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‘Hello,’ he said.

Amy crossed from where she was still standing to greet her saviour. ‘I thought you’d changed your mind.’

‘I don’t understand.’ And there was puzzlement in his voice.

‘Never mind. Hello, I’m Amy Ross, and I’m sorry to disturb you.’

‘It’s not a problem. I’m sorry it’s taken so long but I’m renovating my house and the workmen have left it half torn away. Oh, the delay? You thought I wasn’t going to come down, now I understand. Come in.’

Once Amy was in the entrance hall she was able to get a better look at the young man. He was incredibly beautiful, there was no other word for it. Somewhere in his mid-twenties, he had straight thick black hair that just covered the rim of a collarless white shirt, an old-fashioned shirt, one that Lord Byron might have worn: the finest of cotton with voluminous puffed sleeves that buttoned tight on his wrists and tails tucked into tight, well-worn jeans. He was not exactly delicate, not exactly feminine – in fact, not feminine at all – just a sensitive-looking male beauty, the sort that ancient Greek sculptors might have used for models when they carved Greek youths for posterity. He was sensuous the way a woman can be when she moves, but with a masculinity to him that was undeniable. He was, too, enormously erotic-looking, as if sex was his life’s blood. He was very slim but with broad shoulders and a tight, rounded and muscular bottom. She wanted to see him nude, she wanted him. Amy guessed males and females alike fell in love with him on sight. He was irresistibly alluring, deliciously decadent – or at least one imagined he might be. Either that or asexual, as pure and fresh as driven white snow.

It did not take her long to understand that he was,
too, a beautiful person, someone very unusual. He smiled at her and there was something genuine and sweet in his expression. Here was a man with not a malicious bone in his body.

‘I think you’re cold. Follow me. The drawing-room at least is liveable. I’ll light a fire, and you’ll have a drink to warm you, and then I’ll take you to the Palazzo Davanzati. Oh, let me introduce myself. My name is George Constantakis, a Greek from Egypt. We are the best of the Greeks, you know, the Egyptian Greeks,’ he told her teasingly.

He was gazing into Amy’s eyes. His were pools of black, sparkling and sensuous, and he had the longest, most sexy eyelashes she had ever seen on a man. He appeared to speak with them. His skin was the colour of tea and his nose perfect and noble; his lips such as any woman would have wanted for her own.

The hall was crammed with packing cases and paintings leaning against the wall, candelabra with candles in them stood on top of steamer trunks. She and George squeezed their way in and round things until he opened the drawing-room door. They stepped into a beautiful sixteenth-century room with a wall of windows, some of which still had their original glass. It ran the width of the house and faced on to a canal. Lamps were lit. It was furnished with bits and bobs of Venetian things, most of which appeared to be past restoration. But it was the room itself that was amazing, by
palazzo
standards perfection in miniature. Through the windows she saw a pair of stone lions on either side of marble
steps leading down into the water. Across the narrow canal a private gondola was tied to a pole striped with colour. For several minutes she stood entranced by what she was seeing and the silence all around save for the rhythmic lapping of the water against the marble steps.

George lit the fire and soon it flared up. He took a deep, rich scarlet velvet jacket from a chair and placed it round Amy’s shoulders. That pulled her from her trance. George smiled at her, a knowing smile. Here was a stranger who understood the magic of Venice. George liked her; she had a soul to match her beauty and ripe sexuality. He went to a table covered with a silk velvet cloth and from a decanter poured them both glasses of brandy. ‘Drink this down, it will warm you. You must be careful in Venice this time of year when the days are still hot and the nights are cold.’

Amy drank her brandy in one gulp and found George was right. It instantly warmed her. ‘This is an amazing room,’ she told him, looking up at the twenty-foot-high ceiling with its intricate carving, faded colour and gilding.

‘Yes, it is. It’s the perfect Venetian
palazzo
for one. It has wonderful views of Venice. In the daytime through this window you can see a larger canal. After some distance it turns rather sharply and you can catch a glimpse of the Grand Canal. From the rooms above the best domes and spires, roof tops and canals of the city that are never photographed can be seen.

