this gold Poseidon is just magnificent. A real treasure. Can’t believe you rescued it! I wonder how we came to miss this amazing treasure trove?’
‘The storm, yesterday,’ Antonio Zaccaria said. ‘It must have uncovered the pot. That’s how Poseidon found it this morning.’
They looked at each other. A storm had uncovered the wreck in the first place, shifting the sand so that the debris had been spotted by a fisherman, who had reported his find to the Duke of Mandalà, the major landowner on this stretch of the coast—who in turn had reported it to the Berger Foundation. Which was why they were here.
But another storm could just as easily bury the wreck again, perhaps for centuries. Thieves like Poseidon weren’t the only danger to a fragile site like this one.
‘The trouble is,’ Isobel said slowly, putting the thoughts of all of them into words, ‘that it’s not really a wreck at all. We’ve found no traces of the timbers—the boat itself must have rotted away a thousand years ago. All that’s left is the cargo, strewn along the sand, with nothing to protect it.’
Antonio nodded. ‘And the site’s so shallow that rough weather pulls it around, throws the material in different directions, covers it with sand…’
‘We need to work fast,’ Isobel said decisively. As the team leader, it was up to her to take decisions. ‘Between the weather, the tides and visitors like Poseidon, that material may not be down there much longer. We’ll have to work double shifts until we’re sure there’s nothing else left down there.’
The others nodded. Isobel glanced at what they had recovered so far. Not a bad haul for a few days’ work: a row of wine and olive oil amphorae, heavily encrusted with barnacles, but intact and, according to David, the pottery expert, of extremely rare shapes and sizes; the bronze fluke of an anchor and some other bronze fittings, yet to be identified; and now this hoard of coins.
All the finds lay soaking in neutralizing solution in plastic boxes, ranged rather incongruously along the carved marble bench that ran the length of the workroom they had set up. The Palazzo Mandalà was a magnificent, seventeenth-century palace that bore little resemblance to the rough quarters Isobel and the others were more accustomed to working in. Even the laundries and kitchens of the palazzo, which led off the vaults, were echoing marble halls, studded with carved angels and saints—no doubt to edify the souls of generations of skivvies.
The palace was the family home of Ruggiero, Duke of Mandalà, now in his eighty-first year, a noted benefactor of many causes, including the Berger Foundation, which employed Isobel, Theo and David. It was that lucky connection that had secured them the invitation to come and investigate the sunken Greek galley that had turned up practically on the duke’s doorstep, thanks to a Mediterranean storm.
And the old duke had extended his personal hospitality to the archaeologists, so that they were billeted in stunning chambers hung with Tintorettos and Caravaggios, instead of the leaky tents they were more used to.
The workroom, set aside especially for them, was a good place, spacious and secure, with an immense door like the portal of a cathedral, which could be locked with a key that weighed about three pounds.
‘The carabinieri have promised to keep an eye on the site,’ Antonio Zaccaria said as they made their way up the flamboyant marble staircase to the first floor, where they were roomed. ‘And the Coastguard say they’ll send a patrol past there every couple of hours.’
‘Think that’ll help?’ Isobel asked.
Antonio shrugged. ‘This is Sicily,’ he replied.
‘This is Sicily?’ she repeated. Of the three of them who had come from New York, she was the only one who had never been to Sicily before and, good archaeologist as she was, she sometimes felt out of her depth. ‘What does that mean, ‘‘This is Sicily’’? The cops have to keep that jerk away!’
‘I’m sure they will,’ Antonio soothed. ‘You were very brave to confront Poseidon like that, but not very wise. Especially since you say he had a knife. You were lucky he just backed off.’
‘He won’t come back,’ she said confidently. The story she had told the others had been highly edited. If it got out that she had allowed herself to be kissed by the marauder, her reputation as the Ice Princess of Archaeology would melt in a second!
‘We’ll see. We’ll ask the old man for help on this—I’ve just been informed that he’s joining us for dinner.’
‘The duke?’ Isobel asked, raising her arched eyebrows.
Antonio nodded. ‘He apparently arrived while we were at the wreck. He’s resting in his room.’
‘I’m looking forward to meeting him,’ Isobel said. She had only seen the noble-looking, white-bearded Duke of Mandalà in photographs, but his contribution to the arts had been legendary. The author of many scholarly books, he had also bestowed his vast wealth among several carefully selected museums and trusts, including the Berger Foundation. He had been away from the palazzo since before their arrival. ‘It’ll be a great honour for me.’
Antonio, a lean, dark-eyed man with a saturnine face, favoured her with a smile. ‘For all of us. We’re eating in the principal dining-room, by the way. I’m going to shower. See you at supper.’
Isobel made her way to her own room. It was a ravishing bedchamber that always made her sigh with delight as she entered it. There was no question that it was a woman’s room, and she had often wondered which languid duchess it had been arranged for. The pale-rose-coloured walls were hung with exquisite paintings, the eighteenth-century gilt-wood furniture was upholstered in violet satin, and the bed, an operatic production in itself, was a four-post affair in amaranth and mahogany, dressed in mountains of ivory voile. It had its own marble-balustraded balcony, which looked out over a grove of orange trees, so the rich, spicy scent of blossoms drifted up to her bed all night long.
Some more recent Duke of Mandalà had added an en suite bathroom, a gleaming symphony of white marble and gold taps, and it was here she now headed to wash off the salt of the day’s dive.
She stood under the warm rush of water, closing her eyes as she sluiced her long auburn hair. Alone with her own thoughts for the first time since that morning, Isobel allowed herself to remember what had happened to her. Not the edited version.
The real story.
How on earth had she allowed such a thing to happen to her? To be embraced by a total stranger on a rock, to be kissed on the mouth by him…It was humiliating in the extreme.
He was a very big, strong brute, she told herself. She had had no way of fighting back. She should just count herself lucky it hadn’t gone further. As with a thug like that, it might well have done.
But as she soaped the womanly curves of her body a more honest voice whispered that it hadn’t been that simple. Something very important had happened on that rock today.
He had been the most magnificent man she had ever seen, and she had wanted that embrace, had kissed him back, even as she’d fought with him. And what had happened to her then, in the matter of a few seconds, was something that had very seldom happened with Michael Wilensky.
Almost never, in fact.
Her rich, sophisticated New York City lover had not been able to do to her, with all his polish, what Poseidon had done to her with a single kiss.
