Husband By Necessity
Lucy Gordon
At her best friend's wedding, Angie Wendham met the groom's half brother, Bernardo, and fell instantly in love with this gorgeous, brooding Sicilian! Only, he wasn't planning to walk up the aisle himself, events in his past having left Bernardo unwilling to give his heart….In spite of himself, he became close to Angie–and now she was expecting his baby! They needed to marry before Angie's pregnancy showed. Bernardo would be more than a husband by necessity–if only Angie could convince this proud man to trust in love!
“Nothing’s changed.”
“You can’t say that,” Bernardo said flatly. “Everything has changed.”
Angie tried to turn away but he took hold of her shoulders and kept her facing him. If she’d have shown the slightest sign of softening, he would have drawn her into his arms and kissed her ardently. And then, even he, who was uneasy with words, would have tried to tell her of the bittersweet happiness that had possessed him ever since he’d suspected that she was to bear his child. He was an old-fashioned man and, above all, a Sicilian. To create a child with a beloved woman was a joy that wiped out all else.
He stared at her. “The sooner our marriage takes place, the better.”
“Us? Get married?” she echoed. “Why would we do that?”
He was floundering again. Angie’s eyes were full of a cool appraisal that baffled him. “Because we are having a baby,” he said.
Dear Reader,
Being married to an Italian, I take a special delight in writing about Italian men—the most fascinating and endearing men on earth. I’ve enjoyed telling the stories of the three Martelli brothers.
Although linked by kinship, they are all different. Lorenzo, the youngest, is a merry charmer. Renato, the eldest, is head of the family, a man of confidence and power. Bernardo is their half brother. Only part of him belongs to the family. The other part is a loner who finds it hard to accept love.
And then there is Sicily, their home, one of the most beautiful places on earth, where people’s true passions rise to the surface, giving them the courage to follow their hearts.
Husband by Necessity is the story of Bernardo—who has to fight for that courage after nearly throwing away the love of his life—and Angie, a remarkable woman who dares everything to lead him into the light.
With best wishes,
Husband by Necessity
Lucy Gordon
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
‘ANGIE,’ Heather called, not for the first time, ‘the cab’s here.’
‘I’m ready,’ Angie called back, not entirely truthfully. She would be ready when she’d finished applying her eye make-up and just touched her lips. It was an article of faith with her not to travel unless looking her best, even when time was fast running out.
For ten minutes the cab had been standing in a downpour outside the London house that the two young women shared. The driver had hauled the last of the luggage down the steps, leaving only Heather, standing by the door, frantically calling back into the house,
‘Angie, the cab!’
‘I know, I know,’ Angie called back. ‘You told me.’
‘I know I told you. I told you ages ago and you haven’t moved.’
‘Coming, coming, coming,’ Angie muttered frantically to herself. ‘Have I got everything? Well, if I haven’t, it can’t be helped. Any minute now, she’s going to kill me.’ She raised her voice and called back to Heather. ‘Tell the man to take the bags out.’
Heather sounded as though she were dancing with frustration. ‘He’s already done that. Angie, I’m going to Sicily to get married, and if you don’t mind I’d prefer to get there before the wedding.’
‘But that’s not for a week, is it?’ Angie asked, appearing at that moment.
‘Well, I’d like not to cut it too fine, and that includes not missing the plane.’
It was the perfect day for leaving London. The rain poured down in buckets, making the journey from the front door to the cab a mad dash. The two young women made it, laughing with delight at escaping, at being on their way to the sun, laughing because they were young and happy and one of them was getting married; because life was good despite the rain.
‘Look at that!’ Angie said when the door was shut behind them. ‘Have you ever seen such rain? Oh, it’s good to be going.’ She saw her friend eyeing her askance and added penitently, ‘Sorry I kept you waiting.’
‘I don’t know how you ever got to be a doctor,’ Heather said. ‘You’re the most disorganised person I know.’
‘Ah, but I’m not a disorganised doctor,’ Angie said with truth. ‘It’s just that in my private life I tended to be—you know.’
‘Birdbrained, scatty and infuriating,’ Heather said.
Angie stretched happily. ‘I really need a holiday. I’m worn out.’
‘I should think you are. It must be tiring running away from all your admirers, Bill and Steve and—’
‘Bill and Steve?’ Angie looked aghast.
‘You do remember them don’t you?’
‘Oh, yes. Last month. History.’
‘Do they know they’re history?’ Heather asked.
‘I tried to break it to them gently,’ Angie said. She added, with a touch of wounded innocence, ‘I always do.’
‘So who was that man who came by last night begging you to come back soon?’
‘That was George—I think.’
Heather chuckled. ‘Honestly Angie, you’re incorrigible.’
‘No I’m not. I’m extremely corrigible—whatever that means. Anyway, I need a holiday because I’ve been working so hard. Accident and Emergency is exhausting enough, but when it’s night duty as well—’ She mopped her brow and looked plaintive.
They had shared a house in London for six years. Heather was quietly lovely and her nature was reserved and modest. The attraction of opposites had decreed that her dearest friend should be Angie, a radiant social butterfly who seemed to regard the world of men as provided for her personal entertainment.
At this moment she was contemplating the pleasures to come. ‘Sunshine, sparkling blue sea, miles of golden sand, and lots of gorgeous Sicilian young men, all liberally endowed with S.A. Or at the very least, C.H.’
Angie divided male attractiveness into two categories—S.A., sex appeal, and C.H., come hither. As far as Heather could understand her friend’s marking system, S.A. was the more immediately exciting, while C.H. was the more subtle and intriguing. Since Angie was, herself, liberally endowed with both qualities, she was in a good position to judge.
‘You make C.H. sound like the poor relation,’ Heather objected now.
‘Not really. But it takes time, and I don’t have time. S.A. is better for short stretches.’
‘Well, you behave yourself.’
‘No way,’ Angie said at once. ‘I don’t come on holiday to behave myself. I come to get a sun tan, fall in love, sample the local delights and act outrageously. Otherwise what’s the point?’
It was easy to believe that she meant every word. Angie was daintily built, barely five foot three, with blonde hair and deep blue eyes. Her nature was romantic and impulsive. She became easily infatuated and, since she looked, according to one besotted admirer, ‘Like the fairy on the Christmas tree,’ she had no trouble inspiring infatuation in return. The result had been a string of intense, short-lived relationships which had caused Heather to describe Angie as a serial flirt.
But appearances were deceptive. Dr Angela Wendham’s love affairs were brief because her true, enduring love was her work. Her ethereal look concealed a brain that had carried her through medical school with honours. She’d gone on to four exhausting years post-graduate training, including stints in Accident and Emergency departments, coping not merely with casualties but with drunks and vicious louts. She was skilled at dealing with both kinds of crises.
But now she planned only to enjoy herself. Heather was about to marry Lorenzo Martelli, a young Sicilian. Angie was to be the bridesmaid, and since it was her first real holiday since she-couldn’t-remember-when, she was going to make the most of it.
