The Fires of Torretta

by Iris Danbury

  THE FIRES OF TORRETTA

  Iris Danbury

  Rosamund was furious when, inspecting the villa which her employer had rented for his stay in Sicily, she found a strange man apparently in occupation there.

  Brent Stanton was no Adonis, she thought, and his hectoring, over-bearing manner added nothing to his attractions. Yet Erica, her employer's daughter, and the beautiful Adriana Mandelli made it only too clear that they found Brent irresistible.

  Could Rosamund be mistaken?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Rosamund glanced again at her watch. Half-past four. Erica had declared that she would be here not a minute later than three o’clock.

  Not that Rosamund objected to waiting. She was content to idle here at this garden café perched high on the cliffs. Far below in a curving bay a small green-covered island contrasted with the intense cobalt blue of the expanse of sea beyond. The Ionian Sea, she reminded herself, for this was Taormina on the east coast of Sicily, and to Rosamund the idea of lazing here on a warm afternoon in February was one that had not entered her plans until recently.

  For the past year she had been working as residential secretary to a history professor, Stephen Holford, at his house in a quiet part of Essex not far from the coast. Then one morning he startled her by asking, “How would you like to spend a year in Sicily?”

  “Sicily?”

  “Yes. You know where it is—a footstool to the toe of Italy.”

  “Of course I know, but—”

  “I spent a couple of months there about three years ago and I’ve always wanted to go back and stay for at least a year, even longer. I haven’t had the chance until now. Erica is home. She’s nineteen, but doesn’t seem to have any ideas about a career, or whether she wants to go to university. So I’m not interfering with her future education. She’s not particularly strong and I think a good long stay in Sicily might do her good.”

  “I’d like to think about the idea.” Rosamund was reluctant to make a snap decision. “What would you be writing about there? Whose history or biography?”

  She knew that he always had several projects in mind, but she wondered which he would choose to work on so far from his own extensive library and other sources of information.

  Her employer laughed. “I’ve a hankering to delve into some of those old civilisations in that part of the Mediterranean. There’s a theory that the people of lost Atlantis lived near Crete at one time. Oh, you needn’t worry about work. There’d be plenty to occupy you.”

  Rosamund considered the proposition. She could see that Professor Holford was determined to spend a long time in Sicily and take his daughter with him. If Rosamund refused to accompany him, she would obviously have to find not only a new post, but living accommodation as well, so why not take the exciting opportunity? Besides, in the course of a year she might be able to learn Italian and surely that would be useful in her own future career.

  The professor accepted her decision as though it had already been made at the moment of asking and the possibility of refusal was unthinkable. He lost no time in letting his house and making travel arrangements for Sicily.

  “Taormina is probably a pleasant place to stay,” he decided. “We can always move on somewhere else if we feel like it.”

  During the three weeks she had been here, Rosamund had been enchanted with Taormina. The precipitous cliffs with buildings clinging precariously to impossibly shallow ledges, the changing colours of sea and sky, and the busy, narrow streets on different levels connected by daunting flights of steps. For her part she hoped that her employer would decide to stay here a long time.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Erica’s arrival broke into Rosamund’s daydreaming.

  Rosamund smiled and signalled to a waiter. “Coffee? Tea?” she suggested to her companion.

  “Ice-cream. Cassata, please.” Erica set down her small parcels on a vacant chair and pushed her blonde hair behind her shoulder. Her blue eyes stared mournfully across the glittering sea. “I suppose you’ve been patiently waiting an age for me.”

  “It didn’t matter.” Rosamund spoke mildly. “I enjoyed sitting here, watching the view and the people.”

  Erica leaned with a sudden jerk on the table. “Oh, I know you’re content to vegetate in a place like this and not really mind, but it’s different for you. You work for my father and you’re interested in his stuff, although it really beats me why. But I just couldn’t care less about lost civilisations or who won battles long ago, and I can’t get excited about digging up pieces of pots and sticking them together to give to some museum.”

