She looked at the door as if to call him forth, but it remained firmly shut.Do I need him? The house belongs to Isabella. It will be our home, not his.
Corridors opened to the left and to the right. Nora strode toward the one on the right, and the little man scuttled after her, notebook in hand, sputtering in Italian. She made out the Italian word for fiancé, one word she had cause to learn.
Robert’s house looked dim, smelled of dust, and echoed her every step. She adored it. The corridor led past two anterooms to a large chamber filled with furniture under Holland covers.
She wondered if Italian houses had drawing rooms. Drapery covered one wall of the room. Nora peaked behind the drapes and found floor-to-ceiling windows that opened to the sunny courtyard filled with overgrown beds and marble statuary. She pictured the shabby gray room at the vicarage her father called a drawing room, clapped hands over her mouth, and giggled.
“Hello?” a voice called.Jamie!
Nora’s companion scurried down the corridor and began a spate of Italian. Jamie answered him in the same language. Nora couldn’t make out the words, but she understood the tone. Her faux fiancé had arrived thoroughly out of sorts.
“What is it?” she asked him when he strode into the drawing room.
“This person tells me the count insists he deal only with me,” Jamie complained. His red-rimmed eyes made her heart sink.Has he been drinking?
“But he’s Robert’s employee!” she exclaimed.
Jamie shot her a scathing look. Lines around his eyes and the crease between his brows added to her unease.Drinking or simply lacking sleep?
“Let’s get this over with,” Jamie growled. “Who knows what game the count is playing?”
The hound darted a speculative look between the two of them. Jamie spoke a few sharp words, and the man led them toward the opposite corridor. When the man glanced over his shoulder, Jamie took Nora’s hand, kissed it, and placed it formally on his arm.
“Look delighted,” he whispered. “We’re betrothed, remember?”
Nora plastered a smile on her face. “You might do the same. What’s the problem?”
“The man’s accent. Piedmontese,” Jamie said under his breath.Piedmontese. Like the count. “This,” he translated, more loudly, “is the family wing.”
Four modest sleeping chambers lay on either side of the corridor. In one, a finely embroidered coverlet and a tiny bed full ofbamboleproclaimed it to be Isabella’s room. The little dolls in their tiny silk dresses smiled back at Nora.
“On the first floor?” she asked. In an English manor, the nursery would be tucked high and away.
“Why not?” Jamie asked.
Why indeed.Beaumont’s villa had no second story to block sun to the courtyard. Robert and his wife must have wanted Isabella close. Nora opened a door and found a closet full of small girl’s clothes and bows that clearly had no place in convent school. A second door led to a room for a nursery maid.
Jamie leaned into the doorframe while she fingered toys and treasures. She wondered whether he was being patient or feeling too poorly to care. A small music box began a familiar melody when she opened it, but ran down. She looked up at Jamie and caught sight of the little man eyeing them both.
“What is in the other rooms?” Nora asked. When Jamie took her hand, she felt sparks in her fingers.
“He says they are unused,” Jamie told her. She opened a door and found the room as empty as the man said.
“For additional children,” Jamie breathed from behind her left ear.
Heat shot up Nora’s arm to her face.
“Or so the man said. For Robert and his wife,” Jamie added belatedly.The irritating man probably meant to make me blush.All for show.
At the end of the corridor, an ornate door stood facing her. The corridor took a sharp right turn at that point.
Robert’s man reached past her with an oily smile to open the door.
“The master suite,” Jamie translated.
The door swung open to reveal a spacious room. With her hand warm in Jamie’s, all she saw was the massive bed that dominated the room. Nora later remembered a vague sense of tasteful decoration and carefully arranged furniture.
Robert’s man continued speaking, but Jamie didn’t translate.
