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'I am no Galatea to your Pygmalion!' Deborah denied, hot with indignation. 'Or was it the other way round?'

'Should I know these people?' Gianetta asked.

'No,' Deborah answered crossly. 'One of them was a statue whom the other one brought to life. But I am living flesh!'

'That I would be the last to deny!' Domenico said, smiling. 'More satisfactory in every way than a cold, dead statue!'

Deborah turned her head away. 'I don't know what you mean!'

Domenico brushed her bright curls with his open hand. 'One seldom wishes to kiss the lips of a statue.'

Deborah fastened her eyes on Signora Manzu's closed expression. She knew that her son's interest in their guest was unwelcome to the older woman, and that she could understand. She was a foreigner with different attitudes towards most of the things that mattered, an unknown quantity who could not be relied upon to behave in the traditional ways of Roman society. She longed to tell her that Domenico meant nothing to her, even to tell the truth, that he was holding her in the palace against her will, but she thought that that could only add to the Signora's misgivings, as it did to her own.
Why?
Why should Domenico have done such a thing?

Deborah was glad to find plenty of space between herself and her host at the dinner table. The refectory table at which they sat was at least twelve feet long and, as Domenico sat beside his mother on the long side, Gianetta and herself sat at either end in splendid isolation.

The food was every bit as good as it had been at lunchtime. Deborah refused the pasta dish with regret and almost immediately wished she hadn't as Signora Manzu could only suppose that to refuse good food was symptomatic of serious illness.

'You are tired,
signorina
?' she began her campaign.

'A little,' Deborah admitted. 'It's been a long and eventful day.'

Domenico looked up, his eyes meeting hers with a clash that she felt right down to her toes. 'Let's hope you have an uneventful night,' he said lightly. 'A good sleep and tomorrow you will be eating enough to satisfy my mother.'

'You should not have dragged her round the shops this afternoon!' his mother retorted. 'Didn't I say she should rest and compose herself?'

Domenico looked meaningly at the revealing bodice of Deborah's emerald dress. 'I am sure Deborah agrees that the result was worth the trouble,' he smiled.

'It was exciting, buying so many new things at once,' Deborah admitted. 'But I like my jeans too. They're very comfortable to wear.'

'But less good to look at,' Gianetta remarked. 'Mamma is always complaining if I wear such garments !'

'With reason,' her mother told her promptly. 'You have not the shape,
cara
. Deborah has the shape, but looked like a little girl. Now she looks a young lady and that is better, no?'

'Better than Alessandra?' Gianetta put in hopefully. She was rewarded by a strained silence from both members of her family.

'Who is Alessandra?' Deborah asked. 'It's such a pretty name!'

'Alessandra is Domenico's intended,' Gianetta answered. 'You could call her the girl next door. Her family's
palazzo
is the nearest one to ours, only her family were elevated by Napoleon and are much richer than we are. Mamma and I suspect it's her money that attracts Domenico more than anything else about her. She is—how do you say it in English?—she is not sympathetic to us. Like this Agnes you were speaking about!'

'Oh,' Deborah said.

'She is a friend of mine,' Domenico corrected his sister gravely. 'She is not yet my intended, though she would be very suitable for that position.'

'Very!'
Gianetta put in irrepressibly. 'She is an only child and will inherit everything when her aged father goes to the next world. When that happens, she and Domenico will be able to toss up every night to decide which of their palaces they will sleep in! Cesare and I are going to live in an ordinary villa,' she added with a smugness that made them all laugh.

Domenico stretched back in his chair. 'Palaces have the advantage of being large enough to escape from one's more depressing relatives!'

'Good!' said his mother. 'For live with Alessandra I will not!' Her soft dark eyes fell on Deborah with renewed pleasure, forgetting all about her being a foreigner for the moment. 'Gianetta is right—the girl has bad blood. It was rumoured that Napoleon's sister —but there, one cannot in charity speak of such things!'

