Rose Red by Flora Speer

about decorum.
    From the sitting room door Eleonora watched
them, with Bartolomeo close behind her. Eleonora’s gaze went from
the rosy-cheeked Rosalinda, who was laughing uproariously, to the
paler Bianca, trying to catch her breath between giggles, to
Andrea, brushing snow off his knees before he gallantly offered a
hand to help Bianca.
    “Take care, Andrea, that your hands and feet
do not freeze again,” Eleonora said mildly, before leaving the
doorway with Bartolomeo following in her wake.
     
    * * * * *
     
    That evening, after the ladies had retired
for the night, Andrea went to Bartolomeo’s office.
    “I would like my daggers back now,” he said,
being careful to keep any hint of threat or impatience out of his
voice.
    “They are put away, under lock.” Bartolomeo
looked up from the manuscript on which he was working.
    “I will wait while you get them.”
    Bartolomeo looked at him for a while longer,
then took up a ring of keys and went to a heavy wooden chest that
stood in one corner of the room. There he paused.
    “You do not really need a dagger while you
are here,” Bartolomeo said.
    “You wear one,” Andrea said in the same quiet
tone of voice. “Like any man, I feel undressed without my knife.
Those daggers are among my few belongings.”
    Another long look passed between the two men
until Bartolomeo nodded and opened the lid of the chest. Drawing
out the daggers, he handed them to Andrea.
    “I notice they are almost identical. Why do
you have two of them?” Bartolomeo asked.
    “This one is mine.” Andrea slid the knife
with the red enamel-and-gold hilt into his belt. He kept the other
knife in his hand, looking down at its blue enamel-and-gold hilt.
“This belonged to my brother.”
    “How did you come by it?”
    “I found it,” Andrea answered shortly.
Bartolomeo said nothing to break the silence that followed the
abrupt words. Finally, taking a deep breath, Andrea explained. “My
brother would never have given it up without a struggle. Finding it
covered with blood, in a place where I knew he had recently been
because I was following him and trying to catch up with him, I took
it as evidence that he must be dead. I have kept it, as I know he
would want me to do, until I can plunge it into the heart of his
murderer.”
    “Then you are bent on revenge.”
    “Wouldn’t you be, too, under the same
circumstances?”
    “You have not told me what those
circumstances are.” Bartolomeo paused, as if considering a serious
decision, then asked, “Will you take a glass of wine with me? My
throat grows dry after an hour or so of writing.”
    “What are you writing?” At a wave of the
older man’s hand, Andrea pulled the second chair in the room up to
the desk.
    “A history of the dukes of Monteferro.”
Bartolomeo handed a parchment page across the desk to Andrea. “You
may read it if you like.”
    “The Farisi dukes of Monteferro,” Andrea
amended Bartolomeo’s remark. His eyes on the other man, Andrea took
the page but did not look at it at once. Bartolomeo nodded his
comprehension of the meaning behind Andrea’s alteration of his
statement.
    “I have seen you looking at the portrait in
the sitting room.” Bartolomeo sat back in his chair, a goblet of
wine in his hand. “The painting is a fine likeness. You have
recognized my old friend, Girolamo Farisi.”
    “If I did not recognize his face, I should
have known him by the eagle that accompanies him in that picture.
All of Italy remembers the Farisi eagle, and how that symbol once
represented an honest ruler. Having recognized the late duke, it
was but a small step further for me to identify the ladies of Villa
Serenita. You need have no fear for them on my account, Bartolomeo.
After everything the duchess Eleonora and her daughters have done
for me, I would give up my life before I allowed any harm to come
to them. I will never tell anyone where they are hiding.”
    “It is my hope, and also the hope of Madonna
Eleonora, that