He understood all too well and an impatient hormonal jig urged him to go for the scissors, but he reined it in.
This was definitely a moment for the careful unpicking of knots.
‘I find that anticipation is often the greater part of the pleasure,’ he assured her. ‘Which is why we are taking the scenic route.’
‘Oh? Should I be worried? About lunch.’
Inevitably the destination was going to disappoint her, but that was for him to know and her to find out. But lunch was merely the first stop on the journey.
‘Graziella is an excellent cook. You can rest assured that expectations will be fully met, if not exceeded.’
The path wound up the hill for a hundred yards or so to a point where the countryside was spread out in all directions below them. The village, vineyards, his laboratory and nursery for the vines, scattered farms.
Sarah lifted her hand to shade her eyes as she looked into the far distance.
‘Are there bears in the mountains?’ she asked.
‘Bears?’ It was the last question he’d been expecting. ‘There are a few brown bears, mostly in the national park. And wolves are on the increase. What makes you ask?’
‘I thought Lex might have been teasing me.’ She let her hand drop, looked down. ‘The trees completely hide the house from up here.’
‘It’s tucked in a dip in the landscape. The winters can be hard.’
The only vulnerable spot was the broken wall. That, and a boy who happened to be in the right place, at the right time, to open the gate. Whether by accident or design he had yet to discover.
‘Does the scenery live up to the recommendation?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely. Lex told me it was beautiful but actually it’s breathtaking.’ She looked around. ‘Where’s the river?’
‘It’s over there.’ His chin was level with her shoulder as he bent to point out to her a glint of water on the far side of the village. Breathing again the scent of her sun-warmed skin. Something faintly spicy. Vanilla. Cinnamon. Good enough to eat. ‘To the left of those trees,’ he added as she searched for it.
‘I have it,’ she said. Then, as she spotted the motorcycles of the paparazzi who’d followed the limousine from Rome, ‘Who are all those people down there on the road?’
Well, she could hardly ignore them.
‘They’re paparazzi. They followed Bella from Rome this morning.’
She turned to stare at him. ‘Your cousin is here? No wonder you were so edgy.’
‘It has been an interesting morning,’ he admitted.
‘And yet you were willing to let me take a photograph of your house?’
‘I don’t think the lens in your mobile phone would give you much of a photograph,’ he said. ‘But I’ll let you into a secret. Bella wasn’t in the car they followed.’
‘So they’re waiting down there while she’s …?’
‘Somewhere else.’
‘Good for her,’ she said, smart enough not to push it. ‘Is it okay if I take a photograph?’
‘Of the paparazzi? Or the view?’
‘Sneak pictures of the photographers?’ The idea seemed to amuse her. ‘They’d just be a smudge in the distance. I simply wanted a shot of the view. Lex will be interested to see what it looks like now.’
‘Will he?’ he said, forcing himself to curb a snag of irritation that, while he was going out of his way to make life easy for her, charm her, she kept talking about some other man.
He waited while she took her pictures then asked the name of a town, its red roofs spread over the top of a distant hill.
‘That is Arpino. Cicero was born there.’
‘The man who wrote that a room without books is like a body without a soul.’ She caught him looking at her and with a wry smile said, ‘It’s on a fridge magnet at home.’
‘Then it must be true.’ Forcing himself to look away, he said, ‘It’s an interesting place. They’ve recently excavated a well-preserved Roman pavement beneath the town square and there’s a bell tower that has to be climbed by anyone who really wants to see a view.’ Then, aware that he sounded rather like a guidebook, ‘After a shaky start, I’m attempting to make a rare visitor feel welcome.’
‘And doing an excellent job.’ Then, with a sigh, ‘Everything is so ancient here. We have old buildings, monuments at home, but in Italian history isn’t a visitor attraction, it’s embedded into the very fabric of life.’
‘We’ve been here a long time,’ he said. ‘And while you were building in wood and straw, we were constructing in stone, which is more enduring.’
‘You built in stone in Britain, too, but the Saxons were the original recyclers.’
It occurred to him that he should be grateful to whoever had sent her for having the wit to choose someone with intelligence as well as beauty.
The journey, wherever it took them, certainly wouldn’t be boring.
‘Shall we go?’ He took her elbow. ‘The path down through the olive grove is steep.’
‘An olive grove? Hold on …’ Now that she’d started, there was no stopping her and she made him wait while she took photographs of the olives. ‘Sorry. I’m being a total tourist.’
She was certainly giving a great impression of one. But, then again, maybe she had never seen olives growing before.
‘Don’t apologise. Like life, we tend to take our surroundings for granted. It’s refreshing to see the familiar through new eyes,’ he said, opening the gate to the garden.
‘Wow.’ Sarah had stopped on the top terrace. ‘Just … wow.’
Below them the vineyards swept away down the valley, but she wasn’t looking at that. She was looking at the kitchen garden and in a moment had abandoned him to snap close-ups of zucchini flowers, artichokes, was stooping to rub her fingers against the herbs billowing over the path. They were swarming with Nonna’s bees, but she seemed oblivious, as intoxicated by the scent as they were.
‘You are a gardener?’ he asked.
‘No. That’s my mother. She gardens, keeps hens and we’ve always had bees. What is this?’ she asked.
He lifted her long, slender fingers to his face. He didn’t need the scent to identify the plant but he was the advocate of taking time, in this case to smell not roses, but herbs.
‘It is Thymus citriodoros “Aureus”. The golden variety of lemon thyme.’
‘The Latin name. That’s impressive,’ she said, laughing.
‘But I am a Roman,’ he reminded her. ‘Between Monday and Friday, anyway.’
Her hand was soft to the touch and his reluctance to release it was not entirely an act. It might be a game, but this wasn’t the Garden of Eden and he wouldn’t go to hell for picking the fruit.
‘Of course it helps that I am a botanist.’
‘Oh.’
‘We don’t do souvenirs of Isola del Serrone,’ he said, bending to break off a piece of the herb, ‘but put this in your bag and you’ll remember us whenever you open it.’
Remember me, was the subtext. It had been a while, but he still remembered the moves.
She responded with every appearance of delight to this small gesture and he found