Kiss of Hot Sun (7 page)

“Dangerous? How do you mean?”

“You must remember he is Italian—and far away from his own home. Besides, we have heard things... rumours. I advise you not to let yourself be alone with him again.”

I felt a surge of anger. “And just what rumours have you heard about Cesare?” I asked in a stiffly restrained voice.

“Never mind. You are young...”

“I am not a child, Miss Harcourt.”

Guido Zampini lumbered out of his armchair and came towards me, scowling. “You will listen to Miss Harcourt. She speaks as she does only because she has your best interests in her heart.”

I didn’t answer him. If I had tried to, the strand holding my temper would certainly have snapped. Instead I addressed Miss Harcourt again. I tried to be reasonable in face of this quite unreasonable interference in my private affairs.

“You are making far too much of a perfectly ordinary incident,” I said with care. “I’ve been for a drive with Cesare. And that is all. Another time I may have dinner with him.”

“That would be madness,” thundered Zampini. “I forbid you to do any such thing.”

“Will you kindly mind your own business,” I blazed. “What I may do or may not do isn’t the smallest concern of yours.”

“Tell the imbecile, Adeline,” snapped Zampini. “If she won’t listen to me, then
you
tell her.”

Before Miss Harcourt could speak again, I gave her fair warning.

“It had better be understood right now,” I said in a level voice, “that how I occupy myself when I’m off duty is entirely my own affair. I have no wish to be disrespectful, Miss Harcourt, but you have no right to interfere in my private life.”

If she fired me on the spot, that was all right by me. But I was darned if I’d stand for this, from her, or from anyone else.

I didn’t hang around for Adeline’s comeback. I stalked out of the salon and straight upstairs, flaming with indignation.

By bad luck, just as I reached the landing outside my bedroom door I ran into Philip. We both of us stopped, six feet apart. Our eyes met and held.

For a brief instant something flickered between us, piercing the formal skin we’d plastered over our relationship. We acknowledged the intensity of caring that had sprung up between us in Rome. And then the contact was broken. A look of cold indifference settled on Philip’s face again.

I dived for the shelter of my room. My pent-up emotions were too much for me, and I felt like slamming the door violently. But just in time I held back. It cost me a ton of self-control to close that door gently. Then I went over and switched on the transistor. If Philip was still hanging around outside, let him make what he could of the sound of cheerful pop music from Naples.

A full hour must have passed before I even made a start to go to bed. I spent the time idly padding around the room, hugging my misery. As if it wasn’t bad enough to have Philip about the place, now I had a grievance against Adeline Harcourt.

The unfairness of her attitude hit me hard. She had pressed me to go for a drive with Cesare, practically ordered me to, in fact. And then, barely a couple of hours afterwards, she tried to make out it was rash of me to be friendly with him, hinting vaguely at sordid rumours.

As for Zampini daring to intervene! To have the sheer nerve to boss me around!

It struck me that Adeline’s about-turn was Zampini’s responsibility. He’d objected before I went, and although Adeline had overridden him then, he must have argued her round.

That man had an unhealthy influence over Adeline. I was convinced of it. However much she protested they were old friends, I couldn’t believe she would free-willingly choose to be so thick with such an unpleasant character.

It was a puzzle, though, why Zampini should care one way or the other about my going out with Cesare. For that matter, why should he care two straws whatever I did? But for some reason he had it in for me, and I didn’t fool myself any longer it was merely because I’d once snubbed him.

A recollection shot into my mind. That first time I’d met Adeline, she had been speaking to someone on the phone. I dug into my memory for the exact words. Something about just a little help with the domestic arrangements, and of no consequence to
us.
..

Was it Guido Zampini she’d been talking to?

What a fool not to have realised at the time she was referring to me. Of course it was me! And I might have questioned just who it was she’d got to placate, since the guesthouse belonged to her. But my mind had been too ravaged by the sight of Philip and that Blunt woman, intimately gay on a hotel terrace.

And hadn’t Adeline also said something like ‘
there is
no
earthly
reason
why
she
should
ever
find
out
’?

