Lady Elinor's Wicked Adventures (8 page)

Rycote was feeling at loose ends. His mother and sister had gone off shopping, Tunbury had headed for the Caffè Greco to meet some writer friend of his, and his father had gone to call on Freeborn. None of those activities appealed to him. What he really wanted to do was go for a long walk along the cliffs at Penworth or through his own woods at Rycote. He wanted to check on his apple trees. The ones on the south slope should be blooming soon if they weren't already. He wanted to breathe the sweet-scented air of home.

Sweet-scented was not how he would describe the air of Rome. It was every bit as malodorous as London, though the scent was not quite the same. Precisely what constituted the difference was not something he cared to think about. He glared out the window at the street. At least London had the occasional tree visible. Here everything was either gray stone or endless streets of stucco, painted in that brownish yellow or brownish red. The same colors as that Etruscan wall they were all making such a fuss about.

In fact, this street might as well be a tomb for all the life on it. Things were busy enough over on the Corso, he supposed, but here every window was shuttered, every door was barred. Anyone would think the city were under perpetual siege.

No, there was some life on the street. Not particularly lively life, however. Down toward the end of the street, on the shadowed side, there was a doorway, and he could just make out someone in its depths. He would never have noticed him if he hadn't moved to adjust his position. What was he doing there? He looked furtive enough to be hiding, but from what, Rycote couldn't imagine. There was no one else about.

Well, well, well. The world was getting livelier. The small door in the corner of the palazzo was opening very slowly. As he watched, he could see a head covered in black move out to peer around the edge of the door, checking the street. One of the Crescenzi servants on a private errand?

She stepped out and Rycote received a jolt. Not a servant. That was Donna Lissandra. He didn't have to see her face, and that black shawl was no disguise at all. He would recognize the way she walked, the way she moved, anywhere. All thoughts of home vanished in an instant. What the devil was she up to, sneaking out without even that blasted maid to accompany her? His protective instincts were outraged.

As she started down the street in the direction of the Piazza Navona, another movement caught his eye. The figure at the other end of the street came out of the doorway. It was that damned bounder Girard. Rycote muttered an oath and ran to snatch up his hat and coat. He was down on the street before he had even finished pulling on his gloves. Why Girard was spying on Lissandra he didn't know, but he didn't like it.

He didn't like it at all.

Lissandra must have turned a corner because she was not in sight. Girard was, however. He was easy to spot in his uniform. If he was going to spy on Lissandra, you would think he'd have the sense to at least put a cloak over it.

As if he could read Rycote's thoughts, Girard shook out the bundle under his arm and swung it around himself. It was a long cloak, complete with hood.

Well, at least he would be uncomfortably hot, wrapped up that way. Rycote took some satisfaction in that thought as he hurried to catch up.

It was not long before he caught sight of Donna Lissandra. She was glancing back often enough to force Girard to keep his head down. One time she stared hard at him, and he stepped around a corner. Fortunately, she had not noticed Rycote, whose long legs were rapidly cutting down the distance between them. When one of her backward glances sent the Frenchman ducking into a doorway, Rycote strode right past him and called out, “Donna Lissandra!”

She noticed him then and stumbled to a halt. By the time he reached her, she was wrapped in anger as well as that shabby black shawl. “How dare you call out my name that way on a public street? Do you think I am some sort of…” She waved her hand around. “I don't know what you call them in English.”

Rycote frowned, took her hand firmly, and tucked it under his arm as he began slowly walking her in the direction she had been headed. “Now listen to me before you erupt any further. This is important. Did you know that Lieutenant Girard is following you?”

She stopped abruptly. Whatever imprecations she had been about to rain down on him faded from her lips. “Are you certain?” She started to turn, but he stopped her.

“Don't look back,” he commanded. “Keep walking. Yes, I am certain. He was across the street from the palazzo, waiting for you to come out.”

