Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

Nobody looked at him directly, which said exactly how much everybody was watching him.

“. . . your cousin Emilio’s wife’s niece, Maria-Angiola. The one from Pisa . . .”

The two men who’d come in carrying guns had transformed into smiling, charming, handsome dandies. “Is it really you? The Sara who was lost? I’m your cousin Antonio.”

“Antonio?” Cami blinked up at him. “Tonio? You used to chase me with frogs.”

“I was toughening you up, like a good Baldoni woman.”

That was a Baldoni to keep an eye on. “Cousin Tonio.” Dark, lean, no more than twenty. But older men detoured around him, deferred to him, watched him. He was important in this family.

He threw an arm across the shoulder of the man at his right. “This fool is my baby brother, Giomar. He was this tall—like this—the size of Nicolo over there—when you left. He won’t remember you at all.”

“I remember her. When we had sweet rolls on Sundays she’d give me the raisins out of hers.”

“. . . Catarina’s mother was Baldoni. That was Luisa, the daughter of Jacobino Baldoni, your great-great-uncle. Luisa ran off with a Frenchman, but her second marriage, after they dealt with the Frenchman, was to a Rossi.”

“. . . counterfeit ducats from the Grisons into France. Everybody knows how it’s done. But, no, they decide to be clever . . .”

“A good wine. Very nice. I’ll bring up another bottle.”

“She is the picture of Giannetta. The image of her.”

“. . . idiots decided they’d save money by not bribing the . . .”

“The mortadella from Prato. That one.”

The kitchen was lit with expressive faces, warmed with bright dresses, punctuated with the impact of ink black hair pulled into a knot at the nape of the neck, plaited in a long dark river of a braid, or tousled in curls. They all had the tawny gold skin of Filippino Lippi angels. The young ones even looked like angels. They must find that useful.

Cami was so unmistakably one of them. Her features, her skin, her hair were Florentine as any Renaissance Medici. I’m supposed to see faces. Why didn’t I see that?

“. . . so I’m playing banker. Me!” Cousin Antonio threw his hands up, protesting, in the easy athletic gesture of a fighter. “A banker. I wear dull coats and pontificate on the pound sterling and the volatility of India bonds.”

Cami murmured something.

“. . . one of Old Paolo’s schemes. We were going to abandon it, but there it sat, making money. Every year, more and more money. We can’t give it up just because it’s legitimate.”

The band of children seethed underfoot, aided by three—no, four—dogs. A baby howled. No one paused in the crowded dance of bodies going to and fro. They touched in passing, put an arm around a cousin—everybody seemed to be a cousin—handed the baby back and forth.

This was how Baldoni lived when they weren’t playing roles, in this din, this confusion, this breathing in each other’s breath. Nothing could be further from the cold expectations of the house he’d grown up in.

“I do this in my office”—Antonio made a motion of moving stacks of coin—“and suddenly money is in the Austrian branch. Then I charge as if I’d shipped gold in a pouch, with a fee and bribes for every border.”

“We will make ribollita from yesterday’s soup and chicken alla cacciatore.”

“The real profit comes from changing currencies. When we buy and sell it’s like coins falling down from the sky.” Antonio shook his head. “There has to be something wrong with that being legal.”

Bernardo Baldoni came across the room toward him, carrying a glass in each hand, and offered him one.

Baldoni bearing gifts. He took the wine and raised it to his lips and didn’t drink any. Baldoni all over the room would make note of that and know what it meant.

“It’s a happy occasion that brings Sara back where she belongs.” Bernardo drank from his own glass. “I thank you for your part in this.”

“She’s Camille now.”

A tiny hesitation. “She has changed,” Bernardo agreed. “But she’s still our Sara. Still Baldoni.”

He said, “Of course,” in a voice that meant just the opposite.

Cami had acquired a glass of wine, Aunt Fortunata, and a pair of young matrons, one at each ear, talking, one with the baby on her hip. That was the baby that had been passed from Baldoni to Baldoni till there was no telling who it belonged to.

“She hasn’t forgotten her Italian,” Bernardo said.

“That’s good. Though your English is excellent.”

“We learn English from babyhood. Something of a family tradition.”

