“Well, take it easy. A change of scene can do wonders. Fancy Switzerland or Austria? Go ahead and choose somewhere nice and cool, cara. We’ve both been working damned hard.” She knew he wasn’t persuaded by her response, for she seldom suffered from PMT and periods were never a problem.
“Are you going straight to the office from the airport?”
“Not this time.”
As the hot night closed round her, she cried herself to sleep, waking far too early the next morning, spinning with panic, dark smudges under puffy eyes. She felt as though she was coming apart. How was the scene going to play out? She could manage no more than half a glass of orange juice. Mirella gazed at her with a worried expression, but wisely bit back a remark.
“Home! Where’s my girl?”
Luca had tracked her down to the workshop and, bending to kiss her, she averted her head.
“As bad as all that? It can only mean I’m desperately in need of a long, hot shower.”
A few minutes ticked by. She said nothing and he saw her looking strangely at him and sensed a distance between them. “Want to share?” he asked gently.
“I’ll still be here when you’ve sorted yourself out,” she mumbled, pretending to busy her with endpapers.
He raised his eyebrows but, suppressing a trickle of exasperation, made for the house and after a while she rose and followed him in out of the fierce summer light.
* * * *
“Ah, that’s much better. Any coffee going?”
She’d been considering how to tackle him. Now, all her cool, balanced reproaches forgotten, she lunged at him, her face flaming and crashed the rolled up copy will down on his hand. “We have to talk.”
The best laid plans…He let it slide to the floor then, reaching for a fresh roll and buttering it, said lightly, “Who’d have guessed snooping was your game?”
“Luca,” she began, and then her mouth went dry and she was freaking out. “I wasn’t snooping. I mistook the envelope. There were two manilas in the safe. I had to look inside both to check.” She felt the beginnings of a thumping headache.
He composed himself, forcing down anger. “Check, yes. Read, no. Unauthorized copying, sicuramente non. Certainly not.”
She cleared her throat and ploughed on. “Don’t wriggle. You married me for mercenary reasons, you shit. The chemistry of money has corroded you. To you the marriage is simply a business deal, but you won’t win.” She was, she realized, also angry with herself for having allowed him to dupe her. How could she have thought it possible he’d love a pudding like her? He’d known just what buttons to push and she’d been so stupid, so naïve to be swept off her feet, to be set alight by just one glance. Do it now, Tamsin, she told herself. “I want out. I’m leaving you. I want a divorce.”
For a long moment something like guilt and shame flared through him I ought to have put my cards on the table. I was wrong to deceive her, And why did I when I pride myself on my honesty, integrity and fair dealing? “No Leopoldo has ever divorced and we’re not going to be the first.”
Blindly, Tamsin swept on. “You can’t stop me. I’ll file a petition in England, not here where you can deploy your influence and money to buy off the courts.”
“Cara, nonsense.” He kept his tone even, knowing he had to salvage something, that he had to keep them together. “I chose you. I had a choice, many choices, but I chose you because I wanted you.”
“I don’t want you,” she protested shakily. “I don’t want your money. I’m not staying married to you. I can find work.” As she willed herself to talk more calmly, she realized that, in England, she would be lucky if the Judge awarded her much, if anything, given she was still young, educated, capable of earning a living and, crucially, had not been long married.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “If you leave me, leave this place, if you try for a divorce, Ruby won’t fare so well.”
It was a stark reminder of why she was here, of the game she’d signed up to.
She stared at him, an old fear clutching her heart. “You can’t be serious. You couldn’t, wouldn’t jeopardize her future.”
He shrugged, watching her carefully. “It is you who are doing that.”
Numbly, she acknowledged to herself that if Luca’s funding of Ruby folded no way could she maintain her. And no way would she want Ruby burdened with a massive student loan.
“Of course,” he said, feeling mildly brutal, “there are always other options. Have you considered persuading her to switch to something less arduous and expensive, pharmacy or biology perhaps, that would be more affordable for you?”
There was a short silence.
