Wizards Daughter

Nicholas, and surely that was odd. Then he looked at his wife's father and stilled. No, he thought, it couldn't be possible.

'No,' he said aloud. 'No.'

'They did not want to let you out of their sight. I wondered if they will let me snag you away when it is time to return home to attend Grayson's wedding in September.' He paused and looked around. 'Was this your bedchamber?' He pulled off his boots and began unbuttoning his shirt. He was hot.

'Yes. They didn't change anything in it.'

Nicholas opened all the windows and leaned out to breathe in the unique scent of Italy. Her bedchamber faced the east gardens and the air was warm and smelled of jasmine. And what? Excitement, he thought. There was so much excitement in the air itself since they'd arrived this afternoon.

Nicholas said, 'I like your brothers. And Raffaello is a good man,' he said, turning to look at his wife as she pulled on a lovely peach silk dressing gown. How lovely that the gown beneath it was as sheer.

'Yes, I like them too. The young ones don't know what to make of us-of me-but they will come to accept me as their sister and you as another brother. I brought a dozen boxes of English sweetmeats. Those candied almonds, in particular, should help them accept us all the more quickly.' She paused a moment, frowned. 'How odd that Raffaello is a man grown now. I can see him so clearly as a boy.'

'Your father, Rosalind, he-'

'Yes, I know. I wouldn't have realized it, though, if I hadn't seen the portrait.'

'Your father is the bloody image of Captain Jared Vail.' There, it was said aloud.

'Sarimund said our lines crossed somewhere back in medieval times, a very long time ago. Still-Nicholas, it's not as if my father is the exact likeness of Captain Jared. There are differences, just as there are differences between you and Richard.'

'Yes, but Richard is my half brother, we live now, at the same time, only five years between us, not some three hundred years.'

Wizardry, he thought, he hated how it twisted and turned in on itself and made no sense to a human brain. He said,

'Let me see your finger, the one you pricked on Taranis's scale.'

He took her hand in his and examined her finger. He stilled. 'You've looked, haven't you?'

'Oh, yes. It becomes more clear every day. Do you think it is Taranis's mark?'

He said, 'It must be, but why a bolt of lightning, I wonder?'

'I don't know.'

Nicholas kissed the finger. 'I wonder. I wonder,' he repeated, and knew, simply knew, that in the future, in some way, that pale red mark would mean something in their lives.

She said, 'Vittorio escaped.'

'Yes, I know. Your father is powerful enough to find him.'

'Yes, he is. He blames himself for telling Vittorio he knew I was alive and that I was coming home. It is a pity his man, Erasmo, died. I would have liked to take him to the Pale and toss him in a fire pit.'

'I'm thinking Vittorio killed him.'

'You are probably right. I daresay my father will kill Vittorio for what he did. He will find him, Nicholas.' And they both knew she was speaking of her father's magic.

'At least Vittorio's second wife is free of him.' He walked to her and scooped her up in his arms. 'Imagine. My wife, my simple red-haired wife, is a damned princess.'

'Well, I'm only called a damned signora, no fairy tale in that title.'

'You're still royal, thus a princess. My poor stepmother actually sputtered when I told her-I don't think I've ever really heard a person sputter before. I thought for a moment, once she believed me, she would curtsy to you before she caught herself.'

Rosalind giggled. 'Well, you did announce me as an Italian princess. Just before they left, she hissed at me that I was still a strumpet, a foreign strumpet, and we would learn that my father had disowned me. A princess, ha!'

He kissed her ear. 'I appreciate that she has remained her malignant self, no change in her at all. Otherwise I might have to like her. Richard now, I begin to believe he and I will rub together very well. That makes me wonder if he will influence Aubrey in my favor.'

'So long as Lancelot and Miranda remain nasty, I'll be content.' She laughed and held him tight. 'All right, I am a princess, a foreign princess. What do you think of that?'

He held her away from him a bit and looked into her eyes. 'I'm thinking my foreign princess would enjoy visiting Macau. Actually, Lee Po suggested it. He allowed that you would take the population by storm.'

She fell silent. 'Do you think you could teach me Portuguese by the time we arrive?'

'Oh, yes, and Lee Po has already offered to teach you Mandarin Chinese.' He began kissing her, then stopped suddenly, stepped back. 'You should have told me your father knew you were alive and coming back.'

'Would you have believed me?'

'No. Yes.' He cursed, plowed his fingers through his hair. 'Probably, dammit.'

'Kiss me, Nicholas. We are magic, accept it.'

He muttered under his breath, but not under enough. 'A witch, my foreign wife is a damned witch.'

She laughed, stood on her tiptoes, and whispered against his neck, 'And you, my lord, are a damned wizard.'

As he nuzzled her neck, Nicholas thought of one of the statues he'd seen, nearly covered with a wildly blooming red bougainvillea. It wasn't very large, but it was extraordinarily lifelike-a shining marble statue of a dragon with glittering eyes and scales that l o oked sharp enough to prick a finger.

The dragon's snout reminded him of Clandus.