Lucianna Read online

  “Stop thinking!” he commanded her.

  Lucianna laughed. “Stop attempting to read my thoughts,” she teased him. “You cannot.”

  “One day I will,” he promised her.

  “Perhaps,” she said with a smile. Then she slipped from his embrace. “I must write to my mother now, and to my father as well if these messages are to go off first thing tomorrow morning. And there is Luca to instruct from here, and the Kiras.”

  “Go,” he said. He was pleased she understood him, and would not attempt to go to London.

  Lucianna smiled up at him, and, turning, left him. Men could be so simple, she thought. She could see he was content that she would obey his directive like a good wife. Yet her responsibilities to her father’s guild could not be ignored. She wrote first to David Kira in London, telling him of her marriage and informing him that her personal wealth would, according to her marriage contract, remain hers.

  “How clever she is,” Yedda Kira said to her husband when he told her of the missive he had received from the new Countess of Lisle. “She has his title and has managed to keep what is her own.”

  “Yes,” David Kira agreed. “A strong woman and an astute one as well. She wants me to tell our cousin, Baram, that she has written to Florence to advise her father to send for her brother so he may now learn from him while advancing Baram to be in charge of the London shop permanently.”

  Yedda clapped her hands in delight. “This is such an opportunity for him,” she said, pleased.

  • • •

  In Florence, Giovanni Pietro d’Angelo read his third daughter’s letter to him, well pleased. He had always prided himself on being able to understand other people, and he had not been wrong about the Earl of Lisle. Robert Minton had fallen in love with Lucianna here in Florence, and it was not just a passing fancy. He had suspected if the young couple had the opportunity to be together more, the earl would make Lucianna his wife.

  Orianna was not as pleased. “She has wed without her parents. What will this English king, and his mother our daughter so admires, think of such rash behavior?” she fretted.

  “She is a nobleman’s wife, my dear,” her husband answered. “Is that not what you wanted for our daughters? Wealth and titles?”

  “And where has my pride gotten me?” Orianna surprised him by replying. “We cannot acknowledge Bianca’s liaison, nor ever know the granddaughter she gave us. Francesca is widowed after all the difficulty we had in getting her to wed her duke. She will never marry again, she says, and I must believe her, for she has a will of iron. And now this third daughter has wed without us in a foreign land. I am surely cursed, Gio.”

  “We can visit England next year,” he promised her, “and do not forget we still have our fourth daughter to match.”

  “I despair of Serena,” Orianna told him. “She is almost eighteen, and past her prime for a husband. She will not be biddable as Lucianna was when we accepted the bookseller as a husband for her. But at least Luca will be coming home if you accept Lucianna’s advice.”

  “I do,” he said. “Marco tries, but his heart is not in silk. It is not in anything that I can see. I thought when you forgave him, it would encourage him to be the young man he once was. Lucianna says that Luca is slow to learn, but he has learned enough for me to teach him the rest of what he must know to take over the family enterprise. I will send for our youngest son immediately.”

  • • •

  When Lucianna wrote to her twin brother what she had written to their father, he was, to her surprise, not pleased. Leaving Baram Kira with the shop, he came to Wye Court to speak with his sister.

  “I like London,” he said. “I am content to remain here for the time being. I have begun to make friends,” Luca told Lucianna.

  “You have learned much from me,” she said, “but you are not really ready to manage a shop on your own, Brother.”

  “Let us not pretend, Sister,” he replied. “We both know when you are not there it is Baram Kira who manages our silk trade.”

  “Aye, it is,” she agreed pleasantly, “and that is why you need to return to Florence so Father may teach you further. Our father grows older, and Marco will never take over our family’s enterprise from him. He doesn’t care, and he cannot understand that without a thriving business, our family cannot survive. It will take several weeks for my letter to reach Father in Florence. Then it will take several weeks for him to reply, Luca. You probably have the summer before you must return to Florence. You cannot shirk your duty to the family.”

  “I know,” he admitted. “Like you, I was enjoying my freedom. You know as well as I do that when I return home, they will have found a wife for me. I will be married, and my life set into the pattern of a silk merchant. I realize I have no choice, but I had hoped . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Lucianna felt sudden pity for this twin brother who had wanted nothing more in his life than a career as a military man. “You have the summer,” she reminded him once again. “Let Baram run the shop, and enjoy your friends while you can. It will not be so bad in Florence, and a pretty wife should ease your time.”

  “If she is pretty, but our parents will wisely seek a girl with the largest dower portion. It is my experience the larger the dower, the uglier the bride,” he said gloomily.

  Lucianna laughed at this, but he was probably correct. “Well,” she said cheerfully, “then you will pick an extraordinarily pretty mistress, and be the envy of all.”

  Now it was Luca’s turn to laugh. “You have always had the gift of taking a bad situation and somehow making it better, Sister.” He remained at Wye Court for several days before returning to London.

  “Now, perhaps,” the earl said as his brother-in-law rode off, “I may be alone with my bride.”

  “Now?” she teased him mischievously, giving him a quick kiss.

