put her teacup down. “Suicide!” she said. “Well, that figures. He never did have the strength of character to face life’s challenges like a man. He ran off and left Guillaume to shoulder the family burden alone. My husband thought Giovanni would return one day to offer his assistance, but of course he never did. It was an enormous betrayal. No one remained to carry the family forward, you see.” She looked at me for a long, tense moment. “But now, there is you. Alberta Isabelle Eleanor Vittoria Montebianco. Do you know why you were given that name?”
I had yet to learn to spell the name, let alone parse its origin.
“They are ancestral names, passed down from generation to generation. If your parents were unaware of the Montebianco family, as you believe they were, it must have been Giovanni who christened you thus.” She narrowed her large green eyes and examined me, as if looking for something to prove me worthy. “Despite everything, he must have felt compelled to continue family traditions. Did your father have an Italian name, too?”
“Giuliano,” I said.
“Ah, well, there you have it. There are a number of Giulianos in the family tree, just as there are many Albertas. The first Alberta Montebianco was born in the thirteenth century. You are her namesake. Isabelle, the second of your four Christian names, was the founding mother of the noble Montebianco line, a member of the House of Savoy who married Frederick, a native of this valley. A great beauty, if her portrait is to be trusted. And Eleanor, your great-great-grandmother, was simply extraordinary. French. Came to Nevenero from Bordeaux. Which must have been something of a shock. The weather is so terrible up here.”
Dolores had explained all of my names except one. “And Vittoria?”
Dolores closed her eyes. Her cheeks flushed, and I wondered if she felt ill. Finally, she opened her eyes and said, “The family has changed over the generations. The Montebiancos have risen to great heights and fallen to unthinkable lows. But there are some elements of the family that have endured, characteristics that make you different from other families. You might say Vittoria is one of those elements.”
“Vittoria was one of my ancestors?”
“Yes, indeed,” Dolores said. “The mother of Guillaume and Giovanni, as a matter of fact, which makes her your great-grandmother. And although her given name is Vittoria, she has always been known as Vita.”
“Vita,” I said, rolling the word on my tongue. Vita. The sound itself seemed to pulse with energy. Life. Vitality. Vita. “It’s pretty.”
“If only the name matched the woman,” she said bitterly.
“Did Vita have something to do with why my grandfather left?”
Dolores gave me a withering look. “You might say that, yes.”
I waited for Dolores to continue, but I could see that the topic annoyed her. Finally, she said, “You were raised far from here, far from your birthright, far from the traditions and expectations of the Montebianco family. But now you are here, Alberta, and I will tell you this: You have a duty to fulfill. You have responsibilities to perform. You must come to understand your inheritance and take charge of it. Or you will find that your inheritance will take charge of you.”
Dolores lifted the crystal bell from the tea table and gave it a quick shake, its clear, high vibrato ending the conversation. Greta jumped to the wheelchair, gripped the handles, and pushed Dolores away. From the hallway, Dolores called, “Meet me at two o’clock in the portrait gallery, and I will show you what I mean.”
Eleven
I left Dolores’s salon intending to go back to my rooms, but before I knew it, I was walking through a part of the castle Greta had not shown me. With its twisting hallways and staircases, its communicating corridors and bricked-up doors and circular rooms with multiple exits, the castle soon became a frustrating maze. After thirty minutes of wandering, I was thoroughly lost.
As I had discovered earlier in the salon, the castle wasn’t as overcast as Nonna had believed. There were flashes of sunlight from time to time, and even whole hours of illumination in the morning. But for the most part, the castle was gloomy. Pools of gray shadow collected in every corner. And by afternoon, the place was dark as night.
This wouldn’t have been a problem had the lights worked. But the electricity was a conundrum. Only a fraction of the structure had been fitted with lights and modern plumbing. The main source of heat came