He quickly came up behind her and with an arm around her waist pulled her back. ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ he said. ‘The cliff can crumble.’
She rotated her body so she could look at him. She remembered how she’d longed for a more exciting world. Well, now she’d found it. And Bobby was going to be at the heart of it. He bent towards her and very gently kissed her on the mouth. He pulled back from her, but feeling sultry with heat and desire, she threaded her fingers into his hair and drew his head towards her again. Moments later, he was kissing her more deeply and she was digging her nails into his back urging him on. She pressed her hips against his, feeling the strength of what was unfolding between them.
‘Oh God,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘What are you doing to me?’
He stroked the back of her neck and nuzzled her hair.
‘What about your uncle?’ she reminded him breathlessly.
‘Oh damnation. I’d forgotten.’
‘There’s always next time.’
‘Would you like there to be?’
She laughed. ‘What do you think?’
She patted his hair down where she’d messed it up. It felt strangely more intimate than the kiss and then he took her hand and walked her back to the car.
When they approached the fortified city of Mdina – rising above the fields and perched on a large hilltop above centuries-old bastions and a solid bed of rock – the high golden walls looked majestic but also a little unnerving. A medieval city, with its domes and towers and cupolas – utterly unspoilt, and completely unassailable. When she asked Bobby about it, he told her it had existed in some form since Roman times and that it had been Malta’s first capital city.
‘It’s mainly Maltese nobility who live here.’
‘Is your uncle Maltese?’
‘No.’
‘So how come he’s living here?’
‘He married Filomena, a Maltese woman. She died, I’m afraid, so now the place his. It’s a seventeenth-century building. Quite beautiful. Of course, there are a few British here too.’
He drove through the massive stone gateway and parked, then they walked around the shady curving streets for a little while. Riva stared open-mouthed at what he calledpalazzi. These imposing houses lined the narrow cobbled streets in every direction, their shutters closed, their magnificent doorways bolted. Everything she saw said ‘keep out’.
‘The Silent City, they call it.’ He lifted his hand and pointed at the stunning baroque architecture all around them.
She stopped walking to listen. All she could hear was the wind.
‘I’d get lost here on my own.’
‘Yes. It’s labyrinthine. After the Knights of the Order of St John arrived it stopped being the capital. They needed to be closer to their ships. And now the British administration is focused mainly in Valletta too.’
He stopped walking and removed an iron key from his pocket.
‘This is it?’ She gazed up at the immense double door and the two heavy brass lion’s head door knockers.
He nodded.
‘Gosh. It looks like a fortress.’
He slid the key into the lock, turned it and then pushed open one side of the huge creaking door. It was dark inside, and it took a while for her eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. He crossed the large hall and into another one, this one vaulted, full of shadows and odd shafts of sunlight.
‘We need to cross the courtyard.’
They passed along a corridor and an arched gallery and then went outside to an internal courtyard surrounded by honey-coloured stone walls. She stopped to look around and breathe in the scent of early jasmine.
Climbing plants crept up the walls and others cascaded from a gallery lined with decorative iron railings running around three sides of the next floor up.
‘What a gorgeous garden,’ she said, looking at the stone tubs full of lilies.