“Why are you doing this to me?” cried Tamsin, gripping the chair arm. “What did I do to deserve this? Just because I want more than money can buy?” She refused to accept that she hadn’t been entirely the wronged innocent, that lust and infatuation and fear of penury had come to her masquerading as love and she’d welcomed marriage because it was cold out there. But she loved him now. Truly, deeply.
“Oh, now stop doing an Eve. Histrionics, melodrama. I don’t understand you. I’ve given you a wonderful life, you want for nothing. Why do you want to chuck it all away?” The words I’m afraid to love stuck in his throat. “This is a convenient necessity. For both of us. To a successful outcome.” His eyes lingered on her mouth. Christ, that soft, wide mouth, and just the thought of kissing her, long and deep, were making his balls tighten. “We laugh together, play together, have incredible sex together. I treat you with the honor and respect due to you as my wife and I fulfill my promises to your sister.” He smiled. ”So what’s not to like?”
The headache thrust into her like a screwdriver. She’d registered his gaze on her and feeling a familiar wild thrill race through her banked it down. “You’ve forgotten the secret ingredient. Love.” She blinked rapidly. “I have a right to think of my future now that you’re a part of it. What’ll happen to me after the five years?” she whispered. “Will you throw me out like a worn pair of shoes when you’ve collected?”
“After five years we’re both free to exercise choices.” He added more gently, “but don’t be afraid, you’ll be taken very good care of.”
She shook her head, suddenly longing for Dad in a way she’d never felt for years. “O for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still.”
“You’re cold. You’re an emotional cripple.” Even as she uttered the words she regretted saying them, couldn’t meet his eyes.
The color drained from his face. He took a deep breath and said, very quietly, “You’re on fighting form today.” He turned aside.
“I need you,” he muttered, barely audible.
She shook her head. “I can’t do this any more.” Her posture stiffened and, standing up, she scurried to the workshop in tears. Called Ruby. Sounding her out on futile options, Ruby wept bitterly, her tears then turning to anger and berating Tamsin for being mean and selfish and thinking only of herself.
Called Gareth, but without going into specifics obliquely alluded to insurmountable marital problems. He was unsympathetic and told her she’d made her bed so she must lie in it.
“For Chrissake, sort yourself out,” he advised airily. “What do you expect us to do? My wife married me, not my siblings and you’d better make your peace with the guy. Luca’s a bastard, I grant you, but he’s a fair bastard, not an ogre.”
Tamsin felt the door of a loveless marriage shutting on her. Luca had turned her world upside down. A dreadful panic descended on her and, unable to settle, she surrendered herself to what had formerly been Catarina’s cozy haven of a bedroom, made up the bed and transferred her toiletries to its bathroom. That made her feel sort of less self-pitying and in control, and somehow she managed to get through the day.
* * * *
Supper was eaten in an awkward silence. Tamsin, toying with her food, sensed Luca’s occasional glances at her. Declining coffee, she took a long walk round the garden trying
to find a solution, trying to get her head round the misery of the day, trying to find a way out that wouldn’t hurt Ruby.
“I’m turning in,” she said, avoiding looking at him as she drifted back inside out of a wind that had sprung up bringing heavy drops of rain. He was in the sitting room, gripped by a football match on TV, a glass of beer at his elbow.
She heard him say, “Sure I can’t get you a glass of wine?” and shook her head. Somehow she made it upstairs, turned left at the top to her room. Somehow she managed to undress and slip into a nightie and, sinking back on the pillows, switched off the bedside lamp.
She drifted in and out of sleep. An hour and a half later she heard footsteps, the door handle turned, the overhead light was switched on. Luca was revealed in the doorway, his expression grim.
“What is it?” She rubbed her eyes and sat up cautiously, her head still throbbing.
“I want you in our bed, darling. We will sleep together. We will keep together. You will not sleep elsewhere or with anyone else but me if you want to safeguard Ruby’s future.”
“Luca,” she said tiredly, “I can’t do that anymore. I won’t. No, no. Don’t.” The realization of what he was going to do sharpened her thoughts.
