The Marriage Portrait(83)

“Yes,” she says. “Of course. Please don’t trouble yourselves any further on my account.”

“Very well,” Elisabetta says, in her musical voice. She gathers her skirts around herself, preparing to leave. But she does not look at Lucrezia or Nunciata when she says, “You will not repeat my sister’s silly remark, will you? To Alfonso, that is?”

Lucrezia blinks.

“It would only…” Elisabetta chooses her words “…worry him. He has so much on his mind. I wouldn’t want to add to his cares. And Nunciata was only teasing. Weren’t you?” she appeals to her sister.

Nunciata is fussing over her dog, letting its ears slide through her hands, ignoring Elisabetta. Again, Lucrezia has that sensation of flames flickering in the air between them.

“Was I?” Nunciata says eventually.

“Yes, you were.”

“If you say so.”

“Do you promise, Lucrè?” Elisabetta says, with an attempt at playfulness, but Lucrezia can hear the knife-edge of anxiety in her voice. “I may call you Lucrè, may I not?”

“Of course,” Lucrezia says. “My sister calls me that.”

“Then it is entirely fitting. We are sisters now, also.”

“And I promise,” Lucrezia says, “that I won’t mention this to Alfonso.” She thinks she would promise anything to the lovely creature who has furnished these rooms for her, who is so anxious to conceal something about herself that she has to pretend it doesn’t matter at all.

“Thank you,” Elisabetta says. “It is of no consequence, you understand. Just a trifling matter. But thank you.”

Elisabetta’s heart-shaped face relaxes with relief. She reaches out and gives Lucrezia’s cheek a light pinch. “Such a sweet and pretty thing you are,” she murmurs. “Alfonso made a wise choice. Don’t you think, Nuncià?”

Nunciata makes a non-committal noise. The spaniel, sighting a pigeon on a balustrade, emits a tiny growl, lurching forward on its slender lead.

Elisabetta touches her fingers thoughtfully to Lucrezia’s hair, bound as usual inside its band and scuffia. “This is a Florentine fashion?”

“I…” Lucrezia raises her hand to the net, feeling the seed pearls pushing back into her palm “…it…My mother wears it like this. I believe it was a custom of her own mother. And we, her daughters, always—”

“Your mother is Spanish, is she not?” Nunciata asks.

“She was born there but spent her girlhood in Naples, where her father was—”

“And you speak Spanish?”

“I do.”

“What else?” Nunciata demands.

“French, a little German. And I can write Latin and Greek.”

“I see. Quite the little scholar, aren’t you?”

Lucrezia makes a lightning decision to sidestep the aggressive tone; sometimes this worked when Isabella and Maria were taunting her. “My father,” she says evenly, “believed in educating his daughters, alongside—”

“You have ladies-in-waiting with you, I assume?”

Lucrezia shakes her head. “I thought perhaps I would—”

“No lady-in-waiting?” Nunciata regards her with a shrewd gaze. “Not even one?”

“I brought a maid,” Lucrezia says, “and I’m very fond of her. She is in there.” Lucrezia points to the chamber.

Nunciata leans sideways, peering through the open door to the chamber, where Emilia is bending over the boxes, lifting out garments and shaking them in the air. She is evidently unimpressed by what she sees because she says: “I will send a woman to you directly. A companion. Someone befitting your status. She can wait on you, introduce you to the fashions of this court, and perhaps attire you appropriately.”

Lucrezia, unnerved, can make no reply. The thought of admitting into her rooms a lady-in-waiting she has never met, and one selected by the unpleasant Nunciata, is not a welcome one. A spy in her midst. What is so wrong with her attire now, and her hair? She would like to lean forward and say to this woman that her mother is considered a great beauty, and highly stylish, that people come from all over the province, and beyond, to look upon her, to copy her dress and her manners.

Elisabetta must have divined her unease because she says, without warning, as if to change the subject: “Tell us about Alfonso.”

“What of him?”

“He seems well. So restored by his time in the country, by his time with you. It is a delight to see. Is it not, Nuncià?”

Nunciata doesn’t reply, but keeps her head bent over her lapdog, still murmuring into its ear.

“He is…” Elisabetta seems to hesitate “…attentive to you?”

Lucrezia nods. “Yes.”

“And…kind? He treats you well?”

“Yes.”

Elisabetta looks at her for a moment longer, then says: “Good. I am glad to hear it.”

She helps Nunciata to her feet. “We will leave you now. Please send me word if you need anything. My rooms are adjacent to the state room where we first met. Nunciata’s are next to mine.” She crosses to the door, her arm through Nunciata’s, where she turns to say: “Alfonso’s apartment is directly below yours. There is a staircase linking your rooms with his. I’m sure he will be up to see you soon.”