by Anne Weale
‘I’ve been to a few formal balls. I can put on a reasonable show. Would you like to try me?’ He turned and assumed the posture of a dancing partner.
As they had the square to themselves, Holly didn’t hang back. She thought they would take a few turns and then he would kiss her and hustle her home for their last night in the swan bed.
‘They say that one of the cafés is haunted,’ he said as she put her hand on his shoulder. ‘People living around the square or walking home in the small hours have sometimes heard music playing. But when they look out from their windows or come round the corner it suddenly stops.’
‘It sounds like something cooked up by the tourist office,’ said Holly, knowing he wouldn’t believe in such a story.
He drew her closer, beginning to whistle one of the slow sweet numbers from the caffè musicians’ repertoire. As he put his cheek against her temple, Holly closed her eyes, the better to concentrate on what her feet should be doing.
Then, as they slowly revolved and he shifted his hold on her hand to interlace their fingers, she heard a violin starting to pick up the melody, and then a cello and a piano.
Her eyes flew open. She looked round. The arcade in front of Florian’s was now alight and on the dais, also lit up, three musicians in overcoats and fur hats were smiling and nodding to her.
‘Did you plan this? Is it just for us?’
Pierce was grinning from ear to ear like a delighted schoolboy who had pulled off a great practical joke.
‘Just for you, my lovely. Something special to remember when we’re back in the everyday world.’
‘Oh, Pierce, it’s all been special...every single minute. You told me I’d fall for Venice and I have...head over heels.’
And for you, too, my darling love.
She almost blurted it out but just managed not to.
They danced to a half-hour medley of waltzes and tangos, Holly’s confidence growing as she found that their physical harmony also extended to dancing. Anything he did, she could follow. In the end they were whirling and twirling like a couple of professionals.
When the music finally stopped and she rested, breathless, in his arms, the musicians applauded. One of them had brought a large flask of hot chocolate and some of the pastries sold in the caffè by day, and a bottle of grappa, a spirit that seared Holly’s throat but made her attempt more polite remarks in Italian than she might otherwise have done. Pierce, of course, spoke it fluently and was able to thank them more graciously than she could, before they all said goodnight.
‘I’ll remember it all my life,’ she told him, on the way home. ‘I’ll tell our grandchildren about it. “When we were on our honeymoon, your grandfather hired an orchestra to dance with me in the Piazza.” I wonder if anyone else has ever done that? I shouldn’t imagine so. Most men would never think of it.’
Whereupon, to her dismay, she burst into tears and had to pretend she was crying from happiness.
But the real reason was that she found it unbearably painful to have everything in the world any woman could possibly want, except the freedom to say those three little words, ‘I love you’.
In the time between their return to London and his departure with Ben for Argentina, Pierce was away a great deal. His absences allowed Holly to get on with her work in Norfolk, taking Parson with her for company. But, fond as she was of her cat, he was an unsatisfactory proxy for her husband.
In late January, Pierce managed to make time to take her to spend a long weekend with his parents. She hoped they liked her. She liked them even more than she had expected to.
Soon after this came the day when they had to say goodbye for five weeks. To Holly it seemed an eternity of loneliness and anxiety. Although the mountain the men were tackling wasn’t comparable with the great peaks of the Himalaya, it was sufficiently hazardous for more than a hundred people to have died attempting to reach the summit.
While he was gone she went down to Talavera and began a comprehensive survey of the grounds. It wasn’t a job which could be completed quickly, but she hoped to have it ready to show Pierce when he came home...if he came home.
From Mendoza, the city in western Argentina where those attempting the climb had their last taste of civilisation, he called her. She managed to sound bright and cheerful. It wasn’t the way she was feeling.
As soon as he had rung off, she wished she had told him she loved him. What did it matter that he didn’t feel the same way? At least, if something should happen to him, she would have told him the truth, held nothing back. Not knowing where they were staying, she couldn’t ring him. The opportunity was lost and might never recur.
The feeling that she had been wrong to conceal her feelings oppressed her more as the time passed. It passed interminably slowly. Every night she watched the newscast with mounting dread that one of the last, minor items in the catalogue of death and disaster would be a fatal accident on Aconcagua. Every morning she switched on the radio feeling the same apprehension.
Hooper, who sensed her anxiety, although she tried to hide it, would boost her morale by citing examples of his employer’s ability to get himself out of trouble, including several sticky situations in central African conflicts.
Every week she had a call from her mother-in-law whom she knew was equally anxious although, like Holly, she didn’t admit to it.
One day, while they were talking, Marianne Sutherland said, ‘It was such a relief to me when Pierce fell in love with you. I was beginning to wonder if he would ever find someone to suit him...if he had passed the stage when he was capable of falling in love. And then he called us to say he had met this amazing girl who was everything he’d ever dreamed of...but that she didn’t like him.’
This was followed by hoots of maternal laughter at the idea of anyone being able to resist one of her beloved sons.
Holly managed to laugh too. ‘Did he really say that about me...even before I changed my mind about him?’
‘Oh, yes, he was plainly besotted. In fact we were a bit worried. For someone like Pierce to fall headlong in love at first sight seemed out of character. We wondered if it could last. But once we had met you we understood.’
‘I wish I did,’ Holly answered. ‘I know why I love your son, but why he should love me is baffling.’
And even more baffling is why he should tell you he loves me, but never tell me he loves me, she was thinking.
