“Our silent hours begin at nine o’clock, so no noise after that hour. And please to remember,” she said, “the convent door is locked at ten o’clock. Nobody may come in or out after that until the morning.”

“You hear that, girls?” Miss Frobisher said, wagging a finger at them. “No thoughts of sneaking out, or you will be forced to sleep on the doorstep. Miss Browning and I are responsible for you, so I trust you will behave at all times.”

“We can’t even go out and see if there is dancing and jazz bands and things?” one of the girls asked.

I shook my head. “I’m afraid I have no experience of dance clubs or jazz bands, Mary. I was here with a strict aunt who said that ladies did not go out after dinner unaccompanied.”

Even as I said it, the memory came flooding back so violently that I almost reeled from it. I had gone out at night. There had been music and the wind in my hair. A vivid image of Leo came to me, him glancing back at me and smiling as he steered his boat, and he had held my hand as we strolled through the dark gardens, and he had kissed me. Now it felt like a beautiful dream. Had he really been who he claimed to be? Did he really live in a palace, or was he a handsome imposter having a little fun with an innocent tourist? And had he thought of me after that night? I realized I’d probably never know. I had never given him my address in England, so he would have had no way of contacting me if he’d wanted to. I could hardly go to the palazzo where he claimed he lived and ask to see him—not with twelve girls and Miss Frobisher in tow. Besides, ten years had passed. I was no longer that hopeful, emotional girl. He was probably married with children by now, with no interest in seeing a naive girl he had once kissed.

We escorted the girls to their rooms for the night, then went to our own room. The air was stiflingly hot and oppressive. I stood at the window, hoping to catch a breath of night breeze. Outside the window I could hear the sounds of the city coming awake for the evening: distant laughter, music, someone singing opera. A couple walked arm in arm along the little street at the end of the alleyway. As if on cue, they paused, she lifted her face to his and he kissed her.

That will never be me, I thought with a great pang of regret.

We were awoken by bells from a nearby church at six o’clock—great reverberating sounds that made the shutters tremble. As they died away, they were echoed by a smaller, tinnier bell from within the convent.

“What on earth is that racket, Miss Browning?” Miss Frobisher asked sleepily. “It’s not a fire, is it?”