He flung open drawers. Empty. Two steps backward and he hit the wall of his tiny room. He slipped slowly to the floor, laughing.Packing? I have nothing to pack and no place to go.To the north lay Sardinia and the long arm of Savoy. Greece?No funds for passage. No Greece.The thought of sailing brought Jamie’s nightmares up from the depths. He covered his ears to close out the screams of dying men.
“Major! Jamie!” Nora’s voice.She will despise me when she finds out. The respect of my friends and, God help me, Nora, will die as surely as the poor souls on theAvante.
“Jamie, are you there?”
She only came to his room when absolutely frantic. He decided she could despise him later; she needed him now.
He flung open the door, heart in his throat, and gripped her shoulders. “What happened? Isabella?”
“Castellimonte.” She shrugged away and swung into the room, collapsing into his rickety chair.
Quick inventory found no injury, not the visible kind anyway. She waved paper.
“He got my message requesting a meeting. He replied with a summons. He wants to see me tomorrow.”
“You got a summons also?” he blurted out without thinking.
“He summoned you?” she asked.
“No, Wentworth. Not important.” He waved a hand as if to push away the thought.
She blinked up at him. “We must see Castellimonte.”
Can’t. If Wentworth doesn’t dig up the truth, Castellimonte’s minions will.“What exactly did the message say?” he asked in order to buy some time.
“Nothing. ‘Mrs. Haley’s presence is requested.’ What did you expect?”
“No mention of me?” Relief flooded him, followed quickly by guilt. He suppressed both.
“No, but if we’re going to announce our betrothal, we need to prepare, don’t we?”
“They invited you alone. I can hardly join you,” he began.
“I can’t announce a betrothal alone,” she pointed out.
The sack on his bed drew her eyes.
“What is that?” she demanded, accusation stark in her eyes. “You gave your word you would stand by me.”Foolish woman.
“Trash.”Everything I own, but rubbish all the same.
It seemed to satisfy. Something in her face when she looked back at him changed. She examined him carefully. “Perhaps I could go alone this time,” she suggested. “We don’t want to aggravate him. I could go and mention the betrothal. To feel him out. Then later you can accompany me to reassure.”
“You don’t like how I look?” he demanded irrationally.
“The count,” she began. Confusion gave her face vulnerability that wrenched his heart. A sudden vision of Nora standing alone in her black bombazine before the ravening wolves of Palazzo di Savoia brought Jamie’s racing mind to a halt.The betrothal,he remembered. His promises.
“No,” he said. “That will not do.” He owed her at least one attempt to fool Castellimonte into giving her Isabella. One attempt.Then he could run. “We have to go together, and we have to do better.”
“Better?” she asked.
“Salvia didn’t believe the betrothal for one moment. For one thing, you’re still in black,” he explained.
“I’m in mourning!” she exclaimed.
“You wore nothing but brown or black before your brother even died. Perpetual widowhood does not become you,” he told her.Never mind that Italy has widows in black aplenty.
“Edmund may not have been much of a husband, but he deserved respect,” she said.
