The Girl Behind the Mask by Stella Knightley Read Free Book Online Page A

expecting incredible luxury but the stone floor was plain and cold. The walls were covered in thick tapestries. It was dark and I couldn’t see what the tapestries depicted. The whole effect wasn’t especially welcoming. In fact it was austere.
    I followed the old man through a series of corridors that were as narrow and convoluted as the Venetian streets outside, until eventually we came to another heavy door. The man pushed it open, putting his shoulder against it for leverage. I made Nick’s joke about the damp. He didn’t laugh.
    ‘Come on.’
    The door led onto a courtyard with an elegant formal garden.
    ‘Oh, how beautiful.’ I couldn’t help but exclaim at the view of neatly trimmed hedges and elegant lemon trees, especially after the severity of the entrance hall.
    ‘ Sì ,’ said the man. ‘Come on.’
    We crossed the garden at a clip. I wished I had time to linger, to look more closely at the silent fountain in the centre, and also up at the arched galleries that surrounded the courtyard. As I glanced in that direction, a gilded sundial directed a shaft of weak January sunshine right into my eyes, forcing me to look back down, catching sight of a beautiful statue of a woman as I did so. On the other side of the garden stood the marble woman’s stony partner, with his hand extended towards her. There was so much to look at. I wanted to pause and imagine what it must have been like to live here when the house was first built. Who had designed this haven from the bustle outside? Who had commissioned the beautiful marble lovers? Why did they look so sad?
    But the old man was not having any of it. He was already pushing hard against the door that would take us back into the house on the other side of the courtyard. I just had time to glance up again and – I was sure of this – see a figure quickly conceal itself behind a curtain in one of the upper rooms.
    ‘This is the library,’ said the man as he opened another door and stood to one side to let me pass. ‘The papers are there.’ He indicated a desk with a curt nod of his head and there, as promised, was the box that must contain Luciana’s letters. ‘ Due ore ,’ was the man’s last comment before he closed me inside.
     
    Well, I thought as I listened to the old man’s footsteps retreating slowly down the corridor. I guess I’m not meeting Donato today after all. While the air still reverberated to the sound of the door closing behind Donato’s servant, I took my first proper look at the library.
    It was an incredible room. The kind of room I dreamed of having for myself. Not that it would have fitted into that tiny flat back in London, where Steven and I had stuffed books onto an overflowing set of shelves from Ikea, or stacked them in precarious piles in every spare corner: by the bed, by the bath, in the kitchen. What luxury to have so much space for books. The ceiling in this secret library was two storeys high. It was crammed with volumes, but at the same time, the stacks had been carefully arranged so they did not encroach on any of the windows. The room was brilliantly lit, even on a January day. There were two desks, which faced each other like companions, and a number of comfortable chairs arranged in various corners and round a huge fireplace set with a fire to cut through the winter chill. Above the fireplace hung a portrait of a woman in eighteenth-century dress. She was beautiful, with intelligent brown eyes that reminded me a little of Bea. She looked down upon me kindly, I thought. I wondered who she was. There was no name on the frame.
    It would be a pleasure to work in a library so well appointed. I was already wondering how I could extend my visit beyond the two hours I had been promised.
    Two hours would certainly not be long enough to study Luciana’s correspondence with the attention it deserved. But, remembering that two hours might be all I ever had here, I stopped admiring the scenery and sat down to the task