Free Lady Elinor's Wicked Adventures by Lillian Marek Page A

suppose?”
    â€œHah! The men in the caffès, they talk of important things.” Lissandra held up a hand and shook her dangling fingers. “They cannot allow women to enter. They might hear some sense!”
    â€œSorry, Norrie,” said Tunbury. “They’re just like the clubs in London. And probably just as dull and stuffy.”
    Lady Elinor did not look convinced.
    Lissandra, on the other hand, looked pensive. “We cannot go to a caffè, you understand, but perhaps…perhaps you would like to go to a trattoria? It is like a restaurant, only not elegant, not for fine ladies and gentlemen. But we could have coffee and talk, and pretend we are in a caffè.”
    Rycote frowned slightly. “Are you sure this place is quite proper?”
    â€œDo you never do anything but frown, Signor Viscount? Del Falcone is most assuredly ‘proper’! My old nurse and her husband, who was once our chef, it is they who run this trattoria. My father and my mother, they have themselves visited and even dined there. Bah!” She sat back, folded her arms, and scowled at Rycote.
    He flushed with embarrassment. “I do beg your pardon most sincerely, Donna Lissandra. I should never have questioned your judgment. It is only that in my ignorance of the customs here…”
    At this point Elinor broke in with a laugh. “I fear it is only that my brother is accustomed to my fits and starts. I am always wanting to do something that he thinks is ‘not proper,’ so now he is worried about anything new. And as you can see,” she said with a wave, “it requires two of them to keep me in my place.”
    â€œTo keep you even a little bit safe, you mean.” Tunbury was half laughing, half frowning.
    Lissandra looked at both young men, then smiled at Elinor. “Brothers. They are always so concerned that we be proper, until they get themselves into trouble. Then they want us to get them out of trouble, and there is no thought of the trouble they make for us, eh?” She reached over to prod the driver with her parasol and gave him an order in Italian too rapid for the others to follow. Nor could they understand the words—in an unfamiliar dialect—that followed when the maid turned around with an angry scowl and began to scold her mistress, who ordered her to be silent. The old woman subsided, but not until she had sent angry glares at the Englishmen.
    With an apologetic smile, Lissandra said, “I must beg you to excuse her. She trusts no one but the priests, and thinks I should be locked up behind convent walls.” She shrugged. “What is there to do? She is old, and she lost a brother and a nephew in the fighting.”
    â€œThe fighting?” Rycote came to attention. “What fighting?”
    â€œWhen the French came to drive out Mazzini and Garibaldi. You did not know of it?”
    â€œYes, of course. But that was years ago.”
    She smiled sadly. “Not so many years ago for us in Rome.”
    Rycote flushed again. “I apologize. I seem to keep speaking without thinking. It must have been quite terrifying for you.”
    That won him another of her shrugs.
    He tried again. “Your maid is a republican, then.”
    â€œMaria?” Her eyes widened in mock horror. “Never say such blasphemy! Her brother and uncle were fighting with the French against the impious devils who dared raise a hand against the Holy Father.”
    Rycote looked thoroughly confused. “But I thought Mr. Freeborn said that your brother…”
    â€œVery true. My brother was one of those impious devils. It is most terrible for poor Maria. She has always been with our family and now, when she would like to pile coals of scorn on our heads, she has nowhere else to go.” She sighed. “Poor Maria.”
    Just then the carriage entered the Piazza Navona, where the late-afternoon sun struck the three fountains, casting dramatic shadows