Page 14 of What Dreams May Come
Game over.
In each of the other strongboxes, a portion of the ransom is within. That portion is yours, but you lose 25 gold coins from the whole. With the second, fifty. If you again choose poorly, you’ve lost the wager and will deliver the ring to La Gnocca with your vow to never speak of these circumstancesand this night.
You may, of course, keep the gold coins you have obtained during the process of the wager.
Game over.
Signed,
Your admiring servant, least among least, unworthy but ever a gambler in life and with chance... Do you have the courage to accept those terms?
I hear you. You’re saying,Rosie, this is your brilliant plan? Upon what do you predicate your success? Even if he fails to choose the strongbox with the hundred gold coins, will he honor the wager? Will he produce the ring? And if not, how will you find it?
When he finished reading, he spoketo Berengaria.
She nodded, the signal I needed.
He had agreed to the wager.
She offeredher strongbox.
He laughed and waved it away, not believing the strongbox so easily held by one woman could have contained the heavy coins.
His mistake, for she did indeed carry the ransom.
As Berengaria turned, she faced the ballroom, I saw her lightly stroke the finger of one hand with the finger of another.
A signal.
She then leaped like a gazelle off the stage onto the tile floor and disappearedinto the crowd.
Count Prospero’s cold-blooded gaze followed her.
Somehow, although her back had been turned, he’d discerned her action, for he lifted his right hand, bare except for one small ring worn on the second knuckle of hislittle finger.
A ring that glittered with the dark fire of a large and dangerous stone.
Well. Now I knew where it was, and for a moment, my courage failed me, for how could I win against such a devious, evil,vigorous beast?
His gaze now flicked over the ballroom, looking for the women dressed as lads, and perhaps for the one to whom Berengaria had passed her message.
I quickly turned away, but something compelled me toglance behind.
He had fixed his concentration on me. Somehow,somehow,he identified me as his foe...or his prey.
Did I stand out so much? Or was he so good at reading the masses?
Beneath his mask, pale eyes glittered. His tongue, snakelike and greedy, flicked out from between the mask’s horrible, grinning lips, tasting the air as if he recognized his plan was coming to fruition. He waved his sycophants away—they scurried like cockroaches—and stood, his gaze still fixed on me. One supplicant dared touch his thigh; he kicked her away and continued on his path.
CHAPTER TEN
I stood, frozen like a mouse caught in the hungry gaze of an asp. Indeed, everything about Count Prospero seemed compelling, an illusion created to fascinate and frighten.
He had one foot on the step that would put him on the dance floor when a strong hand grabbed me by the wrist and yanked so hard I stumbled sideways and into the midst of a formation of women dressed like lads.
Venera grasped my arm and led me forcibly into the swirl of guests. “What were you thinking, Rosie?”
“I wasn’t—”
