‘You’re right; get some rest,’ Mario said. ‘We’ll all meet here tomorrow morning at nine.’
They shook hands and she departed at once.
Giorgio watched her go, then eyed Mario wryly.
‘What’s going on with you two?’ he queried. ‘You’re on edge with each other. For a moment I really thought there’d been something between you.’
‘Not a thing,’ Mario assured him. ‘And there never could be.’
‘Pity. Romeo and Juliet were “star-crossed lovers”. It could have been interesting to have them promoted by another pair of star-crossed lovers. After all, if a couple is meant for each other but just can’t get it together—well, it’s not in their hands, is it? They just have to enjoy it while they can, but then accept that fate is against them.’
‘Isn’t that giving in too easily?’
‘It’s what Romeo and Juliet had to accept.’
‘And then they died.’
‘They died physically, but it doesn’t usually happen that way. Sometimes people just die inside.’
‘Yes,’ Mario murmured. ‘That’s true.’
‘I’ll call the other members of the group and fix a meeting. They’ll just love her. We’ve found the right person. Don’t you agree?’
Mario nodded and spoke in an iron voice. ‘The right person. Not a doubt of it. I must be going. My work has piled up while I’ve been away.’
He departed fast, urgently needing to get away from Giorgio’s sharp eyes that saw too much for comfort.
Upstairs, he headed for his bedroom, but paused before entering. The room allocated to Natasha was just across the corridor and he went to stand outside, looking at her door, wondering what was happening behind it.
The evening had torn his nerves to shreds. The woman he’d met had been as unlike the sweet, charming girl he remembered as steel was unlike cream. His heart told him it was impossible that they should be the same person, but his brain groaned and said it was true.
This was the heartless creature who had vanished without giving him a chance to defend himself, leaving him to hunt frantically for weeks until he’d realised that it was hopeless. And her manner towards him had left no doubt that she was enjoying her triumph.
A sensible man would have sent her away at once. Instead, he’d prevented her leaving, driven by instincts he didn’t understand, nor want to face.
From behind her door came only silence. He moved closer, raising his hand to knock, then dropping it again. This wasn’t the right moment.
Instead of going into his room, he turned away again and went downstairs into the garden, hoping some time in the night air would clear the confusion in his mind. But also doubting that anything would ever be clear again.
* * *
Natasha paced her room restlessly. After such a day she should have been ready to collapse into sleep, but her nerves were tense and she feared to lie awake all night, thinking the very thoughts she wanted to avoid.
Mario had blamed her for disappearing without giving him a chance to defend himself, and in so doing he’d touched a nerve.
Perhaps I should have let him say something, she thought. Why didn’t I?
Because I’m my mother’s daughter, said another voice in her mind. And I can’t help living by the lessons she taught me. Never trust a man. Don’t believe his explanation because it’ll be lies and you’ll only suffer more. In fact, don’t let him explain at all. Never, never give him a second chance.
She’d fled Mario because she feared to listen to what he might have to say. Thinking the worst of him felt safer. That was the sad truth.
But now, meeting him again and getting a sense of his torment, she felt uneasy about her own actions.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I’m not going down that road. What’s done is done. It’s over.’
In the last year she’d often suffered from insomnia and had resorted to some herbal sleeping pills. She took them out now, considering.
‘I’m not lying awake fretting over him. This is war.’
She swallowed two pills but, instead of going to bed, she went outside for a few minutes. The tall window opened onto a balcony where she could stand and look down on a narrow strip of garden. There were flowers, a few trees and beyond them the Adige River, glowing in the evening light. Now it was easy to slip into the balcony scene and become Juliet, yearning over the man who’d captured her heart before she knew who he was. When she’d realised that she’d fallen in love with an enemy, it was too late.
‘Too late,’ she murmured. ‘The last thing I wanted was to meet him again. I came here to start a new life. Mario, Mario, wherefore art thou, Mario? But it had to be you, didn’t it? When I’m looking forward to meeting new people, you have to pop up. Wherefore did thou do this, varlet?’
In her agitation she said the words aloud. Alarmed at herself, she retreated through the window, shutting it firmly.
* * *
Outside, all was quiet. Darkness was falling, and there was nobody to notice Mario standing, alone and silent, beneath the trees. He had come straight into the garden after leaving Natasha’s door, wondering if some light from her room would reassure him. What he had seen stunned and confused him. Her whispered words seemed to float down, reaching him so softly that he couldn’t be sure he’d actually heard them.
To believe what he longed to believe was something he refused to do. That way lay danger, disillusion—the things he’d promised himself to avoid in future. So he backed into the shadows, his eyes fixed on her window until the light went out and his world was full of darkness.
* * *
Promptly at nine o’clock the next morning Mario appeared at the breakfast table, frowning as he saw only Giorgio there.
‘Where is she?’ he demanded. ‘I told her nine o’clock.’
‘Have a heart,’ Giorgio begged. ‘It’s only a few minutes after nine. She’s not a machine, just a lovely lady.’
‘She is an employee being paid a high salary, for which I expect punctuality and obedience to my wishes. Kindly call her room.’
‘I’ve been calling it for half an hour,’ Giorgio admitted. ‘But there’s no reply. Perhaps she doesn’t want to talk to us.’
Or perhaps she can’t, said a voice in Mario’s mind. He remembered the woman she had been the evening before, bright, completely at ease, ready to challenge him every moment.
Yet there had been something else, he realised. Beneath her confident manner he’d sensed something different—troubled, uneasy. Their meeting had taken them both by surprise. His own turmoil had startled and shaken him, making him struggle not to let her suspect his weakness, the more so because she had seemed free of any weakness.
But then he’d seen a new look in her eyes, a flash of vulnerability that matched his own. It had vanished at once, but for a brief moment he’d known that she was as alarmed as he was.
He remembered how he’d stood under her balcony last night, watching her, sensing again that she was haunted, but resisting the impulse to reach out to her. Her disappearance now hinted at new trouble. If he went to her room, what would he find? The confident Natasha, laughing at his discomfiture? Or the frail Natasha who couldn’t cope?
Abruptly he took out his mobile phone, called her room and listened as the bell rang and rang, with no reply.
‘If it was