The Silent Fountain by Victoria Fox

Author:Victoria Fox [Fox, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin (UK) Ltd
Published: 2017-03-14T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Italy, Summer 2016

Adalina finds me on the floor. I must have fallen backwards, back against the banister, and Salvatore has gone. Perhaps I passed out, because all I remember is the painting going up, bright, bright orange, and then this. Now. Adalina’s scream…

‘No!’ she howls. ‘No!’

There is no getting past the flames. They are solid heat. Get up, I instruct myself, move. Then I’m staggering down the stairs, the fire like a wall behind me, threatening with each second to spread to the panels, the mahogany chest, devouring all in its path. Into the kitchen, where by the pale light of the moon I fill a basin with water, back up the stairs, into the fire and it fizzes, waning, so I do the same again. It doesn’t sound like only Adalina screaming; it sounds like another woman, maybe two more, and a high, urgent, reedy cry that ricochets at angles across the vaulted ceiling. As I stumble with the water, I’m reminded of that Northern Line station and the cacophony of cries that followed me into fresh air, all those varied pitches and every one accusing.

The blaze at last extinguished, Adalina sinks against the wall. Her skin is blackened and slick with soot, her hair untied from its usual severe bun. Her features wear an expression of such sadness that the anger I’m expecting is delayed for a while. For a moment, she reminds me of someone; just a glimmer of a suggestion and it’s too hazy to pinpoint. A woman I saw once, someone I think I knew…

‘Adalina…?’

My voice doesn’t sound like my own. I go towards her.

‘What have you done?’ she rasps.

‘I’m so sorry.’ I’m in shock. ‘It was an accident.’

She drops to the floor, and the victim of the crime. The portrait is scarcely recognisable as a person any more. The frame has melted and the canvas is smeared with black, curled up round the edges like hardened glue. One of the sitter’s eyes remains, a green, piercing glint of light that shimmers out like a jewel on the ocean bed. That eye seems to watch me, and I place it immediately. It’s the same man I saw when I first arrived at the Barbarossa, the man I believe to be Vivien’s husband.

‘As if it wasn’t enough to lose him the first time,’ Adalina whispers.

I don’t know what to say. It was a stupid, stupid thing, and to repeat my apology only highlights this, and the woeful inadequacy of my defence.

‘I was talking to Salvatore…’ I begin.

Her head snaps up, mad-eyed. ‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing,’ I backtrack, ‘he… I don’t listen to him anyway.’

‘Good. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.’

The way she’s speaking seems suddenly unfamiliar, like it’s a different person I’m talking to, somebody I’ve never met. It might be the gloom, silvery now with ash and despair. Water puddles on the step; the walls drip.

‘He frightened me,’ I say. ‘The candle, I dropped it and…’

She’s just staring at the portrait. At the face that once was.

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