It was still raining when they reached the airport. They got quickly into the main hall, pushing a trolley piled high with bags, most of which were Angie’s. Her petite figure and striking beauty repaid good dressing, and she happily gave them their due.
As they were waiting to check in there was a strangled cry of, ‘Angie!’ from the crowd, and a damp young man appeared beside them. In his hand he bore one perfect red rose.
‘I couldn’t let you go without saying goodbye,’ he said soulfully, offering it to her. ‘You won’t forget me, will you?’
‘Of course I won’t,’ Angie said, deeply moved. ‘Oh, Fred—’
‘Frank,’ the young man said edgily.
‘Frank, you’ll be in my thoughts every moment I’m away.’
Frank seized her hand and kissed it. Luckily they reached the head of the queue and in the check-in formalities he was forced to retreat. Angie couldn’t meet her friend’s eye.
‘The sooner I get you safely out of the country the better,’ Heather said with feeling.
It was raining even harder as their plane took off, climbing into the clouds. But then they broke through into light, and they both pressed eagerly against the window until the air hostess brought them a snack.
‘I can’t get my head around you being swept off your feet,’ Angie told Heather. ‘Much more my crazy style than yours.’
‘Yes, it’s not like sturdy, dependable me, is it?’ Heather mused. ‘Dashing off to live in another country, practically another world.’
Angie was diplomatically silent but she couldn’t help wondering about Peter who had been Heather’s fiancé for a year before dumping her a week before the wedding.
‘I’m not on the rebound,’ Heather said, reading her un-spoken thoughts. ‘I love Lorenzo, and we’re going to make a wonderful life together in Sicily.’
‘You’re right. New horizons. Lovely.’ Angie’s face assumed a look in which mischief and innocence were evenly matched. ‘You did say Lorenzo had two brothers, didn’t you?’
‘I’ve only met one of them, Renato.’
‘Yes, you told me. I can’t believe that any man would behave like that, actually coming to your counter at Gossways, pretending to be a customer, just so that he could look you up and down.’
Gossways was the most luxurious department store in London, and Heather had been working there, selling perfumes.
‘I don’t blame him for wanting to meet the woman his brother was courting,’ Heather said now. ‘It’s just the way he did it. Not a hint about who he was, and then, when Lorenzo took me to meet him at the Ritz that night, there he sat, just waiting for me to walk into his lair.’
The meeting had been dramatic. Renato Martelli had approved of Heather, but in such a high-handed manner that she’d stormed out of the Ritz, nearly killing both of them under the wheels of a taxi. In the high drama of that evening Lorenzo had begged her to marry him, and she had relented. Now, barely a month later, she was on her way to Sicily for the marriage. She had, as Angie said, been swept off her feet.
‘Tell me about the other brother,’ Angie said now.
‘His name’s Bernardo, and he’s their half-brother. Their father had an affair with a woman from one of the mountain villages, called Marta Tornese, and Bernardo was their son. They died together in a car crash, and Lorenzo’s mother took the boy in and raised him with her own sons.’
‘My goodness! What a woman!’
The plane was banking, showing them the triangular island of Sicily, golden and beautiful against the blue of the sea. In another moment they had started the final descent to Palermo Airport.
As they came out of Customs, Heather broke into a smile and waved at two men standing apart. From Heather’s description Angie knew that the glamorous young giant with light brown curly hair was Lorenzo, her friend’s fiancé. She glanced at the other and felt a smile begin deep inside her.
He wasn’t a tall man, something which the petite Angie greatly appreciated. She hated getting a crick in her neck. So it was a mark in his favour that he was only five foot eight. His shape earned him a good review too. Ten out of ten, she thought, for lean wiriness, narrow hips and a look of hard, compact maleness that sent an uncompromising message to the woman who knew how to read it.
So far, so enjoyable.
It was when she got closer and saw his dark, serious eyes that her inner smile faltered a little. There was something about this man that she couldn’t smile at, something that sent a shiver of excited anticipation up her spine.
As Heather and Lorenzo threw themselves into each other’s arms the young man approached Angie, smiling very slightly. ‘I am Bernardo Tornese,’ he said in a deep voice.
Tornese, she noticed, not Martelli.
She took the hand he was holding out, and felt the whipcord strength of him, even in that light grip. ‘I’m Angela Wendham,’ she said.
‘It is a great pleasure to meet you, Signorina Wendham.’
She could have listened to his voice forever. It was dark, resonant and beautiful. ‘Just Angie,’ she said, smiling.
‘Angie, I am very glad to meet you.’
She sensed that he was studying her, just as she was doing with him. That was fine. She knew she didn’t have to fear being looked at, even when she’d just got off a plane.
The lovers had finished their greeting and disentangled themselves, a little self-consciously. Heather introduced Angie to her future husband, who then said, ‘This is my brother, Bernardo.’
‘Half-brother,’ murmured Bernardo at once.
The drive to the Martelli house just outside Palermo took half an hour. There was so much beauty about Sicily to be taken in that Angie became dazed by the profusion. The hot streets of Palermo soon gave way to the countryside with its riot of flowers and the gleaming blue sea that came more into view as they climbed higher. At last a great three-storied building came into sight, and Lorenzo, from the back seat, called, ‘There it is.’
The Residenza stood on an incline overlooking the sea. It was a magnificent mediaeval edifice of yellow stone. In their own way the Martellis were princes and they lived appropriately.
‘That’s your home?’ Angie gasped.
‘That’s the Residenza Martelli,’ Bernardo replied. He was concentrating on the road, and didn’t seem aware of the quick look Angie gave him.
A moment later they had swung into the courtyard, and there was Baptista Martelli just emerging onto the great steps to wait for them. She was a small, frail-looking woman in her sixties, who looked as though life had aged her prematurely. Her hair was white and her face delicately beautiful. Angie regarded her with interest as Heather’s future mother in law, but she was also fascinated to know what kind of a woman took in her husband’s illegitimate offspring and reared him with her own sons. Baptista greeted her warmly, although Angie couldn’t help reading the message in her eyes.
A will of steel, she thought. She’ll cover it with charm, but it will always be there.
But then Baptista smiled at her, and her sharp eyes softened to warmth.
A dangerous enemy, Angie thought, but a wonderful friend.
She noticed the exuberant hug Lorenzo gave his mother, while Bernardo contented himself with a peck on the cheek. His behaviour was faultless, yet the manner was courteous rather than loving.
A maid was detailed to show the two young women to the bedroom they were to share, and then bring them to the terrace where Baptista would be waiting for them with refreshments.
Their room had two large four-poster beds, hung with white net curtains. More net curtains hung at the floor-length windows that led out onto the broad terrace overlooking a magnificent garden. Angie, who was a demon gardener when she could get the time, promised herself a leisurely exploration of that garden. Beyond it the land stretched away, reaching to dark, misty mountains on the horizon.
