Kissing in Italian (24 page)

The train is slowing down. We’re coming into Florence.

“Paige,” I say slowly, “I’m beyond impressed. Oh!” I realize something else. “
That’s
why you yelled at Evan when we went swimming in the river—why you got cross and told him not to say you were showing your junk all over town! You didn’t want him saying anything to, um, Mig.”

“Exactly!”
she says in a heartfelt tone. “Can you
imagine
? Ev knows how serious I am about Mig, and he was totally messing with me.
Brothers
! I could have slapped him!” She shakes her head crossly as she remembers his teasing.
“Soo”
—she leans across the table—“you’re going to cover for me, right? We’ll go meet Giulio, and then I’ll say I’m staying to shop—meeting Catia and the girls when they get in tonight and coming back with them. You act like it’s all totally normal. He won’t care.”

I nod. Giulio won’t give a toss; he’s as taciturn and grumpy as his wife is vivacious and chatty. Besides, it
is
totally normal that a teenage girl like Paige would grab the chance to spend the day in Florence hitting the shops.

“Okay, Violet?” she asks, grabbing my hands. “Please? This is so important to me—I haven’t seen him in months, and we’re dying to have some time together in Florence; it’s going to be so romantic.…”

What can I say? One thing about Paige, she’s incredibly practical. Look at the way she’s organized this whole thing, volunteering to come down to Florence with me, arranging with Miguel to meet her here, covering her tracks so smoothly no one suspected a thing.

“Was he always going to come to Florence?” I ask, suddenly curious. “I mean, if I hadn’t decided I wanted to come back here, what would you have done?”

“Oh, I had it all planned out,” she says instantly. “Mig was always going to come see me, but when we got packed off to Venice he was going to catch a train up there instead and I was going to pretend I was sick and then sneak out while you were all off on one of the day trips. Lucky Italy’s so small!” she adds, grinning. “You can, like, get anywhere on a plane or train in a couple of hours! But this worked out even better. I get the most time possible ’cause I don’t have to keep worrying about how long you’re going to be out for. Catia’s train doesn’t get in till eight tonight—we have ages.”

She heaves a big, happy sigh. The train comes to a halt, and we hear the hiss as the pneumatic door locks disengage.

“Firenze Santa Maria Novella!”
the guard says, walking through the restaurant car.
“Signori, signore, Firenze Santa Maria Novella, siamo arrivati! Prossima fermata, Roma.”

“We’re here!” Paige jumps up. A tall figure appears in the aisle, almost filling it completely.

“Paige!” he says, and she turns, sees her Miguel, screams, and throws herself against him with an audible thud. They’re pretty much the same height, especially with Paige in heels; I can’t see much of Miguel, just his wide frame, his arms wrapping around his fiancée, and a shaved dark head. They’re kissing madly.

“Ah, l’amore è bello,”
comments a woman sitting across from us.

“Love is beautiful.” I have to agree with her.

“Guys?” I tap Paige. “We better move, ’cause the next stop is Rome, and none of us wants to go there.…”

Locked together, Paige and Miguel move along. We jump down at the far end of the platform. Squinting, I can see Giulio leaning against the buffers at the other end waiting for us, smoking a cigarette, not even looking down the platform; the lovers are pretty safe from being spotted—by him, at least. Because almost everyone who’s getting off or on the train is pausing to look at Paige and Miguel embracing, and commenting audibly with approval and encouragement. That’s Italy for you. If you kissed passionately in public in London, people would judge you as attention-seekers and deliberately ignore you: in Italy, they practically applaud.

“Violet, this is Mig,” Paige eventually says. “Second Lieutenant Miguel Ramirez,” she adds proudly, detaching herself for long enough to manage a few words. Her face is pink and beaming, her eyes twin stars, and Miguel is in exactly the same condition. It’s beyond sweet.

“Nice to meet you, Violet,” he says, taking my hand and pumping it up and down, dragging his gaze from Paige for long enough to look at me politely. “We’re grateful to you for giving us this opportunity to get some time together.”

“It’s my pleasure,” I say, going all formal for some reason—probably because of his military good manners.

