‘You kept it going a lot longer than that.’

‘Things happened unexpectedly. It all ran out of control.’

‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing. It ran out of your control? Primo Rinucci, the big boss, the man in charge, who snaps his fingers and people jump-’

‘Cut that out,’ he raged. ‘You created a tailor’s dummy and told yourself a load of stories about him, but he’s not me. He never was.’

‘Why didn’t you stop me?’

‘Because I was enjoying myself,’ he said rashly.

‘Ah, now we have it. You loved making a fool of me-’

‘I didn’t mean that. I meant-’

Somewhere there were the words that would tell her of the delight he’d known during those few days when he’d teased and incited her while falling under her spell. There must be words for the sweetness that had engulfed him, the sense of a miracle, so long awaited, that must be treated with care, lest it vanish. And more words for the fear that overcame him whenever he thought of telling the truth and risking everything.

Yes, there were words. If only he could find them.

‘Well?’ she demanded remorselessly.

‘I didn’t mean it to turn out the way it did,’ was the best he could manage.

‘No, you didn’t mean to get caught out.’

‘That wasn’t what I-’

‘Just how did you plan to tell me? Or didn’t you?’

‘Of course I was going to tell you, but it was hard. I knew you’d misunderstand.’

‘Surely not?’ she said caustically. ‘How could anyone misunderstand a man who gives a false name and lures a woman into making a fool of herself just so that he can have a cheap laugh? Men do it every day, and women put up with it.’

‘And what about what women do every day?’ he demanded, stung to anger. ‘You were planning a good laugh yourself, weren’t you? When Rinucci turned up you were going to take him for a ride. You had it all worked out, down to the last detail, fluttering your eyelashes, plus the old hair trick culled from a hundred corny films.

‘You even enlisted me to give you “inside information”-your own words-to weaken his defences, and never mind what a fool you’d be making of him when he turned up and I watched you bringing him down. I may have behaved badly, but that’s nothing to the derision you piled on him-I mean me. Oh, hell!’

‘You can’t even sort out which of you is which,’ she snapped.

‘That’s true,’ he said wryly.

‘What do you think it was like for me to find out the truth the way I did?’

‘How could I have anticipated that? I didn’t know you were going to be at my mother’s.’

‘I wouldn’t have been if I’d known you were coming back. You kept very quiet about it.’

‘I wanted to surprise you.’

‘You sure as hell did that.’

‘Olympia, please, I know I did wrong, but it wasn’t for a laugh.’

‘You’ll never get me to believe that in a million years, so don’t try.’

She turned and stormed away from him. She’d changed out of her glamorous red dress into serviceable trousers and sweater. Her face was free of make-up and her hair was dishevelled. It looked as if she’d torn down the elaborate arrangement then scragged it back any old how. A few wisps hung down over her face, softening the austere lines.

Despite her rage it was her misery that reached him most poignantly. Without the glitz she was pale and slightly wan, and even more beautiful in his eyes. He longed to reach out to her but he knew it wasn’t the right time. She wasn’t ready to hear what he had to say.

She was walking up and down the room now, brooding bitterly. ‘All those things I said. I trusted you.’

The injustice of this made his temper rise again.

‘Yes, you trusted me with a blow-by-blow account of the unscrupulous methods a woman adopts to bring a man to heel. A real eye-opener! I should write a book about it. Men beware! This is what they get up to. You turned me into a fellow conspirator with myself as the intended victim. I don’t know who to feel sorrier for-me or me!’

‘I warned you I wasn’t a nice person,’ she told him. ‘Remember that day I said that I was up front about what I wanted and what I’d do to get it? You should have believed me.’

‘I did believe you,’ he shouted. ‘How could I not when I was getting a demonstration every moment? You did a great job. Up front with me, not with him, although of course you couldn’t have afforded to be. That’s what you’re really angry about, isn’t it? You showed your weapons to the wrong man and now they’re dead in your hands.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not planning to use them on you.’

‘But you did use them on me, and to hell with me and my feelings! Did you ever think of your victim? Suppose I’d fallen in love with you?’

‘Be honest! You were in no danger of that.’

‘Luckily for me I wasn’t. I’m safe against your kind-’

‘And just what is my “kind”?’

