The Venetian Playboy’s Bride

by Lucy Gordon

  She found the little alley and almost walked past no: 36. The door was dark and easy to miss. She hesitated before knocking, suddenly shy. From inside she could hear sounds of movement, cheerful voices, laughter. She knocked.

  The door was opened by Guido.

  For a moment they stared at each other. Dulcie found no softening in his face, only a dismay as great as her own.

  ‘I came to see Fede,’ she said at last. ‘Is he here?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said briefly, and stood aside for her to pass.

  ‘Who’s that?’ came a hearty female voice from deep in the house.

  The next moment its owner came into view. She was large, middle-aged and had a ruddy, smiling face, flushed from cooking.

  ‘Ciao!’ she boomed.

  ‘This lady is English, Maria,’ Guido said. ‘She wants to see Fede.’

  ‘Aha! You know my son?’

  ‘A little,’ Dulcie said hastily. ‘I have a letter for him, from Jenny.’

  Maria screamed with delight. ‘You are a good friend. I am Maria Lucci.’

  ‘I’m Dulcie,’ she gasped, swallowed up in the woman’s embrace.

  ‘Si. I know. Lady Dulcie.’

  ‘No,’ she said hastily. ‘Just Dulcie.’

  Maria bawled, ‘Fede!’ and urged Dulcie towards an inner door. ‘You go through there. We just start eating. You eat with us.’

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t want to intrude,’ she said hastily. It was unnerving to have Guido standing there in silence. ‘I’ll just give him the letter and go.’

  ‘No, no, you eat with us,’ Maria insisted. She stomped away, bawling something in dialect that Dulcie guessed was a demand for an extra chair.

  ‘You have to stay,’ Guido said quietly. ‘When a Venetian family asks you into their home it’s an honour. We’re not like the English who just go through the forms.’

  ‘But you don’t want me to stay, do you?’ she challenged.

  ‘That means nothing. This isn’t my home.’

  ‘No, you never honoured me with an invitation to your home.’

  ‘But I did. I took you to my real home, the home of my heart. There I thought I began to know your heart, which only proves what a fool I am.’

  Dulcie was in despair. Where was the man she’d found so easy to love? Vanished, replaced by someone with a steely core. But he must always have been there, beneath the bright surface. It had taken herself to bring him out.

  Fede appeared in a rush. ‘Mama says you have a message for me.’

  Dulcie gave it to him. He read it in a blaze of joy, and kissed the paper. Then he kissed Dulcie.

  ‘Grazie, grazie, carissima Dulcie.’ He glanced quickly at Guido, ‘I kiss her like a brother-you don’t mind-’

  ‘Not a bit,’ Guido said with a grin that would have fooled anyone but Dulcie. Now she was alive to his every nuance, and knew that his charming manners were one of the masks with which he protected himself.

  ‘Come and eat,’ Maria yelled from down the passage.

  ‘I can’t,’ Dulcie protested.

  ‘Maria will be hurt if you don’t,’ he said.

  ‘But Mr Harrison wants me back-’

  It was the wrong thing to say. Guido’s mouth twisted in a mirthless grin.

  ‘The man with money snaps his fingers and you go running. Yes sir, no sir, shall I break another life for you today, sir?’

  ‘I haven’t broken any lives.’

  ‘How would you know?’ he flashed in a voice that startled her with its bitterness, and for a moment she caught a glimpse of real pain beneath his anger. She gazed at him in the dim light, shocked to realise just how much she had hurt him. A broken life? This rich playboy who pleased himself? What could possibly touch him?

  ‘Guido-’

  She reached out her hand and in another moment she would have touched him, but then Maria yelled from the garden and he called back, ‘She’s just coming.’

  His hand was on Dulcie’s arm, gentle but insistent, and again she had the sensation of steel. He wasn’t asking her, he was telling her.

  The way out led to a small garden with two long tables in the centre, decorated with flowers. It was dusk, and small glasses containing candles were laid along the tables, so that on each side the faces of the Lucci clan glowed. Dulcie tried to keep up as she was introduced to Poppa, his two brothers, his three elder sons, his daughter, her husband, and various children. By that time she’d lost track.

