'When then?' was his burning question.
'When Theodore has been whipped out of Montferrat.'
His arms tightened about her until his armour hurt her. 'It is a pledge, Valeria?'
'A pledge?' she echoed on a questioning, exalted note.
'The man who does that may claim me when he wants me. I swear it.'
CHAPTER XII
CARMAGNOLA'S DUTY
My Lord of Carmagnola had shut himself up in a small room on the ground floor of the castle of Quinto to indite a letter to the High and Most Potent Duke Filippo Maria of Milan. A heavy labour this of quill on parchment for one who had little scholarship. It was a labour that fell to him so rarely that he had never perceived until now the need to equip himself with a secretary.
The Princess and her brother newly returned from Mass on that Sunday morning, four days after Bellarion's escape, were together in the armoury discussing their situation, and differing a good deal in their views, for the mental eyes of the young Marquis were not dazzled by the effulgence of Carmagnola's male beauty, or deceived by his histrionic attitudes.
Into their presence, almost unheralded, were ushered two men. One of these was small and slight and active as a monkey, the other a fellow of great girth with a big, red, boldly humorous face, blue eyes under black brows flanking a beak of a nose, and a sparse fringe of grey hair straggling about a gleaming bald head.