them.
‘Do you think I’m seeking her now?’ he murmured. ‘Can’t you tell the difference?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Let her go, Polly. Until you drive her out neither of us can.’
He kissed her again and again, as though seeking the one kiss that would speak to her heart.
‘Perhaps it can’t be done,’ she gasped.
‘Don’t say that,’ he begged.
‘I’m afraid. Aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
She returned the kiss so that the impulse came from her and the strength was on her side. She was inexperienced in love, and the reverse was true of him, but now he was following her lead, learning from her, trusting her in love as in everything else.
But she was leading him along a road whose end was obscure to her-a road that might be wrong for both of them.
He guessed it too, for he said, ‘You can deal with my ghost but can I deal with yours?’
‘Hush.’
‘Can Brian?’ he growled. ‘Does he even know that you still spend your life making comparisons? That when he kisses you he holds two women in his arms?’
‘Forget him,’ she urged.
‘As you have?’
‘He doesn’t belong here now. Nobody else belongs here with us.’
She gave herself up to the joy of the moment, trying to believe that only this mattered and she could make it last for ever. But that hope was doomed. Even in the midst of her happiness she knew that.
It was the sound of a church bell that forced them back to reality, making them draw apart, both shaking with desire and confusion.
‘Do you hear that?’ she murmured.
‘It’s only the clock. Ignore it.’
‘I can’t. It’s striking midnight. Time for Cinderella to go.’
‘Why are you laughing?’ he asked, feeling her shaking in his arms.
‘I’m laughing at myself,’ she said with a touch of hysteria. ‘Oh, heavens! I should have remembered that midnight always comes. Sensible Polly isn’t always so sensible after all.’
‘I’m glad of that,’ he said huskily.
He turned her face up and looked at it in the moonlight, seeing its clean, perfect lines as never before. The sight entranced him, and he would have kissed her again, but she pressed her hands against his chest.
‘It’s time we went home,’ she whispered. ‘The ball’s over.’
‘But you’ve left me a glass slipper, right?’
She shook her head. ‘More like an army trainer. Nurse Bossy-Boots is back in charge.’
His smile was as sad as her own as they walked together back through the small, winding streets.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘DULL, dreary, prosaic. That’s what I am, and I shouldn’t have let myself forget it.’
It was typical of the hand life had dealt Polly that after claiming her freedom by dramatically shearing off her hair she should find that it backfired on her with a feverish cold.
‘Can you take Matti?’ she croaked to Hope next day. ‘I don’t want to get too close to him.’
The cot was promptly whisked out of her room, and she herself was banished back to bed, where she was nursed royally. Everyone looked in to wish her well-including Ruggiero, who stayed well back in response to her urgently flapping hands.
For three days she could do little but suffer. Her meals were brought upstairs, and in between eating she slept. At last she felt better, and began to make forays out of bed.
On one of these days she sat by the window, watching as Ruggiero, below, played with Matti, showing every sign of pride in his mental alertness, while his son, as always, strutted his stuff to an admiring audience.
They’re both fine without me, she thought.
At that moment Hope pointed up to the window, and they all looked up, waving and smiling to her. For a strange moment it looked as if they were waving goodbye.
When she was sure she presented no threat to anyone, she went downstairs again.
‘You were away too long,’ Ruggiero told her.
‘Or just long enough. You and Matti get on better when I’m not hovering over you.’
‘I’ve taught him three new words. And Toni swears he’s learning to call me Poppa, although it sounds more like patata.’ He grinned. ‘But I don’t mind being called a potato by my son. He’ll probably call me worse when he’s older.’
‘Brilliant. So now you and he have established a connection, you’re not going to be taking any risks, are you?’
‘Risks?’
‘I can assume that you’re enough of a father to abandon this mad idea of the rodeo?’
‘It’s tomorrow.’
‘And you’re riding?’ she demanded, aghast.
‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t.’
‘There’s every reason. You’re not fit yet. You’ll have another accident and maybe this time you’ll be killed. That child has lost his mother-he doesn’t deserve to lose his father too. Especially when he’s only just met him.’
‘It’s no more than I’ve done before. I wasn’t killed in the past, and what happened the day we met was a freak accident, and you know it. I have a duty to our workers to prove that the bike is good. They depend on us for a living.’
‘So get another rider. You say there’ll be others, so I expect any one of them would be glad of the chance.’
His mouth set in stubborn lines.
‘It has to be me,’ he said. ‘Because I was the one riding when things went wrong.’
‘And if things go wrong again-?’
Hope, approaching, overheard this and joined in the conversation with horror.
‘I knew you were having this party, but I didn’t know you were actually riding,’ she said, appalled. ‘You’re not nearly well enough. Get one of the others to do it.’
‘Don’t give me orders, Mamma,’ he said quietly. ‘That goes for both of you.’
He walked away before either of them could reply.
Hope groaned and cursed herself.
‘I’m sorry, cara. I shouldn’t have spoken. You would have done much better.’
‘But I wasn’t doing any better,’ Polly sighed. ‘He’s completely pig-headed. I don’t understand that. I thought we were getting through to him-that Matti was getting through. Then suddenly everything goes into reverse. He plays with his son, he teaches him words, and he smiles in the right places, but he won’t give up his pleasure to protect him. Oooh, I could-’
She made a strangling motion with her hands.
‘Do it for both of us,’ Hope snapped.
Secretly Polly knew that it was disappointment as much as anger that was driving her. The softened mood between herself and Ruggiero had seemed full of promise for his future with his son. Suddenly his image had darkened into that of a man concerned only with himself and his own wishes, without care for his child.
None of Ruggiero’s siblings happened to be in Naples at that moment, so there was only Toni, Hope and Polly who might have attended the rodeo. Hope flatly refused to do so.
‘No, you’ll just be shopping nearby,’ Ruggiero said. ‘As always.’
