The Dark Lady's Mask (36 page)

Winifred cleared her throat. “If you recall, you were pregnant with another man's child when he married you. With any luck, he'll get used to it.”

H
ER DECISION MADE
, A
EMILIA
wasted no time. As soon as she had washed and dressed, she rushed off to tell Paolo.

“I've taken your words to heart,” she said. “I shall leave with Prudence and her sisters today. But first you and I must go down into Verona to sell the wine in the cellar. Never fear—I shall leave enough funds with you to insure the laborers and servants have enough to tide them over should the harvest fail.”

The worry lines on Paolo's face eased into the first smile she had seen on him in days. “This is a wise decision,
signora.
Please know that you can place your faith in me. I have stewarded this property for your family for twenty years, and so shall I continue, even if you need to spend some months in the Casa dal Corno.”

Paolo, of course, assumed that she was heading back to Bassano and that she would return to the vineyard—preferably without Prudence—once the drought had ended. She said nothing to correct his assumption.

T
HAT BRIGHT MORNING UNFOLDED
like a dream with Paolo and Antonio loading the wine casks onto the wagon. They set off down the steep cobbled track toward the city with its churches and
palazzi
gleaming in the sun. When they arrived at the wine merchant's, part of Aemilia stood outside herself, watching like a witness as she and Paolo haggled to get the best profit. The drought and predicted poor harvest were driving up the prices, with wine merchants scrabbling to buy up good
amarone
while they could still get it.
At least this small mercy.

Could Paolo see the difference in
her, she pondered, as she weighed the sack of gold and silver in her hands. Could he tell from her puffy eyelids that she had spent the entire night waking and weeping? Had he heard from Lucetta that Will had not returned the night before, or did Paolo blame her distress on the rumors of witchcraft?

Once they had returned to the villa, she was relieved to see that the Weir sisters had already saddled the mules and loaded the pack donkeys for the overland journey. After safely stowing her coins, Aemilia leapt into the saddle. Under her skirts she wore her riding boots.

“Farewell, good Paolo. Be of good hope. Perhaps the harvest shan't be as bad as they say.”

Despite her sleepless night, she felt more alert than she had in months, her senses honed and blazing.

Paolo looked troubled. “Where's your husband? Is he not riding with you?
Signora,
you know it's not safe for women to travel alone.”

His words threw Aemilia off balance. Where was Will, indeed?

Meanwhile, Tabitha was in tears, her eyes locked on her infatuated Antonio. Aemilia reckoned that the young man would have given anything to accompany his beloved, but Lucetta would have sooner disowned him than let him take up with a foreigner whose sister was a suspected
strega
.
Tabitha and Antonio are the true star-crossed lovers
, Aemilia concluded, opening her heart to their plight if only to distract herself from her own despair.

But even Tabby and Antonio parted gazes at the sight of Will trudging down from the hills. His hair was disheveled, his clothing rumpled, as though he had spent the night wandering like a ghost. His eyes froze on Aemilia as she perched in the saddle about to ride away from him. Of course, she had expected him to appear any minute that morning, if only to demand to know what she'd done with the plays. Everything stood still as they stared at each other.

It would take so little
, she thought. Just a single look of regret. Will only had to speak her name or ask where she was riding in such haste. If he revealed his heart in any way. Her own heart was pounding hard enough to knock her out of the saddle.

Paolo glanced from Will to her then hung his head, as if silenced. The Weir sisters remained motionless.

Even now Aemilia longed to smooth Will's hair with her fingers, to caress the stubble on his chin and tease him about growing a beard. True love could turn back time. They had never quarreled. He had never scorned her. That single moment of waiting, not daring to breathe, seemed to stretch into eternity.

Until Will blinked and looked away, as if unable to hold her yearning gaze. His shoulders stiffened, as though to shield himself from her love. His remorse over his son had poisoned his heart, and he could not lay down his bitterness, and now, in his mind, Aemilia seemed to be tangled up inextricably with his darkest sense of guilt. Only severance could heal that. Perhaps that was what they both needed to keep themselves from going mad.

Aemilia kicked the mule's flanks and set off at a jarring trot, leaving Will behind so he wouldn't see the tears streaming down her face. It felt like an age since she had last sat in the saddle.
This is what freedom feels like.
Don't you remember?
She didn't know whether to laugh or howl. A masterless pregnant woman riding across Europe, just as Anne Locke had done when fleeing to Geneva with pregnant Catherine Willoughby.

Will's only power was in leaving
, she told herself. Leaving Anne and his three children. Running away from Harry's midnight revels rather than stay and be mocked by the Earl's friends. Now he was bent on leaving her, except she had beaten him at his own game. Let him discover how it felt to be the one left behind.

