Giancarlo and his new bride lived in a tidy little townhouse in a row of houses on one side of a square so new that the trees in the central garden were still saplings and some of the paths had not yet been laid.
Emily allowed Maddox to hand her down from the hired carriage. He paid the driver to wait. "It looks as if we will have to walk miles to get another if we let this one go," he said as he joined her. "Are you ready, my love?"
No, she wasn't, and she wasn't going to be. Giancarlo lived in the centre of an emotional tempest that revolved around his hurt feelings and his needs. She hated the thought of being drawn into that drama once again. Still, the sooner they started the sooner they could leave. Her nod to Maddox was firm.
He took the four steps up to the front door and a couple of strides, and gave the doorknocker a sound wrapping. The door opened immediately. The maid on the other side said, "The missus ain't receivin'."
Maddox put a foot forward to block her from shutting the door but she made no attempt to do so. Instead, she ignored them both and began to take the knocker off the door. "Going somewhere, are they?"
The maid glared at him. "The missus ain't receivin'," she repeated.
"We are here to see Signore Narcisco," Maddox explained.
Another hostile glance. "You're not having the look of a debt collector," she observed. "Got your sister in the family way, did he?" She spoke directly to Emily, her voice slightly more sympathetic. It's sorry for you, I am, but it ain't nothin' to do with me or the missus."
"We have not brought that kind of trouble to your mistress's home," Emily said. "Can you tell us where we might find Signore Narcisco?"
"Maggie, have you packed my mother's tablecloths? I cannot leave without my mother's tablecloths." The speaker drifted into sight, and stopped short to examine Maddox with widened eyes and then look beyond him to Emily. The voice was that of a little girl, but the figure was definitely a woman; a very young woman, to be sure. But the heavy pregnancy removed any question. This was Giancarlo's wife.
"Mrs Narcissco?" Maddox asked.
The woman nodded. "Have you come to visit my husband? Does he owe you money? He told Papa that the list was for all his debts. I hope you are on the list, Sir. If you are not... I am sorry, but Papa says he will not pay anything more."
Maddox's voice softened. "Your husband does not owe me money, Mrs Narcisco. I am merely here as escort to –"
"In that case, you must come in. You must both come in." She flicked her eyes to Emily, and then back to Maddox. "My husband will be home soon, I am sure. Indeed, I expected him quite two hours ago." She cast an anxious look at the maid, who had finished taking the knocker off the door and was standing ready to shut it again. "I do hope nothing has befallen him. Maggie, do we still have the makings for tea?"
She turned her attention back to Maddox. "Come in, come in. How do you know my husband?"
Emily climbed the stairs and entered the house to follow the flustered woman. As she passed the maid, she heard the woman muttering, "The devil to a penny, 'tis the whiskey or a woman that has befallen the blaggart, to be sure, to be sure."
With Maddox at her heels, Emily followed Mrs Narcisco into a drawing room covered in dust sheets and empty of any ornaments or personal items.
The girl—she was little more than that, perhaps half Emily's age—regarded the dust sheets in dismay, as if she had forgotten they were there. "We are almost packed," she explained, still ignoring Emily and looking up at Maddox as if he was the only other person in the room. "Tomorrow, we sail for Italy, where we will be living with my husband's family." A quick frown. "Oh, but listen to me. You cannot be interested in our private business. I did not catch your name?"
"The business is mine, Signora," Emily said. "I am Emily Kilbrierry, and your husband has a trunk of mine. I wish to collect it."
Mrs Narcisco's eyes widened and she took a pace backwards. As she lifted her hand to her breast, the lace frills on her café fell back. Her wrist was ringed with purple, green, and yellow marks, and more marred her forearm. Someone was in the habit of gripping her hard enough to bruise. Having suffered the same treatment, though not repeatedly, Emily could put a name to the brute.
"You should not let him do that to you," she told the poor girl.
Mrs Narcisco dropped her hand to hide the marks. "I do not know what you are talking about," she insisted. "You should not have come here, Miss Kilbrierry. It is not proper for a woman of your sort..."
Maddox cleared his throat, and the girl's speech stuttered to a stop.
"If you will not protect yourself, think of your child," Emily pleaded.
At that moment, someone cried out her name. "Emilia!"
