He stared at her, disconcerted. She couldn't just disappear like this. She was the most congenial soul he had met since coming to Naples. No, far longer than that. He stood. "I should hate to think that I have endangered your livelihood. Let me escort you back. If necessary, I can explain that you are late because you saved me from grievous bodily injury."
She laughed. "Lord Randolph, can you think of anything more likely to be injurious to a governess's reputation than having a handsome man say it is all his fault?" When he looked sheepish, she continued, "You needn't worry. My livelihood is not threatened. I am between situations, gloriously free until I take up a new position after Epiphany." She wrinkled her nose. "Twins! The prettiest little vixens you can imagine. I don't know how I shall manage."
"Very well, I'm sure." The proprietor appeared, and Randolph settled the bill with a gratuity that put an ecstatic expression on the man's face. When the proprietor had left, Randolph continued, "Since it will not cost you your situation, will you accept my escort?"
She hesitated, and he felt a constriction somewhere in his middle. Probably the pizza fighting the antipasto.
Then she smiled. "That would be very nice. I am going back to my pensione, and it is not in the most elegant part of the city."
As they made their way through the piazza, Randolph carrying her canvas bag, she explained, "I am giving drawing lessons to my landlady, Sofia, who has been a good friend to me over the years. She is free for only an hour or so at the end of the afternoon, and if I am late, she will be deprived of her lesson."
Would Mrs. Bertram have abandoned the company of a man in order to fulfill a promise to a landlady? Randolph knew the question was soy foolish as not to merit an answer.
As they threaded their way through increasingly narrow, crowded streets, Miss Walker gave an irreverent and amusing commentary on the sights. While she did not neglect splendors like the recently rebuilt San Carlo opera house, her real talent lay in identifying Neapolitan sights like the ribbons of wheat paste drying on backyard racks, and the ancient statue of a pagan goddess, now rechristened and worshiped as a Christian saint in spite of a distinctly impious expression.
All too soon they arrived at the pensione, a shabby town house on a noisy street. Miss Walker turned to make her farewell. "Thank you for the luncheon and escort, Lord Randolph. While you are in Italy, stay away from designing young baggages, no matter how dire their straits seem to be."
Impulsively Randolph said, "The discerning eye that makes you an artist also makes you a fine tour guide. Since you are at liberty now, would you consider acting as my guide? You could protect me from the l designing baggages directly." When she frowned, he said coaxingly, "I would be happy to pay you for your time, at double the rate of the boring fellow who insisted that I eat only English food."
"It is not a matter of money," she said, uncertain in the face of his unusual offer. "Why do you want me for a guide?"
"Because I enjoy your company," he said simply.
For a moment her serene good humor was shadowed by vulnerability. Then she gave a smile different from her earlier expressions of amusement. This smile came from somewhere deeper, and it transformed her
plain face to fleeting loveliness. "Then I will be very glad to be your guide."
ELIZABETH woke with a glow of anticipation, and at first she could not recollect why. Then she remembered. It was not yet time to rise, so she opened her eyes and gazed at the ancient fresco on the ceiling. In truth it was badly drawn, but without her spectacles, it looked splendid, a magical landscape inhabited by flawless lads and lasses. One golden lad looked rather like Lord Randolph Lennox must have at eighteen.
She tucked her arms under her head and reveled in the strange and wondrous chance that had brought them together. Perhaps heaven was giving her a special Christmas present as a reward for managing to keep Maria pure until her marriage? Elizabeth chuckled at the thought. The longer she lived in Italy, the more superstitious she became.
Eager to begin the day, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and slid her feet into the waiting slippers. Then she began the slow process of brushing out her hair, which was thick and very curly. In the morning it tumbled over her shoulders in a wild mass and at least once a week she considered cutting it, but never did. A governess had little enough femininity.
Patiently she unsnarled a knot. He had said that he was harmless, but that was only partially true. Certainly he would not threaten her virtue, for he was a gentleman and she wasn't the kind of woman to rouse a man to unbridled lust. Heavens, not even bridled lust!
