Rinaldo’s Inherited Bride

by Lucy Gordon

  ‘Teresa says she saw Gino driving away,’ she said.

  ‘I guess he wants to think for a while. He’ll feel better afterward.’

  But despite his confident words he stood on the porch for half an hour, staring into the darkness.

  ‘Don’t let him come back and find you watching out for him,’ Alex suggested gently. ‘He’s not a kid any more.’

  ‘You’re right. I can’t get out of the habit of thinking of myself as a kind of second father. I’ll have to now, won’t I? But it’s going to be hard, telling him.’

  ‘Do you think perhaps-we shouldn’t?’ she asked unhappily.

  But he shook his head.

  ‘I can’t give you up for any reason. Not just because I love you, but because you’re necessary to me, as air and water are necessary. I love my brother, but even for him I can’t do without you. Come inside with me now, for I need, very much, to be alone with you.’

  In the darkness they climbed the stairs. Almost before they reached the top she was in his arms, kissing and being kissed with a determined purpose that thrilled her.

  Rinaldo put out his hand and opened the first door he came to, which was his own room.

  ‘I can’t wait to get to yours,’ he murmured, drawing her inside and shutting the door. He was already removing her clothes with urgent hands.

  She helped him, stripping him even as he stripped her until they lay on the bed together and he took her into his arms for a long kiss that was part affirmation, part exploration. She loved this moment, when his tongue teased the inside of her mouth, rousing her gently and expertly to the pitch of desire that only he could create.

  When he withdrew his mouth she could see that his face held the brooding expression that excited her so much. His great hand drifted over her breasts, enclosed one, caressing it with subtlety so that she was flooded with warmth.

  For this above all she loved him, for revealing her own sensuality to her, showing her that the woman of desks and good order was only one facet, and not the truest one. The real Alex was a woman who lived for the primitive force that united them, and could relinquish herself totally to the man she loved.

  For so harsh a man Rinaldo was an unexpectedly gentle and skilful lover. He waited for her to be ready, but he didn’t have to wait long. She wanted him, wanted more of the shattering sensation that pervaded her, wanted everything.

  When her moment came Alex drove back against him, urging him on with all her strength until they reached fulfilment together. She saw his face in that instant, and wondered at its mixture of awe and surrender.

  He fell asleep first, and she propped herself up on her elbow, watching him with eyes that were passionately protective, but also curious. The chance to study him unaware did not come often.

  His face was scarcely softer in sleep than in waking. The chin was still stubborn, the nose too strong for comfort. They would still fight. He’d warned her of that, and the starkness of his face told her that it was true. But that was all right. Fighting wouldn’t suit everyone, but to them it would merely be an aspect of their love. And she could give as good as she got.

  But she would be careful, because deep instinct warned her that he was more vulnerable than she, more easily hurt, less able to show it, and therefore more at risk.

  His mouth intrigued her the most. It was not, at first glance, a sensual mouth; too firm, too wary, even in repose.

  But she was no longer fooled by the look. She had kissed that mouth and felt it soften against hers. She had shared passion with that big, lanky body with its longs legs, powerful arms and skilful hands. No woman who had experienced that sensation could mistake his essential nature. He was a man who could love with every part of him, mind, soul and body.

  After a long while she lay down, gazing into the darkness, looking back along the road that had brought her here.

  Since coming to Italy she had discovered that the country had two faces. There was Italy of the smile and the song, of the rich colours, flowing wine and bright laughter. This was romantic Italy. This was Gino.

  And there was another country whose past had been steeped in blood and vengeance, a dark, sombre place, full of sullen shadows, deadly feuds, anger, bitterness, danger. This was Rinaldo.

  If a woman had once been delighted by the smile and the vibrant youth, why should she turn away from that to the other land, where a man with a face like granite and a soul to match offered only his darkness, and his need?

  Why? Because she could not help herself. That was why.

