And all Elizabeth could think of to say was, “There’s a problem. One of us has the wrong accessories.”
And she began to laugh and cry hysterically, weeping for the beautiful candlelit vision that had died, and laughing because she was a healthy, normal girl who had just learned that she was free.
The next day Elizabeth tried the shower nozzle.
CHAPTER 13
At Easter vacation, in her final year at school, when she was eighteen, Elizabeth went to the villa in Sardinia to spend ten days. She had learned to drive, and for the first time she was free to explore the island on her own. She took long drives along the beaches and visited tiny fishing villages. She swam at the villa, under the warm Mediterranean sun, and at night lay in her bed listening to the mournful sound of the singing rocks, as the wind gently blew through them. She went to a carnival in Tempio, where the entire village dressed up in national costumes. Hidden behind the anonymity of domino masks, the girls invited the boys to dance, and everyone felt free to do things they would not dare do at any other time. A boy might think he knew which girl he made love to that night, but the next morning he could not be certain. It was, Elizabeth thought, like an entire village playing The Guardsman.
She drove to Punta Murra and watched the Sar-dos cook small lambs on open fires. The native islanders gave her seada, a goat cheese covered in a dough, with hot honey over it. She drank the delicious selememont, the local white wine that could be had nowhere else in the world because it was too delicate to travel.
One of Elizabeth’s favorite haunts was the Red Lion Inn at Porto Cervo. It was a little pub in a basement, with ten tables for dining, and an old-fashioned bar.
Elizabeth dubbed that vacation the Time of the Boys. They were the sons of the rich, and they came in swarms, inviting Elizabeth to a constant round of swimming and riding parties. It was the first move in the mating rite.
“They’re all highly eligible,” Elizabeth’s father assured her.
To Elizabeth they were all clods. They drank too much, talked too much and pawed her. She was sure they wanted her not for herself, because she might be an intelligent or worthwhile human being, but because she was a Roffe, heiress to the Roffe dynasty. Elizabeth had no idea that she had grown into a beauty, for it was easier to believe the truth of the past than the reflection in her mirror.
The boys wined and dined her and tried to get her into bed. They sensed that Elizabeth was a virgin, and some aberration in the male ego deluded each boy into the conviction that if he could take away Elizabeth’s virginity, she would fall madly in love with him and be his slave forever. They refused to give up. No matter where they took Elizabeth, the evenings always ended up the same. “Let’s go to bed.” And always she politely refused them.
They did not know what to make of her. They knew she was beautiful, so it followed that she must be stupid. It never occurred to them that she was more intelligent than they. Who ever heard of a girl being both beautiful and intelligent?
And so Elizabeth went out with the boys to please her father, but they all bored her.
Rhys Williams came to the villa, and Elizabeth was surprised at how excited and pleased she was to see him again. He was even more attractive than she had remembered.
Rhys seemed glad to see her. “What’s happened to you?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Have you looked in your mirror lately?”
She blushed. “No.”
He turned to Sam. “Unless the boys are all deaf, dumb and blind, I have a feeling Liz isn’t going to be with us much longer.”
Us! Elizabeth enjoyed hearing him say that. She hung around the two men as much as she dared, serving them drinks, running errands, for them, enjoying just looking at Rhys. Sometimes Elizabeth would sit in the background, listening as they discussed business affairs, and she was fascinated. They spoke of mergers and of new factories, and products that had succeeded and others that had failed, and why. They talked about their competitors, and planned strategies and counter-strategies. To Elizabeth it was all heady stuff.