The maid was unpacking their cases. Angie hurriedly changed out of the serviceable jeans she’d worn for travelling, into a light, floaty dress of a blue that turned her eyes to violet. When they were both ready the maid led them out onto the terrace and round to the front of the house where Baptista was seated at a small rustic table, laden with refreshments. Bernardo and Lorenzo were also there, handing them to their seats and filling their glasses with Marsala.
‘May I get you something to eat?’ Bernardo enquired, indicating the candied fruit ring, zabaglione, Sicilian cheesecake and coffee ice with whipped cream.
‘My goodness,’ Angie said faintly.
‘Baptista is the world’s greatest hostess,’ he said. ‘When she doesn’t know what her guests will like, she orders everything, just in case.’
‘Baptista’, Angie noticed. Not ‘my mother’. She remembered how quickly he’d said ‘half-brother’ at the airport, and for a moment she felt a frisson in the air. Her instincts were telling her that this was a complicated man who carried his own tensions everywhere. She felt her curiosity rising.
He helped her to food and wine, and gently asked if she had everything she needed, but he took little part in the general conversation. Angie thought she would never have known him to be a brother of Lorenzo, about whom so much was light, from his curly hair to his smile. Everything about Bernardo was dark. His skin had the weather beaten swarthiness of a man who lived amongst the elements. His eyes were so dark they seemed almost black, and his hair was truly black.
His face intrigued her. When in repose it had a set, rock-like quality. His eyes were deep set and full of secrets, his mouth slightly heavy. But it became mobile and changeable as soon as he spoke, and animation glowed from him.
At last Baptista indicated that she would like to be left alone with Heather. Lorenzo slipped away and Bernardo turned to Angie. ‘May I show you the gardens?’ he asked.
‘I should love that,’ she said happily, taking the hand he offered.
The great garden of the Residenza was a show place, tended by a dozen gardeners. At its centre was a large stone fountain featuring mythical beasts spouting water in all directions. From this relayed a dozen paths, some wandering past flower beds, others curving mysteriously into the trees. Bernardo conscientiously pointed out every variety of plant, and she had the feeling that he had learned them as a duty. It was as though this magnificent place forced him to be something he wasn’t. Angie’s curiosity increased.
‘Have you and Heather known each other very long?’ he asked.
‘About six years. She had a job in a paper shop just around the corner from where I was doing my medical training.’
‘Ah, you’re a nurse?’
‘I’m a doctor,’ Angie said, slightly nettled at his assumption.
‘Forgive me,’ he said hastily. ‘Sicily is still a little old-fashioned in some respects.’
‘Evidently.’
They walked side by side for a few minutes. ‘Are you annoyed with me?’ he asked at last.
‘No,’ she said too quickly.
‘I think you are. Try not to be. I spend my life in the mountains where people still hark back to an earlier age. To you, perhaps, we would appear rough and uncivilised.’
He didn’t smile, but there was a gentleness in his manner that won her over. Her curiosity about him was growing.
‘I’m not annoyed,’ she said. ‘It was silly of me to make a fuss about nothing. I was telling you about Heather. We got to know and like each other, and eventually moved in together. We’ve shared a home for several years now.’
‘Can you tell me something about her? She’s so different from—that is, Lorenzo—’ He stopped in some confusion.
It was odd, she thought, that this man from a wealthy background should seem so shy and ill at ease. Whatever else he might be, he wasn’t a smooth-tongued charmer, and she liked him better for it.
‘Lorenzo has played the field with ladies of easy virtue and you’re wondering what Heather is like,’ she supplied cheerfully.
Bernardo coloured and pulled himself together. ‘Since Renato approves of her I know she’s not a lady of easy virtue,’ he said hastily. ‘He speaks of her in the highest terms.’
‘She doesn’t speak of him in the highest terms,’ Angie said darkly. ‘She says he behaved outrageously.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard the story about that evening. I think those two will always be at odds, with Lorenzo in the middle, being pulled each way.’
‘I’m interested to meet Renato. What’s he like?’
‘He’s the head of the family,’ Bernardo said with a hint of austerity in his tone.
‘And that really means something here, I guess.’
‘Doesn’t it mean something in your country?’
‘Not really,’ Angie said, considering. ‘Of course, we all respect my father, but that’s because he’s been a doctor for forty years and helped thousands of people.’
‘Is that why you became a doctor too?’
‘We all did, my two brothers and me. And my mother was a doctor when she was alive. She died while I was still doing my training.’
‘Then your parents founded a dynasty.’
Angie laughed. ‘I wish Dad could hear you. He never encouraged us to follow his footsteps. I remember him saying, “Whatever you do, don’t go into medicine. It’s a dog’s life and you won’t get any sleep for years.” Of course, we all did. But I must tell you—’ she eyed Bernardo mischievously, ‘that in England a man doesn’t get respect just for being a man. In fact—’
‘Go on,’ Bernardo said with a smile far back in his dark eyes. ‘You are longing to say something that will be “one in the eye” for me.’
‘When I took my medical exams, it was a point of honour with me to get higher marks than either of my brothers. I did too.’ She giggled as gleefully as a child. ‘They were so mad.’
The smile had reached Bernardo’s mouth. He was regarding her with delight. ‘And your Papa?’
‘Before the exams he said, “Go for it!” and afterwards he said, “Good on you!”’
‘And what did your brothers say?’
‘Before or after they’d put arsenic in my soup? They just doubled up with laughter at the thought of what I had in front of me.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Four years of post-graduate work. General medicine, general surgery, accident and emergency, obstetrics, gynaecology, paediatrics, psychiatry and general practice.’
‘It sounds terrible,’ Bernardo said, half laughing, half frowning.
‘It was. I think it’s made as nightmarish as possible to discourage the weaklings. But I’m no weakling. Look at that.’ She clenched her fist and bent her arm in a ‘Mr Muscleman’ pose.
Bernardo laid tentative fingers on the barely perceptible bulge. ‘I’m terrified,’ he said with a smile. ‘All these qualifications, and you’re only—’ he regarded her warily. He’d been going to say ‘only a little girl’ but decided hastily against it.
‘I’m twenty-eight years old,’ she declared, ‘and a lot tougher than I look.’
‘You could scarcely be less,’ Bernardo observed, with an admiring glance at her fairy figure.
She laughed and ran a few steps ahead of him to where the path vanished into a tunnel of trees, and turned, skipping backwards, teasing him. As holiday romances went, this one showed signs of going very well. He didn’t run after her as another man might have done, but simply held out his hand, watching her, until she stopped skipping and laid her fingers lightly in his palm.
Hand in hand they strolled among the trees, while a sense of enchantment crept over her. It was nothing he said or did. He wasn’t the most handsome man in the world. He wasn’t even the most handsome man she’d romanced, but his looks pleased her deeply. The smile that had started at the airport was growing by the minute.
‘I think this garden is wonderful,’ she sighed, gazing around her.
‘Yes, it’s perfect,’ he agreed.
A touch of constraint in his voice made her look at him quickly. ‘But you don’t like it?’