“
Maledizione
,” she whispered. Her hand trembled on his arm as they walked ahead slowly, and she was biting her lip.

He gave her a minute to absorb his news before he spoke. “We seem to be going in the direction of your friends' trattoria. Is that where you are meeting him?”

“Him?”

He glared at her. “Do not take me for a fool.”

She had the grace to blush. “No, no, meeting him there would be foolish. That is the first place they will look if they know he is here.”

“They? Your parents as well as the lieutenant?”

“My parents? They might be annoyed, but they will hardly betray him.”

“Really? I believe my parents would be more than annoyed if my sister were sneaking out to meet a lover.” He sounded stiff and priggish. He knew it, but he couldn't help it. Did she expect his approval?

“A lover?” She pulled away from him. Now it was her turn to glare. “You think I was sneaking out to meet a lover? How dare you suggest such a thing!”

He shot a quick look over his shoulder. “Keep your voice down. There are people about, and Girard is close enough to hear.” He took hold of her arm and began walking again. She tossed her head and kept her eyes turned away from him. He could feel the injured pride radiating from her. After several minutes of silence, he finally asked, “If you weren't going to meet a lover, who were you going to meet?”

“My brother, of course,
cretino
!”

He stumbled slightly. It was surprising how much lighter he suddenly felt. “We need…” He cleared his throat and began again. “We need to talk. Can we speak privately at that trattoria?”

She nodded, and then she began to smile. “That will be perfect. We must let Girard see us. Then he will think that I came out to meet you somewhere away from our families. He will think you are my lover.” She laughed with delight.

Rycote smiled, though he was not sure he liked her thinking the notion comic. He did, however, enjoy the way she now walked beside him, hanging on his arm and smiling up at him.

“I just realized,” she said, coming to a sudden stop, “you have shaved off your moustache. Let me see.” She stood in front of him and put up a finger to turn his face first one way and then the other. “Yes, you are far more handsome this way. You have a most excellent mouth. Moustaches should be left to those with something to hide.”

Rycote could feel himself turning red.

“That was to pay you for calling out to me in the street and for thinking that I was a bad woman going to meet a lover.” She grinned at him. “But you are a beautiful man, and I think you must know it.”

He could think of absolutely no reply to make to anything she had said. Nothing, at least, that wouldn't make him sound like even more of an idiot than he already felt himself to be. So they proceeded with him walking in silence while she occasionally hummed a cheerful tune until they reached Del Falcone.

As he held the door open for Lissandra, he looked around as if casually admiring the fountain in the middle of the piazza. A hooded figure that he was almost certain was Girard lurked in the shadows. He hoped the lieutenant was gnashing his teeth.

Seated at a table—not by the window this time—and served with coffee, cakes, and suspicious glares by Amelia, he settled down to hear Lissandra's story.

It took her a while to get started. Amelia had placed three little jewel-like tarts in front of Lissandra, and she sat there poking them with a fork. First she arranged them one way on the plate and studied them. Apparently she disliked the arrangement, because then she set the tarts in a different order, studied them, and turned her attention to the coffee. After putting three spoonfuls of sugar in it, she stirred it carefully, took a sip, and made a face.

“Donna Lissandra,” he said patiently.

She looked across at him and her mouth quirked up at one side. “My brother is not always the most sensible of men.”

There was a pause, so he nodded in what he hoped was an understanding, reassuring way.

“He is full of—enthusiasm. He does not lack courage, you understand. He is very brave. But he is not always sensible.” She looked at him uncertainly, so he nodded again. “And he does not always see what will happen, the problems that will come. He lacks…”

“Foresight?” he suggested.

Her smile beamed at him. She should always smile that way. She should never be worried.

“Foresight,” she repeated. “Yes, that is it. That is what he lacks. He admires Garibaldi, he believes in a united Italy. These are wonderful ideas, and many agree with him. But he never thought about what would happen to us when he fled Rome. Our father is old, he is ill, and he did not know how to deal with problems. French soldiers march into our home looking for Pietro, and Papa cannot say his son has run off. No, no, Papa is too proud. He must defy them, call them names, and so they smash things, they fine him, they confiscate things.” She shrugged.

