Kitabı oku: «Prince's Virgin In Venice», sayfa 3

CHAPTER FOUR

IT WASN’T A party or even a ball. It was like being part of a fairy-tale.

Rosa ascended the wide staircase to the second level above the water—yet another floor with soaring ceilings and exquisite antiques and furnishings. The music from the string quartet was louder here, richer, its sweet notes filling the gaps between the sound of laughter and high-spirited conversation coming from the party rooms either side of the staircase.

And the costumes! A brightly coloured peacock strutted by as they reached the top, all feathers and flashes of brilliant colour, and Rosa couldn’t help but laugh in sheer wonderment as a couple with ice-white masks wearing elaborate gowns and suits of the deepest purple nodded regally as they strolled past arm in arm.

Rosa felt herself swept away into a different world of riches and costumes—a sumptuous world of fantasy—and only half wished that the man who had rescued her from the foggy calles wasn’t quite so popular, because then she could keep him all to herself.

Everyone seemed to recognise Vittorio and to want to throw out an exchange or a greeting. He was like a magnet to both men and women alike, but he always introduced her to them, including her in the conversation.

And, while her presence at his side wasn’t questioned, she wondered what she might see if everyone wasn’t wearing masks. Would the women’s eyes be following Vittorio’s every move because he was so compelling? Would they be looking at her in envy?

If she were in their place she would.

And suddenly the music and the costumes and the amazing sumptuousness of the palazzo bled into a heady mix that made her head spin. She was part of a Venice she’d never seen and had only ever imagined.

Suddenly there was a shriek of delight from the other wing, and a commotion as someone made their way through the crowds into the room.

‘Vittorio!’ a woman cried, bursting through the partygoers. ‘I just heard you were here. Where have you been hiding all this time?’

But not just any woman.

Cleopatra.

Her sleek black bob was adorned with golden beads, the circlet at her forehead topped with an asp. Like Vittorio, she hadn’t bothered with a mask. Her eyes were kohled, their lids painted turquoise-blue, and her dress was simply amazing. Cut low—really low—over the smooth globes of her breasts, it was constructed entirely of beads in gold and bronze and silver, its short skirt just strings of the shiny beads that shifted and flashed skin with her every movement.

It wasn’t so much a dress, Rosa thought as she took a step back to make room for the woman to reach up and kiss Vittorio on both cheeks, as an invitation. It showed the wearer’s body off to perfection.

Cleopatra left her face close to his. ‘Everyone has been waiting hours for you,’ she chided, before she stood back to take in what he was wearing.

Or maybe to give him another chance to see her spectacular costume.

She held her hands out wide. ‘But must you always look so dramatic? It’s supposed to be a costume party.’

‘I’m wearing a costume.’

‘If you say so—but can’t you for once dress out of character?’

‘Sirena,’ he said, ignoring her question as he reached for Rosa’s hand, pulling her back into his orbit. ‘I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. Rosa, this is Sirena, the daughter of one of my father’s oldest friends.’

‘Oh,’ she said, with a knowing laugh, ‘I’m far more than that.’

And then, for the first time, Sirena seemed to notice that there was someone standing next to Vittorio. She turned her head and looked Rosa up and down, letting her eyes tell Rosa what she thought about his ‘friend’.

‘Ciao,’ she said, her voice deadpan, and Rosa couldn’t be certain that she was saying hello as opposed to giving her a dismissal.

She immediately turned back to Vittorio, angling her back towards Rosa.

Definitely a dismissal.

‘Vittorio, come with me—all our friends are in the other room.’

‘I’m here with Rosa.’

‘With who? Oh...’

She gave Rosa another look up and down, her eyes evaluating her as if she was a rival for Vittorio’s affections. Ridiculous. She’d only just met the man tonight. But she wasn’t mistaken. There was clear animosity in the woman’s eyes.

‘And what do you think of Vittorio’s outfit...? What was your name again?’

‘Rosa,’ Vittorio growled. ‘Her name is Rosa. It’s not that difficult.’

‘Of course it’s not.’ Sirena gave a lilting laugh as she turned to the woman whose name she couldn’t remember and smiled. ‘What do you think of Vittorio’s outfit? Don’t you think it’s a bit over the top?’

‘I like it,’ she said. ‘I like the blue of the leather. It matches his eyes.’

‘It’s not just blue, though, is it?’ Sirena said dismissively. ‘It’s more like royal blue—isn’t it, Vittorio?’

