stranger.
'I suppose I must apologise,' he said after a pause that seemed
endless. 'My only excuse, Giulietta, is that you made me very
angry. But there's no need to be frightened. It won't happen again.
Now come and eat or your soup will be cold.'
He came across to her and lifted her to her feet, his arm impersonal.
She let him lead her out of the room and across to where the trolley
stood waiting in front of the sofa. He seated her, unfolded a linen
table napkin and handed it to her, then ladled some of the rich
fragrant mixture from the tureen into the delicate china bowl that
stood waiting.
'I'll leave you now,' he said when he had completed these
preparations. 'Shall I ask my mother to look in on you when she
retires for the night?'
Juliet shook her head wordlessly. She did not trust her voice.
'Very well,' he said. 'Buona sera, Giulietta.'
He waited for a moment and when she did not reply, walked
without hurry across to the door and out without looking back.
Juliet sat motionless staring at the steaming bowl of soup in front of
her. Long after it had gone cold, she got to her feet and went back
into the bedroom. She let the peignoir drop in a crumpled heap to
the floor and climbed in between the covers of the tumbled bed. She
felt very cold suddenly, and very tired, although she knew she was
beyond sleep.
And as she lay there, counting each hour chimed out by a nearby
campanile, through the open door from the sitting room came
drifting the tormenting, evocative perfume of Santino's roses.
CHAPTER EIGHT
'Darling,' wrote Mim, 'I'm so pleased that you've managed to extend
your holiday for so long. You'll be able to see such a lot of Italy.
Now aren't you glad that I persuaded you to go? And how nice that
Jan has been able to get some time off with you. How kind of these
friends of hers to have invited you both to stay with them.
'Jan's news is really exciting,' the letter continued. 'She's been very
happy at Di Lorenzo, but I can quite see that the time has come for
her to make a change, and how wonderful to think that there's talk
of a film!'
Juliet put the rest of the letter back in the envelope and stared rather
bleakly out of her bedroom window. So that was Jan's latest line,
she thought bitterly. If only it were true, or even approaching the
truth. The fact was that Jan was now out of work. She had officially
resigned from Di Lorenzo, and had written to several other fashion
houses stating she was available for work, and giving a forward
date some two months after the expected birth of her baby. But
none of them had shown even a modicum of interest in availing
themselves of her services, and Jan's mood had grown progressively
stormier at each politely worded refusal.
She had seemed more contented of late, Juliet had to admit, but
there had been no approaches made to her about future work, and
certainly none from a film company. She sighed. Jan enjoyed the
limelight, and was not going to be prepared to live her life quietly in
anyone else's background.
They had been at the castello for just over a month, and the time
was fast approaching when Juliet knew she was going to have to
return to England. It had been far from the happiest period of her
life. In fact she could not remember when she had been more
actively miserable. Yet on the surface, everything in the garden
appeared lovely. What had gone wrong?
Acting the role of Santino's fiancée had not been as difficult as she
feared, because he had gone out of his way, it seemed, to make it
easy for her. He had been away on business a great deal, and apart
from kissing her lightly on arrival and departure, he had kept his
word about not forcing his attentions upon her. There had been; she
thought with a certain relief, no return to that dark, frightening
passion he had shown her that night in the hotel suite. In fact, there
had been no passion at all, and Santino seemed to make a point of
avoiding being alone with her. She supposed, rather desolately, that
she should be grateful for this. It was after all what she had
wanted-or rather what she had told him she wanted, so she had no
one to thank but herself if he had taken her at her word.
Not that they had had much opportunity to be alone since their
return to the castello because Jan was always there-glamorous,
confident, and often with a faint mocking smile curving her lips as
she observed them. Sometimes, Juliet thought her sister knew that
the engagement was merely a hoax. Sometimes when they were
sitting round the dining table and Jan would make one of her lightly
barbed remarks about love and marriage, Juliet felt like crying
aloud, 'Oh, please let's stop all this pretence. We don't need it now.'
