“I HEARD NOTHING. PAPA.”
The high, frightened voice of a child murmured through the chill darkness.
“I heard nothing, Papa.”
Borghini sat bolt upright in bed, his dazed eyes chasing after the fleeting image.
“I heard nothing, Papa.”
“Forget this happened, Ludo. You saw nothing. When the police ask you, tell them you saw robbers …”
“Robbers?”
“The ones who came tonight. The ones who broke into the house …”
“I heard nothing, Papa. I heard nothing, Papa. I heard noth—”
“If you say anything, I’ll cut your head off.”
Late the next day when the colonel returned to the palazzo, he was tired but unusually happy. His eyes fairly glowed as Beppe drew his bath and helped him to disrobe. The night before, he had addressed the Milan chapter of the Pugno.
“Several hundred came, Beppe. You should have seen. The place was packed. They cheered me at the end. They got up on their feet. They adopted all of my proposals. Almirante was there. The old man himself. He came up to shake my hand.”
Borghini lifted his foot and lay back on the bed as Beppe knelt to pull off his boot. “How is the signorina?”
“I brought her a tray in the morning. Then another a few hours ago. She eats nothing.”
“Scared.” The colonel hoisted each foot to permit the boy to haul his trousers down. “You don’t understand that, do you, Beppe? You’re never scared, are you?”
Smiling, he slapped the boy affectionately on the back. “Is the water hot? It must be scalding. I ache all over.”
“Boiling, maestro. Just as you like it.”
Slipping his aching bones beneath the steamy water, the colonel groaned softly. Gradually, his head drooped and he appeared to nod off to sleep. Then, as though by some act of will, he forced his eyes back open and fixed the boy with a woozy gaze. “I’ve seen the way you look at the signorina, Beppe. That’s not for you, my lad. Don’t touch. This is not some puta off the streets. Hands off. I have other plans for her.”
The boy shrugged pleasantly. That was his way. He was always pleasant, deeply respectful to the colonel, but with him, Borghini could never be quite sure.
Shortly past dusk, someone knocked at the door of her room.
“Yes.” She half-rose.
“Signorina,” the boy called back from the other side of the door. “The colonel asks if you might not join him for dinner.”
“Downstairs?”
“Yes, signorina.”
She took a quick glance at herself in the wardrobe mirror. “Just one moment.”
She went into the bathroom and, standing before the mirror, ran a comb several times through her hair, then went back out.
She heard the key fumble in the lock. The door swung open and there once again stood the boy. His face was different tonight, she noted. That nasty, bad-boy mischievousness was gone. In its place now, she thought she saw resentment.
“I do regret all this, Isobel,” he was saying as Beppe ladled steaming soup into their bowls.
Uncharacteristically casual in pale linen slacks, a silk ecru shirt open at the collar, with a foulard tied round his neck, Borghini smiled and appeared relaxed. “I’m sure you do, Ludo. And if, as you say, you regret it, then please forget all of this ever happened and let me go home.”
A weary, not unkind smile creased his face. “I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that.” He tapped the crystal decanter and tilted it toward her. “More wine?”
She shook her head and covered the top of her glass with her hand.
“It all seems so far away now.” Borghini peered into the deep garnet color of his goblet, watching the reflection of the dinner candles shimmer in the bowl of his glass. “When you first came here to this house, wanting to join our little group.”
“I was interested then.”
“And now no more?”
“The violence,” she said unhesitatingly. “I hated the violence.”
“Revolution is seldom peaceful.” He laughed wearily. “Was there anything about our program you liked?”
She thought a while, marshaling her thoughts carefully. “The emphasis on tradition, continuity, family,” she finally volunteered. “The notion that people had to earn their place in the system. Fair and square advancement based on real achievement. I like all that. I liked the fact that the movement stressed intellectual discipline, preservation of cultural values, and that it insisted upon a period of military service for young Italians—men and women alike. These things I admired.”
Borghini nodded and sipped his wine. “You avoided any mention of our racial theories, Isobel.”
“I don’t admire them.”
Borghini’s whiskered face crumpled into a soft smile. “At least you’re honest.”
Seeming to materialize out of thin air, Beppe appeared at the table, cleared the soup plates, and proceeded to serve the pasta course.
All the while Borghini talked, he observed the flash of fork and spoon as the boy served the cheese-drenched rigatoni from a deep peasant bowl that had belonged to the colonel’s mother.
“How old are you now, Isobel, if I may ask.”
“I’m twenty-nine.”
“So you were nineteen when you first came to me?”
“Yes.”
His eyes closed as he drifted back over the spate of years.
“What do you intend to do with me, Ludo?” she asked quietly when it appeared he had lapsed into silence.
When he didn’t answer, she started to ask again, but this time he stirred, shifting in his seat, then finally spoke. “Understand, Isobel. I have no wish to harm you.”
The words alone, by their very tone of conciliation, were alarming.
“You have no reason to. I’ve done nothing to you.”
“Oh, I can’t say I agree with you “there.”
“If you mean my sending Mr. Manship to Pettigrilli …”
Borghini nodded. “That’s exactly what I mean, Isobel. That was unwise. Unfortunate things have come about as a result.”
The more he spoke, the more cryptic and incoherent he became.
“Forgive me, Ludo. I don’t understand.”
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “I would have preferred to have avoided all of this. I like you, Isobel. Believe me, I truly like you.”
The note of regret in his voice, she found unsettling.