‘Don’t you worry, I won’t let them.’
But she heard the uncertainty in his voice and it made her shiver. She’d always known him light-hearted in the face of any challenge, as though nothing could ever be too much for him. Now she sensed that he didn’t feel confident of overcoming this.
‘You know,’ she said huskily, ‘some people would dream of this. They’d say we were being unreasonable. Suddenly you’re an important man with a great inheritance. Why aren’t we glad?’
‘Because it’s a nightmare,’ he said. ‘Me, a count. The country bumpkin, which is all I’ve ever wanted to be. Do you want to be a contessa?’
‘Are you kidding? I’d rather be a cow-pat.’
They clung together, seeking reassurance from each other, but each knowing they were fighting something that could suffocate them.
There was a knock on the door, and Dulcie looked in.
‘Your uncle wants you in his study,’ she said to Leo. ‘He’s got papers to show you.’
‘Hell!’
‘Best get it over with,’ she said sympathetically.
When he’d gone Selena said, ‘How do you feel about this? You were going to be a contessa, and now you’re not. How can you smile?’
Dulcie laughed and shrugged. ‘I’ve had enough of titles to last me a lifetime. Being a countess never made my mother happy.’
‘Your mother-is a countess?’ Selena echoed.
‘My father’s an earl, that’s a sort of English count.’
‘And you live-like this?’ Selena indicated their surroundings.
‘Goodness no!’ Dulcie laughed. ‘We never had two pennies to rub together. My father gambled it all away. That’s why I had to work as a private detective. I couldn’t do anything else. Having a title doesn’t qualify you for a proper job.’ She looked at Selena, suddenly alert. ‘Selena, what’s the matter? Are you ill?’
‘No, I’m not ill, but I’ve stepped into a crazy house.’
Another knock on the door. This time it was Harriet, and behind her a servant with a trolley bearing champagne. While Dulcie began to pour, Harriet stretched out on a sofa and kicked off her shoes.
‘Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,’ she said. ‘You-
‘We would,’ Dulcie chuckled, handing the other two a glass each. ‘We’re well out of it.’
‘Leo and Guido were practically coming to blows,’ Harriet said cheerfully. ‘Leo says he’s going to wring Guido’s neck. Oh, by the way, Liza would have come with me, but she’s a little tired, and she’s gone to bed. Actually I think it’s her English that’s troubling her. She doesn’t speak it very well and she’s afraid you may be offended.’ This last was to Selena.
So that was the countess’s excuse, Selena thought glumly. That was how these people operated. No out-right snub, nothing you could take offence at. Just a half-truth that left you clutching at shadows.
She downed the champagne, which she suddenly needed badly.
Leo waited until the house was quiet before he slipped out of his room. Propriety be blowed, tonight he needed to be with Selena.
But when he opened her door he found her bed empty and no sign of her. He switched on the light to be sure, then switched it off again and went to the window. The Grand Canal lay before him, silent, mysterious, melancholy in its beauty. Many a man would envy him, the inheritor of all this, but it was his wide, rolling acres that called to him.
And his instincts told him that there was another trouble coming, and that was the one he dreaded.
Something caught his eye and he looked to see where the palace made a right angle to itself. Through the large windows he could see a white shape wandering through the great rooms.
Like any self-respecting palace this one had its ghosts, but none like this. Leo left the room quickly and hurried down through the building, across the marble floors that echoed the lightest footsteps.
He found the ghost in the ballroom, walking forlornly along the huge windows that went from floor to ceiling. All around them shone decorations of gold leaf. Above them hung gigantic crystal chandeliers, silent in the gloom.
He spoke her name softly, and she turned to look at him. Even in this light he could see her face well enough to know that it was distraught. The next moment they’d thrown themselves into each other’s arms.
‘I can’t do it,’ she cried. ‘I just can’t do this.’
‘Of course you can,’ he soothed her, stroking her hair although his heart was full of fear. ‘You can do anything you set your mind to. I know that, even if you don’t.’
‘Oh, sure, I can do anything that takes grit and bull-headedness, but this-it would crush me.’
That was what he’d been afraid of. But he wasn’t ready to give up.
‘We wouldn’t be trapped here all the time-’
‘We would in the end.’ She pulled away from him and began to pace restlessly. ‘Look at this room. Dulcie would be at home here because she was raised in a place like this. Harriet would be all right because it’s full of antiques. But me? I just spend my whole time hoping I don’t bump into things.’
‘It would be different in time,’ he pleaded. ‘You’ll change-’
‘Maybe I don’t want to change,’ she flashed at him. ‘Maybe I think there’s nothing wrong with the way I am.’
‘I didn’t say-’
‘No, and you never will. But the truth is the truth, whether anyone says it or not. Leo, we don’t just come from different worlds. It’s different planets, different universes. You know it yourself.’
‘We’ve overcome that before.’
‘Yes, because of the farm. Because of the land, and the animals, and all the things we both love. It didn’t matter where we came from, because we were heading in the same direction. But now-’ she looked around her in despair.
‘We don’t have to spend much time here-we’ll still have the farm-’
‘Will we? This was going to be Guido’s inheritance, and now he’s lost it to you. Aren’t you going to have to give him yours in exchange?’
That thought had been nibbling uneasily at the edge of his consciousness.
‘Guido’s not interested in farming, I can repay him in money. And if I have to I’ll sell some of the antiques in this place. Every single one if I have to.’
‘And we live on the farm and let your ancestral palace stand empty? Even I know better than that.’ She tore at her short hair. ‘If it was anywhere else you could simply move into the palace and buy up some farming land around it, but what can you do in Venice?’
‘
‘Don’t call me that,’ she said quickly.
‘Why, suddenly-now?’
‘Because everything’s changed-now.’
‘So suddenly I can’t tell you that I love you more than life? I can’t say that I don’t want this either, but it’ll be bearable if I have you?’
‘Why mustn’t I say that your love is everything to me?’ he asked in a voice that was suddenly hard. ‘Because you can’t say the same?’
In the long silence that followed Leo felt his heart almost stop.
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered at last. ‘Oh, Leo, forgive me, but I don’t know. I-I do love you-’
‘Do you?’ he asked in a harder voice than she had ever heard him use.
‘Yes, I do love you, I do, I do-’ With every repetition she grew more frantic. ‘Please try to understand-’
‘I understand this-that you only love me on certain conditions. When things get tough, suddenly the love isn’t enough.’
He gave a bitter laugh. ‘It’s ironical isn’t it? If I lost every penny I could count on your love. If I was left to starve in the streets I know you’d starve with me and never complain.’
‘Yes-yes-’
