by Anne Weale
A few moments later he had gone, leaving her with the feeling that he disapproved of finding his personal assistant sitting in the shop as if she were Damiano’s helper.
‘We should miss his account if he took his custom elsewhere. He spends a lot of money with us,’ said Damiano.
Sophie nodded. ‘I know.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’d better be going. Ciao…’
Outside the shop, she looked along the street in the direction Marc had taken. He was not in sight, but even his long stride could hardly have taken him as far as the end of it yet. He must be in one of the neighbouring shops.
Knowing she was behaving like a lovesick teenager, she sauntered past them at a leisurely pace, hoping he would emerge. On and off she had spent all day in his company, yet she longed for more. The evenings seemed endless intervals between the vital hours at the palazzo.
Outside two of the shops she loitered, gazing at the displays, hoping to see a tall reflection joining hers in the plate glass. But it didn’t happen.
She walked home with the desolate knowledge that she was making a fool of herself, and that the pain and frustration of being in love with Marc Washington was going to get worse rather than better.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ON THE morning of her twenty-sixth birthday, feeling slightly cast down by the thought that in four years’ time she would be thirty, Sophie walked into her office to find it full of flowers, with several gift-wrapped parcels lying on her desk.
Three were from Marc’s aunts and one from Chiara. They could only have known it was her birthday because he had told them. The largest parcel had his signature on the tag and she left it unopened while she unwrapped the others.
Chiara had given her scent and the aunts’ gifts were a pair of hand-embroidered pillowcases, a silk scarf and a leather-bound photograph album. Marc’s parcel contained a de luxe volume on paintings of Venice by twentieth-century artists. It was one she had seen and coveted in Damiano’s aunt’s shop but had felt was outside her budget. Now it was hers, the lasting pleasure of its pages immeasurably enhanced by the simple inscription on the flyleaf, ‘To Sophie from Marc,’ and the date.
She was unable to thank him for it immediately because he had gone to Prague and was due back that afternoon. As the aunts were not early risers, she left it until mid-morning to go down and thank them and his cousin.
They insisted she lunch with them, and the chef produced a special pudding to mark the occasion. Sophie was touched by their kindness, but it was the fact that Marc had filed her birth date in his phenomenal memory which meant the most to her.
During the afternoon she received a message from the Prague office. Marc’s return flight had been put back. But he had booked a table for dinner and would collect her from her flat at eight o’clock.
In Sophie’s absence, the postman had delivered a large envelope with an array of United States stamps on it: a typically funny, flamboyant American birthday card chosen by Merle, with several one-line greetings from other friends.
It was nice that they had remembered her. Inevitably, birthdays were times when she was particularly conscious of having no family ties.
Not knowing where Marc was taking her or who else might be there made it difficult to know what to wear. After reviewing her wardrobe, she decided on the outfit she had worn in Paris, but with a shorter skirt than the one she had travelled in and a new pair of sheer black tights.
She was ready long before she needed to be and spent the interval restlessly pacing the living room, annoyed with herself for being as absurdly on edge as if it were her first date. She wasn’t even sure that she would have Marc to herself. He might have invited others.
When the bell rang, she ran down the stairs to find Antonio, the boatman, waiting outside the street door. For an instant she felt cold panic, fearing an accident. Then he explained that the boss was running late and would meet her at the restaurant.
After taking her most of the way by water, Antonio insisted on escorting her to the door of the restaurant and handing her over to the head waiter, who showed her to a secluded corner table laid for two.
Less than five minutes later Marc arrived. ‘Many happy returns,’ he said as he joined her, only the dampness of his hair betraying that he had been rushed.
‘Thank you…and thank you for your wonderful present. It’s exactly what I would have chosen if I’d been offered the freedom of every shop in the city. Have you had a difficult day?’
He shrugged. ‘It started badly, but—’ he gave her a glinting smile ‘—all’s well that ends well. Tell me about your day.’
The wine waiter had already brought champagne to the table and filled a glass for Sophie. So far she had only taken a couple of sips. Now he did the same for Marc who, as the bottle was returned to its bucket of ice, lifted his glass to her. ‘To your twenty-seventh year. May it bring you a lot of things on your wish list.’
‘Thank you.’ This time she drank a mouthful of the chilled golden wine, knowing it would quickly enter her bloodstream, hoping it would give a sparkle to her conversation. She wanted to please and amuse him, but when she had told him about her other presents and the lunch party with his aunts she found herself strapped for subjects having nothing to do with their working life.
The only thing she could come up with was, ‘You never finished telling me the story of the haunted mirror. I said that as ghost stories go it was rather a nice one. You said, “Actually, no.” What did you mean?’
As she spoke she wondered if he would remember why he hadn’t finished the story and felt sure he would.
‘Apparently, when the princess and her lady-in-waiting compared notes, it was clear they had seen two separate pairs of lovers,’ said Marc. ‘We don’t know who the princess saw. Since they were in bed, naked, there were no clues to the date of the time-warp she’d entered…if you believe in such things.’
‘But you don’t.’
‘What makes you think that?’ he asked.
