” I said, rising to pace. “But I’m worried it’s soon. I think Firenze was fully in power when the Renaissance happened, which is around the corner too. Do you remember the year that started?”
She shook her head. “What about the plague? Has the plague happened?”
I felt woozy and quickly took my seat again. The plague. The Bubonic Plague. I shook my head. More than a third of Siena and Firenze had died in those years—I remembered that much.
“No, I haven’t heard of anything like it happening. Fevers, but nothing widespread. Just your typical medieval maladies. So it must still be coming.”
“We have to get out of here, Gabi,” she said, wringing her hands. “It’s one thing to play at this lords and ladies thing, another to take on the plague.”
“I have a plan, but it means you’re going to have to lay low till I come for you. Lord Forelli and his men are going to break you out.”
Her eyes widened in disbelief. Then she strode over to a wall and ran her delicate fingers over two swords and a bow. “I dunno,” she said. “Find me some arrows, and methinks I could fight my way out.”
I smiled at her lame medieval-speak. “I’ve had to do much the same this past week.”
Her blue eyes widened. “You’ve used a sword? In battle?”
“Twice. Tried to bring it with me in here, but they caught me. As soon as you can, secure some arrows to go with that. Tell Lord Paratore you wish to practice. Pretend you’re a beginner, so he has no idea how good you are. Appeal to his sense of pride and generosity. Flirt with him if you have to.”
She shivered. “Ugh. No way.”
“Lia, look at me. You have to do what you must. We are in a fight for our lives, whether you feel it yet or not.”
“I think you’re exaggerating.”
“No, seriously. Trust me. I’ve seen guys die.”
She clamped her pretty lips shut and stared at me. “They will try to kill us?”
“As soon as they realize we have double-crossed them,” I whispered.
“Really? Lord Paratore has been nothing but kind to me. Giving me more food than I want, this room, art supplies—”
“It’s all a ruse. He’d kill you in front of me if he knew it’d make me give him what he wanted.”
She paled, and I regretted my frank words. But she had to know. Had to know what we were up against. Had to be ready. “And…and you’re sure there is no other way out?” she asked.
“Not that I’ve seen yet,” I said.
“Okay, then,” she said, patting her knees and rising. “Hurry, Gabs. The faster you go, the faster you can return to me.”
I pulled her into my arms and hugged her. “Be ready, Lia. Day or night, be ready. All right?”
She nodded.
I turned from her then, before I gave in to the impulse to take her hand and try and run out of this place together now. I moved down the hall, down the stairs, and back into the den, where Lord Paratore waited for me. He must have heard me coming, but he did not turn from his place in front of the map of Paratore land.
“You will deliver what has been asked of you?”
“I—I don’t know. Is there no other way, m’lord? Nothing else I might give you in exchange for my sister’s life?”
He looked down at the table before him for a long moment, then turned to face me. “There is nothing else, m’lady.”
I wrung my hands. If I showed no hesitation, he might doubt me. In truth, it wasn’t difficult to work up. He looked from my hands, up to my face.
“You and your sister are obviously fine, noble women, and that is unfortunate. But there is no way around it. I must use the tools I have at hand.”
“Women are hardly tools.”
“They are at times. A man will live and die for the right woman.” He moved forward, circling me as Lord Vannucci had. “Sir Forelli…I wager you have caught his eye, have you not?”
“He is promised to Lady Rossi.”
“Lady Rossi represents nothing but an alliance for his family.” He shook his head and rubbed his chin. “Nay, you must have caught his eye.”
“I know no such thing.”
“Don’t play with me, Lady Betarrini. I know men. And I’ve known my share of women. And you aren’t as innocent as your younger sister—I can tell that much.”
I stared straight ahead for a moment, then looked to the ground. “I may have caught his eye.”
“Good, good,” he crooned. “Then he will be blinded by love, never suspecting that I have found a hole in the corner of his chicken coop. Keep leading him on. Use his weakness for our strength.”
I nodded, feigning misery.
He again put a knuckle beneath my chin and lifted it, forcing my eyes to his. “Ahh, he has spun his web around you as well. You are in love with him?” His eyes hardened with suspicion.
“In truth, I fancied myself in love,” I said. I pulled away from his hand and went to the picture window, with its view of the courtyard. “But he sent me away. He said that I was interfering with his alliance with Lady Rossi’s family. There was no other way than for me to leave. The timing, however, was providential. He had no idea I would be coming straight to you.”
He moved over and placed his big hands on my shoulders. “I am sorry for your pain.” Slowly he turned me around, his hands still on my shoulders. I dared to look him in the eye. Was he trying to comfort me?
No, he was testing me, trying to sort out what was truth, what was lie. But I could see he wanted to believe me.
“You shall use your pain,” he said, a sick smile twisting on his lips. “Turn it into anger, vengeance, Lady Betarrini. And you shall get your reward. Not only your sister, but horses, and a chest full of gold to see you safely on your way. I’ll even send four guards with you, as far as Firenze. But we shall wait until Marcello returns home. I want him there to witness it, when I breach his defenses at last. He is the last of the line of Forellis. With him gone, no other can stand in my way.”
The River of Time Series Page 19
