Bride By Choice

think. All right, I was thoughtless, but I love you. Isn’t that enough?’

‘No, it’s not enough,’ she said wildly. ‘You treated me with contempt.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Oh, you don’t think it’s treating me with contempt to conceal from me something that everyone else knew, letting them laugh at me, pity me, counting on me not finding out until too late? No, of course you don’t. Because that’s how a Sicilian man behaves, isn’t it?’

‘Will you stop talking like that?’ he roared. ‘All that prejudice of yours is damned silly.’

‘No, it isn’t, it’s true. I thought you were different, but you’re not. And my prejudices, as you call them, are based on reality. The little woman is entitled to know exactly what he tells her and no more. If even you can behave like that, I was right all the time.’

‘All right, I should have told you, but it’s so far in the past-’

‘Little more than a year ago.’

‘It’s still over.’

He was a creature of the moment, she realised with despair. What was over was over, whether it was one year or ten.

‘Heather and I weren’t right for each other-’ he began to say.

‘You must have loved her once or it would never have got as far as a wedding.’

Lorenzo tore his hair. Analysing people, especially himself, came hard to him, and the effort was doing his head in. But he tried his best. ‘I thought I did,’ he said. ‘I was wrong.’

‘Oh, you changed your mind just like that, and left her standing there to be laughed at.’

‘That wedding was a terrible mistake. Heather and I didn’t love each other.’

‘Didn’t you? Are you sure you didn’t regret it afterwards? She was very convinced you two still had a yen for each other, maybe still do-’

‘She? Who?’

‘Sara. She was a maid here when it happened. And later, she took the call when Heather dashed to England to be with you, although she was married to Renato by then-’

‘Sara? Mio Dio!’ He threw up his hands. ‘So that’s it. Heather dismissed her for stealing. She must have had a wonderful time getting her revenge.’

‘You mean it’s not true? You didn’t leave Heather at the altar?’

‘Yes, I did, and I’m ashamed of it, but if you’d just let me explain-’

‘It’s too late for that. You should have told me earlier, and not left me to find out from someone else. What were you thinking of?’

‘I was thinking of you,’ he said simply. ‘Just you. You drove everything else out of my head. Maybe I should have remembered the past and realised, but-’ he shrugged ‘-I suppose I just assumed that our love was so special that it could overcome everything.’

She turned away swiftly, not to let him see that this affected her. It was less his words than his tone, suddenly gentle and almost bewildered, that touched her heart. But she fought the tears back. He’d always known how to make her weaken, but she couldn’t afford to weaken now.

Lorenzo took hold of her, drawing her close although her head was still averted from him.

‘Listen to me, darling, I was wrong. I’m sorry, but I love you more than anything in the world. It’s not too late. If we go back to the cathedral now, we can still be married. People will think it strange, but let them. If we love each other-’

‘Stop it, stop it!’ she cried, wrenching herself free. ‘I can’t simply turn the clock back like that. You talk about love, but what is your love worth? How long does it last? You changed your mind about Heather. What about when you change your mind about me, Lorenzo? It’s not so easy after the wedding, but I’m sure you’d have found a way to do as you pleased.’

His face had been pale before, but at this it became a greyish colour, as though he were dying. ‘Be careful what you say,’ he whispered.

‘Why? Should I be afraid of you?’

‘No, I think perhaps you should be afraid of you. You’re on the verge of saying things that will make it impossible for us ever to find our way back to each other.’

‘There is no way back. I made a mistake. Luckily I saw it in time.’

He put his hand over her mouth. ‘Hush. Don’t talk like that, Elena. For pity’s sake, leave us some hope.’

‘Don’t call me Elena. She’s someone else, someone you can manipulate because she’s stupid. And I have been stupid, haven’t I? Everything about our marriage suddenly fell into place so neatly-too neatly. It was always obvious but I wouldn’t see it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look me in the eye and tell me you had nothing to do with me getting that job at the hotel.’

‘What on earth-?’

‘Tell me.’

He took a deep breath. ‘I called Erik and suggested you were ideal to work there, but you are. Axel Roderick wouldn’t have given you the job otherwise.’

‘But you did call him and fix me up with a job in Sicily-to suit yourself?’

He stared. ‘If you want to put it like that. I just thought I was taking care of the problems. I knew you still wanted your career, and this way you could still have it and marry me.’

‘You manipulated it,’ she repeated. ‘You wanted me, so you pulled all the right strings.’

‘Yes, I wanted you,’ he shouted. ‘I’d have done anything to get you to marry me. You make it sound like a crime.’

‘I just wonder what would have happened when it suited you to make me leave my job and stay at home all day. More string-pulling, and suddenly I wouldn’t have a choice.’

‘You really believe that I’d do that to you?’ he asked, aghast.

‘I don’t know. I told you, I don’t know you any more. All I know is that I walked right into something I always promised myself I’d avoid. There are too many unanswered questions. You say Sara was being spiteful, but it’s true about you and Heather. You are very close. I’ve seen it, but I thought it was just brother and sister-’

‘So it is! What the hell are you suggesting. That Heather and I-?’

‘What happened when you went to England and sent for her to join you, and she promised to be with you that night?’

There was a long silence. As it stretched on and on she knew that she’d made a dreadful mistake. Lorenzo looked like a man who’d received a mortal blow. Before her eyes he grew older, wearier. It was there in his face that he’d given up on something. Given up on her? On hope? On love?

‘If you’ve been thinking that of me,’ he said at last, ‘then I’m surprised you got as far as the altar.’

‘I kept hoping to talk to you-that we might clear it up-’

‘Talk? Between me and the woman who thinks I slept with my brother’s wife? How you must have despised me all this time. What is there to talk about?’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘What could we say to each other, you and I?’

‘Nothing,’ she said dully.

He stared at her in a kind of horror. ‘You never understood how much I loved you. It happened right from the start but I wouldn’t face it because I knew you didn’t want me. All that friendship talk was just a cover for the fact that I was off my head about you. I thought about you non-stop. I thought about you when I should have been working.

‘I nearly went crazy when I had to leave New York. I was jealous as hell of Erik. I kept wanting to beg you not to marry him because you belonged to me. Yes, belonged to me. Mine. Nobody else’s. I’m a Sicilian, and that’s how we think. Sorry about that, but it’s true. It’s not modern, not liberated. It’s Sicilian. If you marry me, you belong to me. But what you never thought of was that I belonged to you. In my heart and mind I was yours, your property to do as you liked with. I’d have done anything you asked, anything at all. I’d have lain down and invited you to walk over me if it made you happy. And, be honest, Helen, that’s a damned sight more than you could ever say.’