Belladonna

  So I get to meet him after all, the man who did such a splendid thing for us once upon a time.

  Bryony can’t be old enough to have a husband and a child. Why, it was only yesterday when I left, wasn’t it?

  “Come home with us, Tomasino,” Guy says. “We need you. I need you. The maid took down all of Pompadour’s books for a proper dusting and left them in a hopeless jumble. Please come back. Hugh and Laura are arriving soon for a visit. They want to see you, too. Please. Besides,” he adds with a naughty wink, “no one can make a mint julep the way you do.”

  Pompadour’s books, Pompadour’s Bible. The secret in"

  Belladonna is smiling at me through the tears in her eyes. Her hands close over mine, on the golden lion’s head of Leandro’s cane.

  Angelica is running around the wishing star, her hair streaming behind her. “Make a wish,” she calls out, laughing.

  Make a wish!

  We stand there in the sunshine, watching her running races with her father. He lets her win every time. Just like Matteo had done with Bryony.

  I catch a whiff of something pungent wafting by me on a puff of wind. Nerium oleander, I think, the flowers so delicate, so fragrant. No no no, that’s not quite right. Atropa belladonna, it must be. Lovely red flowers shaped like bells, berries black and shiny as a cocker spaniel’s coat.

  How could it be anything but Belladonna?

  Oh ho, the sweet sweet poison!