What maybe impresses me most of all about Miguel is that he isn’t that handsome, though he has a really lovely, kind smile. Paige has gone for character rather than looks. He’s wide and square, with a friendly, solid face that looks as if it might have been in a couple of fights. He seems poised.
Mature. As if he can handle Paige with one hand behind his back. Which is good, because Paige, frankly, needs someone who won’t let her ride all over him.

“We should get going,” I say, glancing at Giulio, who’s stubbing his cigarette out with his foot and starting to look down the platform for us.

“Yes, Mig, get lost,” Paige says flirtatiously. “Meet you by the McDonald’s.”

“Hey, I did
not
come to Italy for a day to eat McDonald’s!” Miguel says with a grin. “I’m taking you to an Italian restaurant for lunch. Pizza, pasta, the works.”

“Silly! You never eat pizza and pasta together in Italy! You have a
lot
to learn,” Paige says, pushing him back into an embrasure in the station wall. “Catch me up, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

He salutes and ducks out of sight as we walk quickly down the platform, waving at Giulio.

“I love him
soo
much,” Paige says in a soft, dreamy voice that I’ve never heard from her before.

“He seems really, really nice,” I say.

“Oh, he
is
,” she assures me as we greet Giulio and explain about Paige staying on.

As expected, Giulio reacts to this information by shrugging and grunting, “
Moh! Cazzi vostri
,” which we know by now is a rather coarse way of saying “Who cares? It’s your business.”

So I hug Paige hard, which would have raised Giulio’s suspicions if he had any natural curiosity, because why on earth am I hugging her like this when she’s just going shopping? I follow Giulio out of the station, and just as we’re about
to turn down the walkway that leads to the underground car park, I look back. Sure enough, there are Paige and Miguel by McDonald’s, kissing again, Paige’s blond curls clearly visible, both of them still oblivious to the fact that every single passerby is slowing down to gaze and comment approvingly on this excellent demonstration of
l’amore
being
bello
. I’m horribly jealous, to be honest.

“Allora, prima la villa?”
Giulio says as we get into the Range Rover.

“No, direttamente al Castello di Vesperi,”
I say. We’re going straight to the castello. And as I say the words, I feel my heart leap and bound in my chest.

Not long now. Not long at all.

Forty-five minutes later, we’re bumping up the zigzag of cypress-lined driveway, around the castle, in through the portico, barely even slowing down, though there can’t be more than a few inches’ clearance for the Range Rover on either side; a month and a half ago, I would have been gripping the armrests in fear, but I’m so used to Italian driving right now that I don’t break a bead of sweat.

“Eccoci,”
Giulio says economically, screeching to a halt a bare foot from the castle’s internal wall. “We’re here.”

I heave open the door, clamber down, get out. He’s backing through the open gates almost as soon as I slam the door again. My ride’s gone; no way back. But that’s okay. I’ve never wanted anything in my life as much as I want to go forward right now.

I run up the walkway into the castle. The doors are open, letting in light and air, and a maid is up on a high stepladder in the hallway, dusting the hanging crystal light fittings.

“Il signore?”
I ask.
“Luca? Dov’è?”

“Where’s Luca?” I’m asking.
I’m so close
. I’m trembling as she says:

“Non lo so, signorina. Mi dispiace.”

She doesn’t know: oh well. I don’t care if I have to comb the entire castle for him.

“Prova su di sopra,”
she adds, jabbing the ceiling with her duster; he’s somewhere upstairs.

Oh well, that narrows it down. Only about twenty thousand square feet to search, rather than thirty thousand
.

“Grazie,”
I say over my shoulder as I start to run up the big central
Gone with the Wind
staircase. I take the search systematically, starting with the picture gallery, covering the south wing first, where there are a lot of public rooms. I don’t want to run around calling his name; but as I find myself pushing open the double doors that obviously lead to the family’s private quarters, I decide that, if I won’t call out for him, I’ll knock on every closed door. The last thing I want is to barge in on Luca doing something private and start this massively important conversation on a completely wrong note.

