Sister Swap. Lilian Darcy
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delay in his already shattered morning.
But he couldn’t ask her to tramp around the gardens with him on an empty stomach, so…
“I’ll call Maria, and you can tell her what you would like. There may still be coffee on the sideboard in the dining room. Will you excuse me while I make some phone calls? Come along, Pia.”
“If they’re business calls, why don’t I keep Pia with me?” Dr. Madison suggested quickly. “Pia, you can pour my juice and tell me what breakfast foods are called in Italian. You can be my teacher. Would that be nice?”
Gino held his breath, waiting for No, I wanna go with Papa, and wondering whether his saying Okay, come with me, then would count as immediate capitulation to a tantrum that hadn’t quite happened yet but surely would if he insisted she was to go with Dr. Madison.
“Yes! It would be delightful!” Pia said and reeled off several breakfast words in Italian.
“You might have to go a little slower than that, Your Majesty, and you might have to get quite strict with me when I make silly mistakes. I think I’m going to be a very bad student!”
Pia laughed. She was already halfway to the dining room, her hand stretched out to take Dr. Madison’s, which was reaching back to her, open and inviting. The horticultural expert looked across at Gino, raised her eyebrows and grinned at him as if to say, “Didn’t I handle that well!”
He grinned back, too surprised not to, even though the grin felt…rusty.
Yes, I have to admit, you handled it well.
Then he let the grin drop and went to get some work done.
It was well after eleven when he surfaced from negotiating an unexpected problem in the Paris office and realized that even if Dr. Madison had ordered a full American breakfast, she must have finished eating it by now and must have learned by heart every Italian breakfast word Pia could think of to teach her. He went in search of them, clued in to their whereabouts by the sound of the piano that Pia had gotten into so much trouble over last night.
Dr. Madison had taught Pia to play “Chopsticks.”
As a duet.
With the doctor herself improvising some impressive, wild-fingered variations in the bass.
“Now we’re going to do it sad, Pia,” Gino heard her say. He paused in the doorway. “Listen, stop for a minute, can you hear me slowing down? Can you hear me changing the notes?” She went into a minor key. “Does it sound sadder to you now? Can you play it sad with me? Oh, boohoo, our chopsticks are bro-o-o-ken. Oh, it’s tragic, it’s terrible, we’re so, so sad, our notes are going so slowly, our fingers are so heavy on the keys, boohoo.”
He came farther into the room and she caught sight of him, nodded to show that she understood he was ready for their tour.
“Pia, someone’s fixed our chopsticks!” she said. “We’re happy again. We can get fast. Our fingers are moving so fast we can’t see them. I’m chasing you. Can you play as fast as me? I’m catching up, go faster, Pia. Faster, faster!”
Pia’s playing collapsed into laughter and fractured rhythm and thumping keys, and Dr. Madison sank sideways against her little shoulder in an exaggerated parody of breathlessness and exhaustion after a race.
“There! Whew! Fabulous! Thank you! It’s not nearly as much fun playing ‘Chopsticks’ on my own. Do you remember what this note is called, Pia?” She touched a key, and the sound of a single note vibrated from the instrument.
“Middle C,” Pia said.
“That’s right. Now if I shut the piano lid and open it again, can you still find Middle C?” She did as she’d described, and Pia’s finger went straight to the right note. “Very good!” She stood up, closed the lid once more, and turned to Gino. “We’re ready. I’m sorry, I felt I should—”
“No, that’s fine. You’re right. You needed to finish properly. Pia, Dr. Madison is going to show us her plans for the garden, now.”
Crunch time, Roxanna thought.
She’d decided to wing it without Rowena’s written and sketched-out plans, because she knew that her sister would have had the whole thing locked down in her memory the way Rox had locked down the lyrics and music to all her favorite songs. Without those comforting scrolls of paper clutched in her hands, however, she felt like an actress caught without a vital prop.
Gino was dressed down today, in a white Polo shirt that showed off the natural tan on his arms and on that very nicely shaped column of neck appearing from inside the Polo collar. He wore his hair short at the back, but not too short; just the right length for a woman’s fingers to run through—not too prickly, not too soft.
Rox happened to be an authority on exactly what this length was, because she’d never convinced Harlan to let his hair grow to it. He’d always kept it as short as cornfield stubble.
After she’d retrieved some of Rowie’s notes from the office, Gino led the way outside, and asked her about what she’d been doing with Pia. “Was it a lesson, or just fun?”
And that was a much safer subject than either garden restoration or the best length for a man’s hair, so she snatched it up.
With too much enthusiasm, as usual.
“Lessons and fun should be the same thing for a four-year-old, I think, especially with something like music, if you don’t want to put them off for life. So it was both, really. And she was very responsive. She was great!”
“Really?” He sounded skeptical, as if he didn’t dare to hope for too much where his daughter was concerned. And that was just ridiculous!
“Gino, she’s a very bright, creative little girl, hungry to learn. She latched on to what we were doing incredibly fast, and she loved it. I think you should consider music lessons for her.”
He thought about it for a minute, then shook his head. “When she’s older.”
Oh, okay, right.
Older.
You mean, when she’s snowed under with schoolwork. When that great big spark of joy and curiosity has been completely snuffed out by gray dresses and repressive tantrum control. When you can hit her with endless scales and finger exercises, and toss poor old Beethoven’s trampled-on “Fur Elise” at her like tossing a bone.
Makes total sense.
But, as we discussed yesterday, it’s none of my business, so I’ll keep my trap shut.
“You’re very talented at music, by the way,” he added, distracting her.
“Oh…not half as talented as I’d like to be. I love it, but, no, I’m coming to realize—”
That Harlan is probably right about my voice.
Oops, and that Harlan has nothing to do with any of this, because I’m pretending to be my twin sister.
“Gardens are my real love, of course,” she quickly added.
“Talk me through the whole plan,” he invited her.
Examination time.
Half an hour later, she was pretty confident she’d earned a passing grade. When you had to do all your exam preparation the night before, jet lag did have its advantages. Walking around the extensive and beautiful but dilapidated and overgrown old gardens, only part of which had yet been cleared under Rowena’s supervision, they managed the odd snatch of polite but slightly more personal conversation, also, which made Rox relax more than she’d expected to.
She asked Gino whether he had any kind of a garden in Rome, and he told her, “Only the one in the oil painting on my wall. It’s from the French Impressionist school. Not by a world-famous artist, but pretty.” He asked her why she’d chosen to go into a field like this. The combination