Page 81 of Thus with a Kiss I Die
“Fruit! Honey!” I demanded, and handed back the mug.
Under my eager gaze, he cut an apple into quarters, dipped it in golden honey, and, with his cupped hand under it, put it to my lips. As I bit eagerly into it, he utilized his handsome eyes and his deep, poetry-reciting voice. “‘Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for Iamsick of love.’ ”
Cheating! He’d gone biblical on me, quoting a verse from the Song of Solomon 2. I chewed and swallowed, plucked the apple from his hand, and said, “Yes, I’d like bread and cheese, too, please. And wine, since you offer it.”
He poured a deep red wine, from a flagon, of course, and put it to my lips.
I didn’t like being suckered twice, so I placed the cloth-wrapped ice on the bed—yes, I knew I was going to have a damp spot on the blankets—then took the goblet and sipped.
He wasn’t smiling. He never smiled. But he radiated a manly glee at feeding me and offering wine and making me as aware of him as I would be of a generous lover. In so many words, I wanted to tell him I got the message and to knock it off, but sometimes (frequently) that didn’t work out for me. In his hands, my plainspokenness tended to rebound in unforeseen ways. In other words, I was not a chess player, and he was, able to predict my movements far ahead of me and counter them in the way he considered most advantageous for him.
“Why did my father let you remain in my bedchamber?” I suppose I should have asked that first thing.
“I vowed to be on my best behavior.” Plucking the cup from my fingers, he turned it to drink from the exact place my lips had rested.
It didn’t take Eros to figure outthatsymbolism. “This is your best behavior?”
“Not at all. One day soon, I’ll pleasure you with my best behavior. But for today, I keep the implication of my promise to your father.” Cal carved a trencher out of the crusty bread, cut a slice of blue-veined cheese, finished slicing the apple, and placed them all in the bread bowl with a pool of honey. “I merely provide you with food and drink. Call it reciprocity for preparing soup to hearten the bodies and souls of me, my sister, and my men.”
“Don’t forget about restoring the palace kitchens to respectability,” I advised him.
He settled into the chair and cut himself a slice of cheese and broke off a stem of grapes, and ate them as if the last few days in battle had been generous in violence, but sparse with food. “If you’re right and the attack on Nonna Ursula came from within the palace, and was generated by my father’s killer—”
Maybe I was bruised and exhausted, but the way he changed subjects made my head whip around in a complete circle.
“—who do you suspect?” he finished.
Marcellus.But why? Because he didn’t like me and I didn’t like him? I knew better than to propose that solution. Shaking my head, I ate an apple quarter dipped in honey and followed it with a bite of cheese.
At my non-answer, Cal asked, “Who does my father suspect killed him?”
“He saw a man in a mask. He fought and then your father was dead. He doesn’t know.”
“Mayhap the spirit is lying. Mayhap the spirit is not my father, but one come to deceive us.” Cal made a good point.
But—“He looks like the portrait.”
“Can a ghost change its appearance?”
“I don’t know the rules, Cal. No one does, not even your father, or so he says, but I assure you, no ghost who wanted to gull me would be so rude and arrogant. If he drew breath, I would smother him.”
“Sounds like my father,” Cal grudgingly agreed.
Randomly I ripped off a chunk of bread and waved it as I took a stab at a suspect’s name. “Barnadine.”
“He saved my father’s life time and again on the battlefield. Nonna Ursula has treasured him all the years since. Why murder Papà and years later attack my grandmother?” He drank the wine again, then handed me the cup.
“Whoever attacked Nonna Ursula believes that in her séance and with the assistance of Yorick’s skull, she discovered the assassin’s treachery.” I drank, making sure I did not drink from the same place that his lips had touched.
He observed, and if anything, my skittishness pleased him.
Men. Who understands them?
“If she discovered the truth, the killer would already be hanging from a gibbet on the bridge over the Adige River.” He slipped a grape between my lips.
What was I supposed to do? Spit it out? I chewed and swallowed, and responded sensibly. “Your grandmother, being who she is, very well might not tell you what she knows. She might intend to handle it herself, and everyone in the palace and beyond realizes that.”
I could see Cal struggle with that truth. “Damn,” he said. “Yes, Barnadine would grasp that better than anyone, but he has no reason—”