‘That’s enough, Sirena.’

‘Well, I would have said it was royal blue.’

‘Enough, I said.’

The woman pouted and stretched herself catlike along the brocade chaise longue behind her, the beads of her skirt falling in a liquid slide to reveal the tops of her long, slender legs—legs that ended in sandals with straps that wound their way enticingly around her ankles.

The woman made an exquisite Cleopatra. But then, she was so exquisitely beautiful the real Cleopatra would no doubt have wanted to scratch out her eyes.

‘It’s all right, Vittorio, despite our difference in opinion Rosa and I are going to be good friends.’ She smiled regally at Rosa. ‘I like your costume,’ she said.

For the space of one millisecond Rosa thought the woman was warming to her, wanted so much to believe she meant what she’d said. Rosa had spent many midnight hours perched over her mother’s old sewing machine, battling with the slippery material and trying to get the seams and the fit just right. But then she saw the snigger barely contained beneath the smile and realised the woman hadn’t been handing out a compliment.

‘Rosa made it herself—didn’t you, Rosa?’

‘I did.’

Cleopatra’s perfectly threaded eyebrows shot up. ‘How...enterprising.’

Vittorio’s presence beside her lent Rosa a strength she hadn’t known she had, reminding her of what her brothers had always told her—not to be cowed by bullies but to stand up to them.

Her brothers were right, but it was a lot easier to take their advice when she had a man like Vittorio standing beside her.

Rosa simply smiled, not wanting to show what she really thought. ‘Thank you. Your costume is lovely too. Did you make it yourself?’

The other woman stared at her as if she had three heads. ‘Of course I didn’t make it myself.’

‘A shame,’ Rosa said. ‘If you had you might have noticed that there’s a loose thread...’

She reached a hand out to the imaginary thread and the woman bolted upright and onto her sandalled feet, a whole lot less elegantly than she had reclined, no doubt imagining one tug of Rosa’s hand unleashing a waterfall of glass beads across the Persian carpet.

‘This gown is an Emilio Ferraro creation. Of course there’s no loose thread.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I must have been mistaken.’

Sirena sniffed, jerked her eyes from Rosa’s and placed a possessive hand on Vittorio’s chest. ‘Come and see our friends when you’re free. You won’t believe what they’re wearing. I’ll be waiting for you.’

And with a swish of her beaded hair and skirt she was gone.

‘That,’ said Vittorio, ‘was Sirena.’

‘Cyclone Sirena, you mean,’ Rosa said, watching the woman spinning out of the room as quickly as she’d come in, leaving a trail of devastation in her wake.

She heard a snort and looked up to see Vittorio smiling down at her. It was a real smile that warmed her bone-deep, so different from one of Sirena’s ice-cold glares.

‘You handled that very well.’

‘And you thought I wouldn’t?’ she said. ‘My brothers taught me to stand up to bullies.’ She didn’t mention that it was Vittorio’s presence that had given her the courage to heed her brothers’ advice.

‘Good advice,’ he said, nodding. ‘If she finds that thread you saw she’ll bust the balls of her precious Emilio.’

Rosa returned his smile with one of her own. ‘There was no thread.’

And Vittorio laughed—a rich bellow that was laced with approval and that made a tide of happiness well up inside her.

‘Thank you,’ he said, his arm going around her shoulders as he leaned down to kiss her cheek. ‘For the best belly laugh I’ve had in a long time.’

It wasn’t really a kiss. Mouth to cheek...a brush of a whiskered jaw...a momentary meeting of lips and skin—probably the same kind of kiss he might bestow upon a great-aunt. Even his arm was gone from her shoulder in an instant. Yet to Rosa it felt far more momentous.

It was the single most exciting moment in her life since she’d arrived in Venice.

Chiara had told her that magical things could happen at Carnevale. She’d told her a whole lot of things and Rosa hadn’t believed her. She’d suspected it was just part of Chiara’s sales technique, in order to persuade Rosa to part with so much money and go along to the ball with her.

But maybe her friend had been right. Rosa had been kissed by a man. She couldn’t wait to tell her friend.

‘You’re blushing,’ said Vittorio, his head at an angle as he looked down at her.

She felt her blush deepen and dropped her head. ‘Yes, it’s silly, I know.’

He put his hand to her chin and lifted her face to his. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s delightful. It’s been a long time since I saw a woman blush.’