  To her embarrassment she was greeted as a heroine by everyone: Fede’s friend, doing all she could to bring him together with Jenny. Since there was no way of explaining what had really happened she was forced to endure it in silence.

  Fede was sitting at the end of the table. Eagerly he grasped Dulcie’s hand and took her to a seat at right angles to his own. Guido seated himself facing her.

  ‘Tell me how Jenny is,’ Fede begged. ‘Does she miss me? Is she as unhappy apart as I am?’

  She told him as much as she could, stressing how much Jenny loved him.

  ‘Grazie,’ he said fervently. ‘While we have friends like you and Guido I know there is still hope.’

  ‘Be careful, Fede,’ Guido said sharply. ‘Have you forgotten that Dulcie came here to ruin you?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that-’ she protested.

  ‘Of course it wasn’t,’ Fede said at once. ‘You were deluded by the Poppa, and you are our friend now, that’s all that matters.’ He clapped Guido on the shoulders. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Not everyone is as generous and forgiving as you, Fede,’ Dulcie said impulsively. ‘Jenny’s very lucky to have such an understanding man.’

  ‘No, no, it’s I who am lucky.’ Suddenly he clasped her hands. ‘Dulcie, you don’t believe that I’m a fortune hunter, do you?’

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ she said warmly, clasping his hands back and smiling into his face with as much reassurance as she could. ‘I know everything’s going to work out for you, because when two people really love each other, it has to. It can’t just end. It can’t.’

  She wondered if Guido was listening, and hearing the message she was trying to send him. Glancing up, she saw him watching her from across the table, but the glow from the candles masked his eyes.

  There seemed an endless line of dishes; pasta, followed by fish, followed by veal, followed by sweet cakes. Dulcie ate heartily, which won the approval of everyone there, even Guido.

  ‘Will you tell Jenny that I shall be waiting for her tomorrow night?’ Fede begged.

  ‘Are you going to be at the ball?’ she asked.

  ‘Not officially,’ Guido said. ‘But he’ll be there.’

  ‘Guido has promised to make all well, with your help,’ Fede said. ‘By this time tomorrow all our problems will be over.’

  He bounced up out of his seat and went to help his mother at the far end.

  ‘What mad promises have you made?’ Dulcie said to Guido across the table.

  He slid round into Fede’s seat. ‘Not mad promises at all. What I say I do, I’ll do.’

  ‘You’ve filled those two up with false hopes, but remember, Harlequin isn’t as clever as he thinks. He’ll overreach himself and fall flat on his face.’

  ‘Not with Columbine’s help. She always picks him up and remembers the things he’s forgotten.’

  ‘Don’t count on Jenny.’

  ‘I didn’t mean Jenny.’

  ‘But I’m going to be Cleopatra, didn’t your shop assistant tell you?’

  ‘Yes. A good choice. Very eye catching. Roscoe will never know that it isn’t you in the costume any more.’

  ‘And what will I be doing?’

  ‘I’d have thought you could have worked it out by now. You slip away and change into another Columbine costume.’

  ‘It’s mad,’ she breathed.

  ‘Just mad enough to work.’

  He’d put his head close to hers so that his breath whispered against her face. His eyes glinted. He wasn’t reconciled to her, but her n
earness affected him, as his did her. The others at the table had drawn away, smiling at these two lost in their own world.

  Guido took her hand in his and looked down at it, while she felt him tremble and sensed the indecision that wracked him. Her heart ached. In a few hours she would have lost him forever unless she could find a way past the barrier he’d put up against her. And something told her that she was no nearer to her goal. He was having a moment of weakness, but he was a stronger and more stubborn man than she would ever have believed.

  More of a challenge, she thought, as the gambler’s instinct flared in her. But when he was gone from her life, the desolation would be the greater. She wouldn’t think of that now. There was everything to play for.

  Gathering all her courage she leaned forward and laid her mouth on his, feeling his shock, and his fleeting determination to resist her. Another moment and she knew that the gamble had paid off. His mind was telling him to draw back, but he couldn’t do it. She’d taken him by surprise and won the first trick.