‘I’m—not comfortable with perfection,’ he said after a moment. ‘For me, it is too precise. A man cannot feel free in a place like this.’ He checked himself abruptly and gave a polite smile.
‘Where can he feel free?’ she asked, her interest growing every moment.
‘When he’s up high among the birds, where the golden eagles fly so close that it feels as though he’s their brother.’
‘Golden eagles?’ she echoed eagerly. ‘Where?’
‘In my home in the mountains. I come here very little. My real home is Montedoro.’
‘Let me see—monte means a mountain, and “oro” is gold. Is that right?’
‘You know Italian?’
‘My mother’s sister married an Italian. When I was a child we visited them every summer.’
‘And you are right. It is “mountain of gold”.’
‘Because of the golden eagles?’
‘Partly. But also because it’s the first place the sun touches at dawn, and the last place it leaves at sunset. It’s the most beautiful place on earth.’
‘It sounds like it,’ Angie said wistfully.
He gave her a curious look. ‘Would you—?’ He broke off with a grunt of embarrassed laughter. ‘That is, I wonder if—?’
‘Yes?’ she encouraged him.
Bernardo drew a deep breath while Angie waited eagerly for what she was sure he was going to say.
‘Hey—Bernardo.’
He came back to himself with a start. Angie had the strangest feeling of waking from a dream. And there was Lorenzo, coming along the path, hailing them. ‘Time to get ready for dinner,’ he called.
As Angie returned to the house with the two of them she was disappointed but not discouraged. Bernardo wanted to show her his home, she was certain of it, and she was every moment growing more eager to learn all about him. The evening lay ahead, and if she couldn’t tempt that invitation out of him, she was losing her touch.
She joined Heather in their room and threw herself onto her bed, putting her hands behind her head, with a sigh of pleasure.
‘C.H. or S.A?’
‘S.A.,’ Angie said happily. ‘Definitely S.A.’
Heather looked alarmed. ‘You be careful!’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Angie said innocently.
‘Oh, yes, you do. I’ve seen you when you’ve set your heart on twisting a man around your little finger. You’ve got all the tried and tested tricks and a few you invented. But Bernardo doesn’t strike me as a man to be fooled with.’
‘He isn’t,’ Angie confirmed. ‘He’s terribly serious and thoughtful.’ She chuckled. ‘That’s why he’s going to be such a challenge.’
‘I give up.’
‘Yes, do, darling. I’m beyond redemption.’
For dinner she wore a dress of blues and greens in the kind of glowing shades that belonged on a peacock. Many blondes couldn’t have got away with it, but Angie looked like a star. She wondered if Bernardo would think so.
She had her answer as she descended the great stairway a little behind Heather, and had the satisfaction of seeing Bernardo look right past the bride, the official guest of honour, to seek out herself. There was even more satisfaction in the subtle change that came over him at the sight of her. He became more alive, every inch of him responding to her as intensely as she was responding to him. She felt a tingle of happy expectancy deep inside as he took her hand and began to take her around his friends and family, introducing her.
Now that she had a chance to study Lorenzo more closely she realised how delightful he was, and she could understand her serious minded friend being bowled over by him. Perhaps he was a touch immature, but his looks and charm were both overwhelming, and no doubt he would soon grow up.
But she couldn’t warm to Renato, who struck her as an unpleasant, cynical man, harsh and overbearing. He was tall and splendidly built, but although there was no doubt about his physical attractions, and he greeted her pleasantly, she disliked him, and she could see that her friend was going to have to fight him some time soon.
There were two long tables, each seating thirty. The Martellis were the great family of the area, and the wedding was the event of the year. Baptista headed one table, with the bride and groom. Renato and Bernardo headed the other. Renato was an accomplished host, but Bernardo gave most of his attention to the lady by his side. Perhaps this was fair, as, being English, she needed to have Sicilian cuisine explained to her.
‘Bean fritters?’ he offered. ‘Or perhaps you would prefer stuffed rice ball fritters, or orange salad?’
‘That’s just one course?’ Angie asked, wide-eyed.
‘Certainly. The next course is the rice and pasta dishes, pasta with cauliflower, sardines—’
‘Yum, yum. Lead me to it.’
Like many petite women Angie could eat like a starved lion without gaining an ounce. This she proceeded to do, to Bernardo’s delight. He watched entranced as she demolished a dish of rabbit in sweet and sour sauce, then pressed her to fried pastries with ricotta cheese, which she accepted with relish.
‘I have never seen a woman eat like you,’ he said admiringly. Then horrified realisation dawned, ‘No, I didn’t mean it like that! I meant—’ He stopped, for Angie was convulsed. Her laughter had a rich, resonant quality that made him smile. He felt his embarrassment evaporate. She understood, and everything was all right. Of course it was.
‘I’m an awkward clod,’ he said. ‘I never know the right thing to say.’
She made a face. ‘Who wants to be saying the right thing all the time? It’s more interesting if people say what they really mean.’
‘Some of the things I say and mean disconcert people,’ he admitted ruefully.
‘I can imagine.’
The meal was ending, the guests were rising from the table and splitting into groups. Bernardo drew her aside, oblivious to his duties to the other guests. Nor was he the only brother being a poor host. Renato had just returned after twice leaving the table to take a phone call. Bernardo saw her looking in his direction.
‘Renato is the Worker of the family and Lorenzo the Charmer,’ he said.
‘And what are you?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said simply.
He took two glasses from a passing waiter, handed one to her and led the way through a small side door. He hadn’t asked if she wanted to draw apart with him, but there had been no need. Angie slipped her hand in his and went gladly.
Away from the dining room the house was quiet. Their feet clicked softly against the floor tiles and the sound echoed in the gloom.
‘Where are you taking me?’ Angie asked.
He looked surprised. ‘Nowhere. I just wanted to be alone with you. Is that all right?’
She smiled, liking his awkward bluntness better than the smooth charm of the men she knew. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s all right.’
He showed her over the vast magnificence of the house, with its great windows that gave onto glorious views no matter which side they faced, its long tapestry hung corridors, and ornate rooms.
‘This is the picture gallery,’ he said, showing her into a long room, hung with portraits. ‘That was Vincente, my father,’ he said, indicating a portrait nearest the door. ‘The one next to him was his father, then his brother, and so on.’
There were too many faces to take in all at once, but Angie’s attention was held by a small picture, almost lost among the others, showing a man dressed in eighteenth-century style, with a sharp, wary face, regarding the world with suspicion.
‘Lodovico Martelli,’ Bernardo told her. ‘About ten generations back.’
‘But it’s you,’ she said in wonder.
‘There’s a slight resemblance,’ he conceded.
‘Slight, nothing. It’s you to the life. You’re a true Martelli.’
‘In some ways,’ he said after a moment.
She couldn’t pursue the subject, because she remembered just in time that what she knew of his situation didn’t come from him.
They strolled out onto the terrace. Night had fallen, and in the velvety blackness the only lights came from the house behind them.
