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The answer remains: I don't.

I understand this is inconvenient for whatever morally complicated enterprise you have in mind. I suggest you find another gentleman of flexible principle and excellent aim. London is full of them. I, however, am a gentleman of leisure now.

Rome is what would happen if Versailles were built atop Troy, administered by Jesuits, and then permitted two thousand years to accumulate grudges, mistresses, disputed inheritances, and blackmail.

The company here is excellent. Most of them have only lost thrones.

I find myself received rather like Alexander must have been upon discovering Persia: delighted, appalled, and quite unable to pretend there is not an empire waiting to be conquered.

I do accept the occasional commission, I confess. But I have established a criterion: I will only undertake work that answers the question of whether it would allow me a seat at a heavenly supper party without being smitten. You would be surprised how many opportunities fail this test.

Lady Saint John sends her regards, assuming she remembers to, which she may not, as she is currently engaged in plotting against the Bourbons. I won't tell you the details. I do occasionally provide certain resources when asked. For the fun of it, you understand. Not professionally.

My lady has taken to Rome with alarming ease. The Bonaparte clan have embraced her, which will surprise no one who has ever spent more than ten minutes in her company, and Madame Letizia—her formidable grandmother—has appointed herself Louise's Italian tutor. As my wife acquires languages with the irritating efficiency other people reserve for catching colds, I expect that within the month she will be able to intrigue fluently in three tongues. I confess myself indecently proud.

I won't describe the palazzo, as you must come and see it yourself. I will only say that the ceiling of our bedroom was painted by Annibale Carracci and depicts the loves of the gods in considerable detail and with great enthusiasm, and that I have found it to be a source of both artistic appreciation and practical inspiration.

At this moment I am sitting at my desk in the late afternoon sun with the window open, watching the light turn the garden into a masterpiece waiting for Virgil to describe it. The marble is gold. The orange trees are in flower, and their scent drifts in through the window along with the sound of the fountain in the courtyard below, which has been running since approximately the reign of Paul III and shows no signs of fatigue.

I am looking at the bronze group near the gate—the she-wolf and the small, determined boys beneath her, Romulus and Remus, abandoned in the wild, raised by a wolf, and eventual founders of this city. There is something in that story, Will, that I find both quaint and instructive, and it has given me a wonderful idea that I must put into motion immediately.

I will write again when the idea has developed.

Come to Rome. The sun is extraordinary.

Yours, etc.

R. Montfort

Rodrick folded the letter, sealed it, and went to find his wife. He had scarcely reached the end of the gallery when James appeared from the opposite direction wearing the expression of a man whose employment had once involved kidnapping, smuggling, and occasional gunfire, and who resented discovering that none of these had prepared him for domestic service.

"My lord. Brutus is having another episode."

"The oats again?"

James shook his head. "My employment stipend does not, as I understand it, include horse interpretation as a paid function. Nevertheless, I believe the animal is jealous of Marengo."

Rodrick sighed. Recovering Napoleon's famous gray from the Allies had been an operation of such unnecessary complexity that even he had begun to resent it by the end, particularly once the final price was named. He had paid it anyway. What could he say? Lady Montfort was fond of the beast.

"Marengo attracts a crowd every morning," James said. "Half of Rome appears to have discovered that Napoleon's horse is here. They bring children. Artists. Yesterday there was a cardinal. Brutus is being ignored, and he has responded by kicking his door, refusing his feed, and attempting to bite anyone who admires Marengo within his hearing."

Rodrick considered this.

"Very well. Spread the word that Brutus carried the dispatch which saved Wellington's left flank at Waterloo after three lesser horses died beneath their riders."

James frowned. "Did he?"

"Not remotely."

"Would that not be a lie?"

"Indeed. But one at which Saint Peter would certainly laugh, so I think our position is defensible."

James appeared unconvinced.

"If necessary," Rodrick added, "tell them Wellington wanted to buy him. The duke attempted to pat his neck afterward in recognition—very stoic, mind you—and for his trouble received a vicious kick that nearly took his head off."

James closed his eyes briefly.