“How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!”
Again, he’d spoke louder than he thought. Reverend Jones frowned. “Sounds like something from the King, although I don’t recognize it. Since when did you become an Elvis Presley fan, Larry?”
Mazzare sighed again.
Chapter 10
“Cool.” Gerry put the enthusiasm into the word that only someone sixteen could manage.
“Yeah, it’ll do,” Ron drawled, looking around.
Frank couldn’t quite figure out if he was looking at the decor or the help—who clearly thought the Stone brothers’ various attempts on the Italian language were funny, but were being polite about it. At least, he hoped that was what they were finding funny. They had also insisted on doing, more or less, everything for him and his brothers when they had lugged their bags up to their rooms, short of—
He let that thought die a natural death. True enough, the help was worth looking at. All four of the servants assigned to them were girls about their own age. If only two of them could properly be called “pretty,” all of them could certainly bear the label of “healthy” with great ease.
But if there was one thing that Frank’s not-so-great weight of experience with the female of the species had taught him it was that not pushing too hard on the first date—don’t hump her leg, as his dad had once put it in a jocular mood—did wonders for the success rate in the long run. Things had been decidedly fluid on that front these past two years, though, and he was a free agent for the moment. Part of that was the way in which German attitudes were rubbing off on everyone he knew—including himself, truth be told. Everyone seemed to want to get themselves set up and steady before they got romantic. Which was odd, but then again most of the things everyone had taken for granted as opportunities for dating had gone away. And then the rubbers had run out, and things had gotten decidedly chilly on that front, damn it.
So, he looked around. “It isn’t quite how I imagined it.”
“Oh?” Ron sounded interested.
“Sure. I looked it all up. You wouldn’t believe how many books of photographs of Venice there are. Well, you would now you’ve seen it, and this town’s famous for looking pretty. But all the photos have captions about how such-and-such a palazzo or the Casa-de-that was refurbished in the eighteenth century. So I figured it’d all look more—different—than it did in the pictures, and all.”
“Oh,” said Ron. Frank’s younger brother was trying very hard not to stare at the rump of the chambermaid who was bending down to sort their linen into drawers. Frank sympathized with his struggle. She was the only maid left in the room, since the others had left in a swirl of giggles—and easily the best-looking.
“Whoah!” Gerry called out, “Not that one!” He stepped smartly across the room to where the maid was about to try to lift his bag of tricks. The one that clanked when he moved it.
Frank didn’t doubt that someone would take a peek later anyway, but by then the Stone boys would have taken the more outré stuff out of it and hidden it somewhere safer. Gerry was the youngest of the brothers and he’d packed the thing—which meant that “outré” would be outré indeed.
The maid gave Gerry an odd look. Not puzzled so much as . . .
Calculating.
A thought came to Frank, and he decided to take a chance. “Committee?” he asked, making sure to use the English term.
“Yes,” the maid hissed softly. “You are the Committee with the Grantville embassy?” Her English was surprisingly good, aside from a heavy accent. But Frank thought the accent was a charming as the rest of her.
“Yup,” he said, extending a hand. “All three of us, actually. You learned English for us?”
“No.” She took his hand a bit shyly, not shaking it so much as just holding it. “My father make us learn, so we can work with Sir Henry Hider. And then he made us study even harder, when we learned you were coming to Venice.”