The Venetian Playboy’s Bride

‘But you didn’t know she threw it,’ Columbine reminded him. ‘You thought it was fate but actually it was her. I think she was dreadful, deceiving you like that.’

‘But she didn’t deceive me,’ Guido said earnestly. ‘Not if you look at it the right way. Dulcie and I were always destined to be together, so when she threw that sandal she was only doing what fate demanded. And when I let her think I was Fede, that was fate too, because that way she saw me. Not a Calvani with a palace and a title at his back, but just a man falling in love with her.’

He wondered if Columbine would speak, but she danced in his arms, gazing intently at him, as if she were waiting for something. He was several inches taller, and from this angle he could see little of her lower face, because the lace of the mask blocked his vision. But he could see her green eyes, and a strange feeling began to creep over him.

‘I’ll make her listen to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll remind her what it was like during those days we spent together, because that’s when we were most truly ourselves. She was so-’ he hunted for the word, not easy for him, a man not used to analysing ‘-so surprised. As though nobody had ever taken care of her before.’

‘That’s very clever of you,’ Columbine said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think anyone ever really has. The rest of her family were so irresponsible that she couldn’t afford to be. She had to grow up too fast and she’s been lonely all her life, but people don’t see it.’

‘I once told her that masks could make people free to be their real selves,’ Guido said. ‘Now I think maybe your real self can come as a surprise. I’m not who I thought I was.’

‘Who are you, Guido?’ Columbine asked earnestly. ‘Do you know now? And do you know who she is?’

‘I’m the man who loves her, come what may,’ he said.

‘But is she the woman who loves you? Suppose she doesn’t?’

‘She must, even if I have to spend the rest of my life convincing her.’

Columbine smiled as though she’d discovered a secret treasure. But instead of answering him directly she said, ‘Someone’s trying to attract your attention.’

Guido saw two Harlequin figures beckoning him from the window that led into the garden. He murmured something to Columbine and followed to where Leo and Marco were waiting for him.

‘It all went like clockwork,’ Leo said from behind his mask. ‘We delivered Jenny to the church, Fede was waiting for her with his family, and they’re probably married by now.’

‘But Jenny’s still here,’ Guido said thoughtfully. The strange, haunted feeling was back. ‘I was just dancing with her.’

‘Jenny was with us.’

‘Then who-?’ He remembered now. Jenny’s eyes were blue.

Dazed, he returned to the ballroom, looking this way and that, searching for Columbine. But, like an elusive ghost, she’d vanished.

Suddenly there seemed to be a thousand Columbines, and none of them was the right one.

What he was thinking couldn’t be true, he told himself. It was a mental aberration. But while his head might be muddled his heart had never been more clear. He knew everything now. Or at least, Harlequin knew what Columbine thought it was good for him to know.

He spotted her at last, drinking champagne and talking to Leo, who’d removed his mask. Suddenly inspired, he made sure his own mask was in place, and bore down on them.

‘You’d better keep out of Guido’s way,’ he said, clapping his brother on the shoulder. ‘That little revelation has put him on the warpath.’

‘So I saw,’ Leo said, studying him cautiously. ‘Marco?’

‘Sure, I’m Marco, and I’m about to ask this lady to dance.’ He slipped his arm firmly around Columbine’s waist, and glided with her onto the floor. Her eyes were on his face, laughing, not fooled one little bit.

‘So Guido’s annoyed?’ she asked provocatively. ‘Serve him right!’

‘Don’t be so hard on him,’ Guido said. ‘He’s not a bad fellow.’

‘He’s a clown and someone should take him in hand and reform him.’

‘You can do that when you’re married.’

‘Me? Marry him?’ Columbine sounded shocked. ‘Never!’

‘You’ve got to marry him,’ Harlequin said urgently. ‘You can’t leave him running amok the way he is. Think of the family reputation. Besides, he’s madly in love with you. I know he hasn’t been clever about it, but you can be clever for both of you. After all, you’re really in love with him too, aren’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t abuse him so much.’

‘Never mind about Guido,’ Columbine said, looking at her partner’s mouth and thinking how badly she wanted to kiss it. ‘After all, he isn’t very interesting.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘I’ve never thought so,’ she said with a fair assumption of indifference. ‘But I played along to keep him happy.’

Their eyes met through the slits in their masks, each understanding the other perfectly.

‘You-’ he breathed, ‘you-I’ve a good mind to-’

‘To do what?’ she asked with interest.

‘To do this!’

Swiftly he removed his mask, then hers, and pulled her into his arms for a long, breathless kiss, while the crowd cheered and applauded.

‘It was you all the time,’ he said when he could speak.

‘I fooled you for a while, didn’t I?’ Dulcie teased.

‘Only a very short while,’ he growled, interrupting himself with another kiss. ‘How did you get here?’ he asked breathlessly after a while. ‘You were leaving.’

‘I left the train at Mestre and caught the next one back. Not just because you came after me. I was going to do it anyway. I stormed off because I was furious, but I wouldn’t really have let Jenny and Fede down.’

‘I see. You only came back for them?’

She chuckled. ‘Of course not. There was another reason.’

He held her tightly. ‘Tell me.’

‘I had to retrieve my mobile phone,’ she teased.

‘Cara, you’ll drive me too far-’ he broke off. She was laughing at him and it was like music.

‘I would always have come back,’ she said, ‘because I wasn’t going to give up on us just like that.’

He kissed her again and again, while the music played and they swayed in its rhythm.

‘So,’ she resumed as he whirled her about the floor, ‘at Mestre I telephoned Jenny, and she told me about your calls, and the very interesting things you’d said.’

‘But why not call me?’ he demanded. ‘You knew I loved you. I should think the whole world knew after I shouted it the length of the platform.’

‘I did call you, but Marco answered. You’d all just got back from chasing me to the station. Leo was there too, and they told me one or two things-’

‘Like that I was going out of my mind. Just tell me how big a fool you’ve all made of me.’

‘I came back, Leo met me at the station and brought me here. Then I just slipped into the role you’d always meant me to play, wearing the costume you supplied. Roscoe complicated things by giving Jenny that necklace, but in a way it actually made things easier. Jenny gave it to me just before she left, and while I wore it nobody doubted that I was her.’

‘And you made the switch-when? When Jenny saw Roscoe waving to her. She left me-’

‘Slipped into a side room, where Leo and Marco were waiting, gave me the necklace, and told me you wanted to speak to her about me. They left. I went out to speak to Roscoe-’

‘And he didn’t know his own daughter?’

‘He knew his diamonds, which were all he was looking at. I came back to you and took up the cue she’d given me, about you wanting to talk about Dulcie.’

‘But why couldn’t you simply have told me?’

She chuckled, and the sound went through him pleasurably. ‘I wouldn’t have missed the last hour for anything. I’ve discovered things I couldn’t have learned any other way.’