My Cursed Highlander (44 page)

"Please, do not come near me." The furious clatter of the chain stilled Viviana's movements. "There is a sideboard to your right."

Viviana pushed aside a trough of uneaten food and set Lily's gift atop the surface all the while searching for words. She had so many questions, but knew not where to begin.

"You grew into a beautiful woman, Viviana. I can see why Lard Kraig failed to resist you."

Viviana snorted beneath her breath and wanted to share her woes, but thought better of it. "Sister De Rosa, I am—"

"Please, I insist you call me Marea. I am no longer deserving of God's epithet. Now, tell me of Lily."

"She is well." Viviana settled back atop the stool and twisted her wedding band round and round her finger. Remi's pacing could be heard outside the door and gave her some sense of comfort. "Makayla indulges her, and they giggle relentlessly."

"Lily laughs? Aloud?"

"
Sì.
She is a wonderful child." Thinking of the girls with Miocchi and the kitten eased Viviana's nerves. "Makayla is quite fond of your daughter. The two are inseparable."

"It is good she has a friend." Her voice cracked.

"Lily has more than just a friend. She has the protection the clan's chieftain. Not a day will pass that she wants for anything here at Ravenhurst." If it was the only task Viviana accomplished today, she wanted to assure the woman of Lily's well-being. Viviana had spent time with Lily reading Marea's writings. Her desire to protect Lily from Gillian was as strong as her will to end the curse.

A long pause filled the chamber before Marea sucked in a gasp of air, then coughed. "
Vae!
I'm certain Lily would prefer Makayla's friendship over yours." Her words were quiet, yet harsh.

Her comment made little sense to Viviana and then it occurred to her that Marea might be conversing with the witch. "Is she talking to you? Gillian?"

"She never stops." Her chuckle ended on a sharp whimper. "The witch has been with me since I was six summers when my mother gave me over to her and left me on the steps of
Spedale degli Innocenti
."

Viviana couldn't help but think of her own mother who'd disposed of her and Fioretta in similar fashion.

"Fear not, Vivi. I've grown quite accustomed to ignoring her insults." Again, came the uncomfortable silence, accompanied by the eerie feeling that someone was watching.

A fire popped to Viviana's left, yet the cold wrapped itself around her like a blanket of wet snow. She tuned her ears to Remi's shuffling feet and hugged herself. "Is Gillian the reason you left
Spedale degli Innocenti?
" The hurt warbling Viviana's voice was impossible to hide.

"I hope you might one day forgive me for leaving the orphanage. Had there been another way, I never would have involved you and your sister in my affairs."

Tears instantly stung Viviana's eyes. She regretted the years she'd spent resenting Marea. "I now understand why you left, and I'm certain Fioretta would have chosen a different path had she been able to foresee the outcome of her thievery."

"Her thievery? Fioretta did not steal the amulet. I gave it to her," Marea corrected, confirming what Viviana had known for years. "Oh, hush you wretched cow! Naught can be gained by your taunts now."

A quick yelp prefaced a wet cough. Marea's breathing came in short bursts and Viviana could almost hear the blood in her lungs. Damn the witch for her savagery. Viviana shot upright, but fear pinned her feet in place. "You will cease this abuse at once," Viviana demanded with a surprisingly stern voice. "I am one of the few people fighting to keep Marea alive. If my husband and his brother had their druthers, your host would be naught but a corpse. And where does that leave you, Gillian?"

Remi's pacing ceased. Silence followed.

Viviana's heart beat in her throat. She eased back onto the cuttie stool out of concern for her weakening knees and attempted to display the persona of strength. Inside her head, Viviana pictured the three of them in conversation. Old memories painted Marea's appearance. She'd always been a woman who wore her brown hair neatly tucked beneath her wimple and held herself with dignity. Viviana focused on Marea's image and tried to ignore the characterized demon sitting beside her on the bed with snakes for hair and flesh that only covered part of her skull. Viviana chided herself for mirroring Gillian's image after a charcoal rendering Angelo had once drawn.

She inhaled, swallowed, and clamped her knees with rigid fingers. "If I may continue?"

"
Sì.
Per favore
."

Seeking answers to age-old questions, Viviana drew on her memories of
Spedale degli Innocenti
. "There was a girl who accused Fioretta of stealing from you."

"Elena?"

"
Sì.
She was my friend." Those simple words shamed Viviana.

"The girl had to be quieted."

Viviana remembered the day the children were forced to witness Elena's punishment. She was bent over a wooden vat of purple dye.

"What color is it?"
Sister De Rosa had asked Elena over and over as she beat the backs of her bare legs with a switch.

"Purple. Purple..."
Elena cried, and Viviana had felt vindicated that day, now she simply felt sickened by her own heartlessness. "Elena was not being punished for dying a vestment red, was she?"

"I convinced Gillian that Elena stole the amulet. A crime she later admitted to. With Fioretta's guidance, Elena claimed to have thrown the stone into a well at San Marco monastery."

"But that, too, was a lie. Why?"

"To protect Lily," Marea answered without pause. "When I learned of Fioretta's involvement with Messer Medici, I asked her to guard the talisman. She used her influence over Giuliano to have a replica of the amulet made. The monks spent weeks draining that well until we found the fake." Long moments passed before Marea continued. "With Gillian content, I left
Spedale degli Innocenti
and moved to the country."

"With your lover?"

"
Sì."
Shame surrounded that single word.

Viviana calculated the years in her head. She and Fioretta moved to Cafaggiolo nine years prior. Lily was only six. Either Marea was lying or Viviana did not yet understand the whole of it. "You went to great efforts to protect a daughter that had not yet been conceived."

