Not that he was thinking of marriage for himself. The mere thought of Selena in the glimmering white satin and lace creation that Dulcie had worn put the whole matter into perspective. Selena would probably marry in a stetson and cowboy boots.

By the time he reached his own house he’d settled the matter in his mind. They’d had a great time together, but it was over, and that was as it should be. He wouldn’t think of her any more.

Gina had just finished making up his bed. She greeted him and went to collect a duster that she’d left by the window.

‘Renzo wanted to see you this afternoon,’ she started to say, ‘so that he can-I wonder who that is.’

‘Who?’ He went to stand beside her at the window that looked down on the path that led up from Morenza.

A tall slender figure, in jeans and shirt, and weighed down by a couple of bags, was walking towards the house, sometimes stopping to stare upward, her hand shading her eyes. She was too far away for Leo to see her face, but he recognised everything else, from her swaying walk to the angle of her head as she tilted it back.

‘She must be a stranger in these parts,’ Gina was saying, ‘Because-signore?’

Her employer was no longer with her. She heard his feet thundering down the stairs and the next moment he appeared below, running so fast that Gina thought he would topple headlong into the valley.

The young woman dropped her bags and began to run too, and the next moment they were locked in each other’s arms, oblivious to the rest of the world.

‘Celia,’ Gina yelled to one of the maids, ‘We’ve got a guest. Stop what you’re doing and prepare a room for her.

‘Not,’ she added, her eyes on the entwined figures, ‘that I think she’ll spend much time sleeping in it.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘TELL me I’m not dreaming. You’re really here!’

‘I’m here, I’m here! Feel me.’ Selena was laughing and crying together.

He did his best, crushing her in a fierce grip and kissing every part of her face.

‘I’ve imagined you walking up that road so often but it was always a trick of the light.’

‘Not this time. Oh, Leo, are you really glad to see me?’

Suddenly the words failed him. Was he glad to see her? All he knew was that the lump in his throat made it hard to speak.

‘You’re crying,’ she said in wonder.

‘Of course I’m not. Only wimps cry,’ he teased her with the reminder of her own words. But his eyes were wet and he didn’t dry them. He was a Latin, raised not to be ashamed of his emotions, and he had no wish to hide them with this woman.

He took her face between his hands, looking at her tenderly before laying his lips on hers in a long kiss. She answered, putting her heart into it, knowing this was why she’d come such a great distance, and nothing could have kept her away.

Something butted her from behind, then from the side, and she looked down to find herself surrounded by goats. They were coming down the hill, milling around the two of them, while a grinning goatherd made a gesture that was half greeting, half salute.

‘’Notte Franco,’ Leo said, grinning back.

It would be all over the valley now, he thought. So let them talk!

He tucked one of Selena’s bags under his arm, took the other in his hand, disentangled himself and her from curious goats, and put his free arm around her. Then, together they went up the hill to home.

‘Are your family visiting you?’ Selena asked, seeing all the faces at the windows.

‘No, they’re-’ he stopped himself from saying ‘-the servants.’ ‘Two of the girls are Gina’s nieces,’ he said. It was true. When he needed to employ somebody new he just told Gina and she produced some of her own vast family.

The faces vanished, and when they reached the door there was only Gina, smiling a welcome and explaining that the signorina’s room was being prepared, and in the meantime refreshments were on their way from the kitchen.

Gina departed, and Leo took Selena back into his arms, not kissing her this time but pulling her against him and resting his head against her hair.

‘How come she’s already preparing a room for me?’ Selena asked.

‘She saw you come up the hill, and when I-when we-well, I guess everyone knows all about us by now.’

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what he thought ‘all about us’ might be, but she let it go. She didn’t know the answer herself. It was what she was here to find out. For the moment nothing mattered next to the joyous glow that enveloped her at being with him. In this country where everything looked strange and she didn’t know the language she felt that she’d come home. Because he was here.

‘Why didn’t you take a cab all the way to the door?’ Leo asked.

‘I didn’t know how to tell him your address. I found a bus which had ‘Morenza’ written on the front, only I didn’t know you had to buy the tickets in a sweet shop first, and by the time I’d done that the bus had gone. Yes, all right, make fun of me.’

He was chuckling at her droll manner, but he controlled himself. ‘I’m sorry, carissima, I can’t help it. It was the way you said it. We are a little mad in Italy. We buy bus tickets in sweet shops.’

‘What happens if the sweet shops are closed?’

‘We walk.’

She gave a choke of laughter. He dropped his head so that his forehead rested against hers, and grinned with sheer delight at having her here.

‘So I waited for the next bus,’ she said, ‘and then I recognised your house from what you’d told me.’

‘But why didn’t you call me to collect you?’

‘Well-you know-’

All the way over she’d been tormented by the thought that he didn’t really want her at all. She would call and hear the awkwardness in his voice. Perhaps he’d only called her in Texas to tell her not to call him because it had all been a big mistake. Only the fact that she was high above the Atlantic at the time stopped her getting out of the aircraft there and then.

She’d promised herself that when she landed she’d go straight back. Or call him. Or do anything rather than seek him out. Then she would hear again the sound of Barton clucking, and make herself go on, telling herself that no member of the Gates family had ever been a quitter. She had no idea if this were true, but it helped.

