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She would have asked Agata after Ms Quell left, and Antonio had locked himself in his office, but she’d not been able to find the housekeeper. And with no clue where the light switch was, Ivy had made it up here last night, frustrated and embarrassed that she’d had to feel around the walls like a woman with no sight. Which wasn’t true. She was a woman with three-quarters of her sight, so she could stop feeling sorry for herself and get on with things. The problem was that she didn’t know what ‘things’ she was supposed to be getting on with here in Antonio’s Tuscan villa.
She threw back the covers and wandered over to the windows, pulling back the largest curtains she’d ever seen to gasp at the sight through the window. Pressing one hand to her chest and squinting through her good eye, the sun stretched lazy morning rays over rows and rows of grape vines, before rolling green hills reached a small town over in the distance. She could just make out the terracotta roofs and tall church towers.
She grabbed her camera from her bag and held it up in front of the window. Even when she was alone, it felt more natural to hold the viewfinder up and for her to be able to see the world entirely as she wanted it to be.
The sight in her good eye was still excellent. But the damage done by the first retinal detachment from the trauma of the accident had been compounded by a second detachment. She’d been lucky in that a visiting specialist from Greece had treated her and performed miracles according to the medical community. Her case was now taught at hospitals around the world, and she was at least—in some part—thankful that some good had come out of the shocking bicycle accident that had left her reeling when it had dramatically changed her life as she knew it.
And while there was still a possibility that her brain would eventually adjust to the differences in the information that each eye provided, for three years she had lived in a world that had one strong image, superimposed by a second, shadow image just a few millimetres out, and that was unlikely to change now. There were times when it was harder than others, but none were as awful as the moment that the darkness had slowly come down over one eye as the second detachment had occurred. The inching black had struck a fear so severe into her heart that she still felt the echoes of it even now. But she knew better than to give in to that fear. It had claimed nearly a year of her life following the accident, and she wouldn’t let it claim any more.
She made her way to an en suite bathroom so beautiful she thought she could live in it, showered, and dried off with the fluffiest of towels as she reconciled the incongruity of seeing her toothbrush and paste in such splendour. She ran her fingers through her hair, relishing the heat of Italy that made it possible to dry it naturally. She pulled on a fresh change of clothes and went in search of food.
Ivy followed the stairs back down to the large beautiful kitchen. In the morning light she was able to see it much better than she had yesterday, when they’d simply passed through it on the way to the garden.
She found Agata bustling around the pristine space.
‘Cosa le porto, signora?’
Ivy was about to answer when Agata’s offer to get her something was translated into English from behind her. She turned to find Antonio, clean-shaven, hair as damp as her own, looking fresh and crisp and all the things that she didn’t quite feel.
In a blue shirt and tan linen trousers, he was almost enough to make her forget Agata’s question.
‘I’ll have a herbal tea if you have one? Or mint? I noticed there was some in your garden last night,’ she said, turning to Agata. ‘That would be lovely, but I can make it?’
Agata fussed and shook off her offer, and Ivy realised that Agata spoke at least as much English as Ivy spoke Italian.
‘Grazie,’Ivy said with a smile as the housekeeper disappeared into the garden.
She braced herself before turning back to Antonio. Really, the sight of him had blown apart her defences and she needed to gather them before facing him again. Her dreams last night had been intense, and erotic and full of him, and she simply wasn’t used to it. He had filled her nights in the months following their marriage, but time had dulled them to occasional harmless occurrences. But being back in his presence…
He held a small espresso cup in his hand, his gaze assessing on hers.
‘I am prepared to admit that I might have made an error in judgement last night.’
Ivy pinned her lips between her teeth, hoping he couldn’t see her smile. It must be hard for a man like Antonio to admit a mistake. That he did proved that the man she had once known—albeit briefly—was still in there.
‘I can see now that I was wrong to think this would go away easily, and I have anewplan.’
Ivy nodded, almost entirely sure that she wasn’t going to like where this was going.
‘You have an appointment this afternoon in Siena.’
She nodded again, wondering why he was telling her about his meeting in Siena if—
‘Wait…me?’
‘Sì.’He nodded.
‘Yougot things wrong andI’mthe one with the appointment?’ she asked, not to be obtuse, but because she was very confused.
‘Ivy,’ he said as if with the greatest of patience. ‘If we are going to prove that we gave this a ‘go’, then we are going to need to beseen‘giving this a go’. We will start with dinner tonight. We will do some sightseeing tomorrow and later in the week we will be attending a gallery opening.’
‘A gallery opening,’ Ivy repeated, her lips numb.
She blinked and pressed a thumb to a temple that had started aching with each step of his plan. Starting with her appointment.
‘What’s in Siena?’
Precisely one hour later, Ivy was thrust through the glass doors of one of Italy’s most exclusive salons, feeling more nervous than she had done before her last ophthalmologist’s appointment.