Giovanna was visibly softening now. Very rapidly, in fact. She even put her hand on his. It was like she’d touched him with a live wire.
“It is not your fault, Frank.”
“I guess. I just screwed up tonight. It was me embarrassed you. I’m sorry.” He wondered if he should try puppy-dog eyes, and then thought better of it. The dating tactics that had worked in up-time America—okay, occasionally worked, Frank was really no Lothario—were completely out of place here. Hippie upbringing or not, Frank was no fool. The Marcolis might be revolutionaries, but they were still seventeenth-century revolutionaries. Their radicalism, he was quite sure, only went so far—and probably not that far at all on some subjects. One of which undoubtedly included what they would regard as matters of family honor. With a capital H. In red ink, with a border of daggers and skulls-and-crossbones. The fact that Antonio Marcoli had magnanimously waived the necessity of a chaperone didn’t mean that he would have casual up-time attitudes about sex. “Freedom” was one thing; “free love” another.
And besides . . . Frank wasn’t really just interested in getting laid. Not that he wasn’t interested in that, of course. For an instant, he had to fight down a ferocious surge of hormones that threatened to addle his wits completely at the worst possible time. But sex was only part of it. He didn’t understand why, exactly—maybe he had a taste for the exotic—but something about Giovanna excited him far more than any American girl he’d ever had the hots for.
Giovanna sniffed, putting her nose in the air. It was a very pretty nose. For the first time, ironically, it dawned on Frank that it was also what people usually called an “aristocratic nose.” A lot like Sophia Loren’s, in fact. Odd that he hadn’t noticed that before—since he’d certainly noticed the resemblance to Sophia Loren’s figure. Um. Well, maybe his dad was right. A little bit. Maybe Frank did suffer from a touch of callow adolescence. What his dad called “infantile boob fixation.”
Giovanna sniffed again. The sound, this time, had the flavor of doom about it. A very aristocratic sound, as it happens. “You should not apologize, Frank! I will not have it!” Then, more softly—oh, very softly indeed—and with suddenly warm and open eyes: “I am not embarrassed to prick the pretensions of the parasites who grind the blood and flesh of the Italian nation under their filthy heels.”
Frank almost choked. The tone was of a piece with the moonlight on the water of the lagoon, with the soft strains of distant music that reached them from a myriad of Carnevale parties. The words? Straight from Revolution 101. Or Introduction to Storming the Bastille. No, wait, that was the French revolution. What had the Italians called theirs? The risorgimento, he thought. It was led by some guy in the future named . . .
The only thing Frank could remember was that the name rhymed with Pavarotti. Of course, that was no help, since half the names in Italian rhymed with Pavarotti.
Verdi? No, that was the opera guy.
Whatever. It didn’t matter, because that had all happened in another universe. In the here and now, it looked like the name was going to be “Marcoli.” At least, that seemed to be the ambition of Giovanna’s father. Frank had a horrible feeling he had no choice but to get with Messer Marcoli’s program completely, if he wanted to get anywhere with Giovanna.
“Well,” he said, trying to be as gruff and manly about it as he could, “if it’s all right with you. I should have checked first, though. Wasn’t respectful to just drop you in all that with no warning.” Yeah, make out you planned it all along, that’s right. Dumbass. At times, Frank wondered if there was any way to get rid of that treacherous little voice in the back of his mind. Stand it against a wall and shoot it, maybe.
But he couldn’t dwell on the political risks involved, not with Giovanna looking at him like that. She had a smile on her face again. A shy one, to his surprise—though not so shy that those glorious dimples weren’t showing.