Gino was standing at the end of the bed, staring at them both with a face full of shock and disillusion.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FOR a long moment Alex couldn’t move. Inwardly she was weeping. Dear Gino, so generous and affectionate, the last man she would ever want to hurt! But his face was telling her that he was stricken to the heart.
Rinaldo was sleeping with his head against her, his whole attitude that of a man who had come home to the place where he belonged. Her arms were about him in a way that would have told Gino how things were between them, even if nothing else did.
‘Gino!’ Her lips formed his name without sound.
Still he neither moved nor spoke, while his face seemed to grow paler every moment. Alex reached out a hand to him.
Then he moved, backing away to the door, his eyes, filled with bitter betrayal, fixed on his brother and the woman he loved.
Despairingly she gave Rinaldo a little shake, awaking him. When he saw his brother he tensed and gave a soft groan.
Gino had reached the door, shaking his head as though trying to deny what his eyes saw. Then he vanished.
He hurled himself out of bed, pulling on his jeans and racing to the door almost in one movement. Alex sat with her head in her hands, devastated by the sudden catastrophe, torn with anguish for Gino, who didn’t deserve to be hurt like this.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Please, no! Oh, Gino, Gino!’
Huddling on her clothes she went down to where Rinaldo had caught up with Gino in the room that led to the veranda. The tall windows had been thrown open, showing the low table, and the chairs where the three of them had spent happy evenings.
Gino was striding about the room, as though his pain was something he could leave behind. He turned when he heard Alex and she was shocked by his face.
It was as though all the youth had drained out of it, leaving it haggard and joyless. He looked from one to the other.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked. ‘It wouldn’t have been difficult, would it? Hell-the way you pulled the wool over my eyes, pretending to be enemies, letting me believe what I wanted. The only thing I don’t understand is why?’
His eyes were cold and hard as he faced Alex. ‘Did it give you some sort of pleasure to lead me by the nose?’
‘I didn’t-truly I didn’t-’
‘Don’t insult my intelligence, Alex. All this time-’
‘But it isn’t all this time. You talk about Rinaldo and me pretending to be enemies, but it wasn’t a pretence. When you’ve seen us quarrelling it’s been real.’
‘So what changed?’
‘Nothing changed,’ Rinaldo said quietly. ‘What we felt for each other was there all the time, but we didn’t know it. Or maybe we suspected, and were fighting it. I resented her at first, you know I did. I didn’t want to fall in love with her, but I couldn’t help myself because she’s a wonderful-’
‘I’m sorry,’ Rinaldo said. He seemed cast down in a way Alex had never seen before, and she realised that in his own way he too was devastated. He loved his brother, and it was tearing him apart to quarrel with him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I just hoped you’d understand-’
‘I understand all I need to,’ Gino said.
‘Gino, listen,’ Alex begged, ‘Rinaldo hasn’t taken anything that was yours. It was always going to be him. It took us both too long to realise it, but it’s as he says. There was something there between us right from the start. All the time we were quarrelling, we were falling in love as well.’
As she spoke she’d moved forward so that she was standing directly before Gino.
‘Please,’ she said softly, ‘please believe me, I’d do anything rather than hurt you.’
‘Would you? You could have warned me.’
‘But I didn’t know how you felt. You treat love as a game, and you play it so well that that’s all it seems.’
‘It started that way,’ he agreed, ‘but then I found I was really in love with you.’
‘I didn’t know,’ she said. ‘If I had-I could have told you earlier that I could never love you.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Not as you want, anyway,’ she said desperately.
He nodded. ‘Not as I want,’ he repeated softly.
‘What happened at the party-I would have prevented that if I could.’
Gino made a despairing gesture. ‘So I made a fool of myself in front of our neighbours. That’s not important.’
He looked at Rinaldo. ‘I came back here tonight to find you. I wanted to speak to you, ask your advice-there’s a laugh. And I’ll tell you another thing that’s funny. The one thing I never thought of was that I’d find her in your bed.’
‘I wish that had never happened,’ Rinaldo said gravely. ‘But Alex and I love each other, and we’re going to be married. I didn’t take her from you. The choice was hers.’
Alex hadn’t thought it possible for Gino to grow paler, but suddenly his face seemed to become grey, the grey of death.
‘Be damned to the pair of you,’ he said with soft violence, and strode out.
‘No,’ Rinaldo stopped her following. ‘He can’t bear the sight of either of us right now. When he calms down he’ll forgive us. But right now he needs to be alone, and we should respect that.’
Bleakly she nodded and let him lead her away. Together they climbed the stairs but at the top they paused, looking at each other. Then, as if by a signal, they went their separate ways. They couldn’t be together again tonight, not in the face of Gino’s anguished condemnation.
Alex went alone in her room and after a moment she heard Rinaldo’s door close.
It seemed strange to come down in the early morning and not find Gino there. His handsome, smiling face, his clowning and his kind heart had always been part of her pleasure in Belluna.
She did love him. Not as she loved Rinaldo, with a dark, burning passion, but with the tender affection of a sister. But he wanted so much more from her that the chasm was unbridgeable.
She went out onto the veranda, hoping against hope that she would see him. But the morning was quiet.
Then her eyes fell on the chair where he always sat. The jacket he’d worn the night before was tossed down there. Alex ran her fingers over it, thinking of him putting it on before the party, slipping the ring into the pocket, planning how he would propose to her. He’d been full of young, eager love, sure of being loved in return. And it had turned to heartbreak.
There was a clatter as something fell to the floor. It was the ring he’d tried to give her. She sat down heavily and leaned her head on her hands.
After a moment she heard Rinaldo, felt his hand on her shoulder.
‘That’s how I feel too,’ he said.
They sat together for a while, just taking comfort from each other’s presence.
‘Gino’s gone away,’ he said at last. ‘His car isn’t there, and some of his clothes are missing.’
‘But he’ll come back?’ she said quickly.
‘Of course he will. We just have to be patient. Everything will work out.’
Meeting his eyes, Alex saw that he didn’t believe it any more than she.
‘All these years,’ he sighed, ‘watching him grow up, being a second father to him, and now-dear God, what
