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There was no reason other than the one he had already suggested, Marco was sure, and that was why she couldn’t answer him.
He had started to turn away from her, he the victor in their exchange and she the vanquished, when she said in a low, tense voice, ‘Very well—yes, there is a reason, and it has nothing to do with me wanting Anton in my life.’ A fierce shudder racked her body. ‘Quite the opposite. But I can’t … I can’t talk about it.’
‘Why not? Surely I deserve an explanation for your behaviour?’
‘Behaviour for which I’ve already apologised.’
Lily had had enough. She could feel her self-control fraying and giving way under the pressure of her emotions. She bent her head, not wanting Marco to realise how close to the edge she was, how afraid she was that her own actions as much as her words might inadvertently give her away.
‘There’s no law that says I have to provide you with an explanation of my … of the reasons for what I did as well,’ she told him fiercely. ‘A … a compassionate man—a man who understands and accepts that other people can sometimes be vulnerable and in need—would know that. But you aren’t that kind of man, are you? You’re the kind of man who wants to think the worst about others.’
‘I’m the kind of man who knows when he’s being lied to, if that’s what you mean,’ Marco agreed acidly, defending himself against the knowledge that he had been far more affected by Lily’s outburst than he should have been.
‘But you are not being lied to,’ Lily insisted. ‘Perhaps I should be the one questioning you about your motives for refusing to believe me rather than the other way around,’ she added perceptively.
Marco felt his heart thud heavily into his chest wall. His glance fell on his watch and his heart gave a surge of relief as he saw his means of escape from what had now become a very dangerous situation.
‘It’s nearly eight o’clock,’ he told her, ignoring her comment, ‘and we’re due to leave at nine.’
Seated in the privately hired hovercraft next to Marco, Lily warned herself that she was here in Italy to work, and that she must put aside the temptation to let the pressure of her secret thoughts and emotions stop her from doing that. Even though Marco’s unjust accusations had hurt her as well as angered her.
After leaving Marco’s suite earlier, she had only just made it downstairs in time for the arrival of their transport, having returned to her own suite first, to shower quickly and then change into jeans and a tee shirt, worn underneath her faithful cardigan.
They’d been driven to the first villa on Marco’s list, where they’d been given a private tour of its art collection. After lunch at a small, elegant restaurant, where Lily had still been too wrought up by the events of the morning to do her pasta justice, they had gone on to their second villa, where Lily had discussed the loan to the trust of part of a collection of letters written to past owners of the villa by an Englishman who had stayed there in the decade following Napoleon’s defeat. The third son of a duke, the Englishman had come to the lakes for his health, and the letters had been written to a young female relation of the family on his return to England as part of his courtship of her. In addition to the letters there were also some sketches he had done for her of his home in Yorkshire.
Aidan Montgomery had died from his tuberculosis before they could marry, and as she’d inspected the documents closely Lily had wondered if the marks on them came from tears cried over the letters by the fiancée he had left behind.
It had been Marco who had noticed her concentration on the stains, and Marco too who had pointed out dryly to her, when she’d voiced her thoughts, that if Teresa d’Essliers had grieved for her fiancé that grief had not stopped her from marrying someone else within eighteen months of his death.
‘A diplomatic family marriage,’ the curator had told them. ‘Her father was a banker who enjoyed gambling with other people’s money. Her husband was one of his clients—a wealthy silk merchant who wished to improve his own social status.’
‘Will we have time to visit any of Como’s silk mills?’ Lily asked Marco now, as the hovercraft took them to their next appointment—a villa situated at the side of the lake, with its own landing stage.
