She leaned forward again, stretching her hands towards the fire now. He couldn’t help but witness the small tremor running through her fingers.
‘Ugh, I hate winter.’
Stefano had an intense desire to apologise, as if he were personally responsible for Lasserno’s unseasonal cold snap. He ignored it. ‘I’ll call Bruno and ask him to tow your car. Come and collect you and return you to thepensione.’
‘The car’s a rental.’ She stared into the crackling fire, the light of it flickering golden across her pale face. ‘I guess I need to talk to the company.’
‘If you give me their name, Bruno will deal with them. If they give him any problems, they can deal with me.’
She withdrew her arms from in front of her and wrapped them round her waist, then turned to him and smiled. It was as if a hundred candles had been lit in the room, the brightness of her in this moment. The crinkles at the corners of her eyes. The way her beautiful mouth turned upwards, showing white teeth.
She was looking at him as if he were the solution to her every problem. But he wasnotthat man. He never would be again. And yet the faith she showed in that fleeting, perfect moment made the blackened heart he’d thought had ceased to beat, stutter to life again.
‘My grandfather was right about Lasserno’s hospitality.’
‘He travelled here?’
‘That’s what I tried to say in my letter. He was a navigator in World War II, on the run after his plane came down. He crossed the border from Italy to Lasserno. I—I believe your family might have taken him in till he could get back to his squadron?’
Stefano stilled. It was as if with her earlier smile the universe might have smiled down on him as well. But it was then that he noticed how drawn she appeared. A bluish tint under her eyes giving them a bruised quality. He shouldn’t press. He should give her a hot drink and food, in the greatest of Lasserno’s traditions. But it was as if every solution to his problems might rest in this one exhausted traveller, and he needed answers now. They would inform his next move.
‘What was his name?’ Stefano tried not to appear too eager. ‘We kept some records, but many were lost when the enemy occupied our castle. Our country tried neutrality and was still drawn in.’
‘Arthur Hunter. His friends used to call him Art. Did your family ever mention him?’
‘That isn’t a name that immediately comes to mind.’
Hunter... Hunter... His great-grandfather had written of a man, never forgetting promises made of taking a precious treasure to safety through the underground as the enemy were beating down the castle’s door.
Could it be this easy? Stefano didn’t know of an Arthur Hunter, but the English translation ofcacciatorewas “hunter”. In the war, with language barriers, perhaps he had been given a name which was easily understood. Or perhaps he’d used the name as a joke, trying to hide himself all along.
But one thing was certain. Lucille Jamieson would not be returning to thepensionein the village. No. She would be staying here until he had the answers he sought.
CHAPTER TWO
LUCYTRIEDTOget comfortable in the astonishing room, with its silk-lined walls, golden accents and frescoes on the ceiling. Even though the couch cushions were plush and deep, easy enough to sink into and never want to leave, it was hard to feel at ease with the Count of Varno...looming.
He was a man who looked as if he belonged in a gothic movie. Days-old stubble that on anyone else might have looked unkempt but on this man, added to hisfilm noirappeal. He was tall, imposing, with a shock of thick black hair. Eyes so dark and piercing it was as if they had no pupils as he stared at her in an unblinking kind of way.Gloweredat her, really. And, whilst she might have been frozen to the marrow, one look like that from him and she went up in flames.
When he’d first opened the door of this castle which rose ominously out of the mountainside, her instincts had told her to run. Slabs of gloomy grey stone... Turrets spearing from the solid base... Windows like the Count’s dark judgemental eyes, piercing the sides of the structure.
But those instincts had let her down so poorly in recent months that she hadn’t trusted them. So she’d kept on standing there, weak with exhaustion and the recognition that she was going nowhere on foot in the snow.
She liked to think she could be sensible about some things, even if the thought of walking into a castle that really did look like it belonged in a horror film had filled her with dread. But the truth was she had nowhere else to go. Her life in Salzburg, imploding. Australia, no haven either. Lasserno held answers to questions she didn’t want to ask, but was being forced to, nonetheless.
Her grandfather had filled her head with stories of the kindness of the country’s people to him during the war. It was a place he’d been over three-quarters of a century before and had never forgotten, although in his final days his memories had been fractured and consumed with guilt. He’d become obsessed by his culpability for some unnamed sin, which had been upsetting to both her and her mother, trying to comfort him without knowing the reason for his distress.
Still, she hoped his fond recollections of Lasserno had meant something, as all she craved right now was a bit of kindness. It was why she’d thrown everything she could fit into a single suitcase, turned her back on her life, and fled.
She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the thoughts that filled her head of those last days in Austria. Walking into her flat a little earlier than normal, finding her boyfriend, Viktor—
‘My apologies, Signorina Jamieson. You’ve travelled a long way and must be tired.’
That voice of his stroked over her skin, all midnight and black velvet. She shivered—and not from the cold. All she wanted to do was lean back in the seat and listen to him speak. Bask in the rich allure of his voice and let it wash over her like water from a hot bath. But, as tempting as that seemed, it was all just fantasy, at a time when she’d been forced to swallow a hefty dose of reality.
Sadly, reality was overrated.
She opened her eyes again.