Nora put her hand on the wall to steady herself, suddenly lightheaded. “Why?” she whispered.
“I don’t know what it means, Love, but I don’t like it, especially with you living here.”
She grasped his offered hand and clung to it just as she clung to his calling her “Love.”
“More foolish if I bring Isabella?”
He nodded.
“You’ll have the locked fixed,” she said, “surely that will help.”
“We’ll get every window and door checked, fixed with sturdy locks, and secured,” he told her. “That will only slow down a determined intruder. You shouldn’t be here alone.”
Come to me. Live here with me.The words stuck in her throat.
Whatever she might have said died with a firm knock on their door. Nora reached for the handle, but Jamie reached out and pulled her hand back.
“Lady of the house, remember?” He made shooing gestures toward the little anteroom Nora guessed to be the household office. She lifted her chin and swept across the tiles. The chuckle that followed her almost ruined the effect.
She sat on a delicate gilt chair behind the small writing desk inlaid with patterns and color. She didn’t have long to wait.
Signora Capello turned out to be tall, stern, and as intimidating asJamie suggested. Nora thought she rather resembled Sister Cecilia; she looked as disapproving.
“Is the signora related to my brother’s man of business?”
The woman shrugged. “A cousin, a distant cousin,” Jamie translated.
The woman shot him a filthy look.
“Do you speak English?” Nora asked. Jamie looked expectant. His eyes met Nora’s; he seemed to approve. They both looked at Signora Capello.
“Some. Little,” the woman said at last. She turned to Jamie and spoke in her native language.
“She was given the impression this was to be an Italian speaking house,” he said. His eyes held a warning.
“The household will speak Italian,” Nora said. Her agreement to raise Isabella in Rome, to learn the language, to send her to Santo Spirito day school all implied that they would.
Jamie raised an eyebrow. She didn’t back down. Having said it, they would live with it.
“However,” Nora went on, “I need someone who can understand me while I learn Italian.” She looked directly at Signora Capello. The woman nodded. She understood Nora’s English.
They dealt with her extensive experience, exemplary references, and immediate availability in a rapid series of questions in Italian.
“What is your role at the Palazzo di Savoia?” Jamie asked in English abruptly. If the woman had been taken off guard, she hid it well. She sat straighter and spoke to him directly.
“I have no role at the Palazzo,” she replied in perfect but heavily accented English.
“Who do you know there?” he asked without breaking eye contact.
“My nephew serves the count,” she said. When he looked expectant, she added, “Eduardo Mora.”
Jamie grimaced. “One of my ‘students,’” he told Nora.
“You have no role at the Palazzo. Piedmont perhaps? What Castellimonte family household employed you last?” he asked.
For a long moment Nora thought the woman would not answer. In the end, she said, “I had the honor of serving the count’s mother until she passed away last month.”
“Noble of you,” Jamie said.
