‘We should like to look at rings,’ Luca opened without preamble.
‘Certo,’came the immediate reply. Followed by enquiries as to whether they’d prefer antique or modern style, and which stones.
Luca turned to Bianca. ‘What do you prefer?’ he asked, switching to English.
‘Does it matter?’ she returned indifferently. ‘You might as well choose something you like, since it will be yours when this is all over. Get something you can resell.’
She hadn’t spoken loudly, but Luca assumed the jeweller spoke English to accommodate his tourist trade.
‘Let’s stay in role, shall we?’ he murmured, tight-lipped. More loudly, he went on, ‘Emeralds for your eyes,mia cara?’ His voice was caressing.
Even as he spoke, memory snapped in his head. Bianca had met him one evening at the restaurant he’d usually taken her to, just around the corner from his apartment. She had been sporting huge, dangling clip-on crystal earrings in a vivid green.
She’d flicked them with a crimson nail extension. ‘Like them?’ She’d grinned. ‘Under a fiver in Brick Lane Market!’
She’d been pleased by the acquisition, and he’d had to allow that they looked stunning on her, with her lush auburn hair. But then, everything about Bianca was stunning…
He pulled his thoughts away from his irrelevant memories, instructing the jeweller to show then some modern designs incorporating emeralds. Absently he visualised the family betrothal ring with its emerald and pearls. Then he pulled his thoughts away from that too. It was as irrelevant as the memory of those garish crystal clip-ons.
The jeweller extracted a tray from a cabinet behind the illuminated desk. One row held emeralds, in various settings and designs.
Bianca stepped forward, looking down at them. ‘How about that one?’ She indicated one that had the smallest gemstone.
‘Oh, I think I can run to something a little more suitable,’ Luca murmured. He cast a rapid eye over the rings, selecting a design he didn’t care for, with a large cabochon cut stone.
‘No—too flash. And these are all too modern.’ Bianca looked at the jeweller. ‘I think you said you stock some antique rings?’ she asked.
‘Of course…of course,’ came the immediate reply, and the offending modern tray was whisked away to be replaced by another.
‘Oh, but these are beautiful!’
There was a warmth in Bianca’s voice Luca had only heard before when she was thanking Giuseppe or her uncle’s staff, or talking to Matteo.
She reached forward, letting her fingertip trace over the rings, pausing at one that had, of all things, Luca realised, an emerald nestled in a circle of pearls.
‘May I try?’ she asked the jeweller. She was holding out her hand. ‘Will it fit, do you think?’
‘I believe so,signorina,’ the jeweller informed her. He extracted the ring, but instead of sliding it over her extended finger himself, he handed it to Luca. ‘You may perhaps prefer…?’ He paused for a moment, then added, his tone both deferential, and curious, ‘So very similar…if you will permit me to say so?’
As he spoke, Luca did not miss the rapid, flickering glance at Luca’s own outstretched hand, and the signet ring he wore, its distinctive crest clearly visible. He cursed him for it. Damn—he would have preferred not to announce his identity.
‘Forgive me, Signor Visconte, but my father once had the privilege of resetting one of the pearls in the D’Alabruschi betrothal ring. I was only a boy, but I remember the ring vividly—an incomparable piece.’ He cleared his throat carefully. ‘But, of course, for everyday wear perhaps something more as thesignorinahas selected…?’
‘Precisely so,’ said Luca, his voice clipped.
He was aware that Bianca was looking at him, and that she had stiffened. Visibly tensed. As he, perforce, grazed her hand in sliding the ring onto her finger, it seemed to jerk minutely.
The ring fitted perfectly, and the jeweller said as much.
Bianca dropped her gaze to look at it. For a moment that was all she did. And then she spoke. Her voice was as clipped as Luca’s had been. But in it was a sardonic note he’d have needed to be deaf not to hear. And stupid not to know why.
‘So it does,’ she murmured. ‘Who’d have thought?’
Then, with a rapid movement, she removed the ring, handing it back to the jeweller.
‘It had better go in a box for now, please. I have no idea of the price, but I would not like to lose it on the street.’
The jeweller looked uncertainly between them, but Luca only nodded. As the jeweller found an appropriate case, and then proceeded to the delicate business of payment, Luca was aware that Bianca had turned away, ostensibly to look at the window display from the inside of the shop. But not before he had seen her blink rapidly. As though something were in her eye.