Wife By Arrangement

secretly glad, except that after that you hated me. I couldn’t blame you, but there seemed no way of approaching you.’

‘If Mamma hadn’t decided to arrange a marriage between us, would you have let me go away?’

‘No,’ he said simply. ‘I wanted you.’

Wanted, she noted. Not loved.

‘But when we talked you became angry,’ he continued. ‘She was the only one you would listen to.’

‘You mean-you were behind it?’

‘I knew what was in her mind. I could have discouraged her. I didn’t.’

‘But you hit the roof at the idea of marrying me.’

‘Only after you roared with laughter. What did you expect me to say after that?’

She stared at him. It was on the tip of her tongue to demand, But why didn’t you just ask me to marry you?

But she couldn’t say it. It would reveal too much about her emotions, and she was safer not doing that with a man who kept his own emotions hidden.

And that, of course, was the answer. Renato wouldn’t risk asking because it meant revealing himself. So he’d sought to negotiate a deal at arm’s length.

Now she remembered something else he’d said. ‘I would invite betrayal by expecting it.’

Not betrayal. She could never betray him. But withdrawal. A man who kept his heart hidden made it impossible for her to do anything else.

‘So Mamma was acting as your emissary?’ she asked lightly.

‘After the way you’d been hurt, an impersonal approach seemed wiser.’

It was all so reasonable. She wanted to scream at how reasonable it was. Or maybe she just wanted to scream that he had so little to offer.

Baptista was her tower of strength. After the marriage she had never relinquished her role as intermediary.

‘That’s what I call it,’ she observed one day as they sat together at Bella Rosaria, watching the rain. ‘Some people would call it being an interfering mother-in-law.’

Heather smiled and squeezed her hand. ‘You know better than that.’

‘Before you there was no woman who could make him stop and think, force him to forget his arrogance, and learn to trust and love again. So I “acquired” you because he needed you so much. But was I being selfish to you?’

‘No, Mamma. We’re very happy in many ways. And sometimes I can feel him wanting to reach out to me, but he always pulls back. How can I ever tell him that I love him?’

‘Must it be told in words?’

‘For me it must.’

‘I think his feelings for you were coming alive since before your first “wedding”. Maria vergine, how lucky we all were that Lorenzo had the good sense to abort it!’

‘Lorenzo?’ Heather echoed with a chuckle. ‘Good sense?’

‘He saw what needed doing to avert disaster, and he did it. How miserable you’d all be now if he hadn’t! He’s still rather irresponsible. But he’s developing into an excellent and sensible young man.’ She added with a twinkle, ‘But don’t tell him I said that.’

‘I won’t. Besides, if he became too sensible he wouldn’t be Lorenzo. Now, Renato is all good sense. It’s his driving force. He doesn’t love me because he doesn’t understand love. He understands need and want and acquisition. But he knows nothing about the heart.’

‘You are mistaken,’ her mother-in-law said firmly. ‘He simply hasn’t yet discovered that you matter to him more than anything else in the world. That will take time. Perhaps years.’

Heather said nothing, but in her heart she wondered if she could spend years waiting for what might never happen. She saw Baptista watching her, and knew that she wondered too.

Winter was passing, the rains eased off, leaving the soil rich and black for the spring sowing. Everywhere there was a sense of life renewing. Her first spring. Her first lambing. The harvest that was gathered in this year would be truly her harvest.

She was managing the estate well. Everyone said so, even Luigi, who really did the work of managing it.

‘You at least can’t be fooled,’ she chided him.

‘No fooling. You do well. You stand back and let me do my job. That’s clever.’

Her revenues were excellent. She spent as Luigi advised, otherwise practised thrift, and built up such excellent credit with the bank that she was able to assist Renato through a minor cashflow problem. There was pleasure in that, but it was lessened by his insistence on paying her a proper rate of interest, ‘to keep the books straight’. It was an entirely reasonable explanation, and she couldn’t find the words to explain her irrational sadness.

These days she saw little of Lorenzo, whose job occupied him abroad almost permanently. His next visit to England coincided with Renato’s departure to spend ten days in Rome. Renato didn’t suggest that Heather should go with him.

She spent a couple of days at Bella Rosaria and returned to the Residenza to find that Baptista was out visiting friends, and not expected back until late. In her room she unpacked, trying to ignore the feeling of restlessness that had seized her. She chided herself for being ungrateful. She had everything-almost everything that she could want. But it seemed that all the world was waking to new life and she alone was going nowhere.

From her bedroom window she could see the sea, almost as far as the harbour and the Santa Maria, the boat on which she’d first known danger: not the danger of nearly drowning, but the first stirrings of desire and emotion for her fiance’s brother.

How terrible everything would have been if the wedding had gone ahead. Baptista had been right about that. For she no longer believed that making love with Lorenzo would have deadened her to Renato. It would have done the opposite. The more she’d discovered about physical passion, the more she would have craved the man who could make passion absolute for her. And that would not have been Lorenzo.

Instead she was married to the man she wanted, perhaps loved.

She sighed, realising that there was always a perhaps. She was holding back, refusing to admit to herself that she loved a man she wasn’t sure was capable of love. Renato lived his life on very precise terms. What he wanted, he found a way to have. Just now he wanted her, and in bed he was as pleased with their bargain as she was herself. But that wasn’t love. She’d told Baptista that he knew nothing about the heart. She still feared that was true. And while she believed it, she couldn’t open her own heart to him.

There was a knock on her door. It was Sara the maid returning some ornaments she’d taken for washing. As she was laying them out the phone rang on the bedside table.

‘Hello,’ Heather said, snatching it up. ‘Lorenzo?’

He sounded strange and troubled. ‘Heather, are you alone?’

‘No, just a moment.’ She signalled to Sara to leave. ‘All right, I’m alone now.’

‘I need to talk to you-but Renato mustn’t know.’ His voice became urgent. ‘Nobody must know.’

‘Lorenzo, what is it?’

‘I want you to come to London.’

‘What?’

‘I need you. Please, it’s important. There are things I-please, Heather, please-’

The words poured out of him, frantic, desperate, and her refusal died on her lips.

‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll get the next plane. With luck I should be with you tonight.’

She found her passport and put a few things into an overnight bag, relieved that Baptista’s absence gave her the chance to leave without answering questions.

She found Sara and said casually, ‘I’ll be back tomorrow, or maybe the next day.’ Then she got out quickly. She couldn’t tell the truth about where she was going or why.

Renato wasn’t due home for a week, but the following afternoon he threw the house in turmoil by arriving early, striding into the house like a man with no time to waste. He was smiling, picturing his wife’s face at seeing him early, and hearing that he’d abandoned a week’s work to return to her. Perhaps she would even relax the slight distance he still felt she kept between them.

‘Amor mia,’ he called, throwing open the door to their bedroom. ‘Where are