One Hot Summer by Norrey Ford Read Free Book Online Page A

reach as ever. ‘ Tomorrow, Dino, we’ll try again. Let’s go home now. Villa Tramonti.’
    He nodded. ‘ Villa Tramonti.’ Then he jabbed a finger towards the port. ‘ Il porto.’
    How could she destroy his pride of achievement? ‘ Thank you, Dino. Grazie .’
    In the cool drawing room of the Villa, the mistress of the house was sitting with her embroidery. She looked up, smiled, and calling Jan Bianca, spoke to her in Italian.
    Back to Square One!
    Early next morning Jan put on one of Bianca’s bikinis, and her own trusty shoes. Then, with towel and sandals slung round her neck, she slipped away to find the steps down to that secret beach she coveted. She had a great longing to swim in the sea, and an even greater longing to be alone.
    The gate was padlocked.
    She felt sick with shock. That padlock definitely wasn’t there yesterday.
    Yesterday she had walked through the gate and tested the path. Had someone seen her, and decided she was not to go down that way? If the steps were unsafe, surely the Signora could have told her? Who had made the decision—and why that heavy chain?
    Dino had frustrated her desire to go down to the harbour yesterday. Was that lack of understanding, in such an apparently sensible and trusted young man? Or had it been done on purpose?
    If so, did it tie up with the locking of the gate which effectively prevented her getting down to the beach?
    ‘ In other words,’ she said aloud, staring back at the silent garden, ‘ is someone trying to keep me a prisoner here?’

 
    CHAPTER III
    Jan sat on the warm stone, the morning sun across her shoulders, and stared into the azure distance, thinking hard. She hugged her knees and sat so still that presently a tiny green lizard flicked out from a crack and sunned itself beside her, the minute throat pulsating.
    Marco’s stated purpose in bringing her to his villa was to keep an eye on his mother during his sister’s absence, but it was beginning to look as if he had another, and secret, purpose of his own.
    It could be that the gate to the beach path was normally padlocked. It could be that Dino had not understood her repeated requests to be taken to the harbour. Maybe she was making a mountain out of a molehill.
    It’s not that he planned to seduce me, she decided. He’s shown no signs of being impressed by my feminine charm. His only interest in my looks is that I’m very like his sister, and—
    She caught her breath. Very like his sister !
    He insisted that she wore Bianca’s clothes. Twice, he had asked her to wave to people at a distance—strangers who couldn’t possibly know her. He had encouraged her to play Bianca’s guitar.
    ‘ So !’ She spoke aloud, and the lizard flickered into his crack with the speed of lightning. Was that what her host was up to? Had he brought her here to act as a stand-in for his absent sister? It was all right, was it, to be seen driving in the open beach buggy with Dino? But not permitted to stroll around the town where anybody could see she wasn’t Bianca Cellini?
    So where was Bianca? Was she dead? No, because even an autocrat like Marco could hardly conceal a death for long. Had she eloped, made a marriage of which her brother disapproved? Young Italian girls of good family were strictly brought up and expected to obey the male head of the house, but Bianca’s room and her possessions suggested she had absorbed some pretty modern notions. So she might be defying Marco somewhere. Perhaps he had her locked up in some horrible dungeon in the rocks until she submitted and did whatever it was he wanted.
    Whatever his motive, he had no right to involve Jan in it, without telling her. The more she thought about it, the more angry she became. She shivered suddenly, and saw that her bare arms had goose-pimpled. Not because she was apprehensive about her own situation, but because the sun had moved and left her in deep shade.
    She moved over, following the warmth, stretched full length, prone under