The Golden Key (74 page)

He sighed in defeat. “She was a Grijalva—Sario’s close cousin, in fact. Legend says she was almost as talented as he was—or as any man of our family has ever been.”

“She sounds a little scandalous,” Mechella said with a smile. “A woman Limner! What happened to her?”

Cabral swallowed hard, not taking his gaze from the painting. “Saavedra fell in love where she shouldn’t have, and rather than see her lover marry someone else she disappeared from Meya Suerta—from Tira Virte, in fact. He searched for her, but no trace was ever found. Sario painted this portrait so that her lover had something to remember her by.”

A sad enough tale, but hardly of an impact to cause Cabral such amazement. Mechella examined Saavedra’s face again. Some subtlety of expression in the gray eyes resonated inside her—not recognition of the family similarity of most Grijalvas, but emotion speaking to kindred emotion. Mechella felt bewilderment draw her brows together. She had nothing in common with this woman’s beautiful tragic eyes. …

“Chieva do’Orro, you found her!” Lord Limner Mequel hobbled over, supported by a gold-topped cane Cossimio had given him to aid his halting steps. “I’ve been looking for her these four days!”

Mechella smiled. “I’m glad to see you so improved, my Lord.”

“Nothing like work to put new strength into even the most recalcitrant bones, Your Grace,” he replied with a bow. “Cabral, I must steal you now. Get someone to help you take
The First Mistress
upstairs to be recrated.”

“‘
The First
—’?” Mechella’s stomach clenched in a way that had nothing to do with her pregnancy. Her gaze flew to Cabral. He wouldn’t look at her. And no wonder: Saavedra’s abandoned lover had been Duke Alejandro do’Verrado!

She chided herself for a fool. No picture would be here at the Palasso, even in storage, that didn’t have some connection to the do’Verradas. Suddenly the tale was not sad but insulting: a reminder of that other Grijalva woman who now called herself a Countess.

As casually as she could, Mechella turned to the Lord Limner. “Why did she leave Alejandro?”

“No one knows.” Mequel folded his hands atop the cane; the long fingers were as yet straight and strong, untouched by the bone-fever that was slowly crippling his legs and spine. “Some say she was banished by Alejandro’s conselhos, some say she left voluntarily, and some even say she was murdered.” He gazed at
The
First Mistress
with thoughtful dark eyes shaded by thick lashes.

“They say many things, but no one knows for certain.”

Mechella experienced reluctant pity. The emotion angered her—as if she were feeling sorry for that other Mistress who deserved nothing but contempt. But then she abruptly understood why instinct prompted compassion and fellow-feeling. Before she could stifle the words, she heard herself ask, “Did anybody ever say that she was pregnant?”

Both men caught their breaths—Mequel a bit painfully as he moved in to study the painting, muttering to himself. Cabral joined him. Mechella only watched, not saying why she knew it to be the truth. It was quite simple, really: it was why Saavedra seemed familiar. It wasn’t the shape of her mouth or nose or the color of her hair or anything else Grijalva. Despite the defiance in that set mouth, despite the poignancy of those luminous pale eyes, there was in her face that inexplicable
something
that Mechella had seen in her own mirror.

“I think she had to leave because she was pregnant with Alejandro’s child,” Mechella said. “Bastards are never welcome. And at that time the Grijalvas were—how did you put it, Cabral?”

“Consolidating their position at Court,” he mumbled, casting a wary glance at the Lord Limner. Mequel shrugged; it was only the truth, after all.

Mechella continued, “So if she was carrying a child, she’d be dangerous not just to the do’Verradas but to her own family. Perhaps she left on her own, or was taken away by force—but perhaps she really was murdered.”

“It would explain much,” Mequel mused. “The story has it that she and Alejandro were wildly in love and he would have wed her if he could. If a child was expected, then he would have had honor on his side. What true compordotta used to be, that combination of right behavior and justice and integrity that the Serranos never possessed. …” Suddenly he bent closer to the border framing the painting. “Cabral, look at this sequence. Have you ever seen anything like it before?”

