One With the Shadows (3 page)

“Do you feel well enough to sit up, my dear?” the marquesa asked. Her breast was awash with diamonds, cascading in a net of gold filigree. Stones as big as the end of Kate’s little finger dangled from her ears. A diminutive maid who had not escaped the nose of her home city came hurrying in with a salver holding a cut-glass decanter and a glass. “Have some Madeira. I must see to my guests.” Kate sat up, and the marquesa patted her hand. “That’s a good girl.”

The older woman rose gracefully, started for the door, and then turned back, a wistful look on her face. “You’re really very lucky. He wants a private conversation. I shouldn’t have thought it … what with your … Well, it doesn’t matter. Enjoy yourself. I did once. But the experience was expensive. His heart is untouchable. Don’t let your own be broken.” With that, she swept through the door, head held high.

Heart broken? Kate chuffed a laugh. Not likely. Whatever il Signor Bel Fisico wanted with her, it wasn’t what the marquesa thought. He knew she was a fake. He’d taken some additional dislike to her, no doubt because of her appearance. Those who were beautiful thought it their right to be so, and seeing someone like her was a reminder, like a glimpse of mortality, that beauty could be marred. He probably meant to cut off her chance to get a bit of the “soft” Rome had to offer and stash it away. Well, she wasn’t going to give him a chance to betray her.

“I’ll take some of that Madeira,” she said. The maid poured her out a glass. She gulped it, much to the girl’s surprise. Kate had cut her teeth on Blue Ruin. But if Madeira was all she had to fortify her, so be it. Now to be off. “I simply can’t face the crowd out there, after fainting. So embarrassing. I’m sure you understand.”

The maid nodded, eyes big.

“Can you retrieve my cloak and my cards and show me to the lane behind the house?”

*   *   *

She trudged up to the rooms she had procured on the Via Poli. Hardly as fashionable as the area around the Piazza Navona that the marquesa’s townhouse occupied, but she had no wish to spend her earnings on luxury when she was saving for escape. It had taken her a while to walk here. She’d left the mantilla that hid her face in the marquesa’s salon. That meant she must keep to the shadows, lest she have to face jeering rogues or shrinking ladies. Rome had back alleys and dark passages just like London did when she was living on the streets. But these days, being alone without protection brought back memories of the night she was attacked. Fear must be conquered, that was all, or soon one would be too afraid to leave one’s rooms at all.

She opened the door, trying not to think about her strange lapse tonight. But she couldn’t help it. She could practically hear Matthew threatening to abandon her for her failure.

“Don’t ye dismiss me!” he’d say when she tried to ignore his drunken meanderings. He always lost his flash accent when he drank. “Gels like ye are mine for a song. Ten pound, no more. Younger and pretty and willin’ ta please inta the bargain. And if I throw ye out, ye’ll end in a…”

“I know,” she’d always interrupted. “The only life other than this for one like me is the brothel, and a cheap one at that, where the men don’t care what the women look like.”

“And where a beatin’ is part o’ th’ price o’ admission. Ye’ll end dyin’ o’ syphilis ye sucked from some lecher’s cock if one of ’em don’t beat ye ta death, or if ye don’t bleed inside, slow, from a cock up yer arse too big fer ye.”

That was usually when he turned violent. She’d spent many a night wandering the streets after he’d hit her and then fallen into a stupor. She took a breath. She was glad he was gone.

He did abandon her in a way. He’d died in a drunken stupor in Barcelona, choking on his own vomit. And at first she had panicked. He was the one who arranged the entertainments, dropping the right names at the gaming hells, hinting that his daughter could read the future. He was the one who got them invited to the soirées where they made their living. He’d arranged for young men to get more than a private reading from her, at least before the attack left her scarred.

She let herself into the little sitting room. But she’d hit upon another way to arrange the soirées. She loitered about in libraries, perusing the latest novels, until she struck up conversations with ladies or their maids. She took her cue from Matthew, blending in with her surroundings, appearing genteel, almost embarrassed, when she mentioned her “gift,” reluctant when they suggested she entertain. One night, that’s all she needed in a city, and if the hostess was well placed, she was all the rage, her calendar full.