  She raised herself again and touched his face with her fingertips. Then she kissed him so softly that he did not awaken. He was hers, to have and to hold, to love and cherish. Because he needed her. And that was all there was to be said.

  Rinaldo was in a mysterious place, one where he’d been before, but which had no name. He knew that he was waiting for something, but he did not know what.

  His father was there again, looking at him with troubled eyes. But this was the moment when he always awoke, and the message was never delivered.

  With a shudder he sat up in bed, his eyes open and staring. His whole body was shaking.

  ‘What is it?’ Alex said from beside him. ‘Rinaldo, wake up.’

  She shook him gently. At first she thought he was too far lost in his unquiet dream for her to reach him, but at last, to her relief, she felt him relax.

  Still she could not be certain that he was awake, although his eyes were open. She touched his face gently.

  ‘Rinaldo,’ she whispered, ‘talk to me.’

  At last he seemed to focus on her. He looked drained, and when she put her arms about him he clung to her.

  ‘Was it a bad dream?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Something came back to me at last. It’s been there all this time, hovering just out of sight. I’ve tried so often to remember-’

  ‘And now you have?’

  ‘Yes. It was the day my father died. I got to the hospital before Gino and I had a few moments alone with him.

  ‘When he saw me, he tried to say something. His face was swollen and he couldn’t get the words out-just the words, “Sorry”. He said that over and over. I can still see his eyes-they were desperate. He wanted so much to tell me something, but he couldn’t manage it.

  ‘I kept waiting for him to tell me, but then I realised that it wasn’t possible. So I took his hand between mine and told him everything was going to be all right. He seemed quieter. And then he died.’

  ‘What do you think he wanted to say?’

  ‘I think it was the mortgage. He knew what was going to happen, and he was trying to tell me that he was sorry.’

  Rinaldo shook his head as though trying to clear it.

  ‘I don’t know how I could have forgotten that,’ he said. ‘It was as though my mind just blanked it out.’

  Alex took him in her arms, speaking gently.

  ‘With all that happened that day, and the state you must have been in, it’s not surprising. You needed to be ready to remember.’

  ‘And I’m ready now, here in your arms. All this time-I blamed him-but he did try to warn me.’

  ‘He never meant you to find out the way you did,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right. He didn’t just abandon us without a word, the way I felt he had. That might have been unreasonable, but it was how I felt. Now it’s different. It’s as though I’d got my father back again. You did that.’

  Her heart sang at his praise, but she said, ‘It would have happened anyway.’

  ‘No, it happened because I found peace with you. That peace had to come first, before I could be reconciled with him. Now I am. He’s in my heart once more, and I’ll never lose him again-because of you.’

  Suddenly he clung to her. ‘Don’t leave me,’ he said desperately.

  ‘Never in life. As long as you need me, I’ll be here.’

  ‘I’ll always need you. There was no warmth or light before you came.’ He rested his head against her. ‘Su
ppose you’d never come here, and we’d never met?’

  ‘But we did,’ she murmured. ‘Maybe we were always bound to meet. Do you remember that first day?’

  ‘At Poppa’s funeral? Yes.’

  ‘I think I knew then that you were going to be something important in my life. I didn’t know what, but I knew it wasn’t going to be indifference.’

  ‘No, we could never have been indifferent to each other,’ he murmured.

  ‘And in those days it looked like we’d be enemies.’

  ‘Is that what we were?’ he whispered.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She smiled tenderly. ‘We had to be enemies first before we could be anything else. It’s not a bad way of getting acquainted.’

  ‘Yes, we did that,’ he agreed with a faint smile. ‘Now we have to get to know each other in another way.’

  ‘You think we don’t know each other?’ she asked softly.

  He didn’t answer at once, but he raised his head and their eyes held, full of deep, shared knowledge. They knew each other.

  ‘I’m looking forward to the rest,’ he said. ‘Being with you every day, learning all about you, the things you like, dislike. Growing old with you, becoming part of you, making you part of me.’

