The Tuscan Tycoon’s Wife

by Lucy Gordon

  He spoke her name softly, and she turned to look at him. Even in this light he could see her face well enough to know that it was distraught. The next moment they’d thrown themselves into each other’s arms.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ she cried. ‘I just can’t do this.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ he soothed her, stroking her hair although his heart was full of fear. ‘You can do anything you set your mind to. I know that, even if you don’t.’

  ‘Oh, sure, I can do anything that takes grit and bull-headedness, but this-it would crush me.’

  That was what he’d been afraid of. But he wasn’t ready to give up.

  ‘We wouldn’t be trapped here all the time-’

  ‘We would in the end.’ She pulled away from him and began to pace restlessly. ‘Look at this room. Dulcie would be at home here because she was raised in a place like this. Harriet would be all right because it’s full of antiques. But me? I just spend my whole time hoping I don’t bump into things.’

  ‘It would be different in time,’ he pleaded. ‘You’ll change-’

  ‘Maybe I don’t want to change,’ she flashed at him. ‘Maybe I think there’s nothing wrong with the way I am.’

  ‘I didn’t say-’

  ‘No, and you never will. But the truth is the truth, whether anyone says it or not. Leo, we don’t just come from different worlds. It’s different planets, different universes. You know it yourself.’

  ‘We’ve overcome that before.’

  ‘Yes, because of the farm. Because of the land, and the animals, and all the things we both love. It didn’t matter where we came from, because we were heading in the same direction. But now-’ she looked around her in despair.

  ‘We don’t have to spend much time here-we’ll still have the farm-’

  ‘Will we? This was going to be Guido’s inheritance, and now he’s lost it to you. Aren’t you going to have to give him yours in exchange?’

  That thought had been nibbling uneasily at the edge of his consciousness.

  ‘Guido’s not interested in farming, I can repay him in money. And if I have to I’ll sell some of the antiques in this place. Every single one if I have to.’

  ‘And we live on the farm and let your ancestral palace stand empty? Even I know better than that.’ She tore at her short hair. ‘If it was anywhere else you could simply move into the palace and buy up some farming land around it, but what can you do in Venice?’

  ‘Carissima, please-’

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Why, suddenly-now?’

  ‘Because everything’s changed-now.’

  ‘So suddenly I can’t tell you that I love you more than life? I can’t say that I don’t want this either, but it’ll be bearable if I have you?’

  ‘Don’t!’ She turned away, her hands over her ears.

  ‘Why mustn’t I say that your love is everything to me?’ he asked in a voice that was suddenly hard. ‘Because you can’t say the same?’

  In the long silence that followed Leo felt his heart almost stop.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered at last. ‘Oh, Leo, forgive me, but I don’t know. I-I do love you-’

  ‘Do you?’ he asked in a harder voice than she had ever heard him use.

  ‘Yes, I do love you, I do, I do-’ With every repetition she grew more frantic. ‘Please try to understand-’

  ‘I understand this-that you only love me on certain conditions. When things get tough, suddenly the love isn’t enough.’

  He gave a bitter laugh. ‘It’s ironical isn’t it? If I lost every penny I could count on your love. If I was left to starve in the streets I know you’d starve with me and never complain.’

  ‘Yes-yes-’

  ‘If I had to sell the shirt off my back you’d sell the shirt off yours, and we’d fight the world together and be happy. But if I’m rich, that means trouble. You turn away from me and wonder if I’m worth loving.’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ she cried.

  ‘I’m the same man, rich or poor, but you can only love me if we have the life you want. But I want that life too. I don’t want all this either.’

  ‘Then leave it. Tell them you won’t accept. Let’s go back to the farm and be happy.’

  ‘You don’t understand. It can’t be done like that. All this is now my responsibility, to my family, to the people who work for us and depend on us. I can’t just turn my back on all that.’

