Frescoes and marble and tiles.
Hand-carved crosses and clocks and furniture that beat us by centuries.
The light was dim, only coming from windows in other rooms, almost as if thecastellohad no electricity, only fireplaces and candles to shimmer the panes and perfume the air come nightfall.
“Hm?” I met the livery lady’s eyes after removing my own from the interior. She had spoken but I wasn’t paying attention.
Her gaze shifted from me to Mia. “Shall I take her?” she asked in Italian.
“No. She’ll stay with me.”
She turned the look on the women standing beside me, silently asking them the same question. Each women answered the same as I did.
The lady in livery nodded, her unspoken reaction easy to read—whatever you want—and directed us to a dining room filled with platters of food.
The tall windows lining the walls gave plenty of natural light to see all the spectacular details that gave the place character. At night when the candlelight danced on the surfaces in glimmering strokes, it would appear enchanted. The scene was easy to imagine and create in my head.
“My God,” Juliette said, gazing around the dining room. “This is fit for royalty.”
“You’ve never been here?” Carmen asked Rosaria.
“We were welcome to the smaller villas, but not this one. I’ve heard rumors though. Rocco substantiated them. He has only been here once or twice. After Marzio—” She waved a hand, refusing to finish the thought. “It was sealed tight.”
“There are more places like this one?”
“I believe so. Though this one holds the most history. The Faustis are careful about their secrets. If things go wrong,poof, a place emerges from the ground as though by magic for them. There are even places that are rumored to have been purchased for a mistress or two. Nothing as grand as this, of course. The wife always gets the better places—the most in general. Or it would be an insult.”
Carmen snorted. “So much for loyalty.”
“Men will be men. Especially men like ours.” Rosaria gave me and Juliette a pointed look, but it didn’t linger.
Rosaria would always be Rosaria, but she’d learned that some battles she couldn’t win with me. It seemed like she felt the same resolve from Juliette. She and Carmen had grown close, and even though I believed that Carmen would give Dario hell over taking mistresses, I wasn’t sure what she and Rosaria agreed on concerning this life.
Another attendant took Mia’s stroller and brought it to the back of the room after I took her out of it. Ettore watched us as though he was worried that one of us might pocket something. I rolled my eyes and strolled to one of the windows, kissing Mia’s hands as she put them close to my mouth.
She wanted to get down, but I kept her against me, promising her she could in a bit. We were going to look for birds outside of the window. This caught her attention, and she beat her hands against the glass, calling,irdie.
When some of them flew away from her noise, her eyes grew wide and she turned to look at me, opening and closing her hands, as if to ask,where’d they go, mamma?
“They like quiet,” I whispered. “They’re so tiny, and noise scares them, so we need to whisper and be gentle. It’s important, baby girl, to respect the birds just as much as we respect the lions. All living things matter, no matter how small.”
Mia made a much quieter noise, and I kissed her cheek, pointing to another bird. A much bigger one. A swan. It was white, except for her face, which had a black mask. She waddled toward some unnoticed water source.
Searching, searching, searching, I found the swan’s ending destination.
Beyond the tall shrubs of the labyrinth lived a giant.
A colossal sculpture rose from the ground, bracing himself against the land, his massive feet dug into the grass and soil. One of his hands was pressed against either a snake or dragon’s head. Narrowing my eyes, I thought it resembled a snake more than a dragon.
The giant was looking down at the serpentine creature, his head covered in hair, his beard so long that it covered what would have been his exposed parts—he was naked, all of his finest qualities on display. Muscular shoulders, arms, and legs.
He was lifted from the ground by a mound of rock half covered with overgrown greenery, shrouded by tall trees on all sides. Before him, a pond stretched out, where the water from the serpent’s mouth trickled down in a slow stream.
It had to be at least from the fifteenth or sixteenth century. I had never seen anything quite like it—so real, yet so unnatural. The giant’s features were so alive in the reflection of the pond as they reached out to my husband over the surface of the water.
He’d been surrounded by his brothers as they walked the bank, but he had stopped, looking down, and the two reflections wavered across from one another.
If it wasn’t for Juliette kissing Mia’s hands, I wouldn’t have noticed the women hovering around me, taking in the scene and all that existed beyond the castle, or the heartbreaking tenor’s voice that graced the hidden speakers in the house.
