He stood for a moment, looking down at her nakedness while his own chest rose and fell fiercely. Then he went into the connected bathroom, returning with a large towel that he tossed over her.

‘Dry yourself,’ he snapped. ‘Do it quickly before you get pneumonia. I don’t want your death on my conscience.’

He walked out.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THERE was a blinding light somewhere, insistently penetrating the darkness, calling on her to awaken.

She opened her eyes to find the sun streaming into her room, and Salvatore beside her.

‘I brought you some tea,’ he said briefly, setting it down and departing at once.

The tea was good and when she’d drunk it she felt better. The sleep, also, had helped. She hadn’t expected to sleep at all, feeling sure that she would lie awake fretting, and at first it had seemed that she was right. Pictures and sensations flooded her brain, the sheer strength of him, holding her, stripping her, but then releasing her to spend the night alone. Then she’d seemed to sink into darkness.

Now she was awake. She could still feel his hands on her naked body, but whether the memory came from last night, or other nights when he’d held her in the fires of passion, she could not have said.

She looked down at herself, wearing a slip from the bag she’d brought with her, which contained only underclothes. Last night she’d dried herself hurriedly, put on the only clothes she could find, and huddled under the duvet. She looked around for the outer clothes he’d torn off her, but they had vanished.

He pushed the door open slowly. ‘Are you ready for more tea?’

‘I’d like my clothes back.’

‘They’re still wet; I’ve hung them up to dry.’

‘I need something that covers me better than this,’ she said firmly.

‘All right.’ He opened his buttons and removed his own shirt, handing it to her. ‘I’m afraid this is all I have here at the moment. It will cover you completely.’

It did, buttoning up to the neck and enclosing her in warmth from his body. She regretted that at once. It was too intimate, as was the sudden view of him bare-chested. But he retreated at once, returning in a moment with more tea, and breakfast.

‘Boiled eggs?’ she queried.

‘Don’t you eat them? I thought all the English did.’

‘As long as they’re soft boiled.’

‘If not I’ll do them again. And don’t look at me so suspiciously.’

‘You think I shouldn’t be suspicious after what you’ve done?’

‘No, you probably should. But it’s not for much longer. I want you to hear me out. After that I’ll return your phone, you can call for help, accuse me of kidnap and by tonight I’ll probably be in gaol. You can look forward to that, but listen first.’

‘As though anyone at Venice is going to arrest you!’ she said scornfully.

‘What about the people on the other end? Wasn’t someone meeting you at the airport? There’ll be a hue and cry by now. Cross your fingers and you’ll see me locked up yet.’

If she hadn’t been so wary she might have thought his voice held a note of resignation, almost of defeat. But she suppressed the thought before it could flower. She’d let down her guard with him once. Never again.

‘I look forward to seeing you locked up,’ she said.

He looked at her for a moment, then left without speaking.

The eggs were perfect. She ate every last crumb then got out of bed and went for a wash. Putting back the shirt made her relatively decent, she reckoned.

Going through her bag, she found her things untouched except for the missing phone. There, in its own small compartment, was the glass heart Antonio had given her, and a sudden impulse made her put it on. It would tell Salvatore where her true heart lay, and it gave her a mysterious feeling of safety, as though Antonio was watching over her, as he’d often promised to do.

‘Look him up in gaol,’ she muttered. ‘He doesn’t mean it. He’s just trying to get around me.’

But her own words didn’t convince her. Once again she had the frustrating sense of thinking she knew all about Salvatore, only to find a new side to him that left her as confused as ever.

He was waiting on the terrace as she went out and sat a careful distance from him.

‘What game are you playing?’ she wanted to know.

‘No game. You shouldn’t be surprised that I stopped you returning to England, after your graphic description of what you were going to do when you got there. You knew what you were telling me-’

‘That I could raise the money I needed to fight you-’

‘Helena, let’s be honest. Our fight has nothing to do with money or glass. We were made to belong together, but only if we could get other things out of the way first. We started as enemies but it didn’t stop me wanting you more than I’ve ever wanted any woman. No-don’t say it.’ He held up a hand to silence her. ‘Don’t say anything about that figurine,’ he continued. ‘It was designed long before I met you, and its coming out now was an unlucky accident. It’s just that…’

There he stopped, silenced by pain and confusion. Never in his life had he known how to describe his own feelings, or perhaps there simply hadn’t been any worth describing. The few times he’d managed to find words he’d been talking by rote, saying what was proper, disconnected from meaning.

