by Liz Fielding
‘I will take the signorina to her room,’ Anna said. ‘Follow me, please.’
The way led up a grand staircase that curved to the next floor, ending in luxurious marble tiles on which her heels echoed up to the door of her room.
The room itself was startling, with a marble floor and an exposed stone wall that gave it an air of rustic charm without lessening its elegance. Two floor-length windows flooded the room with light. The bed, which was large enough to sleep three, was a four-poster, hung with ivory net curtains.
The rest of the furniture was in dark wood with a rich sheen, and ornately carved. To Holly’s eye the items had the look of valuable antiques. She had reason to know this, having recently received a terrifying education in antiques.
‘Are you sure this is the right room?’ she asked, overwhelmed.
‘Signor Fallucci insisted on the very best guest room,’ Anna replied. ‘He says that every attention must be paid to you.’
‘That’s very kind of him,’ she murmured.
‘If you will follow me, signorina…’
Anna showed her through a door to a bathroom with walls also of exposed stone, an antique marble basin and hand-painted tiles. Thick ivory towels hung on the walls.
‘If the signorina is satisfied-’
‘Yes, it’s lovely,’ Holly said mechanically. She could feel a net closing about her.
‘If you would care to rest now, a meal will be sent to you here.’
When she was alone she sat down on the bed, feeling winded. On the face of it she’d fallen on her feet, but that wasn’t how it felt. The more she was welcomed and pampered, the more unnatural it all seemed, and the more nervous she became.
Everything made it clear to her that Judge Fallucci was a supremely powerful as well as a wealthy man. He was using both to prepare a niche for her, so comfortable that she wouldn’t want to leave.
But the fact was that she could not leave, even if she wanted to. He’d taken her passport; she had little money and no clothes. Now she had to depend on this stranger, who had seized control of her for his own purposes.
Despite the luxurious surface of her surroundings, she was a helpless prisoner.
CHAPTER TWO
SUPPER, when it arrived, was a feast for the gods. Soup made with ray fish and broccoli, lamb roasted in a sauce of garlic, rosemary, vinegar and anchovy, followed by tozzetti, sweet cookies made from sugar, almonds and aniseed.
With every course came the proper wine, rough red, crisp white or icy mineral water. Everything was perfect. Nothing had been left to chance.
When she had finished eating Holly went to the window and watched the last rays of the sun setting over the garden, which stretched out of sight, a maze of pines, Cyprus trees and flowers, threaded by paths, along which a tall man was strolling.
‘Signor Fallucci walks there every evening,’ Anna said, just behind her. She had come into the room to collect the tray. ‘Always he goes to visit his wife’s grave.’
‘She’s buried here?’
‘In a patch of ground that was specially consecrated.’
‘How long has he been a widower?’
‘Eight months. She died in a train crash, last December, and the little girl was badly hurt.’
‘Poor little mite.’
‘You can just see the monument, there-where the setting sun just touches the tip. Every evening he stands before it for a long time. When it’s dark he walks back to the house, but here there is only more darkness for him.’
‘I can imagine,’ she breathed.
‘He says he will see you in his study in twenty minutes,’ Anna added, departing with the tray.
Earlier, the high-handed message would have annoyed her. Now, watching him moving in the dusk, she realised that there had been a subtle change. He looked lonely, almost crushed. She began to feel a little more confident. Perhaps he wasn’t so fearsome after all.
At the exact time she knocked on the study door, and received a cool, ‘Avanti!’
Entering, she found herself in a room, dominated by a large oak desk, with a table lamp that provided the room’s only light. Outside its arc she was dimly aware of walls lined with leather-bound books.
He was standing by the window, looking out, and turned when she entered. But he didn’t move out of the shadows, and she couldn’t make out much more than his outline.
‘Good evening, signorina.’ His voice seemed to come from a distance. ‘You would prefer that we talk in English?’
‘Yes, thank you, Signor Fallucci.’
‘Your room is to your liking?’
‘Yes, and the meal was delicious.’
‘Of course.’ His tone suggested this was the natural order of things. ‘Otherwise my staff would have heard my displeasure. Would you care to sit down?’
He indicated the chair facing the desk. It was a command, not a request, and she sat.
‘I know something about you from my daughter,’ he said, seating himself opposite her. ‘Your name is Holly, you are English and you come from Portsmouth.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Didn’t you tell Liza that you lived in Portsmouth?’ he said sharply. ‘She thinks you did.’
‘That’s a mistake, and I’ll explain if you’ll let me finish.’ For all her resolution to tread carefully she couldn’t keep an annoyed edge out of her voice. She was damned if she’d let him cross-examine her as though they were in court.
He leaned back in his chair and made a gesture that meant, ‘Go on.’
‘I come from a little town in the English Midlands. Portsmouth is down on the south coast and I know it quite well because I’ve spent some holidays there. I tried to tell Liza that, but the place means a lot to her because of her mother. So I talked about it, as much as I could remember, and I think she seized on that, built on it and just blotted out the bit she didn’t need. She’s clinging on to something that can bring her a scrap of comfort. Children do it all the time.’
