‘Wonderful-’

‘Well, wasn’t she? You said she was dazzling when you first met, but wasn’t it more than that, all the years you were together? Isn’t that why you’re grieving for her, because she was wonderful? Maybe you don’t want to dwell on that part, but I don’t think you can get through it without remembering, and sharing it with Liza. You’re the only person who can do that for her.’

‘I know I am,’ he said heavily. ‘That’s the devil of it. But you don’t know what you’re asking. If I could talk to anyone it would be you. I’m like Liza in that. We both lean on you. It’s the effect you have. But even with you…’

His voice faded and the hand that was holding hers clenched convulsively.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’

She wasn’t sure that he’d heard, but the grip on her hand remained tight. After a while he looked up, meeting her eyes, his own full of an unmistakable message. Every nerve told her that she should draw back, be cautious, but that message mesmerised her.

She leaned forward as he reached up to touch her face, drawing his fingertips down her cheek, tracing the outline of her lips. It was the lightest touch, yet the effect was electric, shuddering through her with a brilliant excitement.

‘Holly,’ he whispered. ‘Holly-Holly-’

It was like a lightning flash. Once before a voice had spoken her name on that caressing note, and it had all been a performance. Now another man was luring her into the same trap for his own ends, and she had nearly fallen for it.

This time she’d even known what he was doing, yet the spell had worked. She’d recovered from Bruno, but to fall in love with Matteo would finish her.

‘Take me home,’ she said in a hard voice.

He stared. ‘Holly-’

‘I said, take me home.’

They let themselves quietly into the house.

‘Goodnight,’ she said, turning towards the stairs.

‘Holly, don’t.’ Matteo took her arm. ‘You’ve been silent all the way home and now you’re trying to run away from me. I didn’t mean to offend you. One moment I thought we understood each other, but then you backed off as though I were the devil. What happened?’

‘It got out of hand, didn’t it?’ she asked wildly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The clever game you’re playing. “Taking care of the problems”.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Have you forgotten your own words so soon? I heard you talking to Signora Lionello after the party. She said I was out to get a rich husband, and you said you’d take care of the problems. I guess this is your way of doing it.’

He swore under his breath.

‘Forget that,’ he begged. ‘It meant nothing.’

‘I know exactly what it meant. You’re trying to “attach me”, but only just so far, so that I’m there when needed. Just so that you have the use of me for Liza. After that I can go hang. A bit like Bruno really, except that he only wanted money. You want far more.’

‘Don’t dare liken me to him.’

‘Why not? You’re playing a cynical power game, just like him.’

‘A game? You think this is a game?’

His move was too fast for her to see, and the next moment she was in his arms, feeling his lips on hers. If his fingertips had excited her, his kiss drove her wild. She tried to control the fierce feelings that threatened to overwhelm her body, but he seemed set on making her acknowledge them, moving his mouth over hers with seductive power.

‘Stop this,’ she managed to say.

‘No,’ he said fiercely against her lips. ‘Not until you see sense.’

He called this seeing sense? she thought wildly as he silenced her again. There was no sense in this, no logic, no calculation, no ability even to think. There was only sensation so violent that it left her trembling, and anger at the way he thought he could set her objections aside, as though they counted for nothing.

But the real treachery was the way rage became confused with desire. It was as though she had turned against herself, betraying her own resolve with the need to kiss him back, press herself against him, demand that he explore her further.

Her mouth opened against his in what should have been a protest but emerged as a sigh, encouraging him to thrust his advantage home. The feel of him caressing her with skill and purpose almost sent her wild.

She knew she must free herself from his hold, but it was hard when all her senses were betraying her. They wanted to cling to him, inviting him on to the next step, and the next, wherever the path might lead. But she would fight them, though it broke her heart.

Holly could feel him moving, drawing her back into the shadows under the stairs, but she knew that if she yielded she was lost. This time she was going to be no man’s pawn.

She tried to pull herself away from him, but succeeded only in freeing her mouth.

‘Let me go, right now,’ she gasped. ‘I’m warning you-I’m dangerous-’

She had the feeling that he was almost in a trance, but this seemed to get through to him, and his hands fell away from her so suddenly that she had to clutch the wall.