‘This house is wedged between two marvellous
palazzos
that are still lived in by the same families that
built them. They commissioned this house to be built at the same time as their palaces to keep a quite violently mad brother close to them rather than incarcerate him. He lived here in splendour with his keepers and servants. They say that soon after he was moved into this house, quite suddenly the demons that had haunted him from birth vanished. All the violence and most of his madness was dissipated. He lived to be seventy-two years old, a very old age four hundred years ago, never leaving this house except for rides in his gondola which were taken late at night or at dawn when few people were about, or else when he walked in the small garden. Diaries I have seen claim that for the last thirty of those years he was quite sane. They believe here in Venice that this is a house with a healing spirit.’

‘Have you lived here long?’

‘No, not long.’

Amy had so many questions she wanted to ask George about the house and how he came by it. But she knew it was rude and had the feeling that he would be offended by her prying, so she asked nothing.

Shortly after her arrival he offered to take her to the
pensione
. She realised after five minutes that she had done well to ask for help. The way to the
pensione
was through seemingly endless twisting and turning streets and several small piazzas. After twenty minutes they were at her
pensione
, the Palazzo Davanzati.

On entering the courtyard through wooden doors set in a wall that faced the street she was immediately enchanted. It was filled with potted tropical and
Mediterranean flowering trees and shrubs, a palm tree and creeping vines, all overgrown. A curved flight of rose-coloured marble stairs rose magnificently to the first floor and the second of the two main entrances to the building. The first and equally as grand entrance was on the canal. The
palazzo
, though crumbling, was impressive by any standards.

George and Amy entered through the front door. This was nothing at all like any
pensione
she had stayed in or heard about before. She had imagined something quite modest, having heard about the place from Jimmy and Richard and others of the sort of clientele that frequented the
pensione
. In fact the Palazzo Davanzati was at least as large and as grand as the Hotel Gritti Palace, the only difference being that this
palazzo
was still a private house that took in recommended-only paying guests, and then only ones who were interesting and amusing to the owner.

George found a servant dressed in a rather smart white jacket with a family crest emblazoned in gold thread on the cuffs. He wore white cotton gloves also, and was in his seventies at least. The two men spoke in Italian for several minutes and then Amy and George followed him through several magnificently furnished reception rooms to an inner circular hall with a vast marble staircase that wound its way up several floors under a dome that Amy would later find had been painted by Tiepolo.

She all but pinched herself to make certain she was not in a dream. She felt more like Alice having walked
through the looking glass than Amy Ross in Venice. George looked amused.

‘You might have warned me,’ she whispered.

‘Yes, I might have, but then you wouldn’t have been surprised.’

‘It’s not exactly what I would call a
pensione
, George.’

‘That’s what’s so amusing – it is. Marina, the princess who owns the place, adores meeting interesting people. She collects them the way some people collect fine china. Her charm and generosity, and the high regard in which she is held by the Venetians, are just some of her saving graces. She’s not a snob, more a noble lady. You’ll like her. Marina is an unusual Venetian. She likes foreigners, takes them into her home as paying guests, and the money she earns goes towards the upkeep of the
palazzo
, which as you can imagine is an endless project and very expensive. I doubt she makes anything, she takes care of her guests too well for that, and will rarely take anything from a writer or painter or any struggling artist. I actually think she opens the house to people because she likes to see it full and alive and can’t afford to keep it that way without them.’

They were on the second floor now and walking down a corridor hung with family portraits. The butler stopped in front of a pair of doors and pushed them open. The three entered a sitting-room, large and elegant, with windows on to a small balcony overlooking the canal. There the butler had a conversation with George after which he beckoned to Amy and took her through to the bedroom, equally as large and with an impressive four-poster
canopied bed hung with sixteenth-century silk velvet damask in a colour that could best be described as silver moonbeams.

Amy’s luggage had been unpacked and her clothes hung in an armoire in the dressing-room. Her nightdress had been laid out on the bed, her dressing gown draped elegantly across a chaise longue. The bathroom was all marble and mirrors, and her toiletries and cosmetics had been placed neatly on the dressing table. The butler then escorted Amy back into the sitting-room. After talking for a minute more with George he left the room.

