‘Did I do the right thing today?’ Bernardo asked her anxiously.
She laughed and touched his face. ‘Isn’t it a little late to be asking me that?’
‘I was desperate. No matter how I asked, you said no, but I couldn’t bear to be without you. So I-forced you, I suppose.’
‘I could have refused.’
‘Not with the town’s population standing there determined to make us tie the knot. I used to think I was a brave man, until I had to get the whole of Montedoro to do my courting for me.’
‘And us,’ Lorenzo put in behind him, from where he’d been shamelessly eavesdropping.
‘Where would you be without your brothers?’ Renato demanded as he glided by with his wife in his arms.
‘And not just your brothers,’ Angie said. ‘I’m only guessing, but-’
‘Yes, I asked Baptista’s help and she gave it as freely as if I were one of her own sons.’
‘Doesn’t that tell you something?’ she asked as they returned to their table.
‘I suppose it does,’ he said thoughtfully. Sitting down, he noticed her father talking to Ella with great attention, his eyes fixed on her damaged face, until her mother gave him a shy smile and took the little girl away.
Dr Wendham leaned over towards his daughter. ‘I think I can do something for that child,’ he said quietly.
‘Yes, Dad-I’d hoped you’d be able to. I was going to ask you in my next letter,’ Angie replied in a low voice.
‘I’ll rely on you to set it up, then. Get the X-rays done in Palermo and send them to me. It’s probably best if I come over here to operate. Then I can visit you as well.’
‘And you send the bill to me,’ Bernardo said quickly.
Dr Wendham regarded him kindly. ‘My dear boy, one of the advantages of being a rich man is that you don’t have to charge people when you don’t want to. Now, who shall I dance with now?’
He was gone, and a moment later they saw him leaping about on the dance floor with the mayor’s wife.
Bernardo turned to Angie. ‘He will really do it for nothing?’
‘He does it all the time.’
His heart was in his eyes. ‘I was wrong about so many things.’
‘It doesn’t matter,
‘Yes,’ he said awkwardly.
‘It’s your decision, but I think you should tell Baptista everything.’
‘Is this the moment to take such a risk-?’
‘I don’t think you’ll find it a risk.’
‘Come with me. I can’t do it without you.’
Baptista was watching them as the new husband and wife rose together, and came over to her. His body stiff with tension, Bernardo sat beside her and took Baptista’s hand in his.
‘How can I thank you for what you have done for me, today?’ he asked gravely. ‘There are no words-’
‘But there is one word,’ she said. ‘All these years I have longed for you to accept a mother’s love from me-not forgetting your true mother, but loving me also. It was a happy day when you turned to me for help. I have always loved you as my son. If only you could simply believe that.’
Bernardo’s face was tortured. ‘But how could I accept your love, knowing that I had no right to it? There is something-if you had known the truth all these years-’
She regarded him tenderly. ‘What truth is that, my son?’
Bernardo gritted his teeth. ‘That I was responsible for your husband’s death. I ran away that day. I meant to come down here. I wanted to see where he lived, see his wife and his other family. I was jealous because my mother and I had to hide away. I never got here. I turned back. But in the meantime they went out to look for me in the car, and the car crashed, and they died.’
As he spoke he was forcing himself to look at Baptista’s face, waiting for the revulsion to appear in it. Instead, she only gave a little smile and said, ‘So that was it. Vincente couldn’t imagine why you’d vanished suddenly.’
‘You mean he spoke to you about it?’ Bernardo asked, thunderstruck. ‘But how could he? He was killed outright.’
‘Yes, but before he went out searching he called me to say that he would be late home because he and your mother had to find you,’ Baptista said.
‘You two spoke about me?’ he asked, astounded. ‘You knew?’
‘I knew about Vincente’s second family almost from the start. I asked him about it, not blaming him, but letting him know there was no need for lies. We talked frankly, like the friends we were, and after that he was always open with me. I knew when he visited you. Oh, my dear boy, does that shock you? Did you think I had learned only after his death? Vincente and I had no secrets.’
‘But you were his wife-’
‘The heart has room for many kinds of love. Your mother made him so happy. It was a kind of happiness I couldn’t give him, for he wasn’t in love with me, any more than I was with him.’ She turned fond eyes on Fede, sitting beside her. ‘Another man had been my great love. Vincente knew that.
‘My husband was my dearest friend, and as friends we loved each other. Once he made me promise that if anything happened to him, I would care for his other family. I gave him that promise gladly, and was proud to keep it-as far as you would let me keep it.’
Bernardo was very pale. ‘When you came for me that day-I thought you hated me.’
‘My dear, if you could have seen yourself-twelve years old, so certain that you were a man, determined not to cry. When I tried to take you in my arms you held yourself as stiff as a ramrod. I knew then that it was going to be hard, but I never dreamed that you would stay aloof from me all these years, refusing your father’s name, and your rightful portion of your inheritance.
‘I thought the time would come when we could talk. Sadly, it never did, but in my heart I have always loved you as a mother.’
‘But-I killed him,’ Bernardo persisted, as though unable to believe that any good could be his.
‘You were a child. Soon you will be a father. Will you blame your children all their lives for the accidents of childhood?’
Slowly Bernardo shook his head. ‘No-Mamma.’
At the longed-for word, Baptista’s smile was beautiful.
‘If-you can forgive-’ Bernardo said slowly.
‘It is you who must forgive-yourself. When you’ve done that, you’ll be ready to be a full member of this family- both you and your mother.’
‘I don’t understand. How can she-?’
‘As you know, the Martellis have a little private chapel in the cathedral. I plan to put a plaque up to the memory of Marta Tornese. Then she too will be one of us.’
Suddenly Bernardo found that he couldn’t speak. Baptista understood. Enfolding him in her arms, she met Angie’s eyes and a silent message passed between them. There were still rocks ahead on his road. Probably there would always be rocks. But he had the protection of two women who loved him, and he would make it.
‘Well,’ Baptista said, when she had released him and wiped her eyes, while he did the same, ‘it seems our family is growing bigger all the time. One wedding last year, one today, two children on the way, and-’ she paused dramatically and took Fede’s hand ‘-another wedding.’
A cheer went up. Baptista was looking at Bernardo for his reaction. She already knew that Renato and Lorenzo were glad for her, but Bernardo was the most puritanical of the three.
‘Do you mean,’ he asked her, ‘that this is-?’
‘My great love, the man I told you of. We are to be married at last.’
‘As you should always have been,’ Bernardo said.
‘Yes,’ Fede said, making one of his rare interjections, ‘as we should always have been.’
‘I am glad for you,’ Bernardo said, shaking his hand. ‘And for you, Mamma.’ He kissed her. ‘Recently, you’ve planned so many weddings for your children, it’s right that you should also plan one for yourself.’
‘I enjoy planning weddings,’ Baptista said irrepressibly. ‘And I’m certainly not finished yet.’
A silence fell. Suddenly Lorenzo became uncomfortably aware that all eyes were on him. He looked around in mounting alarm.
