Nico released her just as Olivia appeared from upstairs, her eyes moving suspiciously over them. Olivia was jealous, Saffron saw wearily, but she lacked the energy to make any use of the discovery. She was going to die. The knowledge filled and obsessed her. No matter what her father did he would not be able to save her. She shuddered and felt rather than saw Nico frown. Why was he pretending to feel concern for her? All of them knew that she was simply a commodity, a means of raising money for their cause. She fingered the still tender flesh of her face where he had struck her, feeding her hatred.
Saffron had no appetite for the chicken casserole., She had eaten very little for breakfast either, and had to choke back bitter laughter when Nico ordered her to finish her meal.
'Why?' she demanded. 'You're going to kill me anyway, so I might as well do the job for you.'
Olivia laughed. 'She is not as stupid as I thought. Or perhaps she is trying to cultivate your pity, caro. She has read too many newspaper stories about the relationships that develop in these situations between captor and prey.'
'You have to eat,' Nico told her unemotionally, ignoring Olivia. 'Has she been getting plenty of exercise?' he demanded of Guido.
The other man shrugged. 'She has been working^ in the fields this afternoon.'
'And every night one of us walks with her as you instructed,' Olivia told him.
'You will eat, or I will feed you myself,' Nico told Saffron.
'Have you heard anything from London?' Olivia interrupted him. 'Was there . .
'So far her father has followed our instructions to the letter.' Nico told her. 'He is trying to raise the money and hopes to have it within the stipulated time.'
'He'd better—otherwise we shall be sending his daughter back to him piecemeal.' Olivia's dark eyes glittered at the prospect, and this time when Saffron pushed her plate away untouched Nico made no attempt to chastise her.
'The sooner it's over the better,' Guido opined. 'I'm sick of this place. Give me Rome any day!'
It had gone dark outside while they were eating and in the velvet softness of the night the crickets chirruped ceaselessly, tiny moths hurling themselves at the windows as they sought the light.
'Come,' Nico instructed Saffron when they had finished eating. 'Tonight I will walk with you.'
She wanted to refuse; she could feel Olivia's eyes boring into her back like twin knives and had seen the flash of resentment in the glance Guido gave him, but Olivia had developed a habit of slipping silently away when she was supposed to be walking with her, leaving her alone with Guido, whose eyes roamed too hotly over her body.
There was a heavy stillness in the air which brought a fine film of perspiration to her skin the minute they stepped outside. She would give anything for a shower, Saffron thought longingly, quelling a sudden stupid urge to laugh as she recalled macabre jokes she had often been amused by, concerning a prisoner's last wishes. It seemed a lifetime ago since she had laughed naturally; she was beginning to understand how religious cults worked on their converts; shut away from the rest of the world, at the complete mercy of strangers, it was dangerously easy to feel one's judgment slipping away and one's willpower disintegrating.
Nico steered her in the direction of the river, almost as though he had read her mind and wanted to deliberately add to her torture. The warm male scent of his body reached her through the scents of the countryside around them, her senses so attuned to him that it frightened her.
Nico's offer that she could bathe in the river had never been repeated, and pride had prevented Saffron from asking, just as she refused to ask Nico for anything, no matter how acute her physical discomfort.
'You know, you're different from what I expected.'
The quiet comment caught her off guard, and she almost missed her footing as she stopped in the darkness to look up at him, searching his face for signs of mockery, but there were none.
'In what way?'
Somehow the cloak of darkness made it easier to talk, to put her hatred away from her, how ever temporarily.
She felt him shrug beside her.
'In every way—more vulnerable, and yet tougher, more resilient.'
Saffron tensed, suspecting a trap, her voice faintly brittle as she said bitterly, 'Not quite the rich bitch you expected? Not just a spoiled Daddy's girl who thinks she can buy her way out of anything? I'm not stupid. I know the statistics; I know why I'm here, and if you expect me to get down on my knees and beg for my life when I know that you're going to kill me.'
'And if you didn't know?'
'Is that what you want? For me to crawl and cry? Why? does it turn you on? Make a change from Olivia's masculinity?' she asked cuttingly. 'I've never begged any man for anything and I'm not going to start now!'
'No?'
Nico turned towards her and in the moonlight Saffron saw the cynicism ingrained into the hard planes of his face. 'That isn't how I heard it,' he said softly. 'Word is that that you're one of the easiest lays around—and the best. A real tough little lady who knows how to get her man when she wants him.'
'But I don't want you!' The husky denial was raw with an emotion Saffron wasn't going to try to name. Just listening to Nico speak had left her as bruised and aching as though she had been beaten. She knew about her reputation, of course; and sickness swept over her as she remembered her initial 'foolish belief that something special existed between them. Her fingers curled into her palms, her nails now devoid of varnish, and broken from the work she had been forced to endure.