‘Pleased?’ asked George.

‘Need you really ask?’

‘No. Just teasing. Silvio says I am to tell you that drinks are served in the library on the first floor at eight. Dinner is served at nine and apologies have been sent by the Princess Marina. She is not in this evening, but there will be five other people at the table. He has also asked me to tell you how things work here. You come and go as and when you like. There are no rules about dress. Breakfast is served in your room as and when you want it but you must tell the waiter or the chef what you want the night before. Lunch is served at two o’clock and you are expected to say if you are not in for it or if you have invited guests to join you. You must say at breakfast if you plan to have an evening meal in. That’s it. Oh, and though Silvio has not said so, I happen to know that guests who have the occasional overnight visitor are not frowned upon – that’s taken as the norm here, part of the Palazzo Davanzati’s charm. Well, now
you are no longer lost, I’ll be on my way.’

George took Amy’s hand in his and lowered his head to place a kiss upon it. They gazed into each other’s eyes and smiled. He knew very well that this young woman was stepping into a new, more decadent world, and had no doubt, even after being with her for so short a time, that she would make the most of it. She had about her a hunger and passion, repressed but struggling to break free. Otherwise what was she doing there?

‘George, thank you very much for coming to my aid, but it doesn’t seem enough merely to say thank you. Please let me invite you to stay for a drink?’

‘I would really like that but I can’t. I’m invited out this evening.’ He slipped his velvet jacket from her shoulders and draped it over his arm. ‘Oh, and just a word of advice – most everyone who stays here is in for lunch. It’s usually amusing, and the food is always excellent. But for dinner, when you want to go out somewhere close by, in the piazza only a few steps away from here is the restaurant we all go to. It’s cheap and good, you can’t miss it. It’s called Rimboccare. You’ll find struggling poets, writers like myself and painters turning up there when they have a few pennies to spare. It’s our lifeline for meeting, eating and drinking. Now I really must go.’

Amy sat on the end of the bed and thought about the beautiful George; she could hardly get him out of her mind, nor his strange but wonderful house. Finally she decided on a long and luxurious bath. In the hot steamy water she dozed on and off and tried to make some sense
of the excitement that seemed to have taken her over, swept her up and away from everything she felt safe with and sure of. She found this alien world, the real Venice, fascinating. It was like being drugged and taken a million miles from being a tourist in the Piazza San Marco. She felt as if she had stepped back in time to a world where everyone was just a little eccentric, just a little too self-involved, living for the fun of living and creating. Enthralled with Venice, they were drugged by its beauty and mystery, intrigue and history, and seduced by the city. She felt utterly bourgeois, as if she had many skins to shed. A brief peek into this world seemed not nearly enough.

In the library where drinks were served (American martinis, French champagne), she was not surprised to meet one of America’s most famous playwrights and his entourage, in Venice for five days of fun. He was very drunk or drugged and not very pleasant. A manic depressive – you could see it in his eyes, hear it in the sharpness of his wit. Several other names that she had heard of but never met were present, altogether less tortured. Two couples from Paris, another from London. Half of them went elsewhere to dine. Those who remained and Amy sat at the long dining-room table, splendid with family silver and flowers, set at one end for them.

George had been right: the food was sublime, the best she had had since her arrival in Italy. But the company was only mildly amusing and after dinner Amy went directly to her room. On her pillow she found a note
from George. He would come to the Palazzo Davanzati after siesta tomorrow to take her to see one of the hidden wonders of Venice.

They met the next day and George took her to see a small but splendid church. It was closed to the public, but he had made arrangements to borrow a key. Inside they saw fourteenth-century frescoes that were the finest she had ever seen. That night Amy invited him as her guest to the restaurant he had suggested to her. There several people who knew George greeted him with delight, and surprise that he had been wrenched from his house. One man’s eyes filled with love on greeting George; an older woman, still ravishingly beautiful, embraced him and whispered something in his ear. Everyone she was introduced to seemed to be just a little bit in love with George, to want him, and Amy could understand that. She wanted him herself.