  “Well, even if you’re not interested, you can surely enjoy being here for a while.”

  “A while! My father wants to stay here a whole year. Think of it! One whole year out of my life!”

  Rosamund laughed. “Don’t give up so easily. We’re in a luxury hotel with superb views from all the balconies. We have all Sicily to explore in due course. Perhaps when your father decides on the villa he wants to rent, you’ll accept the place better. It’s not exactly a prison.”

  “It is to me,” grumbled Erica. “I’ve been marooned here because Father and I disagree about the life I want. That’s the real truth and you know it.”

  Rosamund remained silent. The kind of life that Erica wanted was the subject of considerable dissension between the girl and her father. Erica, nineteen and released from what she termed the “tyranny of school”, demanded to be allowed to chase from one pleasure to another during the day and then dance most of the night away. The professor, preferring to be immersed in his books and his studious research, had been alarmed and disturbed when he realised that the girl was in danger of running wild.

  Erica took a spoonful of ice-cream. “He’s smashed up my—my friendship with Hugo. The only reason is that Hugo is an actor. Now why on earth should Father take such a dislike to him because of that?”

  “Perhaps your father thinks you’re rather too young to tie yourself down to any particular man,” Rosamund pointed out.

  “Rubbish! He’d be only too glad to get me off his hands and retire peacefully to his study, his pipes and his musty old books if only I’d marry someone of his choosing, preferably a schoolteacher or a bank clerk—or a sedate civil servant. Then he’d have someone to yarn with while I’d be in the kitchen washing the dishes.”

  Rosamund laughed at this outburst. “You? Washing the dishes while the men yarn? That’s a domestic picture that I can’t believe in. In any case, you’d have your own home and your father would be quite happy with his competent housekeeper.” Then she became more serious. “Erica, try to be patient. Your father is really anxious about your best interests and surely even you, in your most rebellious moods, can see that a year in Sicily might turn out to be a year of pleasure and exciting happenings.”

  Erica turned her head and gave Rosamund a long, thoughtful look. “It must be my father’s influence. Already you talk like a maiden aunt instead of a girl only two years older than I. Isn’t that what you are—twenty-one?”

  Rosamund nodded with a smile. “Perhaps I’ve aged rapidly in the last year. Come on, if you’re ready. Let’s go.”

  The two girls walked up the steps and along the paths of what was now a public garden but had once been the grounds of a magnificent villa owned by a wealthy Englishwoman. Possibly in her day when she had sauntered in her garden she had appeared as unmistakably English as these two girls. Erica, a slight figure with long blonde hair and a pale skin, wore a hyacinth blue trouser suit with a patterned scarf at the neck.

  Rosamund was taller than her companion, with dark reddish hair that curled just below her shoulders. Her plain cream dress and jade green jacket complemented hazel eyes flecked with green.
r />   At the hotel, Stephen greeted the girls as soon as they entered the ground floor lounge.

  “I’ve been waiting for you two. I’ve great news.” He spoke with unusual excitement. “The most incredible piece of luck. You remember we inquired about a villa called Delfino?” He now turned towards Rosamund.

  She had handled most of the correspondence with the estate agents about renting villas. “Yes. The one at Torretta.”

  “I’ve taken it, signed the agreement for a year and we can move in as soon as we like.”

  Rosamund smiled, “Good.”

  Erica made no sign that she had even heard her father’s news. Privately, Rosamund considered that it would have been more tactful if Stephen had consulted his daughter and taken her to see the villa before committing himself. As it was, he and Rosamund had made a rapid inspection of the Villa Delfino among others, but Erica had spent the day elsewhere.

  “What d’you think, Erica?” Stephen now spoke to the girl.

  She shrugged. “It’s hardly my business. If we have to stay here in Sicily at all, I’d rather be here in the hotel. Come to that, I’d prefer one of the other towns like Palermo or Syracuse, instead of this little town that’s hardly bigger than a village. Where is Torretta anyway?”

