But he lay so still that he might already have gone into another world. At last, leaning down, she kissed him softly on the lips.
‘I love you,’ she whispered at last. ‘That’s all there is to say.’
Then she jerked back, startled. Had he moved?
She watched closely. It was true; he moved.
A sigh broke from him, and he murmured something.
‘What did you say?’ she asked. ‘Speak to me.’
‘Portia,’ he whispered.
‘What was that?’
After a moment, he repeated the word. ‘Portia-I’m so glad you’re here.’
She wanted to cry aloud in her despair. He didn’t know her. His brain was failing, as he’d feared. Whoever Portia was, she was there inside with him.
Slowly he opened his eyes.
‘Hello,’ he murmured. ‘Why are you crying?’
‘I’m not-I was just happy to have you back.’
He gave a sleepy smile. ‘You were calling me names-scheming, manipulative, dodgy. Never mind. My little friend will stand up for me.’
‘Your little friend?’ she asked, scarcely daring to breathe.
‘Our daughter. I’ve been getting to know her. I want to call her Portia. She likes it. Darling Ferne, don’t cry. Everything’s going to be all right.’
It took time to believe that his recovery was complete, for the news seemed too good to be true. But with every hour that passed Dante showed that his faculties were as sharp as ever.
‘We played fate at his own game,’ he told her. ‘And we won. Or, rather, you did. You were the player. Before you came, I never had the nerve to take that game on. Without you, I should never have had it.’
He touched her face.
‘I see you there so clearly, and everything around you; all the world is clear. I hadn’t dared to dream that this would happen.’
‘It’s what I always believed,’ she said.
‘I know, but I couldn’t be sure. There was always the chance that you might have had to put me in an institution.’
Ferne hesitated. It would have been so easy to let this moment slip past and be forgotten, but something impelled her to total honesty, whatever the risk.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I would never have done that.’
He frowned. ‘But you promised, don’t you remember?’
‘I know what I promised,’ she said calmly. ‘But nothing would have made me keep that promise. Even now I don’t think you begin to understand how much I love you. Whatever happened, I would have kept you with me. If you were ill, that would have been more reason to love you, but you were in no state to understand it then. So I had to practise a little deception.’
He looked stunned, as though the full power of her declaration was only just dawning on him.
‘But,’ he whispered at last, ‘you promised on everything you hold dear and sacred.’
‘I lied,’ she said calmly. ‘You wanted to be kept out of sight, so that’s what I would have done-but you would have been in our home, where the world couldn’t see you, but I could see you every day. Whether you were yourself, or whether your mind had gone, you would have been my husband and I would have loved you until the last moment of my life.’
Suddenly, shockingly, she found her temper rising. Why should she have to explain all this to him?
‘So now you know,’ she said. ‘I lied to you. I wanted to marry you so much, I’d have said and done anything. I made that promise without the most distant intention of keeping it, because I loved you with all of my heart and all of my
‘Can you see it now? Or are you just too proud and arrogant-and too
She waited to see if he would say anything, but he seemed too stunned to speak. Was she being foolish? she wondered. Was she risking their marriage for the satisfaction of getting this off her chest?
But she had no choice. If they were to stand a chance, the air must be clear between them.
‘So now you know the worst about me,’ she said. ‘I tricked you into marriage by deceit. I’m a shameless, dishonest woman who’ll do anything to get her own way.’
When at last Dante spoke, he said only two words, and they were the last words Ferne expected to hear.
‘Thank goodness!’
‘What was that?’
‘Thank goodness you’re a liar, my darling! Thank goodness you had the courage to be shameless and deceitful. When I think of the disaster that could have befallen me if you’d been truthful, I tremble inside.’
‘What-what are you talking about?’ she said, half-laughing, half-afraid to believe her ears.
‘I never felt I had the right to marry you, knowing what I might be leading you into. It was my way of setting you free. If you’d refused to promise, I’d have forced myself to refuse the marriage, although to be your husband was what I wanted with all my heart. In life, in death, or in that half-life I dreaded so much, I want you, and only you, to be there with me.
‘But that felt like selfishness. I demanded that promise because I believed I had no right to trap you and blight your life.’
‘But you could never blight my life,’ she protested. ‘You
‘I guess I’m just starting to. It seemed too much to hope that you should love me as much as I love you. I still can’t quite take it in, but I know this: my life belongs to you. Not only because we married, but because the life I have now is the life you gave me.
‘Take it, and use it as you will. It was you who drove the clouds away, and you who brings the sunlight. And, as long as you are with me, that will always be true.’
Two weeks later Dante was discharged from hospital, and he and Ferne went to spend a few weeks at the Villa Rinucci. Even when they returned to their apartment they lived quietly, the only excitement being the delayed wedding-breakfast, celebrated when the whole Rinucci family was present.
After that everyone held their breath for the birth of the newest family member. Portia Rinucci was born the next spring, a combination of her mother’s looks and her father’s spirit. At her christening, it was observed by everyone that it was her father who held her possessively, his face blazing with love and pride, while her mother looked on with fond tolerance, perfectly happy with the unusual arrangement.
If sometimes Ferne’s eyes darkened, it was only because she could never quite forget the cloud that had retreated but not completely vanished. As her daughter grew, it might yet darken their lives again-but she would face it, strengthened by a triumphant love and a happiness that few women knew.
Lucy Gordon