  ‘I am part of you,’ she said. ‘I always will be.’

  ‘I feel as though I’ve spent the last years wandering in a desert. And you’ve brought me home.’

  She kissed him repeatedly, not in passion but in tenderness. There had been passion and there would be passion again, but for now their embrace was an assertion of profound peace and trust between them. At last they slept again, still holding each other.

  When Alex found herself drifting back to the surface she wasn’t sure whether it was happening naturally or because of some other reason. Despite her feeling of fulfilment she was pervaded by an uneasy awareness of something wrong.

  Slowly she opened her eyes.

  Gino was standing at the end of the bed, staring at them both with a face full of shock and disillusion.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  F OR a long moment Alex couldn’t move. Inwardly she was weeping. Dear Gino, so generous and affectionate, the last man she would ever want to hurt! But his face was telling her that he was stricken to the heart.

  Rinaldo was sleeping with his head against her, his whole attitude that of a man who had come home to the place where he belonged. Her arms were about him in a way that would have told Gino how things were between them, even if nothing else did.

  ‘Gino!’ Her lips formed his name without sound.

  Still he neither moved nor spoke, while his face seemed to grow paler every moment. Alex reached out a hand to him.

  Then he moved, backing away to the door, his eyes, filled with bitter betrayal, fixed on his brother and the woman he loved.

  Despairingly she gave Rinaldo a little shake, awaking him. When he saw his brother he tensed and gave a soft groan.

  Gino had reached the door, shaking his head as though trying to deny what his eyes saw. Then he vanished.

  ‘Gino!’ Rinaldo shouted.

  He hurled himself out of bed, pulling on his jeans and racing to the door almost in one movement. Alex sat with her head in her hands, devastated by the sudden catastrophe, torn with anguish for Gino, who didn’t deserve to be hurt like this.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Please, no! Oh, Gino, Gino!’

  Huddling on her clothes she went down to where Rinaldo had caught up with Gino in the room that led to the veranda. The tall windows had been thrown open, showing the low table, and the chairs where the three of them had spent happy evenings.

  Gino was striding about the room, as though his pain was something he could leave behind. He turned when he heard Alex and she was shocked by his face.

  It was as though all the youth had drained out of it, leaving it haggard and joyless. He looked from one to the other.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked. ‘It wouldn’t have been difficult, would it? Hell-the way you pulled the wool over my eyes, pretending to be enemies, letting me believe what I wanted. The only thing I don’t understand is why?’

  His eyes were cold and hard as he faced Alex. ‘Did it give you some sort of pleasure to lead me by the nose?’

  ‘I didn’t-truly I didn’t-’

  ‘Don’t insult my intelligence, Alex. All this time-’

  ‘But it isn’t all this time. You talk about Rinaldo and me pretending to be enemies, but it wasn’t a pretence. When you’ve seen us quarrelling it’s been real.’

  ‘So what changed?’

  ‘Nothing changed,’ Rinaldo said quietly. ‘What we felt for each other was there all the time, but we didn’t know it. Or maybe we suspected, and were fighting it. I resented her at first, you know I did. I didn’t want to fall in love with her, but I couldn’t help myself because she’s a wonderful-’

  ‘All right,’ Gino said harshly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rinaldo said. He seemed cast down in a way Alex had never seen before, and she realised that in his own way he too was devastated. He loved his brother, and it was tearing him apart to quarrel with him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I just hoped you’d understand-’

  ‘I understand all I need to,’ Gino said.

  ‘Gino, listen,’ Alex begged, ‘Rinaldo hasn’t taken anything that was yours. It was always going to be him. It took us both too long to realise it, but it’s as he says. There was something there between us right from the start. All the time we were quarrelling, we were falling in love as well.’

  As she spoke she’d moved forward so that she was standing directly before Gino.

