Chapter Ten
Ismay smiled at the table and then at Alistair.
‘I would love nothing more than to have you all to myself.’ She offered the reply as if the prospect of spending an entire day with a man who kissed like temptation personified—and that was when he was only play-acting—did not raise the temperature of her blood to indecent levels. She had to get that under control.
Alistair would be disappointed if she couldn’t remain objective about their plan.
It was all meant to be a game. Which posed the highly provocative and exclusively rhetorical question of what a kiss would be like if he truly meant it.
Provocative because last night’s kiss had certainly ignited her curiosity, and rhetorical because there was no true need to find out.
The ruse did not depend on that question being answered.
That hadn’t stopped her from lying awake most of the night trying to answer it anyway.
Her only conclusion was that they shouldn’t have done it.
Strategically, it had been a good idea, but it had also been a dangerous one.
It had accidentally crossed lines that couldn’t be uncrossed, as touch so often did.
But how could she have guessed he’d kiss like that?
Or that she would respond as she had? Even now in the bright light of morning, it was hard for her to put precise words to her reaction, for fear of making last night too real.
She rose from the table and excused herself, matching Alistair’s nonsense with her hand with a gentle trailing of her fingertips across his shoulder as she passed.
‘I’ll go upstairs to fetch my gloves while you finish eating, and then we can be off before it gets too hot.
’ Although, she feared she’d be hot all day regardless of the weather.
That was something she needed to get under control.
It would not help the ruse if part of it became real, nor would it help her when all of this came to an end.
Upstairs, she gathered her things along with her composure, giving herself a stern reminder that she did not like him and he did not like her.
A false kiss in the moonlight didn’t alter that.
She had her goals, and he had his. The moonlight couldn’t be allowed to change those either.
Alistair met her in the airy entry foyer, his straw bowler on his head, his white linen suit immaculate, blue eyes dancing.
A man had no right to look so handsome. ‘You won’t be so neat by the end of the day.
’ She couldn’t resist a verbal mussing to bring him down a peg.
‘We are walking everywhere.’ The lineal neighbourhoods of Naples with their gradini and discese were not made for carriages.
‘The suit will clean, if it comes to that.’ Alistair merely grinned and offered his arm. ‘Now, what sort of delights do you have planned for me?’
‘Planned? You’ve given me no time to plan,’ she scolded playfully.
‘I heard about our outing the same time everyone else did—twenty minutes ago.’ But her mind was already cobbling together a tour and thinking of ways in which it might be used as a reminder to them both of their differences and a reminder to him that he wasn’t made for Naples.
Their first stop was the hexagonal Castel Sant’Elmo.
‘These are the best views of the city. You can see the Sorrento Peninsula, the mountain and out to the islands. And there’s always a breeze.
I stop here when I reach the top of the hill.
It gives me a chance to catch my breath, literally and figuratively, before I get home,’ she confided as they looked out over the bay.
‘The city appears peaceful from here, but I assure you it is not. Four hundred thousand people from all over Europe living on top of each other will never be peaceful.’ But that was what she loved about the city—its variety, its colourful diversity.
Naples might be the end of the Grand Tour for Englishmen, but for centuries people from all over Europe had flocked to Naples in search of something more.
Spanish nobles had come in the sixteenth century building their villas and elegant townhouses.
The Germans built churches to compete with the Spanish.
The Greeks came looking for a trading post. The French and others came eager for diplomatic ties.
Even peasants had been drawn to Naples, to their own detriment and the kingdom’s.
When peasants don’t work the land, there is no food to eat.
They began the walk down the discese into the city, she pointing out the architectural features of this house or that as they passed neighbourhoods where the wealthy lived in villas next door to bassi housing the poor.
The sun was out and the air was crisp—for Naples.
The streets grew narrower, busier and more…
fragrant. ‘We’ve not had as much rain as usual.
September is normally a wet month here,’ she said, steering them towards an open-air mercato.
