Duchess of Milan Read Online Free PDF Page A

concern you that Il Moro seems curiously reluctant to sleep with Beatrice?”
    Eleonora still didn't look up. Her voice had a tremolo of contrivance. “Beatrice's husband shows an admirable control over his passions. I cannot tell you how many grooms I have seen fall seriously ill in the midst of their wedding feste because they could not restrain their lust. The Duke of Milan was in peril of his life.”
    “Oh, Mama, everyone in Italy knows that it took the Duke of Milan the better part of a year to consummate the marriage. That is the kind of wedding festa certain to make the bride ill.”
    “Il Moro has assured me that he will attend to Beatrice. His astrologer is preparing a schedule.”
    “Per mia fe, Mama. I have never personally known a woman to have success with that method. As long as Il Moro continues to sleep with his mistress”--Eleonora's head involuntarily snapped up--”his astrologer is more likely to become pregnant than is Beatrice.”
    Eleonora's ringing soprano lowered at least an octave. “You are presuming something that simply is not true.”
    “Oh, Mama, you haven't lied to me successfully since I was eight, when you briefly convinced me that it was impossible for Signorina Anabella to be with child because she wasn't married and that she was going to the convent because she wanted Jesus to be her husband.”
    Eleonora picked up a silver-framed mirror and self-consciously tilted her head as if appraising her image. She glared at something else and said nothing.
    “Mama. You can practically smell her perfume in the halls. I believe she even has a suite of apartments in this Castello. Those rooms that were blocked by scaffolding, which our host so graciously regretted he could not show us because they are under renovation: when we passed by those rooms I thought I observed you incline your head slightly to the right. It is a tic you have whenever you are anxious about something.”
    The room became as still as a tomb. The faint screech of a swift could be heard as it flitted past the big arched window overlooking the steel-blue moat. Eleonora examined the engraved frame of her mirror. Finally, still watching her fingers trace over the engraving, she said, “I don't believe that your sister is likely to be as observant. And I am certain I can depend on you to understand the necessity for discretion in this matter.”
    “You can depend on me for my discretion, but I don't believe you can depend on Beatrice to be so easily duped. You and Father have never realized how truly clever she is. I don't know if Maestro Guarino ever told you this, he was so fond of me--that reminds me, I must write him--but, Mama, there were days in our Latin tutorials when Beatrice recited better than I did.” The Marquesa offered this information as gravely as if she had just revealed Beatrice's central role in the creation of the universe. “She will find out, and she will feel betrayed. You know how loyal she is, and nothing hurts her worse than betrayal.”
    “No. She is too preoccupied at the moment to go snooping for a mistress whose existence her husband and I have been very careful to conceal from her. No. Not now. She will find out later, of course, and there will be tears and recriminations. But they will pass. It will all pass. But if we tell her now, while we are still here, she will feel she has our strength on her side, and she will force the issue. And I cannot allow that to happen.” Eleonora looked up again, toward something distant, visible only to her.
    The Marquesa. shook her head slightly, a gesture for her own benefit, not her mother's. “Mama, I am going to help Beatrice unpack her chests. You have my word that I won't tell her anything, even though she is going to hate me as much as she will you and Father when she finds out. You are wrong, Mama.”
    After the Marquesa had swished out of the room, Eleonora held the mirror before her face. The silvered image that stared back at her was one of