by Isobel Chace
“That’d be the door through to the Signor’s room,” Giulia told her, her black eyes fastened to Ruth’s face. “I expect the Signor thought you were tired,” she went on. “Look, it is here!”
Ruth watched fascinated as Giulia touched, one of the doors of what she had taken to be a built-in wardrobe.
I hope it’s locked!” she observed. Giulia gave her a look that cast her into an immediate panic. “It is locked, isn’t it?” she insisted.
“Signor Verdecchio has the key,” Giulia sniffed. “These rooms were once used by his father.” She pointed to the bed that Ruth had just vacated. “The Signor was born in that very bed! This was his mother’s room when she was alive. No one has slept in here since.”
“Then—then why—?”
Giulia sniffed again. “I obey orders,” she answered.
She tried to pick up Saro to take him downstairs, but the dog ran under the bed yapping furiously.
“You’d better leave him,” Ruth said.
“If you say so,” Giulia shrugged. “The Signor does not allow his dogs in the house—”
“I will tell him that I brought him upstairs,” Ruth answered with a great deal more confidence than she felt.
“I suppose it will be all right then,” the Italian woman agreed. “I’ll be in the kitchen when you want me.”
Ruth was glad to see her go. She huddled back under the bedclothes and sipped her coffee in a dream, only it was more like a nightmare! She would have to face Mario, she thought dismally, though her courage for that seemed to have disappeared during the night. But she would tell him that she was going straight back to Naples and that so long as he didn’t interfere with her sister again, he need never set eyes on her again.
But in fact she never had the opportunity to voice any of these fine sentiments. She had almost finished her coffee when the door in the wardrobe swung open, startling her so much that she spilled the remains of the coffee in the saucer and hastily put it down on the table beside her bed.
“At last, cara, I am here with you!”
The teasing, warm Italian voice reduced Ruth’s courage to zero. She pulled the bedclothes closer about her and shut her eyes.
“Do you forgive me for not being here yesterday?” he went on. “I had to visit a friend who was dying. Happily, my aunt was there also and I was able to come away. And now, my darling—”
He advanced into the room and came face to face with Ruth’s frightened gaze. “Miss Arnold!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
Ruth swallowed hard. “I might well ask you the same question!” she retorted warmly.
He was exactly as she had remembered him. The same cynical expression and the same ruthless look in his eyes. She shivered, for there was nothing kind about him. To her surprise an irrepressible smile crept into his eyes. He shrugged his shoulders, elegantly clad in a silk dressing gown, spreading his hands in an eloquent gesture.
“This is my house, Miss Arnold. I am accustomed to living here.”
Ruth was forced to admit that there was a certain justice in that. She hugged Saro to her under the blankets and said forcefully: “But I am not accustomed to receiving men in my bedroom!”
She was grateful that he didn’t laugh. Instead he looked at her for a long moment, taking in every detail of her face. She could feel herself blushing and wished that she had outgrown such a childish habit. Pearl never blushed, she remembered uneasily.
“I imagine not!” he said at last. It hardly sounded like a compliment.
“So,” she said with a rush, “I would prefer to continue this conversation downstairs!” Her effect was somewhat ruined by Saro’s wriggles. The dog’s head slowly emerged out of the bedclothes, uttering a series of joyous yaps.
Mario was outraged. “Saro!”
The dog shook himself happily. He ran down to the bottom of the bed, tail waving, pleased to have Mario’s attention riveted on himself.
“I asked him upstairs,” Ruth explained hurriedly. “He—he didn’t mind.”
“I imagine not!” Mario said dryly. “He is also probably covered with fleas!”
“He is not!” Ruth protested indignantly.
“For your sake, I hope not!” he rejoined.
Ruth lifted her chin belligerently. “Anyway, if I’m prepared to risk it, I don’t see what it has to do with you!”
Mario looked amused. “You are not very like your sister, are you?” he remarked.