  ‘Please,’ she said softly, ‘please believe me, I’d do anything rather than hurt you.’

  ‘Would you? You could have warned me.’

  ‘But I didn’t know how you felt. You treat love as a game, and you play it so well that that’s all it seems.’

  ‘It started that way,’ he agreed, ‘but then I found I was really in love with you.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ she said. ‘If I had-I could have told you earlier that I could never love you.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Not as you want, anyway,’ she said desperately.

  He nodded. ‘Not as I want,’ he repeated softly.

  ‘What happened at the party-I would have prevented that if I could.’

  Gino made a despairing gesture. ‘So I made a fool of myself in front of our neighbours. That’s not important.’

  He looked at Rinaldo. ‘I came back here tonight to find you. I wanted to speak to you, ask your advice-there’s a laugh. And I’ll tell you another thing that’s funny. The one thing I never thought of was that I’d find her in your bed.’

  ‘I wish that had never happened,’ Rinaldo said gravely. ‘But Alex and I love each other, and we’re going to be married. I didn’t take her from you. The choice was hers.’

  Alex hadn’t thought it possible for Gino to grow paler, but suddenly his face seemed to become grey, the grey of death.

  ‘Be damned to the pair of you,’ he said with soft violence, and strode out.

  ‘Gino-!’ Alex cried, reaching for him.

  ‘No,’ Rinaldo stopped her following. ‘He can’t bear the sight of either of us right now. When he calms down he’ll forgive us. But right now he needs to be alone, and we should respect that.’

  Bleakly she nodded and let him lead her away. Together they climbed the stairs but at the top they paused, looking at each other. Then, as if by a signal, they went their separate ways. They couldn’t be together again tonight, not in the face of Gino’s anguished condemnation.

  Alex went alone in her room and after a moment she heard Rinaldo’s door close.

  It seemed strange to come down in the early morning and not find Gino there. His handsome, smiling face, his clowning and his kind heart had always been part of her pleasure in Belluna.

  She did love him. Not as she loved Rinaldo, with a dark, burning passion, but with the tender affection of
a sister. But he wanted so much more from her that the chasm was unbridgeable.

  She went out onto the veranda, hoping against hope that she would see him. But the morning was quiet.

  Then her eyes fell on the chair where he always sat. The jacket he’d worn the night before was tossed down there. Alex ran her fingers over it, thinking of him putting it on before the party, slipping the ring into the pocket, planning how he would propose to her. He’d been full of young, eager love, sure of being loved in return. And it had turned to heartbreak.

  There was a clatter as something fell to the floor. It was the ring he’d tried to give her. She sat down heavily and leaned her head on her hands.

  After a moment she heard Rinaldo, felt his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘That’s how I feel too,’ he said.

  They sat together for a while, just taking comfort from each other’s presence.

  ‘Gino’s gone away,’ he said at last. ‘His car isn’t there, and some of his clothes are missing.’

  ‘But he’ll come back?’ she said quickly.

  ‘Of course he will. We just have to be patient. Everything will work out.’

  Meeting his eyes, Alex saw that he didn’t believe it any more than she.

  ‘All these years,’ he sighed, ‘watching him grow up, being a second father to him, and now-dear God, what have I done to him?’

  ‘What have we done to him?’ Alex said.

  ‘He’s changed. Grown up. Last night it was like talking to an old man.’ He sighed. ‘Whatever happens now, we’ll never see the Gino we knew.’

  Alex forced herself to say the words that terrified her.

  ‘How can I stay here if it’s going to do this to him? If I go away-’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘I can’t live without you. I won’t let you go.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave you,’ she whispered, ‘but-’

  ‘No buts. We have the right to our love. Besides, your leaving wouldn’t solve anything. Gino and I can’t turn time back to before you came, and even if I could do that, I wouldn’t.’ His voice deepened, became tender. ‘Never to have known you, loved you, to return to the half-life where you didn’t exist-I couldn’t do it.