"I loved Lily before conception. The amulet showed me my daughter before she formed in the womb. Because Gillian is perverse, she prefers a woman's body over a child's which is why she didn't proceed with the transfer straightaway. But a little more than a year past, I became ill with the sweating sickness. Gillian attempted to transfer into Lily's young body, and it was then she discovered the amulet was naught more than a cut piece of stained glass. By then, the real talisman was being safe-guarded by the Medici."

Viviana didn't doubt the amulet's power, nor did she question Marea's desire to protect her daughter from Gillian, but the complexity of Marea's plans seemed outlandish. "Why did you come to Scotland? If your goal was to protect Lily, why did you not just toss the amulet into the sea?"

"Similar thoughts occurred to me on more than one occasion." Marea yelped and panted until she'd recovered from Gillian's infliction. "I fear living in limbo almost as much as Gillian fears the fires of Hell. I came to Scotland to see to the safety of my soul." Marea paused for what seemed like an eternity before she confessed, "I have committed the vilest of sins, but I am devoted to my love for God. While protecting Lily is my greatest goal here on earth, I do not wish to spend my afterlife here. I came to break the curse and set those who have passed before us free so I might be given the opportunity to stand before God on my day of judgment and beg for His mercy."

The chain rattled with an intensity that unnerved Viviana.

Marea's whimpers turned into a disturbing chuckle. "Do it, Gillian. Kill me. Rip my insides to shreds if you so desire. Lily is safe and happy."

"You are not going to die," Viviana offered Marea false words, knowing full well her time here on earth was drawing to a close.

"Death is inevitable. Albeit, I admit I'm fearful of my day of reckoning."

"I'm certain God will judge you based on the person you tried to be and not the person Gillian made you." Viviana couldn't begin to imagine how Gillian might have punished Marea. She didn't want to imagine it, nor did she want to believe Gillian might have had the power to reap her anger on all of Firenze. "Gillian," she spoke directly to the witch, "were you responsible for the assassination of Giuliano Medici? I lost my sight as well as my sister because of the events that occurred that day."

A long pause prefaced Marea's weak laugh. "You would find compliment in the question." Marea's bearing altered when she spoke to the witch. Her tone turned bitter, sardonic. "Gillian is flattered that you think her capable of such devastation, but Messer Medici's assassination had naught to do with the talisman's power."

"And what power is that?"

"The gift of sight, of course."

Marea's words held an altogether different meaning for Viviana. She'd known the amulet's power, even felt an addiction to the gift it had provided her. "If Fioretta had discovered a way to use the talisman's power, what kind of effect would it have had on the curse?"

"A temporary suspension." Marea paused in thought. "Mayhap it was during the years Fioretta was in possession of the amulet that Makayla was conceived. Any other female babe would have died in the womb."

Viviana cringed. Taveon had been right to fear for Makayla's life. Had Fioretta not been harboring the amulet, Makayla may never have been born.

"Viviana, did Fioretta ever tell you anything about your future?"

Instant worry made Viviana question Marea's odd inquiry. "No."

Marea's silence was unnerving. If Fioretta knew anything about Viviana's future it was doubtful she would have shared the grim details. "What are you implying?"

"It is naught." Sister De Rosa was lying to protect her.

"It is something. If Fioretta used the amulet to foresee the future, what would it have cost her?"

"Her soul would remain in limbo," Marea stated with a tone of regret.

Fioretta was trapped inside the walls of Santa Reparata the same as the women were trapped in the burial ground. Of this, Viviana was now certain. A heavy sense of obligation came with this revelation. Somehow Viviana needed to set them all free. She thought of the babe inside her, of Cora-Rose and Makayla and Lily. Then she recalled the first time she'd seen her husband's eyes in the looking glass at Chillion Castle. The colors had only intensified since that day. She once thought the colors represented her growing love for Taveon. Or mayhap his love for her? But mayhap it had been Kael's love for Elise that had become a force far greater than Gillian could have ever foreseen.

For reasons unbeknownst to Viviana, Elise had not inhabited Taveon's body, but she had inhabited Viviana's. In that moment, Viviana came to an all-encompassing decision that might very well cost her her life. She rose from the cuttie stool on wobbly knees.

"What are your intentions?" Marea asked.

Viviana splayed her shaking hands over her belly. "I intend to free Elise from the burial ground."

Chapter 34

Taveon sat in silence on a roughened pew at the back of the kirk and wished he was brave enough to go to Viviana. She'd entered the ruined sanctuary more than an hour earlier and whisked passed him. Her familiar citrus scent extinguished the musty smell clinging to the wet stone walls and made him nigh ache with the need to hold her.

Afraid the wooden bench beneath him might creak and reveal his presence, he sat unmoving and stared at his wife. Light spilled over her kneeling form from a hole that used to be a stained glass window. Blue-black hair fell to her waist like a cloak of spun silk.

What he would give to touch its softness again. To touch her.

For the past two nights he'd watched her sleep through the curtains of their bed, fantasizing about a life with her, imagining what it would be like to fill Ravenhurst with love and laughter. 'Twas a victorious dream reserved for warriors who reaped the rewards of their successes, but not him.

He'd failed to set Elise free. The woman was there. He'd felt her, smelled her. She'd penetrated his psyche more than once, flooding his mind with memories of her life with Kael, memories of their happiness, their love, and their sorrow. There was a hot energy that wrapped itself around him while he waited for any sign that Elise might have inhabited his body, but naught occurred.

Or mayhap the signs of possession had been present, but he was too craven to acknowledge them. S'truth, he wanted to live. He wanted to sing to his wife, to dance with her, to hear her laughter. He wanted to hold her and watch her grow wide with his son. But most of all, he wanted to love her without fear of losing her.

He was too selfish to die.

His fingers curled around the amulet. He was a fool to think he could have Viviana without repercussions. Regret consumed him and ate at his insides like feasting grubs.