But that didn't mean Lord Randolph was harmless, because of course she would fall in love with him. Any lonely spinster worth her salt would do the same if thrown into the company of a man who was charming, kind, intelligent, and handsome as sin. And he would never even notice, which was as it should be.
After a day or two he would tire of sightseeing, or go north to Rome, or become involved in the glittering circle of court life for which he was so well qualified. And she would begin the task of taming the terrible twins, and tuck the image of Lord Randolph away in her heart, next to that of William.
She might cry a little when he was gone for good, if she wasn't too busy with the twins. But she wouldn't be sorry to have known him. Though magic must sometimes be paid for with pain, that was better than never knowing magic at all. When she was old and gray and dry, she would take his image out and dream a little. If anyone noticed, they would wonder why the old lady had such a cat-in-the-creampot smile on her withered lips.
Elizabeth glanced into the cracked mirror. With her glasses off and her hair curling madly around her face, she looked more like a blowsy baroque nymph than a governess.
For just a moment she let herself dream. Lord Randolph would fall in love with her beautiful soul and marry her out of hand. England would be home, but they would make long visits to Italy. They would have three children; she might be starting late, but she was healthy. She would paint, powerful unusual canvases that some people would love and others would loathe. His aristocratic family would be delighted that Lord Randolph had found a wife of such fine character and talent.
Her mouth thinned and she put her spectacles on and began tugging her hair back. As the nymph vanished into the governess, she knew that he would not fall in love with her, and that even if he did, she could not marry him. Even in her wildest flights of fancy, she could not escape the knowledge that her actions had put respectable marriage forever out of reach.
But that did not mean that Elizabeth could not enjoy this rare, magical interlude. And she did.
In Rome, she had been told of an Englishman who had decided that the main point of seeing sights was to say that one had seen them, so he had hired a carriage and crammed the Eternal City into two fevered days so he could devote the rest of his time to dissipation. Fortunately Lord Randolph proved to be a visitor of quite a different stamp, interested in everything and willing to take the time to absorb as well as see.
She began by taking him to all of Naples's famous sights, and when it became clear that he shared her taste for the unusual, she expanded the itinerary to include more eccentric amusements. Over the next week they explored Naples's narrow, teeming streets, ate fresh fruit, pasta, and ices purchased in the markets, and stopped to enjoy arias of heart-stopping purity that soared from the open windows of tenements.
When it rained they searched dark churches for neglected paintings by great masters, and smiled together at signs that offered, "Indulgences Plenary, daily and perpetual, for living and the dead, as often as wanted." As Lord Randolph remarked, it was precisely the way a London draper would advertise.
Tactfully, Lord Randolph did not again suggest hiring her services; instead, he paid for all admissions, meals, and other expenses. On fair days he hired a carriage and driver and they went into the countryside. They visited Baia, which had been a fashionable Roman bathing resort, and speculated about the palaces that now lay beneath the
sea. At Herculaneum they marveled at the city that had emerged after almost two thousand years beneath volcanic mud, and Elizabeth did sketches that populated the ruins with puzzled, ghostly Romans.
It was Lord Randolph who had suggested that Elizabeth bring her sketchbook. While she drew, he would sit quietly by, smoking his pipe, a man with a gift for stillness. It was not uncommon for rich tourists to hire artists to record what they saw, and Elizabeth quietly resolved to give Lord Randolph this set of drawings when they parted. When he looked at them to remember Naples, perhaps he would also think of her.
In the meantime, she utilized the governess's skill of watching unobtrusively, memorizing the angle of his eyebrows when he was amused, the way the winter sun shimmered across his dark gold hair, and a hundred other subtle details.
Alone in her pensione in the evenings, she tried to draw Lord Randolph from memory, with frustrating results. He would have been an easier subject if he were less handsome, because his regular features looked more like an idealized Greek statue than a real man. She did her best to capture the quiet humor in his eyes, the surprising hint of underlying wist-fulness, but she was never satisfied with the results.
