‘Thank you.’ She smiled shyly. ‘Meg and I both thank you very much for the flowers, too, but I’m afraid there’s a problem—’
‘You cannot dine with me?’ he said quickly, his smile fading.
‘Meg’s not well enough to come.’ Alicia eyed him uncertainly. ‘Is it all right if I come with you on my own?’
Francesco’s eyes lit with a look which set her pulse racing. ‘It is perfect. I am most honoured to help you celebrate your birthday.’ He took a phone from his pocket. ‘I will ring the restaurant.’ After a short, rapid-fire conversation he led Alicia outside into the balmy, starlit night. ‘We are dining in Santa Croce. Can you walk that far in those shoes?’
She nodded fervently. Even if she had blisters tomorrow.
Florence after dark was so vibrant with noise and life, and the constant background noise of traffic and inevitable motor scooters. Alicia took in a deep, relishing breath, drinking it in like nectar as Francesco led her through the still-crowded Piazza della Signoria where at outside tables couples were drinking cocktails and people-watching in the balmy evening. Neptune loomed in his fountain, sleek and silvery-pale in the floodlights with his attendant water-nymphs, but Alicia’s eyes went straight to the Loggia dei Lanzi where Perseus held his gruesome trophy aloft.
‘You like that statue?’ asked Francesco, watching, and she nodded happily.
‘But I love everything here. I’ve looked forward to the holiday for so long, I was afraid I might be disappointed.’ She smiled up at him. ‘But your city is even more wonderful than I’d imagined.’
‘It is beautiful,’ he agreed as they left the piazza behind to make for Santa Croce. ‘But it is not my city. I am here for a few days on business. I do not live here. My home is in Montedaluca.’
As they passed the floodlit façade of the great Santa Croce church, it suddenly struck Alicia that in the town that had his name in it he might well have a wife and family. Something she should have checked on long before now.
Francesco came to a halt soon afterwards outside the ancient palazzo which housed the restaurant. ‘Something worries you,’ he said in the slow, careful English which had surprised her from the first. She would have expected an Italian to talk quickly, with a lot of hand waving. But there was an inner stillness to Francesco da Luca she found deeply fascinating. ‘What troubles you, Alicia?’
She braced herself. ‘Are you married?’
‘Ah, I see! What would you do if I say yes?’ he asked, amused, sending her heart plummeting down to the new shoes.
‘Go straight back to the hotel,’ she said promptly. And cry into her pillow.
‘Without your birthday dinner?’ He smiled. ‘Then it is a good thing, cara, that I am not married.’ He threw out a hand. ‘No wife, no fidanzata.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A fiancée, MissAlicia.’ He looked suddenly stern. ‘If I had possessed either I would not have requested your company tonight.’
Her chin lifted defiantly. ‘I had to ask.’
‘Naturalmente.’ He smiled and took her hand. ‘Now, let us eat.’
An elegant woman at the reception desk led them through the crowded restaurant to a small group of tables for two on a raised dais at the back of the room. Alicia gazed at her surroundings in delight as Francesco held her chair for her. Faded haughty faces of mediaeval knights looked down on them from frescoed walls, their rearing horses and lean hunting-dogs given the illusion of movement by the flickering candles on the tables. Alicia was suddenly grateful for her mother’s faultless taste. Her simple little sheath-dress, for all its simplicity—or because of it—felt exactly right here. As Francesco held her chair for her Alicia’s eyes widened. On her plate lay a single, creamy rose. She gazed up at him in delight as she thanked him, thinking how aristocratic he looked, so very obviously at home in surroundings like this.
‘I chose it with care,’ he informed her, his eyes gleaming in the candlelight. ‘See? The petals are the colour and velvet texture of your skin.’
Thankful that due to this same texture her skin rarely showed blushes, she smiled at him luminously. ‘Thank you for making my birthday so special for me.’
‘It is my great pleasure,’ Francesco assured her as a waiter filled their glasses. ‘Allora, even if you do not care for it you must have one sip of champagne to celebrate this special day. Happy birthday, Alicia.’
She smiled as he raised his glass in a toast and touched it with her own, and to please him drank a little. And found that this champagne was pure nectar. ‘It’s delicious,’ she told him, surprised.
He smiled indulgently. ‘I am glad it pleases you. Now, tell me what you like to eat.’
Alicia took one look at the daunting menu and appealed to Francesco. ‘Will you help me choose?’
His eyes gleamed bright in the candlelight as they smiled into hers. ‘I will do anything you wish, cara.’
Afterwards Alicia had very little recollection of the delicious antipasti she was served, or the meltingly tender lamb with artichokes that followed. She was so enchanted with Francesco and Florence that the food was of secondary importance as they talked together in a little candlelit oasis of privacy on their dais above the other diners in the crowded restaurant.
‘So where did you go to school, Alicia?’ he asked.
‘In a convent,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘When the nuns heard we were coming to Florence, they told us we must visit Santa Croce—but they meant the church, not a restaurant like this.’
‘You are a Catholic?’
‘Yes. Are you?’
He nodded. ‘But not as devout as my mother would wish.’
‘I’m not as devout as Bron, either.’
‘Bron?’
‘My mother, Bronwen Cross. As I mentioned before, I’ve never met my biological father,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Is your father still alive?’
His eyes shadowed. ‘No. My parents married late. He died when I was young.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ She touched his hand in sympathy. ‘Brothers, sisters?’
‘None.’
‘So your mother just has you.’
‘Davvero,’ he said heavily, then smiled and changed the subject. ‘I would offer you more champagne, but perhaps it is better you keep to one glass.’
‘Much better,’ she agreed, and with a sigh glanced at her watch. ‘The entire evening has been so lovely, Francesco, but now I must get back to Meg.’
As they left the restaurant Alicia stumbled a little in her new heels, and Francesco took her hand to steady her, then kept it in his to walk back to the hotel. For Alicia the warm, hard clasp of Francesco’s hand in hers was the crowning touch of the entire evening. As they neared the hotel he drew her to a halt in the shadows in the quiet street.
‘Tomorrow I have business matters to attend to during the day, but in the evening will you dine with me again, Alicia? Your friend also, if she is well enough.’ He smiled into her startled eyes. ‘Say yes.’
‘I need to ask Meg first,’ she hedged, secretly ecstatic.
‘Do you have a telefonino—a mobile phone?’
She nodded. ‘Megan’s brother gave me a new one for my birthday.’
‘Give it to me, then. I will enter my number into it, and yours into mine. Allora,’ Francesco