‘That was my housekeeper,’ he explained, shutting off the phone.
‘And she’s already made my bed up?’
‘She never doubted that I’d bring you back.’
‘Now I remember. Gino once said that none of your servants ever doubted that you could do everything you said you would. It’s an article of faith, and practically heresy to doubt il conte.’
He made a wry face.
‘It sounds devoted but actually it’s just a way of controlling me.’
‘I suppose people’s expectations can be like handcuffs.’
‘Exactly. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always tried to keep my head down and not be il conte any more than I have to. But it doesn’t work. I’ve got the name hanging around my neck, and that great palace. How can any man live a normal life in a place like that?’
‘It must be grim if you’re there alone.’
‘I’m not exactly alone. Minna lives there, and Celia, a maid. And Toni.’
‘I love Toni,’ she said at once. ‘He’s so big and shambling. I’m not sure why but he looks terribly vulnerable.’
‘I got him from a rescue centre. Nobody else wanted him because he’s epileptic, and I suppose they thought it might make him aggressive. It doesn’t. Quite the reverse. When he has a fit he just lies there and shakes.’
‘Poor soul,’ she said, shocked. ‘So you gave him a home because he had nowhere else to go.’
‘Well, if I did he’s repaid me a thousand times. He’s the best friend a man ever had.’
But still, Ruth thought, shivering as she recalled that great empty building, it must make for a lonely life, with only his memories for company. She wondered about his wife, and how much he must have loved her to have been reduced to such bleakness by her loss. And she shivered again.
‘Where did you go when you slipped out this morning?’ Pietro asked.
‘Looking for places I’d been before, but I didn’t do so well. It’s all so different in winter. I went to a little café where we’d been together. We sat outside, and I remember the sun shining on his hair, but today I stayed inside because it was drizzling. I can’t do it on my own. I’ll have to wait until he returns. Or maybe I could go to see him.’
‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘It has to be here, where you were together.’
Pietro knew he must keep her with him at least until he’d spoken to Gino. Earlier that day he’d sat by the lagoon and put through a call on his cell phone. A female voice had answered. Pietro had left a message for Gino to call him, but nothing had happened.
He’d sent a text, stressing the urgency but not mentioning Ruth’s name. Now, hours later, while Ruth was drinking her wine he did a hasty check under the table, but found nothing.
‘How did you find me?’ she asked.
‘With the help of a few hundred friends. Venice counts as a great city because it’s unique, but in size it’s little more than a village. We all know each other. Sooner or later I found someone who’d seen you, and could point me in the right direction. I even knew what your new coat looked like.’
‘So I’ve been under surveillance?’
‘In a nice way. You can’t hide anything from your neighbours in Venice, but it can be comforting to have so many people look out for you.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Most of them said something about how I shouldn’t be out so early in the cold, and I should be careful not to get lost.’ She gave a sigh of pleasure. ‘It was like being protected by a huge family.’
‘We do that,’ he agreed. ‘Venetians are so different from the rest of the world. We try to look after the others.’
Except Gino, who had simply deserted her, he thought. He wondered if she were thinking the same, but she gave no sign.
‘Go on telling me about your day,’ he urged.
‘Oh, you’d have laughed if you could have seen me. I had all sorts of impractical ideas, take a gondola ride, feed the pigeons in St Mark’s Square, go to look at the Bridge of Sighs. Something really did come back to me there-the first time I got cross with him and we ended up bickering.’
‘About the Bridge of Sighs?’
‘Yes. Gino spun me the whole romantic story, how it had been named after the sighs of lovers. I thought that was lovely until I bought a guide book and discovered that the bridge connects the prison to the Doge’s Palace, where trials were held. So the sighs came from prisoners taking their last look at the sky before going to the dungeons.’
Pietro began to laugh. ‘You quarrelled about that?’
‘Not quarrelled, squabbled. I like to have the truth.’
‘Rather than a romantic fantasy? Shame on you.’
‘I don’t trust fantasies. They lay traps.’
‘But so does the truth sometimes,’ he pointed out quietly.
She didn’t answer in words, but she nodded.
‘I got very lofty and humourless,’ she said after a while. ‘I told Gino sternly that he had no right to tell lies just to make things sound romantic when they weren’t. D’you know what he said?’
Pietro shook his head.
‘He said, “But, cara, one of the prisoners was Casanova, the greatest lover in the history of the world. You can’t get more romantic than that.”’
He had to laugh at her droll manner. ‘Did you forgive him?’
‘Of course. You have to forgive Gino his funny little ways.’
He noted her use of the present tense, as though Gino were still a presence in her life. Was this how she explained his desertion to herself? Gino’s funny little ways?
Ruth went on talking about her day, putting a light-hearted gloss on it, while he watched her with a heavy heart. A stranger would never have known the anguish that lay behind her flippant manner. But he saw it, because it was like looking at himself.
CHAPTER THREE
‘THE trouble with you,’ Pietro said at last, ‘is that you’re not organised. You need to do this properly, with someone who knows Venice and who can keep an eye on you to stop you doing something daft.’
‘Well, I’m interviewing applicants for the position,’ Ruth said promptly. ‘There’s no salary, unpredictable hours and it needs to be someone who can put up with me.’
‘I’ll consider myself hired.’
‘I haven’t offered you the job yet,’ she protested in mock indignation.
‘Fine. Shall I wait at the end of the queue? If you’re wise you’ll snap me up while I’m on offer.’
‘Now which one of us is mad?’ she chided him.
‘Fifty-fifty, I’d say. It’s best that way. We may be the only people in the world who can cope with each other.’
‘But haven’t you got your firm to run?’
‘I have a good manager, and January isn’t busy.’
They left the restaurant and wandered back to the path by the water just as a vaporetto approached the landing stage.
‘That’ll take us down the Grand Canal as far as we need to go,’ Pietro said, seizing her hand and beginning to run.
They made it onto the great water-bus just in time, and laughed, holding themselves against the rails until a wave made the boat lurch, sending her stumbling against him. He steadied her, reminded again how insubstantial she was.
But then she gave him a cheerful smile and he realised that it was only her body that was frail. Tonight he’d glimpsed her cheeky fighting spirit, and he liked it.
‘Shall we sit down for safety?’ he asked.
‘No, thanks, I’m fine.’
Ruth fixed one hand onto the upright rail and leaned slightly over the side, gazing down into the water rushing by. With a sigh of resignation Pietro wound an arm about her waist, holding her safe. It was simpler than remonstrating with her.
But it was a mistake, bringing back the previous night when she’d put her arms about his neck, kissing him again and again in the joy of eager young love. It had been so long since a woman had kissed him that he’d tensed, holding himself still, not responding to the shock, then waking her gently.