Roman Sunset - Merry Farmer Page 0,3

them all in beauty and poise, and he could barely resist slipping back into his old ways.

“Then you would make the very best tour guide I could find.” He inched closer to her, flickering one eyebrow and giving her a frank and appreciative stare. Any woman who was game for a good time would know exactly what he truly wanted from her. He practically held his breath as he waited for her answer to his unspoken question.

She laughed again, warmer and even more alluring than before. “I think we will be good friends, Lord Landry.” She stepped forward to adjust his tie, resting her hands on his lapels for a moment before backing away. “Very good friends indeed.”

Thomas could only stand there and gape at her, his trousers so tight that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to walk normally, as she turned and sashayed away. She sent him one final look over her shoulder before bursting into the most charming smile he’d ever seen as she swept out the door. Thomas sucked in a breath and grabbed his key from the desk. He needed to get to his room as quickly as possible so that he could relieve the tension she’d sparked in him while imagining how delicious it would be to undress the woman.

He was stopped from running to the nearby elevator by the concierge’s laughter.

“Is something wrong?” Thomas asked.

“Only that Singorina Roan seems to have taken a fancy to you,” the concierge said.

Thomas frowned at the door, then at the concierge. “Do you know her?”

“Know her?” The man laughed harder. “My lord, Signorina Roan is very famous here in Rome. She is an actress.”

Thomas’s brow shot up. Once again, he stared at the door, as if Miss Roan would sweep back through for a curtain call. A smile spread across his face. “Do you know what theater she’s performing in right now? Perhaps I could secure tickets to her latest show.”

The concierge shook his head with a chuckle. “She does not perform in a theater, my lord. She is one of Rome’s best commedia dell’arte performers.”

Thomas turned toward the concierge, confused. “I thought commedia dell’arte was Venetian,” he said. “And that it died out a hundred years ago.”

“True, true.” The concierge nodded, ceding the point. “But with all the tourists passing through Rome these days, particularly British tourists, such as yourself, there is a troupe that has revived it. They give performances in English. Though if you ask me, the great Signora Violante and her compagnie must be rolling over in their graves to know of it.”

Thomas could only assume the man was talking about a great commedia dell’arte troupe of the past.

“No,” the concierge sighed as he went on, staring at the door the same way Thomas was, “Signorina Roan and her compangie have become quite famous. They say that Signorina Roan is the best Colombina to grace the stages of the plazas of Rome since Caterina Biancolelli herself. They say she has the grace and humor of a goddess, in spite of being English.”

Thomas jerked to full attention, his mouth dropping open. “Did you say Columbine?”

“Eh, Columbine, Colombina.” The concierge shrugged in true Italian fashion. “It is all the same, no?”

Thomas’s heart raced. He took a few steps toward the door before coming to his senses. Miss Roan was likely long gone by now. But the concierge had confirmed the impossible for him in a way that nearly made Thomas laugh. Miss Violetta Roan was the English Columbine. His ally in Rome had already made contact with him.

Chapter 2

Violetta could hear the audience gathering in the plaza from the make-shift dressing room set up for the acting troupe she belonged to. The dressing room was little more than a tent erected against the side of an old church, but it had plenty of space, partitions so that the actors could dress and undress in relative privacy, and a table with mirrors propped against the church wall, where she sat applying her make-up.

The traditional make-up for Colombina wasn’t complicated. Unlike the male commedia dell’arte characters, the female characters didn’t wear masks. Although as Violetta stared at her reflection while applying lip rouge and powder, all she saw was a mask of a different kind.

“You’re looking so pretty today,” her fellow actor, Maria, said as she sat beside Violetta to apply her own make-up. “I would give anything for eyes like yours.”

Violetta grinned at Maria’s reflection in the mirror, giggling as though the two of them were