‘He was a married man when he took Elissa to wife, which means that she was a free woman when she married our father. Their marriage was legitimate. And so are you.’

‘What do you mean it’s all been proved?’ Leo demanded. ‘What can be proved after all this time?’

‘It can be done, with a little ferreting around.’

‘Which I’ll bet you did.’

‘Sure. I never wanted all this, never pretended about it. It’s all yours.’

Leo was looking around him with a trapped look.

‘This is nonsense,’ he said. ‘You have to forget it.’

‘It’s the law,’ the count roared. ‘It cannot be forgotten. You are my heir, and that is how it should be. You’ve always been the eldest son-’

‘The illegitimate eldest son,’ Leo said firmly.

‘Not any more,’ Marco reminded him.

‘You keep out of this,’ Leo ordered him, ‘You-you banker!’

Marco poured himself a drink, unperturbed.

‘It’s too late to change anything,’ Leo insisted. ‘I don’t believe in this so-called proof. It wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny by a lawyer-’

‘It already has,’ Guido said. ‘It’s been gone over and over by lawyers, sworn statements, properly notarised, records from the English registers.’

‘What does Vinelli say?’ Leo challenged. ‘Bring him here to face me.’

‘Vinelli died last year. He had no family, and nobody near him knew about that English marriage.’

‘There must be somebody.’

‘There’s only written records.’

‘I’ll bet you thought of every detail,’ Leo fumed.

‘You bet I did.’

‘You’re loving this, aren’t you?’ Leo flung at him.

‘Every minute.’

‘That’s fine for you but what about-’ Leo’s eyes fell on Selena, pale and distraught, watching him beseechingly. ‘What about us?’ he finished quietly, taking her hand.

She rose and stood beside him. The sight of them side by side seemed to alert the others to the fact that something was really wrong. This wasn’t the joyous announcement that Count Francesco had counted on.

The count began to huff and puff. ‘Well, I must say, I expected better than this,’ he said. ‘It should be a great day.’

‘Having your life overturned doesn’t make for a great day,’ Leo said firmly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse us, Selena and I will go upstairs. We’ve got some talking to do.’

They walked from the room, hand in hand, and broke into a run as soon as they were out of sight. They didn’t stop until they reached his room.

‘Leo, they can’t do this to us.’

‘Don’t you worry, I won’t let them.’

But she heard the uncertainty in his voice and it made her shiver. She’d always known him light-hearted in the face of any challenge, as though nothing could ever be too much for him. Now she sensed that he didn’t feel confident of overcoming this.

‘You know,’ she said huskily, ‘some people would dream of this. They’d say we were being unreasonable. Suddenly you’re an important man with a great inheritance. Why aren’t we glad?’

‘Because it’s a nightmare,’ he said. ‘Me, a count. The country bumpkin, which is all I’ve ever wanted to be. Do you want to be a contessa?’

‘Are you kidding? I’d rather be a cow-pat.’

They clung together, seeking reassurance from each other, but each knowing they were fighting something that could suffocate them.

There was a knock on the door, and Dulcie looked in.

‘Your uncle wants you in his study,’ she said to Leo. ‘He’s got papers to show you.’

‘Hell!’

‘Best get it over with,’ she said sympathetically.

When he’d gone Selena said, ‘How do you feel about this? You were going to be a contessa, and now you’re not. How can you smile?’

Dulcie laughed and shrugged. ‘I’ve had enough of titles to last me a lifetime. Being a countess never made my mother happy.’

‘Your mother-is a countess?’ Selena echoed.

‘My father’s an earl, that’s a sort of English count.’

‘And you live-like this?’ Selena indicated their surroundings.

‘Goodness no!’ Dulcie laughed. ‘We never had two pennies to rub together. My father gambled it all away. That’s why I had to work as a private detective. I couldn’t do anything else. Having a title doesn’t qualify you for a proper job.’ She looked at Selena, suddenly alert. ‘Selena, what’s the matter? Are you ill?’

‘No, I’m not ill, but I’ve stepped into a crazy house.’

Another knock on the door. This time it was Harriet, and behind her a servant with a trolley bearing champagne. While Dulcie began to pour, Harriet stretched out on a sofa and kicked off her shoes.

‘Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,’ she said. ‘You-would-not-believe the commotion that’s going on downstairs.’

‘We would,’ Dulcie chuckled, handing the other two a glass each. ‘We’re well out of it.’

‘Leo and Guido were practically coming to blows,’ Harriet said cheerfully. ‘Leo says he’s going to wring Guido’s neck. Oh, by the way, Liza would have come with me, but she’s a little tired, and she’s gone to bed. Actually I think it’s her English that’s troubling her. She doesn’t speak it very well and she’s afraid you may be offended.’ This last was to Selena.

So that was the countess’s excuse, Selena thought glumly. That was how these people operated. No out-right snub, nothing you could take offence at. Just a half-truth that left you clutching at shadows.

She downed the champagne, which she suddenly needed badly.

Leo waited until the house was quiet before he slipped out of his room. Propriety be blowed, tonight he needed to be with Selena.

But when he opened her door he found her bed empty and no sign of her. He switched on the light to be sure, then switched it off again and went to the window. The Grand Canal lay before him, silent, mysterious, melancholy in its beauty. Many a man would envy him, the inheritor of all this, but it was his wide, rolling acres that called to him.

And his instincts told him that there was another trouble coming, and that was the one he dreaded.

Something caught his eye and he looked to see where the palace made a right angle to itself. Through the large windows he could see a white shape wandering through the great rooms.

Like any self-respecting palace this one had its ghosts, but none like this. Leo left the room quickly and hurried down through the building, across the marble floors that echoed the lightest footsteps.