She blinked up at him, her skin tingling where his fingers lingered.

Oh, boy.

Talk about a distraction... She’d wanted to ask him more about Sirena, but the woman had faded into insignificance. Now all she could think about was Vittorio and the way he made her feel.

‘Come, come!’ said Marcello, clapping his hands as he walked into the room to gather everyone. ‘The entertainment downstairs is about to begin. You don’t want to miss it.’

Downstairs, the entire level of the piano nobile had been divided into performance areas, with stages and dramatic velvet drapes, and they spent the next hour wandering between the rooms to see the spectacle of gymnasts and jugglers and opera singers, and aerobatic performers who spun on ropes in the air. Then it was the turn of the clowns, and Rosa was soon almost doubled up with laughter at their antics.

She found herself thinking about Chiara and wondering how her night was going. They’d treated themselves to the cheapest tickets to the cheapest Carnevale ball they could find—and that only gave admission to the dancing segment of the evening. They hadn’t been able to afford the price for the dinner and entertainment that came first. But surely even that entertainment would be no match for this.

And then Vittorio took her hand in his and she stopped thinking about Chiara, because her heart gave a little lurch that switched off her brain.

She looked sideways up at him to find him watching her, the cobalt of his eyes a shade deeper, his sensual slash of mouth curled up at the ends.

He gave the slightest squeeze of her hand before he let her go, and she turned her eyes back to the entertainment. But suddenly she wasn’t laughing any more. Her chest felt too tight, her blood was buzzing, and she was imagining all kinds of impossible things.

Unimaginable things.

Chiara had said that magical things could happen at Carnevale.

Rosa had been a fool not to believe her.

She could feel the magic. It was in the air all around her. It was in the gilded frames and lush silks and crystal chandeliers. It was in the exquisite trompe l’oeils that adorned the walls with views of gardens that had only ever existed in the artist’s eyes. And magic was pulsing alongside her, in leather of blue and gold, in a man with a presence she couldn’t ignore—a man who had the ability to shake the very foundations of her world with just one look from his cobalt blue eyes.

Chiara had said she might meet the man of her dreams tonight. A man who had the power to tempt her to give up her most cherished possession.

She hadn’t believed that either.

It would have to be a special kind of man for her to want to take such a momentous step. A very special kind of man.

Vittorio?

Her heart squeezed so tightly that she had to suck in a breath to ease the constriction.

Impossible. Life didn’t work that way.

But what if Chiara had been right?

And what if Vittorio was the one?

She glanced up to sneak another look at him and found him already gazing down at her, his midnight hair framing the quizzical expression on his strong face.

His heart-stoppingly beautiful, strong face.

And she thought it would be madness not to find out.

* * *

Sirena either had spies everywhere, or she had a knack for knowing when Rosa had left his side for five minutes. The entertainment was finished but, while the party wouldn’t wind down until dawn, Vittorio had other plans. Plans that didn’t include Sirena, no matter how hard she tried to join in.

‘This is supposed to be a party,’ Sirena sulked conspiratorially to Marcello when she cornered him standing at the top of the stairs, where Vittorio was waiting for Rosa so they could say their goodbyes. ‘A party for friends. An exclusive party. But did you see that woman Vittorio dragged along?’

‘Her name is Rosa.’

Sirena took no notice. ‘Did you see what she was wearing, Marcello? It was appalling.’

‘Nobody’s listening, Sirena,’ Vittorio said dismissively.

‘Rosa seems very nice,’ said Marcello. ‘And I like her costume.’

Vittorio nodded. ‘She is nice. Very nice.’ He thought about the way she’d pulled that ruse with the loose thread and smiled. ‘Clever, too.’

Sirena pouted, her hand on Marcello’s arm, pleading. ‘She wasn’t even invited.’

‘I invited her.’

‘You know what I mean. Someone like her wouldn’t normally be allowed anywhere near here.’

‘Sirena, give it up.’ Vittorio turned away, searching for Rosa. The sooner he got her away from here—away from Sirena—the better.

‘That’s our Vittorio for you,’ Marcello said, trying to hose down the antagonism between his guests, playing his life-long role of peacemaker to perfection. ‘Always bringing home the strays. Birds fallen from their nests. Abandoned puppies. It made no difference. Vittorio, do you remember that bag of kittens we found snagged on the side of the river that day? Dio, how long ago was that? Twenty years?’

