With a newfound vigour, I left my room and made my way downstairs. Just as I reached the bottom of the staircase, Hortense appeared, coaxing a moody Violante along. My sister-in-law was dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief and Hortense looked at me over the girl’s head, her eyes warm with sympathy and perhaps a touch of relief.
“Ah, Julia. Just the friendly face we hoped to find. Violante is a trifle upset, and perhaps you can cheer her better than I. I think she grows weary of me,” Hortense said, hugging Violante close to her side and giving her a wink.
Violante hugged her back, watering the silk of her gown with her tears.
I put out my hand. “Come, walk with me, Violante. We will be very naughty and steal cakes from Cook and eat them on the stairs as Portia and I used to do as children.”
Violante pulled a face and put a hand to her stomach. “I do not think the cakes I would like very much.”
“Perhaps not, but you will like being with me. I am far nicer than Lysander and much prettier than Plum.”
She laughed at this and took my hand, giving Hortense a quick kiss in farewell. I was astonished at how quickly they had become intimate, but it ought not to have surprised me. I knew only too well how kind Hortense could be. Compassion was the brightest treasure in her jewel box of virtues.
Violante and I strolled down the corridor, arm in arm. I felt a little ashamed of myself. The poor child was in a foreign country, with an imperfect grasp of the language, struggling to accommodate herself to her new family, and had endured a murder in her home, as well. And one could only imagine how the knowledge of her pregnancy had affected her. Doubtless she was pleased, but she had not had an easy time of it thus far, and I noticed her mouth was drawn down with sadness.
Impulsively I patted her hand, sorry I had not remembered earlier how affectionate she was. She must have missed the easy intimacies of her sisters and cousins in Italy. I brushed the hair back from her brow. “You are a little homesick, I think.”
She nodded. “Si.I miss the sunshine, the flowers, the good foods of Napoli.” I raised my brows and she hurried on. “England is very nice, of course. But it is not my home. There are no dead people at home.”
I blinked at her. “Of course there are dead people in Italy, Violante. Some of them are still lying out in the churches for people to look at. I have seen the guidebooks.” They were gruesome too, those decaying old saints, preserved under glass like so many specimens in a museum of natural history. I had made a point of visiting as many as possible during my travels.
“They are not in my house,” she corrected, and I had to concede the point. To my understanding, her upbringing had been a conventional one. Her family might be passionately Italian, but at least murder had never broken out at one of their house parties.
“Please believe me when I tell you that they are not usually in this house either. This is a very strange turn of events, my dear, and not at all the welcome we had planned for you,” I said consolingly.
She smiled at me, but doubtfully so. I changed the subject.
“What do you think of Father?”
Her smile deepened. “He is very nice.”Verra nice.“His Italian, it is not so good as my English, but we understand each other.”
“Good,” I told her. “It is good when family understand one another.”
She leaned toward me conspiratorially. “I am making him a waistcoat—it is a surprise, tell no one.”
I blinked at her. “Of course not. What a charming idea. Father will be delighted.”
She smiled, clearly pleased with herself. “It was Lysander’s idea. He thought if I made something for Papa with my own hands, it would show how much I est—est—”
“Esteem?” I suggested.
“Esteem him,” she finished happily. “I want to be the good daughter to him.”
I resisted the little dart of annoyance I felt when she said that. Father had five daughters, he scarcely needed another. But I reminded myself that Violante was a stranger in our country, and that we were her family now.
I patted her hand. “That is a noble idea, Violante. I am sure he will be very pleased.”
She brightened and tucked her handkerchief into her pocket. “I will go and work on it now. Tell me, does he like best the purples or the oranges?”
I tipped my head, considering carefully. Father’s wardrobe was usually an excellent barometer of his mental state. When he was feeling melancholy and sulky, he wore his decaying old tweeds and shirts made for him in Savile Row thirty years ago. When he was in fine fettle, he dressed like a maharajah with just a dash of circus performer, all colour and light. It had not escaped my attention that he had worn his threadbare tweeds with a pair of disgusting old gaiters since our arrival at the Abbey. Perhaps a fine new waistcoat would be just the thing to raise his spirits.
“He loves them both, Violante. He loves them both so much you ought to make him a striped waistcoat, orange and purple together. Perhaps with some nice red taffeta for the back,” I told her firmly. “And great buttons all down the front, green ones.”
She beamed at me, and I beamed back at her, baring my teeth in a fond smile. I was quite beginning to like the girl.
Violante and I chatted haltingly for some little while as we paced the length of the ground floor. She told me about the baby and I pretended to be surprised, and by the time we finished, she seemed much more cheerful than she had been when I found her with Hortense. At one point she threw her arms around me, kissing me soundly on the cheek.
I patted her shoulder a little awkwardly. “How very sweet you are, Violante. Now, why don’t we go and find Lysander? It is almost time for tea.”