One With the Shadows (4 page)

And then the impression drained away. Her stomach settled.

She shook her head. How long had she been staring here? Light was leaking in around her curtains. Carefully she put the emerald back in its nest and closed the box.

There. She felt lighter.

Still, this was a pretty problem. All the answers to her prayers were here inside this box. This stone was worth enough to buy a cottage and keep her solvent even if she lived a hundred years. Escape, fulfillment, peace, lay right in her hands.

But not in its current form. To fuel her future, she must sell it. But who would buy such a unique stone without provenance or receipt? No one would believe she could own a stone like this. Whoever bought it would know that the true owner would come looking for it.

One man might come looking for it very soon. How long before he realized that a casual bump in the street had cost him his most precious possession? Could he track her down? Did they cut off hands for stealing in Italy?

The gem had to be cut. And she must do it today.

Her mind began to race. Jewelers would know who could cut a jewel. Dialogue began racing through her head.
I have a necklace, from my mother. Much too large for current fashions, more’s the pity. I want only the best to cut it, you know.
Her cache of money must be sacrificed to pay for the work. The cutter might also try to blackmail her for a share of the resulting stones.

So be it. Even part of the proceeds would make her dream a reality.

She should be exhausted, but a strange exhilaration rolled through her. Today, this very day, she might escape this public display of her scars, and her precarious existence one step away from a brothel. She packed the stone into its box and took it into the sitting room. She glanced around as a prickle ran down her neck. A strange dislocation settled on her.

The lightening room was replaced by a view of the square below her rooms in a single, shuddering motion. It was dark. People were running every which way. The night was lit by flames snapping against the night sky, and there was the arrogant Gian Urbano, vibrating with energy. Horror lit his eyes. Someone had just said something that shook him to his soul. The words almost trembled in the air, but she couldn’t quite discern them. He turned slowly and looked at a building behind him fully engulfed in flame. His emotion hung in the air. He was appalled at some realization and that turned into determination even as she watched his back straighten. He struck off for the building. He charged inside and was obscured by a curtain of flame. He was running to his death.

And then the room around her reappeared. She felt herself thunk back into place. Kate put her hand to her mouth. What was
that
? She shook her head as though to clear it. But it was perfectly clear. She looked around, wary. Would the room change again? But it didn’t. The morning light, channeled through a wide crack in the draperies, made the room look shabby.

She shook her head again. She wasn’t getting enough sleep. And the excitement of finding the stone was making her imagine things. Was she so struck by this Gian Urbano she couldn’t help imagining him in circumstances that seemed so real they felt like visions? And how had she seen an emerald in her vision earlier tonight which had only come into her life for the first time hours later?

Never mind. The stone changed everything. She might escape this life and all the marquesas and Gian Urbanos. No wonder she was overexcited. She had escaped Matthew, through his death. But she had not escaped his legacy. He had given her a livelihood, and left her scarred. Was it right to hate him? He was the nearest thing she had to a father, though the relationship had turned out not to be biological. She hated the life he had left her. That was the next closest thing to hating him. So be it. If one couldn’t hate one’s father, who could?

And now she hated all of them, all the marks she had duped, and the ones who thought she was worth no more than an evening’s entertainment. She hated the Gian Urbanos of the world who despised her for what she did. She would escape them too.

Three

Kate glanced around her to be sure the clerk with the limp had closed the door behind him. The room was dark except for the blinding circle of light cast by one of the new gas lamps on the scratched worktable. It crackled and fizzed as its shade glowed incandescent. The light revealed two hands set calmly on the table, fine hands with delicate, long fingers and carefully pared nails. Those hands did not fit with their surroundings. Equipment loomed in the darkness, though she could make out few details through her veil. The place smelled of oil and dust. An array of tools, tiny chisels, wooden mallets, polishing cloths, lay on the table just outside the circle of light. Sitting behind the table was a tall, wizened presence possessing a prominent nose with spectacles that occasionally caught the light, making them opaque.

