Carpathian 00 - The Scarletti Curse

was a boy and angry with his madre, he did such things, or perhaps he is hurt and needs help." She was watching Nicoletta closely as she spoke.
    Nicoletta's teeth teased nervously at her lower lip. She would know if someone was in need, and Maria Pia was well aware of it. Nicoletta had always known. And the bird would come to her. She looked at the older woman with stricken eyes. "I must go outside where I can feel the wind on my face. I want to look at the sky."
    "What do you have in your hair?" Maria Pia reached around her and picked strands of a spider web from her long hair. "What have you been doing?" For the first time she noticed the severed broomstick the don had carefully removed from Nicoletta's hands when she had been in danger of injuring him with it.
    It had been neatly sliced through with a blade of some kind. Maria Pia picked it up, turning it this way and that to examine it before looking at Nicoletta with a frown.
    "Do not ask," Nicoletta said, shoving a hand through her long hair. "You arrived after the misadventure in the hidden passageway. What matters now is that you no longer wish me to marry the don. You were not quite so opposed of late."
    "Something is wrong here, piccola. When I am in this house, I feel the echo of your madre's screams as she was thrown over the ramparts. I can feel the spirits of the other dead. They are uneasy in this palazzo." She made the sign of the cross and kissed her crucifix. "May the good Madonna- save you from your enemies."
    Nicoletta did not protest. She knew she had enemies at the palazzo; she just didn't know why. She felt eyes staring at her in disapproval each time she left her bedchamber. "I must go outside," she said again.
    Her heart felt heavy in her chest. She opened the door, turning back toward Maria Pia as she did so.
    "How did all of this start, so long ago? When did they first whisper of the curse on the famiglia Scarletti?
    Is it possible there is a strain of madness in their blood?"
    Maria Pia glanced past Nicoletta to the waiting guards. "It is not a good thing to speak of in this place where the walls have eyes and ears." She lifted her chin. "Come, let us go out to the courtyard. We will see if the don kept his word and sent his men looking for Cristano."
    For some reason it irritated Nicoletta that Maria Pia entertained the notion that the don would betray their trust. "I can imagine many things about Don Scarletti, but he lives by his word. He would not tell me Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    one thing and do another," she defended.
    Maria Pia looked at her sharply. "Perhaps you are already falling under his spell. I told you to be careful.
    He can read minds, make one say things one does not wish to reveal. You must be strong, Nicoletta.
    Until you know more of the don…"
    "The man who is to be my husband," Nicoletta corrected. "We are to be wed on the morrow. I will live with him, and this palazzo will be my home. I have no choice in the matter. You said not even the holy father would defy the don."
    Maria Pia muttered unintelligibly as they moved down the long corridor to the stairs. She looked at the banister and once more crossed herself devoutly. "Look at this, Nicoletta. A serpent coiled around a tree branch! That is the artwork on his stairs. What manner of man is he?"
    "He inherited the palazzo and the title from his father and his father before him, and so on. What should he have done? Refused to live here because he did not like the artwork on the stairs? It is actually quite beautiful, Maria Pia. If you look at some of the work, it is truly remarkable."
    Maria Pia resorted to clucking as she often did when she was agitated. "I fear he has cast a spell over you, bambina."
    Nicoletta glanced over her shoulder at the silent guards following them at a circumspect distance.
    "Where is little Sophie?" The child would still be upset that Nicoletta had been trapped in the secret passage.
    "She was sent to her room, signorina," the guard replied, raising an eyebrow at his partner.
    The other guard shrugged with a wry grin and placed something in the first guard's open palm.
    Nicoletta ignored the byplay between the two men. "I must go to her; she will be frightened. By now she will think i fantasmi have gotten me."
    As she started back up the stairs, the guard shook his head. "She was removed from the nursery and is on the first floor."
    Nicoletta smiled at him. "Thank you." She knew the