Page 15 of Under a Dancing Star

“For God’s sake!” He lifts a hand to his head. “Am I never to escape an encounter with you without some sort of horrific head injury?”

“I believe you’ll find this one is your fault,” I say with as much dignity as I can manage, as I attempt to extract myself from the tangle of limbs. As he is doing the same thing our efforts rather cancel each other out and we don’t get very far. “You were too busy talking to listen to me and then there was a dragonfly…”

“Oh, there was a dragonfly. Well, that explains everything then,” he mutters.

I put a firm hand on his chest and he stills beneath my fingers. I roll to one side so that I am lying on my back beside him. The sky resolves itself overhead and I find myself squinting up into the sunshine. I close my eyes for a second. When I open them, I realize Ben still hasn’t moved.

“Are you all right?” I ask.

“I think so.” His voice is resigned. “No blood this time, at least.”

I pull myself up and look down at him. There’s something staining his blonde hair. “Don’t be so sure,” I say. I run my fingers through his hair, looking for the injury, and they come away red.

He looks startled. “Really?” he says. “Again?”

“I can’t see anything wrong,” I mutter, still looking for any obvious wound. Puzzled, I look more closely at my fingers, rubbing them together. There is red on my dress too. Then, in a flash, the truth comes to me. “Oh, it’s just paint!” I grin down at him, and the sudden rush of relief makes me laugh. “See?” I hold out my gory hands to show him.

“Paint?” His whole body tenses. “PAINT?” He leaps to his feet with a rather startling roar, that only intensifies as he takes in the scene in front of him.

I, too, scramble up. “Oh dear,” I say.

It seems that the can Ben kicked over contained a quantity of red paint, which, when mixed with the water from the jar that has also been knocked over, has created a rather alarming red trail, streaming merrily along the paving stones towards us. Ben’s painting, now lying on the floor thanks to my desperate grab at the easel, is worryingly damp with a long red smudge running almost horizontally across it – I’m fairly sure that wasn’t there before.

Ben stares at the canvas, open-mouthed.

“Perhaps it’s not so bad,” I say at last, reaching down to pick up the painting and place it carefully back on the easel.

“You have put it upside down.”

“Really?” I ask, squinting at the picture.

“This is all your fault,” he says, snatching the painting up and turning it the right way round. “I never know what disaster you’re going to unleash upon me next.”

That’s not really fair, but I don’t want to argue the point. “Shall I help you to tidy up?”

“No,” Ben says quickly. “Who knows what could happen next? I think I’ll proceed alone, with all my limbs intact.”

It is then that I remember my errand. “I think my binoculars might have fallen out in the car last night,” I say. “Have you seen them?”

“Mmm,” Ben murmurs, not looking at me any more, just at the painting in an absorbed sort of way. “They were under the back seat. I gave them to Rosa this morning.”

That is good news. I would have hated to misplace them, particularly in a place like this, where new and exciting discoveries seem to be waiting around every corner. With a cheery goodbye, I turn away, back towards the avenue cut into the yew hedges. The air is filled with a symphony of birdsong and almost immediately I am treated to the sight of a blue-throated keeled lizard (Algyroides nigropunctatus) skittering along in front of me. Surely a sighting of the hoopoe cannot be far behind? I head towards the villa in an excellent mood.

As I emerge from the gardens the building rises from behind the trees, the earthy red facade glowing with welcome under the heavy golden sun. I make for Rosa and the kitchen. Perhaps as well as my binoculars there will be a glass of something cold. And another one of those sweet rolls. Exploring is hungry work, after all.

As I get closer to the house I spy Hero in the distance, sitting under the pergola with her books spread over the long table, and an older woman perched rigidly beside her. Hero’s head turns and she spots me. She lifts her hand in greeting, leaps to her feet and runs forward, followed by her tutor who calls after her despairingly in Italian.

Hero’s expression is cheerful, but once we get a little closer to one another, she suddenly comes to a screeching halt, naked fear and horror dawning on her face.

“Oh, Bea!” she gasps. “What has happened?”

“Madre de Dio!” the woman behind her exclaims, promptly dropping into a dead faint at my feet.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“And then…” Hero’s voice is gleeful. “Bea emerged from the garden, ghostly pale and positively dripping with blood…”

“Paint,” I put in here. “It was paint.”