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'She will be,' he said confidently, and she fell silent. How true that was, for who would ever accuse Alessandra of stepping off the straight and narrow way? She was, indeed, above suspicion!

Deborah loved everything about the church of St Paul. She didn't care that the original building had been destroyed by fire and the whole had been meticulously reconstructed in the nineteenth century. She loved the alabaster windows, the uncluttered interior with the portraits of the Popes around the walls, and the quiet insistence, backed now by the opinions of many leading historians, that this was the actual spot where St Paul had been beheaded and buried.

She was grateful to Domenico for not crowding her, or leading her from one item to another. Instead, he left her to discover the place for herself, talking himself to one of the priests whom he apparently knew slightly. Every now and again she heard his laugh ring out, and she turned her head to look at him, her heart thumping at the sight of him. She found it strange that they should talk so loudly in church, but Italians seldom lowered their voices and saw no reason not to acclaim the Pope, for example, with a thunder of applause, whether they were in church or not.

She was admiring a paschal candlestick, done, she thought, some time in the twelfth century, when she saw someone standing in the shadows quite close by her. She looked up, all thought of comparing the candlestick with the Roman triumphal columns gone from her mind. The outline of the man was very familiar.

'Michael!'

'Go away!' he said through his teeth.

'But, Michael, I only want to speak to you!'

He took a step forward, coming out of the shadows. He was looking awful, his clothes unkempt and his face unshaved.

'Speak to me?' he repeated. 'You knew where I was. You're better off where you are.' He looked her up and down significantly. 'A great deal better off from the look of you!'

'Oh, Michael, don't be like that,' she pleaded. 'My clothes don't make any difference to how I
feel
! If you didn't approve you shouldn't have let me go so easily!'

'Perhaps I didn't think you'd sell out to the enemy with quite such indecent haste,' he retorted. 'It seems you're your father's daughter after all!'

Her temper blazed. 'What do you mean by that?'

'Don't be naive, Debbie! I'm no expert, but even I know when a woman is wearing the kind of money neither you nor I could earn in a year of constant effort. What did you have to give him in return?'

'Nothing,' she said stiffly. 'My father paid for my clothes.'

'Without a word of protest from you? Come off it, love. You're enjoying yourself!'

'What if I am?' she demanded. 'Do you have to be so resentful about it?'

Michael shrugged his shoulders. 'It's your life,' he agreed. 'But you can't have it both ways. Your father won't like old friendships getting in the way of your social progress, though, so perhaps we'd better say goodbye?'

'Just like that?' She thought about it for a moment.

'I don't think your hands are clean of my father's money either,' she said. 'What did he pay you five hundred pounds for, Michael?'

The expression on his face was ugly. 'How did you know about that?' he demanded.

'It was among your things you gave me to carry.'

'And you had to pry?'

'No, I didn't! I just came across it! But why, Michael? Why?'

He shook his head. 'It's best you don't know. It was something that was between your father and myself. You'd better go on back to your new life, Deborah. It looks as though he's waiting for you.'

Deborah turned her head, but she could see no sign of Domenico. 'Do you want to be rid of me?' she asked Michael. There was something new about him, she thought, something that had never been there before. It was almost as though he disliked her.

'Don't you see,' he said with a suppressed violence that startled her, 'that it can never be the same again! Your father's won! You
let
him win!'

She looked at him as though she had never seen him before. 'If I did it was because you wanted me to,' she said. 'You handed me over without a murmur. I felt like a pet lamb going to the slaughter '

The sound in his throat was one of contempt. 'Some lamb! Grow up, Deborah Beaumont! It's you who've changed, not me! I'm still where I always was, as you can find out for yourself if you come and look me up before I leave Rome.'

That hurt as he had meant it to, but she refused to give him the pleasure of knowing it. She lowered her hat to hide her eyes from him and forced a smile to her lips.

'Same address?' she mocked him.

'I haven't anywhere else to go,' he returned with a bitterness that was distasteful to her. She didn't much like the new Michael—or was this the same old Michael and was it herself who had changed?