“Is it?”

“Tuscany has always been full of the English—travelers, mercenaries, exiles, artists, madmen . . . spies. We’ve found the English profitable over the years. Our relationship with our French masters is less satisfying.” Without any sign he was changing the subject, he said, “How is an agent of the British Service concerned with my niece?”

“We’ve known each other awhile.”

“And how does that come about?”

“It’s a long story. And not my story. It’s Cami’s.”

Bernardo waited, gravely polite, for more comment. When that didn’t arrive, he said, “You respect her privacy. That is admirable.”

“I respect her skill with edged weapons. Let’s go outside. You could float an egg on the noise in here.”

A nod. “We must talk, Mr. Paxton.”

Cami looked up to see them leave, but it was Antonio who followed him out. Antonio and three Baldoni walking at his back. He didn’t like it that Antonio looked thoughtful. Thoughtful men were more dangerous than angry men.

By the time she disentangled herself from cousins and aunts and a small child inexplicably wound around her legs, Pax was gone. She found him in the hall, almost to the front door. Her path to him was complicated by Tonio and the stiff-legged fighting cocks who swaggered behind him, playing at being dangerous, and didn’t want to share the game with her.

Or—it was no game. These cousins of hers were most certainly deadly. They were simply much less deadly than Pax.

They were three tomcats trailing a tiger. Who was in a bad mood, most likely. And everyone was heavily armed. It is almost impossible to hold reasoned discussion once pistols enter the conversation.

Bernardo opened the front door politely and stepped through first. Baldoni politeness. One does not force a guest to present his back to a possible enemy.

Bernardo was saying, “. . . considerably more joyful than I expected when Lazarus sent word someone had used an old, old recognition signal. I assumed I would be dealing with a fraud.”

“A reasonable expectation.”

“It would not be the first time a stranger has claimed to be Baldoni,” Bernardo said. “Briefly.”

Pax took the front steps, his back insouciant, his step deliberate, his hand—she could tell by the angle of his arm—on a knife. He was ignoring his tail of escort. Tonio would find that annoying.

She pushed past cousin, cousin, cousin, and cousin and went to where Pax and Uncle Bernardo had stopped to confront one another at the low iron railing that separated the house from the pavement.

When she hurried up, Pax looked down at her with his calm, serious face and the smile that didn’t escape from deep in his eyes. To Bernardo he said, “Do you think she’s an impostor?”

“She is my nephew’s child. There was never a moment of doubt. I know her as I know my own sons.”

Tonio and his fighting tail of bad judgment arrived. She said, “He’s my friend,” and clarified that with, “If any of you touch a gun, I’ll break your fingers.”

Uncle Bernardo said, “There is no question of welcome, Mr. Paxton. She is one of us.”

It was early afternoon. The street was without shade and almost empty of people. The few men and women going about their business showed no interest. If attentive eyes peered at them from hidden corners, they were discreet about it.

Her cousins slipped away, one gliding casually down the pavement, others out into the street. They were not spectators at a coming fight. They intended to be participants. She did not bother to point this out to Pax, who was perfectly capable of seeing for himself.

Baldoni men, and many of the women, prepared themselves for adventurous lives. Antonio would have taken lessons in boxing and fencing. He’d be a crack shot. He’d traveled in dangerous places. The three men at his back were young, strong, and equally well trained.

But they faced someone outside their experience—a man who lived in the cold shadows they occasionally passed through on their way to a profitable venture elsewhere.

Pax didn’t fight for sport. His calculations didn’t include shaking hands afterward.

She didn’t say, “Pax, my cousins would very much like to rescue me from something and you are handy. Don’t hurt them.”

Antonio stepped into Pax’s path and said, in English, “Go back to Lazarus and tell him we’ll settle whatever claim he has on Sara. She is Baldoni. Ours. Run tell him that, figlio di puttana.”

“He’s not from Lazarus,” she snapped.

“All the better,” Antonio said. “Nothing to stop me from cutting his bollocks off.”

“You will leave his bollocks precisely as they are.”

“I am your closest male relation—”

“You are my closest male idiot. No one removes any man’s balls on my behalf. I will do whatever castrating is necessary among my acquaintance.”