Though Aemilia wouldn't allow herself to look back, she slowed her mule to a walk and pricked her ears. If he called out to her, if he came running, she would have stopped. She would have hurled herself into his arms.

A
TOMBLIKE HOLLOW FILLED
Aemilia's chest where her heart used to be. By noon, they were within view of the Lago di Garda where her party and their animals would travel by ferry to the northern end of that long lake. On the other side, they would begin their trek across the Alps, before selling the mules and sailing up the Rhine and its tributaries until they reached the English Channel. They would follow the same route as the overland traders—Aemilia had the maps in her saddlebag. She was determined to arrive back in England before Will did. He wouldn't be able to stage the merest outline of one of the plays without her knowledge.

While Winifred and Prudence remained silent, Tabitha couldn't seem to shut her mouth. The young woman was both tearful and querulous. “How can you just abandon the vineyard, mistress? What will happen to it now?”

“Let it be sweet Giulietta's dowry,” Aemilia said. “Perhaps she will find happiness there.”

“Are we truly going to cross the mountains on muleback? Paolo said it wasn't safe to travel without a man.” Wide-eyed as a hare, Tabitha traded glances with her sisters.

Even Winifred looked as though she were having second thoughts.

“You shall have your man,” Aemilia said.

Tabby was speechless as her mistress slipped from the saddle and stripped off her skirt to reveal the breeches she was wearing beneath.
Just like the courtesan in Harry's favorite piece of pornography.
She removed her bodice and replaced it with her boned and padded doublet that would hide her pregnancy for a few more months if she was lucky. Finally, she strapped her sword and rapier around her waist.

She looked up to see Enrico in Tabby's arms. Her son was staring at her in confusion. Mounting up again, she rode alongside Tabitha and took Enrico in her arms, balancing him in front of her on the saddle, singing to him until he relaxed, his weight settling against her.

“Henry,” Aemilia said, calling her son by his English name.

Leaning back in the saddle, she rode the sure-footed mule downhill toward the shining lake. Beyond it, the snowcapped Dolomites rose like a crown. Once she passed those peaks, she would never see Italy again.

 

 

HE
O
CTOBER SKY LASHED
down rain as if to drown the whole world. Huddled under the wherry's canvas canopy, Aemilia braced her body against the cold and damp. Squeezed around Aemilia's skirts, young Henry and the Weir sisters sagged and shivered while the wherryman struggled to row up the Thames toward Westminster.

Over eight weeks had passed since they left Italy. It seemed impossible for Aemilia to believe that she had ever known drought and searing heat, or that she had once been so blissfully in love. Yet the evidence traveled with her in her swelling belly that made a mockery of any attempt at male disguise. One hand on her womb, Aemilia felt the patter of her child's limbs as though the unborn babe were trying to converse with her. What kind of future could she give her child? Such were the questions that had once sent her to Simon Forman the astrologer.

With numb fingers, she opened the fustian pouch and spilled out the
tarocchi
cards Will had bought for her in Venice—which seemed a lifetime ago. Her tears fell upon the gilded pictures of female knights riding into battle, of the female pope with her triple tiara. Such images of power and authority sent her sinking even deeper into the void of uncertainty. She clutched at La Stella
,
the card of the golden-haired maiden reaching to cup a star in her palm.

Never had Aemilia felt more alone, ashamed to show her face to Jasper. In two and a half months, she would give birth. That meant she had about ten weeks to locate Alfonse and reconcile with him—assuming he had returned from his sea voyage. If Alfonse had hated her before, how would he treat her now?

Aemilia's hands shook as she stuffed the
tarocchi
cards back into their pouch.
You have the plays,
she reminded herself. Let the stars be kind for once. Let the plays provide her children's future fortune.

T
HE
W
EIR SISTERS HARDLY
lifted their gaze from the rain-swollen Thames while Aemilia paid the wherryman. Only young Henry gaped with huge eyes at this drenched world with its dripping buildings of gray stone.

Aemilia carried her son while slinging a satchel over one arm.

Stepping off the Westminster landing, she set her jaw and led the way up the muddy street. The Weir sisters hefted the bags and boxes that contained their own and their mistress's worldly belongings. Tabitha muttered quietly, as though she were praying.

“Cold,” Henry said, his teeth chattering. “I want to go home.”

“This is your home,” Aemilia told him. “You are an Englishman born. The grandson of a King.”

Trudging up the Westminster streets toward Longditch, Aemilia flinched under the eyes of old neighbors, familiar grocers, and market women who would spread the gossip that Mistress Lanier had returned from God-knows-where with a huge belly. She yanked up her hood to hide her face.