He approached. Leaned down and, ripping off the top sheet, lifted her, swiftly depositing her, still wriggling, in their bed, shutting the door with a great heave of his foot. He eased himself in beside her and held her tight.
“I’m not going to violate you, not going to hurt you, but you will sleep nowhere but here. That is your duty—”
“Duty?” she broke in wildly. “Come off it, you’re insane.” Duty was something that medieval women were subjected to.
“I mean it. It’s your duty to honor your husband.” He turned his back on her and switched off the light. “And I like company.” He sensed her beside him, all curled up into a tight ball, all prickly like a hedgehog, not letting the fox near. Throbbing with an urgent need to fuck her, it was agony not to reach out and take her to his core.
Like marble, Tamsin lay rigid, vowing she’d never let him touch her again. She would sleep here until he could take celibacy no longer and move out. She was confident he’d be the first to buckle.
Chapter 9
Luca called her Lysistrata, after the feisty woman in Aristophanes’s comedy who chivvied the ladies of ancient Greece to withhold sex from their husbands as a means of negotiating a peaceful end to war. They’d lie side by side and, attempting to stick a plump bolster between them, she was brusquely thwarted. He tossed it out, cautioning her never to try that again or Ruby would suffer. Often he initiated sexual overtures that she secretly welcomed but took perverse pleasure in rebuffing.
Mornings saw him speed off to Milan. No good-bye kisses. Evenings, no wrapping her in his arms as he bounced, whistling, through the front door. They’d have supper together in an atmosphere of monochrome politeness occasionally livened up by sharp bickering when they’d both drunk rather too much. Dampening down panic, her personal life was a car crash, Tamsin realized. She felt desperate, a lonely prisoner, and it was no longer “should she?” but “could she?” and “when would she?”
It would be five years before Ruby could describe herself as Dr. Heriot, MBBS and earning enough as a junior doctor to self-finance a further two-year surgery specialty. No way could she afford to keep Ruby throughout those early years, even if she was lucky enough to land a job, given high rents of even a rat hole in London. Luca had signaled that he didn’t deal in the currency of the idle gesture, and she felt the clutch of a cold hand when an agitated Ruby called to say her allowance hadn’t hit her bank account on the due date.
Raising it with Luca, he’d regarded Tamsin silently with a quelling gesture. Eventually it was credited, after a fraught, pulse-in-stomach interval of ten days, during which she was at her wits’ end, placating a near-hysterical Ruby on the phone twice a day in tears. The grim little incident was nothing if not an uncomfortable reminder that he could, and would, easily turn off the tap.
It dawned on her that staying with family or friends in England on anything like a long-term basis wasn’t possible, that in Italy, Luca’s circle would be bound to side with him, that he was unlikely to let her use the workshop on a stand-alone basis, so any notions she’d harbored about staying in Lake Garda, were they to separate, were shelved.
It was agony to have his strong body beside her and not inside her as she breathed the fresh cologne of him mingled with that subtle, dark male smell. Their feet collided and she wanted to dip down and suck his toes. In the workshop, she worked herself ragged, trying to tear her mind free from thoughts of him.
During the afternoon when the villa was quiet and she knew she wouldn’t be disturbed she’d go to the bedroom, light aromatic candles and masturbate. With his strong sex drive, did Luca jerk off, while watching a porn video, in the privacy of the Milan apartment where he often cooked himself a simple, quiet lunch during a hectic day? Or maybe he fucked a hot, new promotion-hungry colleague?
After a fortnight’s standoff, Luca called to say that an emergency had blown up at the office, that he’d be home very late and she wasn’t to wait on supper for him.
