The Impatient Virgin. ANNE WEALE
the biggest quarries of all, from an editor’s point of view.’
‘I wonder why Carlisle has changed his mind?’
‘I can’t imagine,’ said Anny. She thought, but didn’t say, And he may change it back double-quick when I turn up on his doorstep.
‘I can give you a little bit of gen about him,’ said Jon.
‘You can?’ Her eyebrows rose in surprise.
Jon had a degree in horticulture and now worked for Fauna and Flora International, an organisation dedicated to preserving natural species in their native habitats. He used a notebook computer and was sufficiently alert to what was going on in the world to have heard of Giovanni Carlisle, the genius behind Cyberscout. But she wouldn’t have expected Carlisle to be more than a famous name to him.
‘He lives at the Palazzo Orengo near Ventimiglia,’ said Jon. ‘From there to Cannes that whole coast is dotted with famous gardens planted when the Côte d’Azur was the smart place to go in the winter. Nobody went in summer. It was considered too hot. Orengo was one of the legendary gardens of the Edwardian era. Then its owner died and it began to decline... until Carlisle bought it. With the cost of labour sky-high now, only a billionaire could restore a place that size. But even the top brass at the Royal Society of Horticulture aren’t allowed in to see what he’s done to it. A guy I know who writes for their journal, The Garden, wanted to do a piece. He wrote to Carlisle, giving a string of influential references. He was turned down flat.’
‘So why has he suddenly succumbed to Greg’s blandishments?’ Anny said, half to herself.
Jon could see she was totally preoccupied with the assignment. If she had had an inkling of what he was about to say before the telephone call, it had been driven from her mind. She was a dedicated journalist whose career, up to now, had come before everything. He accepted that. In some ways it was a bonus. It made her more understanding when his work took him away and kept her from being bored in his absence. Previous girlfriends had been less tolerant.
‘I should think there’s a lot of material about Orengo in its heyday in the RHS archives. I’ve got nothing to do tomorrow. If you like I’ll go and dredge it out for you.’
‘Sweet of you, Jon, but it could be a waste of time. Leave it till I get back. This whole thing could fizzle out if the so-called King of Cyberspace doesn’t like my face.’
‘Of course he’ll like your face. It’s a beautiful face,’ he said fondly.
He was seeing her with the eyes of a man in love, but even people with clearer vision thought Anny Howard good-looking. In fact her eyes were her only truly beautiful feature; large grey eyes with dark-rimmed irises and long lashes. Men admired her slim figure and long legs. Women envied her style. Somewhere she had learnt the knack of wearing very simple clothes in a way that made them look better than expensive designer outfits on other women. But it was the warmth of her expression, the humorous curve of her lips, her attractive voice which drew people to her and made them confide in her.
Jon had wanted to marry her for months. Sensing that she was less sure of her feelings, he had been biding his time. In the event he had chosen his moment badly. That damned telephone call had come at the worst possible moment.
Now, with Giovanni Carlisle on her mind, it might be better to wait until she came back from France before broaching the subject again.
Late that night while, in London, Anny was checking that everything was in readiness for her early start tomorrow, in the balmier air of Monaco on the Riviera, a tall, dark-haired man in a dinner jacket was looking at the sculptured body of a naked girl with her forearms resting lightly on the shoulders of a naked man and her hands crossed behind his neck.
Giovanni Carlisle—known to his father’s side of his family and to most of his intimates as Van—had seen the bronze before, but not by moonlight. It was by a sculptor called Kerkade who had called it Invitation. It reminded Carlisle of an incident in his own life.
The Principality of Monaco was not a place Carlisle liked. He never normally came here. But it would have been churlish to refuse the invitation to tonight’s dinner party given by a woman who, like himself, was half-American. They had something else in common. They had both made serious mistakes in their personal lives, although his had happened in private, not in the glare of public attention which had surrounded her high-profile divorce.
Carlisle could never enjoy complete anonymity, but his life was as private as he could make it. Although rich and famous himself, he disliked the society of other people in that category. Most of the time he stayed inside the boundaries of his own smaller kingdom along the coast.
While Monaco’s economy depended on the tourists who arrived by the coach-load to gawp at the soldiers from the Principality’s minuscule army changing the guard outside the palace, Carlisle had no intention of allowing anyone to penetrate his seclusion except by invitation.
Thinking about the woman bidden to Orengo tomorrow, a cynical smile curled his well-cut mouth.
Was there a possibility that Anny Howard might put her pride before her career? Knowing her, he thought not. Much as she might dislike having to confront him, nothing would make her pass up an important scoop.
Teeth-gritted, she would come. But she wouldn’t get what she wanted. He had made sure of that
There was little traffic in the West End at ten minutes to seven next morning when Anny took a taxi from her flat to Liverpool Street Station where the seven-thirty Stansted Express would take her to the small airport thirty miles north of London.
The airport shuttle train took her to the final departure lounge where there were complimentary newspapers and a small quiet café serving Stansted’s habitués. She needed a cup of coffee to pull her together after a disturbed night. Then she would look through the file on Giovanni Carlisle, the man whose brainchild, Cyberscout, had simplified public access to the vast resources of cyberspace and, in so doing, made him a fortune.
It was he, even more than Jon, who had kept her awake in the small hours and given her troubled dreams. She did not want to be here, on her way to Orengo. She had tried to forget the past and had thought she’d succeeded. Last night had proved that she hadn’t.
Time, it was said, healed all wounds. What ailed her was like malaria in days gone by, a persistent infection which might recur for a lifetime. To know that in a few hours she would see Van again made her head ache, her body shiver.
She should have refused the assignment, made some excuse to get out of it. Why hadn’t she?
Charlene Moore had been PA to Giovanni Carlisle for three years, since her predecessor, also American, had married a Frenchman from nearby Menton.
Charlene left the palazzo by the side door and walked down sloping paths and flights of steps to the swimming pool.
The extra-long pool had been sited where it could not be seen from the house. It was filled with sea water pumped up from the secluded bay at the bottom of the huge garden. Every morning Mr Carlisle swam fifty lengths before breakfast, although sometimes he didn’t have breakfast until ten or eleven, having worked most of the night.
As Charlene had discovered in her first week at Orengo, Mr Carlisle was a man who, as a poet had put it, ‘marched to a different drummer’. Other people’s ways of living and codes of behaviour meant little to him. He could afford to do as he pleased, and did.
Although she lived on the premises, there were areas of his life which even she didn’t know about. It was rumoured he had a beautiful mistress in Nice but, if so, it was a discreet relationship. They were never seen together in public.
In some ways she felt sorry for him. He had a brilliant mind, was phenomenally rich and also very good-looking. But he would never know if a woman loved him for himself or was only going through the motions for what she could get out of him.
When