I’d certainly been a fool all right. A fool not to have been suspicious. A fool to have jumped slap-happily into this blind date of a job.

By morning I had decided to quit. The row over Cesare finally pinpointed the absurdity of my position here. There was no question of leaving Adeline in the lurch, for clearly I wasn’t really needed at all. I’d owe her nothing—nothing but a certain gratitude for having offered me a job out of sheer kindness of heart.

Philip Rainsby, I told myself, was entirely unconnected with my decision. I had at last achieved indifference towards him. Whether he stayed or not, whether he acknowledged me or not, was neither here nor there.

I was downstairs by eight, and to my surprise found Adeline there ahead of me. She took the belligerent wind out of my sails by apologising.

“I must beg you to forgive me, Kerry darling. What I said last night was unpardonable.” She looked at me with candidly respectful eyes. “I admire your spirit in telling me straight out that I am nothing but an interfering old woman.”

“But I didn’t say that, Miss Harcourt...”

Her mobile lips pursed in amusement. “Damn nearly, though! And so I am. And now I’m asking you to forgive me for it.”

From standing there tall and erect, she once again seemed to shrink into tremulous frailty. It was a mirage, I knew. Or rather, a superb piece of acting.

Her pose made it more difficult to announce my decision. And we were still standing at the foot of the stairs; I was uneasily aware that one of the guests might appear at any moment.

I took the plunge. “Miss Harcourt, I’ve been thinking. I know it was terribly kind of you to give me this job, but... well, we both know there isn’t any job really...”

The old lady image slipped out of focus as Adeline asked sharply: “What do you mean by that?”

“Only what I’ve said before—there’s not enough for me to do with so few guests staying here.”

“It is possible I may decide to take more guests later on. In the meantime, surely it’s enough to know that I want you.”

“I really don’t see why you should.”

“Please stay, Kerry.
Please!”

There was an intensity about her appeal that astonished me. For an instant I thought I saw fear in her eyes. Then she looked away, and was at once so much in command of herself that I felt sure I’d imagined the fear.

Adeline kept silent for a moment. She was watching me shrewdly, as if trying to get under my skin.

Suddenly, right out of the blue, she asked quietly: "Had you met Philip Rainsby before he came here?”

“
No
!”

The lie was on my tongue before I’d worked out the reason for it. Caught on the hop, my reply was blind instinct, a defensive reaction. If I admitted I had known Philip, she would ask more questions. I didn’t want that; the hurt was too deep.

“No,” I reaffirmed with more stability. “Why do you ask?”

“It was the way you were looking at one another when he first arrived.”

So Adeline had noticed my moments of stunned surprise at Philip’s turning up here. I’d been kidding myself she’d seen nothing.

Foolishly, I was committed; I could hardly go back on that emphatic denial now. She would think me mad if I told her: “Well... actually we did meet in Rome...” So I too would have to join in the ridiculous game of pretence. Well, if the Blunts and Zampini could keep it up, then I could too.

I tried to shrug lightly. “I can’t imagine what could have given you the impression that we knew one another.”

Adeline dismissed the matter with a little no-consequence smile, and briskly disappeared into the salon. Delighted to escape her probing, it was some time before I realised that the question of my leaving had been forgotten.

Or
had it? Maybe the diversion about Philip was a stratagem to get me off a subject she wished to avoid.

Somehow I was curiously hesitant about raising it again. I couldn’t forget Adeline’s almost desperate entreaty— “Please stay, Kerry—
please
!” I couldn’t forget that fleeting look of fear which I still wasn’t certain I had really seen at all.

I felt myself trapped by circumstances at the
Villa Stella d’Oro.
There was really nothing tangible to stop me going away—right back to England if I felt like it. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to take that step. I was stuck here for the time being.

To make matters worse, I was in the absurd position of having denied all previous knowledge of Philip Rainsby. Still, with Philip so aloof, there was mighty little danger of him blowing the gaff about our meeting in Rome.