It was nearly 2 a.m. when Tamsin heard the sound of his car. She got out of bed and peeked through the shutters, feeling a pang as she spotted the familiar lean figure almost reeling with fatigue. Silhouetted against the moonlight, his expression was withdrawn and pinched. Stubble lined his jaw. She thought, this can’t go on. I have to get rid of this darkness, this crown of thorns. Not without some soul searching she’d reluctantly conceded to herself that her motive for marrying him—to secure a future for herself and Ruby—was, despite being packaged as true love, no less ignoble or calculating than his. A corner of her mind told her she was not, as she’d regarded herself, a helpless victim of a lying schemer. And as for a baby…maybe she ought to cut him some slack. She wavered between putting on a summer dress and slipping into a vampish satin negligee, then whipped off her cotton nightie, sprayed on the scent he liked best and settled herself down.
He came into the bedroom looking gaunt and very pale, undoing his cuff links. “You’re still up?” he murmured, surprised.
She held up a paperback, the book cover showing a masked man wielding an axe that dripped blood. “It’s about a serial killer. I can’t wait to see if they track him down.” Her heart was racing.
He smiled faintly. “Oh, I bet he gets his just desserts. God, what a day.” She’s working up to something, he thought, sensing the shift.
“Shall I get you something to eat? A soft drink, tea or something stronger?”
“No thanks. I’m good.” There was a moment in which she felt something would happen, but then he was abandoning her for the bathroom. He stood for a long time under a hot shower, emerging refreshed and smelling of something bracing. He lowered himself into the bed, slid in alongside her, realized she was naked. She’s caving in.
He switched off his bedside light and, feeling dead tired, closed his eyes. He’d not been lying there long when he felt her inch towards him and a cool, questing palm flattened on his belly.
The omens were good.
“I’m back,” she said softly.
“Yes.” He didn’t reciprocate.
“I missed you.” Her palm was sliding down to his cock. “I’ve ached for you in me,” she said, the urgency palpable.
He waited some more then started to stroke her pussy with two fingers. “Do you want this?”
“I want us to make love.”
He stopped and she gasped as if she’d lost something precious.
“Where is Lysistrata?”
“She has departed.”
“She wasn’t welcome.”
“She has gone for good.” Her exploring fingers wandered to the slit in his ass.
“Dolcezza.” Heat licked through him and he took her in his arms and kissed her. “The reality of marriage is that it’s painful and difficult, and compromise and empath
y have to be worked at to keep it going.”
Caressing her bare skin, teasing her with his tongue, he felt her mounting wetness, her coming apart. Then he was astride her, fitting his legs round her and kissing her all over till she was moaning and sucking his cock, sucking his juices. Then, swiftly sheathing himself, he was plunging inside her and moving in her till her voice rang out in blissful congress. He’d taken her to another place.
She felt like as if she’d been in a kayak that had swung over rapids and was now on calm, silver waters. She’d almost forgotten how sex could be. Wild, passionate, primitive, pleasure soaring, peaking.
“Has anything changed?” Tamsin whispered, burrowing her head in his chest.
“Honey, relationships are organic and of course they change. They’ve always been changing and always will—”
“I love you. That won’t change.”
“I do care about you. You think I don’t, but I promise I do, in my own way,” he murmured and, aroused, drew her into him. “And sex, regular sex, is the best thing for a healthy, functional relationship.” They made love over and over again that night—as if making up for lost time—and she felt she’d regained a future.
In the morning, he called his secretary to say he wasn’t coming in.
“I’ve got my wife back,” he said to Tamsin with evident relish, “and I want to make the most of my wife in every sense of the word. And you’re blushing. I like that.”
“Darling…”
“What are we waiting for? We’re starting over now.” He pulled her into his arms, his hardness brushing against her, making her come.
After luxuriating in a long shared shower, they whirled off on his motorbike—a form of transport he’d not used in ages—to a little lakeside village where, in a small but perfectly formed restaurant, they gorged on Burrata, zucca e nocciole which was fresh burrata cheese with pumpkin, hazelnuts and thyme, followed by coda di rospo, salsa di noci e capperi—a delicate roast monkfish garnished with walnuts, caper sauce and samphire—finishing with an irresistible banana e marron glacé millefoglie, gelato alla banana e noci—banana and marron glacé ice cream, washed down with white wine from Lombardy.
Alchemy (Siren Publishing Allure) Page 11