Ruth eyed him crossly. “I have always found comparisons to be quite odious, besides being very bad manners!” she informed him.
His lips twitched. “Have you?”
“Yes, I have!” she agreed with vigour. “I can see for myself that Pearl has fantastic hair, that her eyes are a delicious blue, and that she is particularly well named! I don’t have to have it pointed out to me—”
“Is that why you came instead?” Mario interrupted her, his face darkening.
Ruth was genuinely astonished. “No!” She could tell at a glance that he didn’t believe her. “You don’t understand,” she said bitterly.
“Evidently not,” he agreed lightly. “Perhaps you had better explain it to me?”
Ruth pleated the edge of the top sheet, unconsciously revealing her nervousness. “I’m afraid you are going to be very angry—” she began.
“Very likely!” Mario put in grimly.
“Well, it’s all your own fault!” Ruth retorted with spirit. “I can’t imagine why you thought Pearl would come in the first place!”
Mario frowned. “Do you mean that she connived at your taking her place?” he demanded.
Ruth’s eyes fell. “Not exactly,” she managed.
“I thought not,” he rejoined. “I am not at all naive, Miss Arnold. You will do far better to tell me the truth! The damage that your meddling has done unfortunately can’t be undone, but this is not the moment for coy untruths!”
Ruth felt thoroughly frightened. “Pearl is not what you think her,” she said hoarsely. “She may have given you the impression—”
Mario snorted contemptuously. The sheer haughtiness of his expression unnerved her sadly and only the thought of what would have happened if Pearl had come made her go on.
“Pearl is very young and—and not very wise. She—”
“My dear Miss Arnold—”
“I am not your dear anything!” she cut him off, thoroughly nettled.
“No? I am afraid we shall have to grow accustomed to one another sooner or later,” he drawled.
Ruth sat up very straight. “I shall go back to Naples immediately,” she decided. “If you’re not going to listen—”
The amusement came back into his face. “I am all ears,” he assured her. “You were telling me about your sister’s virtues.”
Ruth glared at him. “You are a great deal older than she is and I think she may have been carried away,” she said with as much calmness as she could muster. She was quite unprepared for Mario’s quick laughter. “She has always been very attractive to men,” she continued with difficulty, “and she doesn’t in the least realise the effect she is having on them.”
“I am aware that your sister is young and silly!”
“I suppose that’s why you thought—” Ruth hesitated. She forced herself to meet Mario’s arrogant stare.
“Yes, Miss Arnold?” he prompted her.
“I suppose that’s why you thought you could bring her here,” she ended lamely.
“I invited her here at her request,” he stated with so much conviction that Ruth was forced to believe him.
“She can’t have understood!” Ruth insisted helplessly.
Mario smiled at her quite gently. “My dear, she is not the little innocent having a good time that you suppose. It is not my way to go round seducing innocent young women!”
Ruth put her hands up to her hot cheeks. “Pearl may have given you the wrong impression—”
“She was perfectly explicit from the very beginning!” Mario wal
ked over to the window and stared moodily out of it. “If either of you are the innocents you would have me believe, I fear it is you, Miss Arnold!”
Ruth wondered if it could possibly be true. “I’ll have you know that I have earned my own living for a matter of years!” she objected, trying not to cry.
He was unimpressed. “Where? In a convent?” he snorted.
“In a school,” she admitted. “But it’s far from being the cloistered kind of existence you seem to imagine it to be!”
He gave her a long, sober look. “I hope so,” he said at last, “for your own sake!”
“I am very well able to look after myself!” she insisted bleakly.
“That I take leave to doubt! You could hardly have made a bigger mess of things if you had tried.”
“I don’t see why!” she retorted. “I shall go back to Naples by the quickest way possible and that will be that.”
“That will not be that,” he said dryly. “I told you that it isn’t my habit to seduce innocent young women.”
“But you haven’t,” she said, not without some satisfaction. “I saw to that!”