As an escort Lord Randolph was thoughtful and impeccably polite, and Elizabeth knew he enjoyed her company, but she also knew he was scarcely aware that she was a woman. Had he come to Italy because he was disappointed in love? Hard to imagine any woman turning him down. But she would never know the truth. Though their conversation flowed with ease and wit, they spoke only of impersonal things. Her companion kept his inner life to himself, as did Elizabeth.
The first few days they spent together, she was able to maintain a certain wry detachment about her growing infatuation with Lord Randolph. But the day that they visited the Fields of Fire, detachment dissolved as she fell blindly, helplessly, irrevocably in love with him.
The Campi Flegrei—Fields of Fire—lay north of Naples. The poetic name described an area of volcanic activity, a sight not to be missed by tourists. After spending the morning in the nearby town of Pozzuoli, they had driven to Solfatara, an oval crater where the earth was sometimes too hot to touch and noxious fumes oozed from the holes called fumaroles.
A local guide led half a dozen visitors into the crater, and as part of his tour he held a lighted brand over a boiling mud pot. Immediately the steam issuing from the mud pot flared furiously, as if about to explode. Even though Elizabeth had seen this before, she still flinched back.
Lord Randolph touched her elbow reassuringly. "That is just an illusion, isn't it?"
She nodded. "Yes, the fumarole doesn't really burn hotter, but whenever I see that, I can't help feeling that the sleeping volcano is lashing back at impudent humans who disturb its rest."
After tossing the brand into the fumarole, the guide stamped on the ground, sending a deep, ominous echo rolling through the hollow mountain under their feet. Then he led the group away.
Having had enough demonstrations, Elizabeth and her companion wandered off in another direction.
"It's an interesting place," Lord Randolph remarked as they picked j their way through a field of steaming fumaroles. The pungent odor of sulfur hung heavy over the sterile white soil. "Rather like one of the outer circles of hell."
"Solfatara is a place every visitor to Naples should see, but I dislike it intensely." Elizabeth gestured around the barren crater. "When I come here, I always think it is the loneliest, most desolate spot on earth."
"No," her companion said softly, his voice as bleak as the dead earth crumbling beneath their feet. "The loneliest place on earth is a bad marriage."
That was when the fragile remnants of Elizabeth's detachment shattered, for in that instant she came to understand Randolph. It was not a shock to learn that he was married; she had never understood why a man so attractive and amiable did not have a wife. Nor did she feel betrayed that he had not mentioned his wife before, because she had always known there could be nothing between him and her but fleeting friendship.
What Elizabeth did feel was a disabling flood of love and tenderness.
It was tragic that a man so kind and decent should be so unhappy, that loneliness had driven him so far from home.
Even more than tenderness, she felt a sense of kinship. Impulsively she said, "You mustn't surrender to it."
"Surrender to what?" he asked, turning to face her, his slate eyes shadowed.
"To loneliness," she stammered, embarrassed at her own impertinence. "To give in to it is to dance with the devil and lose your very soul."
Under his grave gaze, she felt hot blood rise in her face. She looked away, bitterly sorry that she trespassed beyond the limits of friendship by alluding to intimate, solitary sorrows.
Quietly he said, "If you have danced with the devils of loneliness, you have escaped with your soul and learned wisdom into the bargain."
Elizabeth took a deep, steadying breath, grateful that he had forgiven her lapse. "I think I hear our guide calling. Come, it is time we went back, before he decides that we have fallen into a mud pot."
THE Via Toledo had been called the gayest and most populous street in the world, but Randolph paid little attention to the blithe people swirling around him as he strolled through the lamplit night. He had been walking for hours, his thoughts occupied by an alarming but deeply appealing idea.
He had enjoyed Elizabeth Walker's company from the moment they met, but he had thought her self-sufficient, completely comfortable with her life as it was. That belief had changed in an instant that afternoon at Solfatara. In a moment of weakness he had lowered his guard, and rather than ignoring or despising him for his lapse, Elizabeth had done the same. By the act of reaching out to him she had revealed a loneliness as great as his own, and her blend of warmth, generosity, and vulnerability was so potent that he had very nearly said that if they joined their lives, they might banish the worst of their mutual loneliness.
