by Isobel Chace
He laughed. “And that is an even more shocking thing to say!” he reproved her.
“Besides,” she added primly, “you said you never refused a challenge and I told you I didn’t either!”
“Oh, I see! You were meeting a challenge! How strange that you should immediately run away!”
She gave him a look of pure dislike. “I hate you!” she told him fiercely.
He pulled her into the circle of his aims and she was surprised to discover that she was more than comfortable with her head on his shoulder and with her hands tucked into his.
“More lies?” he asked her with so much laughter in his voice that her indignation died a sudden death, no matter how hard she tried to resuscitate it. She tried to sort out the chaotic thoughts that went through her mind and ended with hoping very much that he was shortly going to kiss her again.
“Is my mother right?” he asked when it was quite clear that she was too engaged in her own thoughts to go on arguing with him. “Do I ask too much of you?”
Ruth struggled for a long moment with her conscience. It seemed base to tell him that he did, when she knew that anything less would have been unworthy of them both. It was that that made her previous friendships with any man seem trivial by comparison. I strove with none, for none was worth my strife! Nor had they been! They had passed by without leaving so much as a ripple on the even tenor of her days. Only with Mario it had been quite different. From the moment he had come into her bedroom she had been lost. First he had made her laugh and then he had tormented her: lastly, he had kissed her and she had been vanquished! There was no denying that she had fallen very deeply in love with him.
“Well? Do I ask too much?” he prompted her.
It would be different if he had fallen in love with her too, but he hadn’t. Was it too much to ask of her? That she should love him so completely and gain in return his interest, his children, and his wretched Sicilian honour? No, she admitted to herself with honesty, it was not too much. She would rather anything than not have him at all.
“Well?” he prompted her again.
A smile trembled on her lips. “No,” she admitted, “you don’t ask too much.”
“Not more than you have to give?”
“No.”
“Then you are content to stay here as my wife?”
She nodded, aware of a constriction at the back of her throat. “Yes,” she said.
“And be the mother of my children?”
“Y-yes.”
She felt a tremor of laughter run through him. “And be the typical Sicilian wife with nothing better to do than to seek the approval of her husband?”
“I suppose so,” she said with such marked reluctance that he was hard put to it not to laugh outright.
“And,” he said provocatively, “allow me to kiss any pretty girl who comes my way?”
That was too much! “No!” she flared up. “I will not! You are my husband—” His laughter was too much for her. She snatched her hand out of his and made a wild swipe at him, but he was far too strong for her. In a flash he had both her hands caught in his and pinned them behind her in the small of her back.
“I daresay,” he said, laughing straight into her face, “that you are the only pretty girl I shall want to kiss! Vixen!”
He let her hands go as his lips met hers. She thought he would crush her ribs and she gave a little sob of protest. He was not much more gentle after that, but for some reason she no longer seemed to notice. Her hands crept up behind his shoulders and she pulled him closer still. What did it matter that he was not in love with her? If he could kiss like this, and this, she must be happy!
Giulia knocked on the door, which set Saro off barking. Ruth pulled herself together with difficulty and sat bolt upright, with her hands clasped in her lap, while Mario went to the door to see what the maid wanted.
“My sister is agreeable to coming in in the morning,” she called to Ruth from the open door.
“Oh? Good,” said Ruth.
Giulia looked from one to the other of them, her eyes sparkling. “I’ll say goodnight, signore, signora! Shall I lock up before I go?”
“Please do,” said Mario.
Giulia came further into the room, making a great deal of noise as she relentlessly checked that each and every shutter was properly secured for the night.
“I’ll leave the front door for Signor Roberto,” she assured them cheerfully. “I have no doubt they will be late back!”
Mario leaned against the doorpost, watching the two women with amusement. He didn’t seem to mind at all that Giulia knew he had been kissing her, Ruth thought resentfully. To him, it seemed perfectly natural that he should kiss his wife when and where he would, but she was not yet ready to face the world—as his wife! But why not?
She stood up, feeling decidedly weak at the knees.
“I—I think I shall go upstairs to bed,” she managed.
“So early?” Mario demurred, his voice quivering with laughter.
Giulia frowned at him. “It has been a long day for the Signora,” she reminded him reproachfully. “She will be feeling lost with her sister gone! You go to your bed, cara! I have turned down the bed for you ready and laid out your nightdress—”
Ruth thanked her briefly and fled, with Saro snapping at her heels, delightedly whirling round in circles, quite sure that she was about to do something exciting and unusual.
“Be quiet, you beastly animal!” she berated him.
Saro barked the harder.
“You’ll be in the stables!” she warned him.
“Now that,” Mario drawled from the foot of the stairs, “would be an excellent idea!”
Ruth gave him a harassed look. She snatched the dog up into her arms and rushed headlong up the stairs, his laughter following her all the way.
He came through the door without knocking, wearing a truly magnificent dressing-gown that filled her with envy.
“You weren’t wearing that the other day!” she accused him.
“If I had known it was you here, and not Pearl, I might have done,” he said with an air of candour. “I don’t think it would appeal to Pearl—”
“How can you say so?” she asked with exaggerated sarcasm.