Domenico's laughter filled the room. 'The damage is already done,
mamma mia
. Padre Umberto is going to be very disappointed in you!' He clicked his tongue in pretended disapproval. 'He will expect you to be doubly nice to Alessandra next time I invite her to our table.'

The Signora looked more mutinous than guilty. 'If you give me sufficient warning I shall go out!' she declared.

Deborah wondered if Domenico really intended to marry this girl. He could not be in love with her, that was certain, or he would surely resent his family discussing her in such frank terms. But then Italians were known to marry without any love lost between them. It was a lowering thought and not even the prospect of his future happiness with the unknown Alessandra could lift the depression that had seized her in the last few minutes.

She put her knife and fork together on her plate and rose slowly to her feet. 'I really am very tired,
signora.
Will you forgive me if I go to my room now?'

The Signora rose also. 'You
are
unwell! Gianetta will come with you,
cara
, and see you have everything you need. Which room is she in, Domenico?'

'I put her in the one overlooking the Roman statues in the garden '

'So far away from everyone else? Suppose she should need something in the night? She must be moved to the pink room next to Gianetta. You will please all sit down again and I shall arrange it myself!'

'No, Mamma. Deborah is quite happy where she is. If she needs anything, she has only to ring the bell and one of the maids will deal with her request. I'll take her upstairs while you are eating your dessert. Are you ready, Deborah?'

She nodded, a little embarrassed to find herself the centre of even such a small domestic contretemps. She felt Domenico's strong fingers on her elbow as she shook hands with the Signora and then with Gianetta. She hoped she looked less nervous than she felt as she murmured a '
Buona notte'
in response to their wish that she slept well after her tiring day.

'A put tardi,'
Gianetta whispered in her ear, but her brother heard her.

'Not tonight you won't!' he growled at her. 'She'll still be here in the morning and you can gossip with her then. She won't want to listen to any more of your nonsense tonight!'

Deborah's eyes opened wide. 'On the contrary, I shall be pleased to see you, if I haven't fallen asleep.'

'I'll bring you a cup of coffee, shall I?' the Italian girl offered. 'I want to see your new dresses!'

'That'll be lovely.'

Deborah swept past Domenico and hurried through the door ahead of him, her head held high. If she could have remembered the way back to her bedroom, she would have told him to stay where he was, but the prospect of spending the next hour or so searching for the right wing of the palace made her hold her tongue.

'She won't let you escape,' Domenico said as they mounted the curved marble stairs to the next floor.

'How do you know?' she retorted. She noted with care the twists and turns he took to bring her to her own door, becoming suspicious when she could have sworn they had passed the same statue of the young Augustus for the second time. 'She will at least show me the way to the stairs without going round in circles!'

'Very acute!' he congratulated her. 'But you don't know what I have told her about you. I shall explain to her that it would be dangerous for you to go out alone in the streets of Rome. Goodnight, little one. Sleep well!'

'From now on I shall escape if I can!' she warned him.

'You may try! Goodnight, Deborah.'

Her eyes blurred with tears. She would have to try, but she didn't want to go. Ridiculous as it was, she wanted to stay within sight and sound of her captor.

'Goodnight,' she said.

Gianetta came with her coffee almost immediately.

'Domenico is like a cat on hot bricks,' she reported. 'He says your father is afraid you may be kidnapped while you're in Rome. It's happening all the time these day, but somehow one never thinks of it happening to someone one knows! Your father must be frightfully rich!'

'I've never thought about it,' Deborah admitted. 'I don't like feeling as though I'm Domenico's prisoner, though. Is there some way I could get out of the palace if I wanted to?'

'Only by unlocking the front door. The bolts are stiff with age, but you might manage it if you have strong fingers. Where would you go, though?'

Deborah smiled and sipped her coffee. 'I'd get a taxi and go to my friends.'

'You'd better ask Domenico to take you,' Gianetta decided for her. 'Do you like him?'

'I don't know him well enough to say,' Deborah said.