Vittorio grunted, hoping that Rosa was nowhere within earshot, because he didn’t want her overhearing any of this.

He did remember that day. Marcello had been visiting. They’d wandered far and wide beyond the castle walls that day—much further than Vittorio had been permitted to roam. They’d both been about ten years old, and filled with the curiosity and compulsion of young boys to explore their world.

They’d been wading in the stream, chasing the silvery flashes of fish in the shallows, when they’d heard the pitiful cries. By the time they’d found the bag and pulled it from the stream all but one of the kittens had perished, and the plaintive mewls of the lone survivor had been heartrending. Vittorio had tucked the tiny shivering creature into his shirt and hurried back to the castle.

‘So now you’re saving sweet young things who get themselves lost in the streets of Venice? Quite the hero you’ve turned out to be,’ said Sirena.

‘It’s lucky Vittorio was in the right place at the right time,’ Marcello said, still doing his utmost to pour oil on troubled waters. ‘Rosa would have had a dreary night by herself otherwise.’

Sirena bristled, ignoring Marcello’s peacekeeping efforts. ‘And does your father know you’ve found another stray?’

Vittorio sighed. Where the hell was Rosa? ‘What’s who I bring to a party got to do with my father?’

‘Only that the three of us might finally settle our differences and work out a timeline for uniting our two families. That’s what was supposed to happen tonight. That’s what was intended.’

‘Intended by whom? By your father and mine? By you? Because it certainly wasn’t intended by me—tonight or any other night.’

He turned away. Where was she?

‘Oh, Vittorio...’ he heard Sirena say behind his back, and he recognised the change in her voice as she switched on the charm offensive. He heard the slither of beads and when he turned back he saw that she’d dropped Marcello’s arm and edged herself closer to him. She placed one hand on his chest and snaked it around his neck. ‘Do you have to play so hard to get? You know we’re made for each other. And while I admit it’s been fun at times, playing this game of cat and mouse, it gets so tiring...always keeping up the charade.’

Vittorio put his hand over her forearm and sighed. ‘You’re right, Sirena. It is tiring,’ he said. ‘I think it has gone on long enough.’

‘You see?’ she said, her smile widening. ‘I knew you’d think it was time we worked this out. We have to start making plans. Marcello will be your best man, surely?’

She didn’t let her eyes shift from her target as Marcello, knowing it should be the groom who asked him, muttered an anxious, ‘I’d be honoured, of course.’

‘We’ll have to have the wedding in the cathedral in Andachstein, of course,’ Sirena said, as if Marcello hadn’t uttered a word, ‘and in spring. It’s so beautiful in Andachstein in spring. But where should we honeymoon? We have to start planning, Vittorio. It’s so exciting.’

Her nails were raking the skin at the back of his neck, but if the woman thought she was stroking his senses into compliance she was very much mistaken.

He put his hand over her forearm, pulling her hand away before he dropped it unceremoniously into what little space there was between them.

‘No, Sirena. What I meant was that this farce has gone on long enough. Can you for once accept that whatever our fathers might have schemed, whatever they promised you, and whatever fantasy you’ve been nurturing in your mind, it’s never going to happen. That is my promise to you.’

‘But Vittorio,’ she said, once again reaching out for him, with a note of hysteria in her voice this time. ‘You can’t be serious. You can’t mean that.’

‘How many times do I have to tell you before you accept the truth?’

‘The truth is you’re a playboy—everyone knows that. But you have to settle down some time.’

‘Maybe I do,’ he conceded, and it was the only concession he was prepared to make. ‘But when I settle down it won’t be with you.’

She spun away in a clatter of beads. ‘You bastard!’ She turned her regal chin over one shoulder and glared at him, the rage in her eyes all hellfire and ice. ‘Go back and slum it with your little village slut, then. See if I care.’

Finally the real Sirena had emerged. He sighed. What kind of man would want to hitch himself to that, no matter the packaging? ‘What you care or don’t care about is not my concern, Sirena. But, for the record, that’s exactly what I plan to do.’

Watching Sirena storm off, her sandalled feet slapping hard on the marble floor, was one of the most satisfying yet exhausting moments of Vittorio’s life. Maybe she had finally got it through her head that there was never going to be a marriage between them. Dio, he was sick of this world of arranged marriages and false emotions.

