Wife By Arrangement

by Lucy Gordon

  Worse still were the moments when everything seemed bitterly funny. If she gave way to those she knew she would collapse in wild, uncontrollable laughter. But she mustn’t let that happen, so she buckled the armour on more firmly than ever, and hoped for the best.

  Baptista had left her bed and was reclining in state on a sofa in her grand sitting room. She looked them both over as they appeared before her, taking up positions at some distance apart.

  ‘We can’t leave things like this,’ she announced. ‘It’s all been handled very badly.’

  ‘Perhaps Lorenzo should be here,’ Renato suggested.

  ‘Lorenzo is the past. It’s the future that concerns me.’

  ‘We know what that has to be,’ Heather told her. ‘I’ll return Bella Rosaria to you-’

  ‘That must wait. If you give it back in the same tax year as I gave it to you, we run into all sorts of problems. We haven’t yet discussed what happened in the cathedral.’

  Heather took a sharp breath. ‘How can there be anything to say? It’s over.’

  ‘Over? When such an insult was offered you by my family?’

  ‘That “insult” talk is old-fashioned-’ she protested.

  ‘And Sicily is an old-fashioned place, even now. If such a thing had happened to me my father would have shot the man dead. And there wouldn’t even have been a trial.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to start shooting,’ Heather declared. She was trying to lighten the atmosphere, but she couldn’t resist adding, ‘Not Lorenzo, anyway.’

  ‘I sympathise with your feelings, my daughter,’ Baptista said, giving Renato a look that would have frozen the blood of a less courageous man. He met it with a grimace in which affection was mixed with hearty respect. It amused Heather to realise that, however he treated anyone else, Renato trod very carefully with his mother.

  ‘Lorenzo and I have already met and declared a truce,’ she said.

  ‘And I’m grateful, but that isn’t the end of the matter. You have been injured by my family, and you cannot be allowed to suffer.’

  ‘Well, if Renato uses his influence with Gossways to restore me to the training programme, I won’t have suffered.’

  Renato frowned. ‘And that’s really your idea of recompense?’

  ‘It’ll put me back where I was before you entered my life,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll be able to pretend you don’t exist. In other words, the perfect solution.’

  ‘Thank you!’ he snapped.

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  ‘It’s not enough,’ Baptista said. ‘There is the dishonour.’

  ‘But I told you, Lorenzo’s actions can’t dishonour me.’

  ‘They can dishonour his family,’ Baptista said, so fiercely that Heather was startled. ‘He insulted you, and the whole family will bear the shame of it until we have made amends.’

  ‘I won’t marry him now.’

  ‘Certainly not. But I have another son. I agree he’s done little to recommend himself to you, but Renato is to blame for this and Renato must put it right.’ Baptista spoke in her most regal manner. ‘Your marriage should take place immediately.’

  There was one moment’s total, thunderstruck silence. Heather tried to speak but couldn’t. The control she’d struggled for was slipping away, releasing the crazy laughter that had been fighting to get out. She gave a choke and turned aside swiftly with her hand over her mouth. But it was useless. A bubble was rising inside her, shooting up until it reached the outside world in peal after peal of mirth. The whole thing was mad. It could only have been imagined in this society that followed its own rules and cared for no other.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped at last, ‘but that’s the funniest thing you could have said. Me? Marry Renato? A man I can’t endure the sight of? Oh, heavens!’ She went off into another paroxysm.

  Renato regarded her with hard eyes. Then he began to speak in a low, outraged voice. He spoke in Sicilian and Heather couldn’t follow it, but she managed to pick out the words for ‘crazy’, ‘unbelievable’ and something that she guessed meant ‘not in a million years’.

  ‘That’s just how I feel, too,’ she told him. ‘Oh, dear! Don’t get me started again.’

  ‘In my day a young woman knew better than to laugh at an eligible match,’ Baptista said with haughty disapproval.

  ‘But Renato isn’t an eligible match,’ Heather pointed out when she’d managed to calm down a little. ‘One, he doesn’t want to marry anyone. Two, he doesn’t want to marry me. Three, hell will freeze over before I marry him. It’s out of the question.’