He was bound to kiss her now, she thought, and she found she was longing for it to happen. He was different from all other men, and his kisses would be different too. Through the few inches that separated them she could feel him trembling.
Then he did something that left her completely taken aback. Slowly he took her hand in his two hands, raised it, and laid it gently against his cheek.
‘Perhaps—’ he said, and seemed unable to continue.
‘Yes?’
‘Perhaps—we should be getting back to the others. I’m being a very bad host.’
With another man she would have said, I think you’re being the perfect host, in a teasing voice and a smile that would tell him she was interested. But the flirtatious banter died on her lips. Somehow, with Bernardo, the words wouldn’t get themselves said.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said. ‘We ought to go back.’
CHAPTER TWO
BERNARDO’S dream was always the same. The young boy was alone in the house, waiting for the return of his mother. The boy was himself, but he could stand aside and watch him, knowing everything he was thinking and feeling as the darkness fell and the knock on the door told him that the world had changed forever. His mother would never return. She lay dead at the bottom of the mountain, trapped with his father in the smashed wreck of a car.
Like a slide show the scene changed. The boy was there again, fighting back the tears over his mother’s body, making frantic, grief-stricken promises, to protect her memory, to honour her forever. For her neighbours had called her prostituta, and the fact that her lover had been a great man made no real difference, except on the surface. They’d deferred to her, because otherwise Vincente Martelli would have made them suffer. But she was still a prostituta.
He’d known, and he’d sworn to erase that stain, to become a strong man like his father and force them to respect her memory. But he’d had to break his promises almost at once.
A different scene. Himself, hiding in the darkness of his mother’s house while the argument raged about what to do with him, for he was only twelve, too young to live alone, and the house now belonged to his dead father’s family. There’d been talk of an institution. He was a bastardo. He had no rights and no name.
Another knock on the door, and the world changed again. Outside stood a beautiful, frail woman in her forties. Signora Baptista Martelli, his father’s betrayed wife, who must surely hate him. But she only smiled sadly and said she had come to take him home.
He’d wept then, to his eternal shame, for he considered himself too old for weeping. But the sobs had devastated him, making it impossible to explain that this was his home and he wanted no other. Having started, he couldn’t stop. He wept for days, and all the while everything he loved and valued was taken away from him, and the wealthy Martellis swallowed him up, a helpless prisoner.
It was at this point in the dream that Bernardo always awoke to find his pillow wet and his body shaking. He would be in his room at the Residenza, for the nightmare came to him nowhere else. It stripped away the twenty years that had passed since, making him a grieving, helpless child again, instead of the hard, confident man that the world saw.
He pulled on some jeans and went, bare-chested, out onto the small balcony outside his window. The cool night air awoke him properly and he stood holding onto the rail, feeling the distress fade until he could cope with it again.
Tomorrow he would leave this place and return to his home in the mountains, among his mother’s people, where he belonged. He would come back in time for the wedding.
Below he could see the broad terrace. A flicker of white curtain caught his eye and he knew it came from the room where the bride and her companion slept. He wished he hadn’t thought of that, for it seemed to bring Angie there before him, teasing as nobody had ever teased him before, bringing warmth to his hard, joyless life.
So strong was the vision that when he heard her soft laughter floating up he didn’t at first realise that she was really there. But then a very real, human voice said, ‘Psst!’ and he looked down to see her sitting on the stone ledge of the terrace, gazing impishly up at him.
He was a man of few social graces. His brothers would have appreciated the audience, Renato with cynical speculation, Lorenzo with amused relish. Bernardo tensed, affronted at being looked at when he was unaware, and horribly conscious of his bare chest. But then he noticed how the moonlight picked out her slender legs, and the way her hair was fluffed up as though she’d only just risen from bed, and he thought—he was almost sure—that beneath her short robe she had nothing on.
A stern sense of propriety made him try to ignore the thought—after all, she was a guest in the house. But there was no ignoring the impish way she looked up at him, or the way his own body was responding to the thought of her nakedness.
‘This is all wrong, you know,’ she called.
‘What’s all wrong?’ he asked, suspicious at not understanding her.
‘It’s Juliet who’s supposed to stand on the balcony, and Romeo who looks up from below.’
Her voice carried sweetly on the night air, like the singing of nightingales, and he could only look at her dumbly.
‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ she asked, her head on one side, like a pretty, expectant little bird.
‘Yes—I was going to ask if you rose to see the dawn. It will be very soon.’
‘I expect it’s lovely.’
‘It’s lovely here, but even more so in my home, because it is so high.’ He took a deep breath and forced himself to say, ‘I’m glad to see you now, because I have to leave very early tomorrow, to return there.’
‘Oh.’ That was all she said, but the disappointed droop in her voice was more than he could bear. The next words came out despite his determination that they shouldn’t. ‘Perhaps you would care to come with me.’
‘I’d love to.’
‘We leave very early.’
‘No way!’ she almost squeaked, trying to remember the sleepers in the house and express her outrage at the same time. ‘I get up early when I go to work. I’m on holiday.’ She almost danced with indignation.
He grinned, enchanted by her. ‘I’ll wait for you. Now be off back to bed, or you’ll oversleep.’
She laughed and vanished. Bernardo stayed a long time looking at the place where she’d been. He knew he’d done something dangerous to his peace. If he was wise he would write her an apologetic note, leave it with a servant, and depart at once.
But he wasn’t going to. Because suddenly he didn’t want to be wise.
Next morning was a bustle of departure. Lorenzo was off to Stockholm to finish some work before the wedding. Renato was taking Heather sailing so that she could decide whether to accept the offer of his yacht for the honeymoon. Angie politely declined the offer to accompany them, explaining that she was going to the mountains with Bernardo.
‘You be careful,’ Heather warned.
Angie smiled, thinking of last night, and the way the silver moonlight had limned Bernardo’s chest and the muscles of his shoulders and arms. ‘Where’s the fun in being careful?’ she murmured to herself, as she got into the shower.
She chose her clothes thoughtfully. White jeans, with a deep blue silk top that turned her eyes to violet. It was slightly stretchy, and clung in a way that showed what a nice shape she had. Dainty silver sandals and a silver filigree necklace and matching earrings completed her appearance, and a discreet squirt of a very expensive perfume provided the finishing touch.
She was prompt, but even so he was waiting for her beside his car, a four-wheel drive, made for rough terrain. It was like the man, nothing fancy, but powerful, uncompromising, made to last.
He swung out of Palermo and into the countryside. After a while they began to climb, and before long they’d reached a small village with narrow, twisting streets. At the top of a hill stood a pretty pink villa with two curved staircases on the outside.
‘This village is Ellona,’ Bernardo told her. ‘It mostly belongs to Baptista. So does the villa. We used to live there in the summer. In fact, that was where—’ He braked suddenly as a chicken darted across the road and uttered something in Sicilian that sounded like a curse.
‘What did that mean?’ Angie asked.