He found the ghost in the ballroom, walking forlornly along the huge windows that went from floor to ceiling. All around them shone decorations of gold leaf. Above them hung gigantic crystal chandeliers, silent in the gloom.

He spoke her name softly, and she turned to look at him. Even in this light he could see her face well enough to know that it was distraught. The next moment they’d thrown themselves into each other’s arms.

‘I can’t do it,’ she cried. ‘I just can’t do this.’

‘Of course you can,’ he soothed her, stroking her hair although his heart was full of fear. ‘You can do anything you set your mind to. I know that, even if you don’t.’

‘Oh, sure, I can do anything that takes grit and bull-headedness, but this-it would crush me.’

That was what he’d been afraid of. But he wasn’t ready to give up.

‘We wouldn’t be trapped here all the time-’

‘We would in the end.’ She pulled away from him and began to pace restlessly. ‘Look at this room. Dulcie would be at home here because she was raised in a place like this. Harriet would be all right because it’s full of antiques. But me? I just spend my whole time hoping I don’t bump into things.’

‘It would be different in time,’ he pleaded. ‘You’ll change-’

‘Maybe I don’t want to change,’ she flashed at him. ‘Maybe I think there’s nothing wrong with the way I am.’

‘I didn’t say-’

‘No, and you never will. But the truth is the truth, whether anyone says it or not. Leo, we don’t just come from different worlds. It’s different planets, different universes. You know it yourself.’

‘We’ve overcome that before.’

‘Yes, because of the farm. Because of the land, and the animals, and all the things we both love. It didn’t matter where we came from, because we were heading in the same direction. But now-’ she looked around her in despair.

‘We don’t have to spend much time here-we’ll still have the farm-’

‘Will we? This was going to be Guido’s inheritance, and now he’s lost it to you. Aren’t you going to have to give him yours in exchange?’

That thought had been nibbling uneasily at the edge of his consciousness.

‘Guido’s not interested in farming, I can repay him in money. And if I have to I’ll sell some of the antiques in this place. Every single one if I have to.’

‘And we live on the farm and let your ancestral palace stand empty? Even I know better than that.’ She tore at her short hair. ‘If it was anywhere else you could simply move into the palace and buy up some farming land around it, but what can you do in Venice?’

‘Carissima, please-’

‘Don’t call me that,’ she said quickly.

‘Why, suddenly-now?’

‘Because everything’s changed-now.’

‘So suddenly I can’t tell you that I love you more than life? I can’t say that I don’t want this either, but it’ll be bearable if I have you?’

‘Don’t!’ She turned away, her hands over her ears.

‘Why mustn’t I say that your love is everything to me?’ he asked in a voice that was suddenly hard. ‘Because you can’t say the same?’

In the long silence that followed Leo felt his heart almost stop.

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered at last. ‘Oh, Leo, forgive me, but I don’t know. I-I do love you-’

‘Do you?’ he asked in a harder voice than she had ever heard him use.

‘Yes, I do love you, I do, I do-’ With every repetition she grew more frantic. ‘Please try to understand-’

‘I understand this-that you only love me on certain conditions. When things get tough, suddenly the love isn’t enough.’

He gave a bitter laugh. ‘It’s ironical isn’t it? If I lost every penny I could count on your love. If I was left to starve in the streets I know you’d starve with me and never complain.’

‘Yes-yes-’

‘If I had to sell the shirt off my back you’d sell the shirt off yours, and we’d fight the world together and be happy. But if I’m rich, that means trouble. You turn away from me and wonder if I’m worth loving.’

‘It’s not like that,’ she cried.

‘I’m the same man, rich or poor, but you can only love me if we have the life you want. But I want that life too. I don’t want all this either.’

‘Then leave it. Tell them you won’t accept. Let’s go back to the farm and be happy.’

‘You don’t understand. It can’t be done like that. All this is now my responsibility, to my family, to the people who work for us and depend on us. I can’t just turn my back on all that.’

He took her gently by the shoulders and looked into her face. ‘My darling, it’s still a fight, just a different one. Why can’t you stand by me in this one, as you would have done the other?’

‘Because we’d each be fighting a different enemy, and we’d end up fighting each other. In a sense we already are.’

‘This is just a little argument-’

‘But you fired the first shot in the war a moment ago, didn’t you notice? You said, “You don’t understand”. You’re right. And as we go on there’ll be a million things I don’t understand, but you will. And more and more you won’t understand the things that are important to me, and in the end we’ll be saying “You don’t understand” to each other a dozen times a day.’

They were silent with fear, each seeing the cracks in the ground beneath their feet that would soon become a chasm that love couldn’t bridge.

But not yet. They couldn’t face it just now.

‘Don’t let’s talk any more tonight,’ Leo said hurriedly. ‘We’re both in a state of shock. Let’s leave it until we’re calmer.’

‘Yes, we’ll do that. We’ll talk when we get home.’

That put it at a safe distance. In the meantime they could hide from what was happening.

He took her back to her room and kissed her cheek at the door.

‘Try to sleep well,’ he said. ‘We’re going to need all our strength.’

As soon as she had closed the door he walked away. He hadn’t tried to go in, and she hadn’t said, ‘Stay with me’.

Leo spent the next day closeted with his uncle, Guido and a brace of lawyers, while Dulcie and Harriet showed Selena Venice. For an hour she tried to make the right noises, but the truth was the narrow alleys and canals suffocated her.

They went into St Mark’s where Dulcie and Guido had married recently, and where Harriet and Marco would marry soon.

It was like being an ant, Selena thought, looking up into the ancient, echoing building. It was magnificent, splendid, beautiful. But it turned you into an ant.