Chapter Twenty-One #2
These days Professor Loughty’s beady eyes had a superior gleam to them that said Of course the engagement is cancelled.
Who would want such an unnatural creature as yourself, with your theories and ideas?
But she simply smiled back with her own secret smug satisfaction.
Alistair had given her the tools to fashion her own weapon against such narrow-mindedness.
She had her journal and even a few interested women who’d already answered her letters.
The joke would be on Professor Loughty this spring when her first issue went to press.
But that seemed a long way off, and there was only her work to sustain her in the interim.
Ismay scanned the note that had come in the morning from Monticelli.
He wanted to meet at the San Gennaro parade.
He had news of the mountain she would find interesting.
She folded the note and slipped it into her skirt pocket.
As far as staying busy with work went, Vesuvius had done its part.
The seismic activity they’d felt the night of their ascent had continued to increase in both regularity and intensity.
She desperately wanted to get up there and feel the quakes for herself.
Perhaps she could convince Monticelli to climb with her.
They’d have to go soon. If her research was right, there would be an eruption soon.
She did not think it would be of the magnitude of the one in 1631, which had claimed lives and villages, but eruptions could do damage in other ways with ashfall and toxic clouds of gas. She hurriedly scribbled her acceptance.
* * *
‘I hope the blood liquefies today.’ Monticelli stood beside her in the throng, craning around others to see the procession approach.
The city’s ecclesiastical leaders carried the relics and the ampoules of blood held high to be seen by all as the delegation passed through the streets.
‘We might need San Gennaro’s protection any day now.
That’s what I wanted to tell you. The rumblings have increased.
’ She nodded. She’d felt them in town while she’d been shopping, although nothing had travelled up Vomero Hill.
‘They’re coming closer together now. Like birthing pangs,’ she added.
Although, it was a labour that had taken quite a while.
‘The mountain has been rumbling since last December.’ That labour had started quickly, with lava flows on the west and northwestern fractures.
But that had been nearly a year ago, a year filled with continuous rumblings and bright sparks at night, a sight that had not been unusual for the last two hundred years.
Vesuvius had been awake for generations.
‘Is that what has you worried?’ The procession passed and the crowd began to thin.
Monticelli pulled her into a quiet side street with a shake of his head.
‘Certainly the regularity is something to note. I would not mind it so much if it wasn’t for the other signs.
A friend of mine who is also interested in our volcano reported coastal shifts, and a few farmers on the slopes say the water table is down. It’s affecting the wells.’
Her mouth went as dry as the reported wells. That had all been part of the impending eruption pattern in years past. It also meant her research might be right—that by paying attention to the changes in seismic activity, one could be warned about impending eruption. ‘I want to get up there.’
‘If we’re right, a trek would be dangerous,’ Monticelli warned.
‘We can cover our mouths and noses to protect against gas.’ She began to make her argument, pausing when a golden head grabbed her attention.
Alistair? But it couldn’t be. He was gone.
She’d spent the last four weeks playing the game of I wonder what he’s doing now or I wonder where he is.
If he’d left right away, he might have made it home for Christmas.
Or perhaps he’d only gone as far as Florence.
In which case, he’d be with his cousin. But those shoulders, that hair, the cock of his head.
It could be no other. ‘Excuse me, signore.’ She left abruptly, pushing through the crowd.
If that was Alistair, what was he doing here, and why hadn’t he left?
She called his name and he turned, blue eyes startled. She gasped and hurried forward. ‘Alistair, what are you doing here?’ The hope she’d buried for weeks surged. If he was here, perhaps something might be done, perhaps she might have a second chance.
‘I came to see the blood.’ He grinned, but there was weariness beneath his eyes. She could see that now. ‘I had it on good authority that it will liquefy.’ She remembered that conversation as if it had taken place yesterday.
‘But what are you doing in the city? I thought you were gone.’ Gone as in far from here, out of her reach.
‘I might as well be gone. I leave in a few days for Florence. I promised your father I would tie up loose ends and finish my projects before I left.’
The import of that was a blow to the stomach, two blows in fact. ‘You were here in the city all along?’ And he hadn’t tried to contact her. So near and he’d not told her.
‘Ismay.’ He said her name like a warning, his intuition reading her reaction like the most open of books.
Damn, she hated that he knew her so well.
‘It’s not like that. Your father asked me to make a clean break of it.
I gave him my word, and I will honour this one small thing he’s asked of me.
It’s for your sake as well, to spare you the gossip,’ he instructed sternly.
He reached out an arm to guide her to the side of the crowd.
‘You take too much on yourself,’ she scolded. ‘Where are you living?’
‘If I tell you, you cannot go there, Ismay,’ he cautioned. Of course he cautioned. She was Ismay Rose, the girl who took everything too far, who didn’t know when to stop. ‘I am at the house off Piazza Vittoria.’
‘Our house?’ Irrational anger rocketed through her.
‘It was never going to be our house.’ His mouth was grim now. ‘I should go before anyone sees us together.’
She grabbed his sleeve. ‘Is that what you want? Do you want to leave? Do you want this—us—to be over?’
‘It’s what we planned, Ismay. It’s what you wanted.
’ It was not a pleasant reminder. She’d had the chance at the horse race to call it off, to fight for them, and she had not.
He gently removed her hand from his arm.
‘Besides, it’s too late now to change your mind.
Your father thinks I’m a cad of the highest order.
Your mother has quietly broken the engagement in social circles. ’
It was a reminder, too, that this had not been what he’d wanted at the end. He’d said he loved her that night in the library. Did he love her still after all she’d asked of him?
‘What if I could fix this? What if I told my father it was all a sham?’ She was begging him now. ‘What if I told him I love you? Come back with me. We can do it together.’
‘Is this the truth talking, Ismay? Or is it guilt?’ The words sounded exhausted.
There was no hope in them. That was her fault.
There’d been a moment of opportunity, when Alistair had been willing to change course, and she’d frozen.
He’d attributed it to her doubt of him when it had really been doubt of herself, her inability to make him happy.
‘What if I told you I’d made a mistake, that I was scared, just as you said I was? I see that now. It took losing you to see all that you meant to me, how you’ve changed me for the better. I’m not afraid anymore.’
‘Excuse me, Ismay. I have packing to see to. It’s best to let things lie.’
* * *
She could not let it lie. Perhaps she had lost Alistair.
But he need not lose his reputation with her father, nor her father lose his lifelong friendship with Hugh Burke-Price.
Their hastily concocted ruse had far-reaching repercussions, like the aftershocks on Vesuvius, constantly rumbling and rippling.
There were still some things that could be saved, and she would save them.
She’d meant to confront her father immediately, only to discover he was gone for a couple days, travelling to see some figurines—ironically, work that would have once fallen to Alistair.
Two days did not cool her temper. It only served to heat it. The moment her father returned, Ismay stormed into the study, demanding his attention. ‘You told me Alistair left.’
Her father looked up from his writing, his gaze angry. ‘You saw him? He gave me his word he would not contact you. I should have known not to trust him. I leave town for two days and he takes advantage.’
‘It’s not like that,’ Ismay rushed to Alistair’s defense. He was going to bear no more blame for anything. ‘I saw him. I approached him. He did nothing wrong.’ She paused. ‘In fact, that’s what I want to tell you. He’s guilty of nothing but trying to help me.’
Her father’s brows went up. ‘I am afraid I don’t follow.’