“How can I protect her?” The cry torn from her heart lacerated his.
“Do you fear for her at the convent? Surely the nuns can protect her.”
“Yes! No. That is, no one will harm her physically. Mother Margarita wouldn’t permit it. She deserves better, though.”
Better than the wealth and power of Savoy?Jamie wondered.Better than the stern care of the Sisters of Santo Spirito? Is the woman daft?
“I’m sorry,” she continued, dismissing him. “You have no way to help. I wasn’t thinking.”
“You need a solicitor.” Jamie blurted out the words before he stopped to think.
“Yes! Of course! This is a country of laws.” She turned to him with hope alive in her eyes.
“To an extent. This isn’t England.” Jamie knew too well the limits of law in the face of absolute power, but he didn’t want to deflate her.
“It is the Papal State, not Sardinia,” she said.
“Yes, but it is still an absolute monarchy. Pius VII’s rule is the only law. You might do better here than in Sardinia, however.”
“Where will I find an English Solicitor?” She didn’t say “might.”
Jamie scratched at his ear. He had agreed to be her translator, not her knight errant.
“Franz von Reden is minister of the Kingdom of Hanover in Rome,” he began thoughtfully.
Nora looked confused. She shook her head as if to bat his words away, but he held up a hand and went on. “He frequently has houseguests—representatives of Hanover’s cousin King George in London, unofficial British envoys here. Some of the ‘guests’ are permanent.”
“Of course!” Nora’s eyes lit up. “Excellent suggestion. We can go tomorrow.”
Not bloody likely. I’m not going near that place, even for Nora Haley.He suspected word would shoot straight back to London, and he knew that if his friends got a whiff of his whereabouts they would descend like rescuing angels—and leave in disgust when they knew the entire truth.
“Not ‘we.’ You! You don’t need a translator to speak with the King’s representatives.”Or even his minor clerks.
She looked for a moment as if she were going to order him to come. He held his ground and watched her eyes, bright with irritation, while she sought a counter argument. She had none.
“Very well. I will go in the morning.”
That was the Nora he had come to know, all backbone.The fools at the Hanoverian embassy will treat her well enough. Has anyone,he wondered,ever cared for Nora the way she cares for Isabella?
Chapter Eleven
Nora watched a young, obviously English, clerk take her information. He introduced himself as Archie Campbell. After the impressive German-speaking guards she passed through to get to a dark little office, the clerk disappointed her.
“You were right to come to us,” he said, puffing out his chest. “We can’t have these Italians bullying a good English lady.”
The man looks like a pouter pigeon,she thought.
He raised his quill, one pinky finger raised delicately above the rest, and looked at her inquiringly. “The father of the child? English also?” he asked.
“Yes. Robert Beaumont. He is,” Nora took a breath, “ill.”
“And Mr. Beaumont wishes you to care for the child?”
“Yes, that is it precisely.”Get on with it! Have you no sense of urgency?
“No question he would want his English family to care for the child,” the man clucked. “If the other relatives are Italian, well…” The pouter pigeon left the rest unsaid.
“And the name of this relative who troubles you?” he asked.
