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'It's one of the best things I've done. But I gave it to you, Mother. I can't take it back now.'

Her mother fielded the carving neatly from her daughter. 'Then I shall give it to him! I've always liked it better than anything else you've ever done.'

She was as good as her word, choosing the dinner table as a suitable venue to present her gift to her future son-in-law.

'Deborah was too shy to give it to you herself,' she mocked her daughter gently. 'She's rather overawed by your collection.' She put the carving carefully into Domenico's hands. 'If you look,' she told him, 'you can find out quite a lot about Deborah from her work. And this piece is the most like her of any work she's done.'

'I can't see it's like her,' Mr Beaumont objected. 'Just a piece of wood, isn't it?'

Domenico ignored him. 'Has she always been afraid of losing her inmost self to outside pressures?' he asked Mrs Beaumont.

'I'm not!' Deborah denied hotly.

Domenico waved the carving under her nose, smiling. 'Where shall we put it?' he asked her. 'Next to the Michelangelo?'

Deborah's horrified reaction made them all laugh, all that is except her father, who stared at the carving with distaste, his face reddening. 'Do you mean you think it's good?' he jerked out.

'Good? One day Deborah Manzu will be mentioned in the same breath as Henry Moore or Barbara Hepworth. I shall certainly do everything in my power to nurture her talent. The children she will have to bear herself, but I can well afford nurses for them and keep most of the other domestic worries away from her when she's working. I shall be very proud of my clever wife! And who better to be her patron than her husband and the custodian of the Manzu collection?'

Mr Beaumont found this hard to accept. 'It will make a pleasant hobby for her,' he said with difficulty. 'But I can't help thinking that if she wants to work, she'd do better with Beaumont's. As a matter of fact, I've been thinking of expanding our interests in Italy, once all that unpleasant publicity has blown over, as it will do if it's given nothing else to feed on '

Both the Beaumont women froze. Deborah cast Domenico an agonised glance and was shocked to see his face crease into an amused, even an indulgent smile.

'Can you imagine Deborah coping with any business venture?' he chuckled. 'It would take you a year to unravel the muddle she'd make of the simplest transaction !'

Mrs Beaumont's clear laugh rang out. 'How right he is!' she agreed. 'I'm sorry, but she's my daughter too! Don't you remember what a mess I used to make of the simplest household accounts?'

'If you'd paid it the least attention you'd have managed it on your head!' Mr Beaumont retorted. 'The trouble was you wouldn't
listen '

'It bored me,' Mrs Beaumont said simply without any visible sign of regret. 'Business is boring. Don't you agree,
signora
?' she turned to her hostess.

'Absolutely,' Signora Manzu smiled back.

Deborah caught the conspiratorial look that passed between the two women and her eyes met Domenico's in silent inquiry. Was it possible they had all known what her father intended and that they didn't
mind?
Indeed, far from resenting his plans, they were all thoroughly enjoying themselves in presenting a united front, as though they belonged together. None of them, not even her mother, was in the least afraid that her father would get his own way!

'Didn't I tell you not to worry?' Domenico murmured under cover of the general conversation that had followed Signora Manzu's
coup de grace.

Deborah picked up her knife and fork, her feathers decidedly ruffled that she should have been excluded from the conspiracy. 'As a matter of fact,' she said, 'I'm very good at figures!'

'Then you will be able to keep the family accounts,' he returned promptly. 'You will find them more to your taste than Beaumont's.'

But Deborah was not yet ready to make any such admission. 'How did you know that I didn't want to work with my father?' she asked.

Domenico shrugged. 'It would have been all the same if you had, you have other things to do. My wife may be a sculptor of renown, but she will still be my wife and she will have time for very little else besides!'

'Because you say so?' she asked, her eyes flashing.

'Because I say so,' he answered quietly. 'If you have any objection to that, I suggest you make it after dinner when we are alone.' He put out his hand and picked up the carving Mrs Beaumont had given him again. 'How right your mother is!' he exclaimed. 'Did you do this piece as a self-portrait?'

'Certainly not!' she denied.

'No? It is like you, nevertheless. But you, my darling, will never have to stand alone again, like this lonely little spirit. Isn't that worth ceding a little of your independence for?'

She tried whipping up her anger against him, but her heart wasn't in it. 'I'll tell you that, too, afterwards,' she said.

But afterwards, just when she wanted to be at her coolest and most sophisticated, she was nervous to the point of stupidity.

'I shall put your carving in my study,' Domenico decided, running his fingers over the grain of the wood. 'Then I will only have to look up to see a part of you on my desk.'

Deborah flushed. 'Do you really like it?'

He looked at her in silence, his gaze sweeping over her face. He put a hand out to her and slowly, almost defiantly, she put her own into it, palm downwards, trying not to notice the tremble in her fingers as they touched his skin.

'You don't have to say you like it, unless you really do, just because I did it!' she blurted out. 'My mother should never have given it to you!'

His fingers closed round hers and he pulled her into the circle of his arms. 'Shall we take it into my study now?' he said in her ear.

She wanted to go with him badly, but she couldn't bring herself to admit it. 'What will the others think?' she put him off.

'That we want to be alone. Or don't you want to be alone with me?'

For two pins she would have denied it, but her natural honesty wouldn't allow her to pretend to him. 'You know I want that!' she said.

