Lady Midnight (2 page)

She managed to stand, clinging to the thin bedpost.

But the instant she let go, she collapsed into a heap, crying out at the pain as she struck the hard floor. Helpless tears, dampening the bandage and dripping down her chin onto her fisted hands.

"Maledizione!"
she sobbed.

The loud patter of footsteps echoed outside the room, and the door flew open to reveal a short, plump woman with black and silver braids wound about her head and a white apron over a plain black dress.

Katerina sniffled as she stared up at the woman. Surely she remembered her from the beach?

There,
she thought.
You remembered something else. Things are not entirely hopeless.

"Signorina! Why are you out of bed?" the woman—Maria?—cried. She bustled across the floor to slip her arms around Katerina's prone body and haul her upright. The woman might be short, but she proved to be strong, having Katerina tucked back into bed before she could even notice the new waves of pain. "If you needed something, you should have called for me."

Katerina sank back into the soft pillows with a grateful sigh. "I wasn't sure anyone else was here."

"I was just right down the stairs, in the kitchen. Do you remember me?"

"You are Maria," she whispered.

Maria beamed, as if she were a governess and Katerina her star pupil. "
Va bene!
Your memory is coming back, yes?" She smoothed out the rumpled blankets, tucking them warmly about Katerina's aching legs. "Now, what was it you needed? A drink of water, maybe?"

Katerina suddenly realized that she
was
burning with thirst. Her throat felt like coarse stone. "Oh, yes, Maria!
Molte grazie."

Maria poured out a glass of water from the pitcher on the table and watched with satisfied approval as Katerina drank deeply. "You do look better today. Not so pale. You were like a ghost!"

"I felt like one," Katerina murmured. Her throat felt better after the water, but her cheek still throbbed. "How long have I been here?"

"This is the third day."

"Three days!" Katerina cried. "So long?"

"We were not sure you would live. You were so feverish, and delirious! Calling out for your mama." Maria laid her strong, callused fingers against Katerina's brow. "You feel a bit cooler. But not out of danger yet, I think."

Katerina did feel warm, yet also strangely chilled. It was a cold that came not from the sun-warmed room around her, but from deep inside herself, spreading a clammy touch outward to her skin. She sank down under the shelter of the blankets until they covered her to the chin. "It is kind of you to look after a stranger, Maria."

"Pah!" Maria protested with a laugh. "Though I'm sorry you're injured, signorina, I have truly enjoyed nursing you. All my children are grown and gone. They no longer need old Maria. But tell me, little one, how did you come to wash up on our beach?"

Katerina frowned, all of her confusion, her dizziness, rushing back to her. "I—I do not know for certain. I was on a boat, but I'm not sure what happened."

Maria
tsked
as she went about the room fastening the curtains shut and rearranging the bowl and pitcher on the table. "You must have been caught in the storm."

"Storm?"

"Oh, it was a big one! I was fortunate that my husband, Paolo, and our sons didn't go out that day to fish. It blew up very suddenly, when only that morning it was sunny and clear. You poor girl, to be out in it! Do you remember who was with you? What happened to them?"

Them?
A vision flashed across Katerina's mind, like a jolt of silver lightning. There was a woman, with black hair like Katerina's own. A ruby necklace flashed as the woman laughed, her head thrown back in merry abandonment. A handsome, fair-haired gentleman, older but still trim and vigorous, held the woman in his arms, twirling as if in a wild dance. A swirl of color, noise, music.

Then they were gone.

"Yes," she whispered. "Did anyone else wash ashore near here? Another woman, or an older gentleman with pale hair?"

Maria shook her head sadly. "No,
cara,
I'm sorry. You were all alone. But then, we're very isolated here, and there are beaches and villages all along the shore. Someone may be looking for you there!"

Perhaps—but deep in her heart, Katerina knew it was not so. Those people, whoever they were, were gone forever.

