acquaintance of my brothers, but had become something of a connoisseur in the months he had known them. To begin with, he no longer made the mistake of tossing his head back and drinking the entire glass at one gulp.
After a few minutes by the fire he had thawed sufficiently to speak. “It is so good to see you again,” he said, careful to look at Plum as well as myself when he spoke. “I am very much looking forward to spending Christmas with you here.” His English was terribly fluent, very much better than my Italian, but there was a formality that lingered in his speech. I found it charming.
Plum, who had poured himself a steady glass of spirits, took a deep draught. “I am afraid there has been a change in plans, old man.”
“Old man” was his favourite nickname for Alessandro, no doubt for its incongruity. Alessandro was younger than either of us by some years.
The young man’s face clouded a little and he looked from Plum to me, his silky dark brows knitting in concern. “I am not invited for Christmas? Shall I return to Firenze then?”
I slapped Plum lightly on the knee. “Don’t be vile. You have made Alessandro feel unwelcome.” It had been arranged that Alessandro would come to us in November, and we would all spend the holiday together before making a leisurely journey to Venice in time for Carnevale. There was no hope of such a scheme now. I turned to Alessandro, admiring for a moment the way the firelight licked at his hair. I had thought it black, but his curls shone amber and copper in their depths. I wondered how difficult it would be to persuade Plum to paint him.
“You see, Alessandro,” I explained, “we have received a letter from our father, the Earl March. He is displeased with our brother Lysander and wishes us all to return to England at once. We shall spend Christmas there.”
“Ah. How can one argue with the call of family? If you must return, my friends, you must return. But know that you will always carry with you the highest regard of Alessandro Fornacci.”
This handsome speech was accompanied by a courtly little bow from the neck and a noble, if pained, expression that would have done a Caesar proud.
“I have a better idea, and a very good notion it is,” Plum said slowly. “What if we bring Alessandro with us?”
I had just taken a sip of my own whiskey and I choked lightly. “I beg your pardon, Plum?”
Alessandro raised his hands in a gesture I had seen many Italians employ, as if warding something off. “No, my friend, I must not. If your father is truly angry, he will not welcome an intruder at this time.”
“Are you mad? This is precisely the time to bring someone outside the family into the fold. It will keep him from killing Lysander outright. He will behave himself if we cart you back to England with us. The old man has peculiar ideas, but he is appallingly hospitable.”
“Plum, kindly do not refer to Father as ‘the old man’. It is disrespectful,” I admonished.
Alessandro was shaking his head. “But I have not been invited. It would be a great discourtesy.”
“It would be a far greater discourtesy for Father to kill his own son,” Plum pointed out tartly. “And you have been invited. By us. Now I must warn you, the family seat is rather old-fashioned. Father doesn’t hold with new ideas, at least not for country houses. You’ll find no steam heat or even gaslights. I’m afraid it’s all coal fires and candles, but it really is a rather special old place. You always said you wanted to see England, and Bellmont Abbey is as English as it gets, dear boy.”
Alessandro hesitated. “If I may be so bold, why is his lordship so angry with Lysander? Surely it is not—”
“It is,” Plum and I chorused.
Just at that moment, sounds of a quarrel began to echo from upstairs. There was a shout and the unmistakable crash of breaking crockery.
“But the earl, he cannot object to Lysander’s marriage to so noble and lovely a lady as Violante,” Alessandro put in, quite diplomatically I thought.
Something landed with a great thud on the floor, shivering the ceiling and causing the chandelier above our heads to sway gently.
“Do you suppose that was one of them?” Plum inquired lightly.
“Don’t jest. If it was, we shall have to deal with the body,” I reminded him. Violante began to shriek, punctuating her words with tiny stamps of her heel from the sound of it.
“I wonder what she is calling him. It cannot be very nice,” I mused.
Alessandro gave an elegant shrug. “I regret, my understanding of Napolitana, it is imperfect.” He dropped his eyes, and I wondered if he understood more than politeness would allow him to admit.
“Probably for the best,” Plum remarked, draining the last of his whiskey.
“Do not finish off the decanter,” I warned him. “Lysander will want a glass or two when they have finished for the evening.”
“Or seven,” Plum countered with a twitch of his lip. I gave him a disapproving look. Lysander’s marital woes were not a source of amusement to me. I had endured enough of my own connubial difficulties to be sympathetic. Plum, however, wore a bachelor’s indifference. He had never said so, but I suspected his favourite brother’s defection to the married state had rankled him. They had travelled the Continent together for years, roaming wherever their interests and their acquaintance had directed them, exploring museums and opera houses and ruined castles. They wrote poetry and concertos and painted murals on the walls of ancient abbeys. They had been the staunchest companions until Lysander, having left his thirtieth birthday some years past, had spotted Violante sitting serenely in her uncle’s box at La Fenice. It was, as the Tuscans say, un colpo di fulmine, a bolt of lightning.
It was also a bit misleading. Upon further investigation, Lysander discovered Violante was Neapolitan, not Venetian, and there was quite simply nothing about her that was serene. She carried in her blood all the warmth and passion and raw-boned energy of her native city. Violante was Naples, and for a cool-blooded, cool-headed Englishman like Lysander the effect was intoxicating. He married her within a month, and presented Plum and me with a fait accompli, a sister-in-law who smothered us in kisses and heady jasmine perfumes. For my part, I found her charming, wholly unaffected if somewhat exhausting. Plum, on the other hand, was perfectly cordial and cordially perfect. Whenever Violante stepped from a carriage or shivered from the cold, Plum would offer her a hand or his greatcoat, bowing and murmuring a graciously phrased response to her effusive thanks. And yet always he watched her with the cool detachment one usually reserves for specimens at the zoological garden. I often thought there might be real fondness there if he could unbend a little and forgive her for coming so precipitously into our lives.
But Plum was nothing if not stubborn, and I knew a straightforward approach would only cause him to dig his heels into the ground like a recalcitrant pony. So I endeavoured to distract him with little whims and treats, cajoling him into good temper in spite of himself.
And then we met Alessandro, or to be accurate, I met Alessandro, for he was a friend of my brothers of some years’ duration. Rome had been too hot, too noisy, altogether too much for my delicate state when I first arrived in Italy. My brothers immediately decided to quit the city and embark on a leisurely tour to the north, lingering for a few days or even weeks in any particularly engaging spot, but always pushing on toward Florence. We settled comfortably in a tiny palazzo there, and I began to recover. My fire-roughened voice smoothed again, never quite as it had been, but not noticeably damaged. My lungs were strengthened and my spirits raised. Lysander felt comfortable enough to leave us to accept an invitation for a brief trip to Venice to celebrate the private debut of a friend’s opera. Plum pledged to watch over me, and Lysander departed, to return a month later after endless delays and a secret wedding, his voluble bride in tow.
Alessandro had kept us company while Lysander was away, guiding us to hidden piazze, revealing secret gardens and galleries no tourists ever crowded. He drove us to Fiesole in a beribboned pony cart,