‘The rain clears the air and the drains,’ she said wryly.
The mercato was bustling, people bumping one another in their attempts to navigate the crowd.
No doubt, Alistair would not be used to such jostling proximity.
It was one of the reasons she’d chosen to come.
But Alistair took it all in stride, outwardly unfazed, but he was not oblivious to the risks of such crowds.
She felt his grip on her tighten, felt him draw her infinitesimally closer to him as they moved from booth to booth.
He was being protective. It was unnecessary but…
nice. ‘The mercato is one of my favourite places in the city,’ she told him.
‘You can find things from all over the world and local products, too.’ The mercato was a feast for the senses: vendors calling their wares in a variety of languages, the smell of fresh-baked bread, the bright colours of ripe, fresh vegetables in tomato-reds, pepper-greens, and the lush red-violet of grapes.
‘They don’t have markets like this in London, I’d wager,’ Ismay boasted proudly. Certainly not a market he’d frequent.
They stopped at a stall selling fresh produce to arrange for a delivery to the villa. As they talked with the vendor, Ismay felt a tug at her pocket. She moved a hand to investigate, but Alistair was faster.
‘Basta, lasciala stare,’ he growled with a glare at the grubby urchin who’d been caught pickpocketing, but not before he tossed the child an apple and added another glare, which Ismay thought was more for the vendor’s satisfaction than any real desire on Alistair’s part to frighten the pickpocket off.
He’d divined correctly that the real threat was starvation not the child.
‘You will just encourage him the next time he finds you in the mercato,’ the vendor scolded in broken English as Alistair handed over a coin for the fruit.
‘Better that than a child going hungry.’ Alistair gave the vendor a terse nod, and they moved on.
Well, that was interesting. Alistair Burke-Price had a soft spot for street rats.
She would not have guessed. One could tell a lot about a person by how they treated a stranger, someone to whom they had no obligations or ties.
‘Do you come here alone?’ he asked as they wound through the crowd.
‘Yes, and yes, I can handle myself with pickpockets, drunks, overly eager vendors.’ She laughed.
‘I am not helpless, Alistair.’ She stopped and took a deep breath.
‘Do you smell that? It’s the best smell in the world.
Pizza.’ She tugged at his hand. ‘There’s the vendor.
Come on, we’ll make a real lunch of it.’ What would he make of that?
* * *
A real lunch turned out to involve buying slices of baked flatbread topped with mozzarella, basil and diced tomatoes from a strolling vendor with a portable warming oven.
‘Do you want a big piece?’ Ismay asked over her shoulder, explaining, ‘Price per slice is based on the size.’ Then, in typical Ismay fashion, she turned back to the vendor without waiting for his response and ordered for them both.
‘Due fette grandi. è sempre affamato.’ She handed Alistair a slice, and they found a quiet place to sit beside a fountain on a side street.
But he was on to her. Ismay was up to something, a little game within their larger game.
‘Well, what do you think?’ she asked as he took his first bite.
He was thinking he was overwhelmed. Not by the city.
He rather liked it with its hum of humanity and all of its imperfections, although he suspected that was the opposite of what she’d wanted.
He wouldn’t call her out on it. She had her reasons for wanting to establish some distance.
He would not embarrass her by asking for them.
No, he was overwhelmed by her: the way she’d managed the market, how she had bartered with vendors for deliveries up to the villa, how she ate street food from a peddler with an old tin oven.
There wasn’t a débutante in London who could do what she’d done in the last three hours, and Ismay had done it effortlessly, without even thinking.
Of course, she’d had years to perfect those skills.
The point was she had perfected it. Working at the warehouse with her father, Alistair had already seen plenty of Englishmen who professed to live here without truly living here, their Italian no better than his.
‘You’re staring.’ Ismay brought a hand to the corner of her mouth in sudden alarm. ‘Do I have food on my face?’