The Venetian Playboy’s Bride

get tired of my uncle matchmaking, introducing me to women who look past me to the title. You were looking at me, or at least I thought you were, and I couldn’t resist making it last, just while we got to know each other.’ He gave a crack of laughter. ‘It’s nauseating isn’t it, like some idiot character in a fairy tale. There was me, delighted that you weren’t a fortune hunter, and all the time you thought that I was.’

‘You made it easy for me to think the worst. When I told you I was Lady Dulcie you went strange, as though it was important.’

‘It was. I couldn’t believe my luck in meeting someone that I could love and marry without my uncle giving me grief about it. I thought you were wonderful, the one honest woman in a world of schemers.’ He sighed. ‘Well, perhaps I should apologise for being unfair to you. It was unfair to put you on a pedestal, because if I hadn’t done that I’d probably have coped better when you fell off.’

Her anger began to stir. ‘Then it’s as well I fell off now, because sooner or later I’d have disillusioned you. Your dreams weren’t real Guido. I’m an ordinary woman struggling my way through the world as best I can. I make compromises, I don’t always behave well, but mostly I just do what I have to, whether I like it or not. I’m hemmed in by circumstances, like everyone else. Except you perhaps. You’ve got more freedom than anyone I know. Two lives, and you hop back and forth between them to please yourself, so you can’t have any sympathy with ordinary mortals.’

‘You don’t expect me to believe that Lord Maddox’s daughter really has to do this for a living?’

‘Yes, I do damned well expect you to believe it,’ she flashed. ‘Every penny my father had went on the “gee- gees” as he calls them, or on the tables at Monte Carlo. The estates are mortgaged up to the hilt and the bank is getting restive about the size of the overdraft. Marry me? You’d have had to be out of your mind. Dad would have touched you for a loan in the first five minutes, and if you’d been mad enough to say yes he’d have been back for more. You’re better off without me. So we do agree on something. In fact I reckon I’ve done you a favour.’

She walked on without waiting for his reply, and he had to run to catch her up and they walked awhile in silence. Overhead the laundry hung from lines strung between buildings. Above it the moon seemed to float behind the shirts and vests. Dulcie turned aside into a dark calle, finding her way more readily now. He’d called her a Venetian and perhaps she was becoming one, sure-footed when faced with confusion. At any rate she moved under the single lamp, and then away from it into the gloom.

‘But in the end, it’s not really about money at all,’ she said, her voice sounding mysterious as it whispered to him from the darkness. ‘I really took this job because I wanted to punish all men for Simon. I told you about him the first evening.’

‘The man you loved and thought you saw? That was real?’

‘Yes, that was real. I didn’t make him up. I told you we were going to come to Venice for our honeymoon, but what I didn’t tell you was that it was going to be the Vittorio, the Empress Suite. He had it all planned, with me paying the bills. He thought I was an heiress. When he discovered the truth he vanished.’

Guido murmured something that sounded like a Venetian curse. ‘And you came here, to that hotel?’

‘Roscoe was set on it, and I thought, “What the hell?” What does anything matter?’

‘He was here with you?’ Guido asked sharply. ‘In your mind, in your heart-?’

‘All the way across the lagoon from the airport,’ she agreed. ‘All the way down the Grand Canal and right into the suite. He was there when he shouldn’t have been, reminding me that he should have been there, and he wasn’t. Always his ghost, whispering in my ear that the whole world was nothing but a great con trick, and no man was anything but a deceiver. Turning Venice into a huge, bitter joke, when it should have been so lovely-’ She broke off, overwhelmed with anguish at the thought of how lovely this man had made Venice for her, how lovely he could have made the whole world.

But she had lost him, and now she was tossing her last chance away with her own hands. It was suddenly impossible to do anything else.

Guido sensed rather than saw her emotion and took an involuntary step towards her, but she backed away, fending him off. She needed all her strength to force herself to do what was best for both of them. He stood helplessly, listening to her choked breathing in the dim light.

‘He was a pig,’ he said at last. ‘You’re well rid of him.’

She gave a high, hysterical laugh. ‘That’s just what I thought, but here’s the joke. I’ll never be rid of him. He changed me. Men don’t look the same now. I keep trying to see behind their eyes to discover what lies they’re telling. When Roscoe told me what he wanted me to do I was glad. There! You want the truth, and that’s it! Ugly, isn’t it? Like me, deep inside.’

‘I never said-’

‘I know what I’m really like. You’re only just finding out the worst. I was glad of the chance to hunt down and punish a man like Simon, a man who deceived a woman for her money and abandoned her when she had none.’

‘And you were sure I was like this, on Roscoe’s say so?’

‘I saw you through the distorting lights that Simon put there. I can’t get rid of those lights, and they make all men look suspicious. I guess they always will now. I am as I am. It’s done. I can’t change back.’

‘And these were your thoughts all the time we were together,’ he whispered in horror.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Not all the time. When you were looking after me everything became very confused.’

‘And you couldn’t tell me then?’

‘How could I? I thought you were Fede, and I began to think Jenny was lucky. And then I learned the truth and it was too late. I’d ruined everything, hadn’t I? Hadn’t I?’

He couldn’t answer.

She was shaking with anguish as she forced the truth out. ‘I’ve turned into someone you can’t love. I guess I can’t blame you for that. You loved an illusion. The real me isn’t really very loveable. She’s hard and cynical-’

He became angry. ‘Don’t say that about yourself.’

‘Why not? It’s what you’ve been saying to yourself about me these last few days. I couldn’t make you happy, I see that now.’ She gave a harsh, self-condemning laugh that fell painfully on his ears. ‘I hated Simon so much, but it was for the wrong reasons. The real injury he did me-isn’t it funny?-is to make me just like him. Do you know the saying, “Never trust a mistrustful man-or woman”? I can’t trust, and so I can’t be trusted.’

‘Dulcie,’ perversely, now that she’d turned on herself, he felt the urge to defend her. But she warded him off, driven by the need to put her thoughts into words.

‘We can’t alter anything now, and why should we try?’ she asked passionately. ‘It wouldn’t work. You’d never really feel you knew me, or could trust me, and how could we love each other like that?’

‘You tell me,’ he said, almost pleading with her. ‘Columbine is the one with all the answers.’

‘She doesn’t know the answer to this riddle. I don’t think there is one. Maybe, in the end, I’m better off without you. I’m sorry if I hurt you, Guido, but I also think you’re suffering from damaged pride.’

‘You really think it’s my pride that’s been speaking?’ he asked, his voice growing angry again.

‘A lot of the time. Underneath all those smiles you don’t forgive easily. You believe that masks are only for you. When someone else uses them your world falls in. Pride. Well, I have pride too. It’s finished. Tomorrow night belongs to Jenny and Fede, so we’ll say our goodbyes now.’

‘Oh, will we? Maybe I have something to say about that.’

‘You’ve already said all I’m prepared to listen to. You win some and you lose some. I lost but there are other games to play.’

She saw his eyes gleam. ‘Lining up your next victim, Dulcie?’

She was about to say that there could be nobody after him, but checked the impulse. That was weakness.

‘Maybe,’ she said defiantly. ‘Once I’ve left Venice it won’t matter to you what I do. But I’ll say this before I go.’

She pulled his head down to her with a swift movement that took him by surprise. She took full advantage of that surprise, putting her arms about him, drawing his body close to hers. After a moment his arms went about her, but it was still her kiss. She was the one who took it deeper, teasing him with subtle movements against his mouth, reminding him of everything he’d thrown away.

‘Dulcie…’