Free An Innocent Abroad: A Jazz Age Romance by Romy Sommer

jealousy clawed at Isobel’s gut.
    This
was a man who belonged very much in a world of drawing rooms and dinner parties
and small talk. Had the man who’d kissed her even existed? Perhaps she had only
seen what she wanted to see.
    Not
once did he look her way. In this glittering company, with so many more
beautiful, sophisticated women, she could not compete for his attention.
    What
do I mean to you?
    But
the answer was before her. He did not care for her. Not enough to send her even
the slightest reassurance of his regard. Not a glance, nor a smile.
    Course
after course was set before them. Isobel sampled every dish, enough to allay
Christopher’s concerns, though afterwards she could not remember what she had
tasted.
    Christopher,
seated on her right, eventually gave up the attempt to draw her into
conversation. On her left, the bearded Russian writer whose name she no longer
remembered maintained a lively philosophical debate with his neighbour.
    “You
were part of the battle re-enactment.” Frances’ flirtatious voice floated down
the table to Isobel. Tonight she was as vivacious as ever, eyes sparkling,
roses in her cheeks.  Shamelessly ignoring convention, she leaned across the
table to address their honoured guest, conveniently exposing the smooth white
skin between her breasts.
    He’s
mine , Isobel wanted to shout down the
table. Except he wasn’t.
    He
was even less hers now than he had been a scant hour ago, when she’d believed
him to be a common fisherman and completely ineligible.
    “My
ancestor led the villagers who fought off the Saracens,” said Stefano. “It has
become tradition for the head of our house to play the same role.”
    Mortification
stung colour to her cheeks. She had been so naïve. She should have realised
what he was, who he was. And she should have known that a man like Stefano, so
full of life, so sure of himself, would see nothing more than a schoolgirl in
the throes of her first crush. She had been nothing more to him that a pleasant
diversion for an idle summer’s day.
    “Is
it too hot in here for you?” Christopher asked, his tone low and solicitous.
    “No.”
She pressed her cold hands to her flaming cheeks, but nothing could cool the
sting of the truth. “Yes.”
    The
excruciating meal drew to an end, and in time-worn custom the men remained in
the dining room to drink their brandies, while the ladies returned to the
drawing room to gossip. Isobel could not bear to go with them. She knew exactly
what all the women would be talking about. Who. And she didn’t want to hear it.
    She
slipped out a side door and into the cool night air of the terraced gardens. On
the level below the main terrace, out of sight of the long windows of the
drawing room, she perched on a stone balustrade, still warm from the day’s sun,
and struggled against a tidal wave of new and unexplored emotions.
    She
began to breathe again. She gazed out across the endless sea, streaked silver
by the full moon. Far below, specks against the velvet sea, she distinguished
the flashes of light of the night-time fishing boats, the lanterns in their
bows winking as the boats dipped and rolled on the waves.
    “It
is beautiful, is it not?”
    She
didn’t turn to see who it was. She would know his voice anywhere.
    She
straightened her back and lifted her chin. She would act like a woman, even if
she didn’t feel like one. She was not a schoolgirl any more.
    “Yes,”
she said. “It is.”
    Silence
stretched taut between them. Then he sat beside her on the warmed stone, close
enough that she could feel the heat emanating from him, that sensual heat that
caressed her like sunlight.
    No
longer able to avoid him, she turned to face him. “So that is what you wanted
to tell me – that you are a nobleman?”
    He
nodded. “Does this change how you regard me? Am I more acceptable to you now?”
    Was
he laughing at her? His dark scrutiny burned her, but she could decipher
nothing from his gaze.
    She
shook her head