She turned to find Giancarlo in the doorway. Ignoring everyone else in the room, he reached her in two strides, and would have taken her in his arms except that she held him away. "Emilia! Vita mia! You have returned to me! And just in time, for we go to Italy tomorrow. You must come too. Diedre will not mind, will you, Diedre? Giancarlo has potenza for two. More, even. You need not fear."
Emily waved Maddox to silence, evading his grasp once again. "Giancarlo, show some respect for your wife. I have not 'returned' to you. I have come for my trunk."
"No, no, amori mio. You have come back to Giancarlo. I feel it here. I read in the papers that you had taken up with a cold Englishman, but I knew such a one could never replace Giancarlo in your heart." He clutched both hands together over his own heart.
"Can I hit him?" Maddox asked.
Mrs Narcisco, who had sunk to sit on one of the dust-sheet covered couches, gave a startled squeak.
"The trunk, Giancarlo," Emily insisted, and kept repeated the request while Giancarlo continued to lay out a picture of the perfect life they would have in Forenze, where his family had a villa in which he could keep his son and the boy's mother, and cottages nearby, any one of which he and Emily could inhabit between concerts. "For we will make beautiful music together again, as we did before."
Maddox's temper continued to rise, and Mrs Narcisco was crying, the tears running silently down her face.
"What have you done with my trunk?" Emily asked, once again.
A crafty look crept into Giancarlo's eyes. Had she ever fancied the horrible man? She couldn't remember why. "It must be with the luggage already sent to the ship," he proclaimed. "We will find it when we unpack."
At that, Mrs Narcisco leapt up. "No! He pawned it!"
Narcisco lifted a hand but before it could fall on Mrs Narcisco, Maddox had his wrist in a tight grip.
"No," he said. A single word, but it was enough to make Narcisco wilt. At her nod, Maddox let go of his wrist.
Narcisco stepped out of Maddox's reach, then turned on Emily with a sneer. "This fancy boy is your new lover, is he? What instrument does he play? Drums? Or is he a gigolo you have hired to pleasure you now you are old?" He turned his sneer on Maddox. "Does she show you the tricks she learned from her puttana mother? As if I would marry a bagascia."
He found himself pressed up against the wall next to the door, dangling by his neck, his feet off the ground.
"Tell Miss Kilbrierry where you took her trunk, and we will leave this house. And keep a civil tongue in your head, or I shall rip it out and make you eat it." Maddox's threat was made in his most aristocratic drawl and sounded all the more lethal as a result.
Mrs Narcisco whimpered again.
Narcisco made another couple of attempts to evade the question, but eventually gave the address at which he had pawned the trunk, and its contents. Emily did not particularly regret the gowns and other accoutrements, and she had taken the jewelery that mattered most to her when she fled, but she would hate if they could not retrieve the three-quarter sized violin on which she had trained when smaller, and that she carried for luck.
"Let him go, Lord Maddox," she said. "We have the information we came for."
Maddox lowered Narcisco to the floor, stepped back, and even began tidying the man's twisted colour and necktie.
Emily was turning to farewell their unwilling hostess when the sound of flesh hitting flesh had her spinning around to see Maddox landing a second punch on Narcisco's jaw. The Italian fell back against the wall and slumped down it, to lie in a huddle on the floor.
"Thank you," she told Maddox. He bent to feel the man's pulse and nodded. "Strong enough, but he'll wake with a headache.
His voice was still full of repressed rage. "The first one was for you, the second for his poor wife."
Emily couldn't agree more. She turned to Mrs Narcisco, who had made no attempt to see to her husband's wellbeing. "Going to Italy with him would be a mistake, you know. Will your father not protect you?"
Mrs Narcisco shook her head. "He sent me back when I complained once before. Said I made my bed and must lie in it." Her eyes brightened. "But he would not like that Giancarlo propositioned a fallen woman right in front of me! Papa is very proper."
Maddox started to object to her insult, but Emily laughed. "Then hurry and tell him all about it, Mrs Narcisco."
The girl took her at her word, stepping over her husband's legs and hurrying out of the room. They heard her shouting on her way to the door. "Maggie! Come home with me! I have to talk to Papa!"
Maddox offered his arm. "Shall we find this pawnshop, dearest?"
Emily allowed him to help her into the carriage and give the driver the new direction. She had not retrieved her belongings, but she had achieved something more important. Any lingering resentment of the girl who had replaced her had been washed away by pity. She hoped Narcisco fled Ireland alone.