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Wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved, form-fitting blue dress, so dark it could be mistaken for black, with what appeared to be silver stars patterned over it and falling to her feet, her hair was twisted back into her usual elegant chignon and her face subtly adorned with make-up. There was nothing special or unusual about her appearance. Nothing that could account for his throat catching and his intended polite greeting refusing to form.
‘My apologies for making you wait,’ she said in that soft, quiet voice he was slowly becoming accustomed to.
He cleared his throat and rose to his feet. ‘You haven’t. I was a few minutes early.’ He’d been ready over an hour ago and had ended up watching the last half of an Italian football game to pass the time. He didn’t even like football but he’d run out of distractions from the tingles that had plagued his body the entire day. What he wouldn’t have given to be able to jump behind the wheel of a racing car and thrash it around Ceres National Racetrack and feel the machine bending to his will. Too dangerous, of course. He had done many laps of his country’s racetrack, but those had been in ordinary cars in which he’d been obliged to resist the compulsion to put his foot flat on the accelerator and take them to their limits, and push himself to the limit too.
She stood before him. A waft of her perfume coiled into his senses. It was the same perfume she’d worn on their wedding day and every day since. He must have become accustomed to it for his dislike had vanished without him noticing. Probably familiarity, he supposed, even as he resisted the temptation to dip his face into the graceful curve of her neck and breathe it in more deeply.
Yes. Familiarity. It could do that. He’d always thought familiarity bred contempt or indifference but was learning it could have the opposite effect too. The opposite effect on him when it came to his wife in any case.
It had to be all those working hours they spent together causing it, he reasoned. No wonder his senses were attuning themselves to her. She’d arrived at his castle like a long-forgotten ghost, bland and insignificant, barely seen or noticed, but slowly her form was taking shape and solidifying, and now he was always wholly aware of her presence. And her absence. Slowly but surely, she was coming to dominate his thoughts in the weeknights and private days they spent apart. This would have been as disconcerting as his awareness of her if he didn’t have an answer for that too, which was that Elsbeth was a conundrum to be worked out.Thatwaswhy she invaded his thoughts. Amadeo had always insisted on knowing how things worked, from car engines to the pendulum of a grandfather clock.
Elsbeth’s insipidness was an act, he was certain of it, the smiley face a mask. Every day his conviction grew that there was more between her ears than a little grey matter and a lot of hot air. Sometimes his fingers itched to rip the mask off her face and insist the real Elsbeth show herself.
‘Where did you get that?’ he asked, nodding at the painting above the fireplace.
‘It was a gift from the Italian ambassador’s daughter. Giuseppe told her how much I liked it so she sent it to me.’
‘That’s the danger of always having to be complimentary,’ he observed. ‘People take our compliments at face value. You didn’t have to hang it—we have a room the size of the Blue Stateroom filled with gifts from the public where it can be stored. Your team should have told you that.’ Noticing her gaze dart to the floor, he narrowed his eyes. ‘Didthey tell you about the storeroom?’
A blush covering her cheeks, she nodded.
‘Then why did you hang it?’
‘Because I like it.’ She chewed on her bottom lip before adding, ‘But if you don’t think it should be hung there I will have the old painting put back.’
‘Youlikeit?’ He wouldn’t have been more surprised if she’d actually pulled the vacuous smiley mask off her face with her nails.
She nodded again.
‘Why?’
‘I just do.’
‘More than the original painting?’
Another nod.
His incredulity rocketing, he shook his head. ‘Elsbeth, this is your home so what you hang on the walls is entirely up to you, but I’m curious why you would prefer the work of a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl over a Renaissance masterpiece.’
She raised her head and stared at the painting. ‘I like the colour of the flowers.’
He recalled the waterlilies of the original painting. There had been something insipid about them he’d believed perfectly matched his wife.
‘They’re so bright and bold. And honest.’ Was that a wistful note in her voice? ‘And I like the expression in the woman’s eyes. It’s like she’s saying, “Yes, I know, I’m wearing a headdress of flowers but aren’t they wonderful?”’ Her shoulders rose and she gave him a smile that contained no vacuity at all. ‘Seeing it there makes me feel warm.’
Looking more closely at the painting, Amadeo began to see what she meant. Therewassomething playful and knowing in the sitter’s eyes.
And then he looked back into his wife’s eyes and his throat caught again.
For an instant, her baby blue eyes were soft and warm, and in that instant he saw that behind themwasa real woman of flesh and blood, with thoughts and opinions and dreams all of her own, and when the instant passed and the vacuous smile began to set itself back into place, his heart thumped and he snapped, ‘Don’t.’
Elsbeth’s smile froze on her lips.
What had she done to make him raise his voice at her like that?
Holding her breath, the individual beats of her heart pounded loudly in her ears while she watched Amadeo’s shoulders and chest rise, and his head lift as he cast his gaze to the ceiling before his stare locked back on her.
‘Only smile if you mean it.’