‘I don’t think people ever recognise why they themselves are lovable,’ said her mother-in-law. ‘The lucky ones, like you and me, who are loved by very special men just have to accept that it is so and be eternally grateful.’
After that conversation, Holly debated flying out to Mendoza to be there when Pierce got back. It was Hooper who dissuaded her, pointing out that if there had been any change of plan she might find it hard to locate him, especially as she didn’t speak Spanish.
On the day before they were due back, Chiara rang up. Immersed in her own concerns, Holly had hardly given a thought to what might be happening to her stepsister. Now she learned that Eric had been dropped and Chiara was living on the yacht of the man who had given her the aquamarine. She sounded on top of the world.
‘He’s gorgeous...and he’s crazy about me...wants me to meet his family. They’re in Australia. His father’s a motor-cruiser tycoon and his mother comes from Indonesia, which explains why, when I saw him, I thought Bradley might be a sheikh.’
‘Are you going to Australia on his yacht?’ Holly asked, a good deal relieved that Chiara’s new man was Australian and not from a culture where attitudes to women were completely different from those in the West.
‘No, that would take too long,’ said Chiara. ‘Bradley and I will fly there. The yacht can be shipped back the same way it came to Europe. So it doesn’t look as if you and I’ll be seeing much of each other in future, Hol. Bradley’s had Europe, he says. He wanted to have a look round but he likes his own country better. He says the future is with the Pacific Rim countries. He says..
.’
She talked about Bradley non-stop for the next ten minutes. If he was only half as opinionated as she made him sound, he must be a world-class bore, thought Holly. All the same she was glad Chiara had met the man she had always wanted: rich, generous, handsome, pleasure-loving and besotted with her.
Perhaps down under she could make a fresh start, as so many others had. If the relationship lasted, Australia could be the making of her.
‘So it’s goodbye for now, but I’ll give you a buzz every now and then,’ Chiara promised.
‘Yes, do that. Don’t let’s lose touch. Take care of yourself.’
As she replaced the receiver, Holly had the feeling it could be goodbye for a long time, if not for ever.
It was five o’clock in the morning when Pierce rang from Mendoza to say they had made the summit and would soon be flying to Buenos Aires and then back to London. ‘Have you been OK, Holly? I’ve been worried about you.’
‘I’ve been fine, but missing you badly. I can’t wait for you to come home. Saying “I love you” on the telephone isn’t the same as saying it in person.’
When he didn’t answer, she had a sinking feeling that they had been cut off in mid-call.
Then his voice came through, strong and clear. ‘Say it again anyway.’
‘I love you. I’ve always loved you. Perhaps from the first time we met, when you belonged to someone else.’
‘I never belonged to anyone till that day at New Covent Garden when you made it clear me you hated my guts. From that day on I was hooked.’
‘Do you realise you’ve never said so?’
‘Neither have you, until now.’
‘I know...it’s been driving me crazy...that something awful might happen and I would never have told you in so many words.’
‘It’s been the same for me, I pictured you getting run over...being in a train smash. Why the hell am I up here, stuck in this damned tent with Ben, when I could be in bed with Holly? I kept asking myself.’
‘Pierce, have you called your parents? They’ve been as anxious as I was.’
‘I know and I’ll do that next. But you had priority. You’re more important than anyone. I’ll be with you as soon as I can. Until then, take care of yourself.’
Why it had been a problem to be open about their feelings was something that they discussed some hours after their reunion. By then they had made rapturous love and Pierce had caught up on some sleep.
The exertion of the ascent combined with limited food had made him lose weight. He was all bone and sinew—too spare, in her opinion, but even more exciting with his lean face deeply tanned by the Argentine sun and his hair overdue for a cut.
‘Until I was stuck on that mountain, unable to make contact with you, I’d never been in a situation where, if something went wrong, I would leave a dependant...someone I wanted to be with for the rest of my life,’ Pierce said thoughtfully. ‘Before that I was hell-bent on inducing you to love me, which I didn’t think you did.’
‘Why did you think I married you?’
‘Partly for Talavera. Partly because of the sexual attraction between us. Partly because you were lonely. Put together, those factors seemed enough for you to persuade yourself that marrying me was a sensible thing to do.’
‘It was a sensible thing to do,’ Holly said, smiling. ‘Men like you aren’t thick on the ground. Any woman who meets one is a fool if she hesitates...even if there is a downside.’
‘What’s the downside?’ Pierce asked, amused.
They were having a late breakfast in the conservatory, with Parson and Louisa sunning themselves on the long, cushioned window-seat and a vase of early daffodils flown in from the Scilly Islands on the table.
‘The downside is having to bite one’s nails when you’re risking your neck on the other side of the world. But if all our reunions are going to be like this one I guess it’s a small price to pay.’
‘It wasn’t much of a risk and I may give up doing these things now that my home life has become more exciting,’ he said, reaching for her hand and pressing it to his cheek. ‘I love you in ways there are no words to explain.’
He hadn’t shaved yet and she felt a tingle of response to the masculine roughness of his bristles against her palm. She knew that being married wouldn’t change him and she didn’t want him to change. His energy and his daring were two of the many reasons why she loved him.
Why such a man should love her must remain forever a mystery.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-7017-6
A MARRIAGE HAS BEEN ARRANGED
First North American Publication 1997.
Copyright © 1997 by Anne Weale.
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