But in comforting myself, I was entirely overlooking a vital fact. Philip and I had met at a party given by Guido Zampini. He must have seen us together.

Resigned to staying on, I determined that as of now I’d take a real hand in the running of the
Stella d’Oro.
And if Adeline didn’t like it that way she could either lump it, or fire me.

In this new tough mood, I sailed through to the kitchen.

I’d already discovered that domestic arrangements at the villa were not quite so perfect as they’d appeared at first sight. Now I noticed a breakfast tray of coffee and rolls waiting on the dresser. The coffee pot was barely warm.

“Whose is this?” I asked abruptly.

Carlo didn’t even trouble to reply. But Maria, in her usual placid way, told me it was for the honeymooners. They always breakfasted in their room.

“Then why hasn’t it been taken up to them?”

Carlo regarded me with deep dislike. “I am busy.”

I swung back to his aunt. “Please make fresh coffee, Maria, and then Carlo will take the tray upstairs
immediately.
Is that understood?”

I enjoyed the next couple of hours. It was great to be really occupied again. I realised now that I’d been missing out on that sort of satisfaction ever since leaving Dr. Stewart. Monica had been fun, but never for a single moment had she taken work seriously.

Everything I delved into except the cooking itself was wide open for improvement. After a huddle in the storeroom, Maria and I agreed on several ways of cutting waste. I felt convinced that Carlo was up to his neck in petty fiddles. That young man was in for a mighty big shock!

About eleven I started on the flowers, a job I had already made my own. With all that fabulous colour rioting in the garden, it seemed a pity not to bring some of it indoors. The old gardener and I were fast friends, even though our conversation was limited to my few words of Italian. Pietro kept me supplied with all the blooms I needed.

The little utility room off the hall smelled like heaven, Pietro’s lavish offering for the day stood all around me in buckets of cool water. Opposite, through the salon’s open doors, I could glimpse Adeline and the Blunts. They seemed to be doing a tour of the room and after a while I realised they were discussing the paintings.

“My soul demands beauty,” I heard Adeline say in her carrying voice. “I must be surrounded by lovely things.”

I grinned to myself as I fixed a vase of madonna lilies. From anyone else such high-flown sentiment would sound like humbug, but Adeline could get away with it.

George Blunt’s voice boomed. “You’re a lucky woman to own such a grand house, Miss Harcourt. Happen you’ve been here long?”

“Just over fifteen years,” she told him. “But of course the
Stella d’Oro
has been in my family for
generations.
It was built by an ancestor of mine a couple of centuries ago.”

“Was he English?” queried Rosalind.

“No, no. I have a
soupçon
of Sicilian blood in my veins. The villa remained in the hands of the Italian branch of the family until quite recently...”

In sheer astonishment I stopped working on the flowers. I was trying to reconcile this story with what Adeline had told me on the plane. She’d said then, and without wrapping it up, that the
Villa Stella d’Oro
had been a gift from her lover.

Just who was she trying to impress—me or the Blunts? And why, for goodness’ sake, tell lies to either of us?

Maybe Adeline’s flamboyant nature demanded a background suited to her immediate audience. Maybe she thought that the romantic tale of an Italian lover would be fascinating to me. The Blunts, however—
nouveaux riches
from stolid Yorkshire, would be more likely to go for an ancient family home with English and Italian roots.

And the funny thing was, I didn’t hold it against her one bit. If she spun a different tale to everyone she met, good luck to her! With Adeline Harcourt it wasn’t a matter of 'lying’; just that she was always on-stage.

“You’ve got a lot of grand paintings here,” George Blunt was saying. “Right champion, I reckon.”

Adeline accepted the compliment modestly. “They are nice, aren’t they?”

“One or two of ‘em I wouldn’t mind having myself. No, I wouldn’t mind at all!” There was a pause, as if he was studying a picture more closely. Then I heard him say: “Ever think of selling?”

“Sell my paintings! Good heavens no, I should never sell any of these. They are far too precious.” She sighed wistfully. “Of course, I know they aren’t terribly valuable, but it’s the... the sentimental associations, you see.”