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'Isn't he here with you in Rome?'

'Not exactly,' Deborah said carefully. 'Father, how do you come to know Michael?'

He had the grace to look a little embarrassed. 'Your mother writes to me every now and again, telling me of your doings. She seemed to think Michael Doyle was important to you—shared your artistic interests, that sort of thing! She also told me you were going on holiday with him to Rome. I was worried about you coming here, I have to admit. You may have read in the papers that the son of one of our local managers was kidnapped the other day. We paid up to get him back and he was returned to his parents alive, but it wasn't a pleasant incident. I was afraid something similar might happen to you.'

'You should have told me,' Deborah put in, thinking how casually she had dismissed his warnings when she had gone to see him.

'I didn't want to worry you,' he explained. 'But I didn't think it would do any harm to have a word with your young man '

'He isn't my young man!'

'He seemed to think he was,' her father said dryly. 'I got the impression
I
'd be paying for your wedding before I knew it!'

'Never! Why should you pay?'

'I'm your father '

'I don't care if you are! I don't want your money!'

'I see,' he said. 'I haven't much else to offer you, Deborah. I work too hard to have much time, and I have other responsibilities.'

'Agnes.'

'And our children.'

Deborah heaved a sigh. 'It isn't because she's your wife that I don't like Agnes. She doesn't like me either!'

'Now there you malign her,' her father said with unexpected humour. 'Agnes only dislikes those she envies or who are much richer than herself.'

Deborah made a face at him. She didn't doubt that Agnes was the complete materialist, but she would have liked to think her stepmother had some reason to envy her the freedom of being young and talented. One day, when she was a sculptor of note, would Agnes envy her then?

'Yes, well, never mind,' she said aloud. 'You summoned Michael to see you?'

'Hardly that,' Mr Beaumont protested. 'I took him out to lunch, if you must know. Not being my daughter, he didn't hesitate to order the most expensive meal on the menu! He also informed me it would be difficult to look after you in Rome as you were doing the whole thing on a shoe-string and if you were tempted to try and cash in by selling some of your work, he could hardly stop you. Everyone would know who you were then, just as everyone at that art college you attended knew you were connected with Beaumont International and had been born with a silver spoon in your mouth.'

Deborah gaped at him. 'But it isn't true! I never told anyone who you were! I didn't want them to know!'

Her father winced. 'These things get about. You'd be surprised!'

'I should! It's true you paid my fees at the College, but that was no wish of mine. How could I get a grant, which was what I wanted to do, when they only allow them to people whose parents earn a lot less than you do?'

'You sound as though you resent my paying for you?'

'Well, so I did! Wouldn't you have done? I want to stand on my own feet!'

Her father looked first sad and then reluctantly amused. 'Signor Manzu said you should have been called Miss Independence!'

Deborah raised her eyebrows. 'He did? When?'

'He telephoned me last night to tell me he had you safe.' Mr Beaumont leaned forward in his chair, his hands lightly clasped together on his knees. Deborah recognised the stance at once. It meant he was about to say something she wouldn't like and that he hoped to hurry over the rough ground of her displeasure as quickly as possible.

'Well?' she prompted him.

'I wasn't satisfied young Doyle understood the danger you might be in '

'Oh, Father, really! What danger?'

Her father managed to look more sheepish than ever. 'It wasn't just my imagination working overtime,' he rebuked her gently. 'I received a number of anonymous letters, all saying that Beaumont International would be made to pay for their capitalist crimes in the near future, and that neither I nor my family would be safe from their vengeance. Naturally, my first thoughts were for Agnes and the children '

Naturally! Deborah thought. She was only surprised she had figured at all in her father's calculations, even as an afterthought.

'—but then your mother wrote me about your proposed visit to Rome. I thought I would be able to talk you out of it, but you're every bit as stubborn as she is and you wouldn't listen to anything I said '

'You didn't say much!' Deborah remembered. 'I thought you were just being difficult.'