‘You believe in realities, not fantasies.’
‘On the whole, yes,’ he agreed. ‘But at the beginning of this century supersonic flight was a fantasy. Now millions of ordinary people are surfing the internet from their living rooms. The future is full of things which seem impossible to us. As to the past…who knows? Perhaps it’s still there, like a radio station we can’t reach because we don’t know the waveband. Anyway, what the lady-in-waiting tuned into wasn’t the same channel as the princess had seen earlier that night. There were two different people making love by the light of candles, and then suddenly a dark shape…the silhouette of a man standing at the foot of the bed.’
Sophie drew in her breath.
‘We have a letter in the archives in which she described what happened next,’ Marc continued. ‘Briefly, the intruder moved to one side, clearing her view of the lovers. They disengaged, looking alarmed. As well they might. What happened next was a blast from some sort of blunderbuss. The results were so gruesome, the lady-in-waiting fainted.’
Sophie’s face must have reflected her feelings at seeing, in her imagination, the horror he hadn’t described but which she could easily visualise.
Reaching across the table to cover her hand with his, Marc said, ‘I shouldn’t have told you.’
The intimate gesture sent a strange frisson through her. She said, ‘No, no…it’s interesting. Do the archives hold any evidence that such a thing might really have happened?’
‘Plenty. It happened in the eighteenth century. The marchese of the time returned from an evening with his mistress to find his wife in bed with a handsome young servant. He must have suspected something to enter the bedroom armed. At the time morals in Venice were notoriously lax, but he must have been a jealous man who didn’t subscribe to the view that an unfaithful husband gave his wife licence to do as she pleased.’
Marc’s hand still lay on hers. He seemed to have forgotten it was there. But Sophie was sharply aware of his long fingers enfolding hers, sen
ding a current of feeling to the top of her arm. She was both relieved and sorry when the arrival of their meal caused him to break the contact.
‘Let’s talk about something more appropriate to a birthday celebration. How did you celebrate last year?’
‘I was sharing an apartment. My flatmate, Merle, laid on a party for me.’
‘Do you miss that arrangement?’
Sophie shook her head. ‘I might in another big city. But Venice has a villagey atmosphere.’
‘Was the man of the moment at last year’s party?’
‘There was no man of the moment.’
‘But there have been men in your life?’
‘At twenty-six it would be rather extraordinary if I’d never thought myself in love.’
‘Only thought?’
‘If it had ever been the real thing, I shouldn’t be here now, should I?’
‘I suppose not. Are you still looking for the real thing?’
‘Isn’t everyone?’
‘Are they?’ He gave a slight shrug. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. Money and power seem more popular objectives. They always were among men and now they’re the principal goals of many of your sex. Women like Martha Henderson don’t seem to exist any more.’
‘She didn’t have to work, and wouldn’t have been encouraged to. Chiara’s the first girl I’ve met who doesn’t have a career, or even a time-filling job. When you have to compete in the rat race you develop a protective shell.’
She had meant to leave it at that, but then, on impulse, added, ‘And women see through men more. Your sex has lost its mystique. Women realise that not many men come up to their expectations of what a man should be like.’
‘Speaking for yourself, what should a man be like?’
He asked with a gleam of amusement, making her feel she was about to cross a conversational quagmire and could quickly find herself floundering.
‘Kind to women and children, fair in his dealings with his own sex. Not a very tall order.’
‘A generalisation. Be specific. What doyou want from a man? Surely more than kindness and fairness? If that’s all you want you could find yourself saddled with dullness.’
‘Naturally I want perfection,’ she said, with a smile and a gesture to show she was joking. ‘The brave, gentle, handsome knight of all the best fairy tales.’
‘A tall order,’ Marc said drily.
In response to his signal, the alert head waiter brought menus. Looking for something light for dessert, Sophie regretted her answer. Instead of sounding like a naïve teenager, she should have said something witty.
Having entered the restaurant from the street, she expected to leave the same way. Instead, as they left their table, the head waiter came forward, saying. ‘If you will follow me, signorina…’
Somewhat baffled, she obeyed and found herself being led in a different direction, down some stairs and along a passage which, when it turned a corner, brought them to a doorway with a gondola moored outside it.
‘It seemed an appropriate conclusion to your birthday,’ said Marc, when she turned to look up at him.
He said a smiling good evening to the gondolier, an elderly man who had swept off his hat with a gallant flourish when he saw Sophie.
The last thing she had expected was to find herself being handed into a gondola and, when she was seated on the cushioned sofa, having a rug draped over her legs by Marc.
‘Although it’s not cold tonight, it’s always cooler on the water, and we’re taking a roundabout route,’ said Marc as he tucked it round her.
When he was seated beside her, another waiter appeared carrying a small wicker hamper. He gave it to the head waiter, who placed it where Marc could reach it before bidding them goodnight.
‘The basket is an heirloom,’ said Marc. ‘I had it sent round earlier. It was fitted out for my maternal grandfather, who liked to take the air with his current mistress beside him. He would drink and smoke a cigar and she would eat Brussels chocolates. He had a theory that chocolate made women amorous, and he liked them generously curved. Tonight…it only contains a flask of freshly made coffee and a rather special liqueur brandy I think you’ll like.’