  ‘It’s good sense. You came here to marry a son of this house, and that’s what you must do. Then things will be right again.’

  ‘They’d be very far from right,’ Heather said desperately. ‘I don’t know how you can have thought of such a thing-the last man in the world I’d ever-’

  ‘The feeling is mutual,’ Renato said coldly. ‘Mamma, I have the greatest respect for you, but you must forget this idea.’

  ‘Your feelings don’t enter into it,’ Baptista told him firmly. ‘You have injured a decent young woman, and must make reparation.’

  ‘One phone call to Gossways will do that very nicely, thank you,’ Heather said crisply.

  ‘I’ll make it at once,’ Renato declared. ‘Plus I’ll pay all your expenses for your trip here and-’

  ‘Renato, I’m warning you, if you dare offer me money you’ll be very sorry.’

  ‘I’m already sorry: sorry I ever met you, sorry my brother met you, sorry we welcomed you into our home-’

  ‘Then it’s a pity you took so much trouble to get me here, isn’t it? When I got up to walk out of the restaurant in London you should have let me go.’

  ‘If I had, you’d have gone under that car.’

  ‘If I hadn’t been running away from you I’d have been in no danger from the car.’

  ‘If you’d been a more reasonable woman you wouldn’t have been running away.’

  ‘I-? If I’d been-? You have a very selective memory. You looked me up and down like a piece of merchandise, decided that I’d just about do, and awarded me your brand of approval. For which you had the nerve to expect me to be grateful. As for poor Lorenzo-remember Lorenzo? The groom?-he didn’t know whether he was coming or going.’

  ‘I understood that he proposed to you in the hospital.’

  ‘Only after your majesty made your wishes known. Then we were all supposed to fall into line, weren’t we? The way everybody always has for you. The way I’m supposed to today. Only you’ve miscalculated now, just as you did then. I won’t marry you, Renato, and you know why? Because after the way you’ve behaved you’re not good enough. And if the angel Gabriel came down off a cloud with a signed testimonial I would still say you’re not good enough.’

  ‘Indeed!’ Renato snapped. ‘Then allow me to remind you that in Sicily, as, I believe, in other parts of the world, it’s normal for a woman to wait until she’s received a proposal of marriage before rejecting it.’

  ‘I was simply trying to save time.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have bothered. Then I wouldn’t have needed to say that I would rather swim the Straits of Messina in lead weights than link my life to a woman who is nothing but trouble.’

  ‘Then we’re agreed and everything’s-oh, Mamma, I’m sorry!’

  Shocked, Heather had just remembered Baptista’s frail condition, but the old woman was watching them both, bright-eyed, with something that might almost have been enjoyment.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry too,’ Renato said. ‘We had no right to lose our tempers-your heart-’

  ‘My heart is well, but you are both being very foolish. I advise you to reconsider.’

  ‘Never.’ They spoke with one voice.

  ‘Very well. Perhaps I raised the subject in the wrong way.’

  ‘Mamma, there’s no way you could raise this subject that would make Renato acceptable,’ Heather pleaded. ‘I don’t want to marry him, I want to kick his
shins.’

  ‘You’re perfectly right,’ Baptista said at once. ‘I never saw a man who needed it more. When you’re his wife you can do it every day.’

  ‘This is my mother talking?’ Renato enquired grimly.

  ‘I’m not blind to your faults, my son,’ Baptista retorted. ‘I’ve found you the perfect wife, someone who won’t hurry to agree with you and say, “Yes dear, no dear!” In short, someone who sees right through you to the other side, and isn’t impressed by what she sees.’

  ‘That’s certainly true,’ Heather observed. ‘But while I’m reforming Renato’s character-and, heaven knows, he needs it-how do I benefit?’

  ‘You get to stay here,’ Baptista told her. ‘You become part of this family, and a Sicilian, both of which nature meant you to be.’

  ‘That’s the most tempting thing you’ve said to me so far,’ Heather said. She was recovering her poise and even a touch of humour. ‘If you could fix the last two without my having to burden myself with Renato, I’d be delighted.’