  “Not far along the coast from here,” answered Rosamund.

  “It would be impossible for us to stay in a hotel for any length of time,” Stephen observed. “Especially a luxury one like this. Apart from that, I couldn’t work here.”

  Erica picked up her handbag and small parcels and walked towards the lifts.

  Stephen stared after her, a puzzled expression on his lean face. “I thought she’d be pleased at the idea of living in a nice house where she can do exactly as she likes. Besides, she didn’t wait to hear the rest of my news.”

  He paused for so long that Rosamund prompted him, “Yes? What else?”

  “Oh, yes. The estate agent has put me in touch with a Signor Mandelli. Apparently he owns a villa quite close to the Delfino and is interested in excavations. Buts more than that, I’m told he has an excellent library.”

  “Have you met him yet?”

  “We’re to dine with him this evening.” Stephen made it sound as though he had personally achieved a royal command.

  “Where?” asked Rosamund.

  “Here. The estate agent has arranged it all. So you might let Erica know—and tell her not to be late. Eight o’clock sharp.”

  “Am I included, or is it a private party?”

  The professor gave her a couple of light taps on her shoulder. “Of course you’re included. When did I shut the door on you? It’s very important that you should be there. I shall expect you to remember all that Signor Mandelli says.”

  Rosamund laughed. “I shall take down a verbatim report on the tablecloth or my dinner napkin,” she promised.

  She walked up the main staircase to the first floor suite which her employer had booked. Her room was adjacent to Erica’s and the balconies were not partitioned.

  Erica lay sprawled in a long chair on the balcony. Her face was unusually sombre and she did not answer Rosamund’s murmured comment, “You should have stayed to hear the rest of your father’s news.”

  Rosamund moved to face Erica. “Wear your most attractive dress tonight. We’re to dine in style with Signor Mandelli.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Evidently a near neighbour when we go to the Villa Delfino.”

  “One of my father’s cronies, I suppose?”

  “Well, he’s hardly been here long enough to have acquired cronies. Signor Mandelli might be youthful and charming or a middle-aged father with a handsome grownup family. In any case, he’s someone new for you to meet—and who knows what exciting possibilities might develop from tonight’s meeting?”

  Erica sprang up with a show of interest. “If he’s Italian and lives here, at least he might know where some of the exciting night life of Taormina is to be found.”

  “You can ask him,” suggested Rosamund with a laugh. “Though it might be more discreet not to let your father hear you,” she added as an afterthought.

  Erica glanced up at Rosamund. “You haven’t seen this Mandelli man, have you?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Then we’ll have a bet on him. I’ll wager that he’s about sixty, has a longish face and a grey beard. What d’you say?”

  “That he’s tall, under thirty, dark-haired and his eyes have a wicked sparkle,” decided Rosamund.

  “Right! You’ll owe me a four-ounce bottle of good perfume.”

  While she showered and then dressed, Rosamund reflected that even the prospect of perhaps an elderly man on Erica’s horizon had aroused the girl from her sullen apathy of the past weeks. Among the hotel guests there had been several young men of various nationalities who had given more than a second glance at Erica, yet she seemed indifferent to the possibility of further acquaintance.

  Rosamund suspected that Erica was putting on an act of grief-stricken numbness to impress on her father that she was heartbroken at being separated from Hugo. Yet how strong was the attraction for that young actor struggling to achieve the heights of star parts? Rosamund believed it to be nothing more than a youthful infatuation, a longing to identify with a smart set, a slightly bohemian group of people connected with acting or other branches of the arts.

  A few minutes before eight o’clock, Stephen was prowling along the balcony asking the girls if they were ready.

  “This instant!” called Rosamund as she joined him.

  “Only a second!” was Erica’s answer.

  “That girl’s seconds are like other people’s months,” he grumbled, but at that moment Erica emerged, wearing a sober dress of deep violet trimmed at the neck with a band of gold embroidery.

