her time. Nearly three hundred years passed before she came, not a little girl, but a woman.'
Sarimund said, 'I know. It has driven me quite mad to know I was so very wrong in my calculations.'
Nicholas said, 'How could this be? Why did you want her in the first place?'
'After I left the Pale, wondering if Epona had indeed birthed my son, Taranis visited me in my dreams one night. He dreamed to me that Epona would kill our son-Prince Egan-because she'd somehow divined what he, the man, would become. Taranis said I had to stop her or the Pale would be thrown into incredible chaos, and he didn't know if he would be able to fix it. He said there was no wizard, no witch, no creature here in the Pale to help me so I must rely on humans. What could a human do, I asked in my dream back to him. He puffed out a whiff of flame and I swear to you I felt a sting of heat. He told me I was a wizard and a human, wasn't I, and I awoke. He was right, and so I settled into my wizard's brain and cast about for other witches and wizards on earth as strong as I. I found two separate, very powerful wizard lines that stretched back into time, meeting at one point back in the times of the Crusades. One was the Vail line. In my time your powerful line was represented by Jared Vail, a ship captain then, but not simple. He was brave, many times too brave. Ah, he was filled with strength, but being human, living in your constricted civilized world, he did not realize what he really was. I knew then that Jared Vail was the one. And you were there in my mind, Isabella, in the same time, representing your powerful line, and you were so clear, so strong, so very magic. I knew that both of you would be successful.'
She said, 'You saw the little girl. Why would you believe a little girl would have a better chance of saving Prince Egan than a grown woman, namely me?'
'The little girl was a light so bright no evil could touch her. She saw everything clearly, she could not be deceived by either magic or evil. But now? Is your light still as bright, your eyes as clear? Is the little girl still burning bright inside you? We will see.'
'What does that mean- we will see!' Nicholas asked. 'You're telling us you do not know?'
'Now is now, even though in the Pale, the present can bleed into the future or shrink into the past, though time itself is not really a factor, and thus I cannot know what will happen.'
Nicholas looked angry enough to strike Sarimund.
Rosalind said, 'When the child didn't come, why didn't Epona kill your son?'
'The point of the spell was to stay her hand until you arrived, Isabella, until you could come to the Pale to save him.'
Nicholas said slowly, 'You froze time?'
'That is a crude way of saying it, but yes, Egan has remained a little boy. When you save him, Isabella, he will become the man, the great wizard ruler he was meant to be.'
Rosalind said quickly, 'There is a problem, however. I don't know who I am so I cannot know what the little girl was and how her strengths would aid-' She stopped dead in her tracks. She stared from Sarimund to Nicholas and back again. Sarimund smiled at her and slowly nodded. She swallowed. Then she gave them a brilliant smile. 'My name is Isabella Contadini. I was born in San Savaro, Italy, in 18I7.'
'And your name is the same as it was then in Captain Jared Vail's time,' Sarimund said, then leaned forward and kissed her forehead.
48
Sarimund gave her a graceful bow. 'Yes, your birth was greeted with great celebration, Isabella. You already had an older brother, you see, so the heir to the duchy was secure.'
'Duchy?' Nicholas asked, an eyebrow raised.
Rosalind grinned up at her husband. 'Oh, dear, Nicholas, I fear you're not of high enough rank to have married me.'
'Tell him who you are, my dear,' Sarimund said.
'I was born to Duca Gabriele and Duchessa Elizabeth Contadini. My mother is English, daughter of the Duke of Wrothbridge, and she married my father when she was seventeen years old-my father was visiting London as a young man, saw her riding in Hyde Park, and wanted to marry her, and so they married two months later. I loved hearing that story, nearly every night I asked my mother to tell me of it after she had shooed away my nanny to kiss me good night. She paused a moment, and a spasm of pain crossed her face. 'My mother,' she said again, and pictured her glossy red hair, the way she'd felt her heartbeat when she held her close against her, how she smelled, of violets, she remembered now.
She whispered, terrified of the answer, 'Are my parents still alive?'
Sarimund nodded. 'Yes, both of them are in fine health.' 'And my brother?' 'Raffaello as well.'
She wanted to shout, to leap about. She had a mother who had loved her, petted her, who wasn't afraid of her because she was magic. Magic? But it was true, she remembered it well. And her father, standing beside her mother, tail, his thick black hair brushed back from his face, a perfect man who'd once let her sit beneath his chair while he conferred with an ambassador from Austria. She'd been so excited she'd vomited on the ambassador's boots. Her father, she remembered now, had laughed-once the ambassador had left. She frowned. Her father's eyes, had she seen them somewhere? She said slowly, 'My grandfather died while my father was visiting England and so he became the Duke of San Savaro after his return to Italy.'
She grabbed Nicholas's arms, shook him. 'I have parents, Nicholas, and I remember them! They loved me, very much. I have a family!' She began to dance around in her excitement. Nicholas grabbed her and held her tight. He kissed her lightly on her mouth, kissed the tip of her nose, smoothed his fingertips over her eyebrows. He said, 'Where is San Savaro?'
Rosalind grinned up at him, so excited her feet still danced. 'It is on the spur of Italy's boot. San Savaro is also the capital city of the duchy. It is near Nardo, oaiy five or so miles from the Ionian Sea. We had a summer palace overlooking the sea. I swam there with my brother. I remember one night I went down to the beach to swim under a full moon, not something I should have done, naturally. I heard my parents laughing. They were swimming in the sea, just like my brother and I did.' She paused a moment, tapped her foot. 'Do you know, I'm wondering now if they were simply swimming.'
Nicholas laughed. 'A woman is married for less than a week and she knows everything.'
Sarimund ahemmed. 'Isabella, it's time to tell my lord what happened.'
Nicholas frowned at him. 'How do you know she can remember what happened to her?'
Sarimund shrugged. 'She could not be allowed to remember before, it would have been too dangerous. Mr. Sherbrooke would have felt compelled to contact her family in San Savaro, despite his own misgivings. But now the time is right. Tell him, Isabella, what happened to you.'
Suddenly the knowledge was there, alive and terrifying in her mind, and she trembled. 'He was my father's cousin- his name was Vittorio. He knew I'd seen what he'd done because he was magic, you see, and he knew I was magic as well. He sensed me, he knew I saw him smother the small babe then lay it back in its dead mother's arms.'
Nicholas said, 'There was no one else there to see this?'
Rosalind didn't want to but she pictured that horrible scene in her mind. The dead babe and its dead mother and Vittorio standing there, staring down at them, a bitter smile on his mouth. She would never forget that, never. 'No, only I saw him kill them.'
Nicholas was frowning. 'You were a child. Few people believe a child. Why would Vittorio take action against you?''
'If I'd told my father, he would have had the bodies of Ilaria and the babe examined. They would have seen the marks of Vittorio's fingers on her neck. Perhaps the physician would know the babe had been smothered.'
Sarimund said, 'Isabella, do you know why Vittorio murdered his wife and babe?'
She shook her head.
Sarimund said, 'Theirs was an arranged marriage, naturally, but Vittorio was vicious and unnatural in his sexual demands. Mixed with the magic was madness, only his father Ignazio did not want to face it, he never
