Those who’d insisted on paying him with goods instead of that asked-for help, he’d had leave the stuff in front of Harrow’s hole. It kept disappearing, so he assumed Harrow was getting most of it. He doubted anyone else was. That part of Castello had become mysteriously free from crime of late . . .
He sighed, and got to his feet. It was hard, trying to think out all the ramifications of something. He was so used to living one day at a time, not thinking beyond the needs of the season. Now—
Now it was time for dancing lessons. Pah. Dancing lessons. He’d been here a week and needed to get out and see Kat. But he wasn’t sure what to tell her. She was a commoner, a smuggler. He was now one of the Case Vecchie. How was she going to take that? She was the greatest darling in nature. But touchy about her home. It must be very simple and poor and she didn’t seem to want him to know where it was.
How would he handle that, now? How would he handle anything?
He didn’t know. All he knew was the meaning of the sword, there in its rightful place.
Dell’este steel. Dell’este honor. It had been returned to him. He had no choice but to honor it. Nor, he discovered, probing his heart, did he have any desire not to honor it.
Chapter 64
Light flickered up ahead as a door opened and closed. A figure entered the corridor. “Who is it?” snapped an elderly female voice in irritation.
“Your pardon, milady,” Marco said humbly, “I’m afraid I took a wrong turn somewhere.”
He paused in the unfamiliar stuffy, darkened corridor. Marco realized that, with his mind preoccupied with the conversation just finished with Petro, he’d gotten lost. This area of Casa Dorma was part of the Family’s living quarters—and, apparently, an old and poorly maintained one. The perfume in the single lamp along this stretch of hallway could not mask the faint odor of mildew, nor the olive origin of the oil it burned.
Marco’s night sight had always been good; he had no difficulty seeing who it was that had accosted him. Milady Rosanna Dorma—Petro’s mother—and she didn’t look well. Her skin was grayish, a vein throbbed in her temple, and her eyes seemed to be all pupil. She was pressing her right hand to her temple, and supporting herself against the corridor wall with her left. Prudence said that he should go back and leave her alone. Concern and the healing instinct said she was in no shape to be left alone. He moved quickly to her side, footsteps sounding hollow in the uncarpeted corridor, intending to ask if he could be of service to her, since he’d inadvertently intruded on her privacy.
But she began trembling the moment he came into view, staring at him as if he was a thing out of nightmare. She crowded back against the corridor wall—and when he held out his hand to steady her, she shrieked, spasmed, and fell to the floor.
Prudence dictated that he find help: Doctor Rigannio, or Petro Dorma.
And by the time I find help she may be dead—
He was on his knees beside her in an eye-blink, then cradling her in his arms to protect her from injuring herself with the convulsions she was suffering. He held her head against his shoulder, and pinioned her wrists in one long hand. She was so frail, it took next to nothing to restrain her.
“Ernesto!” she cried shrilly. “Ernesto, no! Not again! Dear God, not again!” She writhed in his arms, trying to free her hands, trying to reach for something.
Dilated eyes, racing pulse, clammy skin. Sweat beading the brow, and hallucinations. By that throbbing vein in the temple, probably a blinding headache. Symptoms tumbled together in his mind and formed an answer.
Lotos dreams. He’d seen it in the Jesolo with blue-lotos addicts. Either induced, or flashback; it didn’t matter which. And in a patient as obviously weakened as this one was, if someone didn’t do something, now—she was in very real danger of never coming out again.