to the task. Finally, he gingerly placed the strap back on her shoulder and the purse fell naturally across her opposite hip as intended.
The care this total stranger was extending to her was surprising. And also a first for Princess Luciana. Commoners were not permitted to touch her, except on occasions of handshakes during official processionals through the streets or when meeting military heroes, and under close supervision. But certainly nothing involving a gorgeous man with enormous hands putting his arms around her or arranging a purse onto her body.
Only then did Luciana remember what she held in her still tightly closed fist. “Oh, my gosh, I’d forgotten that I’d been holding my jewels all of this time. I thought surely those boys were going to tear my purse off me, so I grabbed the contents.”
“Why are you carrying such valuables in a flimsy purse on a city street?”
“It’s a long story.”
The princess opened her purse and placed her jewels in a zipped pocket inside. As the man with the gigantic hands said, it was absurd that she’d let the few palace jewels, which she had chosen as sacrificial lambs to buy her this voyage of freedom, be tossed around in a thin pouch of leather not properly protected. That was only one of the possibly crazy decisions she had made.
There was no turning back now.
“Thank you.” She bowed her head to the Renaissance painting of a man on the street. “You saved me from danger and harm.”
“That’s me. A regular Prince Charming.”
Her Royal Highness Princess Luciana de la Isla de Izerote had never wished harder that words were true.
* * *
“May I show you to your destination?” asked the handsome savior after the thugs were long gone from view.
“All right,” Luciana answered although she didn’t know what her destination was. Which, as she was zooming to Italy through Spain and France on high-speed trains, felt like a marvelous relief. To be able to go wherever she wanted, whenever she wanted. Not to be bound by a schedule or accompanied by an entourage. Now, the unfamiliarity of all that liberty had her frightened.
“By the way, I’m Gio. Giovanni Grassi. And you are...?” He took hold of Luciana’s suitcase handle and gave it a tug.
“Luci...” She left it at that, the nickname her mother used to call her when she was a small child. A name she hadn’t heard in years. It was fitting that she thought of her mother now, who had died without ever fulfilling her own quest for the bit of autonomy that Luciana hoped to have.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Luci.”
She wasn’t sure that she should be letting this man she didn’t know pull her suitcase. What if he ran away with it? Or what if he was luring her into some kind of trap so that he could steal her jewels for himself?
Princess Luciana sensed that he meant well. After all, no one had forced him to come to her aid as he did. And she couldn’t just continue standing on the street now that those threatening boys had been chased off. She’d lost all sense of direction, not that she knew where she was going in the first place. Had she been able to sell the ruby, she would have returned to the train station to look for a tourist bureau that could help her find accommodations. That could still be her plan. But now she wasn’t comfortable walking alone with the jewels.
So they began forward, Gio’s grip on her suitcase keeping its wheels cooperating under his control. Princess Luciana caught a reflection of herself in the glass of a shop window. In the commotion of her arrival, her failure at the jewelry store near the train station and the threat from those boys, she’d completely forgotten that she wore a wig in disguise. While Izerote was not a famous island and her monarchy had not made her a recognizable face throughout the world, she knew there was a good chance that her father would send someone looking for her. Even though she had left him a note promising to return in three weeks to marry King Agustin as planned. If the cloak she donned could help throw any operatives of King Mario’s off her track, it was well worthwhile. Plus, she liked the idea of having a new appearance.
Gone were the long girlish locks of hair that spent many evenings as a showplace for the family tiaras. Now the thick brown strands that fell halfway down her back were bound and tucked under a blond wig she’d bought in Barcelona. The wig was cut into a lob, a term the princess knew from idly flipping through fashion magazines was the hip description for a long bob.
The surprisingly realistic-looking hairstyle fell in sleek sheets to the tops of her shoulders where it curled under just a bit. Every move she made caused the lob to give a slight swish that Luciana found chic. The hair made her feel like a woman on the go. Which was quite unlike the fussy preplanned existence she had always known. Although her let’s see what happens attitude, so out of character, had almost led her into hazard.
“Where to, signorina?”
The scare of those boys had been an immediate awakening to the perils she needed to look out for, and she didn’t know what she should tell Gio Grassi. Yes, his beautiful crystal-blue eyes seemed trustworthy, but outward appearances told her nothing.
Nonetheless, she had to start somewhere.
“I don’t know, Gio. I find myself arriving in Florence with less money than I had planned. Would you know of a reasonably priced hotel?”
“No, actually, I’m sorry I don’t. I grew up here in Florence but I’ve spent many years traveling for business. I no longer know the city.”
Disappointment rung through her. Barcelona had been quite an eye-opener once she discovered that the jeweler to whom she had intended to sell the first of her lot was unwilling to buy what Luciana referred to as her estate pieces without proof of ownership and certifications. She’d made up a story about the jewels belonging to her recently deceased grandmother.
At her begging, that jeweler put her in touch with another jeweler who refused her and sent her to yet another, this one located in a downtrodden part of town. He gave her far less than she had estimated for the first piece. She knew now that this trip would have to be on more of a budget than she’d originally envisioned.
That didn’t matter. At least she was here.
“I’ll need to sell more of my jewels.”
“More of them? Does that mean you have already sold some?”
Yes, but she didn’t need to tell that to Gio.
“I had tried at a shop near the train station. That’s where those boys began following me.”
“Florence is a big city with people both opulent and poor, honest and not. You should watch out at every turn.”
Luciana was already learning that the hard way. But as they turned a corner into a piazza, a public square, her troubles receded and the widest of smiles swept across her face. Here it was. The Florence she’d seen in movies and travel websites, and read about in books. Firenze, the central city of Tuscany, with its centuries of trade and finance, art and medicine, religion and politics.
People moved across the piazza in every different direction. Fashionable girls giggled as they snapped selfies of themselves. A tour group of older travelers dutifully stopped so that their guide could point out landmarks. Four men stood in front of a shop arguing, their loud voices and hand gestures marking them as uniquely Italian. A flock of children chased pigeons, their overjoyed faces bursting with surprise every time one of the birds made an unexpected escape. Two lovers sat close on a bench while they shared a fresh orange, the woman holding the peel in her hand.
Every which way, people wove in between each other to get to where they were going. It was everything the princess had imagined it would be, alive and magnificent under the autumn of the Tuscan sky. She placed her hand over her mouth as she took it all in.
This was what Luciana came to see. To be a part of this city that had always held her fascination, if only for a stolen moment of her lifetime. She drew in a slow