'I was beginning to wonder. What's wrong, Deborah?'

She held her head high as she preceded him through the study door. 'Nothing is wrong. Why should anything be wrong?'

He put his head on one side and looked at her. 'You tell me,' he invited her.

She went over to the desk, watching in silence as he placed the carving where he could see it both from the leather chair where he read in comfort and when he was seated at the desk. She didn't want to tell him because she was afraid he would laugh at her and, somehow, that would be the last straw.

'I wanted to defend you from my father!' she burst out.

'And instead we stole your thunder and defended you from him?' he said. 'Was that so bad?'

'Not really,' she admitted. 'Only I thought I wouldn't be able to marry you because of him, and I thought I was the only one to see the difficulty, but you'd arranged the whole thing without me! Even Mother, who's always done everything he's asked of her, spiked his guns as though she'd been doing it all her life. She didn't look afraid of him once—it was as if he had no power over her at all!'

'My dear silly Deborah, are you afraid of him?'

She nodded, her eyes dark with remembered incidents from the past. 'He's very persistent '

'But you're a Manzu now, and now that that has been explained to him he'll see for himself he has no hold over you, and as you were the only hold he had over your mother, no further hold over her either. He is your father, no more than that. Don't build him up into a bogey to frighten yourself with or I shall begin to think you don't trust me to look after you in every way. Cheer up, sweetheart, your father will know how to treat the future Signora Manzu with the respect that is due to her name and talent. You may believe me about that!'

It felt as though it was a physical weight that had rolled off her shoulders and vanished, leaving only a happy glow behind it.

'Oh, Domenico, I do love you!' she exclaimed.

He hugged her to him. 'That's much better,' he commended her, and then, 'I'm very glad to hear it,
spiace mia
, and now, could you hold your head so, and put your arms up so, and allow me to make love to you at last?'

'Oh, yes,
please
!' she said.

In the last six months Deborah had almost become accustomed to being Domenico's wife. Any fear she might have had that she would not be accepted by Roman society had long ago disappeared. Completely sure of her husband's love for her, she had achieved a new confidence and elegance that could seldom be ruffled nowadays by anyone but Domenico, who took a mischievous delight in changing his wife's cool public face to one of passionate response to his lovemaking.

They had made his study very much their own, perhaps the more so because they had to share the other public rooms in the palace with Domenico's mother and other relations whenever they came to Rome. It was into this room that Deborah came now, seating herself on the arm of Domenico's chair.

'It's finished!' she announced.

'Good,' he smiled at her. 'Does that mean I can bask in your undivided attention for a few weeks?'

She lowered her eyelids. 'For a few weeks,' she said.

He looked suspiciously up at her. 'What are you planning now?' he asked, amused.

'Another addition to the Manzu collection,' she murmured. 'At least, I think so.' She bent her head and kissed his cheek. 'I'll let you know when I'm quite, quite sure, but I'm too excited to keep it to myself until then. Are you pleased?'

He pulled her down on to his knee. 'You know I am! But it may interfere with your work,
cara.
Have you thought of that?'

'It will be work of another kind—and it will be for you! I'm glad I've finished the bust first, though. I promised you that right from the beginning. But this will be nicer still because it will be a part of both of us.'
She wriggled free of his restraining hands and stood up, laughing down at him, 'Come and see the bust, darling. I meant it to be a very objective portrait, but I'm afraid anyone with half an eye could see that the sculptor is very much in love with you!'

He went with her at once, his hand on her shoulder as though he couldn't bear to be completely out of contact with her. Her old bedroom had been turned into a studio for her and the marble bust was standing on the bench, no longer covered by the sheet that had covered it for the past few weeks whenever Deborah was not working on it.

'What do you think?' she asked, eyeing it critically from the doorway.

Domenico was silent for a long moment. Deborah could feel his excitement as though it was her own, and was satisfied.

'Is that really how you see me?' he asked at last.

Looking at the strong lines chiselled out of the marble that were so like his own, she thought she had idealised him less than many another artist would have done. And it was a good portrait, revealing so much about him that she had come to know and love.

'It's better than the wood-carving my mother gave you,' she said dispassionately. 'It's the best thing I've ever done.'

'Yes, it is,' he agreed. 'The other was done by a child, but this was done by a woman. You're a greater artist than even I had thought. It would be a shame if you were to neglect such a talent.'

She leaned against him, her happiness full to overflowing. 'But I want to have babies too,' she told him. 'There's more than enough time for both!'

He kissed her. 'And?' he prompted her.

She turned towards him, glad to give him his answer. 'And best of all is being your wife! I would give up both art and motherhood if they meant I couldn't be the Signora Domenico Manzu! But aren't I lucky that I don't have to?'

His hands became more demanding against her body as he smiled deep into her eyes, seeking the passionate response he knew he could arouse at will.

'May you always think so!' he said against her lips.

She buried her fingers in his hair and drew his head down, congratulating herself that the glint of purpose in his eyes meant that he had no intention of going back to his study alone.

'Do you think your mother will excuse us for dinner?' she murmured.

A quiver of laughter answered her. 'She is thinking of inviting your mother to keep her company,' he told her, 'she sees so little of us!'

Deborah made an inviting sound of satisfaction and lifted her face to his. 'What a good idea!' she said. 'They can both get used to the idea of being grandmothers to our son together!
Domenico
!
'