I was forced to exchange pleasantries with Don Vittorio, who at the time had only a sprinkling of gray through his dark hair,and then I was relegated to the gardens while the men got down to business.
I found her sitting by the pool. She was fully dressed with her skirt hiked up to her knees and her feet dunked into the water.
“You the Russian prince?” she asked with a defiant jerk of the chin.
I nodded. “You the Italian princess?”
She gave me a nod. “Wanna sit with me?”
“I was thinking it’d be kinda cool to have gills. Then I could live in the sea. There’s a whole lot more sea than there island.”
Great, I remember thinking. This chick’s nuts.
“My papa says I’m probably going to marry you one day,” she added.
I’d laughed right in her face. “That’s never going to happen.”
She didn
