Loving Lucianna

Chapter 10

            Serafino went very stiff. “Signore, whatever Lucianna has told you of me in an attempt to lessen in your sight her own guilt is, at the very least, a vast distortion of my misdeeds. I may have, on a rare occasion, requested a small loan from her, but its was she who chose to maintain her silence after I revealed to her the truth of her birth, so that she might not lose the many privileges she had acquired by beguiling a friendship with a wealthy merchant’s daughter. Perhaps I was wrong to help her maintain her deceit, but in truth, I saw it as a kindness. Imagine what her future would have been had Cosimo Gallo thrust her out, a young, pretty woman, into the streets of Venice?”

            “Oh, I do not doubt in the least that is the very fear you preyed upon with her. A kindness? Pah! You are a scurrilous bully of a scoundrel. To call yourself her brother is to befoul the word.”

            Serafino gave a dramatic sigh. “You are overwrought, signore, for which I cannot blame you. It was most certainly a terrible shock to learn how the woman you loved has deceived you. I cannot express to you the depths of my own disappointment, but what can one do? ‘Blood will out,’ as they say, and I fear she will always be a thief’s daughter. The moment I saw your ring in her hand and realized she had returned to her pilfering ways—”

            Sir Balduin snapped his fist into Serafino’s face and watched with satisfaction as the blow threw him into a sprawl across the stove.

            “Che diavolo!” Serafino exclaimed, dropping the frying pan so he could press his hand to the eye that Sir Balduin had clouted shut.

            Sir Balduin resisted the impulse to close the other in similar fashion. Whatever whim of fate had thought it amusing to match the green hue of Lucianna’s eyes with this dastard’s gaze should be laughing a little less gleefully now. The auburn hair dusted with silver still mocked him, though, and kept his fist clenched in eagerness to deal another rebuke.

            “Malign her again,” Sir Balduin warned, “and next time I will break your nose. You may well thank the heavens I am not wearing my sword.”

            The eye that was not swelling behind Serafino’s palm flared with alarm. “Malign her? My only sin was in not telling you of her iniquitous character as soon as I arrived. For that, si, I confess myself at fault, and for that I will forgive this unwarranted attack of yours. But signore, it was not I who attempted to steal your ring. You saw her for yourself—”

            “She had no need to steal my ring,” Sir Balduin cut him off. “I had given it to her freely. She could have fled with you and it in the middle of the night if she’d wished to make off with it, instead of flinging it back at me—twice.”

            Sir Balduin took a step forward, prompting Serafino to scurry away from the stove, but not before he bent down to scoop up the frying pan again as he rolled his one good eye apprehensively in Sir Balduin’s direction. Sir Balduin’s blood had begun a familiar pumping, reminding him of the days before his injury when he had ridden into battle at the sides of the masters of Vere. Truly, his palm itched for the feel of a sword hilt in his hand.

            “You, on the other hand,” Sir Balduin said, stalking Serafino around the edges of the kitchen, “comforted me in the garden while I bemoaned that disastrous song I sang to her. You asked, as I recall, rather probing questions about my means to support a wife, and then you embraced me with the assurance that you would help plead my cause with her. The ring was most certainly still around my neck when I rose from bed yester-morning. I recall feeling its weight against my chest as I dined.” Or more precisely during his melodic debacle. “So it must have been sometime after I retreated to the garden that it disappeared. Had a servant found it, it would have been promptly returned to me, for Sir Triston has made a thorough sweep of the corrupt hirelings of his father’s day. But your embrace—it startled me. Sufficiently so that I suspect I did not notice when you undid the chain’s clasp and slipped chain and ring together from my neck.”