Mario’s expression was one of a man sorely tried. “On the contrary,” he told her, restraining himself with difficulty. “As far as the whole of Sicily is concerned, you are quite hopelessly compromised! Do you think they don’t know that I paid for your ticket; that it was my car that met you at Palermo; and that it was my bed you slept in last night?”
Ruth gave Saro an agitated stroke behind his ears. “But you weren’t in it,” she reminded him weakly.
“Only because I was so late home,” he answered with grim humour.
“But as soon as you knew I wasn’t Pearl—”
He turned and looked at her. “You flatter me with a better nature than I actually have. Has no one ever told you, Miss Arnold, that in the dark all women look the same.”
Ruth wished that she was half as sophisticated as she had pretended to be. “What are you going to do?” she whispered.
“I have no choice. I shall marry you.”
“Indeed you won’t!” Ruth said shortly. “I don’t know how you can even think of such a thing!” she added with strong disapproval. “You weren’t thinking of marrying Pearl, were you?”
She looked so anxious that Mario relented towards her. “We are not considering Pearl for the moment, we are considering you,” he said, not without humour.
Ruth lifted her chin with unconscious dignity. “Pearl and I are sisters,” she said firmly.
“If you weren’t, I shouldn’t hesitate to tell you that Pearl hasn’t a moral to her name! Not that you appear to have many—reading other people’s letters! Stealing travel tickets! And even now you haven’t the remotest idea of what you’ve done!”
Ruth blinked. “I may be stupid, but at least I meant well!”
“Spare me your good intentions!” Mario stormed at her. “It is well known which roads are paved with them!”
Ruth bit her lip. An irrepressible urge to giggle defeated her. “I always knew Pluto lived about these parts,” she said. “Are you he, by any chance?”
Mario looked impossibly angry. “Are you joking?”
The desire to giggle left her. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Anyway, what do you know about Roman legends?” he said crossly. “That story was born in Sicily. Did you know that?”
Ruth nodded solemnly. “Do you think the underworld was the same place as Hell?” she asked him.
“No, I do not. Nor am I any relation to Hell’s guardian, whatever you might think! Am I really so impossible?”
She cast him a shy look. To tell the truth she didn’t find him impossible at all. She was a little frightened of him, she thought, particularly when he glared at her down his long nose, but she could quite easily grow used to that. He was, she discovered with some surprise, a great deal nicer than she had supposed.
“No,” she said in a stifled voice, “I don’t find you impossible.”
“Nor I you. In fact I am becoming more reconciled by the minute to our marriage—”
“Don’t be silly!” she reproved him.
He sat on the end of her bed, a slight smile on his face. “I wish it could be as easily resolved as you think,” he sighed. “But this is Sicily, my dear, not the green fields of England. There’s not a soul who won’t believe that we spent the night together and, in Sicily, there is only one conclusion that can come of that. I must marry you as soon as possible!”
“But I’m going back to England. I don’t care if they do doubt my honour!” Ruth said heatedly.
“It is my honour which is in question,” he replied.
“But why should you care?” she wondered.
“Perhaps because I do live in Sicily. If your advent had been a little less public, we might have put a good face on it. But Giulia has already spoken to her family and so on. Nor,” he added wryly, “do I suppose that you had the good sense to stay close to the house all day yesterday?” One glance at her face told him that she had not. “What did you do?” he asked her.
“Henry Brett took me to see the new scheme,” she confessed humbly.
“So the whole village saw you!” he groaned.
“They saw us both,” she admitted. “We had lunch in the little restaurant there.”
He groaned. “And watched you come back here, I suppose?”
She was silent. She was wise enough to know that she had very little understanding of the Sicilian code of behaviour. Wryly, she remembered how she had warned Pearl about their peculiar ideas of honour that forced any compromised girl into marriage whether she wished it or not. She had never even remotely suspected that it might happen to her!
“That isn’t all,” she blurted out finally. “On the boat, I shared a cabin with your aunt, and I told her all about it!”
