‘Crazy.’ She picked up the tray, stared at the half-eaten pasta. ‘You didn’t even touch any of this!’
‘I did; it was lovely,’ Antonia hurriedly said. ‘But there was far too much for me.’
‘You don’t eat enough to keep a mouse alive! No wonder you’re so pale and skinny. I can’t think what Mr Cy sees in you. What he needs is a woman with red blood in her veins, not a pallid little thing like you.’
Lucia was not only Mrs Devvon’s maid; she ran the house with a rod of iron. There were several other servants who cleaned and cooked; Lucia gave them their orders and kept a beady eye on them, as she did on Antonia, and she believed she had the right to comment on anything that concerned the Devvon family.
Antonia bit her lip and didn’t retort. Lucia gave her a grim little smile of satisfaction, and shuffled away again. Antonia got on with her work, feeling oddly uneasy all the time, wishing Cy would ring. He made her feel so safe.
Safe. Her smile vanished; her face stiffened and paled. Patrick Ogilvie had tarnished the word ‘safe’ now; she would be afraid to use it because he had given it a new implication, insinuated that the warm feeling of being secure and cherished she had when Cy was with her was somehow false, unreal.
Why should it be wrong to want to feel safe? She had never felt that way before with anyone. Her parents had always excluded her from their lives; from childhood she had felt like an outsider, her nose pressed against the window of life, watching enviously as other people enjoyed happiness and security. Hers had been such a strange childhood. She had only been happy when Uncle Alex and Susan-Jane were around; they gave her the illusion of happy family life.
She had been very happy on the night of that barbecue party at the villa in Bordighera. Everyone was so friendly, and there were plenty of people of her own age. She had been having a great time, dancing, talking, listening to the music, and then she had seen Patrick Ogilvie standing not far away, watching her intently.
Her heart had missed a beat. She had been deaf, dumb, blind to everything else around her for a moment, staring back.
He was the most exciting man she had ever seen—tall, with a lean, supple body and golden tanned skin, those startling blue eyes, and sunbleached brown hair which tumbled down over his temples. She couldn’t stop staring at him, breathless at his looks, full of curiosity about him.
Was he an actor? With looks like that he could be. A pity he was so much older. He must be thirty or so, she decided, way out of her league, especially with that faintly grim look about him. But she rather liked the grimness; it gave him a dangerous air. He wouldn’t be as easy to get on with as any of the boys she had been dancing with. She had the distinct impression he was angry about something; there was a darkness deep in those blue eyes.
She waited for him to turn away, look at other girls, but he hadn’t. He had gone on staring at her, so fixedly that she had felt excitement running through her like fire through her veins.
He couldn’t really be interested in her, could he? she had thought incredulously. Could he?
She had begun to smile shyly, and then his face had changed. His mouth had twisted impatiently; he had frowned, turned away, drained the glass of red wine he was holding and put the glass down on the nearest table, his whole body tense and restless.
Antonia remembered now how her heart had sunk. He was turning away. He was going to walk off and ask somebody else to dance. But why had he stared at her with such attention, then lost interest? Maybe he had decided she was too young? There was a big gap in their ages, after all. Maybe he was shy, reluctant to ask her to dance in case she rejected him as too old?
She couldn’t just let him go like that. Urgency had given her an unusual courage; she had gone over to him, nerving herself to make the first approach.
Very unsure of herself and yet very excited, her heart beating thickly in her throat, she had asked him to dance.
He had turned, his face blank, stared down at her without answering, as if he had never seen her before.
At close hand he was even better looking than she had thought at first. Antonia had moved closer, wondering if he didn’t understand English, had put a hand on his sleeve, given him a shy smile, not quite able to meet his eyes, hoping he could not see the tell-tale pulses she felt beating in her throat. Just touching his arm had sent her temperature way up.
And then he had rejected her, his voice a slap in the face. ‘I don’t dance,’ he had said, eyes dismissive, and walked away.
She had gone scarlet, then white, wanting to cry but unable to in front of all those people. She had blundered away, like a moth flapping into a window, blinded by a flame which had singed its wings.
She remembered people moving apart as she almost cannoned into them, was horrified to realise that the little incident had been noticed, that her humiliation had had an audience.
Uncle Alex caught up with her, put an arm round her, and steered her into a shady corner where they wouldn’t be overheard.
‘Are you OK, honey? What did Patrick say to make you look like that?’
She had been too close to tears to answer and he had sighed, watching her face.
‘You mustn’t take it too seriously, whatever it was—he’s feeling very low tonight; his engagement has just been broken off.’ He had given her a glass of wine, told her all about Patrick Ogilvie and his fiancée,