Stiff as the oak panel Saavedra was painted on, Cabral replied, “I know little of the oscurra, Lord Limner.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re not—eiha, enough,” he said hastily, wincing as he straightened up. “I’ll have to study her before she’s put away again. Take her up to my office above the Galerria, Cabral.”

“And cover her up with something,” Mechella said suddenly.

Mequel gave her a curious look that turned to admiring approval. “She does have rather amazing eyes, doesn’t she? I’d hate to walk into my office and be startled into a fall by that fierce look of hers. Sario was a genius, no doubt of it, but this painting is … different.”

Mechella hadn’t meant anything of the sort; she merely wanted no one else to see
The First Mistress
and be reminded. She listened to their plans for shutting Saavedra away, wishing it was that easy to be rid of the Grijalva woman who had followed in Saavedra’s footsteps.

The arrival some weeks later of Arrigo’s sister and her three children set all Palasso Verrada into an uproar. Mechella, meeting Lizia for the first time, felt queasy not just from her pregnancy but from shyness; Cossimio and Gizella adored their only daughter, Arrigo thought his two-years-elder sister had hung the stars, and indeed the whole Court turned out to welcome her, even though she arrived at midnight during a thunderstorm. When the family was private and the children sent off to bed, Mechella ventured a compliment on how glad everyone was to see her.

Lizia laughed and kicked off her shoes. “Eiha, they turned out in force only because nobody’s seen me in so long! They want to look at the damage done by the wilds of Casteya!” She tossed the black widow’s veil from her face and propped her wool-stockinged feet on a stool near the fire.

“Expecting you to look like a wrinkled crone of seventy,” Arrigo grinned, bringing her a tankard of mulled wine. “How clever of you to look scarcely fifty!”

She put out her tongue at him. He threatened to pour the drink on her head. Their mother clapped her hands sharply in automatic reproof, then burst out laughing. “Eiha, ‘Chella, you see what I endured when they were children!”

“Still are,” the Grand Duke said in mock disgust. “Not a day over ten, the pair of them.” He frowned suddenly, all the humor draining out of him, even his mustache drooping. “Are you quite certain you’re happy at the Castello, guivaerra meya? It’s so far from Court.”

“Oh, Casteya’s quite civilized these days, Patro. I don’t even have to wring the chickens’ necks myself anymore. Amazing what a do’Verrado dower will do for declining grandeur.” She drank
wine and sighed, wriggling her toes. “It’s good to be here, all the same.”

Lizia had wed Ormaldo do’Casteya at nineteen in a marriage of convenience that became a love match. She’d once told Arrigo that because there was no one else interesting in Casteya, she’d been obliged out of sheer boredom to fall in love with her husband. When Arrigo reported this to Mechella, he had wryly added that not only had Ormaldo been ridiculously easy for his sister to love, she hadn’t known an instant’s boredom from the day the Count took her to his run-down wreck of a castello.

“She was never one for parties and dances. She helped with Mother’s charities, of course, but when she married Ormaldo she finally discovered what she was meant to be: a Marchalo Grando commanding the army that reclaimed Castello Casteya from wrack and ruin.”

The marriage produced three children—Grezella, Maldonno, and Riobira—before Ormaldo died of a wasting disease, aged only forty-three. Lizia, eleven years his junior, had shut herself and her children up in their restored castello since his death three years before. But now Maldonno, Count do’Casteya, was old enough to become a page at his grandfather’s Court. So to Meya Suerta they had come.

Next morning, bright and early, Lizia brought her children—still in nightclothes and bedrobes—to see their baby cousin. They dutifully expressed admiration for Teressa, then occupied themselves, with considerably more enthusiasm, playing in the nursery.

“And now that the children are out of the way,” Lizia said, settling on the edge of Mechella’s bed, “their mothers can have a nice cozy talk. I’m so glad to meet you at last, carrida! You’re all that Arrigo told me in his letters.”

