Vettori's Damsel in Distress. Liz Fielding
And that was more personal information than she’d shared with anyone, ever, but she didn’t want him to think any of them gave a fig for their aristocratic relations. Even in extremis they’d never turned to them for help.
‘The family, narrow-minded and full of secrets, is the source of all our discontents,’ Dante replied, clearly quoting someone.
‘Who said that?’ she asked.
‘I just did.’
‘No, I meant...’ She shook her head. He knew exactly what she meant. ‘I have a great family.’ For years it had just been the four of them. Her sisters, Elle and Sorrel, and their grandmother. They’d been solid. A tight-knit unit standing against the world. That had all changed the day a stranger had arrived on the doorstep with an ice cream van. Now her sisters were not only successful businesswomen, but married and producing babies as if they were going out of fashion, while Great-Uncle Basil—who’d sent the van—and Grandma were warming their old bones in the south of France.
‘You are very fortunate.’
‘Yes...’ If you ignored the empty space left by her mother. By an unknown father. By the legions of aunts, uncles, cousins that she didn’t know. Who didn’t know her.
‘The bathroom is through here,’ Dante said, opening a door to an inner hall.
‘Il bagno...’ she said brightly, making an effort to think in Italian as she followed him. Making an effort to think.
His bagno would, in estate agent speak, have been described as a ‘roomy vintage-style’ bathroom. In this case she was pretty certain the fittings—a stately roll-top bath with claw feet and gleaming brass taps, a loo with a high tank and a wide, deep washbasin—were the real deal.
‘I’ll shut the door so that you can put the kitten down,’ he said, and the roominess shrank in direct proportion to the width of his shoulders as he shut the door. ‘He can’t escape.’
‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ she said as, carefully unhooking the creature’s claws from the front of her dress, she set it down in the bath. ‘And if it went under the bagno...’ She left him to imagine what fun it would be trying to tempt him out.
Dante glanced down as the kitten, a tiny front paw resting against the steep side of the bath, protested at this indignity. ‘Smart thinking.’
‘When you’ve taken a room apart looking for a kitten that’s managed to squeeze through a crack in the skirting board,’ she told him, ‘you learn to keep them confined.’
‘You live an interesting life, Angelica Amery,’ he said, watching as she attempted to slip the buttons at her wrist without getting blood on her dress.
‘Isn’t that a curse in China?’ she asked.
‘I believe that would be “May you live in interesting times”,’ he said, ‘but you’ll forgive me if I say that you don’t dress like a woman in search of a quiet life.’
‘Well, you know what they say,’ she replied. ‘Life is short. Eat ice cream every day.’
A smile deepened the lines bracketing his mouth, fanned out from his eyes. ‘What “they” would that be?’
‘More of an “it”, actually. It’s Rosie, our vintage ice cream van. In her Little Book of Ice Cream.’ He looked confused—who wouldn’t? ‘Of course she has a vested interest.’
‘Right...’
‘It’s the sentiment that matters, Dante. You can substitute whatever lifts your spirits. Chocolate? Cherries?’ No response. ‘Cheese?’ she offered, hoping to make him laugh. Or at least smile.
‘Permesso?’ He indicated her continuing struggle with shaky fingers and fiddly buttons.
Okay, it wasn’t that funny and, giving up on the buttons, she surrendered her hand. ‘Prego.’
He carefully unfastened the loops holding the cuff together, folded the sleeve back out of the way, then, taking hold of her wrist, he pumped a little liquid soap into her palm.
Her heart rate, which was already going well over the speed limit, accelerated and, on the point of telling him that she could handle it from here, she took her own advice. Okay, it wasn’t ice cream or even chocolate, but how often was a seriously scrumptious man going to take her hand between his and—?
‘Coraggio,’ he murmured as his thumb brushed her palm and a tiny whimper escaped her lips.
‘Mmm...’
He turned to look at her, the edge of his faintly stubbled jaw an enticing whisper away from her lips. ‘Does that sting?’
‘No...’ She shook her head. ‘That’s not...stinging.’
She was feeling no pain as he gently massaged the soap between her fingers, around her thumb, wrist and into her palm. All sensation was centred much lower as he rinsed off the soap, pulled a thick white towel from a pile and carefully dried her hand.
‘Va bene?’ he asked.
‘Va bene,’ she repeated. Very, very bene indeed. He was so deliciously gentle. So very thorough.
‘Hold on. This will sting,’ he warned as he took a box of antiseptic wipes from the cupboard over the sink and opened a pouch.
‘I’ll try not to scream,’ she said but, taking no chances—her knees were in a pitifully weak state—she did as she was told and, putting her other hand on his shoulder, hung on.
She’d feel such a fool if she collapsed at his feet.
Really.
His shoulder felt wonderfully solid beneath the soft wool shirt. He was so close that she was breathing in the scent of coffee, warm male skin and, as his hair slid in a thick silky wedge over his forehead, she took a hit of the herby shampoo he used. It completely obliterated the sharp smell of antiseptic.
He opened a dressing and applied it carefully to the soft mound of flesh beneath her thumb.
‘All done.’
‘No...’
Dante looked up, a silent query buckling the space between his brows and her mouth dried. He’d been right about the need to hang on. The word had slipped through her lips while her brain was fully occupied in keeping her vertical.
‘There’s something else?’ he asked.
‘Yes... No...’ She hadn’t been criticising his first aid skills; she just hadn’t wanted him to stop. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Tell me,’ he pressed her, all concern.
What on earth could she say? The answer that instantly popped into her mind was totally outrageous but Dante was waiting and she managed a careless little shrug and waited for him to catch on.
Nothing...
For heaven’s sake, everyone knew what you did when someone hurt themselves. Did she have to spell it out for him?
‘Un bacio?’ she prompted.
‘A kiss?’ he repeated, no doubt wondering if she had the least clue what she was saying.
‘Sì...’ It was in an Italian phrasebook that her middle sister, Sorrel, had bought her. Under ‘People’, sub-section ‘Getting Intimate’, which she’d found far more engrossing than the section on buying a train ticket.
Posso baciarti?—Can I kiss you?—was there, along with other such useful phrases as Can I buy you a drink?, Let’s go somewhere quieter and Stop bothering me!
There hadn’t been a phrase for kissing it better. Perhaps it was in the ‘Health’