I n my panic, I entered the wrong open door and found myself at the far end of the great walk. Which didn’t matter, I assured myself. Sun shone into the rooms; footmen paced and maids cleaned; Cal had the guard with him; Friar Camillo remained in the garden . . .

I caught my breath.

I needed to get back to the safety of Nonna Ursula’s room.

There I’d add Friar Camillo’s odd behavior into the jumble of facts in my brain and make some kind of sense of this.

I set out briskly, and as I walked past the door that led to the tower where first I encountered Elder, I heard my name wafting down from the tower. “Lady Rosaline . . .”

“I’m thinking,” I snapped.

He called again, more urgently. “Lady Rosaline . . .”

“Give me a moment. I need to concentrate. There’s something I’m missing.”

“Lady Rosaline . . .”

Elder could hear me, I knew he could, but he ever acted the autocrat.

No, he couldn’t force me to go up to the tower, his ghostly powers didn’t extend that far, but he’d proved he could annoy me enough to give me the appearance of madness.

I couldn’t find his killer if I was confined to a nunnery, and, let’s face it, if I was confined, I was a target waiting to be pierced by treachery’s swift arrow.

Plus, the good sisters would be at risk, and I didn’t want that stain on my soul.

Also, perhaps . . . perhaps Elder held within him a knowledge to illume this mystery. I suspected he did, although he didn’t know it. I simply had to ask the right questions.

I started the climb up the everlasting stairs.

It was warm in here. My sleep every night had been disturbed by horrific dreams of knives, ghosts, devil’s masks, and broken bodies.

I was disgruntled at being so summarily summoned.

Consequently, as I climbed, I panted, and as I climbed higher, I panted harder.

I know what you’re thinking. I’m a woman of twenty years in the prime of health. I should be able to climb four flights of stairs without puffing.

Please, gentle reader, let me describe my clothing on this particular day.

My fashionable wide skirts were created by petticoats, petticoats, petticoats, and a heavy drape of velvet that draped from beneath my nice tette all the way to the floor.

Under my heavy velvet bodice, I wore several layers of linen, and the bodice itself was shaped by inserting whalebone into the garment.

My silk sleeves, laced on at the shoulder with sturdy gold thread, were covered in pearls and a more delicate gold thread.

My headdress, a cap and trinzale, the net I wore over my long, thick braid, was knit and braided with beads.

Men thought of women as being dainty and fragile; I’d like to see one of them carry a weight like this up and down and around.

Consequently, by the time I got to the top of the tower, I was angry and aggravated, and I popped through the door and shouted, “Elder! What do you want that can’t wait for me to think ?”

Elder wasn’t there.

Then, with that disconcerting little pop, he was. “What are you yelling about?”

“You called me.”

“I did not.”

My mind untangled that sticky web at exactly the same moment a living man stepped around the corner and said, “Lady Rosaline, you really are quite insane, aren’t you?”