The Red Lily Crown by Elizabeth Loupas Page B

tied carelessly so her heavy breasts were half-exposed. She thrust a bundle of fabric into the open chest behind her and faced her stepson, her head thrown back like a wild mare’s.
    â€œHow dare you?” Her voice was high and edged with fear. “I am mourning for your father, and no one, not even you, has the right to interfere with me.”
    â€œI have the right to interfere with anyone I choose.” The grand duke walked across the room and pushed her aside unceremoniously. She stumbled and would have fallen if one of her ladies had not caught her. “I have the right to decide whether you live or die,
matrigna
. What are you doing with this?”
    He picked up the bundle of fabric. It was a camicia in fine white silk, decorated with black work. A silver needle dangled at the end of a piece of thread. He jerked the thread loose and the hem of the camicia unraveled, spilling a glittering necklace of emeralds and pearls onto the floor. The grand duke picked it up. For a moment he was a child again, sulky at being forced to recite a Latin exercise for a group of ambassadors when all he really wanted was to be left alone with his rocks and bird-skulls. The emerald-and-pearl necklace had looped three times around his mother’s neck as she pointed out his errors in front of them all.
    â€œMy mother’s jewels,” he said. His pleasant, almost conversational tone was the one Bianca—his Bia—had learned to fear the most. Bia would not defy him as his father’s second wife was daring to do. “Sewn into the hem of your camicia. And you ask how I dare?”
    â€œThey are my jewels now!” Cammilla snatched for the necklace. The grand duke held it out of her reach. “Your father gave them to me.”
    â€œSo you say.”
    â€œHe wrote it in a letter. I have every right to the jewels, and to everything he gave me. I was his wife, however much you and your brothers and your sister hated me, and I stayed with him when he was sick, fed him with my own hands. I earned it all.”
    â€œAll?” A new voice, a woman’s. Everyone turned. There in the doorway stood the grand duke’s sister Isabella, the favorite of their father; with his blessing and complicity she had never gone to live at her husband’s dreary castle at Bracciano, but had remained in Florence where she lived in luxurious grandeur among the Medici. She was three years older than Cammilla Martelli, but she had a knack of surrounding herself with such a vivid golden glamour that she made her young stepmother look draggletailed and faded. Crowding into the room behind her were Don Pietro, the youngest of the four living Medici children, and his beautiful young cousin-wife Donna Dianora.
    â€œAll?” Isabella demanded again. “What exactly did he give you?”
    â€œSister.” The grand duke’s voice was cold. “Our father may have encouraged informality from you, but I do not. When you enter my presence you will make the proper obeisance.”
    Brother and sister stared at each other. Their eyes were the same, brown and gold flecked with gray; everything else about them was different. Isabella’s emotions were there on her face for anyone to read, outrage, hatred, frustration, cunning. Her eyes, this night, were swollen and reddened with tears. The grand duke’s face was blank. Only his Bia, and to some extent the foreign alchemist Ruanno dell’ Inghilterra, could ever discern his thoughts.
    Isabella looked away first. She sank into a deep curtsy, allowing herself the luxury of making it too deep, too mocking. She straightened and said, “Your excellency, the highest and most illustrious grand duke my brother, I present you with my deepest condolences on the death of our beloved father, and my most humble compliments on your own accession to his titles and properties.”
    The grand duke nodded. For the moment, he thought, I will allow her to believe that