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that’s for later; it’s a side issue to the work you’re doing.”
    “Time for a little break,” Rebecca said. “We got right down to it from the minute I showed up, and haven’t stopped since. Isn’t that right, Piero?” She lowered her head and looked up at the older man through her eyelashes.
    For a moment della Torre could have sworn he’d seen his father’s cheeks colour. The old man kept his eyes on the notes in front of him. His prominent widow’s peak was more apparent than ever; the hair was almost completely white, in marked contrast to his deeply tanned skin. No, della Torre decided, he’d been mistaken; it was probably just the afternoon heat.
    “You’ve been staying here?”
    “For a little more than a week now. It’s terrific. I love how you can really feel history in the place. You can almost taste it,” she said, running her bottom lip under her teeth in a way that sent an electric current up della Torre’s spine.
    History. She was right. Maybe there was too much of it. A history of armies and of destruction. The ruins of a Roman hamlet lay under his father’s wheat field. Bits of stone wall and the detritus of an ancient civilization pushed up through the soil now and again. And his family history was tied to it.
    His father had bought the house as a ruin, a project for the two of them, when they’d come back from the U.S. after della Torre’s mother died. They’d rebuilt it, at a time when these old stone houses were being abandoned in favour of new, concrete structures, the local architecture replaced with anodyne modern Mediterranean villas that wouldn’t have been out of place in Spanish or Greek resorts.
    But when they’d finished, people came from all over Istria to marvel at their work. No doubt some laughed up their sleeves that these Yugo-Americans had spent so much time and money on an old house when a new one would have been so much cheaper and easier to build. But even they had admired the quality of the restoration and the household conveniences they’d only ever seen on television: a machine to wash dishes, a big shower that never ran out of hot water, air conditioning in almost every room.
    The house had been state of the art a quarter of a century before. But, like his father, it had grown tired in the intervening years.
    Rebecca pulled her head closer to the old man’s so that they were reading the papers together. It gave della Torre another chance to look at her closely. The pale skin, marked by small freckles; the curve of her breasts. He felt a pang. Could it be he was jealous?
    She looked up suddenly, catching the younger della Torre scrutinizing her. Again that smile.
    “So how long are you here?” she asked.
    “Just the weekend. I’m due back in Zagreb on Monday.”
    “What a coincidence. I need to get to Zagreb next week too. I’d like to do a bit of research in the library there. Maybe we can make the trip together,” she said.
    Della Torre senior looked up sharply, his head drawing back as if in reproach. “I didn’t realize you’d be leaving so soon.”
    “You’ve been so kind, Piero, but I really can’t encroach any further on your hospitality. I’ve been here too long already. I’d only intended to spend a few days. Besides, there are a couple of people I promised to look up in Zagreb,” she said.
    Della Torre thought he could read hurt in his father’s expression.
    “I need to be in Poreč tomorrow, might make a day of it. So I’ll stay out of your hair while I’m here,” della Torre said. “Right now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to have a shower. It was a hot drive.”
    “If you don’t mind, I’ll join you,” she said. Della Torre’s look of panic made her laugh. “I mean on the drive down to Poreč. I need to pick up one or two things and it’ll make a nice change from the brain work.”
    “I can drive you,” della Torre’s father said, hurriedly. “We can all go to Poreč tomorrow.”
    Della Torre shrugged.