But now that the meaning overwhelmed him, burning him up with emotions more intense than any he’d allowed himself to feel before, he was struck dumb.

Clown! Idiot! Say something! Anything!

Why didn’t she help him? She was the one who was clever with words.

‘It’s just that what?’ she asked.

He made a helpless gesture. ‘Nothing. You wouldn’t believe me, anyway.’

The hope that had briefly flared in her died again.

‘You’re right, I probably wouldn’t,’ she sighed. ‘Let’s call it a day.’

She rose to go but he stopped her.

‘Are you going to give up without even trying for what we might have?’ he asked harshly.

‘I’m not sure it’s worth trying for. Won’t we just be banging our heads against a brick wall? Let me go now.’

He’d taken hold of her, suddenly terrified at her ability to slip away from him in mind and heart if not in flesh. He grasped her body, knowing that her real self still eluded him but helpless to prevent it.

‘I said let me go,’ she gasped.

He did so, loosening his grip, but not quickly enough. As she pulled away there was the sound of a small crash and, looking down, they saw her glass heart in pieces on the ground.

‘Oh, no!’ Helena dropped to her knees.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said desperately. ‘It was an accident, I didn’t mean-’

She rose, clutching pieces of broken glass and backed away from him.

‘Look what you’ve done,’ she wept.

‘Helena, please-we can get another one just like it.’

He knew he’d made a fatal mistake as soon as he uttered the words, and if he hadn’t known her scorn would have told him.

‘Just like it? How dare you? Nothing will ever be like it.’

‘I know it was a gift from Antonio but-’

‘You fool! It wasn’t a gift, it was the gift, the first thing he ever gave me. I wore it when we married, and when he lay dying in my arms he touched it and smiled at me. Can you give that back to me?’

Dumbly he shook his head, feeling the ground shaking beneath his feet. He’d done a terrible thing and he didn’t know how to put it right, or if there was any way to put it right at all. Her grief tore him apart and his own helplessness nearly drove him mad.

He was used to her strength but the agony of her sudden defeat almost destroyed him. And the sound of her tears brought back ghosts that had appalled him for years.

‘Put it down,’ he said, reaching out to her hands that were still clutching the broken glass. ‘Put it down before you harm yourself.’

Somehow he managed to get it away without cutting her. She didn’t try to move, just stood there shaking with misery.

‘What is it?’ he begged. ‘For pity’s sake, tell me.’

She shook her head, a gesture not of defiance but of helplessness.

‘I’m not letting you go until you tell me everything,’ he said in the gentlest voice Helena had ever heard him use.

But she couldn’t respond. The brave face she’d worn since losing the only person in the world to whom she’d been close had suddenly cracked and fallen away, leaving her defenceless.

‘Tell me about Antonio,’ he said. ‘We’ve never talked much about him, and perhaps we should.’

Still she couldn’t speak through her sobs, and he just held her while the storm quietened.

‘I know I was wrong,’ he offered, ‘but that’s all I know. Helena, please…’

She choked and moved her head back a little, enough to speak.

‘Antonio and I were never husband and wife in the proper sense,’ she whispered, ‘but in my own way I loved him. You wouldn’t understand. You know nothing about love.’

‘I might understand more than you know.’

‘No, you see things so simply. You want, you get. Kindness and affection don’t come into it.’

Salvatore groaned and dropped his head so that it just rested against her.

‘I loved Antonio,’ she said sadly, ‘because he was gentle and generous, and he loved me without wanting to grab everything and drain me dry. That’s what men do but he was different, better.’

‘I don’t understand. You could have had any man you wanted-’

‘That’s right, I could,’ she said, recovering enough to speak defiantly. ‘For the best part of sixteen years, I watched them slaver, pant, yearn. And I enjoyed it because I despised every one of them. I’ve been offered as much money as I liked if only I would-well, you can guess. But I never would. Never. Any man I wanted, yes! Only I didn’t want any of them. They couldn’t believe it. Of course they couldn’t. No man ever does. They all thought the same as you, that I was anybody’s as long as the money was right.’