It wasn’t
that
hard. It just felt precarious. One step away from Matthew’s threat of the brothel. She slipped out her lenses and laid them in a glass on the scarred table. Her life had always felt precarious …

*   *   *

Her head hurt. She rolled over and heard a whimper somewhere. The smell of spoiled cabbage and molding rags and old urine assaulted her. And something else she couldn’t name.

“Get out o’ ’ere,” a deep voice growled.

She opened her eyes. It was night. And cold. She looked around, dazed. A flea-bitten cat slunk away from the heap she lay on. There were other, more subtle slitherings behind her.

“Ye’re not wanted. Go on.”

A huge man with black whiskers hauled her up by her arm. He smelled like ale. Her head hurt so badly it made her stomach turn. “Please, sir…” she choked out.

He shoved her down the dark alley. She stumbled and scraped her knee. On hands and knees she vomited onto the dirt. That was the other smell she couldn’t name.

He dragged her up. “Ye can’t stay here. We’re not that kind o’ public ’ouse.”

She saw some kind of pity in his eyes. But then he hardened. “Get along now.”

She glanced fearfully behind her. There was the garbage heap on which she had been lying. She had no memory of anything else. Nothing. Where had she come from? Where would she go? She turned into the cold and darkness. Looking down, she saw that she was dressed in a gray woolen frock. It wasn’t ragged. She had shoes. But she had no idea where she had gotten them. And she had no cloak to guard against the cold.

He was watching her. Making sure she went away. Where did she belong?
I’m little,
she thought.
I must belong to someone.
She took a step into the darkness and another. Her name was Kate. She knew that much. Somewhere the cat yowled.

*   *   *

Kate found herself crouched on the floor of her tiny sitting room. She sucked in a breath and blinked. The memory of that night hadn’t been so strong in a long while.

“I’m Kate,” she whispered to herself. “And I belong wherever I want.” She forced her mind to the future she was building for herself. She’d think about the little cottage she was going to buy someday. She could hoard enough to escape both the life of a charlatan and the brothel if she lived simply. Someplace out of the way in England where she could be alone, where she didn’t have to face unfamiliar people who looked away or pitied her. Enough to live on—that was all she needed and enough to buy the cottage. It seemed so far away, that dream.

Matthew had gambled away whatever they earned even up to the moment he died. Getting to her feet, shaky, she made her way into her room and took the simple wooden box that held her dreams from the drawer in her nightstand. The equivalent of more than two hundred pounds in several currencies lay inside. The rooms pressed in on her as they often did. She couldn’t stay here tonight. She needed the freedom of the streets. That was where she belonged.

On her way out the door, she took her cards and stuffed them back inside her reticule. She needed them by her tonight. Kate Mulroney, Kate Sheridan, or the hundred names … they weren’t her. The box that held her dreams … the box and the cards were her. She grabbed up a mantilla from the drawer and wafted it over her head, sighing.

By morning she would be back in the cage, chained to the wheel of soirées and readings. But tonight she needed the illusion of freedom.

*   *   *

Kate had no idea where she was going. She looked up at the night sky, where clouds chased a gibbous moon. It would rain again. Running away from oneself was easier when one was dry. Her head ached. She stumbled and leaned against the wall of some public monument to right herself. She wanted to be where ancient stones poked up through the modern city, speaking of glories and tragedies that now slumbered in the earth, more tragic than her own small life, more glorious. She walked down to the great circular carriageway. Beyond lay the crumbled walls, the old broken temples, and finally in the distance, the arches of the Coliseum.

She didn’t believe in God. She didn’t believe in redemption. She didn’t believe in goodness or love. She certainly didn’t have faith in her fellow man. But the passage of time was comforting in some strange way. The world went on, in spite of petty sorrows, little sufferings, religion, war, individual death. That arc of time might be the only thing one could count on, even if one’s own life was short. What would it be like to live forever? Would that make the little pains of every day dim, or would it magnify them?

She was walking around the great circle when she felt it.

Vibrating energy.

She jerked around and slid into the shadows under an arching tree she couldn’t name.

She knew that feeling. She had experienced it tonight just before her nemesis appeared in the marquesa’s grand salon. Was he following her? A thrill of fear wound around her spine.

But this energy was different. Less intense. She scanned the great open circle.

There! A shadow slipped down a side street. His silhouette looked … guilty, the way he crept against the wall, the way he glanced behind him. But, was it he? The figure seemed smaller, thinner, than Gian Urbano. She couldn’t imagine her nemesis crouching.