He smiled at her and she was obliged to concentrate hard on her breathing until she felt more normal.
“M-Mario—” she began.
He sat on the edge of the bed beside her. “My love?” he responded immediately.
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that!” she said crossly.
“I’ll call you whatever I please,” he answered.
“But it isn’t true!”
He looked surprised. “And that matters?”
“N-no,” she said hesitantly.
He looked at her closely. “I was right, wasn’t I? You do love me?”
“You know I do,” she said in a small, tight voice.
He took her hand in his, playing with the ring on her finger. “That was generous of you,” he said gently.
Ruth pulled her hand away from him. “No, it wasn’t!” she denied fiercely. “You knew that I loved you. I don’t know how it happened, but I wouldn’t have married you otherwise—only I didn’t know it then! I just thought I’d gone mad! And anyway,” she went on, her sense of grievance getting the better of her, “I didn’t have any choice! It wasn’t at all a comfortable position to be in.”
“It would have been even more uncomfortable if you hadn’t fallen in love with me,” he pointed out reasonably.
“Why?” she demanded sulkily.
“Because I should have kissed you just the same!” he told her.
She blushed and was immediately cross with herself for doing so. “Pearl never blushes!” she said in despair.
“No?” He sounded amused.
“It’s—it’s a very awkward habit!” she said bitterly.
“I think it’s a charming one,” he answered. “Very proper in a loving bride!” he added, for the sheer joy
of watching the colour slide up into her cheeks again.
“D-don’t!” she protested.
He laughed. “You darling!” he exclaimed.
Ruth was shocked by this form of address. She gave him a nervous look and hastily looked away again. The familiar amusement was very apparent in his dark eyes, but there was something else as well, far more unnerving, something she would have liked to have explored, but hadn’t the necessary courage.
“Mario, was it true? Did you indeed have to marry me?”
“It’s the custom,” he replied.
She sighed. “Then you wouldn’t have married me otherwise?”
“No.”
She looked at him again. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“I wouldn’t have married you then,” he went on, just as if she hadn’t spoken.
“Th-then?” she repeated.
“I would have found some other way to keep you here,” he added reflectively, “until you had time to grow used to me!”
Her eyes widened. “I—I d-don’t understand,” she stammered.
He looked amused. “Don’t you? Then I’ll tell you, my love. The day I walked through that door and found you sleeping in my bed—”
“It wasn’t your bed!” she denied indignantly.
“In my bed,” he repeated firmly, “it was a great shock to my system. I didn’t particularly want to get seriously involved with anyone! But one look at you, and there I was!”
Ruth looked at him, fascinated. “Wh-where were you?”
“Involved!”
She frowned. “W-were you?”
“I came through that door and there you were, bursting with righteous indignation! I knew the instant I set eyes on you that I should have to keep you there for ever, you were so completely right! You were made to be my wife! Happily, you had placed yourself in the position where you didn’t have any choice!”
Ruth thought that she had never had such a fascinating conversation with anyone! “I shouldn’t have thought you’d like a reluctant wife very much,” she said.
“There wasn’t too much danger of that!” he retorted.
She lifted her chin pugnaciously. “That isn’t kind!” she told him.
“No, it wasn’t,” he agreed repentantly. “But the fact of the matter is, my dear, that it never occurred to me that I couldn’t make you love me!”
“You chose a very odd way of going about it,” she said flatly. “You had to have your own way about everything!”
“And that rankles?”
She came near to laughter. “No,” she admitted, “but it might have done! You made me give everything, even my pride. I might have hated you for that!
“Was pride the reason you ran away?”
She nodded unhappily. “Oh, Mario,” she said, “I love you so much! I was afraid I’d be unhappy if I didn’t have anything in return. I wasn’t sure you even liked me! When I came home from the vineyards with Henry and you kissed me and I thought you knew, I couldn’t bear it!” She took a deep breath. “I’m not asking you to love me,” she went on bravely, “at least, not very much, but if you think you could pretend sometimes—” Her eyes met Mario’s and she stopped in a hurry. “M-Mario?”
“Ruth darling, I’ve spent the greater part of the evening telling you that I love you! LOVE you, do you hear me? How can you make such an outrageous suggestion?”
She blinked, uneasily aware of her heart thudding inside her.
“I thought we’d spent the greater part of the evening establishing that I loved you!” she said faintly, her courage fast evaporating as he reached out for her. She thought he was going to shake her, but he didn’t, he kissed her very gently on the lips.
“Have I made a mull of it?” he asked her humorously. “How could you think that I wanted you to be a loving wife, if I didn’t love you? It’s because I love you that I want our love to be the central thing in both our lives—”
“It is, in mine,” she said unsteadily.
He looked at her in wonder, a slight smile on his lips. “Carissima, would you really have given me your life without my love?”
“I thought it was what you wanted,” she answered simply.
When he kissed her she felt that she had come home. How could she ever have thought that he didn’t love her? She laughed with sheer happiness against his lips.
“This is what I wanted!” he whispered in her ear. “Oh, Ruth, you little darling, I love you to distraction!” She didn’t answer him because she couldn’t. She didn’t need to answer him. He was the sum of her pride, her life, her love, because he had made her his wife!