I pass another maid waxing the wooden floors, and ask her if she’s seen Luca. She, too, has no idea where he is. Never mind: I know he’s here. The principessa made sure of that. And I’ll find him if it takes all day. I enter a suite of rooms with pale-blue-painted paneling and gorgeous molded golden ceilings, and I guess straight away that these are the principessa’s. There’s something about the formality of this sitting room, the neat piles of books and magazines, the silver tissue box on the coffee table and the perfectly
arranged flowers on the side tables, that indicates the principessa immediately.

Luca won’t be in his mother’s rooms when she’s not here. I pivot to go, but then I hear sounds next door and think it might be another maid I could ask about his whereabouts.

The door’s ajar. It leads to the dressing room that adjoins the principessa’s bedroom, which I can see reflected in the mirrored cupboards behind the dressing table: a big canopied bed, hung with pale-blue draperies, pale-green rugs that echo the color of the fitted carpet in here. It’s enviably pretty and serene, everything built-in, the dressing table stacked with a matching set of white leather jewelry boxes, the kind that lift up and slide open and have lots of little separate drawers and ring stands and different velvet-lined compartments, so you can view all the jewelry you possess, almost at once.

And certainly, the person I heard in here is busy seeing all the jewelry the principessa possesses. It looks as if every lid is raised, every drawer pulled open, every padded, hinged door ajar to reveal its contents. Around the arch of the dressing table are a whole array of built-in concealed lights, which are all illuminated, the faceted jewels sparkling temptingly.

Lit up, reflected again and again in the angled mirrors, is Elisa. She’s sitting on the pale-green velvet low-backed chair, bracelets on the wrist of the hand she’s holding up, arrested in the process of clipping on a huge emerald earring, pearls and diamonds around her neck, rings on her fingers—and, on her face, the most horrified, busted expression I have ever seen another girl wear.

Elisa is dumbstruck. I, most definitely, am not.

“What are you
doing
?” I exclaim, staring at her in shock.

Her mouth is open. She flaps her lips like a fish in a tank when it swims up to you looking for food. And, just like a fish behind glass, no sound comes out.

“That’s the principessa’s jewelry!” I continue. “No
way
do you have permission to try that on!”

“Sì, invece,”
she manages finally. “I do. She tells me I can come in here to wear them.”

I can absolutely one hundred percent tell she’s lying. Her eyes, set in their heavily black-penciled sockets, are flickering from side to side, avoiding mine; her hands, which have
dropped to the marble shelf in front of her, are twisting together in a fit of nerves.

“Right,”
I say witheringly. “You’re making that up.”

She jumps up and turns to face me.

“I am not,” she says utterly unconvincingly, her eyes still flickering; I can tell she’s trying to think of a way to get out of this huge hole she’s in.

“Why are
you
here?” she adds, going for the attack-is-the-best-defense strategy. “You are not welcome in this house! You come in to spy through the principessa’s jewels! If you go now, I will not say that you come in here, and you will be safe—”

“Oh
please
,” I say contemptuously.

“You should go now,” she says feebly, her hands on her hips. “Luca
tells
me to wear this,” she adds defiantly, gathering courage as she works out the best way to get out of it. “He says I may wear his mother’s jewelry when I choose. Because he likes
me
, not you. If you go now, I don’t tell him that you come in here to spy her jewels.”

I know she’s lying about Luca; that doesn’t even ping my radar.

“Nice try,” I say, almost absently, because my attention’s distracted by something about her. The light is catching the jewelry she’s wearing, blazing off the diamonds and emeralds in her ears, more diamonds at her neck where she’s layered a lot of necklaces, pearls glowing against the bare, darkly tanned skin, and …

Wait
.

I stare at her throat. That’s the exact same pearl
necklace the girl in the portrait is wearing, the portrait in Sir John Soane’s Museum I saw in London this spring; the girl who looks so like me she could be my double. And who, thanks to the book in the Greve library, I know was called Fiammetta. It’s extraordinary to think that the very same necklace Fiammetta wore centuries ago, to have her picture painted, has been passed down through the generations to the current principessa as part of the family jewel collection; that it hasn’t been lost, or altered in any way. I recognize it because of the small cameo that hangs from it, a carving of a woman’s head, her hair piled high in curls at the back. The stone is set in a delicate, diamond-studded gold frame, and there are diamonds placed at intervals through the string of pearls. It’s unmistakable.