An Innocent Abroad: A Jazz Age Romance by Romy Sommer

When she was done, Frances handed her the ivory silk dress.
    Isobel
stepped into it and twirled before the mirror. The silken undergarments she now
wore left her feeling naked beneath the sheath of silk.
    The
dress was modish. It was also the shortest skirt Isobel had ever worn, the
hemline above her knees and the back decadently bare.
    What
would her mother say?
    She
wished she had her hair bobbed, as Frances wore hers. But there was nothing she
could do about that now. So she left her hair loose and flowing about her
shoulders instead of dressing it up. Exactly the way Stefano had admired it.
The soft, sensual sway of it against her skin imbued her with a sense of
daring.
    “He’ll
love it,” Frances said, grinning impishly. She didn’t ask who he was,
this man that Isobel planned to meet. Isobel was glad. She didn’t want to share
Stefano with anyone. He was her guilty secret.
    Isobel
looked back at the mirror and her nerves jangled. She hardly recognised the
young woman in the mirror. A modern young woman, with feverish eyes.
    Her
body thrummed with energy. But she was terrified too. Less by what she planned
to do, more by the intensity of her desire.
    Today
she would lose her virginity to a man who wasn’t her husband. When her future
husband discovered she was not a virgin, it would be too late to undo.
    “I’m
ready,” she said.
    #
    Armed
with nothing more than her purse and sketch pad, Isobel emerged through the
front doors of the villa onto the flight of wide, shallow steps that connected
the villa to the state road.
    A
crunch of gravel drew her attention, and she turned to see one of the
gardeners, his face masked by an armful of tall mauve gladioli.
    “Flowers
for the house,” he said, his voice rough and heavily accented. Though she’d
never seen his face, she knew who he was. Carlo. Frances’ lover.
    A
gardener! What was Frances thinking?
    But
she wasn’t thinking. And with a sinking heart, Isobel realised that she was as
lost to sense as her cousin.
    Did
it really matter to her that Stefano was of noble blood, rather than the
fisherman she’d first thought him? Would she have acted on this driving need if
he hadn’t been an aristocrat? She didn’t know.
    As
Carlo passed, his gaze swept over her. She shivered. The dress left little to
the imagination, and his eyes were coldly shrewd, leaving her naked and
vulnerable.
    He
was boyishly good looking, younger than Stefano, yet she far preferred Stefano’s
more rugged charm, the easy grin and casual grace. At the thought of Stefano,
her insecurity vanished. She drew back her shoulders and straightened her back,
and without a backward glance, headed down to the road.
    She
walked briskly, heading away from Positano, until she reached the stairs to
Arienzo. The stairway descended the steep slope to the rocky shore below,
nearly a quarter mile of steps cut out of the mountainside. Used as she was to
tramping around the estate at home, she’d had more exercise in these weeks in
Italy than she’d ever known. She skipped down the stairs.
    She
lost count of their number, too absorbed in the bird song and the soft, scented
breeze swirling around her. The only sign of life was the muleteers, leading a
couple of braying mules loaded with baskets up towards Montepertuso high above.
    The
tiny hamlet of Arienzo came into view, a cluster of cottages, and above them on
the forested hillside red rooftops that hinted at a sprawling villa. The
luxuriant vegetation on either side of her path gave way to hand-built stone
walls, decorated with hanging baskets spilling blooms and swathes of livid
purple bougainvillea.
    It
was almost nine o’clock. She raced down the steps to the crescent of beach,
arriving breathless and flushed.
    Waves
rolled onto the beach, their filigree of foam breaking apart on the sand. A
handful of rag-tag children played among the nets and fishing detritus on the
beach.
    There
was no sign of Stefano.
    A
single boat rocked against the simple stone