Bernardo laid tentative fingers on the barely perceptible bulge. ‘I’m terrified,’ he said with a smile. ‘All these qualifications, and you’re only-’ he regarded her warily. He’d been going to say ‘only a little girl’ but decided hastily against it.

‘I’m twenty-eight years old,’ she declared, ‘and a lot tougher than I look.’

‘You could scarcely be less,’ Bernardo observed, with an admiring glance at her fairy figure.

She laughed and ran a few steps ahead of him to where the path vanished into a tunnel of trees, and turned, skipping backwards, teasing him. As holiday romances went, this one showed signs of going very well. He didn’t run after her as another man might have done, but simply held out his hand, watching her, until she stopped skipping and laid her fingers lightly in his palm.

Hand in hand they strolled among the trees, while a sense of enchantment crept over her. It was nothing he said or did. He wasn’t the most handsome man in the world. He wasn’t even the most handsome man she’d romanced, but his looks pleased her deeply. The smile that had started at the airport was growing by the minute.

‘I think this garden is wonderful,’ she sighed, gazing around her.

‘Yes, it’s perfect,’ he agreed.

A touch of constraint in his voice made her look at him quickly. ‘But you don’t like it?’

‘I’m-not comfortable with perfection,’ he said after a moment. ‘For me, it is too precise. A man cannot feel free in a place like this.’ He checked himself abruptly and gave a polite smile.

‘Where can he feel free?’ she asked, her interest growing every moment.

‘When he’s up high among the birds, where the golden eagles fly so close that it feels as though he’s their brother.’

‘Golden eagles?’ she echoed eagerly. ‘Where?’

‘In my home in the mountains. I come here very little. My real home is Montedoro.’