  ‘Stop this,’ he murmured against her lips.

  ‘You stop it,’ she told him. ‘Tell me you don’t love me.’

  ‘I don’t-’

  ‘Liar,’ she said silencing him.

  After a long, intense moment she drew back a little, but not far because his hand was behind her head. His eyes, close to hers, were burning with resentment at how easily she could play on him, but still he held her face close to his. Far off she could hear applause as the family enjoyed what was happening. But the two at the end of the table weren’t lovers as everyone thought. There was a deadly duel going on, with no quarter asked or given.

  ‘Don’t do this, Dulcie.’

  ‘I will. I don’t think you’ll push me away in front of everyone.’

  ‘Don’t gamble on that.’

  ‘You forget I come from gambling stock. I know more about odds than you do.’

  ‘The odds are all in my favour. You can’t win.’

  ‘If you love me one tenth as much as you said you did, I can’t lose.’

  ‘I don’t love you.’

  ‘I say you do,’ she countered.

  ‘Is this how it has to be with you? Complete surrender? But you’ve already had that once. Remember that morning I came to the Vittorio and said you were my life, begged you to forgive me for concealing my identity? And all the time you knew the truth, yet you let me burble on.’

  ‘Because I loved what you were saying,’ she said passionately. ‘Because I loved you. I remember the other things you said, too, about the years we’d spend together. It sounded wonderful.’

  ‘Sure, it meant you’d done your job well. What satisfaction it must have given you to have me at your feet! Be satisfied with that, without trying to get me there again. Leave your victim a little dignity.’

  ‘The hell with dignity. Look how I’m risking mine. What am I supposed to do after tomorrow night, Guido? Walk off into the sunset and spend my life in memories of a man too stupid and stubborn to see when a woman’s in love with him? I told you once before, I’m not like that.’

  ‘What are you like? How am I ever supposed to know?’

  ‘Why don’t you find out?’

  ‘And be made a fool of again?’

  The words were barely out when his lips were on hers. He wanted to quarrel with her and he wanted to make love to her, and he didn’t know which one he wanted more. Then she would show him, she thought, moving in a little closer, and sensing her victory.

  For a moment she thought he would fight her, but he couldn’t make himself do it. He was shaking as he slipped an arm about her shoulders, drawing her close, increasing the pressure of his mouth on hers, kissing the breath out of her. He was furious and bitter and it was all there in the way his lips moved over hers. Yet she sensed that he wasn’t only angry with her, but also with himself for being unable to resist her.

  Cries of appreciation went up around them but neither heard. Dulcie’s heart was beating strongly, with love tinged with victory. He was still hers whether he wanted to admit it or not.

  Her phone rang.

  She said a very unladylike word.

  Guido drew back as if shot, breathing hard and looking at her with burning eyes. Dulcie switched the phone off without answering but it was too late, the moment was gone.

  ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ Guido said. ‘Your employer will be angry.’

  ‘To blazes with my employer. After tomorrow I’ll enjoy never seeing him again.’

  ‘Don’t be hard on him. He did me a favour.’

  Dulcie was shaking with suppressed passion and frustration at how everything had been snatched away at the last moment. Tears filled her eyes but she forced them back, determined to show no sign of weakness in front of him.

  ‘I’d better be going,’ she said.

  She went round the family, saying her goodbyes and promising Fede that she would tell Jenny how much he loved her. Maria escorted her to the door, and there, to her surprise, she found Guido.

  ‘I’ll come part of the way with you,’ he said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  S HE half expected Guido to make an excuse to leave her as soon as they were out of the door, but he walked along with her for a while. He’d recovered himself now, and was on his guard.

  ‘That was a terrible thing to say,’ Dulcie said at last. ‘That Roscoe did you a favour.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.’

  ‘Much I care about that!’ she cried. ‘That’s not what this is about! We could still have it all.’

  ‘If only that was possible!’ he said at last. ‘You know how much you tempt me. But it’s no use.’

  ‘Why are you so determined to hold out against me?’ she asked passionately.

  ‘Yes, I’m making a fuss about nothing, aren’t I? Why should a man care if he meets his ideal and she turns out to be deceiving him for money?’

