She reopened the note and studied it. “Be interesting to find out, don’t you think?”
Magda still looked dubious. Very dubious.
Sharon couldn’t help grinning. She and Madga had gotten to be pretty close friends, all these months they’d spent together as the only two women on the mission since leaving the U.S. late the previous autumn. But, now and then, she was reminded of their very different life experience. Madga had no experience with the freewheeling American custom of dating.
Sharon did. Quite a bit. She’d be the first to agree she was hardly what you’d call a beauty queen. But her features were attractive enough and she had the kind of full-bodied figure that plenty of men were drawn to.
Um. Drooled over, some of them.
She patted Madga reassuringly on the shoulder. “Relax, girl. I’ve got no intention of sleeping with the old goat. But how hard can it be fending him off, at his age? Especially if he’s got a sense of humor? Someday I’ll tell you about a basketball player I went out with once. Him, I had to threaten with a kitchen knife.”
Again, she felt that spike of anguish. Briefer this time, fortunately, and not so painful. She hadn’t had to fend off Hans Richter, for all that he’d made his interest in her crystal clear. In that, as in everything, he’d been transparent and . . . sweet, was the only word.
She pinched her eyes, for a moment. When she took the fingers away, her vision was a bit blurry.
“Still,” said Madga. “I think you should get advice from someone. Perhaps . . .”
She glanced up the staircase which led to the ambassador’s suite. Then, simultaneously, she and Sharon burst into laughter.
“Oh, right!” choked Sharon. “I can see it already. ‘Father Mazzare, please guide me through the proper maneuvers involved in keeping an old Spanish lecher out of my pants while I try to finagle information out of him.’ Yup. I bet he’d be a fountain of wisdom on the subject.”
Madga shook her head, still chuckling. “Still. You should ask someone.”
The answer, also, came to them simultaneously.
“Cavriani!”
“The very man!”