Read Online The Scarlet Contessa by Jeanne Kalogridis - Free Book Online

south wall and make a complicated, sweeping gesture, and heard the faintest of murmurs—softer than a whisper, yet oddly authoritative—issue from his lips. After this, he made a quarter-turn to face west, and again gestured; by the time he faced the north wall, I surmised that he was drawing stars in the air, and connecting them with a circle.
    The realization pricked the hairs on the back of my neck: Stars and circles belonged to the realm of magic, and Bona had drilled into me that such things were of the Devil. Yet only half of me took fright; the other half was keenly interested, and even comforted, for Matteo’s circle enclosed the entire room, including the bed where I lay. Like him, I was sheltered from whatever evil lurked beyond the perimeter.
    In the darkness, my husband summoned no demons, invoked no dead. Instead, he stood in the circle’s center, at the foot of our bed, and spread his arms, his face turned toward the invisible sky. He was, I decided, praying.
    The next morning I did not speak of it to him; nor did I mention it over the next few days, though he continued nightly to draw the stars. As he packed for his Roman journey, he grew increasingly pensive; I felt at times that he was on the verge of telling me a great secret, but something held him back.
    Morning and evening, I prayed at Bona’s side in the chapel: Let Matteo’s acts be good, not evil. Let him love me. Keep him safe.
    He departed for Rome on a chill November dawn. He would not let me go with him to the stables, even though it was early and Bona would not expect me for an hour. Instead, he turned, dressed in his heavy woolen cloak and cap, and stopped as I tried to follow him out the door of our chamber.
    “Dea,” he said. “Let me take my leave now, and quickly.” To my surprise, he clasped both my hands very tightly, and studied my face as if he thought to find something unexpected there; his eyes were so bright, so filled with affection that I thought he was about to kiss me full on the lips.
    “Quickly,” I agreed. “I don’t care for good-byes.” I closed my eyes and leaned in, eager for the kiss.
    It did not come. He let go of my hands abruptly, and when I opened my eyes, he was reaching for something around his neck. He pulled it over his head and handed it to me; I stared at it for an instant as it dangled from his long fingers.
    A tiny black key, strung upon a leather thong. I stared at it in surprise.
    “Use it,” he said, “in case of emergency.”
    “For the compartment in the wall,” I said, disbelieving, “where you keep your papers.”
    He nodded.
    “Why do you not just give it to Cicco?”
    “Because those papers are not for Cicco,” he said, in a way that awakened gooseflesh on my arms. “Or for anyone else but you, and then only in an emergency.”
    “There will be no emergency,” I warned him sternly as I took the key and hung it round my own neck. His statement provoked a thousand anxious questions: If you haven’t been working for Cicco, then who? Why? What sort of papers are these? But I asked none of them; he was standing in his cloak in the doorway, ready to leave. “I’ll return this to you when you come home.” At Christmas, I almost added, and realized how very long he would be gone.
    “Dea,” he said softly, and tried to take my hands again; I threw my arms around him and hugged him. This time, my embrace was fully returned. “My Dea,” he repeated, then drew back and gave me that pure, loving smile. “God keep you.”
    “And you,” I said, struggling to keep my composure. “Oh, Matteo, be careful!” I wanted to say Don’t go to Rome! I felt that if I dared let go, Matteo would slip from my grasp forever.
    He leaned down and gave me a solemn, fraternal kiss upon the lips, then said, “You will see me again, Dea.”
    “Of course,” I said, and he turned and was gone.
    The whole time Matteo was away, I slept on the little cot near Bona’s feet, where I had always slept in