Guido considered. ‘No, I don’t think I was. Is this the way home?’

Any Venetian would have recognised this as an absurd question since, in that tiny city, all roads lead home. The other two looked at each other, then stationed themselves on either side of Guido like sentinels, and they finished the journey together.

The Palazzo Calvani had a garden that ran by the water. Marco signalled the butler to bring wine, and they all sat out under the stars.

‘Don’t talk, drink,’ Marco ordered. ‘There are few troubles that good wine can’t cure.’

‘I’m not in trouble,’ Guido told him.

‘What’s got into you?’ Marco demanded. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘I’m in love.’

‘Ah!’ Leo nodded wisely. ‘That kind of crazy.’

‘The perfect woman,’ Guido said blissfully.

‘What’s her name?’ Marco asked.

But Guido’s sense of self-preservation was in good working order. ‘Get lost,’ he said amiably.

‘When did you meet her?’ Leo wanted to know.

‘This afternoon. It happened in the first moment.’

‘You always say they’re after the title,’ Leo reminded him.

‘She doesn’t know about the title, that’s the best thing of all. She thinks I’m a gondolier, scratching a living, so I can be sure her smiles are for me. The one honest woman in the world.’

‘Honest woman?’ Marco echoed scathingly. ‘That’s asking a lot.’

‘We’re not all cynics like you,’ Guido told him. ‘Sometimes a man must trust his instincts, and my instincts tell me that she’s everything that is good. Her heart is true, she’s incapable of deception. When she loves me, it will be for myself alone.’

Leo raised his eyebrows. ‘You mean she doesn’t love you already? You’re losing your touch.’

‘She’s thinking about it,’ Guido insisted. ‘She’s going to love me-almost as much as I love her.’

‘And you’ve known her how long?’ Leo asked.

‘A few hours and all my life.’

‘Listen to yourself,’ Marco snorted. ‘You’ve taken leave of your senses.’

Guido held up a hand. ‘Peace, you ignorant men!’ he said sternly. ‘You know nothing.’

He wandered away under the trees, leaving the other two regarding each other uneasily.

When he was out of their sight Guido stopped and looked up at the moon.

‘At last,’ he said ecstatically. ‘She came to me. And she’s perfect.’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘I SHOULD be getting home soon,’ Leo said next morning. ‘I only came to see Uncle, and he’s fine now.’

‘Don’t leave just yet,’ Guido hastened to say. ‘He sees you so seldom, and who knows how long he’ll be around?’

They were having breakfast on the open-air terrace overlooking the water, relishing in the warm breeze and Liza’s excellent coffee in equal measure.

‘Uncle will outlive us all,’ Leo insisted. ‘I’m a farmer, and it’s the busy time of year.’

‘It’s always the busy time of year, according to you.’

‘Well, I don’t like cities,’ Leo growled. ‘Hellish places!’

‘Don’t talk about Venice like that,’ Guido said quickly.

‘For pity’s sake!’ Leo said, exasperated. ‘You’re no more Venetian than I am.’

‘I was born here.’

‘We were both born here because Uncle made Poppa bring his wives to Venice for the births of their children. Same with Marco’s mother. Calvani offspring must be born in the Palazzo Calvani.’ Leo’s tone showed what he thought of this idea. ‘But we were both taken home to Tuscany when we were a few weeks old, and it’s where we belong.’

‘Not me,’ Guido said. ‘I’ve always loved Venice.’

As a child he’d been brought to stay with his uncle during school vacations, and when he was twelve Francesco had made a complete takeover bid, demanding that he reside permanently in Venice so that he could grow up with the inheritance that would be his. Guido had only the vaguest idea about the inheritance but the city on the water entranced him, and he was glad of the move.

He had loved his father but was never entirely at ease with him. Bertrando was a countryman at heart, and he and Leo had formed a charmed duo from which Guido felt excluded. Bertrando had wept and wailed at the ‘kidnap’ of his son, but a large donation from Francesco to ease the effects of a bad harvest had reconciled him.

In due course Guido had come to feel his destiny as a poisoned chalice, but nothing could abate his love for the exquisite city. The fact that he’d made an independent fortune from catering to its tourists was, he would have said, an irrelevance.

Marco joined them a moment later, just finishing a call on his mobile phone. As he sat down he said, ‘It’s time I was going home.’

Guido went into overdrive. ‘Not you as well. Uncle loves you being here. He’s an old man and he doesn’t see enough of you.’

‘I’m neglecting business.’

‘Banks run themselves,’ Guido declared loftily.

