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vaguely.
    â€œTraveling? Where?”
    â€œNowhere important,” he replied, but the tips of his ears were pink. “Just getting things ready for your visit. Ah, here is a good place.”
    â€œRadu, are you being evasive?”
    â€œI? Never!”
    He seated her on the terrace of a café, and the footmen satdown on a bench across the way, looking relieved to be in the shade. And to have turned over her care to Radu, as well, Dacia thought, settling her bustled skirts carefully on the tiny café chair.
    She scowled at her cousin as he ordered them lemonade, and when he turned back from the waitress, he saw Dacia’s expression with great surprise. He was clearly baffled by her dour look and the way she was impatiently tapping her gloved fingers on the tabletop.
    â€œRadu, I need to have one person here I can trust,” Dacia said, very serious now.
    â€œWhat are you talking about? Whom
can’t
you trust? You have Aunt Katarina, my father, the other cousins and uncles and aunts . . .” He trailed off, fussing with his napkin.
    â€œRadu.” Dacia stopped and fiddled with her gloves while she put her thoughts in order. “Radu, I know that you’ve probably heard about the Incident in London.”
    He snickered, indicating that he had, but wisely did not comment as she went on.
    â€œBut even before that, it seemed that Mother and Aunt Maria and Aunt Kate were keeping secrets. Lou and I were supposed to come later, in the autumn, and then go back to New York after Christmas. But suddenly we’re being sent here now, months ahead of schedule, and not told when we will return to New York. They’re behaving as though I did something truly disgraceful when you know it wasn’t that bad! Not bad enough to permanently ruin my reputation, anyway.
    â€œI asked Aunt Kate if we could wait in Paris for Lou and her parents,” Dacia went on, struggling to keep her voice undercontrol now. “But she insisted on coming around the coast as fast as we could travel. I thought she was simply eager for us to reach Bucharest. Yet now that we’re here, as I’ve said, she won’t leave the house, nor do we have any visitors.
    â€œIt’s terribly strange, and I don’t like it,” Dacia finished. “I need to have one person I can confide in, until Lou gets here, at least.” She frowned. “And Lou is having a difficult time as well. In her last letter she said that a strange young man approached her on the ship, and was very impertinent.” She toyed with her gloves. “In all honesty I thought that’s who you were just now, and I was prepared to have you arrested!”
    Radu was clearly baffled by this last item. “Someone being fresh with LouLou is hardly a crisis, Dacia, unfortunate as it is.”
    â€œWell,” Dacia said, refusing to let this insult to her beloved Lou get tossed aside. “He said some odd things to her, things that made her uneasy. And they’re making me uneasy as well. It’s a shame that Uncle Cyrus wasn’t there to chase that cad away!”
    Radu patted her hand. “From now on, she’ll be under the protection of her Florescu family,” he said. “She will not need to worry about anyone bothering her again!”
    The waitress brought their lemonade, and Dacia sipped at hers. It was far too sweet, but she didn’t care. The day was really quite warm, and she didn’t want Radu to see how discomfited she was by all that had happened, and most especially what he had just said, and the rude way he had dismissed Lou’s father. Dacia worked very hard to appear like a sophisticated young woman, and it didn’t help that she had outbursts of scandalousmischief that she couldn’t seem to control, like the Incident in London. She was hardly going to start weeping in an outdoor café because she’d had an emotionally trying day.
    â€œDacia,” Radu said, once more