‘And not just children,’ he murmured.
There was a silence.
‘Please go on,’ he said at last.
‘I don’t know what else there is to say.’
He’d been half-turned away from her. Now he swung around and spoke in a hard voice.
‘We have a difficult situation. I’m a judge and you are on the run from the police.’
‘You don’t know that,’ she challenged. ‘They didn’t identify me in the compartment today.’
‘Very shrewd. Clearly they know little about the woman they are seeking, not even that she goes by the name of Holly-whatever her real name may be.’
He was silent, watching her. When she didn’t speak he shrugged and said, ‘You could, of course, give me any name you like.’
‘Not while you’re holding my passport,’ she replied.
He nodded and a glimmer of a smile flickered over his face.
‘You were trying to trip me up,’ she said furiously.
‘If I was, I didn’t succeed. Good.’
‘And if I had succeeded?’
‘Then I’d have been disappointed in you. As it is, you present me with a problem.’
‘You could have solved it in a moment this afternoon.’
‘That would have been impossible,’ he said heavily. ‘You know why.’
‘Liza. Yes, you couldn’t have done that to that poor little girl.’
‘And it’s left me in a very awkward position,’ he said, half angrily.
‘But you didn’t actually tell the police any lies.’
‘I can’t console myself with such nit-picking.’
‘So now you want to know all about me, and what I’m supposed to have done,’ she said, bracing herself.
His reply astonished her.
‘At this moment, the very last thing I want is to know all about you. I know that you are a decent person, incapable of evil.’
‘How can you know that?’
‘Because I’ve met a thousand criminals
and I know the difference. You develop an instinct. My instinct tells me that at worst you involved yourself in some foolishness that you didn’t understand. And also,’ his voice slowed and he added reluctantly, ‘also because of the way Liza clung to you. That little girl’s instinct is even surer than mine. If you had a criminal heart she would never have turned to you and wept in your arms.’
Holly was silent, amazed. She would not have expected such insight from this man.
Suddenly he rounded on her. ‘Am I wrong?’ he asked sharply.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not wrong.’
‘Good. Then I need to know a little about you, but let’s keep it to the minimum. Give me a rough idea, but no details and no names.’
‘It was as you said. I got caught up in something bad, not realising what was really happening. When I discovered the truth I ran, fast.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-eight.’
‘Who knows you’re in Italy?’
‘Nobody. I have no family.’
‘What about your work colleagues?’
‘None. I’m not in work just now.’
‘There must be someone in England who’ll think it strange if you don’t return by a certain date.’
‘There isn’t. I live alone in a small rented house. I didn’t know how long I’d be away, so I told my neighbour to expect me when she saw me. I could vanish off the face of the earth and it would be ages before anyone noticed.’
She said the last words in a tone of discovery, as it was borne in on her how completely isolated she was. It was something she had vaguely recognised, but it was only now that the reality was brought home to her.
And if I’d had my wits about me, she told herself, I wouldn’t have admitted it to him. Now he knows how totally I’m in his power.
In the silence she could sense him surveying her, probably thinking how dull and unsophisticated she was for her age. It was true. She knew nothing, and it had left her vulnerable to Bruno Vanelli. Vulnerable in her heart and her life, in ways that she was only now beginning to understand.
When she’d met Bruno she’d been mostly ignorant of the world and men, and he had guessed that and played her like a fool.
Which was what I was, she thought bitterly. A fool.
‘Tell me about that suitcase you were so anxious to recover,’ the judge said. ‘Is there anything incriminating in it?’
‘No, I just didn’t like losing my clothes.’
‘Anything there that can identify you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Because of Uncle Josh.’
‘Uncle Josh? He’s travelling with you?’
‘No, of course not. He’s dead.’
‘He’s dead but he tells you what to pack?’ he recited in a voice that strongly suggested he was dealing with a lunatic.
‘I know it sounds batty, but it’s the truth,’ she explained.
‘Batty? You’ll have to excuse me. I’m discovering unexpected holes in my English.’
‘It means crazy, weird. I feel a bit weird. In fact, very weird.’
His answer was to fill a glass and put it into her hand. It turned out to be brandy.
‘Give yourself a moment to calm down,’ he said in a gentler voice. ‘Then tell me about Uncle Josh and how he directs your packing from his grave.’
There was a slight quirk to his mouth that might almost have been humour.
‘Years ago,’ she said, ‘he went on holiday and on the journey someone stole his suitcase. There were some papers in it that contained his address. When he got home he found his house ransacked.
‘Since then none of my family have ever packed anything that could identify us. Papers have to go in a bag that you keep on you. It’s an article of faith. You swear allegiance to your country and you vow not to leave bits of paper in suitcases.’
Holly choked suddenly as the sheer idiocy of this conversation came over her. Now nothing mattered but a wild desire for maniacal laughter. She controlled it as long as she could, but then her resistance collapsed and she shook.