  “Nay, damn it! This morning I must listen to complaints, sort out disagreements, and sit in judgment of those accused of minor misdemeanors. I do this once a month. It will last much of the day.”

  “Then go and be a good lord. We have the evening ahead of us, do we not?” she answered.

  The evening could not come quickly enough, Robert Minton thought. He had discovered he could not get enough of his beautiful wife. As for Lucianna, she was an eager student of his tutoring, and he smiled to himself, remembering their nights together. It seemed that the day would never end. He noticed that the warmer weather seemed to bring more complaints and disagreements between neighbors. There was a charge of theft to judge, but upon hearing the complaint, the earl realized it was simply just another misunderstanding between two neighbors.

  One man, who had promised two sheep to his neighbor’s son in exchange for marrying his daughter, had not delivered the dower portion, and the bride was now with child. The bridegroom was threatening to return her unless her dower was paid. The families brought the matter to Father Paul, who brought it to the earl.

  “Why haven’t you given your daughter’s dower to her husband?” the earl asked the bride’s father.

  “I promised him two ewes, but one of the ewes he chose is with lamb now. I asked him to choose another ewe, but he would not. The creature is big, and may birth twins, my lord. He will gain four sheep for my daughter instead of two. It is not fair,” the bride’s father protested. “My daughter is not worth four sheep.”

  The earl turned to the bridegroom. “Why did you choose that particular ewe that you cannot pick another?”

  “She looked healthy, my lord,” was his answer.

  “Are any of your sheep unhealthy?” the earl asked the bride’s father. He wondered why the bride wasn’t worth four sheep, but that was not the difficulty. The girl’s sire was accusing her husband of theft.

  “I possess a small flock of six, my lord. All are healthy.”

  “Withdraw the charge of theft against your so
n-in-law,” the earl ordered the man. Then he turned to the bridegroom. “And Father Paul will choose a second sheep for you,” he said to the younger man. “The ewe with her lambs remains with your wife’s father. You were promised two sheep, not three or four.”

  “If he will accept what is due him, I will gladly withdraw the charges, my lord.”

  Later that evening, Robert Minton told Lucianna the story of his day, and she laughed. “I was surprised when the farmer said his daughter wasn’t worth more than two sheep,” he said.

  “Have you seen the lass?” his wife asked.

  “Nay,” the earl admitted.

  “Now, when I ride out, I shall have to see who she is,” Lucianna said, “or if her sire is merely mean and beggarly. What an unkind thing to say about his child, even if it were true.”

  “You are worth more than two sheep,” the earl said to his wife.

  “And how many sheep would you have offered my father for me?” Lucianna asked him, chuckling.

  “There aren’t enough sheep in the wide world,” he responded with a grin.

  “Oh, wicked man!” Lucianna said. “You have sought to flatter me beyond reason.”

  “And have I?” he queried her.

  “Perhaps,” she replied.

  Robert Minton laughed. “Will you never give me the advantage, amore mia?”

  “Why, my lord, you are a man. Do not men always have the advantage?” she said innocently.

  He laughed again. “You are too quick-witted by far, my Florentine wife. I believe if I chose to join the court, you would quickly gain a reputation that now is only attributed to the king’s mother.” He pulled her into his arms.

  Lucianna slipped her arms about his neck. “I don’t want to live at the court,” she said. “I would have little patience with the many ladies who would look down on me.”

  “You are the Countess of Lisle,” he said. “No one would dare look down on the Countess of Lisle.”

  “I am a silk merchant’s daughter who has married above her station, and worse, engaged in public trade,” she reminded him.

  “Then how fortuitous that we both prefer living in the country,” he remarked, and he began to kiss her.

  She loved his kisses. They were slow and deep, and she found herself tingling with every one. This was marriage as she had always imagined it would be. Though she remained silent, Lucianna knew that she had fallen deeply in love with her husband. She wondered if all women were as fortunate as she suddenly realized she was. She hoped Bianca was, and that Francesca had been. She hoped Serena would find the same happiness one day as they had, she thought, as her husband began to make love to her.

  His hands caressed her gently as he pushed her chemise up from her. “You are so beautiful,” he told her as he bent to kiss her nipples.

  She ran her hands through his dark hair, caressing the nape of his neck. “I have fallen in love with you, my lord,” she murmured to him.

  “You fell in love with me months ago. You are just now willing to admit it, amore mia,” he replied.

  “You are so vain,” she told him.

  “We are so fortunate in each other, Lucianna,” he said softly.

  “I know,” she said, smiling up at him.

  Gathering her up, he carried her to their bed and laid her down. Then, stripping off his nightshirt, he joined her, pulling her back into his arms. Lucianna melted against him with a passionate sigh of delight. Their need for each other was great. Within moments of more kisses and caresses, their bodies were joined, his sheath buried deep within her.

  Lucianna cried out in pleasure with his entry. She loved being filled by him. It made her feel complete, and until he had first had her, she had never realized the pure enjoyment the joining of a man and a woman provided. “I love you!” she repeated.

