Page 33 of Thus with a Kiss I Die
To my surprise, she had tears in her eyes. “In what way have you failed, Nonna Ursula? I’ve heard naught but good about your faithful support of your son, your grandson, and your loving care for your granddaughter.”
“I—”
Urgently Elder spoke in my ear. “He’s coming.”
“Someone’s coming,” I said to Nonna Ursula. “Someone of importance.”
She looked toward the door, straining to see. “Who?”
CHAPTER19
Elder answered her question. “Yago, my brother. He of the schemes and laments and displeasures and personal injuries unwitnessed by others.”
“It’s your son, Duke Yago,” I told Nonna Ursula.
“He comes late and will leave soon,” she said.
Elder continued, “He brings with him his wife, Lugrezia, who in her dappled girlhood cast her net toward me, and when I loved Eleanor, turned her craft toward Yago and caught the fool. Her sour face was always enough to curdle fresh milk, and the years have set that fateful resentment in sneers that can never be erased.”
“He brings with him Duchess Lugrezia, his wife,” I said to Nonna Ursula.
She grimaced. “The woman’s a mumble-news. She speaks softly and so works to leave me isolated among the company.”
Thus we were not surprised when Yago and Lugrezia appeared in the doorway and posed, like two bolts of dark lightning sent to obliterate the candles and plunge us into dark.
Conversation hushed, and Elder said, “Ever they have affected a jolly revelry like two turds tossed in the punch bowl.”
I didn’t laugh—but it was a close thing. Clearly, Cal got his turn of phrase from his father.
When Cal noticed them, he rose slowly to his feet and smiled a grin so faulty, I thanked the Madonna that he’d not felt obliged to create that terrible contortion for me. “Welcome, my noble uncle and gracious aunt. Come sit at the table with this merry company and celebrate my blessed betrothal to Lady Rosaline of the house of Montague.” He gestured toward me, his broad hand a graceful, gracious sweep.
I stood and curtsied. I didn’t remember previously meeting the couple; yet from the expressions on their sour lemon faces, one would have thought Cal had introduced them to a voluptuary.
Duke Yago resembled Elder in his features and form, but even as a ghost, Elder appeared more robust, for Yago’s sallow complexion, crumpled chest, and skinny shoulders gave him the appearance of a soon-likely visit to the boneyard’s stone slab.
Duchess Lugrezia stood taller than her husband, an impressive woman, clearly once so beautiful she had put the stars to shame; and now to clutch at youth, she wore white hair painted yellow, wild eyebrows penciled brown, and narrow lips over-stained with red.
The couple dressed alike in magnificent well-padded scarlet velvets and fur-trimmed sleeves—people of consequence not in themselves, but because their clothes declared them to be. In unison, they strode forward, clearly intending that Yago take his seat at the foot of the table, but Cal gestured them forward. “We sit close so Nonna Ursula can hear our conversations.”
They surveyed the table, looking for the most prominent seats among people they clearly considered beneath them.
Papà rose. “Please take my seat. You’ll wish to greet your mother with affection and respect.”
Yago seemed only now to notice Nonna Ursula. He shuffled over, kissed her cheek, murmured, “Madam Mother, I rejoice to see you.”
For all that his voice was pitched low, she heard him, for she loudly answered, “You rejoice too seldom, Yago. I have only one son left on this earth and he arrives with a tardy gait.”
Duke Yago grimaced in contemptuous and unhidden disdain.
I wanted to warn him of Nonna Ursula’s not-so-impaired vision, but would never deliberately remove the elderly woman’s camouflage, although I saw that his contempt pained her.
The tension at the table thickened, for my kind family had welcomed Nonna Ursula to their hearts, and Cal, for all his dire warnings, obviously loved his grandmother.
Yago remained oblivious, or perhaps he cared nothing for family, friends, and a merry company. He groaned like a swaybacked horse as he lowered himself into my father’s seat next to Nonna Ursula. Cal directed Lugrezia to Cesario’s empty chair across the table, next to Mamma, and ordered they both be given plates and foods to sate their hunger.
Duchess Lugrezia pulled the entire stuffed and refeathered peacock toward her, and with her eating knife, she began the process of removing a joint.
Good luck to her. None of the rest of us had been able to dismember the tough old bird.