This was flagrant provocation since he knew, and the others knew he knew, that Marco was far more than a simple banker. He was a deity of the higher finance, whose instinct for buying and selling had made many men rich and saved many others from disaster. Guido himself had profited by his advice to expand his business, but couldn’t resist the chance to rib him now and then.

Marco bore up well under the treatment, ignoring Guido’s teasing, or perhaps he managed not to hear it. Although his father had been a Calvani his mother was Roman, and he lived in that city from choice. Austerely handsome, proud, coolly aristocratic, unemotional and loftily indifferent to all he considered beneath him, he was Roman to his fingertips. Anyone meeting him for a few minutes would have known that he came from the city that had ruled an empire.

Just once he’d shown signs of living on the same plane as other men. He’d fallen in love, become engaged and set the date for the wedding. His cousins had been fascinated by the change in him, the warmth that would flare from his eyes at the sight of his beloved.

And then it was all over. There was no explanation. One day they were an acknowledged happy couple. The next day the engagement was broken ‘by mutual consent’. The wedding was cancelled, the presents sent back.

That had been four years ago, and to this day Marco’s sole comment had been, ‘These things happen. We were unsuited.’

‘Unsuited?’ Guido had echoed when Marco was safely out of earshot. ‘I saw his face soon after. Like a dead man’s. His heart was broken.’

‘You’ll never get him to admit it,’ Leo had prophesied wisely. And he’d been right.

Marco had never discussed the cancellation of his wedding, and the others would have known nothing if Guido hadn’t happened to bump into the lady two years later.

‘He was too possessive,’ she explained. ‘He wanted all of me.’

‘Marco? Possessive?’ Leo echoed when Guido related the conversation to him. ‘But he’s an iceberg.’

‘Evidently not always,’ Guido had observed.

It was doubtful if Marco would have confessed to the possession of a heart, broken or not. But these days he was never seen without a beautiful, elegant woman on his arm, although no relationship lasted for very long. In this respect his life might be said to resemble Guido’s, but Guido’s affairs sprang from the impetuous warmth of his nature, and Marco’s from the calculating coolness of his.

He seated himself at the breakfast table now, ignoring Guido’s attempts to rile him, and reached for the coffee. Instantly Lizabetta appeared with a fresh pot which she contrived to set down, remove the old one and clear away used dishes without speaking a word or appearing to notice their presence.

‘She terrifies me,’ Guido said when she’d gone. ‘She reminds me of the women who knitted at the foot of the guillotine in the French revolution. When we’re loaded into tumbrels and hauled off for execution Liza will be there, knitting the Calvani crest into a shroud.’

Leo grinned. ‘They won’t bother with me. I’m a hard-working son of the soil, and that’s what I ought to be doing this minute.’

‘Just a few more days,’ Guido begged. ‘It’ll mean so much to Uncle.’

‘To you, you mean,’ Leo said. ‘You just want us to occupy his attention while you get up to no good.’

‘You’re wrong,’ Guido said, grinning. ‘What I’m getting up to is very, very good.’

He was ahead of Dulcie getting to the landing stage, and for a horrid moment he was sure she wasn’t coming. He knew he’d somehow put a foot wrong the previous night, but he could recover himself if he saw her again.

But she wasn’t coming. She’d left the hotel, left Venice. He might never see her again…

There she was!

‘Quickly,’ he said, seizing her hand, ‘the vaporetto is just coming.’

As the boat drew up he hurried her on board as though fearful that she might change her mind. He found her a seat at the side, near the prow, and sat silently, content to watch her as she beheld marvels unfold.

Dulcie could hardly believe that she was here. As she’d packed the black satin bikini she’d told herself that this was pointless because she wasn’t really going to spend today with him. She’d stressed this again as she’d donned the scarlet sun dress, but then her feet had walked themselves out of the Empress Suite and into the lift.

And now here she was, sitting beside him as the vaporetto left the Grand Canal behind and settled in for the half-hour journey to the Lido, the strip of land that marked the boundary of the lagoon. The warm wind whistled past her, making her hair stream out, catching all her troubles and whirling them away across the blue water.

From the landing stage to the beach was just a short walk across the narrow island, and then she was gazing at an expanse of blue sea and golden sand that did her heart good.

He hired cubicles for them, and a huge umbrella which he ground into the sand. When she emerged from the cubicle wearing the bikini and a floating gauze top he’d already spread the towels on the sand and was waiting for her. His eyes never left her as she approached and slipped off the top, revealing a body that was slender, elegant and beautiful. She held her breath for his reaction.