But right now he had more pressing needs. He needed to find Rosa. He’d been wrong to bring her here. He’d exposed her to the best and the worst aspects of his life. And he’d exposed her to the worst of himself, using her as cannon fodder to make a point to a woman he had no intention of marrying.

What had he been thinking, inviting her here tonight? She deserved to be treated better than the way he had treated her. She’d been out of her depth—he’d known that from the start. She’d been overawed by the wealth and sumptuousness of this world she’d been given a glimpse of and yet she had handled herself supremely well, dealing with Sirena’s antagonism with a courage he hadn’t anticipated.

He slapped Marcello on the back in acknowledgement of what he’d attempted and told him he’d be back soon.

He didn’t want to contemplate the carnage if Sirena found Rosa before he did. He’d never forgive himself. He was already feeling ill at ease for taking advantage of Rosa’s circumstances the way he had. Serendipity, he’d called it. Serendipity nothing. He’d been out-and-out opportunistic. He’d charged Sirena with that same crime, and yet he was guilty of the charge himself. When he’d found Rosa he’d seen a decoy—a buffer for Sirena’s insistent attention.

He should just take Rosa home, back to her dingy hotel and her humdrum life. Maybe she would be relieved to be back in her own world. Maybe she would see it as an escape. She should.

He wandered from room to room, brushing aside the calls to him to stop and talk.

He knew he should take her home. Except part of him didn’t want to let her go—not just yet. His final words to Sirena hadn’t been all bluff. Not when he thought about Rosa’s upturned face looking into his. He remembered the change in her expression, her laughter drying up, her lips slightly parted. He remembered the hitch in her breath and the sudden rise of her chest.

He’d seen the way she’d gazed up into his eyes.

Rosa had been the best part of his evening.

He hated it that it had to end. And he had enough experience of the female to know that she didn’t want it to end just yet either.

Eventually he found Rosa, surrounded by a group of guests he recognised—members of Sirena’s retinue, simpering men and women who were her ‘rent-a-court’, always sitting around waiting on her every word, waiting for a rare treat to be dispensed. Now they were formed around Rosa like some kind of Praetorian Guard, looking at Rosa as if she was the treat.

Sirena’s work, no doubt. It had her fingerprints all over it.

‘Here you are,’ he said, barely able to keep the snarl from his voice as he surveyed the smug-looking group. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’

She didn’t look pleased to see him. Her eyes didn’t meet his with relief, or with the delight he would have preferred. The brandy in her eyes was un-warmed. Non-committal. Even her body language had changed, her movements stiff and formal.

‘I’ve been making some new friends,’ she said.

He glanced around at the six of them, all dressed the same—or rather, undressed the same. The men were bare-chested, wearing white kilts, blue and white striped headdresses and wide gold armbands. The women had the addition of a golden bralette.

Cleopatra’s so-called friends. More like a guard of honour. And he knew that, like Sirena, they were capable of tearing an unsuspecting person to pieces. He wasn’t the only one who would be able to see her lack of sophistication and absence of guile. Rosa was like the first bright flare of a matchstick in a darkened room. She was all vulnerability in a world of weary cynicism.

‘I’m sorry to disappoint your new friends,’ he lied, eyeballing each and every one of their heavily kohled eyes, ‘but we’re leaving. I’m taking you home.’

Rosa’s chin kicked up. ‘What if I’m not ready to go home? I know where I am now. I can find my own way.’

‘We can take you,’ one of her new friends offered, with a lean and hungry smile.

‘Yes,’ said another, his lips drawing hyena-like over his teeth as he took one of her hands. ‘Stay a little longer, Rosa. We’ll see that you get home.’

‘It’s up to you,’ Vittorio told her.

There was no hiding the growl in his voice even as he had to force himself to back off—because if she didn’t want him he could hardly drag her out of here, no matter that his inner caveman was insisting he simply throw her over his shoulder and leave. She was a grown-up, with a mind of her own, and if she was foolish enough to choose them over her it would be on her own head.

But still the idea sat uneasily with him.

She looked from the group to Vittorio and he saw the indecision in her eyes, the brittle wall of resistance she’d erected around herself waver. And, like that moment by the bridge, when he’d seen her shoulders slump as she recognised the hopelessness of her situation, he could tell the moment she made a decision.

‘No,’ she said to the group with a smile of apology. ‘Thank you for your kind offer. But it’s late and I have to work tomorrow.’

