But this was the most dangerous temptation of all. He ran from it, turning into a path that led away from the house, into the trees, then out again to where he knew there was a garden seat, overlooking the bay. There he could be safely alone.
But someone was there before him.
‘Come and sit with me, my son,’ Hope invited, patting the space beside her.
He did so, seating himself with a sigh, and running a hand through his hair. Hope watched him, silent but understanding.
‘So now I’ve met your “chambermaid”?’ she said at last, with a twinkle.
‘Chambermaid?’
‘The one who answered the phone that morning. There now, don’t I have a marvellous memory for an old woman?’
‘You’ll never be old, and I’ve sometimes wished that your memory was a little less marvellous.’
‘I know that. It’s quite disconcerting how well I remember certain things. You said she was the chambermaid.’
‘Mamma, I didn’t actually say that. You suggested it and I-’
‘Saw a useful way out,’ Hope teased. ‘Admit it.’
She was laughing, and after a moment he joined in. ‘All right, I’m a coward. No question about it.’
‘You may also recall,’ Hope said, ‘that I heard in her voice that she had a passionate nature. Now I’ve heard that voice again, and I know I was right.’
‘Yes,’ he murmured, still trying to calm himself. ‘Yes. But Mamma, it’s not like that.’
‘Perhaps it’s time you told me what it is like.’ Hope came to the point of real importance. ‘Am I going to have another daughter-in-law, or not?’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘Then why not tell me about it?’
‘What is this? The Inquisition?’
‘Just a mother’s curiosity.’
‘Is there a difference?’
‘Not much,’ Hope admitted, patting his hand. ‘So, give in and tell me everything without making me work harder.’
‘Yes, that was always the easiest way,’ he recalled. ‘All right, she was in my hotel room, but I wasn’t there with her.’
‘Then where were you? Tell me.’
‘Yes, tell us,’ said a voice from the shadows, and they both looked up to see Olympia standing there with a glass of champagne in her hand. She strolled forward and settled herself on a fallen tree trunk that lay nearby, and looked at their faces.
‘I’m all ears to hear where you were,’ she said.
‘The trouble with acquiring a sister,’ Luke said with careful restraint, ‘is that it’s just one more female to put her nose into a man’s private affairs.’
‘Good, then I’m doing the right thing,’ Olympia said gleefully. ‘Come on, tell. Where were you?’
Luke took a deep breath. There was no putting this off any longer.
‘I was in a police cell,’ he said through gritted teeth.
If this disconcerted his mother she gave no sign of it, merely nodding her head as if to say that sooner or later every young man saw the inside of a police cell. Which was probably what she did actually believe. Olympia contented herself with a little choke of laughter.
‘What were you doing there?’ she asked mildly.
‘I got involved in a brawl and was arrested. Charlie was brawling too-he’s Minnie’s brother-in-law.’
‘And his name’s Charlie?’ Olympia asked.
‘It short for Charlemagne, because the family name is Pepino, which was the name of Charlemagne’s father-’
‘And they’re descended from him?’ Hope said.
Luke grinned. ‘You’d never get them to admit that they weren’t. And one of the neighbours has a cat called Tiberius-’
‘After the Emperor Tiberius?’ Hope asked, her lips twitching.
‘Of course. It’s that sort of place.’
He began to laugh at the memory, unaware that his mother was looking at him with fascination.
‘So you and Charlemagne were brawling,’ she reminded him.
‘And Minnie came to bail him out, and that’s how we met. She ended up defending me in court as well.’
The two women burst into laughter.
‘How I wish I’d been there to see,’ Hope said at last. ‘My sensible, businesslike son, in a drunken brawl!’
‘I didn’t say drunken-’
‘Nonsense, of course it was!’ Olympia said firmly. ‘Oh, dear-’
They went off into more gales of laughter while Luke gritted his teeth. But after a moment he relaxed and grinned.
‘I remember the day you left here,’ Hope said, ‘full of plans to confront her in a businesslike fashion, not standing for any nonsense-’
‘And I did confront her, in a police cell, with my clothes torn. I didn’t have my ID card so she had to go to the hotel to collect it, and my phone. That’s how she came to answer it.’
‘You’ve been keeping a lot to yourself. You told me that you’d moved into the Residenza, but you left out the best things.’
‘Well, I wasn’t going to boast about my criminal record to my mother,’ he said defensively, but he was grinning again.
‘But the two of you have made friends now, since she was the one you went to when Toni called.’
He hesitated. ‘I didn’t have to go to her, Mamma. She was right there with me-’
‘In your bed?’
‘Her bed. I’ve been staying with her so that she could nurse me, but it wasn’t-as you think.’
‘I think nothing, my son, since nothing in your relationship with this young woman seems to follow a normal course. Where do you stand with each other?’
‘I only wish I knew. I feel closer to her than any other woman I’ve ever known, and I know that she needs me. But I’m not the man she loves.’
Hope’s eyebrows rose. ‘Loving another man, she shares your bed?’
‘Not in the sense you mean. For the last week she’s cuddled up to me at night as she might have cuddled up to an old dog. The man she loves is her late husband, Gianni Pepino. He’s been dead for four years but it might be yesterday, she’s still so tied to his memory. No, he’s more than a memory, he’s a ghost that she can’t escape. He’s in her thoughts, he’s there with us all the time. At night I’ve held her in my arms while she spoke of him.’
‘And that’s really all?’ Hope asked, incredulous and slightly scandalised at the same time.
‘Yes, it makes me sound like a wimp, doesn’t it? All right, I am a wimp, but it’s what she needs. She must talk of him or go mad, and she can’t tell the others, so it has to be me.’
‘And that is all the use she has for you, my son?’
Luke gave a wry laugh. ‘That is all the use she has for me. Tonight, I did briefly hope-but it wasn’t me. Not really.’
‘But why do you put up with it? There are many other women in the world.’
He said nothing for a moment, but at last he spoke as though with the words he had finally discovered the truth.
‘No, Mamma, there aren’t. There isn’t another woman whose smile can wring my heart as hers can, or make me want to throw aside everything else if only I can make her happy.’
Hope regarded him quizzically. ‘This is you talking-my son, whose life has been lived balancing the accounts, calculating what everyone and everything was worth to him, and taking the long view?’
He winced. ‘I’m not as bad as that, am I?’
‘You were. But not now, I think.’ Then, as though there were some connection, which perhaps there was, she added, ‘I passed on your message of thanks to Olympia, by the way.’
‘And I’m beginning to understand it now,’ Olympia said. ‘At one time you’d never have said the things you’re saying now.’
He nodded. ‘At one time, if a woman didn’t go my way, I went off in another direction,’ he mused. ‘You were the first one I stuck around for, although I knew I might be knocked back-and I was. So, when Minnie knocks me back, I’ll have some experience to help me cope.’
Olympia’s answer to this was to lean forward and kiss him lightly on the mouth.