Betrayed by His Kiss. Amanda McCabe

A rosary was threaded through her cold fingers. Perhaps she was at peace now, at last. Her torment had been so great for so long. Yet how could she be, when her murderer was still out there?

      Matteo Strozzi had not held the poison bottle to her lips, but he had surely guided her hand as she swallowed. The memory of his betrayal haunted even after all those months. The deep-dyed villain.

      She wouldn’t take Orlando’s help before, but he would give it to her now. He owed it to her for the sisterly love she had long given him.

      As he tucked a small bouquet of spring flowers into her hands with the rosary, he remembered Maria Lorenza as she had once been. The two of them as children, climbing trees, chasing through the barley fields, laughing. Her whispered jests and giggles in their father’s chapel, when they were meant to be solemn. Her tears, the raw fear in her eyes, when Matteo Strozzi had betrayed her and she had only Orlando to turn to.

      Maria Lorenza had been there as long as Orlando could remember. His sweet, beautiful baby sister. She never deserved the torment that had driven her to this.

      A baby’s piercing cry suddenly broke the silence of the church. Orlando pushed himself to his feet and turned to see one of the nuns standing in the doorway. Maria’s new daughter was cradled in her arms, a fragile new life that bloomed in the face of her mother’s death. His niece, who had only him now to look after her. Who had lost her mother in the most horrible of ways. Maria had been so sure she could not look after her child, that the shame of having a bastard daughter would drown them both, and thus she had chosen to leave them all. She could bear the humiliation no longer.

      Matteo Strozzi had caused all of this. And he would pay. Orlando would make sure of that.

Chapter One

      The Tuscan countryside—spring 1478

       My Most Illustrious Lords:

       My brother Giuliano has just been killed and my government is in the greatest danger. Now is the time, my lords, to help your servant Lorenzo. Send all the troops you can with all speed, so that they may be the shield and safety of my state, just as they have always been.

       Your servitor, Lorenzo de’ Medici.

       Letter to the Lords of Milan, April 26, 1478

      ‘In a short time passes every great rain; and the warmth makes disappear the snows and ice that make the rivers look so proud; nor was the sky ever covered by so thick a cloud that, meeting the fury of the winds, it did not flee from the hills and the valleys.’

      The girl’s voice, reading from the volume of Petrarch, flowed low and sweet on the warm breeze. It mingled with the hum of bees, seeking the most luscious of the early summer flowers, with the twitter and chatter of birds. The wind whistled through the gnarled branches of the heavy-laden olive trees and the tall cypresses. It was the slowest, most lazy of days. Steps grew heavy in the sunlight, laughter rich. Work was only an afterthought.

      Perfect for Isabella’s own task. There were few tasks for her to undertake at her father’s villa. Meals were lighter, the rich curtains and carpets of winter folded away and replaced by thin, airy linens. The servants gossiped by the open windows, peeling vegetables for a light pottage as the chickens, their feathery lives spared for the moment, scratched in the dirt of the back courtyard. No, she would not be expected at home until sundown, when her father stirred from his books and began wondering where his supper was.

      Isabella leaned over her sketchbook, easing the side of her thumb to smudge a harsh charcoal line. ‘The fury of the winds...’ The girl’s voice faltered.

      Isabella glanced up to find that Veronica, their neighbour’s young daughter, still sat in her spot of sun, the book she was reading from open on her lap. She was a perfect model, with her pale golden curls limned by the sun into a halo, her oval face lightly touched with the bronze of summer. Her pink-striped skirts spread around her on the grass like the ruffled petals of a rose against leaves. But, by St Catherine, the girl would not sit still!

      ‘What is it, Veronica?’ she asked.

      ‘May I see the drawing yet, madonna?’ the child said, eagerness hidden low in her gentle voice. ‘We have been sitting here for ever so long!’

      Long? Isabella glanced at the azure sky above them to see that the slant of the light had changed subtly, its rays shifting to a deep caramel. The sfumato of morning, that silvery-grey haze so peculiar to hot Tuscan days, had long ago burned off. Yet to Isabella, so absorbed in capturing the girl’s face on parchment, infusing the cold, black lines with Veronica’s sweet, innocent spirit, it seemed only moments had passed.

      ‘All the better to practise your reading, Veronica,’ she said, placing her charcoal back in its specially slotted box and flexing her fingers. Her skin and nails were stained deep grey, so engrained that surely she could not scrub it clean before her father saw. Ah, well. After all these years of living alone together, he was accustomed to her doings, as she was to his.

      ‘You read that poem so beautifully,’ she continued. ‘Your parents will be very proud.’

      Veronica closed the precious, green leather-bound book and held it tightly to her stomach, a shy smile touching her rosebud lips. ‘Do you think so, madonna? They say I must go to my aunt’s house in Florence once the summer is over, to learn to be a true lady and find a suitable betrothal.’ She glanced uncertainly down at the book. ‘I shouldn’t like to shame myself there.’

      Ah, Florence. Isabella repressed a flash of envy, of longing. Surely it was foolish to be jealous of a child, when she herself was a great, grown lady of nineteen! But to see the treasures of Florence, the art of Bellini, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, the glorious churches and galleries and palazzi—it must be great indeed. A glory of unsurpassed beauty, of vast sophistication. A world completely unlike their quiet country existence.

      It was a world she knew only from her cousin Caterina’s letters and likely to remain that way for as long as her widowed father needed her. After he had lost her mother so many years before, he’d retreated into his own world of books and was likely to stay there, grieving over his wife. Isabella never wanted to face that herself.

      ‘Then we shall gift them with this drawing before you leave,’ Isabella told Veronica. ‘But you cannot see it just yet! Not until it is finished.’

      Veronica sighed deeply with disappointment and Isabella laughed at her pout. Surely the child had a long distance to go before she found that betrothal and set to running her own household! Much like Isabella, who was long past the age to marry, but who couldn’t imagine being a wife. She liked being herself far too much to submit to the will of a husband.

      And she had watched what had happened to her father when her beautiful mother died all those years ago. The way he had retreated into himself, giving into the grief of losing his wife so completely he even forgot he had a daughter for a time. She could not bear to feel thus herself. Her art took all her emotion.

      ‘Run along now, little bird,’ Isabella said. ‘Your mama will be looking for you.’

      Veronica stood up, shaking out her skirts, the book tucked beneath her arm. ‘Shall we meet again tomorrow, madonna?’

      ‘Of course, if it does not rain. We want to finish this before you go, no?’

      Veronica gave her one last giggle, then spun around and dashed out of the sunny grove, her gown a pink blur until she disappeared down a slope towards her parents’ villa.

      Isabella slid a thin piece of paper over the sketch to keep it from smudging before carefully closing the book. The pages were almost full now, the pristine whiteness covered with black-and-grey images of flowers, trees, houses, people, imaginary scenes. Anything that caught her eye and challenged her to capture its essence in lines and planes.

      She packed the precious volume carefully in a basket, along with her charcoal box