“In relationships. In reproduction. I’m talking about the demands of survival, Lucia. Do you think the Order would have lasted so long if it had allowed its members to follow the random dictates of love?”

Lucia didn’t understand any of this, but she felt a deep horror creep over her.

Pina, too, looked shocked. “You shouldn’t be saying this, Rosa,” she said in a small voice.

Rosa sat back. “It’s the last time I will allow you out of the Crypt. The last time, do you hear? If I have to bell you like a cat . . .”

Lucia, released, turned away.

If she tried hard she could imagine the warmth of his hand on hers. When she thought about that she could feel heat in her lips and eyes, and a hot tautness across her breasts, and her skin tingled under her clothes, and there was a deep burning at the pit of her belly. In the dismal, silent interior of this car, despite the cold severity of Rosa beside her, she had never felt more alive. Rosa hadn’t won.

And she still had Daniel’s card in her bag.

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

As their long sea journey drew to a close, despite the tension between them, Regina and Brica crowded together at the prow of the small ship, hungry for their first glimpse of Italy.

The early-morning air was already hot and dense, and the salt smell of the sea was exotic. The crew called coarsely to each other as they pursued their bewildering tasks, adjusting the ship’s green sails as it approached the shore. This was just a small cargo craft dedicated to transporting jewelry, fine pottery, and other expensive and low-bulk wares, and the ship creaked as it rolled. But to the women, now veterans of an ocean crossing from Britain, the tideless rolling of the Mediterranean was as nothing.

It was Brica who saw the lighthouse first. “Ah, look . . .” It loomed over the horizon long before the land itself was visible, a fist of concrete and masonry thrusting defiantly into the misty air. Soon afterward a great concrete barrier came into view, cutting across the horizon. This was the wall of the harbor, one of two huge jutting moles. The ship was steered easily toward the break between the moles, and sailed past the lighthouse.