Late that afternoon Oliver, Victoria’s driver and the bane of her maid’s existence, stopped the little barouche in front of the Gardella villa. As Victoria stepped out, she realized she hadn’t been home or slept since leaving yesterday morning for the portrait unveiling at the Consilium. She was bone-tired, yet energized with purpose in a way she hadn’t been for months. Her mind was racing down a myriad of avenues, and she felt as though she could barely keep up with it. At the same time she was still dirty and mussed from her evening of moving headless corpses with Michalas.But she had a task, and felt for the first time since Aunt Eustacia’s death that she was back in full form.
Still, she wanted nothing more than to get into the quiet of her room and practice some of the meditation and breathing that Kritanu had taught her. Tomorrow she would meet the mysterious Ylito and they would go to examine la Porta Alchemica.
The front door opened just as she reached it, Aunt Eustacia’s Italian butler looking slightly more harried than usual.
“Grazie, Giorgio,” Victoria said, walking in and directly toward the stairs as she pulled off her gloves and began to unhook the fastenings of her spencer. “Please ring for Verbena and ask that she wait upon me in my chamber.”
“Si, milady,” Giorgio said. “But perhaps you might wish to take a moment to visit the parlor?”
“The parlor?” Victoria, her hand on the newel post at the bottom of the steps, halted reluctantly—only a flight of stairs from the haven she sought. She glanced toward the parlor and saw that the door was closed.
But before Giorgio could reply, the door in question opened. “Victoria!” came a familiar shrill greeting. “Victoria, we have arrived!”
Victoria couldn’t move. Her fingers froze like a cap over the stairwell post as she looked at her mother, Lady Melisande Gardella Grantworth, rushing toward her from the sitting room, skirts and ruffles and lace bouncing and flouncing in all directions.
“We?” Victoria managed to ask, all thoughts of a quiet rest disintegrating along with the peacefulness of her home. No wonder Giorgio had looked out of sorts.
“Indeed! Lady Nilly and Duchess Winnie and myself, we’re all here. Just in time for the week of Carnivale. And for you, you poor dear, of course. Poor darling, to have to handle all of this on your own. I am only sorry I couldn’t have arrived sooner.” Lady Melly gathered Victoria into her maternal embrace even as her daughter desperately clutched the stairwell post.
And as her mother’s two bosom friends spilled into the hall behind her, arms outstretched in greeting, high-pitched voices exclaiming over everything from Victoria’s simple hairstyle to her sunken cheeks to the mild Italian weather and how it was so warm for February, so why were her hands so cold and her gown—was that even a gown?—so dirty and mussed? My goodness!—had she been hurt?…she could do nothing but let them fuss and hug and pat and croon as they’d done since she was a little girl.
With a weary glance over her shoulder, she told Giorgio, “Please tell Verbena I shall be a while.”
A long while.
Two hours later Victoria sank onto the stool in front of her dressing mirror. Two hours.All that time listening to her mother and the ladies Winnie and Nilly prattle on about the circles under her eyes, the gauntness of her cheeks (although Lady Nilly thought it wasn’t so terrible, she of the hollow cheeks herself), and the paleness of her skin. Not to mention the droopiness of her plain hairstyle and unfashionable clothing.
And that wasn’t all. There were unveiled hints about her returning to London to find another husband. And how her dear friend Gwendolyn Starcasset was now the toast of the ton, with her new betrothal to an earl with more than fifty thousand a year, and how her brother, George, would be a perfect match for Victoria. (Victoria had had to bite her tongue particularly hard on that topic, for the last time she’d seen George Starcasset he’d been here in Rome with Nedas, as a member of the Tutela, and had been intent on ravishing her.)
There had been Lady Melly’s grievances about the erstwhile Lord Jellington, who had, apparently, failed to meet her expectations of what a beau should do and be, and was thus the impetus for her visit to Italy.
Then followed opinions on Italian biscuits (too dry and crusty), Italian streets (crowded and confusing and filled with pilgrims), and the beauty of the little fountain in front of the villa.
She’d had to keep the ugly red calluses on her left hand—her tea-pouring and stake-wielding hand—hidden while playing hostess, for, of course, she wasn’t wearing the gloves she would have been wearing had she been home in London. Nor was she garbed in a proper gown, the lapse of which still had her mother in horrified raptures.
The entire event had culminated in one big problem that led somewhere she wasn’t sure she wanted to go. She rested her head on the dressing table in her chamber.
“Now, milady, no sense in lettin’ em make it any worse’n it already is. Ye have important things to attend to.”
Victoria lifted her head to look in the mirror. All she saw at first were two puffs of orange-colored hair on either side of her own dark head, and then her maid, Verbena, looked up from where she’d been unfastening the buttons of Victoria’s tunic. Her face bore pity, but also a glow of interest.
“Did ye see that massive crucifix the duchess was wearing? I swear, even m’cousin Barth wouldn’t be wearin’ one that size, though he’s been known to drive vampires around himself. Pardon me for sayin’ so, but the duchess’s cross looks bigger than the pope’s.”
As she spoke, Verbena drew the tunic up and over Victoria’s head, leaving her droopy-eyed mistress to sit at the table in merely her split-skirt and chemise.
Victoria sighed. “I cannot believe they’re here,” she said wearily. “Without a word of warning Mother has arrived with them, and now I haven’t any idea how I’m going to get out at night without their knowing.” Sundown—vampire-hunting time—was in a matter of hours, and Melly expected her to join them for dinner, and likely more conversation. Surely she would also expect Victoria to join them in other activities, both during the day and in the evening.
In fact, the dearth of calling cards on the front table of the villa had sent Lady Melly into yet another soliloquy about how cloistered Victoria had allowed herself to become since Aunt Eustacia died, and how terrible it was that her social life had gone to null. And how glad Melly was to be here to set things right.