Downstairs, a door slammed loudly, and a man called out, "Maria! Are you here?"

"That will be my Paolo, wanting his supper," Maria said, hurrying back to the door. "I will bring you some soup and bread later,
cara.
It will help you get your strength back. For now, just get some sleep."

"Yes," Katerina muttered. That tiny flash of memory had left her even weaker in its wake, her very bones aching with exhaustion. "I do want to sleep...."

* * *

That night, in the deepest purple black of the witching hour, her fever returned with a vengeful force. With its renewed heat came frenzied dreams, as if her entire life replayed on the stage of her mind.

She saw the house where she lived, her mother's house, a wide, low palazzo on a canal in Venice. In her dream, she stood in a sunlit drawing room, surrounded by gilded furniture upholstered in lavender-and-cream brocade, precious paintings, and objets d'art. That black-haired woman—her mother—lounged on a violet satin chaise placed beneath a portrait of herself. The painted woman, like the living one, was draped in silks, sapphires, and amethysts. She was so very beautiful. Beautiful like a Greek statue or a faraway star, not like a real flesh and blood woman at all. Not like a mother.

Across from her in this glorious room sat two gentlemen. One of them was the blond older man, a person of distinguished features and elegant clothing. The other man was younger, and so handsome he was entirely unreal. His dark hair, rich as the night, waved back from his perfect oval face, and his gray eyes lit from within as he saw Katerina. He came toward her, reaching for her hand and lifting it to his lips for a worshipful kiss on her fingertips.
My Beatrice, my Renaissance princess,
he said.

And her mother laughed, her dangling amethyst earrings clicking and sparkling with amusement. "Katerina, darling! Edward has come to see us, you see, and he has brought his so charming friend Sir Julian Kirkwood. I see you remember how he admired you at the
principessa'
s ball last week. He has been so impatient for your arrival today...."

Even as Katerina stepped closer to Sir Julian, the dream scene shifted. She was no longer in the palatial drawing room but on a gleaming white yacht. Her mother's friend Edward's white yacht. He held her mother by the hand as he led her aboard, at the head of a large procession of guests. Her mother's ruby necklace sparkled in the innocent sunlight.

She saw their merry party live again, as vivid as it had been on that glorious day. There were great quantities of such delicacies as pate, lobster patties, crab salad, white soup. Champagne flowed in great, golden quantities as laughter grew louder and chatter brighter. The elegantly dressed women perched in the men's laps, their white bosoms like ivory against silk bodices and jeweled necklaces. Someone played naughty songs on a pianoforte, and Edward danced with Katerina's mother around the salon, waltzing faster and faster until she laughed breathlessly and cried out, "Edward,
caro mio,
slow down or I shall faint!"

And Sir Julian Kirkwood asked Katerina herself to dance. Their waltz was not as exuberant as her mother's, but he held her close, so close she could smell the light scent of his citrus cologne, could feel the fleeting brush of his lips against her hair.

He was meant to be her first lover—she knew that. And he was a fine choice: handsome, rich, generous, cultured. But there was something—something odd about him, something too intense in the way he watched her, the way he called her his "Beatrice," like she was a character in a Dante poem and not a real person at all. Her mother told her it was just girlish nerves, that she had to remember her training and look to her future.

This is what my life will always be like,
she thought as they swayed through their dance. Handsome men who admired her, jewels, champagne, music, laughter, wild gaiety. Men who made her uneasy, but whom she had to charm. It all stretched before her in an endless vista of uncertainty and fear.

Then the skies, so bright and promising when they embarked on their journey, darkened ominously. The wind whipped up faster, colder, shrieking past the windows. The rain fell in slate gray sheets. Lightning sparked a poisonous yellow. Thunder cracked, louder and ever louder. The yacht tilted and pitched, tossing all the furniture that wasn't bolted down across the floor in a welter of splintered gilt and shredded satin.