  Rosamund was a trifle surprised, for Erica had a dozen or so dresses, most of them more elaborate or striking. Rosamund vaguely regretted wearing her pale water-green chiffon, but it was too late to change now.

  “Come along then,” urged Stephen. “We’re expected in Signor Mandelli’s suite just along the corridor.”

  In the suite’s sitting room, as a page announced Stephen and his two companions, the girls exchanged amused glances, for Signor Augusto Mandelli was an elegant-looking man in his fifties with a narrow face and a small pointed black beard sprinkled with grey.

  “Allow me to present my son, Niccolo.” Signor Mandelli indicated the tall young man beside him. As he bent low over their hands in turn, Rosamund dared not look at Erica, for here was at least a passable approximation to her own forecast.

  Dinner was served in the sitting room and Rosamund was seated between the two Mandellis, but before Erica took her own place on the opposite side of Niccolo, she managed to whisper to Rosamund, “Fifty-fifty! I think I’ve won my half. We’ll buy each other a small bottle.”

  Rosamund smiled and nodded, while Niccolo gazed from one girl to the other as he sat between them.

  “It’s a piece of good fortune that brings two such charming young ladies to live near our villa. When will you come?”

  "You must ask my father,” Erica replied. “I haven’t even seen the house yet.”

  “No? Then we must arrange for you to see it as soon as possible. It is quite small, you understand, but you will find it comfortable, I think.”

  From what she could remember of her hasty visit to the villa, Rosamund considered that the accommodation would be adequate for the three of them, but no doubt Niccolo’s house was large and imposing and he had more spacious standards.

  Signor Augusto Mandelli was telling her of the advantages of living at Torretta.

  “It is very quiet, you understand. A place to work without the noise of traffic or many people. There is a small beach where you can bathe—but of course there is no amusement unless you come in to Taormina.”

  “I think it will suit us all very well,” observed Stephen. It was perhaps fortunate that Erica was engrossed in Niccolo’s conve
rsation and not aware that her father assumed she needed peace and quiet as much as he did.

  “You must come to our villa tomorrow for lunch,” suggested the elder Mandelli. “Then you can meet my wife and daughter and afterwards we will all go to inspect your Villa Delfino and see that all is well. The agent has arranged for staff to attend to your needs?”

  “Oh, yes,” replied Stephen. A couple live there as caretakers, I understand. Keep the garden in order and the wife to do the cooking. They have a small cottage in the grounds.”

  When the protracted dinner was over, liqueurs and coffee were served on the balcony and finally the waiters withdrew. It now occurred to Rosamund that the Mandellis were not actually staying in the hotel.

  “No, my father merely booked this room,” answered Niccolo in reply to her tentative question. “He always thinks it more pleasant to meet people and enjoy a meal in private away from the rush and chatter of the restaurant.”

  “That was very thoughtful,” commented Rosamund.

  “Isn’t it marvellous, Rosamund, how well Niccolo speaks English?” Erica broke in eagerly. “That’ll be the day, when I can speak Italian as fluently.”

  “You must learn, signorina,” Niccolo suggested. His tone of voice and accompanying smile conveyed that he might be delighted to teach her.

  “Is it a difficult language?” pursued Erica.

  Now he frowned slightly. “Not so difficult as English. At least we pronounce most of our words according to rules and a pattern, with few exceptions.”

  The balcony was lit by small orange lamps on the wall and momentarily as a light caught Niccolo’s face, Rosamund noticed that his dark eyes held an expression very Latin in its mixture of soulful intensity and sparkling superficial charm.

  Surely Erica was not already becoming a victim to that charm, but certainly Rosamund had not seen the girl so animated since her arrival in Sicily.

  Finally when the Mandellis, Signor Augusto and his son, left the hotel, Niccolo promised to call for the two girls and Stephen tomorrow.

  “Until twelve o’clock, then. Arrivederci!”