"Come, you don't want to spend your first evening in Rome alone, and Dane is otherwise occupied," he said, following her into the car. "You're tired and bewildered, so it's better you have company."
"You don't seem to be leaving me any choice, Herr Hartheim." "I would rather you called me Rainer."
"You must be important, having a posh car and your own chauffeur." "I'll be more important still when I'm chancellor of West Germany." Justine snorted. "I'm surprised you're not already."
"Impudent! I'm too young."
"Are you?" She turned sideways to look at him more closely, discovering that his dark skin was unlined, youthful, that the deeply set eyes weren't embedded in the fleshy surrounds of age.
"I'm heavy and I'm grey, but I've been grey since I was sixteen and heavy since I've had enough to eat. At the present moment I'm a mere thirty-one." "I'll take your word for it," she said, kicking her shoes off. "That's still old to me-I'm sweet twenty-one."
"You're a monster," he said, smiling.
"I suppose I must be. My mother says the same thing. Only I'm not sure what either of you means by monster, so you can give me your version, please." "Have you already got your mother's version?" "I'd embarrass the hell out of her if I asked."
"Don't you think you embarrass me?"
"I strongly suspect, Herr Hartheim, that you're a monster, too, so I doubt if anything embarrasses you."
"A monster," he said again under his breath. "All right then, Miss O'neill, I'll try to define the term for you. Someone who terrifies others; rolls over the top of people; feels so strong only God can defeat; has no scruples and few morals."
She chuckled. "It sounds like you, to me. And I have so too got morals and scruples. I'm Dane's sister."
"You don't look a bit like him."
"More's the pity."
"His face wouldn't suit your personality."
"You're undoubtedly right, but with his face I might have developed a different personality."
"Depending on which comes first, eh, the chicken or the egg? Put your shoes on; we're going to walk."
It was warm, and growing dark; but the lights were brilliant, there were crowds it seemed no matter where they walked, and the roads were jammed with shrieking motor scooters, tiny aggressive Fiats, Goggomobils looking like hordes of panicked frogs. Finally he halted in a small square, its cobbles worn to smoothness by the feet of many centuries, and guided Justine into a restaurant.
"Unless you'd prefer alfresco?" he asked.
"Provided you feed me, I don't much care whether it's inside, outside, or halfway between."
"May I order for you?"
The pale eyes blinked a little wearily perhaps, but there was still fight in Justine. "I don't know that I go for all that high-handed masterful-male business," she said. "After all, how do you know what I fancy?" "Sister Anna carries her banner," he murmured. "Tell me what sort of food you like, then, and I'll guarantee to please you. Fish? Veal?" "A compromise? All right, I'll meet you halfway, why not? I'll have pate, some scampi and a huge plate of saltimbocca, and after that I'll have a cassata and a cappuccino coffee. Fiddle around with that if you can."
"I ought to slap you," he said, his good humor quite unruffled. He gave her order to the waiter exactly as she had stipulated it, but in rapid Italian. "You said I don't look a bit like Dane. Aren't I like him in any way at all?" she asked a little pathetically over coffee, too hungry to have wasted time talking while there was food on the table. He lit her cigarette, then his own, and leaned into the shadows to watch her quietly, thinking back to his first meeting with the boy months ago. Cardinal de Bricassart minus forty years of life; he had seen it immediately, and then had learned they were uncle and nephew, that the mother of the boy and the girl was Ralph de Bricassart's sister.
"There is a likeness, yes," he said. "Sometimes even of the face. Expressions far more than features. Around the eyes and the mouth, in the way you hold your eyes open and your mouths closed. Oddly enough, not likenesses you share with your uncle the Cardinal."
"Uncle the Cardinal?" she repeated blankly.
"Cardinal de Bricassart. Isn't he your uncle? Now, I'm sure I was told he was."
"That old vulture? He's no relation of ours, thank heavens. He used to be our parish priest years ago, a long time before I was born."
She was very intelligent; but she was also very tired. Poor little girl-for that was what she was, a little girl. The ten years between them yawned like a hundred. To suspect would bring her world to ruins, and she was so valiant in defense of it. Probably she would refuse to see it, even if she were told outright. How to make it seem unimportant? Not labor the point, definitely not, but not drop it immediately, either.
"That accounts for it, then," he said lightly. "Accounts for what?"
"The fact that Dane's likeness to the Cardinal is in general things-height, coloring, build."
"Oh! My grandmother told me our father was rather like the Cardinal to look at," said Justine comfortably.
"Haven't you ever seen your father?"
"Not even a picture of him. He and Mum separated for good before Dane was born." She beckoned the waiter. "I'd like another cappuccino, please." "Justine, you're a savage! Let me order for you!" "No, dammit, I won't! I'm perfectly capable of thinking for myself, and I don't need some bloody man always to tell me what I want and when I want it, do you hear?"
"Scratch the surface and one finds a rebel; that was what Dane said." "He's right. Oh, if you knew how I hate being petted and cosseted and fussed over! I like to act for myself, and I won't be told what to do! I don't ask for quarter, but I don't give any, either."
"I can see that," he said dryly. "What made you so, Herzchen? Does it run in the family?"
"Does it? I honestly don't know. There aren't enough women to tell, I suppose. Only one per generation. Nanna, and Mum, and me. Heaps of men, though."
