Suddenly the ground moved beneath their feet, a subtle, disquieting shift that made the peddler’s figurines chatter together in their basket. Though this was not the first tremor Randolph had experienced since his arrival, he still tensed. He doubted that he'd ever get used to the earth's betrayal, though Elizabeth and the peddler seemed unconcerned.
As the tremor faded, the peddler spoke to Elizabeth with a smile and a triumphant lift of his hand. She burst out laughing. “He says that his price for the complete presepio is so low that God Himself was shocked, and that is why the earth moved.”
Randolph joined her laughter. He had already observed that the local peddlers had an audacity that would make a gypsy horse coper blush. He decided that this peddler deserved to make a sale, but for the honor of the English, Randolph bargained over the price for the next quarter hour.
When they were done, the peddler wrapped the set in an old rag and presented it to Randolph with a flourish. As they walked away, Elizabeth said, “Well done. You brought him down to half the original asking price.”
“Which I estimate is at least double what the things are worth,” Randolph said with amusement. He removed the top figurine from the bundle. It was the Bambino. “Why do I have the feeling that this was made in Birmingham?”
“Cynic.” Elizabeth chuckled. They had reached the market square, which was crowded with people buying the last ingredients for their holiday feasting. “I’m sure that it was made somewhere in Italy. Glowing religious artifacts are just not very English, are they?”
She stopped by a stall that featured marzipan shaped into exquisite imitation fruits and flowers. Knowing that the confections would be popular with the younger Lennoxes, Randolph bought a large number. While the marzipan was being wrapped in silver paper, Elizabeth suddenly jumped, at the same time giving a smothered squeak.
Alarmed, Randolph asked, “Is something wrong?”
“Just someone pinching me,” she explained. “A little harder than usual, or I would scarcely have noticed.”
“Someone pinched you? Outrageous!” Indignant, Randolph turned toward the square with the vague idea of calling such impertinence to book, but Elizabeth caught his arm.
“Don’t be upset, it was not meant as an insult. Quite the contrary.” She smiled at him. “It’s one of the things I love about Italy. Even though I am much too thin and not at all in the local style, at least once a day someone will perjure himself by saying or implying that I am beautiful. I doubt there is another place in the world where a plain old spinster is made to feel so desirable.”
Adding the marzipan fruit to his bundles, Randolph took her arm and began steering her through the crowd. “You do yourself an injustice, Miss Walker. You are not old, and what is thin to a Neapolitan is elegantly slim to an Englishman.”
She gave him a startled glance. “Is that a compliment?”
He smiled down at her. “Yes.”
She looked quite adorable in her astonishment. If they had not been surrounded by people, he would have proposed to her on the spot. What they needed was a place with a little privacy, which shouldn’t be hard to arrange. “Shall we ask Vanni to find us a suitably scenic site for a late luncheon? I suspect that Sofia would be outraged if we returned her basket intact.”
They had reached the carriage, and as Randolph put his purchases away, Elizabeth and Vanni conferred. Eventually she asked, “What say you to a ruined Roman temple, high on a hill, gloriously private, and possessing a matchless view of Vesuvius?”
“Perfect.” Randolph helped her into the carriage, then swung up beside her. He was beginning to feel a little nervous. One would think that a man who had twice before proposed marriage would be a little calmer about the prospect, but that didn’t seem to be the case. But his qualms didn't run too deep. At heart he didn't believe that Elizabeth would turn him down.
The trail had been growing narrower and narrower, and finally Vanni pulled the horses to a halt and turned to speak to Elizabeth. She explained to her companion, “This is as close as a carriage can go. Vanni says the temple is a ten- or fifteen-minute walk along this path.”
Lord Randolph nodded agreeably and took the picnic basket in hand. The condition of the path explained why the site was seldom visited. It was narrow and irregular, not much more than a goat track, and had been washed out and repaired more than once. The mountain face rose sheer on the right, then dropped lethally away to the left. Elizabeth went first, keeping close to the rock face and being very careful where she put her feet.
She rounded the last bend in the trail, then stopped, enchanted. The path widened into a large ledge, with a steep wall on the right and a sheer drop on the left. Perhaps a hundred yards long and fifty wide, the site had soil rich enough to support velvety grass and delicate trees. As Vanni had promised, the view of Vesuvius was spectacular. But all that was simply a setting for the temple, which looked as if it had floated down on temporary loan from fairyland.
Behind her, Lord Randolph said admiringly, “Anyone who ever built a false ruin would give his left arm to have this instead. It’s the ultimate folly.”
The small shrine was built of white marble that held a hint of rose in its translucent depths. The back wall was mostly intact and elegant columns completed the front part of the structure. The roof was long gone and vines climbed the columns for an effect that was beautiful, wistful, and altogether romantic.
Elizabeth said, “Do you think we should invite Byron to visit? This deserves to be immortalized in poetry.”
“Never,” Lord Randolph said firmly as he set the picnic basket down. “If Byron wrote of it, the path would become so jammed with people coming to admire and languish that someone would surely fall down the mountain to his death, and it would be our fault. Much better to let it stay Vanni’s secret.”
The blackened remains of an old fire sheltered by a depression in the cliff proved that the site was not precisely a secret, but certainly it was seldom visited. The floor of the shrine was entirely covered with drifted leaves. Elizabeth knelt and carefully brushed them away, finding a charming mosaic of birds, flowers, and butterflies. “I wonder what god or goddess was worshiped here.”
“A gentle one, I think.”
Glancing up, she saw an odd, assessing look on Lord Randolph’s face. Inexplicably she shivered, wondering if there was really tension in the air, or just another example of her overactive imagination.
Seeing her shiver, he offered his hand to help her up. “In spite of the sunshine, in the shade it is still December.”
His hand was warm and strong as he lifted her effortlessly. Elizabeth released his clasp as soon as she was on her feet. Her awareness of Lord Randolph’s strength and masculinity was acute and uncomfortable. She decided that it was because, in spite of a week of constant company, they had never been quite so alone.
She moved away from him quickly, knowing that her dignity depended on her ability to remain collected. She would rather throw herself from the cliff than let her companion know of her foolish, hopeless passion.
