An Innocent Abroad: A Jazz Age Romance (2 page)

He
took her hand in his and bent to kiss her fingers. His lips brushed her skin,
sending tingles through her. “
Arrivederci
, Isabella.”

Until
we meet again. Not likely.

She
watched him walk away, admiring the assured confidence with which he carried
himself. Not an ordinary fisherman, that was certain. Fishermen did not speak
such beautiful English.

She
sipped the last of her
limoncello
and had to admit the taste was
appealing, full of the intoxicating richness and vibrancy of Italy itself.

Beside
the quay, the fishermen finished unloading their boat and disappeared up the
narrow streets, leaving her alone at the waterfront. Gentle waves lapped
against the pier and the honeysuckle wove mesmerising patterns about her, so
that when Frances at last appeared she wondered for a moment if she had dreamed
Stefano.

Frances
fanned her flushed face, breathless with apologies. “I am so sorry I left you
alone for so long, darling. I hope you don’t mind awfully.”

“Of
course not,” Isobel replied politely. Especially not since it had given her the
opportunity of so much more than a breather from her boisterous cousins.

Frances
glanced up the hillside, to the Villa del Monte above the town, conspicuous on
its rocky outcrop. “The siesta will be over soon. We need to get back.”

Isobel
rose and followed in Frances’ wake, inordinately grateful that her cousin had
not noticed the two empty cups on the table. She clutched her postcards close
to her chest as she trailed Frances up through the twisting narrow alleys of
the town.

This
news, the best news of all, could not be written. She would have to commit the
memory of a pair of laughing eyes to memory another way.

The
Villa del Monte perched on a rocky ridge amid tier upon tier of lemon groves,
narrow vineyards and twisted olives trees. Behind the villa the land rose up
perpendicular towards the great peak of
Monte San Angelo
. Still higher
up the mountainside lay the hamlet of Montepertuso, clinging to the slopes,
inaccessible except on foot.

“We’re
nearly there,” her cousin Adam called encouragingly over his shoulder to
Isobel.

She
didn’t mind the distance or the exercise of the hike, but she wished she could
slow down and enjoy the sweeping views rather than keeping up with the others’
pace.

Montepertuso
sat atop a spur of land, surrounded on every side by magnificent views of sea
and mountain. It consisted of a handful of stone houses, more than half of
which appeared abandoned and crumbling beyond repair, and a surprisingly
elegant church at the village’s highest point.

Their
path into the village was blocked by a herd of goats, wandering aimlessly on
the narrow track under the watchful eyes of two barefoot urchins, who shooed
the goats aside for them to pass.

In
the piazza, a couple of men lounged under the awning of a shuttered taverna,
smoking pipe tobacco as they leaned over a game of chequers, and an old woman
sat on a stool in the doorway of her house, shelling peas.

“The
path is that way.” Adam gestured with his arm, and Isobel looked up. There
indeed was the cavity they’d come to see, the
pertuso
the village was
named for, a dramatic hole carved by nature in an arch of rock in the side of
the mountain. It was spectacular – but she’d much rather stay right here in the
village.

“I’ll
wait here for you,” she called ahead.

“It’s
not that far. Only another fifteen minutes’ brisk walk.”

Isobel
shook her head and held up her sketch pad. “I’d like to draw some sketches.”

Adam
smiled tolerantly, shrugged, and led the rest of the party away up the path.
They didn’t understand her need to put every thought and impression on paper,
but she didn’t care. She’d much rather be seen as the eccentric, artistic
cousin, than as a mawkish schoolgirl tagging behind.

The
others disappeared into the cool, shady forest that rose up the mountainside,
and Isobel turned back to the piazza.

“
Buena
sera
.” She smiled a greeting at the old woman.

“
Buena
sera
.” The woman’s face crinkled into a hundred lines as she smiled back.

In
the shade of a tree in front of the church, Isobel found a rickety bench leaning
up against a low stone wall. She sat and opened her sketch book, flicking
through the pages. She paused briefly at one she’d sketched only a few days
ago, a pair of laughing eyes in a face with strong lines and a dimpling smile.
She turned to the next clean page and began to draw. Her first sketch was of
the church with its clean lines and gabled front.

The
calls of the goat boys broke her concentration. She looked up to see that the
goats had wandered into the piazza. One of the boys, a round-faced cherub with
big dark eyes, came hesitantly closer. She smiled, and his face broke into an
impish grin.

The
boy held out his hand to her. “
Nocciole
?”

He
opened his palm to reveal a fistful of hazelnuts, already shelled. Isobel dug a
few pennies from the pocket of her skirt and dropped them into his palm. “
Grazie
.”

Across
the piazza, the old woman’s face again collapsed into a fan of deep lines as
she smiled.

Isobel
nibbled on the nuts as she watched the boys herd the goats across the piazza
and out the other side, disappearing from view between the
bougainvillea-bedecked buildings.

Then
she returned to her sketch book. Her charcoal pencil flew across the paper,
memorising the lines of the old woman’s smile. She was so absorbed in the
drawing that she failed to notice the presence beside her until a shadow fell
across her page.

“That’s
a good likeness.”

She
looked up into the same pair of laughing eyes she’d sketched, and for a moment
wondered if her imagination had taken flight. “Thank you.”

And
again, she was alone and unchaperoned.

“You
did not care to go up to the
pertuso
with your friends?” Stefano asked.

She
let out her breath in a rush, too relieved to ask how he knew. “No. I wanted to
be alone. There are so many people at the villa, and I like the peace and quiet
here.”