The slight pause and the hint of devilment in his smile made Sophie wonder if he was merely teasing her, or if, in his experience, a smooth but potent liqueur was more effective than chocolates in making women responsive.
A further surprise was in store for her. As the gondola glided past the junction with another canal a second gondola came into view, and in it were seated three violinists who, as it moved into place behind theirs, began to play.
‘Heavens! When you organise a treat, you really go to town,’ she said, astonished that he should go to these lengths to please her.
‘Why not?’
The response to that was, Why? But she didn’t say it, or even allow her thoughts to linger on the reasons he might have. There were times in life when to capture the pleasure of the fleeting moment was more important than pondering the motive behind it or the possible outcome.
She leaned back against the cushions, enraptured by an experience she had often imagined but never expected to live.
By moonlight the city’s waterways were at their most mysterious. She found herself seeing the Venice invisible from its bridges: tall, dark, forbidding façades relieved by elaborate windows, white marble friezes and balconies, and long-disused, barred water-gates, their steps thick with moss.
Behind them, the musicians were playing something by Vivaldi. Between them and the silver bow-prong stood a large basket filled with late-blooming roses from the palazzo’s sheltered garden, their sweetness wafting back like the breath of summer.
He had catered to every sense, she realised as he gave her a cup of coffee and placed a small crystal liqueur glass where she could reach it.
Every sense except touch.
Presently the lights of a restaurant, with diners sitting outside, changed the surface of the canal from silver and black to green and bronze.
‘Let’s not disappoint the romantics by sitting like strangers,’ said Marc.
He lifted his arm and laid it along the cushions behind her shoulders. As the diners, alerted by the music, broke off their conversations to stare at the two gondolas, he took Sophie’s hand and kissed it, not symbolically but with his lips touching her skin for two or three breathstopping seconds.
From the tables behind the railing at the canal’s edge came the momentary dazzle of an automatic flash as someone seized the chance to add another photo to their reel.
Someone else wanted one too. ‘Do that again, would you, please?’ The voice was male, the accent American.
Marc gave a smiling glance over his shoulder. ‘No problem.’ He repeated the gesture, this time holding her hand to his mouth rather longer.
Then the restaurant slid away behind them, the voices and laughter of its patrons lost in the sweeping strings of the violins.
Marc replaced her hand in her lap, but he didn’t remove his arm from behind her. She wondered if, regardless of the gondolier, the next time they passed through a dark place he meant to kiss her properly and what she would do if he did.
Being kissed by her boss wasn’t a dilemma she had had to deal with before. She had no idea how to handle it. Her common sense and her instincts were in diametric conflict. As a woman, she wanted to be kissed. As his personal assistant, she knew it could wreck their relationship and perhaps bring an end to her job here.
But Marc didn’t kiss her. Gliding under the final bridge, the gondola came to the breeze-ruffled wider waterway between where she lived and the Giudecca opposite. It danced and swayed on the choppier surface and the gondolier changed his stroke with centuries-old expertise.
The music came to an end moments before they arrived at a landing not far from her door. Once ashore, Sophie thanked the violinists.
‘That was beautiful…unforgettable. I’ll remember it all my life,’ she said in Italian.
Turning to thank Marc, she found him holding the basket of roses. ‘I’ll carry this upstairs for you, then walk back,’ he said in English, before switching to Italian to add his thanks to the two gondoliers and the musicians.
As Sophie and he walked away, and the gondolas moved in the direction of another canal further along, the lead violinist began the opening bars of a modern love song, the other two joining in.
She stopped to wave them on their way. ‘Was that prearranged?’ she asked.
‘Not by me. Perhaps it’s their way of saying they don’t often have someone as charming as you to serenade.’
Sophie received that in silence. A few yards away from her door, she said, ‘I meant it when I said I would never forget their music, nor everything else about this evening. It’s been a wonderful birthday. I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘Your company was my reward.’
Sophie fished for her key. Having found it, she said, ‘I can manage the basket. Please don’t bother to come up.’
‘It’s no bother, Sophie.’
The night he had shown her the flat he had gone up the stairs ahead of her, as mannerly men were supposed to. This time he let her go first. As they climbed the first flight she remembered the night they had spent in Paris and his schoolfriend Patrick saying to him, ‘You can’t turn in this early…not in Paris. Or maybe you can. Who wouldn’t with legs like that pair going up the stairs ahead of him? I’ll bet she has splendid boobs too…’
Did Marc also remember? Did he have it in mind to end the evening in the way Patrick had thought they were going to end it in Paris—in bed together? Had this whole lovely evening been an expensive prelude to a practised seduction?
In Paris, Patrick’s assumption had filled her with indignant anger. But she hadn’t known Marc then. Now she did. Now she loved and admired him. Now a night in his arms would be heaven.
But not if it were just a try-out. Or the start of a casual affair.
She went up the stairs much more slowly than she normally did, trying to stave off the moment when he would make his move and she would have to respond or rebuff him.
