"Reicho. Buona sera, Reicho." He could not pronounce the letter l.
"Buona sera, John," she answered. She was about to smile, but she checked herself. If she seemed to be encouraging him, he would come at her. Cold sweat broke out over her skin.
He is going to come at me anyway.
A silver pitcher of wine with two silver goblets stood on a small marble-topped table beside the bed. Wine might make this easier for her. Except that too much wine would make her sick. Well, was that not what she wanted? She stretched a trembling hand toward it.
"Will you take some wine, Messer John?" Where on earth did he get a name like John?
She poured the wine, carefully filling the goblets only two-thirds full so her trembling hands would not spill their contents.
The Tartar crossed the room and sat in the round-bottomed chair Tilia had occupied a short while earlier. Rachel held out a goblet to him, and her hand shook so badly she almost dropped it. He did not seem to notice. Maybe he was used to being waited on by trembling women. He smiled and nodded.
Tilia was watching all this, Rachel remembered. She drained her cup quickly, the silver giving the wine a slightly metallic taste. She poured a second cup for herself, and looked at him. He barely sipped from his goblet before setting it on the table, holding his hand palm down over it. Too bad, she thought. She had heard that men who drank too much could not get stiff enough to go into women.
John started talking to her in his own tongue. He spoke for a long time with many gestures, some toward himself, some toward her. She tried desperately to guess what he was saying. She did not want to respond the wrong way and anger him.
He seemed quite at ease, and he laughed occasionally, as if he were telling her funny stories that amused him as well. She saw webs of fine wrinkles in the brown skin around his eyes and thought, He could be older than Angelo.