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and meet my family.'
    But Deborah hung back. 'I wish I were wearing something else!' She made a face at her jeans. 'Funny, really, if anyone had asked me I should have said I was ideally dressed for being kidnapped—and then you have to bring me to a place like this! Whoever heard of anyone wearing jeans in a palace?'
    He was amused. 'I'm afraid you'll have to wait until we've bought you something more suitable. Cheer up, little one, I will tell them you are a sculptor and that will explain everything!'
    Deborah told herself that a kidnap victim—if that was what she was, and she still had her doubts about that—was not expected to be a social success, and certainly not to be nervous about whether the captor's family should like her or not, but, all the same, she could not resist peering at herself in the large, speckled glass on the wall in the hall and tried to smooth down her tangled, knotted hair. She might have made an effort to renew her make-up as well, but something in the way Domenico Manzu was looking at her brought the colour rushing into her face. It was a very masculine look, against which her present clothing was a most inadequate defence.
    'Ready?' he asked her. He held out his hands for her jacket, but she shook her head, pulling her shirt forward over her breasts with fretful fingers. The movement amused him and she cursed herself for being so obvious.
    'How many are there in your family?' she asked him, recovering a little of her usual poise.
    'At the moment only my mother and my sister are staying here, but I have two brothers also. They need not concern you for the moment, however. My sister's fiancé calls frequently, but as yet he does not live here.'
    So, she thought, he didn't much care for his prospective brother-in-law. She hoped the dislike was mutual, for an ally in the household who came and went at will was bound to be useful.
    'And do they all know that you've kidnapped me?' she pressed him.
    'They will not believe you if you tell them so,' he responded dryly. 'As far as they are concerned you are the daughter of a business acquaintance come to stay with us.'
    She was immediately indignant. 'You expect me to pretend to such a thing when you've brought me here against my will?'
    He put his hand on her shoulder and smiled at her. 'You won't find it half as difficult as you think. They haven't the least reason for disliking you, you know. They will be delighted to have such a pretty guest to stay with them!'
    'Even an involuntary guest?' Strangely, she didn't sound either cross or frightened, but only eager for a new experience that might never have come her way otherwise. How many people did one know who had actually stayed in a Roman palace? Deborah didn't know any. More, she had never before met anybody who had pretensions to being a member of the Black Nobility who, less now than before, had made up the secular court of the Pope. Nowadays the papacy was trying to shed most of the trappings of monarchy and the Black Nobility were no longer as important as in former times, but there was still an aura about the old names, Catholic and respectable to a man, and to the ancient offices that many of them still held within the Vatican, the small area to which the Pope's former possessions have been reduced. Who knew, Deborah said to herself, the famous people, perhaps even the Popes themselves, who had preceded her as guests within these noble portals? That was a thrill enough for anyone!
    Domenico Manzu's lips twitched. 'I see you are becoming resigned to your fate at last. If you will allow yourself to be, you will be very happy here as our guest, no?'
    He bent his head towards her and smiled. Deborah took fright and withdrew hastily into herself. She had the unpleasing notion that he had meant to kiss her and the idea that he should do so was somehow shocking to her.
    'Please don't!'
    'You object to such an innocent salute?' he questioned her.
    'Yes, I think I do,' she said.
    The look he gave her