The
cloisters, Domenico told her, were by Vassaletto. It has small round arches on all four sides, with twin columns, some smooth, some spiral, and some with a plaited effect, or enriched with coloured marbles and glinting mosaics, reflecting a style more often to be seen in the Neapolitan and Sicilian schools of art.

'Who were you talking to, Deborah?' he went on, dropping the question into her silence as though he was quite indifferent to her answer.

'It wasn't anybody.' It might just as well have been someone without a name, she thought, for Michael had been a stranger to her.

'Nobody?' The question was as sharp as a whiplash about her ears. She cowered back from him despite herself.

'You already know who it was, so why ask?'

He looked more sad and disappointed than angry, and she began to think that with a little luck she might turn his thoughts back to the cloisters and the martyrdom of St Paul. 'Why here?' she murmured.

'Why not? I suppose you were bound to run into him somewhere. It was Michael, I suppose.'

She nodded. 'But he was different. He looked awful.'

'Did you hope he would take you away from me?'

Tears started into her eyes. 'There was nothing personal in it,' she assured him. 'Only you must see it's better ifHe was so
peculiar
! Not at all like himself !' She wiped an errant tear away on the back of her hand, smudging her eye-shadow.

Domenico took her hands in his. 'What happened,
cara mia
? Didn't he want you after all?'

'It wasn't that! I never flattered myself that he did want me much, not in any way that counted. But he doesn't want me at all now. He said I was better off where I was. That I had sold out to my father and I couldn't have him too. Whatever could he have meant by that? He was ready enough to take that money! He made me feel
cheap
! You wouldn't understand!'

'Wouldn't I? You look very elegant to me, my love. But what interests me at the moment is where are your other friends? Weren't you all going to stay in Rome together?'

'In the apartment of a friend of someone we know,' she concurred. 'But the others were only going to doss there at night. Michael was included because of me. He's older than everyone else, but they like him well enough. Nobody could dislike Michael!'

Domenico looked amused. 'I could—quite easily!'

Her eyes widened. 'But you don't know anything about him! If he hadn't been one of the nicest people I know, I never would have considered sharing a studio with him.' Her brow wrinkled into a puzzled frown. 'We never talked much about the finances involved ' She broke off. 'The sun's coming out,' she said.

'I hope so,
carina
.' It was so softly said that she could have ignored it if she had wanted to. Deborah found she didn't. She welcomed the promise he held out to her like a drooping flower thirsting for water.

'Domenico, he couldn't have thought my father was going to pay for the studio, could he? He must have known that I wanted to do it all by myself! I've never asked my father for a penny, and I never shall!'

'I don't know,' Domenico answered. 'Would it matter very much to you?'

She wondered about that herself. She knew with a sudden certainty that she would never share a studio with Michael, if for no better reason than that she no longer wanted to. Was it possible that in the matter of a few hours she had grown out of him? The thought frightened her and she shivered.

'Cold?' Domenico asked her.

She shook her head, fearful that he might read her thoughts. 'Someone walked over my grave.' His blank expression made her laugh. 'It's an expression for when you get a feeling of foreboding you can't explain.'

'And Michael makes you feel like this?'

'Not usually. I've never had any worries about Michael before!'

Domenico ran his hand up one of the columns beside him and grinned at her. 'It might never have been raining,' he remarked. 'The sun is going to be quite hot for the next hour or so. Shall we go to the Roman Forum after all?'

'At least you won't be afraid I shall run away wherever we decide to go,' she pointed out, her bewilderment reflected in her sea-green eyes. 'If Michael doesn't want me, I have nowhere else to go!'

Domenico touched her lightly on the arm. 'Forget Michael,' he advised her. 'You are more than welcome in the Manzu home, however you came to be there. You are a prized guest—as well as prisoner! Isn't that enough for you?'

It was, but she couldn't bring herself to tell him so. 'Alessandra doesn't think so,' she said.

