The Italian’s Cinderella Bride

face. That hesitancy had always been part of his charm. This was Gino, just as she recalled him.

And yet-something was different, something wrong, if only she could pinpoint it. There was no time to analyse it now. Her heart was beating with some emotion she didn’t understand. It was too much like fear.

Gino was looking puzzled, and she realised that he’d never seen her looking like this before.

‘Ruth? It is Ruth, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it’s me. Hallo, Gino.’

She had the sensation that her mind had split into several sections, each one working at full stretch, noticing something different. Gino stared as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Behind him was a young woman who might have been pretty if her make-up hadn’t been too lavish and her dress too tight. Above all Ruth was aware of Pietro, holding himself still and tense, watching them.

‘I want you to meet someone,’ Gino said with an awkward laugh. ‘This is Josie, my fiancee.’

He emphasised the last word, very slightly, and drew the girl forward, positioning her just in front of him, almost as though he wanted her to protect him. And that, of course, was exactly what he did want, Ruth thought.

She could almost have laughed aloud. For a while she had adored this man, thought the sun rose and set on him. Now he was afraid of her.

And in that moment she identified the subtle difference that had troubled her from the start. Gino looked shifty. The shiftiness was there in his eyes, in his smile. It was there in the fact that he could only face her with another woman to stand between him and trouble. It had probably always been there, had she not been too infatuated to notice it.

Behind the facade of the shining knight, he was a coward.

It was the word ‘coward’ that did it. Suddenly the world grew dark, shuddering around her.

‘Oh God!’ she screamed. ‘No, no, no!’

Dimly she could sense Pietro’s alarm, his look of horror as he rose and came to her. But his face faded, replaced by Gino, not as he was now, but as he’d been that night, handsome, shining, full of adoration for her before the world had fallen in on them.

‘No,’ she cried. ‘I don’t believe it-it can’t be true-’

Gino didn’t say a word. He only looked at her uneasily as his worst fears were realised.

‘You-’ she gasped ‘-you-you ran away and left me.’

She was back in the car park, and suddenly all the things that had been obscure were horribly clear. The thugs knocked her to the ground, kicking her. She screamed to Gino but he was running away as fast as he could. At the last moment he looked behind him, his face full of terror, then ran on faster than ever, abandoning her to her attackers. Then she passed out.

‘You left me to their mercy,’ she repeated slowly.

‘Ruth, what is it?’ Pietro was there, holding her, providing the one sure point in a disintegrating world, the way he always had.

‘When we were attacked in the cark park, he just ran away.’

‘That’s not true,’ Gino began to bluster. ‘I went to get help-you told me to-’

‘No, you saved your own skin,’ she said, staring at him as though seeing him for the first time, which, in a sense, she was.

‘You don’t know what happened-you don’t remember-’

‘I do now. It’s coming back. I could have died because you abandoned me. Get away from me.’

She cried out the last words because Gino had made a protesting gesture towards her. But Pietro was there, warding him off.

‘Stay away,’ he said firmly.

‘Look, it wasn’t as bad as she says-’

‘Yes, it was,’ Ruth choked. ‘I’m surprised you came to the hospital to see me even once-’

‘I-I had to find out how you were-’ he stammered.

‘No, you wanted to find out if I was safely dead, so that I couldn’t give you away. When I couldn’t remember anything you must have thought luck was with you. That’s why you dashed back to Italy so fast.’

‘I did what was best for you,’ Gino tried to plead. ‘It just upset you to see me around, so I left-for your sake.’

‘You lying, cheating jerk.’ The words burst from the girl at his side. ‘You told me she’d broken your heart.’

‘No wonder you’ve kept away this year,’ Pietro snapped. ‘You were afraid I’d find out what a worm you are, and fire you. And you were right to be afraid. The sooner you’re out of this place, the better. Get out and don’t let me see you again. Ever.’

‘Oh, now look-be reasonable-’

‘Reasonable?’ Pietro echoed savagely. ‘You think-’

‘No, Pietro, stop.’ Ruth laid a hand on his arm. ‘Forget it. Let it go.’

‘Let it go? After what he did to you?’

But the clouds that had descended on her so fast were retreating just as quickly in the face of the truth. She could stand up and speak strongly, still holding on to Pietro, but now as much to reassure him as to claim his support.

‘But it doesn’t matter, don’t you see?’ she said. ‘He doesn’t matter. It’s over. Finished. We’ve found out what we wanted to know, and we can take it from there.’

‘Are you quite sure?’ he asked, searching her face.

‘I was never more sure of anything in my life. I love you, and only you. Is everything all right now?’

‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘If it’s all right with you, then everything’s all right with me.’

He drew her close in a fervent embrace, and when they looked up again they were alone.

‘He’s gone,’ Pietro said.

‘So let him go.’

From somewhere deep in the building Josie’s voice floated back, ‘Just push off!’

And Gino’s answering, ‘If you’d just listen to me-ow! What did you do that for?’

‘What do you think?’

They faded to nothing.

‘I think she’s got his measure,’ Pietro observed.

‘Can you stop worrying now?’ Ruth asked tenderly.

He shook his head in wry self-understanding.

‘No, I’ve just got a new set of things to worry about. What will I do if you leave me, if you don’t love me, if you won’t marry me-?’

‘I can set your mind at rest about that one right now.’

‘Then I’ll find another one. Suppose I disappoint you, drive you away with my awkward behaviour-’ He checked, answered by her fond smile.

‘Just promise to be here always,’ he said. ‘Love me to the end, and I won’t ask anything else.’

‘There isn’t anything else,’ she said. ‘Nothing else in all the world.’ She touched his face. ‘I’ll have to teach you that.’

‘Teach me anything you like, as long as you’re here.’

‘As long as for ever,’ she said.

Carnival ended with fireworks set off from boats far out in the lagoon, while an orchestra played on land. It began at eleven o’clock and finished on the stroke of midnight, for that was the start of Lent, the time of repentance.

‘Not for me,’ Pietro said as they wandered back home, his arm about her. ‘No repentance, no regrets- ever.’

‘You can’t be sure of that,’ she reminded him.

He regarded her fondly. ‘Yes, I can.’

Now it was over. The crowds wended their way back to hotels and the next day most of them would be gone. Already Venice seemed to be growing quieter as they opened the side door of the palazzo, and found Toni waiting there with an expectant look.