Jamie choked. He didn’t disguise his horror. “I should think not.”
“You are good with Isabella,” the nun said. “Nieces and nephews?”
“Friends,” he said. “They dote on the little monsters. I play with them and leave.”
“Friends are a great blessing,” Mother Margarita said. He again felt as though she could see right through him.
“That they are,” he managed. They had once been the best part of his life. “The Cohort” they called themselves, friends since boyhood.
“Are you close to your friends?” she asked.
“Not any longer.”Not since I fled in shame.
“What part of England is your home, Major?” she asked.
He hesitated. He tried silence. The Reverend Mother waited him out.
“I grew up in Rossmoor, Mother,” he explained at last, “a tiny speck deep in Derbyshire—that is the Midlands—not a place you are likely to recognize.” He rushed on before she could pursue that line of questioning, “And you, Mother, where do you call home?”
“My home is here, of course,” she smiled, “but I suspect you mean my place of origin. The answer is quite dull—Rome. I have not traveled far afield.” Her look of innocence didn’t fool Jamie. She pushed on before he could think of another tactic.
“Do your parents still live in Rossmoor?”
Jamie groaned inwardly.Here it comes.
“My father died three years ago,” he said. Jamie clamped his jaw shut and determined to say nothing more.The foul old man died with a knife in his chest on a table covered with the cards his assailant accused him of shaving.
“Do you have family, Reverend Mother?” he asked before she forced him to describe his mother’s circumstances. His question elicited a warm discussion of siblings and their many children.
“Do you have brothers and sisters, Major?”
So much for diversion.“One sister,” he said.
“Not married?”
“I believe Arianna is past the age where women expect to marry.” With no dowry thanks to her only brother’s stupidity and little reputation thanks to their father’s behavior, Arianna had no hope of a decent marriage.
“She lives with my mother,” he continued and then cursed himself for a fool. He braced for the next question. The two women who had every right to expect Jamie’s protection lived in dire poverty at the mercy of a miserly old aunt thanks to his incompetence.
Isabella’s running assault on her favorite nun put a stop to the questions that day, but not the campaign.
Every day Nora Haley went to visit her niece. Every day Jamie facilitated until the two of them went off on their own. Every day Mother Margarita’s interrogation continued.
He began to think the tenacious general at Santo Spirito hadintelligence gathering skills Wellington would have welcomed. She never let up.
The nun quickly recognized that Jamie would not be forthcoming with details and began evasive tactics. He resolved to be careful. He still owed Nora Haley three weeks, and he wanted to finish it.
Mother Margarita tried literature, politics, and, finally, money.
“Poverty isn’t the greatest evil,” she probed that afternoon. “Debt is unfortunate but needn’t be permanent or cause for shame.”
The Mother Superior undoubtedly knew that Englishmen often slunk to Rome to avoid debtor’s prison.
“Quite right. Pockets to let is no disgrace,” he said.
“One can seek the help of friends.” She would remember that.
“Of course,” he said. Jamie didn’t object to living off his friends, or even asking for a loan. They could all afford to help.