‘Heartless, scheming, manipulative, calculating-take your pick. Yes, I’m safe, but you didn’t know that. If I’d fallen in love with you that wouldn’t have mattered, would it? Just a casualty of the war, only it wasn’t my war, you heartless woman!’

In despair she stared at him. All the things that had seemed so simple before, when she had prided herself on being immune to feelings, now presented themselves in stark, livid colours, shocking in the light he turned on them.

When she spoke her voice shook. ‘Then it’s fortunate for both of us that you’re so armoured-almost as armoured as I am.’

‘Yes, I noticed that,’ he said softly. ‘When I held you, trembling in my arms, I thought how cold and indifferent you were.’

Her eyes glittered in a way he knew. ‘I do it very well, don’t I?’ she said softly. ‘I know all the right buttons to press, and I can press them in the right order.’

He paled. ‘Are you telling me it was all an act?’

‘Are you so sure it wasn’t?’

Her words brought them to the edge of the precipice, showing him the disaster waiting below.

‘Olympia, don’t,’ he said urgently. ‘Don’t do this, please don’t, for both our sakes.’

‘But what do you think I’m doing? Just being honest, that’s all.’

‘This isn’t honesty. It’s pride and revenge, and maybe you have the right, but don’t do it. Don’t ruin what we still might have.’

She gave a cruel laugh. ‘You actually imagine that there might be something between us, after this?’

‘I know it sounds crazy, but that’s because we’ve been performing in masks, inventing other selves and thinking that’s who we were. But if we could get clear of that and be ourselves-’

He left the implication hanging in the air and for a moment he thought he’d won. Her face softened and a weary look passed across it. But then she said, ‘If we could do that we’d probably find we liked each other-and ourselves-even less. It’s too late, Ja-’ She broke off and a spasm of pain went over her face. ‘Signor Rinucci.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ he shouted.

‘It’s a useful reminder, in case I forget,’ she cried back at him. ‘Or in case you do.’

He closed his eyes. His world was disintegrating about him and whatever he did made it worse. He could only say her name in anguish.

‘Olympia-Olympia-’

‘Don’t.’

They stood in silence, neither knowing what to say.

He looked around him and suddenly noticed things that he’d failed to notice before, and which now seemed ominous.

A half-packed suitcase stood open on the sofa and several clothes were draped over the back.

‘Packing?’ he breathed. ‘Now?’

‘Yes, now. I’m moving out of here tonight.’

‘I told you, you can’t go back to England.’

‘I’m not. I’ve decided to stay and take up the job with Leonate. But I’m moving out of here tonight and going where you can’t follow me.’

‘There’s nowhere I can’t follow you, and I will.’

‘You don’t need to. I’m coming to work tomorrow. Or is that another of your fictions?’

‘No, the job is there.’

‘Then it’s about time I met my colleagues, Signore Leonate and Signor Rinucci who, I understand, is the real power behind the throne. I’m longing to meet him-that is, if you can sort out which one he is.’

‘Stop it,’ he said violently. ‘Are you going to beat me over the head with that for ever?’

‘I can try.’

‘So you reckon you’re the injured innocent? I don’t think so. I may have laid a small trap, but you made it bigger and jumped in with both feet. I’m sorry you feel foolish, but it’s nothing to the kind of foolish that I’d have felt if things had worked out the way you meant.’

He came closer to her, seizing her arm so that she couldn’t turn away from him.

‘That was quite a plan you had, Olympia. Rinucci was going to turn up and you were going to use your wiles on him, and I was going to do what, exactly? Cheer you on from the sidelines? Suppose I’d warned him and brought your house of cards tumbling down? Did you think of that? Of course you didn’t, because you never thought that far ahead.’

‘How far ahead did you think?’ she flung at him.

‘Not far enough, which is why I don’t blame you too much-’

‘Big of you, considering that you started it.’

‘That’s arguable. You said a lot of things before you made the most cursory check who I was. The astute operator you want me to believe in wouldn’t have done that. Perhaps I should question your skills a little more. Not your seductive skills, because we know about those-’

There was a crack as her hand connected with his face. Then something seemed to hold them both petrified. Her eyes were filled with anger, bitterness and insult. But there was also anguish and a kind of fear.

He saw it and his own anger died. Even at this moment he discovered that he couldn’t bear to see her hurt. It made quarrelling very difficult.

‘Let’s say that makes us even,’ he told her quietly. ‘Now can we draw a line under it?’