a break, Claire, for six months or so, became free agents again with no commitments. I feel I’ve tied you down too early and it’s far better that we part now than at some time in the future, when we’ve got children and so on. Please keep the ring and I hope you can understand why I had to do this.
Goodbye. Jeff.
Oh, the hypocrisy of it But, yes, she had understood then and she did now why he had done it. She was just amazed that she hadn’t clicked on to the way his mind was working that first time he had visited her, when the expression on his face as he had looked at her had been one of horror and revulsion at her injuries compounded by a weird sort of panic and disgust.
She had wept, of course, helplessly, hopelessly, for most of the day, and then her eldest brother, Charlie, had come to visit her in the evening and the full truth had come out. It appeared Jeff had been seeing someone else for the last month, a leggy blonde he worked with who was a keep-fit fanatic like him and attended his gym.
‘I got those sort of details after I’d hit him,’ Charlie had told her, with a measure of satisfaction, ‘and if I’m not mistaken he’ll need to see a dentist to replace a couple of teeth—unless he picked them up off the pub floor, of course. I was just hoping you’d never have to know about her, sis.’
She had sent the ring back the next day.
‘Ready, Claire?’ Lorenzo’s voice was very long suffering, and she grinned at him, thrusting the memories back under lock and key in that closed room in her mind
‘Ready—and I’m going to paste you this time.’
‘You wish!’
She spent just over half an hour with Lorenzo before racing up to the room Anna had shown her to earlier. Her suitcases had been unpacked, her clothes put away in the massive walk-in wardrobe and her toiletries placed neatly in the en suite bathroom. It was a beautiful room—the whole house was beautiful, she reflected appreciatively. But she had no time now to gaze out over the sprawling gardens below from the balcony window. She needed to wash away the grime of the day, change into something suitable for dinner and be back downstairs for eight o’clock.
Grace had called by Lorenzo’s sitting room ten minutes earlier to say that they were changing for dinner as it was something of an occasion—Claire’s first night—that she wanted it to be special and that drinks before dinner would be ready at eight.
At the time it had been a crucial moment in the battle of the planets—she had been defending Earth against Lorenzo’s war probes from Venus—but now she wished she had taken a moment or two to ask Grace how dressy it was going to be. Grace and Donato lived in a massive private wing of the house, which Donato had had built once he and Grace had become engaged, and although access was easy it wasn’t quite the same as popping along the corridor to ask advice.
She eyed her clothes, hanging in somewhat meagre splendour at one end of the huge wardrobe, for some precious minutes before realising she couldn’t hesitate any longer and quickly pulling the traditional life-saver, a little black dress, from one silk-embossed hanger, teaming it with a pair of elegant black satin court shoes.
After a hasty shower she towelled herself dry with the huge fluffy bath-sheet that smelt of flowers and summer days, and then, with the towel wrapped round her torso, walked through to the bedroom and sat down in front of the long, ornate dressing table.
Should she have her hair up or down? And what about earrings? Little crystal studs or the big gold hoops her parents had bought her for Christmas? And eyeshadow—green or blue? Which would look best? She caught herself abruptly, gazing at her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes with a little grimace of disgust.
Stop it,—stop it, Claire. The words were fierce in her head. He wouldn’t look at you twice and you don’t want him to. You don’t. He was married to one stunningly beautiful woman for some years and it’s clear he hasn’t recovered from her death. If anyone is going to help him forget his pain it isn’t a little nobody from England who on top of everything else is damaged goods.
The phrase bit into her consciousness, but it had been with her for the last four years—ever since the day she had read Jeff’s letter, in fact. That same terrible evening in the hospital, once Charlie and her parents had left and she was alone, she had remembered Jeff saying the words some months earlier as they bad watched a TV documentary on a cancer patient who was getting married after a series of skin grafts.
‘How could he many her?’ Jeff had been genuinely amazed. ‘I mean, she doesn’t even look like the girl he once knew. He could have anyone. He doesn’t have to have damaged goods.’
‘That’s awful, Jeff.’ She had been horrified, and he had immediately covered his words with an explanation that had deceived her at the time—or maybe it hadn’t, she amended painfully. Perhaps she had just believed what she’d wanted to believe, she’d loved him so much. It had taken the accident to show her that the man she had loved had never existed in the first place.
When she walked into the drawing room some ten minutes later, her hair loose and shining like molten copper, and just the merest touch of green eyeshadow her only make-up, Romano Bellini was very still for some moments before walking from where he had been standing, looking out over the dark grounds through the full-length windows, to her side.
‘In my country it is mostly the older women who wear black,’ he said softly, ‘but perhaps it is a tradition that should change.’
‘I...thank you—at least I think it was a compliment,’ she added, with a disarming uncertainty that made him look at her for one minute more before he threw back his head and laughed—a loud, husky, almost grating laugh, a laugh that sounded as though it hadn’t been aired for a long time.
‘It was,’ he assured her solemnly as she flushed a bright, body-consuming red. ‘Indeed it was.’
Claire was aware of Grace and Donato’s interested glances from the other side of the room, where Donato was preparing cocktails, and she now felt so flustered and out of her depth that she tried to walk hastily forward, forgetting her unusually high heels, one of which entangled itself in an exquisite Persian rug and would have sent her sprawling but for Romano’s firm hand on her arm.
‘Steady, little English girl, steady.’ His voice was deep and very soft, reaching only her ears. ‘I might be the big bad wolf, capable of diverse and terrible crimes, but I am hardly likely to attempt an assault on your virtue in front of my two oldest and dearest friends, am I?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I tripped, that’s all.’ Her voice wasn’t as firm as she would have liked it to be, mainly due to the fact that he had changed from the black shirt and trousers into dinner dress, which, when combined with the midnight-blue silk shirt he was wearing and the wickedly sardonic smile, proved...overwhelming. And stunning. And devastating. She felt the warmth of his hand burning her skin and prayed for calm. This little incident alone confirmed everything she had thought upstairs. They might have come from different planets.
‘Of course you did.’ His voice was smooth now, and cold, and she felt a sudden and quite absurd disappointment that perversely brought her chin high and made her smile bright as she joined the other two.
Things were a little more comfortable once Lorenzo joined them a few minutes later. She had experienced an immediate rapport with Donato’s young brother in the summer, the gift she had with all children as strong as ever, and now they fell into easy conversation as they relived their battles before dinner, teasing each other unmercifully.
‘You