  He groaned, and answered her, “As I do you, amore mia!” Then he began to move upon her, pushing them both towards an utter and complete pleasure that finally left them both exhausted and totally content.

  Chapter 13

  Baram Kira was very pleased as he read Lucianna’s missive to him. Her brother would go home to Florence by autumn, and Baram would be in charge of the shop. She had recommended him to her father, and the head of the Florentine silk merchants’ guild would certainly take his daughter’s suggestion. Baram had, at last, a future and could consider taking a wife.

  One thing, however, disturbed Baram Kira. He did not like the men that Luca Pietro d’Angelo had chosen to befriend. The local gossip, to which he was quite privy, told him that they were troublemakers. Luca was a foreigner, a soldier at heart. He did not understand these Englishmen who spoke disrespectfully of King Henry. And when Luca began to share their thoughts, Baram Kira became worried.

  “He has no real claim to the throne,” Luca said. “He is a usurper.”

  “Nay,” Baram told the young Florentine. “His claim is weaker than the Duke of Clarence’s son, it is true, but his claim is through his mother, who was a great-granddaughter of King Edward the Third’s third son, John of Gaunt, and his third wife, Kathryn Swynford. Gaunt’s eldest son was King Henry the Fourth. The king’s grandmother was a French princess, wed to King Henry the Fifth.”

  “Indeed,” Luca said. “How is it you know this?”

  “I am English,” was the reply.

  “You are a Jew,” Luca answered.

  “But an English Jew,” Baram Kira told Luca.

  “And obviously an adherent of the Lancasters,” Luca noted.

  “The Kiras are loyalists,” Baram Kira said. “It is not wise for a Jew to take sides. We are simply loyal to whoever is in power.”

  “But if you could pull down a usurper from the throne, wouldn’t you want to do it?” Luca queried his companion.

  “My task is to be the best representative in London that the Florentine silk merchants’ guild can have,” Baram answered him. “Your sister tells me when you are returned to your own city, this shop will be my responsibility, Luca Pietro d’Angelo. I would do your father’s guild little good to become involved in treason. It would but taint his family, and his guild. Perhaps you will do well to follow my lead in these matters. My people have survived these centuries by being prudent and not involving themselves in matters of no concern to them.”

  Luca was surprised to be chided in such a manner. What would Baram Kira, a Jew, know of politics, the right of things? He did, however, mention what he had learned to his friends when they met later at a nearby inn. He did not, however, say from where he had obtained his information.

  “Both York and Lancaster have legitimate claims to the throne,” he was told. “But York is a stronger claim. If it were not, would this man who styles himself King Henry the Seventh have imprisoned the Duke of Clarence’s son? This Welshman must be pulled down and a proper English king crowned.”

  Luca considered this strategy and decided that such a statement was probably true. It was what a good soldier would have done. But he was curious as to why these men he had met just recently would attempt to involve him in their plot. His question was answered without his even asking as the ringleader continued.

  “We need a man experienced in the military with no loyalties to either side to approve our plans,” the man said. “You are a foreigner, and I am told you were a soldier once. Is that so?”

  “It is,” Luca answered him. This was a fact he would have ascertained before involving a stranger he met at an inn in a possibly treasonous plot. He wondered just how clever these men were, or if this talk of pulling down a king was just talk.

  “We need to get the young Earl of Warwick released from the Tower,” the man went on. “We know not how to accomplish such a task, but I suspect you would know how to help a man escape such a confinement. Help us in our endeavor, and you will be rewarded.”

  Luca did not bother telling this conspirator that g
old was the least of his worries. The man was obviously a fool, but if Luca learned more of this plot, and revealed it to his new brother-in-law, would it not increase his sister’s status as the earl’s wife? And would not King Henry be grateful? This English king was beginning to accept trading partners, the first English king to do so. If he saw the loyalty of the Florentines, would he not consider them as worthy trading partners? And would the Medici not be well pleased by such a turn of events?

  “I know little of this Tower of London other than it is considered a most worthy fortress,” he said slowly. Best to let them tell him.

  “One of our men is a guard there,” the ringleader said.

  “And he knows where your duke is housed?” Luca asked.

  “Aye! He has made us a drawing of it.”

  “I will have to study it for several days to consider the quickest, easiest way both in and out of this prison,” Luca told him.

  “We will bring it to you. Tell us where you live,” the man said.

  “Nay. Bring it to the shop of the Florentine silk merchants’ guild, and leave it with my assistant if I am not there.” He smiled. “I have just taken a mistress and must spend more time with her. You will not see me here for a time. I will inform you when I have a plan for you.”

  The ringleader nodded. “Very well,” he said. Then he sidled away from the table where Luca sat drinking.

  A fool, Luca decided. What kind of successful conspirator confided his treason to a stranger? The answer was obvious. The man actually did need his help, but he also needed someone who could be blamed if his plot failed, thus diverting attention from himself. That was cleverer than Luca would have given him credit for, which led him to consider who among the nobility was contemplating treason. If he could learn that, it would be even better.