  ‘No pleasure comes without pain, my dear. You’ll learn to put up with him.’

  Heather leaned over and kissed Baptista’s cheek. ‘Sorry, Mamma. The price is too high.’

  ‘Much too high,’ Renato agreed. ‘Let us forget it was ever mentioned.’ He too had calmed down, although anger still lurked far back in his dark eyes.

  ‘In that case, go away,’ Baptista said, seeming to tire of the subject. ‘But before you leave, Renato, you can pour me a large brandy.’

  Later that day Bernardo returned and went straight to see Baptista. He was calm but very pale, and he politely declined the chance to discuss his troubles. She knew better than to press him.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said kindly. ‘Things will work out. They usually do. And there’s one thing to look forward to. Heather and Renato are going to get married.’

  Midnight in the garden. Here, at least, there was the chance for Heather to be at peace, wandering along winding paths, breathing in the scents of a hundred flowers. Here were the rose bushes, created from cuttings from the original garden at Bella Rosaria. She understood so much better now, a symbol of a love that had never died, despite the contentment of an arranged marriage. That was the kind of love she’d wanted, the kind she’d believed she had. And Baptista wanted her to settle for less. She’d thought she’d come to terms with the sadness, but this was a new sadness, showing her the bleak path her life might yet take.

  She sat on the stone edge of the fountain and looked down into the water, seeing the dark shadow of her own head and the silver moon behind. She trailed her fingers, shattering the moon to a thousand fragments, and when the water grew still again, there was another head beside hers.

  ‘You shouldn’t have been put through that,’ Renato said. ‘Mamma gets carried away sometimes. I’m sorry for the things I said-’

  ‘I suppose I was just as bad. There’s no point in having a go at you anyway. It’s over and done with. I said you were too ready to arrange people’s lives, but now I see where you get it from.’

  ‘Don’t be angry with her.’

  ‘I’m not. I think she’s sweet. But, honestly, what an absurd idea!’ She gave a small choke.

  ‘Yes, you’ve made it clear that you find it funny,’ he said with a slight edge in his voice.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you. It’s just-everything-all at once-’

  She tried to pull herself together, but suddenly she couldn’t stop. She’d thought she’d exorcised the wild mood that had possessed her earlier, but now it was back, worse than ever. Sobs of laughter rose up in her, one after the other, each one bigger than the last, until they weren’t laughter any more, and all the tears she’d been suppressing forced their way out.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Renato said, laying a hand on her shoulder. Then he paused because he could feel the shuddering of her body, and knew that it had changed. ‘You’re not crying after all this time, surely?’

  She tried to say, ‘No, of course not,’ but the words came out huskily, and then she couldn’t manage words at all. She’d controlled herself so fiercely that now she had no control left. She was mortified at Renato seeing her like this but she couldn’t do anything about it.

  ‘Heather-’ he said quietly.

  ‘No-it’s nothing-I’m all right, I just need to-’

  ‘You just need to cry it out,’ he said. ‘Heather-Heather, listen-’ He sat beside her on the fountain and laid light hands on her shoulders and gave her a little shake. ‘Stop trying to be so damned strong all the time.’

  ‘I’ve got to be strong,’ she said. ‘I’m among sharks.’

  ‘Not really. I’m the only shark, and I’m not biting tonight. Just for once, let’s forget that you hate me.’

  ‘I don’t-know how.’

  ‘Well, that’s honest,’ he said, gathering her into his arms. ‘Hate me, then, but let’s call a truce.’

  She couldn’t reply. Anguish had taken hold of her completely. She’d told herself that it didn’t hurt, but it did. All the happiness she’d dared to enjoy now turned on her, transformed to grief and bitterness. It swamped her, engulfed her, and there was no help or comfort in the world, except, mysteriously, for her enemy, whose arms enfolded her.

  He held her tightly, murmuring words of kindness that her ears hardly heard, although her heart discerned them, and eased a little. It made no sense, but there was something about his voice that warmed her and made everything seem not quite so bad. He drew away to look at her, brushing back the hair from her face with gentle fingers.

