McGillivray's Mistress - By Anne McAllister Page 0,63

above the wine shop. “Her friend Giulia found it for her,” Molly said. “And they all helped her move in—Alberto, Franco, Giancarlo, Vittorio.”

Vittorio again.

Molly told him about Fiona’s interest in church architecture. “She’s learning a lot. Checking out the churches in all the villages.”

“Taking buses?” Lachlan grinned, remembering the old buses.

But Molly shook her head. “She bought a motorbike. Since she got it, they go all over, she and Vittorio.”

And now Molly said Fiona was going to Milan for the weekend.

“Milan? On the motorbike? By herself?” Lachlan was appalled. Fiona was a small town girl. Thinking of her coping with a city the size of Milan was unnerving.

“Oh, no,” Molly said. “Vittorio drives a Ferrari.”

Lachlan had only one question: Who the hell was Vittorio?

THE FIRST WEEK in October Fiona’s master teacher, Adela Dirienzo, returned from Amsterdam.

It was just as well, Fiona thought, that Signora Dirienzo hadn’t been there when she first arrived. The learning curve was high enough with only her regular classes. If she had been plunged straight into one-on-one work with a master she might have panicked.

Even now, with four weeks’ work under her belt Fiona was nervous. Since she’d arrived she’d seen plenty of examples of Signora Dirienzo’s work. It was strong, powerful, dynamic. She worked in both marble and clay, creating works that were substantial and yet that pulsated with life.

She was, the direttore, Luigi Bellini, told Fiona when she arrived, the reason they had admitted her.

“She say you have talent,” Signore Bellini told her. “She zees potential in the pictures you zent. She wants to nurture your talent. Develop it.”

Potential? In the pelicans? In the sand castles? Maybe in the cutout surfers and fishermen. They were dynamic at least.

“Signora Dirienzo knows what she’s talking about,” Hans, her friend from the history class, told her.

Fiona dearly hoped so. And at the same time she was apprehensive about her first meeting. What if it had been a mistake? What if Signora Dirienzo had mistaken someone else’s portfolio for Fiona’s? What if they’d sent her the wrong pictures when she was in Amsterdam?

So it was with considerable trepidation that she mounted the stairs to the signora’s studio on Wednesday afternoon and knocked on the door.

“Come in!” The words were Italian, but Fiona understood them now.

She pushed open the door to find a sixtyish woman dressed like a workman, her long salt-and-pepper hair dragged back into a knot at the base of her neck, as she wrestled with a block of marble. She looked up at Fiona’s entrance and beamed.

“Ah, you are the island girl? Fiona, yes? Come help me, per favore. This is ours.” She patted the marble as if it were an old friend.

Fiona dropped her backpack on the floor and hurried to do as she was told. There wasn’t time to worry. There was only time to respond.

Signora Dirienzo—“Adela! You call me Adela,” her teacher said as she and Fiona moved the chunk of marble into place—believed in jumping right in. “Is what I like about you. Energy,” she said. “Always energy. You see potential, yes?”

“Um, I try,” Fiona said.

“You look here. You see?” Signora Dirienzo—Adela—moved her hands over the marble, stroked it, seemed to shape it as her palms caressed the grain. Fiona tried to see. She nodded her head, feeling as if she was completely out of her depth.

“You touch,” Adela said. “You feel. Then you see? Yes?”

Fiona touched. The stone was cool against her fingers. Not as smooth as she would have thought. There was a grain. A texture.

“Yes, yes. Like that.” Adela nodded, smiling. “Come.” She plucked at Fiona’s sleeve. “Here. You feel.” And she practically dragged Fiona over to the finished pieces that sat on shelves and in deep window ledges. “Close your eyes.”

Fiona closed them.

“Now,” Adela said, taking her hands and putting them on a piece of sculpture. “Feel.”

Fiona felt. She ran her hands over it, felt the smoothness one way, the grain the other, ran her fingers lightly over angles and bends and curves. She did it on a dozen pieces, possibly more.

“Which one you are feeling?” Adela demanded. “What is it?”

And, eyes closed, Fiona tried to describe what she was feeling.

“Yes, yes! Exactly. Yes! You see! But you do not need eyes to see!” Adela beamed, then tugged her onward. “Come. You feel this next.”

They moved around the room from piece to piece. Under Adela’s direction, she felt them all, marble and terra-cotta, large and small, clothed and naked. And Fiona was reminded of her sculpture of Lachlan.