He
perched on the stone wall. “You do not like being with people?”

“Oh
no, not that. I find people fascinating. But sometimes I need time to myself
too.”

He
nodded, his face serious. “I understand. It is how I feel when I go sailing.”

She
glanced around the piazza. The old woman watched them avidly, her hands still
busy with the pea pods, but the men under the taverna awning paid them no
attention. She looked up again at Stefano and smiled shyly. “Do you live here?”

He
shook his head. “I live closer to the sea, at Arienzo.” The dimple appeared in
his cheek. “Word travels fast in these parts. I came here to see you.”

She
had no idea how to answer that, though her blush no doubt spoke volumes, so
instead she asked “why are so many of the houses here empty?”

“Many
of the people who lived here have gone away to find better lives for
themselves.” Stefano frowned. “There are now almost more Positanese in New York
than there are here.”

The
dark expression lifted and he glanced again at the sketch pad in her lap. “You
are an artist?”

“A
student of art. I’m not very good.”

“May
I see?” He held out a hand.

For
a moment, she resisted handing it to him. What would he make of the drawing
she’d done of him?

But
what of it? She’d also sketched the villa’s housekeeper, and the haunted faces
of the beggars she’d seen in Naples when she first arrived with the boat.

She
squared her shoulders and passed him the sketch pad, stifling the sudden
frantic fluttering of nerves in the pit of her stomach.

She
didn’t usually show her drawings to other people. They were silly sketches,
faces or objects that caught her eye and her imagination.
Good for the
Blackpool sea front, but not true art
, her teacher had said.

Stefano
took the book, cradling it gently in his big brown hands as he flipped through
the pages with long, deft fingers that were surprisingly elegant considering
the rough workman-like texture of his hands.

He
paused over a full page picture she’d drawn on the day of her arrival. She
recognised it immediately. The image had been imprinted on her.

She’d
been fresh off the boat from England, wide-eyed with wonder and excitement. As
her uncle’s carriage had wound through the back streets of Naples, she’d seen
sights she couldn’t have imagined, sights that had shaken the foundations of
her comfortable life.

Tall,
gloomy tenement buildings crowded together, leaning over dark alleys where a
criss-cross of ropes resembling trolley wires twisted overhead. On the streets,
wild-haired women cooked over coal stoves and ragged children swarmed like
flies. But what had hit Isobel hardest wasn’t the squalor of the place. It was
the people. It was the hard, hungry looks in their eyes.

Uncle
Padraig’s chauffeur had driven straight passed, unseeing, but to Isobel that
torrent of humanity had called out to her, opening her eyes. It was as though
she hadn’t truly
seen
, until she’d arrived in Italy.

Without
looking up from the drawing, Stefano said “We are a people in desperate need of
change.”

She
nodded, unable to speak against the lump in her throat.

With
a shrug, he turned the page to a poor copy she’d sketched of Giotto’s
Ognissanti
Madonna
during a school trip to Florence, one of the earliest drawings
she’d made in this book.

“Giotto?”

She
nodded. “Do you know much about art?”

He
flashed a smile that set her stomach fluttering in an altogether different way.
“All Italians have a great love for beauty.”

He
flicked through the last few pages, his mouth curving upwards when he glimpsed
the sketch she’d done of him. Then he closed the book and passed it back to
her. “These are very good. With only a few lines you capture the emotion of
your subject.”

She
knew exactly what emotion she’d caught in his expression. Laughter. The
contentment he radiated.

He
smiled again, and this time there was something more in his smile, something
she wasn’t used to seeing when people looked at her, but which she recognised.
It was admiration.

“In
the hills, not far from here, is a private chapel that is decorated with the
most beautiful frescoes. Local legend says that Giotto himself designed them in
the years he lived in Naples. If you like, I will show them to you on Sunday.”

Interest
warred with common sense. “I would love to see them. Only …”

“Only
you think your family will not approve of you meeting alone with a man?”
Mischief twinkled in his eyes. “Follow the path through the olive grove to the
road. At nine o’clock on Sunday morning I will wait there for you.” His cheek
dimpled. “Bring a chaperone, if you wish.”

There
were voices in the distance, the high voices of women, followed by the lower
rumble of a man. Her cousins and their friends returning from their hike. She
shifted uncomfortably on the bench, and as she moved the corner of her eye
caught the gesture the old woman made with her fingers, in the direction of the
new arrivals.

“What
does that mean?”

Stefano’s
gaze followed hers. “It is the sign to ward off the evil eye. Many people here
distrust the rich foreigners.”

She
didn’t blame them. “But she was friendly to me.”

The
dimple winked in his cheek. “Because you are different.” Then glancing back
towards the path where any moment her companions would appear, “It is better we
are not seen together,
si
?”

“
Si
,”
she answered.

His
warm gaze wrapped around her for a long moment, then he hopped down from the
wall. “Until Sunday.”

She
nodded, watching as he sauntered across the piazza and out of sight as the
others emerged on the other side of the square. She closed her sketch book and
rose.

“You
missed nothing,” grumbled Lotte, the voluptuous German princess. “It was just a
hole in the rock.”

“The
view was worth the climb,” Adam said.

Isobel
suspected the argument had been going on for some time, and no comment was
required. She fell into stride behind them and they headed back the way they’d
come. The sun angled low on the horizon, dipping towards the sea and casting a
soft blue light over the scene.

She
hadn’t decided yet whether she would keep her meeting with Stefano secret, or
whether she would take a chaperone with her on Sunday. The only thing she was
sure of was that on Sunday she would find the path through the olive grove, and
she would see him again.