CHAPTER EIGHT

      THE FOLLOWING EVENING, Dante gave Topsy a wonderful surprise by keeping his promise to arrange a tour of the Uffizi art gallery for her. He had secured tickets for a private viewing. Sofia surveyed Topsy’s glowing face, her mouth tightening as her gaze briefly skimmed to her son’s nonchalant expression. ‘It’ll be a very dressy occasion, Topsy. Those champagne viewings always are.’

      Having piled her hair up on top of her head, Topsy dug a sleek black cocktail frock from her wardrobe and clasped her diamond necklace round her throat. Feet encased in fashionable and perilously high heels, she walked downstairs to join Dante.

      ‘Between the hairstyle and the shoes, you’ve gained about a foot in height, cara mia,’ Dante commented, the very epitome of designer elegance in a well-cut dinner jacket and narrow black trousers. Superbly elegant, he looked, as always, stunning.

      ‘You suit diamonds,’ he added, noting how the white-fire sparkle of the jewels seemed to reflect the brightness of her dark eyes.

      Topsy involuntarily touched the diamonds at her throat. ‘An eighteenth birthday present.’

      ‘Kusnirovich?’ Dante surmised.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Obviously you’ve known him a long time,’ Dante commented, oddly irritated by the realisation and resisting an even stranger urge to tell her to take the necklace off. ‘It looks like a very generous gift.’

      Topsy simply nodded agreement, not wanting to say anything else and encourage more questions. Naturally he was curious about her friendship with Mikhail, who only socialised in the most exclusive circles, and while she didn’t want to reveal the truth about her wealthy and powerful relatives neither did she want to lie to Dante.

      The gilded event at the Uffizi was a true art lovers’ dream. Beautifully dressed people sipping champagne strolled at their leisure through the rooms of magnificent artworks. There was no noise, no queues, no crush to struggle through and this time around she could even appreciate the splendid ornate interior of the building itself.

      When she paused rapt before Raphael’s Madonna of the Goldfinch, Dante remarked that she seemed to know exactly what she wanted to view.

      ‘This is one of my sister’s favourite paintings. She used to be an art restorer in a museum and, when I was growing up, she took me to all sorts of places to see wonderful pieces of art,’ Topsy confided. ‘She wanted to be sure that I got a really well-rounded education and she didn’t quite trust my boarding school.’

      ‘You attended boarding school?’

      Topsy sent him an amused look as she paused in front of Caravaggio’s Bacchus. ‘I was a gifted child and, obviously, I was a scholarship girl. Kat could never have afforded the fees.’

      ‘How gifted were you?’ Dante prompted.

      ‘I don’t like talking about that, Dante,’ she admitted quietly. ‘I learn incredibly fast and I have a photographic memory for facts and figures. Let’s leave it there.’

      A tall beautiful brunette in pearls and black and white polka-dot silk strolled up to them and addressed Dante with the familiarity of an old friend. Her need to ignore Topsy’s presence told Topsy all she needed to know about the brunette’s true source of interest and she drifted off.

      ‘Why on earth did you walk off?’ Dante demanded ten minutes later when he finally ran her to ground in the Titian room.

      ‘She was flirting with you and being rude to me. I don’t waste my time with people like that,’ Topsy told him without apology.

      ‘We were lovers many years ago,’ Dante admitted with a fluid shrug. ‘She means nothing to me now.’

      As soon I will mean nothing, Topsy’s logic supplied, sending a wave of gooseflesh across her exposed skin. Her slim shoulders set back as if she was bracing herself for that day. She knew that their affair lacked the longevity gene. Soon, Dante would head back to the bank headquarters in Milan and Topsy, and having only agreed to work for Sofia for three months, she was returning to London at the end of the summer. He was a holiday fling, she told herself urgently, scanning his perfect profile in a hungry stolen glance. And the end of a holiday fling would sting, not hurt.

      * * *

      ‘That was an amazing experience,’ Topsy assured him when she slid back into his car. ‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Kat will be so envious when she hears that I attended a private viewing.’

      ‘There’s something I want to discuss with you,’ Dante told her softly. ‘I have to fly to Milan tomorrow for forty-eight hours—there’s something of a crisis and I have a government minister to advise. I want you to come with me, gioia mia.’

      Dismayed though she was at the prospect of being without him for even that short length of time, Topsy was very practical. ‘That’s impossible. There’s only three days to go to the fancy-dress ball. I can’t possibly leave your mother to deal with any last-minute hitches that might arise.’

      ‘I heard her say that you’d taken very little time off.’

      ‘That’s true but that was my choice and it doesn’t mean I’m willing to leave her in the lurch. The ball is a huge amount of work and loads of little things could go wrong.’

      ‘She has Vittore.’

      Tensing at his persistence, Topsy shot him an angry look of reproach. ‘You really don’t like hearing the word no, do you? My answer is no, sorry...and thanks for asking...but no.’

      ‘It should be yes,’ Dante contradicted harshly, making no attempt to conceal his dissatisfaction with her decision.

      ‘Arrogant...much?’ Topsy quipped. ‘You don’t get to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do.’

      ‘Non importa...no matter,’ he pronounced with dismissive finality, wide, sensual mouth clenching into a hard line.

      Well, at least she was seeing all his flaws, Topsy reflected unhappily as she lay alone in her bed for the first night that week. Dante was spoilt by having enjoyed too much attention from over-eager-to-please women. He should not be willing to put her in a difficult position with his mother when they could perfectly well cope with being apart for a mere forty-eight hours.

      ‘Topsy...?’

      In the act of crossing the hall the next morning to head into the dining room for breakfast, Topsy spun and raised an imperious questioning brow when Dante beckoned to her from his study doorway.