He coloured. ‘Never mind. I shouldn’t have said it.’
‘Go on with what you were saying. That was where—?’
‘I forget. Look at the scenery just up here. It’s magnificent.’
It wasn’t just her imagination, she thought. After the first slip of the tongue he’d retreated back in on himself and, when she tried to follow, he’d warned her off. She wasn’t foolish enough to persist.
Away from the fertile coast the landscape of Sicily changed, become harsher, more barren.
‘All the prosperity is on the coast,’ Bernardo said. ‘In-land we live as we can. There are crops, sheep, goats. Sometimes we do well, but it’s a precarious existence.’
‘We?’ she asked.
‘My people,’ he said simply. ‘The ones who depend on me.’
After a while he asked, ‘Does the height worry you? Some people get scared as the road twists and turns.’
‘Not me,’ she said bravely, although her eyes were getting a little glazed. ‘How high are we now?’
‘Nearly half a mile above sea level.’
Higher and higher they went on the winding mountain road, while the glory of Sicily fell away beneath them. Everywhere Angie looked there were acacia and lemon blossom, and far distant she could make out the gleam of the sea.
The scenery grew fiercer, grander. They were passing through pinewoods, then the woods were behind them and an upland plain spread out, with vineyards and, above them, a steep cliff with farmhouses.
‘The farmers abandoned them long ago,’ Bernardo said. ‘This is a harsh place to live in winter.’
After a few more miles he pointed and said, ‘Look.’
She rose in her seat, gasping in amazement and delight at the sight that met her eyes. Ahead of them was a village that seemed to have been carved direct from the very rock that reared up to a windswept promontory. What might have been a bleak and uncompromising scene was softened to beauty by the reddish colour of the sheer rock face. She sat back, gazing in wonder as they drove closer, and she saw that this was actually an enchanting little medieval town, whose delights had to be seen up close to be appreciated.
‘That’s Montedoro,’ Bernardo said. ‘Most of it is seven hundred years old.’
They drove in through an ancient gateway and immediately began to climb a steep, beautifully cobbled street, the Corso Garibaldi, according to the signs. It was lined with shops, many of which seemed to sell sweets and pastries. Faces watched them curiously, and it was clear that everyone knew who Bernardo was. She wondered about the size of the village. From the outside it hadn’t seemed very big.
He drove very slowly, for the streets were crowded with tourists. At one point a cart turned out of a street directly in front of them, forcing them to slow to a walk. It contained five people and was drawn by two mules sporting tassels and feathers. But what really drew Angie’s attention was the fact that the cart was brightly decorated in every possible place.
‘Is that one of the Sicilian hand-painted carts I’ve heard about?’ she asked eagerly.
‘That’s right. My friend Benito and his son make a summer living giving rides in their carts.’
Travelling so slowly, she had time to study the glorious paintwork. The wheels, including the spokes were covered in patterns, while on the main body were pictures of saints, warriors and dragons, all glowing in the brilliant sun.
At the top of the street he swung right along a pretty street of grey stone houses, all with ironwork balconies, and at the end of that he swung right again, heading downwards to a building that Angie gradually recognised as the gate where they’d entered.
‘But—that’s—’
‘Montedoro is a perfect triangle,’ he said with a grin. ‘Now we’ll go up the Corso Garibaldi again, to my house.’
When they reached the top she saw a small piazza with several boutiques, and a café with tables spilling onto the street, each one sheltered by a brightly coloured awning. He parked the car and headed for one of the shops, so it seemed to Angie, but at the last minute he swerved aside, to a lane so narrow that she hadn’t seen it. It went right to the back of the shop where it crossed with another lane. Here the space was so cramped and the houses so tall that it was almost dark. When Angie’s eyes were used to the gloom she saw a narrow door in the wall.
‘Welcome to my home,’ Bernardo said, throwing open the door to a world of magic.
She entered with wonder. Instead of the dark hallway she’d expected, she found herself in a courtyard, open to the sky. Delicately arched cloisters went around the sides, and in the centre was a fountain whose water caught the brilliant sun on every droplet.
‘I never expected—I mean, I never thought you’d live in a place like this,’ she breathed.
‘My father bought it for my mother. Lots of the houses in Montedoro have these little courtyards, so that women and children could sit here, and not have to go into the outside world.’
‘A man who believed in the traditional ways,’ Angie observed.
‘Yes, and also because people were often unkind to my mother because they weren’t married. So he protected her.’
‘It’s incredible, how it’s hidden away,’ she marvelled. ‘From outside those shops you’d never guess that it was here, unless you knew where that passage was, and even then you might miss it.’
‘That’s the idea. Outside the world bustles, especially in summer, when this place is a tourist trap. Then all the shops open for the foreign visitors, and the great families from Palermo come up here to open their summer houses and escape the heat. But then summer passes, the visitors go, and only the basic population is left.’
‘How many would that be?’
‘About six hundred. It’s like a ghost town.’
‘How do the people live when there are no visitors?’
‘Many of them work in the vineyards you saw below. The Martelli family owns them and I run them.’
Again she noticed the slight oddity in his speech, the way he spoke of ‘the Martelli family’ as though he wasn’t one of them.
Deep in the house she heard the telephone ring. He excused himself and went to answer it. Left alone, Angie looked around the little courtyard. It wasn’t expensively tended and perfect like the garden at the Residenza, but it had an austere elegance that pleased her.
She sat on the side of the stone fountain and looked into the water. Above her the impossibly blue sky was reflected clearly, and just behind her she saw Bernardo appear. He was looking at her, and she wondered if he’d forgotten that she could see his face in the water, because he wore an expression that made her catch her breath. It was the look of a man who’d been taken by surprise and held against his will. There was alarm, yearning, and a touch of wistfulness. Then he stepped back quickly and his face vanished. When Angie glanced up he wasn’t looking at her.
A large woman of about fifty emerged from the kitchen. Bernardo introduced her as Stella, his house keeper. Stella greeted Angie in excellent English, informing them that wine and snacks were waiting for them, while she finished cooking the proper meal. The snacks turned out to be bean fritters, hot cheese and herbs, and stuffed baked tomatoes.
‘If this is only a snack, I can’t wait to see what the full meal is like,’ Angie mused.
‘It will be a feast,’ he said, pouring her a glass of Marsala. ‘Stella is delighted to see you. She loves displaying her cooking, and I so seldom bring guests here.’
Glass in hand, he began showing her his home. Despite its beauty it was an austere place, with the bare minimum of dark, heavy oak furniture. The floors were covered with smooth flagstones with the occasional rag rug. The walls were plain stone or brick. There were some pictures, but they weren’t the valuable old masters of the Residenza. One was a photograph, an aerial view of Montedoro itself, touched by the sun and standing proud against the valley far below. One was a childish watercolour, showing the streets of the little town, and a man in the dark clothes Bernardo himself was wearing.
‘Yes, that’s meant to be me,’ he said, smiling as he saw her gaze. ‘It was done by the children of the local convent school after I paid for them to go have a day out.’