He kept silent, too skeptical, too wary, to propose marriage on impulse. Yet the idea had taken hold, and now he found himself wondering what kind of wife Elizabeth would make. And the more he thought, the more his conclusions agreed with his first impression of her. She would make an excellent wife.
He smiled wryly, thinking of Samuel Johnson's remark that a second marriage was the triumph of hope over experience. Randolph had thought that life had cured him first of love, then of marriage, and he had resigned himself to spending the rest of his life alone. Yet here he was, thinking that seeing Elizabeth Walker across a breakfast table would be a very pleasant sight indeed. Chloe had seldom risen in time for breakfast, and when she did, she was invariably irritable and self-absorbed.
Elizabeth was not a beauty, but one beauty was enough for a lifetime. Hard experience had taught Randolph that humor, honesty, and a tolerant mind were far more important in a marriage. And she was far from an antidote. While her face was unremarkable, it was engagingly expressive. He found frank pleasure in the supple grace of her slim body, and a mischievous whirl of wind had revealed that her long legs were truly outstanding.
Realizing that he was hungry, he stopped at a small cafe. The proprietor spoke enough French to take an order but not enough to carry on a conversation, leaving Randolph free to continue his thoughts over wine and polio alia cacciatora. He was not in love with Elizabeth Walker, nor was he coxcomb enough to think that she loved him, but that didn't matter, for he was not convinced that love was an asset to a marriage.
What mattered was friendship, and in a short time they had become good friends. He knew that most people would think he was a fool to be considering marriage to a woman he had known only a week, but they had spent a great deal of time together, long enough that he felt he knew her better than either of the other women who had been important to him.
He thought the chances of her accepting him were excellent. She seemed to enjoy his company, he was presentable, and his wealth would allow her the time and money to paint. Yes, a marriage between them could work out very
well. They were both old enough to know their own minds; if she were willing to marry him, there would be no reason for a long engagement.
Now he must find the courage to ask her.
THE morning air was cold but the sky was glass clear; December 24 promised to be the warmest day since Randolph had arrived in Naples. His driver and carriage showed up scarcely a quarter hour late, which was stunning punctuality by Neapolitan standards. Vanni was a cheerful fellow with a splendid baritone and villainous shaggy mustaches. His English was no better than Randolph's Neapolitan, but over the last several days he had learned to drive directly to Elizabeth Walker's pensione.
Elizabeth was ready when the carriage arrived, but punctuality was no surprise in her case. It was one of the things Randolph liked about her.
"Good morning," she said cheerfully. "Are you game for a drive in the country? My friend Sofia has a mission for us. It is the end of the olive harvest, and she has asked that we collect her year's supply of fresh oil. A respectable cook insists on knowing where her olive oil comes from, and Sofia swears that her cousin presses the best oil in Campania."
"Which means that it is the best in the world?" he asked with a smile.
"Exactly. You are beginning to understand the Neapolitan temperament, Lord Randolph." Elizabeth lifted a lavishly packed basket. "As reward for our efforts, Sofia has packed a most sumptuous picnic for us."
He helped her into the carriage, then he and Vanni stowed the basket of food and a large number of empty stone jugs behind the passenger seat. After a staccato exchange with Elizabeth, Vanni turned the vehicle and began threading his way through the crowded streets. Leaving the city, they headed south to the fertile farmlands near Vesuvius. To Randolph it seemed odd that lifeless volcanic ash eventually became rich soil, but lush fields confirmed the fact.
The ride through the hills was spectacularly lovely, and having someone to share the sights made them lovelier yet. After two hours of driving they reached their destination, an ancient rambling farmhouse surrounded by silvery olive trees. The two Britons were welcomed joyfully and given a tour, from the vineyards to the hand-operated olive press. As a farmer himself, Randolph enjoyed it thoroughly, and through Elizabeth, he and Sofia's cousin exchanged farmer comments.