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It was late afternoon when they reached the Palazzo Tirelli, a magnificent edifice. Grander still were the ruins that lay nearby, dating back nearly two-thousand years. Ferne could just make out a film crew looking them over, making notes, rehearsing shots.
Gino came to meet them and show them over the place with its long, wide corridors and stone arches. In every room he was able to describe some notable historical episode, which sounded impressive until she saw Dante shaking his head.
Their rooms turned out to be on different corridors, the only ones left, according to Gino. His manner was awkward, and Ferne guessed he was acting on instruction.
At supper she was seated next to Sandor, with Dante on the opposite side of the table several feet down. There were about fifty people at the long table, most of them film crew and actors. Everyone was dressed up to the nines, making her glad she’d chosen the softly glamorous dress of honey-coloured satin that paid tribute to her curves, yet whose neckline was high enough to be tantalising.
‘Beautiful,’ Sandor murmured. ‘But why aren’t you wearing that gold necklace I gave you? It would go perfectly with that dress.’
‘I’m afraid I’d forgotten it,’ she said.
His self-assured smile made her want to thump him. She glanced down the table to see how Dante was taking it, but he wasn’t looking at her.
He was having a good evening. Dinner jacket and bow-tie suited him, as the ladies nearby made clear. Ferne would have signalled her admiration if she’d been able to catch his eye, but he seemed happy with the full-bosomed creature who was laughing so uproariously at his jokes, that her attractions wobbled violently in a way that Ferne thought extremely inappropriate.
For a moment, she was nostalgic for Dante’s jokes; sharing laughter with a man brought a special closeness. It was something she’d never known with Sandor, and it meant that she was always on Dante’s wavelength, always inhabiting his world, even when they were bickering. In fact, the very bickering was a sign of that closeness, because they could always trust each other to understand.
As Dante had predicted, Sandor treated her as his honoured guest.
‘I owe you so much, Ferne. If it hadn’t been for what you did for me, I’d never have got the next step up.’
‘That’s not what you said at the time,’ she observed wryly.
‘I didn’t appreciate your skill in turning a difficult situation into something that would benefit me.’
She stared at him, wondering how she’d ever taken this conceited booby seriously.
‘Sandor, what are you after?’ she demanded.
He regarded her soulfully. ‘Destiny works in mysterious ways. We were fated to meet on that beach. Everyone was staggered by those pictures you took of me. Between us, we produced something of genius, and I think we could be geniuses again.’
She stared at him in outrage. ‘You want me to…?’
‘Take some more, as only you can. We’ll go out to the ruins, and you tell me exactly how you want me to pose. I’ve been working out in the gym.’
‘And I’m sure you’re as fit and perfect as ever.’
‘What did you think when you saw me today?’ he asked eagerly.
It would have been impossible to tell him the truth, which was that he had seemed ‘too much’, because her ideal was now Dante’s lithe frame.
To her relief, the maid appeared to change the plates for the next course. For the rest of the meal she concentrated on the elderly woman on her other side.
Afterwards the great doors were opened onto the garden, where coloured lights hung between the trees. People began to drift out to stroll beneath the moon. Sandor drew Ferne’s arm through his.
The crowd congregated near the ruins, where blazing lights had been switched on, illuminating them up to the sky. The director, an amiable man called Rab Beswick, hailed Sandor.
‘I like this place more every time I see it,’ he said. ‘Just think what we can make of these…’ He indicated several walls, some of which stood at right angles to each other with connecting balconies.
‘Just the right place to make a speech,’ came a voice behind them.
It was Dante, appearing from nowhere.
‘Antony was known for his ability to make the right speech at the right time,’ he said. ‘And his genius for picking the place that would be most effective.’
The director looked at him with awe.
‘Hey, you’re Italian,’ he said, as though nothing could be stranger than finding an Italian in Italy. ‘Are you an expert about this?’
‘I’ve made a particular study of Marc Antony,’ Dante said.
‘Well, I’d be glad of anything you could tell me.’
‘Let’s not get carried away,’ Sandor interrupted peevishly. ‘This film isn’t meant to be an historical treatise.’
‘Certainly not,’ Dante said suavely. ‘Its selling point will be the personal charms of Signor Jayley.’
From somewhere there was a smothered choke. Sandor turned furious eyes in a vain attempt to detect who was making fun of him. Unable to locate a suspect, he turned back to Dante.
Which was what Dante had intended, Ferne thought. Whatever was he up to?
‘Height is always effective,’ Dante continued smoothly. ‘If Antony was to make a great speech up there, silhouetted against the sky—’
‘That’s not in the script,’ Sandor said at once.
‘But it could be written in,’ Dante pointed out. ‘I’m not, of course, suggesting that you yourself should go up there. That would be far too dangerous, and naturally the film company won’t want to risk their star. A double could be used for the long shot.’
Sandor relaxed.
‘But it could look something like this…’ Dante finished.
Before anyone realised what he was doing, he slipped out of sight, and a moment later reappeared on one of the balconies.
‘You see?’ he called down. ‘What a shot this would make!’
‘Great!’ the director called up.
Ferne had to admit that Dante looked magnificent, standing high up, bathed in glittering spotlight. She only prayed that the balcony was strong enough to hold him and wouldn’t start crumbling.
This time she really wished that she’d brought her camera, but one of the production staff had his and was snapping away madly. Sandor was livid, she was fascinated to notice.
