Moth to the Flame (24 page)

He waited for a moment and when she did not reply, walked

without hurry across to the door and out without looking back.

Juliet sat motionless staring at the steaming bowl of soup in front of

her. Long after it had gone cold, she got to her feet and went back

into the bedroom. She let the peignoir drop in a crumpled heap to

the floor and climbed in between the covers of the tumbled bed. She

felt very cold suddenly, and very tired, although she knew she was

beyond sleep.

And as she lay there, counting each hour chimed out by a nearby

campanile, through the open door from the sitting room came

drifting the tormenting, evocative perfume of Santino's roses.

'Darling,' wrote Mim, 'I'm so pleased that you've managed to extend

your holiday for so long. You'll be able to see such a lot of Italy.

Now aren't you glad that I persuaded you to go? And how nice that

Jan has been able to get some time off with you. How kind of these

friends of hers to have invited you both to stay with them.

'Jan's news is really exciting,' the letter continued. 'She's been very

happy at Di Lorenzo, but I can quite see that the time has come for

her to make a change, and how wonderful to think that there's talk

of a film!'

Juliet put the rest of the letter back in the envelope and stared rather

bleakly out of her bedroom window. So that was Jan's latest line,

she thought bitterly. If only it were true, or even approaching the

truth. The fact was that Jan was now out of work. She had officially

resigned from Di Lorenzo, and had written to several other fashion

houses stating she was available for work, and giving a forward

date some two months after the expected birth of her baby. But

none of them had shown even a modicum of interest in availing

themselves of her services, and Jan's mood had grown progressively

stormier at each politely worded refusal.

She had seemed more contented of late, Juliet had to admit, but

there had been no approaches made to her about future work, and

certainly none from a film company. She sighed. Jan enjoyed the

limelight, and was not going to be prepared to live her life quietly in

anyone else's background.

They had been at the
castello
for just over a month, and the time

was fast approaching when Juliet knew she was going to have to

return to England. It had been far from the happiest period of her

life. In fact she could not remember when she had been more

actively miserable. Yet on the surface, everything in the garden

appeared lovely. What had gone wrong?

Acting the role of Santino's fiancée had not been as difficult as she

feared, because he had gone out of his way, it seemed, to make it

easy for her. He had been away on business a great deal, and apart

from kissing her lightly on arrival and departure, he had kept his

word about not forcing his attentions upon her. There had been; she

thought with a certain relief, no return to that dark, frightening

passion he had shown her that night in the hotel suite. In fact, there

had been no passion at all, and Santino seemed to make a point of

avoiding being alone with her. She supposed, rather desolately, that

she should be grateful for this. It was after all what she had

wanted—or rather what she had told him she wanted, so she had no

one to thank but herself if he had taken her at her word.

Not that they had had much opportunity to be alone since their

return to the
castello
because Jan was always there—glamorous,

confident, and often with a faint mocking smile curving her lips as

she observed them. Sometimes, Juliet thought her sister knew that

the engagement was merely a hoax. Sometimes when they were

sitting round the dining table and Jan would make one of her lightly

barbed remarks about love and marriage, Juliet felt like crying

aloud, 'Oh, please let's stop all this pretence. We don't need it now.'

Not, she supposed, that that was strictly true. During their sojourn

at the
castello,
they had received two seemingly casual visits from

Vittoria Leontana. She was all smiles and affection for Jan, and

even managed a few cordial phrases in English for Juliet, but it was

clear she had come to snoop, and Juliet was thankful for the adroit

way in which Jan managed to evade her more searching questions.

It was plain that the Contessa had seen the newspaper story Santino

had planted linking his name with Jan's, and that she was not

prepared to accept that it was merely a journalistic error, confusing

one sister for another. But in the end, she had to depart with her

obvious curiosity about the situation still unsatisfied, and Juliet

found herself breathing a sigh of relief as her expensive car turned

out of the courtyard and drove away along the coast.

She had sometimes wondered if the Contessa had been responsible

for the phalanx of photographers waiting at the clinic steps for them

to leave that day four weeks earlier. She had been startled by the

battery of flash-bulbs and turned away with a slight gasp, but Jan

had revelled in the situation, managing a brave smile for the

cameras, and clinging to Santino's arm as if he was her one rock

and salvation.

Juliet had expected Santino to be angry at the reception committee,

but although he had not loitered, he had answered the questions

they fired at him quite patiently.

During the drive back to Roccaforte, at a time when she was sure

Jan who had been given painkillers for the trip was safely asleep,

Juliet had ventured to ask Santino what the reporters' questions had

been about.

He gave a slight shrug. 'About
la bella
Janina, for the most part,' he

answered shortly. 'How badly was she injured? When will she

return to her modelling career? You can imagine the sort of thing.'

He gave her a sideways glance. 'And they asked about you, of

course.'

'I see.' She looked down at her hands, clasped together in her lap.

'Did—did you tell them that we were—engaged?'

'Naturally,' he said with a touch of impatience. 'I told them exactly

the same story that we have told everyone else. What did you

expect?'