Vittorio grunted his approval while they pleaded with her to reconsider. So she’d witnessed what was in their eyes and decided he was the lesser of two evils? At least she had that much sense.

But it occurred to him that he might have to rethink his plans for the evening. Things had changed in the balance between them. He’d thought she was learning to trust him, losing her skittishness, but something had happened in the time she’d been out of his sight. Something that had fractured the tentative bond that had been developing between them.

It was too bad, but it was hardly the end of the world.

Tomorrow he would return to Andachstein, a tiny coastal principality nestled between Italy and Slovenia. He had duties there. There was a film festival gala to attend and a new hospital wing to be opened, along with school visits to make—all part of his royal duties as heir. So he’d see Rosa safely home now, and then he’d head back to the family palazzo—the legacy of a match between the daughter of a Venetian aristocrat and one of Andachstein’s ancestral princes.

No doubt his father would be waiting for the news he’d been wanting to hear for years. He was not going to be happy to hear there was none.

‘I’ll be fine now,’ she said, once they were out of the room. ‘I’ll find my own way home.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Listen, Vittorio—’

‘No. You listen. If you think I’m going to let you loose in the fog-bound calles at this time of the morning, after half the city’s been partying all night, you’ve got another think coming. That lot upstairs aren’t the only ones who’d take advantage of a lone woman feeling her way home in the fog.’

She swallowed, and he saw the kick of her throat even as her eyes flashed defiantly. He could tell she saw the sense in his words, even if she didn’t want to.

‘So I’m still stuck with you, then,’ she said.

‘So it would seem.’

She turned her head away in resignation and they descended the staircase in silence, together but apart, the earlier warmth they’d shared having dissipated.

His mood blackened with every step, returning him to that dark place he’d been earlier in the evening. It didn’t help that Rosa had lost the air of wonderment she’d arrived with. It didn’t help that she couldn’t find him a smile and that he had been relegated to mere chaperone—one that she was only putting up with under sufferance. It raised his hackles.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, maybe a little more brusquely than he’d have preferred, but then, he wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought you here. I shouldn’t have invited you.’

‘Why shouldn’t you have invited me?’ she asked. ‘Because I don’t belong? Because I’m no better than a little village slut for you to slum it with?’

‘You heard. How much did you hear?’

‘I heard enough.’

Vittorio wanted to slam his head against the nearest wall. As if it wasn’t enough that Sirena had subjected her to those poisoned barbs face to face, Rosa had heard what Sirena had said behind her back.

‘I didn’t call you that.’

‘I didn’t hear you deny it,’ she said, but she didn’t sound angry, as she had every right to. She sounded...disappointed.

He could have explained that there would have been no point, that it wasn’t what he thought of her and that Sirena would have taken no notice, but she was right. He hadn’t made any attempt to deny or correct it.

Dio. What a mess.

* * *

They collected their cloaks in silence, and only three words were playing over and over in Rosa’s mind.

Little village slut.

Stone-faced, Vittorio covered her shoulders with first her own cloak and then his cursed scented leather cloak. She hated the fact that it smelt so good now, and tried to slip away from beneath it.

‘I don’t need that.’

But he persisted, like a father whose patience with his recalcitrant toddler was all but used up. ‘Yes, you do,’ he insisted, and he turned her towards him and did up the fancy clasp she’d had trouble undoing before.

She looked everywhere but at him. And the moment he released her she turned away from his touch and his stony features, wishing she could so easily turn away from the warmth of his cloak and the promise it had given her.

Instead, the evening had finished up a huge disappointment. It had been a rollercoaster of emotions from the start, from excitement to panic to despair to hope. Or a kind of hope. But now she could see that that hope had been like those strings of beads in the glamorous Sirena’s skirt, and that one pulled thread would have seen it fall apart and skitter away into a million irreconcilable parts.

And now there was just the end to be negotiated.

She took a deep breath. She’d had a night out. A fantasy night such as she could never have expected or afforded. She’d had an experience with which to reassure Chiara, when her friend apologised profusely about losing her in the crowds without her phone or ticket, as she expected she would.

And she’d had a glimmer of something special. Of a man who looked like a warrior, a man who’d been chivalrous and generous enough to include her in his world, a man who simultaneously excited and frightened her, a man who made her insides curl when he looked at her as if she was something special.

At least she imagined that was what he’d been thinking.

She sighed. Soon she would be back home in the tiny basement apartment she shared with Chiara and this night would be just a memory.