Read Online His Last Duchess by Gabrielle Kimm - Free Book Online

and the skin on her fingers was scratchy and rough, despite the oils she had been given to soften them. There was no avoiding the fact that they were still kitchen hands and they still looked bad—particularly the burned one. Even if it no longer hurt, there was a big crimson patch, right across her wrist and the back of her hand, where the skin was softly puckered, like a turkey-cock’s wattle. It looked horrible, but Catelina knew it might well have been much worse if the Signora had not done what she did that day in the kitchen, with the eel-barrel.
    Catelina breathed in. She smelled nice, the Signora—of roses, and some other, sharper flower Catelina could not name—not like most of the people she had lived among so far. Until a week ago she had shared her life with people who were far more likely to smell of mutton fat, sweat and stale woodsmoke than of flowers. Catelina thought she had probably washed more often in the week and a half she had been in Ferrara than she had done in five years at Cafaggiolo.
    â€œWill it be long before you’ve finished? Is it dreadfully tangled?” The Signora’s voice interrupted her musings.
    Catelina started. “Oh—I’m sorry, my lady—have I hurt you?”
    â€œNo, no—not at all.” The Signora turned round. She was smiling. “I was just thinking it seemed to be taking rather a long time. Shall I have a try?” She took the comb from Catelina and began to work with it, her head on one side, a hank of hair clutched in her fist. “Ouch! We should have done this last night, Lina,” she said, grimacing.
    Lina. No one had ever thought to shorten her name before. Catelina sat down on a carved chest.
    The Signora continued her struggle with her hair, and then laughed, saying, “What on earth do you think Giulietta would say to see you sitting there and me fighting with my own hair?”
    Catelina bit her lip.
    â€œOh, don’t look like that! I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty…”
    That morning in the kitchens at Cafaggiolo…Catelina could still hardly believe it had happened: there she had been, sitting in her usual corner, peeling vegetables, one hand all prune-wrinkled and chilled from being too long in the water and the other still sore and stiff and wrapped in bandages, when the big door to the upper floors had slammed back on its hinges and the Signora had burst in, followed by that gangly cousin of hers.
    â€œAngelo, where is she? Where’s that girl who burned her arm a few days ago? Catelina, I think her name is.” She had been all out of breath from running. Catelina remembered how her name had cut right through the noise of the kitchen. She had looked up at once and seen Signor Angelo jerk his head towards her corner. The Signora had pushed her way across the room, through all the bustle and noise, and had stopped in front of her. Then she had just come out with it—asked her to come with her to Ferrara. Catelina hadn’t understood. It hadn’t made sense at all.
    But, sense or not, here she was, with little or no idea of how to be a waiting-woman, working for a girl who (though Catelina felt guilty even thinking it) seemed to have not much more idea of how to be a duchess. A week they had been here, now, and to Catelina’s way of thinking, the Signora seemed as ill at ease and out of place in this great castle as she did herself.
    There had been all the bubbling excitement of the wedding—well, that had been quite an event, and Catelina had been proud to play even a small part in it—but then, the day after the celebrations, she had seen her mistress deflated and miserable, moping about her chamber like a sad little ghost, refusing her food and so pale she was almost transparent. Homesick, probably, Catelina told herself. She had cheered up a little in the week since that day, it was true, but there was a—she searched for the right word—a