  He took her gently by the shoulders and looked into her face. ‘My darling, it’s still a fight, just a different one. Why can’t you stand by me in this one, as you would have done the other?’

  ‘Because we’d each be fighting a different enemy, and we’d end up fighting each other. In a sense we already are.’

  ‘This is just a little argument-’

  ‘But you fired the first shot in the war a moment ago, didn’t you notice? You said, “You don’t understand”. You’re right. And as we go on there’ll be a million things I don’t understand, but you will. And more and more you won’t understand the things that are important to me, and in the end we’ll be saying “You don’t understand” to each other a dozen times a day.’

  They were silent with fear, each seeing the cracks in the ground beneath their feet that would soon become a chasm that love couldn’t bridge.

  But not yet. They couldn’t face it just now.

  ‘Don’t let’s talk any more tonight,’ Leo said hurriedly. ‘We’re both in a state of shock. Let’s leave it until we’re calmer.’

  ‘Yes, we’ll do that. We’ll talk when we get home.’

  That put it at a safe distance. In the meantime they could hide from what was happening.

  He took her back to her room and kissed her cheek at the door.

  ‘Try to sleep well,’ he said. ‘We’re going to need all our strength.’

  As soon as she had closed the door he walked away. He hadn’t tried to go in, and she hadn’t said, ‘Stay with me’.

  Leo spent the next day closeted with his uncle, Guido and a brace of lawyers, while Dulcie and Harriet showed Selena Venice. For an hour she tried to make the right noises, but the truth was the narrow alleys and canals suffocated her.

  They went into St Mark’s where Dulcie and Guido had married recently, and where Harriet and Marco would marry soon.

  It was like being an ant, Selena thought, looking up into the ancient, echoing building. It was magnificent, splendid, beautiful. But it turned you into an ant.

  She thought of the little parish church at Morenza, and was glad that her own wedding would be there, and not in this place that crushed her.

  Dulcie seemed to understand, for as they left she took a close look at Selena’s face and said, ‘Come with me,’ and shepherded them both to the nearby landing stage, where there were vaporetti, the boats Venetians used as buses.

  ‘Three to the Lido,’ she told the man in the ticket booth. To Harriet and Selena she said, ‘We’re going to spend the rest of the day on the beach.’

  Selena’s spirits had perked up as the boat headed out for the forty-minute journey across the wide lagoon. After all those alleys she was in the open at last. And when they reached the Lido, the long thin island that bounded the lagoon and boasted one of the best beaches in the world, she caught her first ever glimpse of the sea, and it cheered her even more. Now that was some open space!

  They bought bathing costumes and towels in the beach shops. When they’d changed they hired a huge umbrella and sat beneath it, rubbing each other with sun cream. Dulcie told of the day she’d come here with Guido.

  ‘He rubbed me with sun cream and I still managed to get burned, so he took me to his little bachelor flat and I was poorly for days.’ She smiled reminiscently. ‘It was very romantic.’

  ‘But if you were poorly-’ Selena said.

  ‘He looked after me wonderfully.’

  ‘But you didn’t-he didn’t-?’

  ‘No. We didn’t. That’s what mad
e it so romantic.’

  Later they ran down the beach to swim in the sea. Selena loved it. All work and no play had been the pattern of her life, and fooling around in the sun and the waves with no purpose but to enjoy herself was a novel experience. She began to think there might be something to be said for Venice after all.

  But when the day was over and it was time to return, the great palace seemed to loom, waiting to swallow her up. It was actually very well lit, with huge windows that let in the light, but in her present mood the shades seemed to fall on her as soon as she entered.

  She found Leo depressed but resigned.

  ‘There’s no way out,’ he said. ‘I’ve spent the day looking over my future with lawyers and accountants until my eyes have crossed. They’re trying to work out a way for me to compensate Guido financially, without having to sell the farm.’

  ‘Can it be done?’

  ‘If I spread it over several years.’