Not, she supposed, that that was strictly true. During their sojourn
at the castello, they had received two seemingly casual visits from
Vittoria Leontana. She was all smiles and affection for Jan, and
even managed a few cordial phrases in English for Juliet, but it was
clear she had come to snoop, and Juliet was thankful for the adroit
way in which Jan managed to evade her more searching questions.
It was plain that the Contessa had seen the newspaper story Santino
had planted linking his name with Jan's, and that she was not
prepared to accept that it was merely a journalistic error, confusing
one sister for another. But in the end, she had to depart with her
obvious curiosity about the situation still unsatisfied, and Juliet
found herself breathing a sigh of relief as her expensive car turned
out of the courtyard and drove away along the coast.
She had sometimes wondered if the Contessa had been responsible
for the phalanx of photographers waiting at the clinic steps for them
to leave that day four weeks earlier. She had been startled by the
battery of flash-bulbs and turned away with a slight gasp, but Jan
had revelled in the situation, managing a brave smile for the
cameras, and clinging to Santino's arm as if he was her one rock
and salvation.
Juliet had expected Santino to be angry at the reception committee,
but although he had not loitered, he had answered the questions
they fired at him quite patiently.
During the drive back to Roccaforte, at a time when she was sure
Jan who had been given painkillers for the trip was safely asleep,
Juliet had ventured to ask Santino what the reporters' questions had
been about.
He gave a slight shrug. 'About la bella Janina, for the most part,' he
answered shortly. 'How badly was she injured? When will she
return to her modelling career? You can imagine the sort of thing.'
He gave her a sideways glance. 'And they asked about you, of
course.'
'I see.' She looked down at her hands, clasped together in her lap.
'Did-did you tell them that we were-engaged?'
'Naturally,' he said with a touch of impatience. 'I told them exactly
the same story that we have told everyone else. What did you
expect?'
She sighed. 'Exactly that, I suppose,' she admitted in a low voice.
'I-I just wish that not quite so many people had to know. It's going
to make things so awkward when -' she paused, not knowing how
to finish the sentence.
'When we decide this particular comedy is over, you mean,' he said
in a hard voice. 'Don't worry about it, cara. I will make it clear to
all sources that it was you that jilted me, if that's what you're afraid
of.'
'It isn't,' she whispered. 'For one thing, I'm worried in case the
English newspapers do get hold of it, and Mim sees it.'
'Hmm.' He was silent for a moment. 'Perhaps it would be better if
you wrote to her yourself and told her, that we were engaged?'
'No 1' Juliet was vehement. 'I'd have to tell her everything in that
case. I can't tell her that I'm engaged to be married-she'd be so
thrilled, so excited. It wouldn't be fair to hoax her. Besides, she'd
want to meet you. There would be all sorts of complications.'
'Then we must hope that the English newspaper® decide that your
affairs are of no interest to them,' he said rather drily, and she
subsided back into her seat, flushing a little.
Now that they were in league, however temporarily, there seemed
to be a barrier between them that had never existed when she was
fighting with him. His manner was cool and courteous, and this in
itself was sufficient to keep her at bay. She tried to tell herself that
it was better-easier this way, but she could not make herself
believe it. Nothing he could say or do-no hardening of his attitude
to her could make the ending of this thing either simple or bearable.
She was caught in an emotional snare which was tearing at her.
At nights she lay awake, staring into the darkness, telling herself
that it was madness to allow herself to feel this way for a man
whom, in all conscience, she hardly knew. He's a stranger, she cried
out silently, a stranger, and yet at the same time she knew that this
was hardly the truth. That it was as if she had always known him,
always in some strange way been waiting for him. Her tragedy was
that he did not feel the same. At first she had been an aggravation,
something on his list requiring immediate attention, then later an
available woman to be made love to as and when the mood took
him. At times she even found herself wishing bitterly that she
belonged to his world, and could accept the kind of casual