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Back Under a Dancing Star
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for Laura Wood
  3. Dedication
  4. Part One: England
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Part Two: Villa di Stelle
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. Chapter Eight
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. Chapter Eighteen
  24. Part Three: Villa di Stelle
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-One
  28. Chapter Twenty-Two
  29. Chapter Twenty-Three
  30. Chapter Twenty-Four
  31. Chapter Twenty-Five
  32. Chapter Twenty-Six
  33. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  35. Part Four: Florence
  36. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  37. Chapter Thirty
  38. Chapter Thirty-One
  39. Chapter Thirty-Two
  40. Part Five: Villa Di Stelle
  41. Chapter Thirty-Three
  42. Chapter Thirty-Four
  43. Chapter Thirty-Five
  44. Chapter Thirty-Six
  45. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  46. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  47. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  48. Chapter Forty
  49. Epilogue: England
  50. Acknowledgements
  51. About the Author

I turn the corner down the winding corridor, following the trail of lights as Hero flicks them on along the way. This is certainly not the Uncle Leo that I remember. Nor, I am sure, is it the Uncle Leo my parents imagined they were sending me to.

I smile to myself. It seems that things at Villa di Stelle might not be so respectable after all. What a pleasant thought.

Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

When I wake the next morning, I am not sure where I am. I stare up at the ceiling for a second, the events of the last few days racing around my head in a jumble of images and sensations, before arranging themselves into something more orderly.

I’m here. I’m really here, in Italy, and the proof is all around me, written into the walls and furniture of this unfamiliar room. I take a moment to absorb it – the heavy, embroidered cotton of the white sheets, the wooden bed frame and the pale green shutters which are throwing stripes of golden light across my legs.

I stand up, swinging my feet down to the ground, the cool touch of the terracotta tiles a shock to my warm, sleepy body. I stretch and move around the sparsely furnished room, running my hand over the rough plaster of the walls. Apart from the huge four-poster bed there is little else in here – a small dressing table in one corner with a pretty, bevel-edged mirror above it and a rickety chair. There’s also a large wardrobe in which my meagre collection of clothes is hanging a little forlornly, and a thin woven rug that was once probably a deep red but has now faded to rosy pink. Through a door to one side is a small, basic bathroom. I turn one of the taps, which splutters to life with – joy of joys – hot water. The villa may be old, but the plumbing is blissfully modern.

When I return to my room I make straight for the window, wrestling with the shutters for a moment before locating the catch and flinging them wide open.

All the air leaves my lungs in one dramatic rush.

The view before me is truly a fantasy made real: something that belongs in the pages of a fairy tale. It’s a place of such light and lushness, beyond anything I could ever have dreamed.