The Chaotic Miss Crispino. Kasey Michaels

in the region!”

      “Bruschetta?” Valerian repeated, scowling. “That’s bread drenched in garlic, isn’t it?”

      “It is nothing so simple. The bread is sliced thick and toasted ever so lightly, then rubbed most generously all over with none but the freshest garlic, olive oil, and salt. I adore it!”

      “You will adore it from a distance today, signorina, or else ride up top with Tweed to the next posting inn,” Valerian warned her, his expression as stern as his voice. “I am entranced by Italy in general, but I have never learned to share your national love of garlic.”

      Allegra’s chin jutted out as her breast heaved a time or two while she considered this ultimatum. It was raining, and had been raining ever since they had left the hotel. She had been an outside passenger in the wintertime enough to know that she did not wish to be one again. “I will have the minestrone, signore,” she said, giving in even though it pained her. “But you will not know what you have missed!”

      “Oh, but I already know what I will miss, signorina,” he corrected her, reaching for the door as Tweed pulled the coach to a halt. “I will miss an afternoon in peace and quiet while you bear Tweed company—probably the last peace and quiet I shall have until we reach Brighton.”

      As Valerian pushed down the coach steps, his back to Allegra, she almost gave in to the urge to lift her foot and push him headfirst through the door and out into the muddy inn yard.

      “Ah, signore,” was all she said a moment later, comically rolling her big blue eyes as Valerian handed her down from the coach, “you must have a saint on your shoulder. You don’t know how lucky, how very lucky, you are!”

      Valerian stared after her as she made her way confidently to the inn’s entrance, her dark head held high, her step fluidly graceful. The feeling that he was in some sort of unrecognizable danger from this small spitfire of a child was growing ever larger in his chest.

      THEY REACHED NAPLES two days later, docking at the bottom of the Via Roma just at sundown, and proceeded directly to the rented villa of Mark Antony Betancourt, Marquess of Coniston, and his wife, Candice. The two were good friends of Valerian’s who, upon leaving Rome in October, had instructed him to visit them in their uncle’s villa in Naples after the New Year.

      His fingers figuratively crossed that the couple would be in residence and not entertaining this evening, Valerian descended from the hastily rented carriage, bidding Allegra to remain behind while he assured himself that the Marquess was at home.

      “Will your Marchesa of Coniston bid me to enter through the servants’ door as well?” Allegra asked, reluctant to move. Her stomach and legs had yet to acknowledge that she was back on dry land, because, as she had told Valerian, she didn’t have “sailor’s feet.”

      She waited until he had walked away before adding peevishly, “Or do Englishwomen have better manners than Englishmen?”

      Valerian, who had already mounted the three shallow stone steps to the front door, turned to smile back at her. “Candie stand on ceremony? I should think not, signorina. I’m sure she’ll make us both feel most welcome.”

      Allegra sniffed and withdrew her head back into the carriage to await developments, as her pride still smarted from having to climb the back stairs at Valerian’s hotel in Florence. Her stomach grumbled as she waited for Valerian to summon her and she smiled, knowing that her appetite was returning to normal. With any luck there would be a good Neapolitan cook installed in the villa’s kitchen.

      Five minutes passed before Valerian opened the door to the carriage and held out his hand for her to descend to the narrow flagway.

      “I’m to go to the servants’ entrance?” she asked warily.

      “The servants’ entrance?” exclaimed a female voice from the doorway. “Valerian, what have you been up to with this poor child? I’ve never before known you to be mean. Cuttingly sarcastic, yes, but never purposely mean. Oh, Tony, Uncle Max—just look at her! She’s beautiful! Have you ever seen anything so small as her waist?”

      “And I don’t think it’s her waist we men are looking at, aingeal cailin, don’t you know,” replied a short, rather pudgy man in a curiously lilting baritone. “Reminds me a bit of your sister, Patsy. Isn’t that right, m’boyo?”

      “I wouldn’t know, Max,” a third voice supplied, chuckling. “I’m a married man now, you know, and beyond such things.”

      “Exactly like your sister, Patsy, my love,” the Marchioness answered, not sounding in the least upset. “I’ve always said I would gladly trade her this tiresome hair for her lovely, full bosom.”

      Allegra, whose gaze had been concentrated on Valerian’s face as she tried to take some silent signal from him as to how to go on (a signal which, no matter how hard she looked, never came), lifted her head to confront the three people who had spoken of her as if she weren’t really there to listen. Almost instantly her mouth dropped open as she looked at the Marchioness of Coniston, a woman whose ethereal loveliness literally took her breath away.

      The Marchioness was tall, and reed-slim, and her beautiful, pale-complexioned, heart-shaped face was animated by a lovely pair of slanted, lively sherry eyes. But it was her hair, a thick mane more white than blonde which fell nearly to her waist, that totally entranced Allegra. Until the Marchioness smiled, that is. Then Allegra was captured and won by the open friendliness in the young woman’s expression.

      “Come inside, Signorina Crispino, do,” the Marchioness commanded, taking Allegra’s hand in hers. “Tony, Uncle Max, come along. Valerian looks as if he could use a tall glass of Chianti.”

      “What a wonderful idea, Candie. And it’s a great thirst I’ve worked up this day myself, being good,” Maximilien P. Murphy answered brightly as the five of them headed inside, passing by a small group of interested servants.

      Valerian slipped his arm around the older man’s shoulders as they walked across the marble foyer and into the main salotto. “It’s strange that you should mention being good, Max,” he said companionably, “for I’ve been wondering—how would you like to be bad for a while? Nothing terrible, you understand, just perhaps a momentary resurrection of the Conte di Casals, the Italian Count Tony told me you played to perfection in London. Would you impersonate him again—just long enough for the Conte to procure a passport for Signorina Crispino here?”

      “That’s it? One tiny passport?” Maximilien answered, frowning. “That’s no harder than tripping off a log. Done and done, my boyo!”

      “Valerian! Shame on you. And shame on you, Tony, my love, for telling tales out of school!” the Marchioness, overhearing, accused. “Uncle Max doesn’t do that sort of thing anymore, Valerian. You know that. After all, now that Tony and I have our sweet little Murphy, we want our son to get to know his uncle as a free man—and not just as a poor wretch we take oranges to at the local prigione.”

      Allegra, who had been led to a chair by the Marquess, looked up at Lady Coniston in confusion. “Prison! Your uncle is a criminal?” she asked, biting her lip at the insult. “Scusi! I mean to say—” She turned to Valerian, who was now holding a wineglass and looking very much at home and at his ease. “Well, don’t just stand there! Help me, Fitzhugh, per favore! What did I mean to say?”

      Lady Coniston promptly sat down beside Allegra and patted her hand. “Don’t apologize, my dear, for it was an honest mistake. You see, dearest Uncle Max and I traveled about the world for many years before Tony and I married, and we—well, you might say we indulged in a wee bit of stage-playing from time to time when the need arose.”

      “Is that right? And ’tis that what you call it now, me fine Marchioness? We lived higher than O’Hara’s hog on that ‘stage-playing,’ if memory serves,” Maximilien retorted, his round face turning a violent red, although Allegra, watching him, was very sure he was not really angry, but was only indulging in a little more stage-acting of his own. They were an unusual group, she acknowledged silently,