TWO
‘HEAD LACERATIONS ALWAYS look worse than they are. If you’ll help me to a washbasin I’ll stop wasting your time. I’m not dizzy any more. Really.’
The woman’s voice drifting from the treatment room was warm, husky and a little bit shaky. She was speaking the Tovahnan language, with an English accent overlaid.
Dr Leo Aretino knew this voice well. For the last few weeks he’d been expecting her arrival on the island, but hoping he could avoid her.
He hadn’t been expecting her here, in his territory.
The language she was speaking was Leo’s native tongue. The first time he’d heard her use it had been over ten years ago. She’d been standing over a microscope, trying to focus. The ’scope had been fiddly, but Anna had been patient. She’d started humming, and then softly singing to herself. In Tovahnan.
It was a tune his mother had taught him as a child.
Leo had doubted if anyone at their prestigious English medical school had even heard of his birthplace, the island of Tovahna, much less known how to speak its language. He’d cut across her song, incredulous. ‘Where did you learn that?’
‘From my mother,’ she’d said. She’d had the slide in focus at that point and had been looking intently at the nasty little pathogen the tutor wanted them to see.
‘Your mother’s Tovahnan?’
‘Yes, she is. Or she was. She left Tovahna before I was born.’ Anna had checked the slide again. ‘But it’s this little guy we’re interested in. You want to look?’
There was a queue. He needed to look at the bug.
His attention was solidly diverted.
Tovahna was a Mediterranean island, sparsely populated, fought over for centuries until its big neighbours had decided it wasn’t worth the bother. It was now mostly ignored by the outside world. Few foreigners made the effort to visit, much less learn the language. The women of Tovahna were generally olive skinned and dark haired. Anna had red hair and freckles. This didn’t make sense.
‘Your mother taught you Tovahnan songs?’
‘She taught me the language.’ She’d moved away from the microscope, allowing the student after Leo access. ‘I think she used it to assuage homesickness. But you’ve missed your turn,’ she’d told him, switching effortlessly into speaking Tovahnan. She’d smiled, a wide, happy smile that had made him feel even more astounded. ‘Don’t tell me you’re...’
‘Tovahnan.’ And suddenly he’d been close to tears.
Tovahna was tiny, impoverished, its assets gouged for generations by a single family dynasty. Most of its people were trapped in a ceaseless cycle of poverty, but Leo had been so smart at school that the community had rallied to send him to England.
‘Get yourself a medical degree and then come home and help us,’ they’d told him, and off he’d gone, aged all of fifteen.
At nineteen he’d been doing brilliantly. His English had been flawless. He’d fitted in with his fellow students. He’d even been enjoying himself, hardly homesick at all. So there’d been no reason why he should gaze at this redheaded, freckled, fellow student speaking his language and feel like...he’d wanted to take her into his arms.
Of course, he hadn’t. Not right then. It had been two whole days before he’d kissed her.
It wasn’t just that they’d shared a language. Anna had been special.
But that was past history, he told himself as he listened to her voice carrying from the next room. What was between them had been a long time ago. Right now he needed to focus on medical imperatives. A woman he’d met years before was being carried into his emergency room on a stretcher.
He was a doctor and he had to deal with whoever needed to be treated. He needed to haul himself together and go see what the problem was.
The medical problem.
* * *
Wow, her head hurt.
The thump against stone had been stupid and entirely predictable. When she’d insisted she wanted to see everything—she now owned a castle and who wouldn’t want to see it all?—her late cousin’s agent had given her a torch.
‘Watch your head,’ he’d told her as he’d led her deep into the depths of Tovahna Castle.
What she’d seen had been a maze of tunnels, some built almost a thousand years ago. Secret passages led in and out from the castle walls, to be used in times of siege. There were hidden living areas, ventilation shafts, storage spaces for weapons, for food and water, all dark and dusty and so fascinating it was no wonder she’d finally forgotten to watch her head.
The thump had been solid and the results immediate. The world had spun and then disappeared. She’d surfaced to find blood oozing down her forehead. Victoir, the agent, had been useless, torn between wanting to help and not wanting to get blood on his suit. Finally she’d ripped off her windcheater and applied pressure herself, then had him help her to the surface.
‘I don’t want paramedics coming down here,’ she’d