'Alessandra isn't a Manzu,' he answered dryly.

She sighed. 'Not yet '

'The Manzus are all very happy to have you, Deborah
mia
. Both my mother and Gianetta would love you to stay for ever! They haven't led you to believe otherwise, have they?'

'No,' she admitted cautiously. 'But they wouldn't want me to stay if they thought it would get you into trouble.' She looked shyly at him. 'I could tell my father that you didn't kidnap me at all—that I came with you willingly! He might still pay for my clothes and everything.' She hesitated, her whole philosophy of independence overthrown before her eyes. 'If I asked him to,' she added grudgingly. 'He wouldn't even tell Agnes, if I asked him not to.'

His glance was remote. 'I wonder if you know what you're saying,' he said at last. 'Do you?'

'Agnes won't like his spending any money on me,' Deborah explained. Her courage wavered and fell before the look in her captor's eyes. 'Domenico, I don't want you to go to prison!'

'Most unlikely!' he answered.

'Is it? Don't the Italian police arrest people of your eminence '

'Deborah, shut up! You don't know anything about our police.'

'Yes, I do!' she claimed. She grasped the subject eagerly, glad to be able to prove how much she knew about his country. Besides, she felt considerably safer discussing that subject than anything more personal to them both. 'You have three kinds of police; the
carabinieri
, a kind of military force who wear peculiar hats; the
polizia municipale
, who hand out traffic rickets and so on; and the
agenti
of the Commissario di Pubblico Sicurezza '

'And what do you know about them?' he openly teased her.

'Not very much,' she admitted. 'But I'm quite sure it's better to keep out of their hands!'

'Very likely, sweetheart. But I don't need your protection from the consequences of my folly, whatever you may be thinking I've done. The police won't be interesting themselves in my affairs quite yet.'

'Are you sure?' She sounded as tentative as she felt, not knowing if she could believe him or not.

'As sure as I am of anything.' He moved and a ray of the sun fell across the austere lines of his face as his mouth relaxed into a faint smile. 'Quit worrying about things you can't help, Deborah. You'll be much happier without that Michael of yours when you've got used to the idea.'

'Will I?' She should have said something in Michael's defence, she supposed, but she could think of nothing that she wanted to say about him. The breathless excitement she felt in Domenico's presence, on the other hand, was becoming a necessity to her, and that had nothing to do with liking him at all. That had to do with being caught by his strong arms and kissed in a way that no one else had ever kissed her. 'I'm glad the sun's come out,' she said. 'I've always wanted to see the Roman Forum. Imagine treading in the footsteps of Julius Caesar!'

Domenico smiled. 'Shakespeare was not noted for his historical accuracy,' he warned her. 'The Forum was not where he was killed, but it is interesting nevertheless. For centuries it was the very heart of the Roman Empire, even when the centre of power had shifted eastwards to Constantinople.'

Her eyes fell before his. 'The British had hardly begun,' she murmured, 'as I'm sure Alessandra would point out if she were here.'

'I'm sure she would,' he agreed. His eyes narrowed. 'The Romans and the British have more in common than she would like to think. With a little trouble, we could understand one another very well!'

Deborah refused the challenge, aware only of her heart pounding within her. 'Let's not miss the sunshine,' she said quickly.

'Come on then, my little coward, I can wait!'

'Well, I can't,' she retorted, deliberately misunderstanding him. 'With only a few days in Rome '

'What makes you think I shall let you go?'

Her eyelashes quivered against her cheeks. 'You can't keep me here for ever!'

He raised a mocking brow. 'You think not? Only time will tell which one of us is right about that!'

'Don't be ridiculous!' she said sharply. 'You'd do far better to think about your future with Alessandra!'

'And you would do better to hold your tongue on the subject of Alessandra,
bella mia.
She is not a subject I wish to hear on your lips again. Is it understood?'

'No, it's not! Good heavens, Domenico, what do you expect? I shall say what I please about her—and about anybody else too!'