Looking more closely, Angie saw the word Grazie along the bottom of the picture. ‘It’s charming,’ she said. ‘Do you often give them treats?’
He shrugged. ‘A party at Christmas, a trip to the theatre. It’s a tiny school. It costs me next to nothing.’
Stella appeared from the kitchen, anxious to speak to him, and while he turned away Angie continued looking around. One door stood ajar, and through the three-inch crack she could just see the end of a bed. After struggling with her better self for a moment she ventured to push it a little further open.
The room was dominated by a large brass bedstead. The walls were stone, the floor made of red flagstones, with one rug beside the bed. There was one cane chair and one pine table on which Bernardo kept his few possessions. It might have been a monk’s cell, except for the old-fashioned picture of a woman by the bed. Angie had seen the portrait of Bernardo’s ancestor, but now she saw his mother, and realised how both of them were subtly blended in him.
It was an intriguing face. The woman had been beautiful with a heavy sensual mouth that hovered on the edge of a smile. But there was something about the eyes, an ironic watchfulness, a refusal to compromise, that spoilt her for Angie. But she was being unfair, she reflected. This woman had been trapped in a situation that left her much to endure. She had coped, but Angie, a woman from a totally different culture, guessed it had twisted her nature out of true, and some of her tensions had been passed on to her son.
The mystery about Bernardo deepened.
She was too cautious to linger, and slipped out quickly before he returned.
In one room the medieval atmosphere had been banished by a modern computer, a desk and filing cabinets.
‘This is where I do my paperwork,’ he said with a grimace. ‘Thank goodness for technology, so that I can do as little as possible.’
On the far side were huge windows reflecting the blue of the sky, both slightly ajar. Angie strode over and threw them open to take a deep breath, and found herself looking straight down the long drop into the valley. She gasped and turned away, her head spinning.
In a flash Bernardo was beside her, his arms about her waist, holding her steady. ‘I should have warned you that that window opens straight onto the drop,’ he said.
‘I’m all right. I haven’t much head for heights—it just took me by surprise. Phew!’
‘Come away from the window,’ he said, drawing her into the room. ‘That’s better.’
His clasp about her waist was light, but even so, she could sense the steely power of the man, and it thrilled her. Her heart was beating in anticipation. They were so close that she could feel the heat of his body and inhale his spicy, male aroma. And surely he must sense her own reaction to him. Even a man so lacking in polish must know that he delighted her. Some things could be neither faked nor hidden.
The next moment she met his eyes and saw in them everything she wanted. But he released her nonetheless, setting a careful distance between them and saying in a voice that wasn’t quite steady,
‘Stella will have lunch ready by now. We mustn’t keep her excellent food waiting.’
The table was laid in a simple room next to the kitchen with red flagstones, white walls, and a pair of French windows that opened onto the cloisters. Through these a gentle breeze blew, and they had a view straight out onto the fountain.
‘It’s magic,’ she breathed, as they sat down to eat.
‘It is at this time of year. In winter, very few people would find it magic. At this height the cold can be dreadful. Sometimes I look out of my window and all I can see is snow and mist, cutting the valley off. It’s like floating above the clouds.’
‘But then you can go down and live at the Residenza?’
‘I could. But I don’t.’
‘But isn’t it equally your home?’
‘No,’ he said briefly. He glanced up and said, ‘I’m sure you’ve heard the story.’
‘Some of it,’ she admitted. ‘How could I help knowing when you’re so prickly about it?’
‘Am I?’
‘At the airport, Lorenzo introduced you as his brother, and you hurried to say, “Half-brother”. It was like you wanted everyone to know you were different.’
‘Not really. I just don’t like to sail under false colours.’
‘But isn’t that the same thing in different words?’ she asked gently.
After a moment he said, ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’
‘Why won’t you let yourself be one of the family?’
‘Because I’m not,’ he said simply. ‘I never can be. I was born a part of another family, my mother and my father. My name was Bernardo Tornese. To the people here it still is.’
‘Only to them?’
He hesitated. ‘Legally I am Martelli. Baptista changed my name when I was still a child, unable to prevent it.’
‘But she must have meant to be kind, giving you your father’s name.’
‘I know, and I honour her for it, as I honour her for all her kindness. It can’t have been easy for her to take me in and live with the constant reminder of her husband’s infidelity.
‘She’s been good to me in other ways, too. My father bought this house and several other properties in the village, presumably meaning them to pass to my mother, and then to me. But when he died they were still in his name, and they became Baptista’s. She said they were mine by right, signed them over to me, and administered them until I was of age.’
‘What a magnificent woman!’
‘Yes. Her sense of duty towards me has never failed.’
‘But was it only duty? Perhaps she was fond of you as well?’
He frown. ‘How could she be? Think how she must have hated my mother!’
‘Has she ever behaved as though she did?’
‘Never. She has treated me like her own sons, but I’ve always wondered what lay beneath it.’
Angie was about to say something conventionally polite about Baptista’s motives when she remembered her impression of yesterday, that beneath the charming surface the old woman had a steely will.
‘How did you come to meet her?’ she asked.
‘She turned up here a few days after my parents’ death, and said she’d come to take me to my father’s home. I didn’t want to go, but I had no choice. As soon as I could, I ran away.’
‘And came back here,’ Angie said at once, and was rewarded by his smile at her understanding.
‘Yes, I came back here, where I felt I belonged. Of course I was fetched back, but I escaped again. This time I hid out in the mountains, and when they found me I had a fever. By the time I was well again, I knew it was useless to run away. Many women, in Baptista’s position would have left me to my fate, and I suppose I was an ungrateful wretch—’
‘But you were a child and you’d just lost your parents,’ Angie said sympathetically. ‘No wonder you weren’t thinking straight.’
‘Yes. If it had happened a little later, I think I could have appreciated her generosity more. As it was, I saw only an attempt to wipe my mother out of the record. That’s why I cling to her name. Inside myself I am still Bernardo Tornese.’
Since he’d opened up so far Angie ventured to ask, ‘What were you going to tell me about Ellona, as we drove up?’
‘The villa you saw there is part of the estate of Bella Rosaria which belongs to Baptista. That was where she took me after I recovered from the fever. I used to awaken in the night and hear her weeping for my father’s death.’
His face was troubled and Angie held her breath, feeling something happen here that was beautiful and mysterious. But before she could speak he forced a smile and said, ‘Why are we talking about sad things? Let us take our wine outside.’
The shadows were beginning to lengthen and it was deliciously cool by the fountain. Smiling, she watched their reflections. But then something made her look up, and what she saw in Bernardo’s eyes caused the breath to catch in her throat.
Slowly he took her hand in his and held it for a moment, touching it almost reverently. He said nothing, and in the silence Angie could hear her heart hammering. He wasn’t even kissing her, just holding her hand as hesitantly as a boy, yet she could feel herself responding so intensely that she was almost scared.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Always before she’d been in control. Suddenly she wasn’t in control of anything, especially her own feelings. She felt like someone who’d set out to take a pleasant day trip and found themselves clinging onto a runaway train. In another moment he really would kiss her, and she wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life.
