Carpathian 00 - The Scarletti Curse

Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    Almost at her feet, the bird was leaning into the bushes and tugging at something light-colored. She knelt down to reach past the creature, to grasp the piece of cloth and pull. It was stuck deep in the prickly branches. Her heart began to pound. She recognized the fabric. She had seen it dozens of times. It was usually a clean if faded blue, but now it looked dirty and weathered, crusted with a wealth of brownish stains.
    Nicoletta sank to the ground, clutching Cristano's shirt to her. She felt it then, the terrible haunting vibration, the aftermath of violence. Cristano was dead, murdered here in the maze, dead all this time.
    While she married and made love with the don and laughed with the children, he was dead, his life taken from him for all time, his only crime that he had wanted to marry Nicoletta.
    Her husband had taken him into the maze. Her husband had walked out of the maze alone, with his knuckles scraped and blood on his immaculate shirt. Her husband had said Cristano had been spotted in a villaggio, and he had called off the search.
    Pressing the shirt to her, she sat there on the ground, rocking back and forth, tears falling to soak into the grass, while overhead the branches of the bushes began to sway from the wind coming in off the sea.
    Bands of fog drifted in as well; and the bird circled lazily in the sky, its sharp eyes surveying the scene below and the forlorn woman weeping.

Chapter Sixteen
    What is it? I can feel your pain and sorrow, but you are attempting to close your mind to me. The words shimmered in her thoughts like gossamer wings, the voice beautiful, comforting, but deadly all the same. Nicoletta knew the don was already moving toward her. The connection between them seemed to be growing stronger and stronger. If a wife had feelings for another, and her husband had the don's tremendous gift and his dark jealousy, wouldn't that be cause enough for murder?
    "What is it?" It was Francesco who found her, reaching to pull her from the ground, bloodstained cloth and all. "Donna Nicoletta, have you suffered an injury?"
    She couldn't look at him with the tears running down her face and the evidence of her husband's guilt in her hands. "Where are the little ones?" she choked out, not wanting the children to see her so distraught.
    The guard called to his partner, Dominic, to collect the two girls. "You must return to the palazzo. Donna Nicoletta," he said softly, his eyes on the material she held in her hands.
    She nodded and went with him. What was the point in trying to explain? Francesco was utterly loyal to the don. Like everyone else, the guard would not worry over the death of a peasant, especially one who had been silly enough to challenge his don.
    Giovanni was pacing across the entrance to the maze, Vincente and Antonello with him, suggesting they had been in a meeting together when the don had become aware something was amiss with his bride. He rushed to her side, sweeping her stiff body into his arms, bending his head to press a brief kiss to her temple.
    Nicoletta struggled to remain still, not wanting to make a scene and push him away from her. It shamed her that she wanted his comfort even as she condemned him. She felt the way his body went rigid, further evidence he was reading her thoughts. "What have you found that has upset you, piccola!" he asked Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    gently.
    She raised her head to look at him, her dark eyes eloquent with accusation. "Cristano's shirt. I have seen this many times. It was his, and it is covered in blood." Her eyes remained locked to his. "I know he is dead. When I hold this cloth, I know." She admitted it quietly, seriously, daring him to call her a liar, to try to argue with her, or to condemn her by naming her witch. Let him name her as such. Better to die an honest death than to sleep with a man, enduring such intimacy for all the years of her life, when he was a murderer.
    Is that what you think? Is that truly what you think? Can you touch me and not feel the truth in your heart? There was deep pain in his tone, in the words brushing in her mind, an accusation. Giovanni turned to look at Antonello over her head. "Did you not tell me Cristano was in the villaggio you had passed through on your way back home?"
    Antonello shrugged, his face expressionless. "I have seen the man only once, Gino. I may have made a mistake.