‘Come on down and we’ll talk about it,’ Rab called. ‘Hey, be careful.’ Dante was hopping down like a monkey, ending with a long leap to the floor, where he finished with a flourish.
‘You’re right, that’s a great shot. You’ll help us work on it, won’t you?’
‘Sure thing,’ Dante said. ‘I can show Mr Jayley how to—’
‘It’s getting late,’ Sandor said hastily. ‘We should be going inside.’
‘Yes, let’s go and look at the pictures,’ Rab said eagerly. ‘Come on, everyone.’
As the rest of them drifted away, Ferne murmured to Dante, ‘What did you do that for?’
‘You know exactly what I did it for,’ he murmured back. ‘I haven’t enjoyed myself so much for ages. He’s ready to kill me.’
His whole being was flooded with brilliance, as though he’d reached out, taken life by the hand and was loving every moment.
‘Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to repeat a trick?’ she asked severely. ‘Just because you climbed up into that building the other week, doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it. You were just showing off.’
He grinned, and her heart turned over. ‘You won’t insult me by calling me a show-off. Too many have said it before you. As for repeating the trick? Sure, it was the memory of the fire that gave me the idea. It was actually a lot easier to get up there than it looks, but your lover wouldn’t have tried it if you’d offered him an Oscar.’
‘He is not my lover.’
‘He wants to be.’
‘Come on,’ someone yelled from the retreating crowd. ‘They’re going to show the pictures.’
She would have argued further, but he slipped his arm about her, urging her forward irresistibly until they reached the villa, where someone had linked up the camera to a computer and had projected the pictures onto a screen.
There was Dante, high up, splendid, laughing down at them. Whether his triumph lay in making the climb, or in making Sandor look absurd and diminished, only Ferne knew. One thing she was sure of—he’d done it in style.
She looked around for Sandor, wondering how he was taking this.
‘He retired,’ Gino explained. ‘He’s had a long day.’
Translation: he’s sulking like a spoilt child, Ferne thought. Dante had hit the bull’s eye.
Dante himself seemed oblivious to his success. He was deep in conversation with Rab, and by now Ferne was sufficiently in tune with his mind to recognise that this was another move in the game. He wouldn’t say anything in front of an audience. But later…
‘I’ve had a long day too,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’
She slipped away and hurried up to her room. Sooner or later there was going to be a visitor, and she wanted to be ready.
First she needed a shower to wash the day off her. She turned it on as hard as she could and stood there, head back, arms wide, just letting it happen. It felt good.
She could have laughed aloud when she thought of how Dante had achieved his revenge—an Italian revenge—not violent, but skilled; a lithe, dancing movement, a quick thrust of the stiletto, unseen by anyone but his adversary, who had slunk away, humiliated.
Now she realised that she ought to have feared for Dante’s safety when he’d been up high, but she hadn’t, because she was under the spell he cast. And she was still under his spell, she thought happily.
She finished under the shower, pulled a robe around her and stepped out into the bedroom. But what she found there made her stop sharply.
‘Sandor!’
He was leaning against the door, his arms folded, a look of happy expectation on his face. He’d removed his shirt so that his magnificent chest was presented for her approval in all its naked perfection, smooth, muscular, evenly tanned.
‘What are you doing here?’ She sighed.
‘Oh, come on, sweetie. We both knew this was going to happen.’
‘Tommy, I swear, if you try to touch me I’ll thump you so hard you’ll see stars.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Don’t tell me what I mean. I’m warning you.’
He laughed and sauntered easily over to her, the king claiming his rights.
‘I think I might just put that to the test—Aargh!’
He yelped as her hand struck his face.
‘You bitch!’ he wailed. ‘I could get a swollen lip.’
She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could speak there was a knock on her door. She darted to open it and found Dante standing there. He was wearing dark-blue pyjamas, and his face had an innocent look that filled her with suspicion almost as great as her relief.
‘I’m so sorry to trouble you,’ he said, ‘but there’s no soap in my bathroom and I wondered if you’d mind—Oh dear, am I disturbing something?’
‘Nothing at all,’ Ferne said. ‘Mr Jayley was just going.’
Dante regarded Sandor with apparent surprise, seeming not to have noticed him before, but Ferne wasn’t fooled. He knew exactly what he was doing. In his own way, he was as much of an actor as Sandor, but a more subtle one.
‘Good evening,’ he said politely. ‘Oh dear, you seem to have suffered an injury. You’re going to have a nasty swollen lip.’
‘Eh!’ Sandor yelped. He tried to make for the bathroom, but Dante was blocking his way so that he was forced to turn away and retreat from the room altogether, slamming the door behind him.
‘That should keep him occupied,’ Dante said with satisfaction.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘BUT how did you know? I didn’t hit him that hard. He didn’t have a swollen lip.’
‘No, but he was afraid of it. I was just outside the door and I heard everything.’
‘And was it coincidence that you were there?’
‘Certainly not. I was lurking in the corridor. When I saw him go in, I listened. After all, you might have welcomed him.’
‘And then you’d have just gone away, I suppose?’ she said sardonically.
Slowly Dante shook his head, and there was something in his eyes she’d never seen before.
‘No way. If you’d welcomed him, I’d have come in and thumped him myself a lot harder than you did. But there was no need. You dealt with him very efficiently—I’m glad to say,’ he added softly.
‘You didn’t really think I wanted him, did you?’
He made a wry face. ‘I hoped not, but I needed to know. When I saw how easily he entered, I did wonder.’
‘I was in the bathroom, or he’d never have got in.’
