Chapter Thirty-Three

She will come.

Patience. She will come.

But each time Roberto breathed in, it felt as though the air had to drag itself through wet muslin to reach his lungs.

She will come because she promised. And Isabella is a woman of her word. Unless . . .

He refused to contemplate unless. But he didn’t trust Grassi and knew that the chairman’s reach was long and stealthy. If Grassi had decided to tighten his grip, Isabella could already be on her knees in some stinking prison cell that Roberto could not prize her out of so easily this time.

The sound of a prayer drifted to him. The scent of candles and wet raincoats. They mingled in the somber light within the circular and ornate body of the Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli. He stood in deep shadow in one of the niches and waited.

And waited.

She came. Limping badly. Her black coat was buttoned up to the neck, her beret rolled into a tube and sticking out of her pocket.

Roberto didn’t move. He remained in shadow, waiting to see whether anyone had hurried off the piazza and followed her into the church. But he could make out no one shifting uneasily between the side chapels or lighting votive candles with a hand that was unsteady and unaccustomed to the task.

He watched Isabella look around the church, her gaze flickering over the few figures sitting silently in the pews who in the dim light looked like statues themselves. She glanced up at the richly decorated cupola above and then took a seat on one of the front benches, cradling her hand to her chest. Roberto was surprised that she turned her back on the door. It made her vulnerable. It was as if she were shutting herself away from whatever was on the other side of it. Her face was solemn and she was gazing straight ahead at the ornate altar with its black marble pillars and gold-framed image of the Virgin Mary. There was something fragile about Isabella, in the way she sat, in the set of her shoulders. It was something he hadn’t seen in her before and it pained him to see it now.

In the hushed atmosphere he moved quietly. He sat in the pew behind her in silence, letting her rest in peace, guarding her back. He sat there so long that it began to grow dark outside before Isabella tipped her head back slightly, looking up at the powerful gold cross that soared above the altar.

“Did you think,” she murmured in a low voice meant for Roberto’s ears alone, “that I didn’t know you were there?”

Roberto smiled softly. “Of course you knew.”

She could hear his heartbeat as clearly as he heard hers.

Picking their way through the darker streets of Rome, they headed for the Tiber River, the Fiume Tèvere, and Roberto felt a rush of relief. The center of Rome was left behind. They crossed on the Garibaldi bridge, its lights glittering in the swirling black depths of the river like stars that had slipped down from the night sky by mistake.

A fine drizzle felt soft and warm on their faces and he walked with his arm around Isabella’s waist, his pace trimmed to match hers. She spoke little. She told him about the meeting arranged for tomorrow morning and that her visit to the quarry had been interesting. But that was it. Something had closed down inside her. He cursed whatever it was that had driven her back in on herself where the nightmares stalked.

He wrapped a scarf around her arm and fastened it like a sling. She didn’t object but she didn’t welcome it either. He could smell the rain in her hair. Once over the bridge into the district of Trastevere, he breathed easier. Here was a maze of narrow streets that twisted and turned on themselves, a place where artists and thieves knew they could find a meal and a bed or a damp cellar to hide in.

“Here we’ll be safe,” he assured her.

She nodded. Her shoulder against his felt weightless.

“Isabella.”

She turned her head to him. The blue lamp outside a smoky bar spilled its melancholy light over her as though there were bruises under her skin that had been hidden till now. Her face looked flat and drawn.

“Tomorrow you’ll learn more from this fellow Blackshirt about your husband and why you were shot. Things will become clearer. You will feel better.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. Tomorrow will change things.”

She looked away, at a rat slinking along the gutter. “Today has already done that.”

“Anything more?”

“No. Grazie.”

“Sure?”

“Yes, it smells good.”

The waitress, with long dark-blond hair and wide-set cornflower-blue eyes, grinned at Roberto. “It tastes good too.” She gestured at the two dishes she had placed on the table—pork in a steaming spicy sauce of tomatoes and capers.

Roberto smiled at her. “Are you English?”

“Of course I am. You’re a sharp one, aren’t you? I came to Rome on holiday and . . .” She slid an affectionate glance across the tables of the tiny restaurant to where a young slim-hipped waiter was taking an order for an aperitivo. “Well, I stayed.” She cast a look at Isabella’s tense face and her bandaged hand, and asked quietly, “Do you need anything, signora? An aspirin, perhaps?”

Isabella looked up, surprised. “No, I’m all right. But thank you, that’s kind of you.” She smiled at the girl. “You must like it here in Rome.”

“Si! Italian men are much more romantic than Englishmen.”

“Hah!” Roberto uttered a snort of laughter.

The girl tossed her hair with a grin. “It’s true.”

“Just remember, don’t believe a word they say,” Isabella commented lightly, but her smile grew stiff and tight around the edges.

Roberto felt uneasy. What did she mean by that? He studied her face by the flickering light of the candle overflowing in the neck of a wine bottle on the table, but she had pulled the shutters down too securely and he could fathom nothing. It was a mistake. He shouldn’t have brought her here. The place was full of people having a good time, drinking, talking, and laughing.

“Enjoy your meal,” the waitress urged. “If you need any more wine, signore, just give me a shout. My name is Issie.”

“Thank you.”

The moment she had moved away, Roberto reached across the table and cut up the pork on Isabella’s plate into bite-size pieces. “There, try that. It should be easier to eat one-handed.”

During the meal he chattered about the photographs he’d taken in the city today at the Campo dei Fiori market, but she uttered no comment and he had no idea what twists and turns were spiraling inside her head. So he filled in the silences by making a show of enjoying his meal. She chased her food around her plate with a fork, but none of it reached her mouth. Every now and again she gave a small shake of her head that tumbled long tendrils of her dark hair over her cheeks, and he wondered what it was she was denying with each shake of her head.

The minutes ticked past slowly and a man in a gondolier costume sang “O Sole Mio,” accompanied by an enthusiastic accordion. The waitress cleared their plates, replacing them with tiny cups of fierce black coffee and a crisp almond biscotti.

“You didn’t enjoy your meal, signora?”

“I wasn’t hungry after all, I’m afraid.”

The girl shrugged and drifted away to lean her shoulder like a young whippet against the slim-hipped waiter who was watching his padrone play briscola with one of the customers. Roberto sat back in his chair. He drank the last of his wine and allowed a silence to build at the table until Isabella was forced to look straight at him. Her eyes were gray instead of blue, as if someone had thrown a handful of grit in them while she was at that damned quarry.

“Isabella, why do you find it easy to talk to the waitress but not to me?” Even Roberto could hear the anger in his voice and he clipped it out before it did damage. “Don’t shut yourself away. I’m here to—”

“To what? To help? Or to spy on me?”

She saw his reaction. Saw the dark regret that shadowed his face. Without a word she rose from her chair and walked out into the night.