Veretti's Dark Vengeance

‘Let’s just say that I’ve never been bested yet.’

‘There’s a first time for everything.’

‘You think so?’

Helena regarded him with her head on one side, her eyes challenging and provoking.

‘I know your kind,’ she said. ‘You think you can “cope with” anything because you’ve never learned different. You’re the sort of man who makes other people long to sock you on the jaw, just to give you a new experience.’

‘I’m always open to new experiences,’ he said. ‘Would you like to sock me on the jaw?’

‘One day I’m sure I will,’ she said in a considering voice. ‘Just now it would be too much effort.’

He laughed again, a disconcertingly pleasant sound, with a rich vibrancy that went through her almost physically.

‘Shall we store it up for the future?’ he asked.

‘I’ll look forward to that,’ she said, meaning it.

‘Do you challenge every man you meet?’

‘Only the ones I think need it.’

‘I could make the obvious answer to that, but let’s have a truce instead.’

‘As long as it’s armed,’ she reminded him.

‘My truces are always armed.’

He stopped a passing young woman and spoke to her in Venetian. When she’d departed he said,

‘I asked her to bring us some refreshment outside, where we can sit down.’

Outside was a wooden seat on a terrace that overlooked a small canal with shops along the bank. It was pleasant to sit there drinking coffee.

‘Is this your first visit to Venice?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I’ve thought about it for years but never got around to it before.’

‘Do you travel alone?’

‘Quite alone.’

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘I wonder why.’

‘Let us not play games. You don’t need me to say that a woman as beautiful as you need never lack company.’

‘But perhaps you need to hear that a woman may prefer to be alone. It isn’t always the man’s choice, you know. Sometimes she consults her own preferences and consigns men to the devil.’

He gave a wry smile. ‘Touché! I suppose I asked for that.’

‘You certainly did.’

‘And have you consigned us all to the devil?’

‘Some of you. There are men who are fit for nothing else.’

He nodded. ‘You must have met quite a few of them.’

‘A fair number. The virtues of solitude can be very appealing.’

‘And so you travel alone,’ he said slowly.

‘Alone—but not lonely.’

That seemed to disconcert him. After a moment he said quietly, ‘Then you must be the only person who isn’t.’

‘To be enough for yourself,’ she answered, ‘safe from the onslaughts of other people, and happy to be so—it isn’t really very hard.’

‘That’s not true, and you know it,’ he replied, looking at her intently. ‘If you’ve achieved it, you’re one in a million. But I don’t believe that you have achieved it. It’s your way of fooling the world—or yourself.’

She felt as if a hand had been laid on her shoulder, halting her in her tracks. It was a moment before she drew a deep breath and said, ‘I don’t know if you’re right. Perhaps I never will.’

‘But I would like to know,’ he said in the same quiet tone. ‘I’d like to see behind that mask you keep so firmly in place.’

‘If I removed it for everyone, there would be no point in having it,’ she pointed out.

‘Not everyone. Just me.’

Suddenly she found it hard to breathe. It was as though a cloud had crossed the sun, throwing the world into shadow, making complex things that had seemed simple only a moment before.

‘Why should I tell you what I tell nobody else?’ she managed to say at last.

‘Only you can decide that.’

‘That’s true. And my decision is…’ She hesitated. Something in his eyes was trying to make her say what he wanted to hear, but it had to be resisted. ‘My decision is that I’ve kept my secrets safe so far, and I’ll go on doing just that.’

‘You think your secrets are safe, do you?’

Something in his voice filled her with the conviction that nothing in the world was safe, her secrets, her heart, herself—nothing.

‘I think—I think I shall work hard to keep them safe.’

‘And woe betide intruders?’

‘Exactly.’