“Ah.” Caroline nodded. “So not my great-aunt then.”

“But Caroline has sketches of a baby that looks a lot like you—like that old portrait of you that used to hang on the nursery wall. Whatever happened to that?” Luca asked.

“I’ve no idea. It disappeared years ago.” He looked up. “Ah, good. Here is food at last.” And a maid came in with a tray of prawns, olives, bruschetta with various toppings. Conversation waned as they ate. Then they were summoned in to dinner. Talk turned to Luca’s experience in the United States, his mother’s family, the difference in lifestyle. “My cousins—they all had a car when they were sixteen. Can you imagine?” he said. “I had to wait until I was twenty.”

“Where is there to drive in Venice?” his father asked, and they all laughed.

The countess asked about Caroline, and she found herself spilling out some of the story about Teddy, stuck in New York because of the attack on the World Trade Center.

“How you must miss him,” the countess said. “I’m sure he’ll be able to fly soon.”

“I have been telling her that I think she should just go and get him,” Luca said. “What child would not want to fly home with his mother?”

“I’m just praying that they haven’t poisoned his mind against me,” Caroline said. “My ex-husband could be very manipulative. But surely you don’t want to talk about my worries. I came here to find out about my great-aunt, but I think we’re never going to know any more.”

“You say your aunt did sketches of Angelo when he was a baby?” the countess asked.

Angelo. She hadn’t heard his first name before, and her thought went instantly to the painting that hung on her great aunt’s wall at home. Angelo. The little angel. It was him. As she raised her eyes, she found the count looking directly at her. There was something in his gaze she found disquieting. In his eyes. Then she realized what it was. He was looking at her exactly as Aunt Lettie had done before her sight failed. Head slightly to one side, eyebrows slightly raised. And then she knew. Aunt Lettie wasn’t his nanny. She was his mother.

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 33

Caroline, Venice, October 2001

It was hard to get through the rest of the meal, to chatter lightly while thoughts whirled in her head. The moment she had made the connection, she could see other similarities—the shape of his upper lip, his long fingers, the hint of auburn in his grey hair. So Aunt Lettie had had a child out of wedlock, presumably with Luca’s dead grandfather. But would the family have legitimized him? Would that old woman in the nursing home have accepted him as her son? She remembered Angelo saying, “Unlike my mother, who rarely visited the nursery.”