But Gianetta looked more than satisfied at her reaction. 'You'll hate Alessandra as much as we do when you meet her. Even Cesare, who never notices
anything,
says he'd like to wring her neck when she tells Domenico what he should be doing, and how he should behave to his mother and to me. I can't wait to see her face when she sees
you!'

Deborah was less eager for the confrontation. 'Is Domenico really planning to marry her?'

'I wish I knew,' Gianetta sighed. 'But Domenico doesn't tell Mamma and me anything we want to know. Friends tell us they see him out with lots of women, but he wouldn't marry any of them—if you know what I mean? Alessandra is so horribly suitable!'

'And will that be enough for him?'

Gianetta looked surprised by the question. 'What more should he want? It isn't the men who suffer in that kind of marriage, it's the women. When I wanted to marry Cesare everyone tried to stop me, but, as I told them, I couldn't have affairs with other men if I didn't much like my husband, could I? Cesare hasn't any money, and he isn't the sort of person we usually mix with socially, but I love him and he dotes on me! When Domenico said I could marry him after all, I thought I'd burst with joy. That's really why I don't want him to be landed with Alessandra. He deserves better than that!' She grinned happily at Deborah.
^C
I couldn't be more pleased about
your
arrival!' she added with relish. That's better than anything!'

Deborah smoothed the bedclothes over her knees. 'I already have a boy-friend,' she informed the other girl. 'His name is Michael Doyle. We're going to share a studio one day. He makes stained-glass windows '

'You mean you're going to
marry
him?'

'Probably.'

'Does Domenico know?' asked Gianetta.

'I think so.'

'You only think so? He can't know he's important to you or he wouldn't have taken you shopping to buy clothes!'

'My—my father is paying for them,' Deborah explained.

'But it was Domenico's name on the cheque! Among our friends that's tantamount to a declaration of intent. You must have known that!'

'I didn't have much choice!' Deborah began hotly. She might have been even more indiscreet, but a knock on the door made both girls look round to see Domenico himself standing in the doorway.

His sister greeted him with a single-minded purpose that made Deborah shut her eyes, wishing they would both go away.

'Did you know Deborah is going to marry this Michael Doyle person?' Gianetta demanded.

'I doubt it will come to that,' Domenico returned with a calm Deborah could only despise.

'Why shouldn't it?' she threw at him, glowering at him across the room. 'I'm very fond of Michael!'

'Exactly.'

'And just what do you mean by that?' she insisted, throwing all caution to the winds.

His eyes were bright with laughter. 'I mean,' he said deliberately, 'that Michael is no more than a red herring ! Fondness is a long way from love—and you are a long way from loving Michael! Isn't that the truth,
piccina?'

Deborah stared at him. 'And how would you know that?' she asked him sweetly.

He didn't take the bait. 'One day I'll explain it to you,' he answered her. 'When we are alone and you have no one's skirts to hide behind.' He pulled his sister unceremoniously to her feet and pointed towards the door. 'It's time we left Deborah to catch up on her beauty sleep. She's had a busy day.' He came back to the bed and stood for a moment looking down at her. 'Is that one of the nightdresses we bought today?'

'Yes.' She couldn't have said anything else to save her life. She pursed up her lips into a prim line and studiously avoided his eyes.

'Very nice too!' he commented. He wound one of her curls around his finger and smiled at her. 'Sweet dreams, little one. You have nothing to worry about now if you will only trust me.'

She clenched her fists beneath the bedclothes, fighting a grim battle against the effect he had on her. She muttered a stormy goodnight and turned her back on him, listening intently as he switched out the light by the door and shut it after him. She expelled her breath on a sigh, and then she heard it, she distinctly heard him turn the lock in her door.

She lay for a long rime in the darkness wondering what she should do. It was, she admitted to herself, a temptation to stay exactly where she was. There were many attractions in being Domenico's prisoner, but none of them were likely to bode well for her in the long run. Yet how could she run away? She couldn't with honour take any of the clothes he had bought for her and she was reluctant, for reasons she wouldn't put a name to, to don her jeans and shirt again, leaving all her new possessions behind her.