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normal cheerfulness had returned.
“I am afraid you will not meet my mother this evening,”
Marc said to him. “She has a headache. But I hope she will
get up for lunch tomorrow.” He looked sharply at Sam’s
face. “You look ill. Was it a bad flight?”
Sam grimaced. “I’m the world’s worst traveller. Don’t
worry, though, I’ll be fine now I’m back on terra firma.”
They dined quietly, in a very modern room with mosaic
tiling on the floor and pleasant, yellow walls. Kate ate
steak and salad, followed by a very sweet dessert made of
figs and cream, after which black coffee seemed very
appropriate.
Sam excused himself early, pleading a headache, and
Pallas went up to sit and talk to her mother for a while.
Kate was intending to go to bed early, too, but Marc said
that she would feel more like sleep when she had walked
around the garden for a while.
“The air is so pure here,” he said, draping her cardigan
around her shoulders, his fingers lingering on the nape of
her neck for a second longer than was necessary. She
shivered at his touch, and he glanced down at her, grey
eyes narrowed.
They walked round the garden without talking,
listening to the cicadas and feeling the cool dusk stealing
over the trees and flowers. The air was, as he had said,
fresh and sweet, with a faint scent of spring permeating it.
One tree was covered with purple flowers which Marc said
were called Judas flowers. High up on the hills the
mountain furze was in golden bloom and a final shaft from
the setting sun made the slopes glow like molten gold, then