  ‘How is Guido about that?’

  ‘Great. He just shrugged and said, “It’s cool. Whatever.” He doesn’t care. He’s so happy to have dumped it on me that he’s like a kid out of school. And behind that juvenile charm he’s a very astute businessman. What he really lives off is his souvenir business and it’s making him a fortune. But of course I’ve got to do the right thing by him.’

  ‘And you’ll keep the farm?’

  ‘Yes, but life’s going to change for us.’

  She nodded. ‘For us. Maybe I should have been in there too instead of being sent off to play.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone was trying to exclude you, it’s just that we were all talking Italian, and you wouldn’t have understood.’

  He could have bitten his tongue off as soon as he said the last words, but she only smiled and said, ‘Sure.’

  ‘I mean, neither the lawyer nor the accountant speak any English, so we’d have been translating-’

  ‘It’s all right. You were absolutely right. It doesn’t really concern me, does it?’

  ‘Everything that happens to me concerns you,’ he said emphatically. ‘I’m sorry, darling, maybe you should have come in, despite the practical problems.’

  She nodded, still smiling but still keeping her distance. But his face looked so desperate and weary that she couldn’t stand it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said huskily, throwing her arms around him. ‘I’m a bitch to nag you when you’re unhappy.’

  ‘Just stay with me,’ he said, holding her tight. ‘Don’t leave me to struggle through this alone.’

  ‘I won’t, I won’t.’

  He sighed. ‘I’ve got a confession to make. Uncle started on again about our wedding. According to him it has to be St Mark’s. I told him it was up to you.’

  ‘Oh, great! Blame me!’ She managed to smile. ‘You’d better say yes. You can’t start your new life by fighting with your family.’

  ‘Thank you carissima.’ He held her fiercely. ‘We’ll be out of here tomorrow.’

  ‘It’ll be all right when we’re home,’ she insisted.

  But her words sounded hollow even to her own ears. She was full of dread, and she could sense that his own dread matched it.

  She kept repeating to herself that everything would be all right when they were away from here. It was a mantra that kept her going as they packed their things next morning. Just a few more hours, a few more minutes-Even then she knew there was no real escape. They would have to return in a couple of weeks for Leo to sign papers.

  ‘You come alone,’ she told him.

  ‘I want you with me. After all, you said yourself that it concerns you too.’

  ‘But there’s nothing for me to sign. I’ll stay home and-’

  ‘And be there when I get back?’ he asked fiercely. ‘Will you?’

  ‘Of-of course I will.’

  ‘I want you with me,’ he repeated with a hint of mulishness around his mouth.

  So he sensed it too, she thought.

  It was like an ugly demon sitting on the floor between them, forcing them both to sidestep, but without ever admitting that it was there.

  More than anyone it was the countess who unsettled her. Her English was so poor that they couldn’t communicate except through an interpreter, and then Selena didn’t know how to interpret her awkwardness. It might be shyness, unease, or downright disapproval. Selena reckoned she could guess which one.

  In the last few minutes before they left the countess approached her. There was nobody else there, and in her hand she clutched a dictionary.

  ‘I speak-with you,’ she said in a voice that showed she was reciting prepared words.

  ‘Yes?’ Selena tried to look composed.

  ‘Things are-different now-your marriage-we must speak-’

  ‘But I know,’ Selena said passionately. ‘You don’t have to tell me, I know. How can I marry him? You don’t want me to, and you’re right. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong in your world. I know.’

  A tense, haughty look came over the countess’s face. She took a sharp breath. The next moment there was the sound of footsteps on marble and she stepped back.

  The rest of the family appeared, engulfing them. There were goodbyes, attempts at cheer. The boat was at the landing stage, then they were drawing away, the strip of water growing wide, and the problems were just beginning.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  N OW there was the relief of attending to the harvest. All over the valley the vineyards and the olive groves were humming with activity. Carts passed along the lines, gradually filling up with the best the earth had to offer. Selena was there, sometimes with Leo, sometimes alone. Even alone she could communicate with Leo’s people for most of them had a smattering of English and she had mastered a few words of Tuscan, which she used badly enough to amuse everyone. In this way she forged her links with them.

