Wounds of Passion by Charlotte Lamb (sci fi books to read TXT) 📗

where once the canal had wound between tall green bamboo canes, long since vanished.

His room was filled with a smell of cooking from the flats below, overrun with bugs of one kind or another, swelteringly hot during the day and stuffy at night.

‘Lucky Uncle Alex, nice to be a rich cartoonist,’ he drily said. ‘It’s beautiful. Are they here now?’

She hesitated, her lashes drooping over her eyes, half tempted to lie, then shook her head, but didn’t tell him that Alex and Susan-Jane were not even in Venice, that they had flown to London to have a business meeting with Alex’s agent, who was visiting England. They had invited Antonia to go, too, but she had decided to stay and have a few quiet days alone.

‘Probably just as well,’ Patrick grimaced. ‘The last time I saw him he looked as if he would like to kill me.’

She bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid he was very angry, and he’s always wished he had had a chance to say sorry to you, but you left without going back to the villa.’

‘Yes, I felt it would be wiser—I was pretty sore about the whole episode at the time. I might have turned nasty if I had run into your uncle; I was in no mood to accept apologies.’

Antonia gave him a searching sideways look. ‘Why did you break your contract with Rae Dunhill? I felt awful about that—it wasn’t her fault!’

He groaned. ‘I must admit, I regretted that afterwards. I had always liked Rae, and I enjoyed working with her—but she had believed I was guilty, and I found that hard to forgive; I felt I never wanted to see her again. It takes a long time to get over these things.’

‘Yes,’ she said, and they both stared at each other in silence, around them the tranquillity of the garden, of the streets surrounding it.

This district of Venice was called the Dorsoduro, which meant ‘hard-back’; built on a hard clay base, it was a labyrinth of winding little streets, full of small private houses, built for workers long ago, later inhabited by the English during the period when there was a large English colony in Venice. The area stretched between the Accademia and the church of Santa Maria della Salute, which was the first glimpse of Venice to greet returning ships.

Patrick dragged his gaze away from Antonia and looked around the garden. ‘It’s so quiet here; you would think this was a country area, instead of being the middle of Venice! How much longer will you all be staying here?’

‘A few more weeks, that’s all. I shall be sorry to leave.’ She had the strangest sensation; she couldn’t believe she was really here, in this tranquil little paradise, with the man who had haunted her for two years. She had been so terrified of seeing him again. Yet here they were sitting under the fig tree with the gentle, musical splash of the fountain to keep them company, talking quietly, and she didn’t feel afraid any more.

Except...except that every moment or so she would look at him and feel herself shrink, as if from the touch of fire. It hadn’t been this man who had attacked her, yet she found it hard not to keep confusing the two of them. Their faces shifted, changed places all the time in her mind, as the leaves on the fig tree moved, flickering dark flames of shadow which were never still, could not be counted.

‘And then you go back to Florence?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘No, I’ve finished my course there. I’ve got a job.’ She stopped, said wryly, ‘Well, Uncle Alex got me a job. Cataloguing a private collection—have you heard of Patsy Devvon? She’s the widow of Gus Devvon; his family made early radios, but he sold out of the company and invested his money in computers, I gather.’ She could talk to him freely about the Devvons; the subject was impersonal; it unlocked her tongue; she talked fast, lightly. ‘When he retired he came over to Europe, settled here in Venice, and spent years buying things—paintings, sculpture, books, even early radios and gramophones and recordings. It’s all in a hideous muddle; things got piled into rooms on the upper floor of this palazzo where they lived. The floor was never used and is very damp, the plaster is cracked and crumbling on the ceilings and the paintwork is blistering, there’s mould and fungus growing on things... It’s such a mess.’

Patrick watched her with very clear, thoughtful blue eyes. She had looked so different, talking like that, her face mobile, changing, full of life.

‘So you’ll stay on in Venice after the lease of this house runs out? Alone?’

She flushed slightly, looking down, and nodded.

His eyes narrowed. What did that look mean? He was beginning to recognise her expressions; the fragile mobility of her face was self-betraying. She was hiding something, or not telling him something. But what?

‘Will you try and find another flat, or stay on in a pension?’ he asked.

Another of those tell-tale hesitations. She was reluctant to tell him anything about herself, but his level stare somehow forced her to answer in the end.

‘I’ve been invited to move into the palazzo until I’ve finished my work.’ Then, quickly, she added, ‘I’ll be sorry to leave this house. I’ve loved living here. The house is small, but cosy, and gardens are so rare in Venice; this one is like a dream.’

He let his gaze wander around from the pink house to the fig tree, an olive tree growing nearer the house, roses climbing on the walls, orange trees, swaddled like babies, in straw matting, standing in huge terracotta pots along the wall of the house.

‘Beautiful,’ he agreed. ‘That fig is covered with fruit; I’ve always wanted to have my own fig tree and be able to pick them when I wanted them.’

‘Have one,’ she offered, smiling. ‘There are so many; we’ll only eat a few.’

‘May I really?’ He smiled, stood