The judge rose quickly, rescuing her glass and setting it down out of danger.
‘I suppose this was inevitable,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to have hysterics you’d better have them and get it over with.’
She jumped up and turned away from him, unwilling to let him see how vulnerable she felt at this moment.
‘I am not having hysterics,’ she said firmly. ‘I just-don’t know what’s happening.’
‘Then why are you shaking?’ he said, moving behind her and placing his hands on her arms.
‘I’m-I’m not-I’m-’
He drew her slowly back against him and folded his arms across her in the front. It wasn’t a hug, because he didn’t turn her to face him. He was as impersonal as a man could be who actually had his arms about a woman. Even through the whirling in her head she knew that he was soothing her in a way that involved no suspicion of intimacy.
It was oddly reassuring. He was telling her silently that she was safe with him because there was a line he would not cross, while the warmth and power of the body behind her seemed to infuse her with new strength.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked quietly.
His breath fluttered heatedly against the back of her neck. She tried to ignore it, as she guessed he expected her to do. In fact, she doubted if he’d given the matter a thought.
‘I don’t know. I don’t even know who I am any more.’
‘That’s probably the safest option for you,’ he observed with a touch of wryness.
Releasing her, he guided her back to where she could sit down, and said almost casually, ‘I suppose it was a man who lured you into this?’
‘Yes, I suppose it’s that obvious. He gave me a line and I fell for it. I don’t know exactly what happened. Maybe they caught him and he managed to put the blame on me.’
‘My love, trust me-love me. Nothing matters except that we should be together.’
‘Saving himself by sacrificing you?’
‘Yes, I think he must have done that.’
‘How refreshing to find you so realistic.’
‘After what’s happened to me, I have no choice but to be realistic.’
His mouth twisted ironically.
‘Some are born realistic,’ he misquoted. ‘Some achieve realism, and some have it thrust upon them.’
‘Nobody is born realistic,’ she parried. ‘We all have it thrust upon us, in one way or another.’
‘How true! How bitterly true.’
He spoke so softly that she wasn’t sure she’d really heard, and when she regarded him with a questioning look he walked away to the window. He stayed there, not speaking, for several minutes. At last he said over his shoulder, ‘I dare say Anna has spoken to you of my wife.’
‘She did say that Signora Fallucci died in a train accident, and that Liza was also injured. Liza herself told me that her mother was English. I felt that she seized on me for that reason.’
‘You’re right. It struck me as soon as I entered the compartment. I saw something in Liza’s face that I haven’t seen for months. She was content, almost happy. And then, the way she clung to you-I suppose I made my decision then.’
‘The decision to take me over, lock, stock and barrel? The decision to acquire me at whatever cost, even if it meant out-bidding the police?’
‘That’s a cynical way of putting it.’
‘How else would you put it?’
‘I might say that you were in need of help, as am I, and we decided to assist each other.’
‘When did I decide anything?’
‘My dear signorina, forgive me if I have been too precipitate. Clearly I should have introduced you to the police and waited while you chose between us.’
Silence!
He was smiling, but behind the smile there was the steel of a man used to having his own way and determined that it was g
oing to continue. He had her helpless, and he knew it.
‘In fact, neither of us made the decision,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Liza made it. I’m merely following her wishes. I admit that the circumstances aren’t ideal but I didn’t create them. I had to act quickly.’
It was true, and every instinct warned her to go carefully and not antagonise him. But too many years of going carefully rose up in defiance now, robbing her of caution.
‘No, you didn’t create them, but you knew how to take advantage of them, didn’t you? Despite your talk of following Liza’s wishes, I’m little better than a prisoner-’
‘Not at all. Walk out whenever you like.’
‘You know I can’t. I have no clothes, no money, no passport…’
His response was to reach into his jacket and hand her a fistful of notes.
‘Go,’ he said. ‘I will order that the doors are opened for you.’
She backed away from him, refusing to touch the money and saying wildly, ‘Oh, yes? Where am I? Where do I go? What do I do? You’re just playing with me, and you should be ashamed.’
Holly could tell she’d taken him by surprise. There was a flash of anger, then he nodded.
‘I admire your courage, signorina. Foolhardy but admirable.’
‘Perhaps it is you who is being foolhardly,’ she snapped, not appeased. ‘You took me into your house, and all you know about me is that I’m on the run.’
‘But you’ve assured me that you’re innocent.’
‘Well, I would say that, wouldn’t I?’ she hurled at him. ‘It was a pack of lies to protect myself. How would you know the difference?’
‘Maria vergine! If you imagine that you could deceive me for a moment, you’re mistaken. If I didn’t think your worst fault was incredible naivety I would never allow you near my daughter.’
Her antagonism died. He’d read her correctly. Naivety was the kindest word for her.
‘Now, can we stop fencing and start being practical?’ he continued. ‘I want you to stay here as a companion to Liza. Berta does an excellent job caring for her, but she can’t give her what she really needs, the thing that only you can give her.