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The fish course was brought, and Kate felt as if she were ploughing through sawdust, but she finished most of it, washed down with the occasional mouthful of white Rioja.
Across the table, Giovanni watched her. Outwardly, she was completely at ease in the luxurious surroundings, and her table-manners were a delight to observe, and yet she seemed unaccountably nervous, and he wondered why.
Surely the sight of Xavier looking as though he would like to devour her for courses one, two, three and four was not making her look almost self-conscious—a quality he had never associated with Kate. He sent Xavier a searing look, and this was interpreted with a rueful shrug.
Before the dessert, Kate got up to use the powder room, and Rosa got to her feet at the same time.
‘Let’s go together,’ she said prettily. ‘And then the men can talk about us while we’re away!’
‘We’ll be talking football, I can assure you,’ said Giovanni mockingly.
In the powder room, all pretence slid away as Rosa turned to Kate, an undisguised look of hostility on her face.
‘So,’ she observed slowly, ‘you are the woman responsible for the breaking up of Anna and Giovanni’s engagement.’
The mention of Anna’s name made Kate’s cheeks flush hot and she thought that it must look like an admission of guilt. ‘You know Anna, do you?’
‘But of course.’ Rosa shrugged. ‘She and Giovanni were together for such a long time—’
‘How long?’ asked Kate, without thinking about the folly of asking such a question.
‘You don’t know?’ The smile grew superior. ‘No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Well, my dear, they were together for eight years.’
Kate felt all the blood drain from her face and had to grip onto the handbasin to stop herself swaying. Eight years! That long!
‘You do look guilty,’ observed Rosa, her soft tone unable to disguise the barb in her voice. ‘I expect that I would feel exactly the same—but then I can never imagine doing what you have done to another woman.’
Kate wanted to cry out and defend herself. To tell this woman that she had not known of Anna’s existence. That Giovanni had not told her. But something stopped her—and she wasn’t sure whether it was loyalty to Giovanni, or a sinking worry about whether she would have behaved differently even if she had known about Anna.
Instead, she fixed a bland smile onto her lips. ‘I think we’d better get back now, don’t you—or the men will wonder where we are?’
Somehow she got through the rest of the meal without letting her smile slip, aware that Giovanni was watching her closely.
And once they were back in the car he didn’t start the engine, just turned to look at her. ‘What is the matter with you?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve been acting strangely all evening!’
She wasn’t going to blab. She pretended to search in her handbag for a tissue she didn’t really want. ‘Nothing.’
‘Yes, there is something,’ he contradicted. ‘Look at me! Something was wrong tonight, Kate, and I demand to know what it is!’
She looked up and glared at him. ‘You lay no claim on me! You cannot demand anything of me, Giovanni!’ she told him proudly. ‘Nothing!’
He almost smiled at her defiance, but he remained resolute. ‘Was something said?’
Kate sighed, recognising a persistence and a determination about his character which was very similar to her own. Giovanni would push and push and push until she gave him the answers he required. Better, she supposed, to give in gracefully now, rather than ruin the rest of their last precious night together.
She stared out at the night. ‘Rosa spoke of Anna—’
An abrasive word was torn from his lips. ‘She had no right! It is not her business!’ he snarled, and then his voice grew softer. ‘What did she say?’
Kate shifted uncomfortably in her car-seat. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Kate,’ he said, on a dark note of warning, and she stared unhappily into his glittering eyes. ‘It matters.’
‘I had no idea that you had been together for so long!’ she said despairingly. ‘Eight years! That somehow makes it all the worse!’
Her pain affected him more than it had any right to. ‘It is the custom in Sicily,’ he told her gently, ‘for engagements to be long ones.’ His face altered into a grim mask. ‘I will speak to Rosa,’ he said in a voice of deadly venom.
‘No, Giovanni! You mustn’t!’