She sighed. 'Exactly that, I suppose,' she admitted in a low voice.

'I—I just wish that not quite so many people had to know. It's going

to make things so awkward when -' she paused, not knowing how

to finish the sentence.

'When we decide this particular comedy is over, you mean,' he said

in a hard voice. 'Don't worry about it,
cara.
I will make it clear to

all sources that it was you that jilted me, if that's what you're afraid

of.'

'It isn't,' she whispered. 'For one thing, I'm worried in case the

English newspapers do get hold of it, and Mim sees it.'

'Hmm.' He was silent for a moment. 'Perhaps it would be better if

you wrote to her yourself and told her, that we were engaged?'

'No 1' Juliet was vehement. 'I'd have to tell her everything in that

case. I can't tell her that I'm engaged to be married—she'd be so

thrilled, so excited. It wouldn't be fair to hoax her. Besides, she'd

want to meet you. There would be all sorts of complications.'

'Then we must hope that the English newspaper® decide that your

affairs are of no interest to them,' he said rather drily, and she

subsided back into her seat, flushing a little.

Now that they were in league, however temporarily, there seemed

to be a barrier between them that had never existed when she was

fighting with him. His manner was cool and courteous, and this in

itself was sufficient to keep her at bay. She tried to tell herself that

it was better—easier this way, but she could not make herself

believe it. Nothing he could say or do—no hardening of his attitude

to her could make the ending of this thing either simple or bearable.

She was caught in an emotional snare which was tearing at her.

At nights she lay awake, staring into the darkness, telling herself

that it was madness to allow herself to feel this way for a man

whom, in all conscience, she hardly knew. He's a stranger, she cried

out silently, a stranger, and yet at the same time she knew that this

was hardly the truth. That it was as if she had always known him,

always in some strange way been waiting for him. Her tragedy was

that he did not feel the same. At first she had been an aggravation,

something on his list requiring immediate attention, then later an

available woman to be made love to as and when the mood took

him. At times she even found herself wishing bitterly that she

belonged to his world, and could accept the kind of casual

encounter that clearly was as much as he wanted in a relationship.

But it was useless. She wanted more, and she had to face the fact

that she had nothing to hope for from him.

She stared out of her window along to the beach. There was a gaily

coloured beach umbrella erected there now, and she could see Jan's

distant figure taking her ease in its shade. She had little doubt that if

she looked hard enough she would be able to pick out Santino as

well; but she had no real wish to add reinforcement to an already

increasing awareness of the attraction that existed between her

sister and the man she loved.

At first she had told herself it was completely one-sided, and had

cringed inwardly from the blatancy of Jan's pursuit of Santino.

Nothing—and especially not the fact that as far as she knew he

belonged to her sister—appeared to deter her, not even the cool

amusement with which her first overtures had been received. And

eventually her persistence had paid off. Jan had always been lovely,

but now her early pregnancy had lent her face a new softness and

her skin a bloom and radiance that had been lacking before. Apart

from an extra fullness to her breasts, her body had not begun to

alter yet, and as she sunbathed every day, her skin had turned to a

soft shade of honey tan which was most becoming to her. Just how

becoming, a man like Santino could not fail to appreciate, Juliet

thought bitterly.

At first she had joined the sunbathing parties on the beach, but

gradually she had begun to feel more and more
de trop.
She had not

thought it was deliberate at first. After all, Jan would obviously

know a great many people whom Santino would also number

among his acquaintance. She had moved in a smart, fashionable

world that he also knew, so it was natural that they would have

things in common to talk about. But Juliet had not expected to feel

so completely excluded. She had not been disturbed at first by Jan's

frequent lapses into Italian, usually airily explained away by her

sister as—'A joke, sweetie. It just wouldn't sound funny in English.'

She could even accept that. What she could not accept was the

gradual switch in their relationships which put Jan at his side at

mealtimes, her voice low and intimate as she retailed some amusing

or scandalous anecdote which might as well have been in ancient

Chinese for all the meaning it had for Juliet. It was skilfully done, of

course, with frequent contrite looks at Juliet. 'Darling, you mustn't

let me monopolise your gorgeous fiancé.'

Nevertheless, Juliet thought, that was precisely and quite

cold-bloodedly what Jan was doing, and the fact that the

engagement did not actually exist between Santino and her self did

not really make her sister's actions any less reprehensible. As far as

Jan knew, Juliet and Santino had fallen in love, and she was doing

her level best to intervene. At times, Juliet wondered rather

despairingly what her motives could be. She couldn't possibly hope

that Santino would marry her, however strong the physical

attraction might be between them.

But Juliet had not bargained for Santino's reaction to her sister's

transparently provocative advances. She had expected him to brush

them aside contemptuously, but he gave no sign of doing so. He

might still be faintly amused, but he was never discouraging, and

Juliet suspected miserably that but for her presence they might well

be in the throes of an affair by now.

With every day that passed, she knew more overwhelmingly than

ever that all she could do to avoid more heartbreak was to get out