  And it might all be for nothing, she would think, looking out over the acres as the sun descended. For who knew how things would be this time next year? Who knew how much of the farm would still belong to him? And these new friends she was making, with whom she felt so much more at ease than her fine new family in their grandiose palace, how many of them would still think of her as a friend?

  They too were worried, she sensed it. They would stop and ask her questions, because she was going to marry the padrone, and therefore she must know him best. How could she tell them that she didn’t feel she knew him at all any more? The instinctive fellow-feeling that had united her with Leo increasingly seemed no more than a happy memory.

  And besides, she saw him less because he was constantly being recalled to Venice to settle some point or other. He’d sworn it would make very little difference to them, but by now they both knew that it wasn’t in his power to keep that promise. Inch by inch he was being forced onto a road where she couldn’t follow.

  These days she often slept in her own room to hide the fact that she sometimes awoke gasping for breath. She had a sense of floundering in a maze from which there was no way out, but only roads growing narrower until they vanished altogether, and herself with them.

  She called the Four-Ten, and avidly drank in news about the Hanworth family. Paulie had gone to Dallas to start another internet firm-or so he said, but Barton confided that a jealous husband had been haunting the ranch for a while, uttering dire threats should Paulie ever reappear.

  Billie was marrying her guy, Carrie was exercising Jeepers, and they’d had two offers for him. If Selena wasn’t coming back-

  ‘No,’ Selena said quickly. ‘If I’m not sending you enough money for him-’

  ‘You’re sending more than enough,’ Barton boomed, offended. ‘Think I grudge you a little horse feed?’

  ‘I know you don’t. You’ve all been such good friends to me, but I’m not going to take advantage of it-’

  ‘What else are friends for? You don’t want me to sell Jeepers? He’s a good racer and he’s going to waste right now.’

  ‘I know but-just hang onto him a litt
le longer, please Barton. How’s Elliot?’

  ‘He’s fine. Carrie rides him, and she says he’s a real sweet old feller.’

  ‘Yes,’ Selena said. ‘I remember that.’

  She hung up, and went into the kitchen to discuss the evening meal with Gina. Leo was due back from Venice and Gina was preparing sardine and potato bake for him. After that Selena went into the office and worked hard on paperwork for the horse farm.

  Then she dropped her head on her hands and wept.

  It was dark when Leo drove up, for the nights were drawing in. He ate his meal with gusto but when Selena asked about his trip he had strangely little to say.

  She knew what that meant. Bit by bit he was being drawn into their world, and he didn’t know how to tell her.

  After supper she headed back to the office, to ‘finish some stuff.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming to bed?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, I just thought I’d-’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Come to bed.’

  Arms about each other they climbed the stairs. In his room he took her in his arms and kissed her deeply. The desire was always there, perhaps deeper now that it was almost the only way they could communicate. They undressed each other swiftly, eager for the union that was still perfect and in which there were no problems.

  For a short, blissful time there was a hot urgency that swept everything before it. She called his name as if from a long distance, and tried to find comfort in his look of tender adoration. As passion faded into contentment she fell asleep with her head against him.

  But as soon as she slept her surroundings changed. She was fighting her way through a thicket. She struggled but it was closing in on her, shutting out the air, suffocating her. She awoke, gasping for breath.

  ‘Carissima-’ Leo sat up and put on the bedside light. ‘Wake up, wake up!’

  She held him until the shaking stopped and he drew her close, stroking her hair.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he murmured. ‘I’m here. Hold on to me, it was only a dream.’

  ‘I couldn’t breathe,’ she choked. ‘Everything’s closing in on me and I can’t find a way through.’