Free Island of Darkness by Rebecca Stratton Page B

signorina ?” he asked, and she hastily shook her head.
    “Oh no, Roberto, it wasn’t you,” she assured him, putting a hand on his arm. “It’s - it was Mr. Connor who made me laugh with his message. Thank you very much for telling me, I’m grateful - tante grazie, Roberto!”
    Roberto bobbed his head, smiling again. “Mi piacere, signorina !” His black eyes narrowed and he looked at her curiously, affected by her obvious pleasure. “You will go to see il signore ?” he asked, and she shrugged her shoulders lightly, unwilling to be too sure as yet.
    “I might,” she said, but Roberto was smiling, as if he was much more certain than that.
    “It is good,” he said softly, and took his leave of her with a polite little bob of his head. As she walked back along the quay Leonora was sure he was following her with that frankly speculative gaze, curious about the messages he had delivered - as her uncle would no doubt be too.
    “I thought you were firmly against ever going again,” Clive remarked when Leonora told him about her meeting with Roberto. Not everything, just that both Scottie and Jason Connor had sent her a message via Roberto.
    “I know I said so, Clive,” she told him. “But - well, circumstances change, and Scottie was very anxious that I should go, when he fetched me after my car broke down.”
    Clive looked at her with one brow raised. “That was two days ago,” he remarked dryly.
    “I know, but-”
    She shrugged and he shook his head. “Are you going?” he asked.
    Leonora shrugged again. She was sure in her own mind that she wanted to go, but unwilling to admit it. “I think I might,” she told him. “I’d like to see Scottie again.”
    Clive’s good-looking face gave nothing away, but she knew he was regarding her steadily as she concentrated on the pattern she was painting on one of his squat earthenware vases. “He seemed a decent chap, your - that Scottie McLellan,” he said. “Good, steady type - no nonsense about him.”
    Leonora smiled to herself at his near slip. Sometimes Clive could be very transparent and he was determined to see her settled with a husband, despite his own bachelor status. “He’s very nice,” she agreed quietly. “But he still isn’t my Scottie, Clive, and nor is he likely to be.”
    Her uncle made a moue of doubt. “He seemed pretty keen, the way he spoke when he came here,” he said.
    “I don’t think so, not in the way you mean,” Leonora insisted. “And anyway, he’s rather too old for me, don’t you think?”
    Clive pulled a face, reluctant to agree. He had taken a liking to Scottie and it would take a lot to make him discard the idea of him as a suitable husband for his niece, regardless of the differences in ages. “He’s no more than thirty-seven or eight, I’d say,” he decided, and viewed the matter of Scottie’s youth from his own years. “Not so very much older, really.”
    “Fifteen years,” Leonora said bluntly. “I’d say it was too much, Clive, and I honestly don’t think of Scottie in that light at all!”
    “What about Connor?” Clive asked softly, and she looked across at him, swiftly suspicious, only to find him apparently giving all his attention to the work he was doing.
    “What about him?” she asked quietly.
    “Well—” He shrugged carelessly. “He must be in his middle thirties, at least.”
    “He’s thirty-five, according to the last magazine article I read about him,” Leonora informed him calmly. “But I really don’t see what he has to do with anything.”
    Clive chuckled deeply, catching her gaze at last, his eyes gently teasing. “Don’t you?” he asked softly.
    “Clive—”
    “All right, all right!” He held up two clay-stained hands, and laughed. “When are you going over there?” he asked.
    Leonora put a last stroke of paint on the round belly of the vase and did not look up. “I thought I’d pop over this evening,” she told him casually.
    The sun was already getting low