It just wasn’t fair, Ruy concluded.
“A real for your thoughts?”
Ruy looked up from his funk, smiling, simply because the sound of Sharon’s voice always made him happy. “You might not approve,” Ruy warned her.
“Try me,” she said with a smile that was more than half-leer.
Ruy glanced behind. The pope sat his horse comfortably and loose-limbed; Vitelleschi sat his like a long- necked scarecrow without joints.
“You might approve, my heart, but I sincerely doubt that the pope would.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think Urban VIII is a prude. But Vitelleschi-brrrr. I suspect he thinks holding hands is the equivalent of fornication.”
“Hmf,” moped Ruy. “Well, I certainly don’t.”
“No,” she agreed with a smile, “you certainly don’t.”
“Heart of my heart, it is more than a man should be asked to bear, this abstinence. To touch your beauty, to experience your vigor, it brands a man’s soul. It creates a hunger that knows no surfeit. It afflicts me with fantasies and daydreams of delights that are bestowed by an angel with the impulses of a demon.”
“In short, you miss the bed.”
“Ah, the bed,” Ruy sighed, shaking his head. “I remember it almost as if it were yesterday.”
“It was. Well, the day before yesterday.”
“Is it so? Then why does it already feel like a century of centuries?”
“Ruy, don’t herniate your flattery muscles, now. And besides, being on the road is a source of adventure, of new opportunities, new places-new beds. “She poked him, her lips curving slighly.
His eyes widened, then narrowed to match the salacious smile that he could feel growing on his face. “It may be true that variety is the spice of life, but I was not done savoring all the many flavors of the farmhouse. And its bed. Which lifted you just high enough, when you lay full upon it, that I was perfectly positioned to-”
“Ruy. You are not going to talk about that here.”
“Ah, so now you fear that Urban will overhear?”
“That. And I need to keep my head on my business.”
Ruy effected an epic sulk. “I am your business.”
“You most certainly are, you old goat. You are the business I want to get down to. Which is precisely why I’m going to ride ahead of you now.”
“To separate yourself from me? I am wounded, wounded unto death.”
“Really? Wounded to death? You? All of you?” Her challenging gaze drifted south of his belt for just a second; he quite literally rose to the challenge.
As she turned away, Ruy protested to the listening skies. “I am lost, utterly lost. My heart is owned by a cruel temptress who has no pity upon my desperate condition.”
Looking back, Sharon smiled. The sensuous curve of her lips seemed reprised in her shoulders, her arms, her hips, her bust. “So your condition is desperate?”
“Despite enduring a thousand battles and a hundred wounds, never have I been in more pain. I, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, swear that it is true.”
She raised her chin in a histrionic huff. “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.” And with a twitch of her tail that matched her spurred mare’s, she moved farther ahead.
Smiling more broadly, Ruy spurred his own charger, keeping up with her. But he was careful not to draw abreast of, or pass, her. No, he must not pass her.
Because he liked the view from back here. Very, very much.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The room stank of chronically unwashed bodies and the proximity of Rome’s Jewish Ghetto, from which rubbish was removed infrequently. At best.
Tom watched Juliet finish her wine. She placed the sturdy flagon down upon the table and, despite her almost parodically curvy bulk, she belched demurely. Then she stood up and whistled, once, shrilly, followed by her cry of “Benito?”
From out of the milling crowd of young men in the front room, a tall gangly adolescent with a bad facial gash and missing one ear loped over. His face was a study of dedication bordering on adoration: “Yes, Signora Sutherland?”
“Time to send all the young bucks along to their billets now, lad. Get Giovanna’s relatives to help you.”
“Her brother Fabrizio, he’s here. But her cousin Dino is upstairs, fetching-you know, ‘him.’”
Thomas North smiled tightly. Him, indeed. But it was true enough that Harry’s fame in Rome was such that the mere mention of his name and rumor of his appearance could create problems. Fortunately, this was working in their favor, now. Since they had removed Wadding weeks ago, there had been an imaginary “Harry Lefferts sighting” almost every other day. The authorities had apparently pursued these rumors vigorously at first. Now, they simply ignored them. Which was good; although the returned Wrecking Crew took meticulous care not to interact or even be seen by locals, even at night, they could not afford a slip-up. Whoever worked for Borja was looking for them; no reason to help the bastard do his job.
Juliet was rolling her eyes over Benito’s report. “Yes, of course, Dino is spending an extra minute basking in the glow of the Great Man. So get Piero to help you, instead.”
“ Si, Signora, we shall have the room clear in thirty seconds. No more.”
“You have them trained pretty well,” North observed when the youngster had left.
“No training required, Lord North.” Why she, alone of the Wrecking Crew, insisted on retaining the use of his title was beyond him. But he wasn’t going to attempt dissuading her. He had learned that Juliet Sutherland was not merely determined, she was a force majeure. In this case, her resolve was quiet, rather than loud and brash, but no less tenacious. She was probably going to call Thomas “Lord North” until the day he-or she-died.
“What do you mean, ‘no training required’?” North sipped at his well-watered wine.
“Well, I’m exaggerating a bit. But just a bit. The only boys who will do the work we require are poor. And the only ones who can do the work are not so poor that they’re too weak to watch, run, report. Which means I’ve been recruiting scamps who’ve already spent a few years watching houses and following people, working as lookouts for petty thieves, smugglers, pimps: you name it.”
“Sounds a savory crew.”
“Sounds a desperate crew,” replied Juliet with a touch of heat. “I’m familiar enough with their circumstances, m’lord. Grew up none too different, truth be told.”
“Sorry,” offered North.
“Ah, nothing to be sorry for, m’lord. I suppose these aren’t the kind of skills you ever had much cause to become familiar with, what with you taking your lessons by the hearth in the ancestral manse.”
“ Touche,” North offered with a smile. “Although that doesn’t quite describe the circumstances of my youth. We had a great deal more title than money, and I was not the oldest son. Nor the favorite.”
“Probably why you don’t take on airs, then. Knew there was a reason I liked you. Not all quality is quality, if you take my meaning. But you are, right enough.”
North hardly knew what to say. “Thank you,” was what came out. It sounded ridiculous.
“Well, if you must thank me for something, you can express your appreciation for my expertise as a recruitrix of unsavory crews. Not things you learn in a book, of course, but on the street. You have to be able to tell the ones who are hungry from those who are desperate. Desperate waifs are no good to us; unfortunately, they’ll serve or sell anyone for a farthing because they don’t believe that anything good will last.
“You also have to be able to tell the ones who are just hard enough from the ones who don’t have enough hardness in ’em-they’ll freeze or bolt-and also from the ones who are too hard-they’ll sell you out or blackmail you, if they get the chance.”
“I wasn’t aware there were such nuances in the recruiting of children.”
“Well, why would you be? None of your own, and no interest in ’em.”
