She took a deep breath.

“When I was eighteen I was in love. You have to understand that where I come from a girl’s whole life is a preamble to getting married to the right man, living in the right house, and in the right county, like something out of a Jane Austen novel. He was a poor relation, but we’d grown up together, and he’d been treated like a son. Daddy liked him. I thought I loved him.

“A huge wedding was planned, my grandmother’s tiara came out of the vault for a clean and a polish, the invitations were ready. I was to wear my mother’s lace veil.” She swallowed, blinking back tears that she still couldn’t hold back. “Then he ditched me. Wrote me a twenty word note and took off for some job in India, left the country. He didn’t even have the guts to tell me to my face. I still don’t know if he planned it or if was an unconscious revolt against everything my family stood for, but I was devastated. Imagine the humiliation-eighteen years old and jilted by someone I’d known forever. I vowed I’d never put myself in that position again. I swore I would marry if and when I had to, but only to secure my inheritance, never for love. Love makes you too vulnerable.”

Marco handed her some more wine and she took a deep draught. He made as if to speak but she held up a hand. “No, let me finish. Almost out of revenge, I set out to break hearts. I was what is known as a ‘goer’. If there was a riotous party I’d be there. I was choosy about my partners, but there were more than I care to admit. Men fell for me, declared their love, but I soon tired of them. When it was finished I never answered their letters or their pleading. I enjoyed the power. I associated with people who didn’t want any commitment and I found myself turning from a jilted, eighteen-year-old deb with a broken heart into a worldly wise woman of twenty-seven.”

She continued to look down, not daring to lift her eyes to see his reaction.

“Is that how you thought of me? An instrument of revenge?” His voice seemed to come from far away.

“Oh God, no! You were so different.” She felt his fingers on her face, wiping away the tears. He gathered her into his arms and rocked her as she cried.

“Now you can take back what you said,” she murmured against his chest. “I understand if you want nothing more to do with me.”

“Cara, bellissima,” he whispered. “I don’t care what men you’ve tortured in the past. Just tell me it’s over.”

“Yes, it’s over. It’s been over for a while, until I met you.” She lifted her face for his kiss.

Soon after, Marco snuffed the candles and lay beside her in the big, soft bed. The sweetly scented night air wafted in through the open windows, stirring the pale curtains.

They lay quietly for a while, with his arms around her. And then he found her mouth and kissed her, not just with his lips but with his whole being, surrounding her and engulfing her in a consuming embrace. She resisted the call of his body for no more than a heartbeat before pressing herself against him and returning his kiss with all the heat and depth of feeling that she knew now had been missing from her life.

Somewhere in the distance frogs croaked and a dog barked. Emma drifted to sleep in Marco’s arms.

The next morning, Marco found her some clothes and a strong walking stick, and she hobbled downstairs to an early breakfast. As soon as she had finished, he brought a couple of horses and they rode into the nearest village. It seemed as if every inhabitant was outside, going about some urgent business. She supposed they were catching up on their lives, bringing back old habits and order after the long interruption.

There was one telephone in the village and it was working. She breathed a sigh of relief as the operator motioned her to pick up the receiver.

“How will I pay for this?” she whispered to Marco as she waited for the connection.

“I’ll pay.”

The static on the line surged and crackled and she closed her eyes, willing the call to go through. It was ten o’clock and her father would have finished his paperwork for the estate, ready for a cup of coffee before he began his rounds.

Suddenly the line cleared, and she heard the voice of the butler.

“Matthews? Is that you? Let me speak to my father. Yes, yes, it’s me, Lady Emma.” She should have thought more carefully about how she would introduce herself. Poor Matthews had sounded as if he’d heard a ghost, which he had, in a way.

At home the telephone was in a poky little cubbyhole under the stairs because her father refused to have it in his office and she waited, tapping her foot, until she heard her father’s steps echoing on the flagstones of the big hall.

“Who is this?” He sounded angry, upset. “Is this some kind of joke?’

“Daddy? Daddy, it’s me, Emma. I’m alive…Yes, really…no, I’m not hurt. It was Catherine, my maid…” Through the blur of her tears she saw Marco move to stand a short distance away, giving her some privacy.

It took three days for money to come through in a wire, and for the British Ambassador in Rome to issue her travel documents. During the three days, Marco took her around the estate, letting her meet his workers, explaining the techniques of wine making, storing and shipping. She’d always had a good head for the business side of things and enjoyed comparing how things were done here with the traditions of her father’s estates.

They found the owner of the dog. Mickey’s real name turned out to be Grande, unoriginal but eloquent. His owner had been in the caves with Marco. They figured the dog must have seen Emma and recognized her when he found her trying to climb the slope. He’d learned the trick with his tail with small children.

Emma bent down and rubbed the animal’s ears. “You’ll always be Mickey to me,” she whispered. “There’s always a big bone for you at my house.”

The days took on a rhythm. They rode out each morning under the sun, with Emma clad in trousers, a loose shirt and a floppy hat. They stopped to eat in a cottage somewhere and to sample the local wine. In the afternoon they returned, hot and dusty, and bathed together, never tiring of exploring their bodies, talking about their morning, always ending in making love on the soft bed with curtains drawn across the windows to create an early dusk. Then they slept until the air cooled.

After dinner in the evening they talked more about the estate, about how Marco would solve the problems that had accumulated while he was away, about marketing his wine. Emma told him about the big house in the Cotswolds, the crops they grew, her father’s dedication to the land.

When it grew dark then they would walk up the stairs, arms entwined around each other’s waist and fall into bed, sated with food and wine and sunshine. Their lovemaking was sometimes slow and easy, sometimes fraught with a raw need, always satisfying, touching the depth of their soul.

The money and the government papers arrived by messenger as they sipped an aperitif on the terrace in the late afternoon of the third day. The man propped his bicycle against a tree and handed them the buff envelope with “On His Majesty’s Service” printed in black across one corner.

Marco signed for the letter and gave the man a tip. Well content, the messenger pedaled away, the wheels scrunching on the freshly raked gravel.

Emma took out the papers and looked at Marco with tears in her eyes.

“I have to go.”

He thrust his hands in his pockets. “I know.”

“I’ll write to you.”

“Of course.”

That night she lay naked in bed with her eyes half closed while he snuffed the candles. The fear settled in her belly, like a living organism, cold and voracious. What if she found she no longer cared for him once she was back in her familiar home? What if he forgot her as soon as she was out of sight? Her head told her that the test would be a good one, but she also knew the physical pain around her heart that had started at the thought of saying goodbye would never go away if she lost him. With icy certainty she understood that if she didn’t return to Marco, even if she had to marry, she would never find anyone who could touch her spirit and make her body sing in the same way.