‘Yes, you are,’ he murmured. ‘I shouldn’t have forgotten that.’

She backed away until she reached a door, then turned and went through it without bothering where it led. She found herself in the dining room with its great window doors that led into the garden, and pulled them open, running outside, taking deep breaths, struggling to calm down.

Holly had promised herself that this wouldn’t happen. Maybe she’d been warning herself about it from the moment she met Matteo, knowing even then that he was a man who threw Bruno into the shade. And every warning had been useless.

She walked anywhere as long as it was away from the house, away from him. As she did so, she talked to herself.

‘Leave this place. Get as far away as you can. Get away from him.’

All useless. There was a time when she might have left this place, but it was long past.

She wandered for an hour, until at last her feet seemed to find their own way to Carol’s monument. She wasn’t sure why, unless she had subconsciously known that she would find him there. He was sitting on the edge of the fountain, dipping his hands into the water, throwing it over his face.

He’d discarded his jacket, and the thin material of his shirt was soaked, showing her the outline of his body beneath.

She didn’t want to look at him. The passion of desire he’d roused in her could only become a greater torment with that incitement.

He looked up at her, gasping.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean anything to happen the way it has.’

‘Neither did I.’

‘You were partly right. It started as you said. I wanted to make sure of you, but then-things changed.’ When she didn’t answer he said almost angrily, ‘You know they did.’

‘I don’t know what I know, except this-I don’t want to be in the arms of a man who’s dreaming of another woman.’

‘What?’

‘You’re still in love with her. You don’t want me, except in one way, and you’re secretly ashamed of that. That’s why you came here, isn’t it? You couldn’t wait to beg her forgiveness for touching me.’

He stared at her. In the silvery light she could only half see his face, glinting with droplets of water, but she could sense that he was totally thunderstruck.

Suddenly he slid down from the fountain until he was sitting on the ground below and, to her astonishment, he began to laugh. Leaning back against the marble, he shook with bitter, silent mirth.

‘My God,’ he murmured. ‘Oh, dear, sweet heaven!’

He put his hands up to his head, covering his face, rocking back and forth, almost moaning. Her anger couldn’t survive that desperate sound, like that of an animal in pain, and she went down on her knees beside him, trying to take hold of him.

‘Matteo, whatever is the matter?’

He dropped his hands and looked at her. He was still making choking sounds that might have been laughter.

‘What’s so horribly funny?’ she asked.

‘Everything. Every damned thing, including your ideas about me. The grieving husband, dreaming of the woman he lost. I’ll tell you the truth. The only time I dream of Carol is in my nightmares.’

‘But-this thing…’ She indicated the monument.

‘This overblown monstrosity? I built it to hide my feelings, not reveal them. I could hardly tell the world how I really regard my wife’s memory.’

‘How you really…?’

The tension seemed to drain out of him.

‘I hated her,’ he said tiredly. ‘I hated her with every fibre of my being for the vicious deception she’d practised on me for years. I hated her for not telling me the truth, and I hated her even more for finally telling it to me.’

He closed his eyes and seemed to address some dreadful inner vision.

‘All those years I loved her, she filled my world. I’d have lain down my life in her service. I told you I’m not a demonstrative man, but with her I was. I held nothing back. Whatever I had or was or would ever be was hers, and she knew it. She’d known it for years, and all that time…’

He opened his eyes again and turned in her direction, so that his head lay directly against the words ‘Beloved wife’ carved into the marble.

‘I made the foolish mistake of thinking I had everything,’ he continued after a while. ‘I should have understood that the man who believes that has nothing at all, that when he imagines he’s walking a firm road he’s actually staggering across a tightrope hung over an abyss. The abyss was always there, but I never saw it.’

‘You mean she stopped loving you?’

His smile was terrible, desperate, wolfish, half-mad.

‘I mean that she never did love me. Not for one second. She married me for money. She liked money a lot, and the man she really loved-an Englishman called Alec Martin-didn’t have a penny. I think she decided on me when she saw the house, these grounds.