She slid along her own wall, toward the figure, curious. It wasn’t Urbano but someone who also had some of that vibrating energy. She put away her headache and concentrated on silent smoothness. There he was, slinking into a doorway halfway down the little street. A lamp flickered on in the first-floor flat. The man definitely wasn’t her beautiful nemesis. His features were sharp, his eyes narrow, his nose prominent as was his Adam’s apple. He bent down and came up with a very ornate silver box and put it in his pocket. Then he blew out the lamp.

Whatever he kept in such an ornately wrought, expensive box must be very valuable …

She blinked. Here was a chance to kick her small store of dream money into another category altogether. Perhaps her cottage was closer than she thought. The door opened and her quarry stepped out into the shadowed lane. She slipped into the shadows of a hibiscus bush. He started off slowly, his hand on his pocket.
Wait for just the right moment.
She strode out of the shadows just as he was coming into them. Her shoulder jostled him. His hands went up in defense. She gasped as they bounced apart. It was done and he didn’t even know it.

“Signore!” she exclaimed in breathless fear. Her right hand was already hidden in her swirling skirts. Her left hand went up to ward him off, drawing his eyes in that direction.

“Pardonnez-moi.” He bowed. “I did not mean to startle you, mademoiselle.”

She put her left hand to her breast, to draw attention now to its heaving. She shook her head and hurried away. He would not wonder that she was veiled. A woman out so late alone could only be bent on an assignation. So he would never be able to identify the one who had jostled him, even if he did understand, when he finally missed the box, what had happened. When she had dashed around a bend, she slipped into a doorway and peered back. Even as she watched, he shrugged and turned back down the street. She breathed again and hurried down the alley past the chaotic outlines of the Forum. She slid between the ancient stone ruins and round into the circle once again. Her mark was just disappearing into the Via del Corso. She crossed diagonally in the opposite direction.

Almost before she had left the circle she felt those vibrations again. And this time she knew just to whom they belonged. She had no desire to meet her nemesis, doubly so because she had just picked the pocket of someone who must be one of his acquaintances, if not family. She made a dash for the narrow street that ran along the Palazzo Venezia. It was dark here. Surely he couldn’t see her. She backed against a wall, breast heaving. She sensed him pause. Then his vibrations receded as he moved on. She sucked in a breath and let it out to gain back her composure before she whirled and took her prize back to her lodgings. Excitement thrilled through her. She could hardly wait to see what her treasure box contained.

*   *   *

Kate turned up the lamp at the scarred writing table with shaking hands. She threw back her veil. It was all she could do not to rip the box open. Instead, she brought the box up where she could examine it. It was made of ornate silver, about three inches square. The chased filigree had an Oriental flavor to it, with crescent moons (or were they scimitars?) and what looked like ornate writing. Perhaps Arabic? The box itself was worth at least a hundred pounds. Not enough to escape her life, but then again, she hadn’t even looked inside yet. What might such a box hold?

Holding her breath, she pressed the simple catch. She raised the lid, fingers quivering.

What first appeared was black velvet, scrunched into a nest. She opened the lid wide. In the nest lay an emerald.

Dear God in heaven.
It was the emerald from her vision tonight. Had she really foreseen it? Impossible. As impossible as the stone before her. The thing was two inches across. It was cut, not in the fashionable square, but cabochon, smooth and elliptical on one side, flat on the other. But there must be facets somewhere, for the thing glinted and flickered.

It was almost … hypnotizing.

Her fingers seemed to reach for it of their own accord. She touched it gingerly, as though it might spark green lightning from its core and stun her. She lifted it from its bed and held it to the light, fascinated. Inside the great stone, light flashed in ripples. How could the light … move? It was as if a great snake was uncoiling, its scales catching the light and sparkling as it rolled. The stone seemed alive—alive with possibilities, if only one could read them. She gazed, unblinking, as the coils moved and flickered. They seemed to whisper to her, and what they whispered made her shudder, even though she couldn’t understand the words. She looked closer, peering into the depths. On each glinting scale was writ … What were those? Tiny moving pictures? She couldn’t make them out. They flashed like cards being shuffled, so quickly. She had an impression that each was a variation on the last. It made her queasy. She couldn’t think.