My dearest daughter,it began in Orianna’s elegant and familiar hand.The news is not what I had hoped to be able to send you after all this time, but all is not lost. The knowledge that you have left Sebastiano Rovere is now public, as is our quest for an annulment for you. Padre Bonamico has presented our request for your marriage’s dissolution to the Holy See itself, traveling to Rome to do so. Your husband has appealed to his kinsman, Cardinal Rovere, to block any such action. Your grandfather in Venice has countered with his own pleas to the two cardinals from his own city. Regretfully, these matters take time, and the bribes both of our factions have paid so far to gain the Church’s ear have been considerable. Unfortunately, more time is needed to gain a favorable result for our side. Lorenzo di Medici himself is sympathetic to your plight, and has offered his own courier to carry this message to you. But our family is not without its own resources, influence, and friends. Your husband carries on, as usual holding the orgies for which he has now become infamous, and appears less and less in the justice courts of the city. Honest folk have become distrusting of him. It is possible that his worsening and dissolute life will kill him sooner rather than later. Your father’s business continues to thrive, as do your siblings. Francesca will be thirteen in the spring, and I have decided to allow her to accompany me to Mass then rather than wait until next year. Your grandfather wishes her to marry into a Venetian family, and so would have her join him and my stepmother after she turns thirteen so she may become used to Venetian ways, and to Venice itself. I wish you were here to see her, my darling Bianca. She misses you greatly. Your father and I miss you also, but take comfort in the fact that you are safe at Luce Stellare. God bless you until we meet again. Your loving mother, Orianna Pietro d’Angelo.
Bianca laid the parchment aside with a sigh.
“Well,” Agata said, “it is not what you hoped for, I know, but it could be worse.”
Bianca laughed. “No, it is not what I hoped for, but at least now we have an idea of where things are at for us.”
“We are stuck in the country, is where we are,” Agata grumbled.
“I thought you were finding a bit of distraction with Ugo,” Bianca teased her.
Agata colored.“Signora!”she said.
“I have eyes,” Bianca told her.
“Filomena talks too much,” Agata said.
“He is a nice fellow,” Bianca told her servingwoman. “If you decided that you wanted a husband, you could not do as well in Florence. I understand that Ugo has his own cottage.”
“With an old mother installed in it,” Agata said sourly. “I don’t believe he is a man for marriage at all.”
“Ahh,” Bianca said, “so there is the problem. Well, it will eventually solve itself, I am certain.”
The prince came to the villa early the next afternoon, riding down the beach on a large gray stallion with a black mane and tail. The animal clambered up the steep path to be stabled out of the rain by Primo. Agata noted how Bianca lit up as the prince came into her little library, where a fire now burned to take the chill off the day.
“Amir!” she exclaimed as he was ushered into her presence. He was carrying something beneath his arm.
“I didn’t know if you had a chessboard,” he said as the box he carried was opened to reveal just that. There was also a small box that held two sets of pieces, one in white marble, the other in red marble.
“You don’t know if I play,” she said to him. In truth, she was a talented chess player.
“If you don’t, I will teach you,” he replied. “I have no desire to travel into the city in such inclement weather, and I am bored alone with my servants. Are you not bored?”
She laughed. “Yes, I am,” she admitted.
They played several games of chess that afternoon, but when he noticed that the light was beginning to fade, he arose. “I must go before I am unable to find my way back home and my horse and I end up in the sea,” he told her. “I’ll come back earlier tomorrow if the rains continue. If the weather clears, we’ll walk together.”
“Your mood is better for his visit,” Agata noted with a smile. “He is a good man for all he is a foreigner. Gemma is disappointed she did not get to feed him.”
“When he comes next, I will invite him to dine,” Bianca replied. That night she fell asleep listening to the rain on the tiled roof beating against the shutters that had been pulled over her windows. Bianca was warm and cozy beneath her down coverlet. Jamila slept near her head, purring contentedly, lulling her mistress into a delicious dream state where she was free to be with her prince.
They began to ride together on the beach on sunny days and played chess on the days when the weather was inclement. The days grew shorter, the nights longer, and Bianca’s seventeenth natal day came. The year she had turned fifteen had been the first she had ever been away from her family. She had been in her husband’s house then. But last year and now this year she celebrated quietly at Luce Stellare. To her great surprise, Prince Amir brought her a gift.
“How did you know?” she asked him, eager to open the white silk bag he gave her. What was in it?
“A little bird mentioned it in passing,” he replied with a smile. Her delight was so pleasing to see. “Open your gift, Bianca.”
She did, pouring its contents into her palm. The rope of black pearls brought a gasp from her slender throat. She dropped the bag, letting the pearls extend to their length from her fingers. “Ohh,signore, they are beautiful!” she exclaimed. Then she sighed reluctantly. “But I cannot accept them, and you surely know the reason why,” Bianca told him. Picking up the bag, she went to pour the pearls back into it, but he took the rope from her hands. Standing before her, he slipped them over her head.
“Let me see them displayed once, as they should be,” he said to her. “I will defer to your honor, and keep them for the day you can accept them freely. I chose each pearl myself to be certain it was perfect and without blemish, as you are.” He stepped back to look at the necklace, and considered how it would look against her unclad body.
As if she could hear his thoughts, Bianca blushed. His gaze was far too warm, and his dark blue eyes lingered on the pearls where they brushed the swell of her breasts. She lifted the jewels off, and gently poured them back into the white silk bag, which she then reluctantly handed to him. “I do thank you for the thought,” Bianca told him. “I don’t believe I ever had anything as lovely.”
“Did not Rovere cover you in jewels?” Amir wanted to know.
Bianca laughed. “Other than a few large and ugly pieces, which I gladly left behind when I fled his house, no. He bought what was most expensive, not what was tasteful or beautiful. The jewelers all knew that. Anything delicately made, he passed over for large pieces that could be displayed to his advantage, not the wearer’s.”
At her invitation, Amir remained for the afternoon meal. Gemma served a lovely white fish broiled in butter and lemon, along with a dish of small pasta mixed with rice and flavored with olive oil and herbs. There were artichokes and a roasted capon that had been stuffed with sage and onion. There was bread, which they dipped in olive oil, and a delicious wine to drink. It was simple but surprisingly satisfactory. They were just finishing their meal when they heard the sound of horses’ hooves outside.