The bus had deposited her by the duck pond in Morenza, from where she could see the house at the top of the incline. There was an ancient cab waiting, and she could have simply pointed out the house to the driver, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it-not if she might be coming back that way soon, a reject.

So she’d walked the last mile, dropping with weariness until a familiar and inexpressibly dear figure had come flying down to meet her, weeping with joy as he enfolded her against his heart. Then she’d known all she needed to know.

He showed her up to the room the maids had just finished, and on the way she looked at the house with its heavy stone walls. It was just as he’d told her, except for being much larger.

Her room, too, was large, with a polished wooden floor and the biggest bed she had ever seen, with a carved walnut head. The windows were guarded by heavy wooden shutters to keep out the heat, and when Gina pulled them open Selena could step out onto a tiny balcony to look down over the valley and the most beautiful countryside she had ever seen. The hills rolled away, greens and blues fading into misty distance, the lines broken by pine trees.

It was still warm enough to have supper outside, watching the sun set. Gina served them fish soup, a mixture of squid, prawns and mussels, garlic, onions and tomatoes. Selena felt that she’d died and gone to heaven.

‘I got back to find Barton jumping up and down,’ she said, sipping white wine. ‘He’d left the message with Paulie who’d “forgotten” it.’

‘But my irresistible attraction drew you anyway?’ he ventured.

‘I came to see the Grosseto rodeo,’ she said firmly. ‘That was all.’

‘Nothing to do with me?’

‘Nothing to do with you. Don’t flatter yourself.’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘And you can stop grinning like that.’

‘I wasn’t grinning.’

‘You were, like the cat that swallowed the cream. Just because I came halfway around the world looking for you, it doesn’t mean anything. Do you understand that?’

‘Sure. And just because I’ve spent the last few weeks going crazy looking through websites trying to get one step ahead of you, that doesn’t mean anything either.’

‘Fine!’

‘Fine!’

They sat in silence, contemplating each other with joy.

‘You did it again,’ she said. ‘When I arrived you called me carissima, but you didn’t tell me what it meant.’

‘In Italian cara means dear,’ he said. ‘And when you add issima it’s a kind of emphasis, the most extreme form of something that you can say.’

She was looking at him.

‘And so you see,’ he said, taking her hand, ‘when a man calls a woman carissima-’

Suddenly it was hard. In the past he’d used the word casually, almost without meaning. Now everything was different and he was left only with the old debased currency.

‘It means that she is more than dear to him,’ he said. ‘It means-’

He broke off as Gina returned for the plates.

‘Tagliatelle with pumpkin, signore,’ she said.

Smiling, Leo let it go. There would be time later to say everything he wanted to say.

They finished the meal with Tuscan honey and nut cake. By then Selena’s eyes were closing. At last Leo took her hand and led her upstairs, stopping at her door.

‘Goodnight,’ he said softly. ‘Carissima.’

‘Goodnight.’

He kissed her cheek and left her.

He lay awake most of that night. The knowledge that she was sleeping next door made him feel like a man with hoarded treasure under his roof. The treasure was his and he would keep it, fighting off the world if need be.

He awoke in the early dawn and went to the window, opening the shutters and standing out on the small balcony. He was still filled with a sense of wonder at her coming, and he wanted to look again at the road that led down to the village, a road he’d so often gazed at, longing to see her, until one day she’d been there.

A shadow in the next window made him look. She was standing there, not looking at him but down into the valley, her face quiet and absorbed, as though in another world.

As he watched, she raised her head long enough to give him a brief smile, but then became absorbed once more in watching the valley.

Now he understood.

Throwing on a robe he slipped out of his own room and into hers, coming up behind her at the window and laying his hands gently on her shoulders. When she leaned back on him he slid his arms around her so that they crossed over her chest. She raised her hands to curve over his forearms, and he held her there against him, filled with a deep contentment that was unlike anything he’d ever known in his life before.

Down below them a soft glow was creeping over the valley, faint at first, then growing in intensity. The light was magical, unearthly, for just a few blessed moments.

Then it changed, grew harsher, firmer, more prosaic, ready for the working day. Only the memory was left.

Selena gave a little sigh of satisfaction, so quiet that he sensed it through his flesh rather than heard it.

‘That’s what I wanted,’ she said. ‘Ever since you told me about that light, I’ve longed to see it.’

‘What did you think?’

‘It was just as beautiful as you promised. The most beautiful thing I ever saw.’

‘It’ll be there again tomorrow,’ he said. ‘But now-’

He drew her gently back into the room and took her to bed, where they found another kind of beauty.

In his mind Leo had often imagined the moment when he introduced Selena to Peri, the mare who had been ready for him to sell for months, but whose elegance and spirit had made him keep her back, waiting for the right person.

Selena was that person. He’d always suspected it and he knew for sure when he witnessed their love at first sight. By now he reckoned he knew a bit about love at first sight.

He thought perhaps he would give Peri to her as a wedding present. He no longer shied away from that kind of thought. A man should know how to accept when it was all up with him.

They spent their days riding his fields and vineyards, and their nights in each other’s arms.

‘Stay here,’ he said one night when they had loved each other to exhaustion. ‘Don’t leave me again.’

She made the little restless movement that he always sensed at any mention of permanency, and he quickly added, ‘Take charge of the horses. Take charge of me. Either or both, as you like.’