'I'm usually thought to be a reasonable man,' Mr Beaumont said drily.

'Perhaps you take the trouble to explain things to other people,' Deborah suggested, almost humbly. 'All you said to me was that you might find yourself harassed if I were recognised as your daughter in Rome. Are you surprised I didn't take you seriously?'

'Maybe I handled you badly '

'That's just it! You don't have to handle me at all! Do you handle the people you work with? Or do you talk to them as ordinary human beings?'

'They're mostly older than you are, Deborah.'

'I'm twenty-one, Father. Isn't that old enough?'

Mr Beaumont started. 'Twenty-one? I hadn't realised. I suppose one doesn't mark the event in quite the same way as we did in my young days. It's all at eighteen now, isn't it?'

'I don't know. I'm not a great partygoer.' She dismissed the subject with a shrug of her shoulders. There was no point in reminding him that she had seldom received a present from him for any of her birthdays. 'Go on about Michael,' she said. 'Why did you give him a cheque for five hundred pounds?'

'My dear child, you weren't supposed to know about that! Did the young fool tell you about it?'

'I was holding his things just before Domenico's car arrived. The cheque was in a loose envelope and I put it in my pocket '

Her father frowned. 'He hadn't cashed it? I wonder what the boy was playing at? He couldn't expect to walk into any bank in Rome and cash it, surely?'

'But why give it to him at all?' Deborah asked, as puzzled as her father was as to Michael's actions.

'I wanted him to take you to a hotel,' her father confessed. 'And to see that you didn't go off on your own. I explained to him what was involved and he seemed to understand. He seemed to know all about the spate of kidnappings in Italy and, even if you don't take it seriously, he certainly did! I can't say I liked the fellow, but he seemed bright enough! He told me he had very little money, but that he'd do his best to look after you. Only it would be difficult for him to keep up with you. You have an ample allowance from your mother '

'I do not!' Deborah was shocked into protest. 'But you
know
I won't accept anything from her now! Not since I left college! I can't live on her for the rest of my life!'

'What do you live on?' her father demanded, equally shocked.

'I worked in the evenings for this holiday. Sometimes I sell a piece of sculpture, but not often. Mostly I do whatever comes my way.' It seemed to Deborah that the whole conversation was getting out of hand. She longed for it to be over, so that she wouldn't have to think about Michael Doyle for a long, long time to come. After this little lot, he was no friend of hers!

'I'm going to do a bust of Domenico,' she remembered with a gush of pleasure. 'He says I can choose the marble for it myself!'

Her father was jolted out of his deliberate calm. 'You'd better refuse! My dear girl, have you seen the Manzu collection? You're never going to be able to compete in that class!'

Deborah had had her own doubts about that, but she was not prepared to share them with her father. 'Have you seen my work?' she asked him.

If her father remembered the invitations he had been sent to various showings of the work his daughter had done while attending the art college, he gave no sign of it. 'Your mother says you are very good,' he admitted indulgently. 'But that isn't the same thing as being of the kind of standing that any artist would gain by having a piece included in the Manzu collection!'

'Oh well,' Deborah said easily, 'if Domenico doesn't like it he doesn't have to have it. He might like to have it because I did it—not for its artistic value at all!'

'I doubt that, my dear. It wouldn't do for you to get fond of Signor Manzu,' he added stiffly. 'I know he's been kind to you '

'Kind?
He hasn't been kind at all! He's an overbearing brute! He really did kidnap me '

'Nonsense! I asked him to look out for you. You can't call it kidnapping to invite you to be his house guest in his own palace!'

'What else would you call it? He sent his car to meet me off the airport bus and forced me to accept his hospitality whether I wanted to or not. And Michael was no help at all, if you want to know!'

Her father actually laughed. 'Signor Manzu is a respectable business man—he doesn't have to kidnap anyone to get his own way in a deal. I have the greatest respect for his acumen. If his methods were a little highhanded, I don't think you have much to complain about, my dear. You seem to be on very good terms with him now!'