“And you’re everything everyone says you are,” Mechella responded, trying to smile. She was feeling very shaky this morning after a late night last night, and with the Iluminarres holiday coming up, she knew she needed all the rest she could get.

“The one thing to believe,” Lizia said with a wink, “is that I am indeed short of person
and
of temper! You leggy creatures don’t know what it is to look up all your life—my neck aches constantly. The only reason I’m not black and blue from being stepped on is that I make so much noise people
have
to notice me. Now, tell me all the latest gossip.”

Mechella knew that there was only one topic of general discussion these days: the Grijalva woman. Arrigo had said nothing about
her for weeks, and no one could talk about her in Mechella’s presence, of course, but she wasn’t a fool. The woman was still at Court, though by mutual silent agreement an arrangement had formed between Mechella and Arrigo: if the Countess do’Alva was to be present at any function, Mechella would be absent from it. Arrigo could have either his wife or his former Mistress at his entertainments, but not both.

“Eiha, what a frown!” Lizia exclaimed, and Mechella gave a start. The tiny Countess snagged an apple from the breakfast tray and munched on it as she continued, “I have informants—everyone does—but they don’t know all the ins and outs the way a do’Verrada must. I assume you’ve established your own little system for gathering information?”

Mechella shook her head.

Lizia was shocked. “You must! Rapidia! How else will you know what’s really going on? I’ll lend you a few of mine until you can find your own.”

“I’d rather not,” Mechella said primly. “I have no interest in gossip, and it seems like—”

“—spying? You’ll be Grand Duchess, you have to know what goes on. My mother has Lissina, of course—” She stopped, gave Mechella a searching look, finished the apple in a gulp, and tossed the unbound black hair from her shoulders. “So that’s it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The Grijalvas. Eiha, don’t look so stiff and formal and Ghillasian! We’re rather free in our manners here, and I’ve always said what’s on my mind and don’t intend to stop at this late date. Think me rude and graceless if you like, but we’re going to do what Mother says you and she did right off, and that’s talk about Tazia.”

A year ago Mechella would have been overwhelmed into meek silence. Now she gave Lizia a cold stare. “I find her a boring topic of conversation.”

“Eiha, I can tell. That must be why at the very sound of the name your eyes turn to ice. I’ll tell you what Mother probably didn’t. Arrigo was eighteen when Tazia began the chase. A year later, she caught him. Men are still boys at that age, and—”

“I have no interest in—”

“—and a boy is no match for a clever woman,” Lizia went on inexorably. “She made him think he couldn’t live without her. But now he knows he
can
, and very happily, too, so she’s no danger to you. But there’s something you must understand, Mechella. Father doesn’t give Arrigo much to do. He likes being Grand Duke too
much to give up any of the fun of it, even to his Heir. I hope when Maldonno comes of age and is ready to take on Casteya, I’ll be more gracious about sharing! But the point is that Tazia knew this, and used it. She made Arrigo feel important, essential, that even the most trivial official engagement was meaningful. And of course she was quite lovely then, and experienced in bed, which always appeals to a young man. She made him feel he was the most fascinating man and wonderful lover in Tira Virte.”

Mechella cried, “And you tell me I have nothing to fear from such a woman?”

“I tell you my brother is deeply in love with you, much more so than he ever was with Tazia. It’s in his letters.”

“What brother writes to his sister about his mistress?”

“Arrigo has always told me everything.”

“Then tell
me
how I can send that woman from Court! I’ve begged him to, but he—”

“That’s asking him to banish his youth. No man wants to do that. And, en verro, I think that hearing his young, beautiful wife complain about a woman he doesn’t love anymore would flatter any man.”

“But why does he need to hear it?”

“Because that’s how men are,” Lizia replied with a shrug.

Mechella shredded a slice of bread onto her plate. “I hate knowing she’s here, I know it’s part of what’s making me so ill. But Arrigo won’t send her away, he won’t stop inviting her here—what can I do?”