  ‘Ideal?’ she whispered, not certain that she’d heard right.

  ‘It’s a laugh, isn’t it? I thought I was so street smart. Alive to every trick. Boy, was I kidding myself!’

  ‘And that’s why you hate me?’

  ‘I don’t hate you. Hating is a waste of time. It’s just that you don’t look the same any more, and I wish you did. The trouble with Fool’s Paradise is that it’s so beautiful, especially after you’ve been shut out. You long to find a way back in, to convince yourself that you don’t know what you do know. Believe me, I’ve spent the last few days trying to get back into Paradise, even if it’s only the Fool’s kind. Because it’s the sweetest thing that’s ever happened to me, or ever will.’

  ‘To me too,’ she said wistfully. ‘Is there really no way back?’

  ‘Do you think I wouldn’t have found it by now?’

  ‘It could all have been so different, if we’d met another way.’

  ‘The truth is,’ he said wryly, ‘that you have the soul of a Venetian. Tricky as they come. All the time we’ve known each other you’ve been wearing a mask.’

  ‘Not all the time,’ she urged. ‘Only at the beginning.’

  ‘All the time,’ he repeated. ‘When you seemed to be removing the mask you were merely changing to another. Why, you have a whole armoury of them. And who should understand that better than me?’

  ‘I’m not the only one. You could have told me who you were from the beginning.’

  ‘And I should have done, but I was looking at you, falling in love with you on the spot. What did names matter? I thought you were the most dazzling girl I’d ever seen and nothing else registered. Then it was too late. Besides, I get tired of my uncle matchmaking, introducing me to women who look past me to the title. You were looking at me, or at least I thought you were, and I couldn’t resist making it last, just while we got to know each other.’ He gave a crack of laughter. ‘It’s nauseating isn’t it, like some idiot character in a fairy tale. There was me, delighted that you weren’t a fortune hunter, and all the time you thought that
I was.’

  ‘You made it easy for me to think the worst. When I told you I was Lady Dulcie you went strange, as though it was important.’

  ‘It was. I couldn’t believe my luck in meeting someone that I could love and marry without my uncle giving me grief about it. I thought you were wonderful, the one honest woman in a world of schemers.’ He sighed. ‘Well, perhaps I should apologise for being unfair to you. It was unfair to put you on a pedestal, because if I hadn’t done that I’d probably have coped better when you fell off.’

  Her anger began to stir. ‘Then it’s as well I fell off now, because sooner or later I’d have disillusioned you. Your dreams weren’t real Guido. I’m an ordinary woman struggling my way through the world as best I can. I make compromises, I don’t always behave well, but mostly I just do what I have to, whether I like it or not. I’m hemmed in by circumstances, like everyone else. Except you perhaps. You’ve got more freedom than anyone I know. Two lives, and you hop back and forth between them to please yourself, so you can’t have any sympathy with ordinary mortals.’

  ‘You don’t expect me to believe that Lord Maddox’s daughter really has to do this for a living?’

  ‘Yes, I do damned well expect you to believe it,’ she flashed. ‘Every penny my father had went on the “gee-gees” as he calls them, or on the tables at Monte Carlo. The estates are mortgaged up to the hilt and the bank is getting restive about the size of the overdraft. Marry me? You’d have had to be out of your mind. Dad would have touched you for a loan in the first five minutes, and if you’d been mad enough to say yes he’d have been back for more. You’re better off without me. So we do agree on something. In fact I reckon I’ve done you a favour.’

  She walked on without waiting for his reply, and he had to run to catch her up and they walked awhile in silence. Overhead the laundry hung from lines strung between buildings. Above it the moon seemed to float behind the shirts and vests. Dulcie turned aside into a dark calle, finding her way more readily now. He’d called her a Venetian and perhaps she was becoming one, sure-footed when faced with confusion. At any rate she moved under the single lamp, and then away from it into the gloom.

  ‘But in the end, it’s not really about money at all,’ she said, her voice sounding mysterious as it whispered to him from the darkness. ‘I really took this job because I wanted to punish all men for Simon. I told you about him the first evening.’