all so peaceful,’ she said in wonder.
‘That’s because there are no cars.’
‘Of course.’ She looked around her. ‘I hadn’t even realised, but it’s obvious.’ She looked around her again. ‘There’s nowhere for cars to go.’
‘Right,’ he said with deep satisfaction. ‘Nowhere at all. They can leave the mainland and come out over the causeway as far as the terminal. But then people have to get out and walk. If they don’t want to walk they go by boat. But they don’t bring their smelly, stinking cars into my city.’
‘Your city? You keep saying that.’
‘Every true Venetian speaks of Venice as his city. He pretends that he owns it, to hide the fact that it owns him. It’s a possessive mother who won’t release him. Wherever he goes in the world this perfect place goes with him, holding onto him, drawing him back.’ He stopped himself with an awkward laugh. ‘Now Venice thinks we should go and eat ice cream.’
He took her to a small café by a little canal so quiet that the world might have forgotten it. He summoned a waiter, talking to him in a language Dulcie didn’t recognise, and making expansive gestures, while giving her a look of wicked mischief.
‘Were you speaking Italian?’ she asked when they were alone again.
‘Venetian dialect.’
‘It sounds like a different language to Italian.’
‘In effect it is.’
‘It’s a bit hard on tourists who learn a bit of Italian for their vacation, and then find you speaking Venetian.’
‘We speak Italian and English for the tourists, but amongst ourselves we speak our dialect because we are Venetian.’
‘Like a another country,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Of course. Venice was once an independent republic, not just a province of Italy, but a state in its own right. And that’s still how we feel. That is our pride, to be Venetian first, before all other allegiances.’
As before, there was a glow on his face that told her he felt passionately about this subject. She began to watch him intently, eager to hear more, but suddenly the waiter appeared with their order, and he fell silent. She had a sense of let-down, and promised herself that she would draw him back to this subject later.
She understood her companion’s mischievous expression when two huge dishes of vanilla and chocolate ice cream were brought to the table, plus two jugs, one containing chocolate sauce and one containing cream.
‘I ordered chocolate because it’s my favourite,’ he explained.
‘Suppose it isn’t mine?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll finish it for you.’
She gave an involuntary choke of laughter, and bit it back, remembering the aloof role she was supposed to be playing. But she made the mistake of meeting his eyes, daring her not to laugh, so that she had to give in.
‘Now tell me your name,’ he insisted.
‘It’s—Dulcie.’ She was mysteriously reluctant to say the rest.
‘Only Dulcie?’
‘Lady Dulcie Maddox.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘An aristocrat?’
‘A very minor one.’
‘But you have a title?’
‘My father has the title. He’s an earl. In Italy he would be a count.’
A strange look came over his face. ‘A—count?’ he echoed slowly. ‘You are the daughter of a count?’
‘Of an earl. Does it matter?’
She had the odd impression that he pulled himself together. ‘Of course you didn’t want to tell me that. I understand.’
‘What do you understand?’ she demanded, nettled.
He shrugged. ‘Dulcie can do as she pleases, but Lady Dulcie can’t let a gondolier think he picked her up.’
‘You didn’t pick me up,’ she said, feeling uneasy, since she could hardly admit that she’d come here to pick him up. ‘I don’t care how we got to know each other. I’m just glad that we did.’
‘So am I because—because I have many things I want to say to you. But I can’t say them now. It’s too soon.’
‘It’s too soon for you to know you want to say them.’
He shook his head. ‘Oh, no,’ he said quietly, ‘It’s not too soon for that.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU must forgive me if I talk too much about Venice,’ he said. ‘I forget that everyone must feel the same about their own home town.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I can’t imagine feeling like that about London.’
‘That’s where you live?’
‘It is now, but I was raised on my father’s estate—’
‘Ah yes, Poppa the earl. And he has huge ancestral acres, yes?’
‘Huge,’ she agreed, mentally editing out the mortgages.
‘So you were raised in the country?’ he encouraged her.
‘Yes, and I remember how peaceful it was there too. I used to sit by my bedroom window at dawn and watch the trees creeping out of the mist. I’d pretend they were friendly giants who could only visit me in the half-light, and I’d write stories in my head about the things they did—’ she stopped and shrugged, embarrassed to have been lured into self-revelation.
But he was looking at her with interest. ‘Go on,’ he said.
She began to talk about her home, the childhood she’d spent there, and the imaginary friends she’d created, for her only sibling was a brother too much older than herself to be any fun. Soon she forgot all else except the pleasure of talking to someone who appeared absorbed in what she had to say. None of her family had the remotest sympathy with her ‘dreaming’, and at last she’d given it up in favour of good sense. Or so she’d told herself. Now she began to wonder if this side of herself had merely gone underground, to be brought back to life with the perfect listener on the perfect evening.
At some point he paid for the ice cream and took her arm to lead her out, murmuring about eating the next part of the meal elsewhere. But he did it without taking his attention from her, or interrupting the flow, and when she found herself crossing a bridge a few minutes later she wasn’t quite sure how she’d arrived there.
He found another restaurant and ordered without asking her. That was how she discovered ‘Venetian oysters’, the shells stuffed with caviar