'Father, don't you
care ?'

'Now listen to me, Deborah. I have every reason to be grateful to Signor Manzu for looking after you. More than that, he took the trouble to kit you out with some suitable clothes, at my expense it's true, and to show you something of Rome. We are very fortunate to be his guests for a few days. Why, he's even introducing us to some of his closest friends this evening and some of them could be very useful people for me to know. If you want to quarrel with him, you won't do it while I'm on hand to prevent you. I'll send you straight back to England, if I hear you so much as breathe a word against him!'

Deborah faced her father, as stubborn and as angry as he. 'I came to Rome under my own steam and I'll go back the same way! Be as grateful as you like to Signor Domenico Manzu, but I don't owe him a thing!'

'Deborah!'

'No, you listen to me, Father. I refuse to be some pawn on your business board, to be moved here and there at will! I'm responsible for myself and not to anyone else for what I do, and say, and think! If you don't like it,
you
can go back to England!'

She was glad to escape from his society shortly after that. To her surprise her hostess meeting her on her way upstairs invited her to take tea with her. Signora Manzu made her own tea, and drank it with a relish that secretly amused her young guest.

'You have seen the collection?' she said to Deborah.

Deborah remembered it with pleasure. 'Yes, I did. How beautiful you are,
signora!
I saw at once where Domenico gets his fine looks!'

The Signora laughed. 'Domenico told me you had recognised me at once,' she said, not without satisfaction. 'You are not shocked,
carat
It caused a great scandal at the time!'

'You must have thought it was worth it,' Deborah observed. 'And the last word must be yours,
signora.
For as long as the statuette exists, everyone can see your beauty for themselves.'

'Not everyone is as broad-minded as you are,' the Signora said with a small, tight smile.

'But who cares what Alessandra thinks?' Deborah retorted.

The Signora gave her a piercing look. 'You think Domenico doesn't?'

'I don't know,' Deborah admitted, and saw her hostess wilt a little. 'But I'm sure one has to make up one's own mind about these things. I wish I could persuade my father of that!'

Signora Manzu frowned. 'You think he would object to the statuette of me?'

'No. He objects to the things I do, though. I don't like being manipulated! I'm afraid we'll never learn to agree!'

Signora Manzu patted her hand. 'If you will take a word of advice,
cara
, you will find it makes a world of difference who it is who is doing the manipulating. You find it objectionable when it is your father and I find it is so when I think it is Alessandra who is pulling the wires. Shall we make an arrangement between ourselves, you and I? We will support each other in the face of these people and—who knows?—perhaps we shall rid our lives of both of them to a safe distance where we can contemplate them with equanimity? Is it a deal?' She brought out the Americanism with a satisfaction that made Deborah laugh.

'It's a deal,' she agreed, and they solemnly shook hands like two conspirators.

Deborah could have done with her new partner beside her when she came face to face with Domenico in the hall on her way back to her own room.

He lifted his eyebrows at the sight of her. 'I hope you managed to reassure your father?' he inquired with less than his usual tact.

Deborah, who scarcely ever lost her temper, did so now. She had come through a trying few hours and she thought she had acquitted herself well—
no thanks to him\

'How much did he pay
you?'
she threw at him. 'Enough to make it worth your while, I suppose, or you would have left me to my own devices! Which I would very much have preferred, let me tell you! How dared you frighten the life out of me '

'When did I do that?' His eyes laughed into hers. 'You weren't scared at all,
piccina!'

'Of course I was scared! I'd never seen you before and I knew nothing about you! How was I to know what evil you intended doing me?'

He put his head on one side. 'A little excitement is not the same as being afraid,' he mocked her. 'You knew all the time I wouldn't hurt you. Come, confess it, Deborah! You were more curious than fearful, were you not?'

Deborah had no intention of doing anything of the sort. 'You took advantage of me!'

He looked up heavenwards. 'Where is the Mouth of Truth now? You would get your fingers nipped for that,
cara mia!'