“You did what?” The menace in his voice was unmistakable.
Ruth’s hand went up to her mouth. “You shouldn’t have addressed your letter to Miss Arnold,” she countered. “You must have known that I am the elder sister!”
“A nice point!” he said nastily. “I wondered what excuse you had for reading your sister’s letter.”
“Her name wasn’t even mentioned!”
Mario laughed without any humour at all. “And so you supposed that I was writing to you? On a few minutes’ acquaintance?”
“No, I didn’t,” Ruth admitted. “But I had to do something! I knew you were out to hurt Pearl, and now that you can’t, you’re going to hurt me instead!” She tried valiantly not to cry, failed, and wiped the tears angrily from her cheeks. “Well, you won’t!” she tossed at him. “I don’t care—that!—for your honour, so there!” She flicked her fingers at him, more than ever annoyed by his laughter.
“Truly, my love, I shall not hurt you,” he promised her. “But if my aunt knows of your visit here she will have lost no time in telling my mother. If you had any choice in the matter, I am afraid that you now have none at all! Marry me you will, and soon!”
Ruth knew that she should have felt nothing but misery at the thought, but a curious sense of elation fountained up within her. She had felt at home from the instant she had set foot on Sicilian soil and the prospect of never having to leave the island again could not help appealing to her.
“But I can’t do that to Pearl!” she exclaimed. “For, whatever you say about her, if you think you have to marry me, you would have felt the same about her!
Mario’s face fell into its familiar, cynical lines. “I think not,” he said. “No one could possibly imagine that I was the first man Pearl had ever known—”
“But that’s barbaric!” Ruth exclaimed, shocked.
His smile mocked her. “It is Sicilian!”
“Besides being unkind,” Ruth added painfully. “I don’t think you’re right about Pearl. And even if you are, I don’t think it’s very chivalrous to say so!”
He said nothing, only smiled with real amusement. “And,” Ruth we
nt on, her sense of grievance getting the better of her, “I may not be as pretty as my sister, but I have had some boy-friends of my own!” He was unfeeling enough to laugh aloud. He reached forward and took her face in his hand, forcing her to look at him.
“No, you’re not as pretty as Pearl!”
Ruth blushed. “You’re hurting me!” she complained.
“I am not!” he retorted. “Don’t lie to me, Ruth! And if you really want to know, you’re not pretty at all! But you have the rudiments of beauty. You ought to accentuate your eyes when you make up and do something about your hair. I’ll see that you do when you’re my wife!”
“Then the occasion will never arise!” Ruth said somewhat smugly.
His eyes lit. “Is that a challenge?” He came closer still and kissed her gently on the lips. “I never refuse a challenge. Remember that!”
She was sadly shaken. She watched in a fright as he slowly rose to his feet. He was so very tall and his broken nose gave him a devilish look that scared her. “N-nor do I!” she stammered bravely.
“Indeed?” She wished he didn’t look quite as though he were enjoying himself so much. “Then I’ll make the necessary arrangements as soon as possible.”
He was gone before she could think up a sufficiently stinging retort, shutting the communicating door with a sharp click. Her bravery fell away from her and she felt cold and shivery. It was a pretty pickle! She wondered what they would have said in the staff room of the school where she taught, but her imagination failed her. There they had all the correct, liberal ideas of how people ought to behave. They were more likely to discuss the price of food than the archaic customs of a foreign people, with quaint ideas of a woman’s honour and shotgun weddings!
But there was one thing that disturbed her more than anything else. Despite her fear of him, even her disapproval of him, she found that she liked Mario Verdecchio. She liked his strange humour and the strength in his fingers when he touched her. He was unexpected, and being with him was like a ride on a scenic railway, as exhilarating as it was frightening. Of course it was ridiculous to consider, even for a minute, that she would marry him, but she couldn’t help thinking that life was going to be very tame back in England, in the school where she taught, when he wouldn’t be there to taunt her.
