Gino’s Arranged Bride

‘I told her how much you loved her. She didn’t believe me at first, so I read her your letter.’

‘Alex, you wouldn’t dare!’

‘My dear boy, I’d have done anything to stop you wandering around, treading on eggshells. Gino, it was all nonsense about that other man. She never loved him. She said so. She said a lot of other things too, but she’ll have to tell you herself. I’ve given you a start. The rest is up to you.’

Gino had come halfway up the stairs to her, his face a mixture of shock and wild hope. Now he turned to descend, then thought better of it and took the last few stairs in a leap.

‘Alex,’ he said, ‘Alex, my dear, dear sister!’

She kissed him. ‘Go on with you.’

‘But where can I find her?’

‘I meant go and get my bag.’

‘Yes, right.’

He went back down the stairs and out into the car. Rinaldo, who’d been watching from a doorway, mounted the stairs to his wife, his eyes warm as they rested on her.

‘What are you up to?’ he asked, suspicious and tender at the same time.

‘Up to? I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean that I saw your bag ten minutes ago.’

‘Did you?’ she said vaguely. ‘You must have imagined that.’

‘No, I didn’t imagine it. And I repeat, amor mio, what are you up to?’

Alex smiled.

‘I just thought that after what Laura did for us, it’s time we did something for her.’

Gino normally regarded himself as a man who was quick on the uptake, but he was within a couple of hundred yards of the house before it dawned on him that he’d been set up.

He stopped the car and sat there quietly, his eyes on the building, rearing up in the fast-gathering gloom. As he watched he saw a small light in one of the windows, as though someone had put on a lamp.

If you were superstitious, you might think that the ghost walked. Or, if you were a man in love, you might think that someone was waiting for you, impatient because you’d taken so long.

For a long time he hadn’t thought of himself as being in love with Laura, because their relationship had come about so strangely that they had missed out the romantic, mysterious stage.

Or perhaps he hadn’t wanted to admit the truth to himself.

But if you desired a woman so powerfully that her every movement was a delight and you woke up thinking of last night’s lovemaking, and spent the rest of the day looking forward to the next night-and if, in addition, you were moved by the longing to take all her troubles from her, so that the knowledge of her defencelessness could make your bones melt in your body-well, did you call that love?

And if, in your stubbornness and pride, and perhaps cowardice, you still refused to call it love, what else could you possibly find to call it?

Suddenly something came back to him: the night he’d returned home to the farm and found Alex in Rinaldo’s bed, both of them asleep. Rinaldo had rested against her breast, in the circle of her arms.

In the past Gino had flinched from that picture, but this time he looked at it head-on, and understood its true meaning for the first time.

Rinaldo had lain against her like a man seeking refuge, and there had been protectiveness in the way her arms curved about him, enfolding him in a circle of safety.

Rinaldo, the powerful, the harsh, the dominant, had turned to Alex because she was a strong woman, and offered him a refuge. Beneath the rough outer shell he was defenceless in ways only she had divined.

And he himself-Gino had only just understood-was precisely the opposite. His laughing, easy manner had always fooled people into thinking him boyish and unreliable. But, in truth, he was the stronger man.

Alex’s beauty and charisma had caused him misery, but he knew now that he would never have been happy with her. She was too independent to need him as he must be needed if he were to know peace and fulfilment.

But Laura’s vulnerability had spoken to him from the first moment, although it had taken time for him to understand. She could be strong and resourceful. The child’s birth had proved that. But for her daily life she needed the strength he had to offer, and his heart had chosen her because she called forth the better part of himself. They completed each other, just as Rinaldo and Alex completed each other. There could be no stronger union than that.

The light was still there in the window. Gino started the engine and drove the rest of the way. As he went into the house, he knew what he would find.

‘Hello,’ she said, smiling at him.

‘Hello,’ he said, gazing at her.

She was enchanting, her face illuminated by the glow of the lamp. When she put out her hand he took it in his, gently caressing her fingers with this own.

‘What is it?’ she asked when a sudden alert look came into his face.

He raised her right hand to study the thing that had caught his attention. It was a small filigree ring on the centre finger.

‘Nikki gave me that,’ she said. ‘She won it at a fair. You’ve seen it a thousand times before.’

‘Yes, but I never realised-’

And suddenly he was back in the hospital, rambling feverishly to the woman who sat with him, speaking in a warm voice, full of hope, saying ‘Time to forget and love again.’

He’d denied it, but she’d pleaded, ‘Suppose she loved you. Don’t you want to be loved as well as to give love?’

Then he’d drawn her hand closer and brushed his lips over it, feeling the rough outline of a ring on her finger.

A filigree ring.

‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ he asked now. ‘In the hospital, that time.’

‘Yes, it was me.’

‘Why did you never tell me?’

‘I couldn’t while you loved Alex so much.’

‘I thought I did. But you said such things to me while I was in that fever-about a woman who loved me as much as I loved her. Who did you mean?’

She shook her head. ‘You know who I meant.’

‘But I need to hear you say it. Tell me that you love me, Laura, please.’

‘I love you,’ she said simply. ‘I have for a long time. I always will.’

‘And I knew I loved you soon after we married,’ he admitted, ‘but I didn’t know how much. I had to come back and see Alex again to realise what a small part of my life she was. You are my life. My whole life, now and for ever. You and Nikki. The three of us.’

She placed his hand on her stomach. ‘Four,’ she said.

She put down the lamp quickly to go into his arms, and as they held each other tightly she felt the shadow between them finally pass away.

‘There’s so much I wanted to say to you,’ he said, ‘But I could never forget that you only married me for Nikki’s sake.’

‘I thought I did. I had to tell myself something like that, as a kind of protection. I was scared to admit how much I loved you, even to myself. I couldn’t believe that I really meant anything to you.’

He kissed her. ‘You were right when you said that I had to come back. You’re wiser than I. You knew the past had to be dealt with. Even though I loved you, it wouldn’t have been complete without this.’

He took her face between his hands, searching it anxiously. ‘What happens now?’

‘I called England this afternoon, to tell them they can buy the house. We can use the money to put this house in order.’

‘It’s all settled, isn’t it?’

‘It was settled before we arrived. Alex chose this place ages ago, but do you know why? Look.’