“Jacob said you had something worthy of my talents.” The voice was flat and nasal. He pronounced the name of the jeweler who had given her his name “Ya-cobe.” Dutch. That was good. Amsterdam was the diamond capital of the world. All the best cutters were Dutch.

“Yes,” she said. She didn’t bother with her lie. This man would know this was no simple heirloom the moment he saw the stone. “And I must know that you have the skill to cut it.”

The opaque spectacles revealed nothing.

Kate willed her exterior to calmness, though her insides boiled with anticipation. And dread. She sensed dread. But it wasn’t her dread. She glanced to her reticule. The dread seemed to be coming from … the stone? How could that be? Jewels didn’t dread things.

“Did not Jacob tell you I was the best?”

He had. So she had come to this winding street so narrow the houses nearly touched overhead in the warren of streets known as the Jewish Ghetto. The fact that the man had fled Amsterdam and set up shop in Rome meant he had probably engaged in cutting items with the same lack of provenance as her emerald. “And how good is that?” she asked, her voice polite.

The mouth went grim. But he wouldn’t order her away for her impudence. A man who spent his life cutting stones would be waiting for the ultimate stone. He wouldn’t chance missing it. Was it the stones themselves or the creation of beauty that fascinated him? Or was it the opportunity to prove his skill? It didn’t matter. She had him. He knew she had him.

“I cut stones even for Urbano, and he uses only the best.”

She set her lips. This Urbano creature seemed to haunt her. “That means nothing to me.”

The jeweler found a small velvet pouch and upended it. Five or six stones rolled into the light. Two were perfectly faceted diamonds as big as the end of her little finger. The others were … rocks. Opaque whitish lumps of irregular stone. “My current project. I am an alchemist.” Pride colored his voice. “I turn these lumps into perfection.” His fingertip touched one of the diamonds, caressing it as though it were a lover. “Or perhaps I only reveal the perfection God created inside them.” He handed her a diamond. She stepped into the light to take it.

It winked in her palm in cascades of color, a little pyramid that mimicked the sun.

“Would you like a glass?” He took a jeweler’s loupe from the shadows.

She shook her head. She would not know what to look for. Where else would she find someone to cut the emerald? Who better did she know? She laid out the money that represented all her progress toward her dreams. The jeweler’s graceful hands scraped it into a drawer. Then she set her box on the worktable. She thought she saw it slide back half an inch. The dread turned into a silent shout of accusation. It was as though the stone didn’t want to be cut.

Ridiculous.

The jeweler’s hands were perfectly steady as he opened the lid. Still, he gasped when he saw it. Then he smiled. He reached for his jeweler’s loupe without taking his eyes from the stone. His brows drew together. Was he seeing that coruscating light she found so strange in a cabochon? He ripped off his spectacles and screwed the strange magnifier into his right eye.

“My God,” he murmured. “I see…” His breath was coming faster. “My grandson … a man. My wife…” Now another sharp intake of breath. “No!” The only eye she could see blinked. “But yes, another view!” What was he talking about? Now he was blinking faster, breathing faster. “Too many! I can’t see!” Then his eyes just went wide. In horror? She wasn’t sure.

“Sir!” she exclaimed. “What is it?” Tears leaked from his eyes.

The man began to shake his head, ever so slightly. He sputtered incoherently. This was bad. She went round the worktable and shook his shoulders. He pushed her away and began to laugh, a high, trembling laugh, all the time keeping his gaze fixed upon the stone. Kate glanced toward it and saw the glinting scales of light moving inside.

“Sir!” she shouted, not caring if it would bring the clerk running. She pulled the jeweler’s loupe from his eye. But it didn’t make any difference. He stared at the stone, laughing hysterically and crying all at once.

And then he slumped in his chair, shoulders still shaking.

Kate lunged for the box and snapped the lid closed just as the door to the outer shop opened, casting dim light over the jeweler’s workroom. She slipped the box into her reticule.