The last thing Katerina remembered was a horrible explosion and the boat tilting precariously to one side. There were shouts, and a piercing, terrified scream—surely not her own?

She reached out desperately for her mother, but Lucrezia slid inexorably away from Katerina, falling down the steeply pitched deck into the roiling black water.

"Mother! Mother!" Katerina screamed, again and again, until the cold waves closed over her own head, and she reached out to grasp a large, rough piece of floating wood....

She awoke, gasping for breath, as if the water still filled her lungs. The sweat-soaked bedclothes were twisted around her shaking limbs, and she was chilled to her very core. She buried her face in the pillows, trying to blot out the horrible images of watery death.

"Mother," she whispered, even though she knew all too well that there could be no answer. Her mother was gone, along with her kind English protector, Edward, the Duke of Salton. And the handsome, admiring Sir Julian Kirkwood—the man Katerina had thought would one day be her own protector.

She herself could easily have died with them, and that horrifying thought made her cry out again, a pitiful wail muffled in the linens.

Katerina turned her head to rest her tearstained cheek on the pillow—and noticed a small wispy movement in the shadows.

She raised herself up to peer closer.

It was a woman, or at least the outline of one. Katerina's first thought was that it must be Maria, but Maria was short and stout. This woman was tall and willow slender. Then the figure stepped into a pale beam of moonlight that fell from one of the high windows, and cold shock broke like one of those deadly waves over Katerina's heart.

"No," she breathed aloud.

The woman was her mother. Yet that could not be! Katerina had seen her mother swallowed by the sea, right before her very eyes. No one had come ashore besides herself—Maria had said so. But here Lucrezia was, as beautiful as ever, standing beside her daughter's bed clad in a white silken gown, like opals or stars. Her long, straight curtain of black hair, gilded by the moon, fell over her shoulders. There was a strange translucence to her fair skin, a shining quality that came from within.

This must be another fever dream,
Katerina realized with a start. She held out her shaking hand to the figure, and whispered, "Mother? Is it you?"

Her mother reached out her own hand, and a coolness like a sweet spring breeze wafted over Katerina's fingertips. "It is me, my Katerina, 'the prettiest Kate in Christendom.' I
am
a dream, but one I hope you will remember when you awake."

It had to be her mother, even though it was a dream—no one else quoted her name from
The Taming of the Shrew,
teasing her about being "bonny Kate,"

"sometimes Kate the curst." Her head spun in confused circles. She longed to leap up, to reach for her mother, but she feared that to do so would make this precious vision vanish like so much smoke. "Why are you here?"

"Cara
mia,
you have been given a wonderful chance. A chance many people long for, beg for, but few are given. The chance to become—someone else."

Kate shook her head. She was Katerina Bruni, daughter of the glorious Lucrezia Bruni, envied by girls all over the city of Venice—no one would ever believe she could be someone else. Not even
she
ever believed it. "What do you mean? I only want to be
me."

"No. I know the truth of this, you see, because I always wanted this chance for myself."

This was the first time Katerina had ever heard such a wild thing. Lucrezia Bruni had always been so supremely self-confident, so beautiful and perfect, carrying her fame—fame inherited from her own mother, Giavanna Bruni—lightly on her velvet-clad shoulders. Katerina remembered her mother laughing on that final day, her entire being aglow with gaiety. "But why? You were famous—everyone adored you. You were so happy. We were
both
happy, in our lovely home."

Her mother gave her a small, sad smile, so unlike her old merry grins. "My dearest girl. I only pretended to be happy—I was a wonderful actress, learned at my mother's knee. I knew my place in life from the time I was a tiny child. I could never truly be anything different. And I thought
you
could never be, either. When I saw how beautiful you were growing, I knew only that you would be desired, sought after, that you would be rich. But you can be so much, have so much more! I know you can. Fame and jewels, my bonny Kate, can never feed a lonely heart. You were truly the only good, fine thing I ever had and I failed you."