"An impressive, if somewhat pedestrian, example of High Renaissance Tuscan vernacular," was how the professor described the architecture of the building. He saved his praise for the garden, not the formal arrangement of Renaissance terraces abutting the villa, but a later Mannerist addition occupying a sunken grove nearby. Conceived and laid out by a grieving husband to the memory of his dead wife, this plunging patch of woodland was fed by a spring and modeled on Roman gardens of the period, with meandering pathways and rills, statues, inscriptions and neoclassical structures.

    "It's a very unusual place," the professor said. "Extremely arresting."

    "You know it?"

    "I did, some years ago. It has never been altered—that's rare— and I know for a fact that no proper study has ever been conducted of it. Which is where you come in, if you want to, that is. Signora Docci has kindly offered it as a subject for one of my students."

    Mannerist was bad, a little too overblown for Adam's taste, and he'd have to do a lot of reading up. Italy, on the other hand, was good, very good.

    "Maybe a garden isn't quite what you had in mind, but don't dismiss it. . . . Art and Nature coming together to create a whole new entity—a third nature, if you will."

    Adam didn't require any more encouragement. "Yes," he said. "Yes, please."

    EXAMS WERE UPON THEM BEFORE THEY KNEW IT, AND gone just as quickly. They celebrated, got drunk, punted off to Grantchester with picnics, danced at college balls and hurled themselves fully clothed into the river—memories irreparably tarnished for Adam by Gloria's decision to end their relationship on the last night of the term. The situation was nonnegotiable and, true to character, Gloria made no attempt to feign a remorse she clearly didn't feel. She did manage, however, to offer him one scrap of consolation: as he would no longer be coming to stay at her family's pile in Scotland, he would be spared the maddening attentions of the summer midges.