  ‘I didn’t think you could ever cry,’ he said huskily. ‘You were so good at shutting us all out of your feelings-or maybe just me-’

  Her tears still flowed, but his soft caresses against her features were making the jagged edges of the world recede and the misery soften.

  ‘Nothing is worth your tears,’ he murmured. He laid his lips against her wet cheeks, then her eyes. ‘Don’t cry-please.’

  She grew completely still, listening to his soft words and letting her body relax against him. With one hand he stroked her hair while his lips wandered over her face. She thought perhaps she shouldn’t do this, but the thought was far away, muffled by the warm sweetness that was taking possession of her. She knew that at any moment his lips would find her mouth, and the breath came faster in her throat as she waited for it to happen.

  When it did his touch was so light that she had to reach up to him to be sure, slipping an arm about his neck, cupping his head with her hand. It was only a few hours since they’d quarrelled, and soon they would probably quarrel again, but now all the world was upside down, and it seemed natural to let him hold her close while his lips continued the work of consolation.

  ‘Renato…’ she whispered, not knowing if she were protesting or simply asking a question.

  ‘Hush! Why should we always be fighting?’

  She didn’t want to fight a man who could hold her so tenderly. She still didn’t trust him, but somehow that didn’t matter so much now. What did matter was the slow movement of his mouth across hers, and the sense of sweet contentment that pervaded her.

  Her mouth was caressing him back, seeking new sensations. She wanted more of him. He was dangerous, but since coming to this country she’d discovered that she responded to the thrill of danger. She put up her hand and laid it against his hair, thick and springy against her palm. Then his cheek. He needed a shave. That was Renato, not smooth and appealing, but all rough edges and sharp angles. You had to take him as you found him. He couldn’t be trusted, but sometimes he could be wonderful.

  He slackened his hold, but kept his arms in place, resting his lips against her hair. He was trembling as much as she.

  ‘You said once-I could always ask you for a brother’s help,’ she reminded him huskily.

  ‘I remember. But neither of us knew this day would come.’

  Hadn’t they? she thought wildly. Hadn’t they?

  ‘Keep you
r word now,’ she whispered. ‘Help me as a brother. Help me find my place back in England so that I can go home and forget I ever came to Sicily.’

  ‘Will you forget us so easily?’

  He would have held her but she disengaged herself and backed away, trying to put a safe distance between them. But how far was safe?

  ‘Don’t ask me that, Renato. You know I can’t answer. Just help me go home. That’s all I want.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I T WAS Baptista’s idea that Heather should visit Bella Rosaria. ‘It’s time you were looking over your property,’ she said. ‘But come to see me often.’

  The suggestion appealed to Heather. She could never regard the estate as hers, but while matters were being sorted out it would be the ideal place to stay.

  She took a car from the garage and drove out of Palermo, taking the winding road that led up to the village of Ellona, and the pink stone villa that dominated it. It was mid-morning and as she climbed she saw how the fresh, vivid light sharpened the contours of the land, which was freshly harvested and brown after the long, fierce summer. She realised that already she was thinking like a Sicilian. Baptista had been right. She loved this place and didn’t want to leave it.

  Baptista must have telephoned ahead, because when Heather reached the villa she found they were ready for her. Jocasta, the housekeeper, had prepared the best room in readiness for the new mistress. It was dark and old-fashioned, with crimson tiles on the floor and furniture made of wood that was almost black. But everything was luxurious, and the huge bed was the most comfortable she’d ever known.

  She met her steward, Luigi, a small, fierce man, brown as a berry, who might have been any age from fifty to eighty, and who offered to show her over her property. He spoke in a mixture of Sicilian and English. Heather responded in the same do-it-yourself dialect, and they understood each other perfectly.

  The villa had its own stables with three horses. Heather had learned to ride while visiting Angie, and now she set out for a ride over the countryside, accompanied by Luigi. Everywhere the land was changing, reflecting the passing of summer and the start of the wet season. Luigi explained that it had been a good harvest this year. She would do well. He didn’t seem to notice that she was sunk in embarrassment.