The Scarlet Contessa by Jeanne Kalogridis Read Free Book Online

into the saddle. Visconti and the servant then mounted the remaining horse; Visconti paused long enough to bow from the shoulders to Lorenzo, who returned the gesture before the trio galloped off across the drawbridge.
    I remained at the window as Lorenzo turned, the wind whipping his dark hair across his face, and watched as he made his way grimly back to the castle. At its entrance he paused to glance pointedly up at the library window—at me, as if, impossibly given his poor eyesight, he saw me standing there.

Chapter Two
    Snow fell that night. By morning, the clouds had gone, leaving behind a blue sky and an infinite white expanse that glittered beneath the sun. The weather was still bitter, but the wind had died; a good day for travel, Bona told me brightly, and promised that Matteo would be home within two days.
    I smiled faintly at her cheer, though my anxiety had not eased; I woke with a gut so clenched I could not face breakfast. Instead I prayed earnestly beside Bona in the chapel: Lord, guard Your servant Matteo da Prato and bring him safely home to me. Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, keep my husband from harm. Saint Christopher, patron of travelers, protect him . . .
    Afterward, I put on my heavy cloak and went downstairs to the passage that led to the garden, where the woodsmen had piled boughs of evergreen as high as my shoulders. I gathered several boughs into my arms, and made my way carefully over the slippery floor of the open loggia; on the opposite side, an old serving woman swept away the snow with a broom while her frailer husband followed, sprinkling ash from a pail onto the stone.
    Matteo’s chamber, situated on the first level, directly beneath the duke’s bedroom, stood two doors from the garden passage. Only the highest of Galeazzo’s officials were housed on the second floor along with the ducal family; Galeazzo’s secretary and right-hand man, Cicco Simonetta, was privileged to live right next to the duke’s suite, closer even than Bona. In recognition of Matteo’s intelligence and loyalty, however, he had been rewarded with one of the better downstairs chambers.
    I paused at the entrance to my husband’s room, wrestling with my fragrant burden in order to get the key from my cloak pocket. Like his immediate superior, Cicco, Matteo always kept his chamber locked; the duke entrusted all his state secrets to Cicco, who in turn shared a few of them with my husband. In these perilous times, a prince was wise to encrypt any correspondence he did not want read by anyone other than the intended recipient; couriers could not always be trusted. The duke had promoted Cicco to a position of great power because of the latter’s natural grasp of the art of encryption, and Cicco had promoted my husband because of Matteo’s ability to create and memorize hard-to-break ciphers. Matteo could look at a letter in Latin or the vernacular and encrypt it in a matter of minutes, an unheard-of feat. After seven years of acquainting himself diligently with the duke’s most confidential matters, Matteo was chosen to serve as a junior envoy to Rome. He had visited there once in the spring, before we were married, and was soon to return from his second visit. I asked him no questions, but I was proud: I had no doubt that he dealt with members of the Sacred College, perhaps even with the pope himself.
    The melting snow had caused the wooden door to swell; even unlocked, it would not open until I gave it a hard kick. Once it was open, I set down a branch and wiped my feet upon it, then closed the door behind me and scattered the rest of the perfumed boughs onto the stone floor.
    Matteo had been gone almost two months, but the room still smelled of him, of rosemary water and olive oil soap, of parchment and iron-gall ink, of the indescribable scent of male flesh. The room was chilly, the hearth long-unlit; I had told God that morning that I would set my oddly persistent fear for Matteo’s safety aside and trust that