One Hot Summer by Norrey Ford Page B

too. Are you in love, Marco? I’m not prying, I just meant are you officially betrothed and looking forward to a happy marriage?’
    ‘ No, I’m not. Eligible daughters are constantly paraded before me, of course. That’s inevitable. But they’re all so—’ he shrugged and spread his hands in an expressive gesture, ‘ predictable. Educated at the same schools, reared in the same atmosphere, dressed in the same fashions—’
    ‘ Is Bianca like that?’
    ‘ I don’t know. I’m her brother. She’s just a child—no, that’s not true. She is a really lovely girl and, I suppose, ripe for marriage. When she comes home, I shall suggest to her fiancé that he puts the wedding forward. I had asked him to wait a year as she is so young.’
    She cried in surprise, ‘ Bianca’s engaged ! You never told me ! ’
    ‘ My dear, do you think I would neglect my duty to a sister? Certainly I have found her a good marriage. He is young, rich, has a fine estate in Tuscany. Bianca will be a contessa .’
    ‘ Great! If she wants to be. Does she love him?’
    ‘ Love comes after marriage, our women admit that. You look doubtful, but if love can die after marriage, can it not also be born? ’
    ‘ Y-yes, I should think so. But how awful, if it didn’t, and one had to face a lifetime with a man one didn’t love.’
    ‘ You have other plans for yourself, eh? A lifetime of service to the sick and old.’
    ‘ How dull you make my career sound. I assure you, if and when I meet the right man, I shall be happy to marry and have a home and children of my own. Only I happen to think that domestic duties are not enough to occupy one’s whole time. I’d probably be a better wife for having interests outside the house. I’d stay younger and be a more complete person, so perhaps I’d be more attractive and interesting to my husband and other people. A cabbage existence I couldn’t abide.’
    The little carriage had now begun to encounter the heavy motor traffic in the narrower streets, and progress was slower. Marco made the driver stop once or twice, so that Jan could admire the huge fountains with their enormous figures spouting water in innumerable cascades. And at last they entered the Via Veneto by the Pincine Gate, and Jan reluctantly said goodbye to the shining botticella.
    They ate outside, under a striped pink and white awning. The smart tables were covered in deep pink linen cloths, and banked with flowers.
    ‘ I shall choose everything for you,’ Marco said at once. ‘ Including the wine, for how can you possibly know what is best for such an occasion?’
    During lunch he proved a delightful companion, knowledgeable and witty. Please don’t let me fall in love with him, Jan prayed, for if I do I’ll never recover, and never find anyone so charming, when he exerts himself to be; so masterful and confident, so difficult to understand completely. One would never get to the end of making discoveries about him, she thought. He can make a woman feel like a queen or a beggarmaid, and be sublimely unaware that he was doing either.
    And when he kissed, he could make a girl feel like a woman. Even now, as exquisitely dressed women and deft waiters moved between the tables, among the scent of massed flowering plants and shrubs, the noise of the Rome traffic and the glimpse of a tall palm tree reflected in the plate glass window of the hotel, the memory of his hard male kiss could stir her. Would it ever be repeated?
    Better, safer, not. Her best chance was to get back to England and her examinations, and forget the Rome episode.
    At last he glanced at his watch. ‘ Alas, I must go. Work calls. Where for you?’
    ‘ I didn’t have time to see the treasury or do my shopping.’
    ‘ You can shop anywhere. Do that in Capri. Nowhere else in the world can you see the jewels of the Vatican—rubies, emeralds, diamonds, pearls. Crowns and crucifixes, cloth-of-gold robes and jewelled Orders— ’
    ‘ Wouldn’t it be better to sell