He hated to see the sadness in her eyes. “It seems to me that they are very much alike, your father and your brother.”

“Alike? But no, they argue all the time. Or they did when Pietro was here.”

“I don't mean they have the same ideas. I mean that they both think they are right all the time and never consider how their actions will affect other people.”

She stared at him in surprise, but slowly the surprise turned to admiration. “But you are right! That is precisely how they are. How very clever you are.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “But you said you were going to meet him. Is he back in Rome?”

“Yes, and that is the same sort of thing.” Her shoulders slumped and she leaned back. “He comes back to Rome thinking to discover the attitude of the people here now that Garibaldi has come back to Italy. But he forgets that Rome is full of people who know him, people who are his enemies. He cannot walk about the streets freely. Many people would be glad to sell him to the French, who would shoot him.”

He raised a hand in protest, but she spoke vehemently. “Yes, yes, they would. That Lieutenant Girard would be only too happy to capture my brother, and we would never see him again. And the lieutenant must have some suspicion, he must have heard something. Why else would he be following me?”

Was she really that foolish? All she had to do was look in a mirror to know why Girard would be following her. Rycote had deduced that the first time he saw the bounder. That presumptuous little Frenchman would do just about anything to get close to Donna Lissandra.

“I cannot help thinking that it would be wiser for you to have taken a servant with you,” he said carefully.

“No, no, no. Anyone I took with me would have to tell my parents, and they would have forbidden me to come.”

Very wisely, to his way of thinking. “But how did you know your brother is in Rome?”

“Eduardo brings a message with the pastries in the morning. But I have to wait until now, when everyone is resting, to be able to leave the house.”

“But still you were followed.”

She nodded. “It was good of you to warn me about Girard.” Then an idea struck her—he could almost see it arrive—and her brilliant smile returned. “And it is even better because he has already seen you. He will think that you are courting me, and that the reason I came out alone was to meet you.”

“Yes, he will.”
And
he
will
be
quite
right
that
I
am
courting
you, though you don't seem to have realiz
ed it yet.

“And so he will not be watching so carefully now. If I leave by the back, he will not see me, and I can go to meet Pietro.”

Rycote, who had been watching her fondly, amused by her naïveté, looked at her in shock. “Don't be ridiculous,” he snapped. “You will do nothing of the sort.”

Her smile vanished and she looked at him with a regal chill. “I do not recall asking your permission.”

“It is not a question of my permission. It is a matter of common sense. I cannot believe that Rome is so different from London that it is considered acceptable for a young lady to wander about the streets on her own. If it were, you would not have needed to sneak out of the house.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he knew he shouldn't have said that. It sounded pompous even to him. He didn't need to see the look of outrage on her face.

“What you think about it is a matter of indifference to me. I will do what I must do, and you have nothing to say about it.” She sat stiffly, looking somewhere over his shoulder.

Rycote was feeling a bit stiff himself. “I cannot believe that your brother would wish you to go about by yourself at the mercy of blackguards like Girard.”

She made a dismissive noise that sounded somehow sad. “My brother has far more to think about than the fate of one woman. He works for the future of all Italy.”

The future of all Italy. Oh Lord, her brother was one of those idiots out to save the world. He probably planned assassinations and threw bombs instead of protecting the people he was supposed to protect. Like his sister.

Rycote had to say something, do something, and obviously common sense and reason were not going to serve his purpose. This was like trying to argue with his sister when she wanted to do something outrageous. “Please, Donna Lissandra, do not be offended.” He thought that came out rather well. His voice sounded calm. “I know I have no right to tell you what to do. It is simply my concern for you. I would not be able to live with myself, were anything to happen to you while you were off on your own.” He tried to look plaintive.