Then she blew his satisfaction out of the water by saying regretfully, ‘If only it were real.’

He stared. ‘Of course it’s real.’

‘No, I’m afraid not. It’s a very good copy, one of the best I’ve ever seen. I can understand why it fooled your friend-’

‘But not you,’ he said, feeling illogically annoyed at her slander of his non-existent ‘friend’.

‘I’ve always taken a special interest in artefacts from Etruria,’ she said, naming the province that had later become Rome and its surrounding countryside. ‘I visited a dig there a couple of years back and it was the most fascinating-’

‘And this qualifies you to pronounce on this piece?’ Marco interrupted, his annoyance overcoming his good manners.

‘Look, I know what I’m talking about, and frankly this “expert” of yours doesn’t, since he can’t tell Greek from Etruscan.’

‘But according to you it’s a fake which means it can’t be either,’ he pointed out.

‘It’s a copy, and whoever did it was copying an Etruscan piece, not a Greek one,’ she said firmly.

The transformation in her was astonishing, he thought. Gone was the awkward young woman who’d collided with him at the door. In her place was an authority, steely, assured, implacable in her own opinion. He would have found it admirable if she wasn’t trying to wipe a million dollars off his fortune.

‘Are you saying that this is worthless?’ he demanded.

‘Oh, not entirely worthless. The gold must be worth something.’

She spoke in the manner of an adult placating a disappointed child, and he ground his teeth.

‘Would you like to explain your opinion?’ he said frostily.

‘All my instincts tell me that this isn’t the real thing.’

‘You mean feminine intuition?’

‘Certainly not,’ she said crisply. ‘There’s no such thing. Funny, I’d have expected a man to know that. My instincts are based on knowledge and experience.’