3 - Cruel Music by Beverle Graves Myers Read Free Book Online Page A

bone.
    When I winced, she threw my hand aside to raise the hem of her gown. I looked down. Blue veins snaked over her bare, withered foot. Sobbing now, she pointed to an ankle encircled by a ring of bruised, chafed skin.
    A door slammed. Two footmen followed the girl that Abate Lenci had called Gemma across the shiny parquet floor. This time I noticed more than her coloring. Gemma’s skirts swelled over shapely hips before nipping to a slender waist, and a generous bosom peeked over her tightly laced bodice. She would have been a welcome sight for any man if she hadn’t been scowling and pushing up her sleeves like a pint-sized Sicilian ready for a brawl.
    “Marchesa, you’ve been a very naughty girl.” Gemma could have been chastising a five-year-old.
    My companion whimpered and tried to hide behind me.
    “You have chocolate and biscuits waiting in your room, My Lady. And Guido has made up a nice fire,” Gemma continued. “Look, you’re shivering. Your feet are turning blue from these cold floors. Come along now. Do be a good girl for once.”
    Gemma reached around me to grab her charge’s wrist. The unhappy lady balled a handful of my jacket in her other fist and gave me a pitiful look. While Gemma tugged at her arm, she tugged equally hard at my brocade.
    “Marchesa…” Gemma’s tone sharpened to a warning.
    The determined marchesa stretched her mouth in a croaking cry until her old face matched the classical mask of tragedy that decorated so many theaters. “Signore, help me, please,” she wailed.
    Gemma jerked her chin at the footmen.
    “Wait,” I stammered, acutely aware that my lack of status in the household gave me no right to comment, let alone intervene. “This lady has committed no wrong. She just came in to hear me sing. Let her stay and listen a moment.”
    I might as well have addressed empty air. Without so much as a nod, the footmen circled the marchesa with their arms and herded her away, sobbing softly and mumbling incoherently.
    Gemma bent to the floor to retrieve one of the marchesa’s errant scarves. Tucking the silk into her sleeve, she drew herself up to full height. Even then, the girl barely came up to the middle of my chest. “You are new here, Signore,” she observed coldly.
    I admitted as much, then added, “But I don’t want to see the poor old lady mistreated.”
    “Do you even know who you are rushing to defend?”
    I shook my head.
    “Your poor old lady is Marchesa Olimpia Fabiani, the cardinal’s mother. She occupies the warmest suite of rooms in the villa, receives every comfort she so much as mentions, and dines off dishes of gold.” Gemma tossed her dark head. “Solid gold, mind you, not plate. The pope himself is not better taken care of.”
    “She showed me her ankle. It was bruised.”
    Gemma sighed. “You must understand. The marchesa is slowly losing her mind, and it’s my job to see that she comes to no harm. Sometimes she has a good day. Then she allows me to dress her, and the cardinal takes her for a walk in the garden. Except that her conversation is confined to long-ago events, you would never guess how addled she truly is. But on a bad day…oh, Signore, you have no idea.”
    “Today is a bad day?”
    “One of her worst.”
    “She does seem harmless, though.”
    Gemma snorted. “Tell that to Guido, the footman she chased through the garden this very afternoon. When I caught up with them, she had him cornered by the pavilion. She was brandishing a pistol in one hand and a hatchet in the other. The Blessed Virgin knows where she got those weapons…had them hidden in one of her hidey holes, I suppose. At any rate, I got there before harm was done.”
    “Perhaps the marchesa was defending herself as best she knew how. This man could have been rough with her.”
    “Rough with the marchesa?” Gemma rolled her eyes. “Guido wouldn’t dare. The cardinal dotes on his mother and allows only so much restraint as needed to ensure her safety. He