“Master, what is wrong?” The young clerk with the prominent Adam’s apple glanced to his master, and then accusingly to her.

“He seemed to have a fit,” Kate stammered.

The clerk came over and pulled him upright. His pale blue eyes were wide, unseeing. A manic light gleamed in them. Spittle foamed at his mouth and leaked over his chin.

“Master,” the clerk called. “Master.”

Kate would wager that man would never answer again in his life. What had happened here? She backed slowly out of the room into the front of the shop. A customer came in the front door. She whirled and pushed past the man, through the door, into the street, the frantic calls of the clerk still ringing in her ears.

*   *   *

Kate stared at the ornate silver box, as it sat in smug malevolence upon her writing desk. What in God’s name had happened at the jewel cutter’s studio? Looking at the stone had driven him mad. She was sure of it. But things like that didn’t happen. That would border on the supernatural, and she of all people knew there was no such thing. The world was formed of what you could see, and touch and taste and feel.

Well, the stone cutter had seen
something
in that stone. It must be something quite different from what she had seen. A few unusual facets within the stone had seemed to move. The illusion that they held actual pictures of events was in the beholder’s imagination, nothing more.

And the impressions she had that the stone was … aware? True nonsense. That the stone seemed smug and satisfied to be in the box on her table was only a measure of her agitation.

She wrapped the box in a chemise and put it in the drawer with her other underthings. What was happening to her? Next she would believe in fairies or angels, or that tarot cards really did read a person’s future. Maybe she was coming down with the influenza. That was why she had imagined seeing Urbano running into a burning building. She had had that dreadful waking dream and fainting spell at the marquesa’s salon, too. She felt herself flushing at the memory of Urbano’s naked body. She really
was
overwrought.

But how could she have known about the stone before she even saw it? Was it connected to Urbano in some way?

Just stop. This is profitless.

She sat with clasped hands and waited. She had three appointments tonight for private consultations. She needed the money from those readings or she would starve. But until it was time to go, she had no obligations. That left her alone with the box.

What was she going to do if she couldn’t get the stone cut? Dared she try another jeweler? She couldn’t risk driving anyone else to madness.

But she
must
cut that stone.
Even if it didn’t want to be cut.

She had to stop thinking things like that. She thrust herself out of her chair and lighted a lamp, leaving it low so shadows still hung in the corners of the room. Outside, the dusk was deepening into night.

The hair on the back of her neck stood to attention. She took a breath. Was that a presence behind her? Afraid to turn, she glanced to the mirror. It showed nothing behind her but the chest of drawers and her bed under the window.

And yet … She felt the throb of vibrating energy just at the edge of her consciousness. Could it be? She swallowed, pressed her lips together, and slowly turned. Just darkness. She sighed. But wait. What was that scent? Cinnamon! Cinnamon and something else …

Out of the darkness stepped Gian Urbano.

She gasped. Her hand instinctively went to cover her scar. Then she recollected herself. She wouldn’t let this man intimidate her. She lowered her hand and suppressed her desire to ask him what he was doing here. What
was
he doing here? And how did he get in without her noticing? Instead she lifted her chin. “Well, speak of the devil.”

He looked taken aback before he set his features in a hard line. “You were speaking of me?” he asked. His voice was hard, but he couldn’t mask its resonance.

“More like thinking of you.” Oh, dear. That was unfortunate. She didn’t want him to imagine she was one of the stupid women who mooned over him.

A smug smile played across his lips. How she would love to wipe that smile away! “Understandable, but I must disappoint. I’ve come only for what you stole from LaRoque.”

She kept her mask on, even as dismay caught at her. “I have no idea what you mean.”

He advanced on her. His hands kept clenching and unclenching. He was trying to frighten her, and doing a fair job of it. “I think you do.”

The vibrations of energy emanating from him cycled up the scale until they were hardly detectable except as a hum of life. Then his eyes went red. They glowed as no eyes could glow. It was hypnotic. She felt herself drifting …

Nonsense! What was he trying to do?