you!”
“Sì, the little meatballs!” Bernardo concurred in heavily accented English, grinning his appreciation of that description of what he and his little mallet would soon be doing to Valerian, the weapon gleaming dully in the faint light.
Valerian was not by nature a timid man, far from it, nor was he incapable of protecting himself. He just, frankly, wasn’t in the mood for a fist fight with a man no taller than he was but twice as muscular and at least five years younger. Was this Bernardo even real? No human should be so beautiful—at least not a man. Besides, the fellow was armed, and that didn’t really seem fair.
He decided to even up the odds a bit. Reaching into his breast pocket, Valerian pulled out a small pistol and pointed it at Bernardo, halting him in mid-attack.
“Call off your dog, signorina,” he ordered amicably enough, “before I am forced to place a small hole between the eyebrows on his pretty face. And I so abhor violence.”
Signorina Crispino lifted her slim shoulders in an eloquent shrug before turning her back on the pair of them and heading for the door. “And why would I warn him, signore?” she called over her shoulder. “Shoot him, per favore. You will be doing me a great service. Addio, Bernardo.”
The pistol wavered, only slightly and only for a moment, as Valerian watched the girl go, leaving him standing almost toe to toe with Bernardo, who was jabbering at him in something that sounded like Italian, but not like any Italian the Englishman was accustomed to hearing.
Now what was Valerian going to do? He certainly wasn’t about to shoot the man—he had never really considered doing that—but with that option lost to him, the metal mallet did once more make the two of them an unmatched pair.
“Signorina Crispino—come back here!” he yelled as Bernardo growled low in his throat, raising the mallet another fraction as if unafraid of either Valerian or the weapon in his hand. “I warn you, I shan’t hang alone. Come back here at once or I’ll tell the authorities that you ordered the killing!”
Her head reappeared around the doorjamb. “You English,” she said scathingly. “What a bloodless lot. You can’t even put a hole through a man who is trying to bash in your skull. And as for honor—why, you have none!”
“It’s not that, signorina,” Valerian corrected her urbanely. “It’s just that a prolonged sojourn in one of your quaint Italian prisons until explanations can be made ranks very low on my agenda. I’ve heard the plumbing in those places is not of the best. Now, are you going to call this incarnation of an ancient Roman god off or not? I’m afraid his notion of the Italian language and mine do not coincide, and I don’t wish to insult him further with some verbal misstep.”
Shrugging yet again, Signorina Crispino walked over to Bernardo and gave him a swift kick in the leg in order to gain his attention. “Bernardo, tu hai il cervello di una gallina! Vai al diavolo!”
“Oh, that’s lovely, that is,” Valerian interposed. “Although I hesitate to point this out, I could have told Bernardo here that he has the brain of a chicken. I also could have told him to go lose himself somewhere. Can’t you just tell your lover that I’m harmless—that I’m a friend of your grandfather’s?”
“My lover! You insult me!” she exploded, throwing down the satchel. “As if that were true—could ever be true!” Her hands drawn into tight fists, she wildly looked about the small room in search of a weapon, seizing on the lighted candle that stood in a heavy pewter base, not knowing whom to hit with it first, Bernardo or Valerian.
Bernardo, who seemed to have tired of staring down the short barrel of the pistol, and who did not take kindly to the insults Signorina Crispino had thrown at him, took the decision out of her hands by the simple means of turning to her, his smile wide in his innocently handsome face. “Allegra—mi amore!”
“Ah, how affecting. The Adonis loves you,” Valerian said, earning himself a cutting glance from Allegra.
“Fermata! Stop it—both of you!” she warned tightly just as Valerian’s pistol came down heavily on the side of Bernardo’s head and the man crumpled into a heap at her feet. She looked from Valerian to Bernardo’s inert form and then back at Valerian once again. “Bene, signore. Molto bene. I thought you said you abhorred violence.”
Valerian replaced the pistol in his pocket. “I have learned a new saying since coming to Italy, Signorina Allegra: ‘Quando sé in ballo, bisogna ballare.’ When at a dance, one must dance. Your Bernardo left me no choice. Thank you for coming back, by the way. It was cursed good of you.”
He looked down at the unconscious Bernardo. “I didn’t really wish to hit him. It was like taking a hatchet to a Michelangelo. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a pretty face.”
“Behind which resides the most bricklike brain in the good Lord’s nature,” Allegra retorted, giving Bernardo’s inert figure a small kick. “He speaks some English, you know, but it goes straight out of his head—pouf!—when he has to do more than stand up straight and be handsome. Sogni d’oro, Bernardo— golden dreams to you. Now, Signor Fitzhugh, I suggest we take ourselves out of this place before he rouses, for Bernardo has a very hard head and won’t sleep for long.”
Valerian bent to retrieve her satchel. “A praiseworthy resolution, signorina. But I must ask again, in light of what has just happened—will you please reconsider accompanying me back to England? This Bernardo fellow doesn’t seem like the sort to give up and go away. He has been chasing you, hasn’t he? That’s the reason you have been so difficult to locate—you’ve been on the run.”
“I’ve been avoiding Bernardo, sì,” Allegra bit her bottom lip, considering how much and what she wished to tell him. “Bernardo has convinced himself he wants to marry me, and won’t take no for an answer. And he won’t give up; I can see that now. Yes, I think I might go along with you, although it won’t be a simple matter to cross over the border.” She took the satchel from Valerian’s unresisting fingers. “I have no passport, signore, so we will have to sneak out of the country. It may take some time.”
“Valerian Fitzhugh forced to sneak out of Italy? What a lovely picture that conjures,” Valerian remarked, closing the door behind them as they quit the room. “But I do have some friends located in Naples at the moment. We should find help there. It would mean a few nights on the road.”
Allegra nodded once, accepting this. “Very well, signore. But I must warn you—I shan’t sleep with you!”
Valerian looked her up and down, seeing her clearly for the first time in the brighter light of the hallway. She was wildly beautiful in her coarse peasant dress, this Allegra Crispino, her ebony hair a tousled profusion of midnight glory as it tumbled around her face and below her shoulders. Her eyes shone like quality sapphires against her fair skin, and her features were appealingly petite and well formed. Almost as well formed as her delightful body.
However, she was also none too clean, her feet were bare, and the smell of garlic hung around her like a shroud. “My hopes, signorina, are quite cut up, I assure you,” he said at last, tongue-in-cheek, “but I would not think of despoiling Duggy’s granddaughter. Your virtue is safe with me.”
For now, he concluded silently, still holding out some faint hope for the restorative powers of soap and water.
THEY HAD QUIT the pensione and were nearing the corner of the small side street and Valerian’s waiting carriage when two large men jumped out of the shadows of a nearby building to block their way.
His eyes on the men, Valerian asked softly, “Friends of yours? I sense a pattern forming, signorina.”
“Alberto! Giorgio!” Allegra exploded in exasperation as Valerian’s small pistol quickly came into view once more, the sight of the weapon stopping the men in their tracks before they could do any damage. “Am I never to be shed of these dreadful, thickskulled Timoteos?”
Valerian eyed the two men warily as the coachman, who had seen his master’s dilemma, hopped