The soft shrill of his mobile phone shattered the moment. Bernardo took a long breath and answered it reluctantly. ‘Yes?’ he said, sounding ragged.
Angie watched a change come over his face as he listened. Finally he said, ‘We’ll be right there.’ He shut off the phone and said, ‘That was Renato. There’s been an accident on the boat. Heather nearly drowned. He asks that you go to her at once.’
‘Of course.’
On the way down the mountain he explained tersely, ‘She and Renato went out on the Jet Ski, and she fell off. When he turned back to look for her she’d gone under. It sounds like a nasty moment. Luckily he found her fairly quickly. He called me from the boat. They should reach the port about the same time we do.’
At last the port of Mondello came into view. The Santa Maria was just tying up. Angie jumped from the car while it was still moving and took Renato’s outstretched hand onto the boat.
She found Heather sleeping in the big bedroom. To Angie’s relief her colour was good and she was breathing normally. She woke at Angie’s touch and gave her a sleepy smile.
‘Trust you to get in the wars,’ Angie said. ‘Renato sent for me.’
Heather eyed her wickedly, ‘I hope you weren’t interrupted at too difficult a moment.’
‘There’ll be others,’ Angie said, conscious that she was colouring. ‘I want you to spend tomorrow in bed. We’ll leave as soon as you’re better.’
Renato drove them home, Angie travelling in the same car as Heather, and Bernardo following on behind. She tried to give her friend all her attention, but inwardly she was thinking of Montedoro, another world, where eagles soared and spirits were free.
CHAPTER THREE
BERNARDO remained at the Residenza next day, but they had little time alone. Angie felt duty-bound to stay close to Heather, who slept most of the time under the influence of a sedative. Also, she found herself caught up in a family crisis.
‘Renato called Lorenzo,’ Bernardo told her. ‘But he’d checked out of his hotel in Stockholm this morning.’
‘But—I don’t understand. He was supposed to stay until tomorrow.’
‘I know. But he’s gone, and nobody knows where.’
‘He’s not playing fast and loose, is he?’ Angie demanded suspiciously.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Having a final fling before the wedding. I’ve heard about continental men.’
‘I’ll be—!’ Bernardo exclaimed, nettled. ‘That’s not only unjust, it’s bigoted, prejudiced—and I don’t know what. It’s practically racist. In fact, it is racist.’
‘Well, Italians do have rather a reputation.’ Angie said illogically.
‘Does that mean Lorenzo lives up to it? Do all Englishmen act the same way?’
‘Well, no. But I don’t know Lorenzo well enough to say what he is like. And, as his brother, you probably do.’
He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. ‘Yes, I’m sorry.’
‘No, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.’
He looked at her with a little smile that made her heart turn over. ‘I think we just had our first quarrel.’
‘So we did.’
They exchanged rueful glances and he opened his arms, pulling her into a hug.
Our first quarrel, she thought. Before our first kiss. And if I didn’t want that kiss so badly I wouldn’t be on edge now.
With the house in a bustle there was no chance of developing the hug into something interesting. Footsteps in the corridor made them pull apart hastily. The next moment Renato entered, looking exasperated.
‘The mystery is solved,’ he said. ‘Lorenzo has just called to say he’s on his way home. Apparently he decided this morning to skip all his appointments and come back.’ His voice grated with displeasure on the last words.
‘He couldn’t bear to stay away from Heather,’ Angie sighed. ‘That’s sweet.’
‘It’s not sweet,’ Renato snapped. ‘He had work to do, work he was already behind with.’
‘He’s getting married in a few days—’ Angie protested.
‘Is he at the airport now?’ Bernardo put in quickly before an argument could start.
‘No, he was calling from Rome, where he had to make a connection. He’ll be here in about three hours.’
‘Fine,’ Angie said crisply. ‘I’ll tell Heather.’
She favoured him with a glare before walking out smartly, closely followed by Bernardo.
‘I pity Heather,’ she said crossly. ‘I really do. Fancy having Renato as a brother-in-law.’
‘Perhaps she loves Lorenzo enough not to mind being related to Renato,’ Bernardo observed. ‘They say love can do that to people.’
It flashed across her mind that he might not be talking about Heather and Lorenzo. For he himself was related to Renato, and if—
Don’t be absurd! This is a holiday romance. He hasn’t even kissed you yet!
Lorenzo’s return changed things, but not in the way she’d expected. He arrived that afternoon, looking harassed, and it didn’t seem to Angie that this was a man who’d tossed everything aside to be with his beloved. Instead he hurried to find Renato and the two of them spent the rest of the day closeted in the study, from behind whose door Angie could hear agitated voices.
Perhaps Lorenzo was berating his brother for not taking better care of Heather. She certainly hoped so. She wondered when she would have another chance to be alone with Bernardo.
It came the next day. Lorenzo, looking pale and tense, was swept off by Renato to work at the company’s head office in Palermo, while Baptista claimed Heather’s company.
‘Naturally, we’d be glad if you joined us,’ she said with a smile, ‘but I expect you and Bernardo have made other plans.’
‘Well—’
‘Of course you have. And when the wedding is over I hope you won’t feel you have to hurry back to England. Perhaps you could stay another week?’
‘Thank you, I’d like that,’ Angie said, feeling the sun come out inside her.
This time it was her choice to go to Montedoro. Bernardo offered to show her the island, but she wanted to return to his eagle kingdom, where he was most completely himself.
When they were part of the way up the mountain he turned the car onto the grass and they got out and walked under the trees. From here Sicily was spread out before them in all its glory. Above them birds sang, the trees were in full beauty and the sky was an unbelievable blue. Angie stopped to breathe in the sweet air. The next moment she felt his hand tighten on hers, and she was in his arms.
The feel of his lips locked onto hers sent happiness streaming through her. She kissed him back, fervently, eagerly, inviting him to kiss her more deeply. She felt his clasp grow more confident. He’d understand her at once, and they could bypass the first tentative questions that strangers needed to ask, for they had never been strangers. They’d known each other from the first moment in the airport, and this sweet blazing kiss had been inevitable then.
His lips were just as she had known they would be, firm and decisive, and her own responded frankly, no holding back. To have pretended reserve would have been a kind of dishonesty, when in truth her heart was reaching out to him.
Just now they asked little of each other, an eager embrace and lips seeking lips, exchanging warmth. She caught a glimpse of his face and he was almost smiling, like a man who’d discovered longed-for treasure and found it all he’d dreamed. There was a hint of surprise as well and it touched her heart. It was as though joy was so unfamiliar to him that he hardly dared to claim it as his own.
He trailed the fingers of one hand slowly down her cheek, almost as though he couldn’t believe she was really there. His words confirmed it.
‘You won’t vanish, will you? I’ve thought of this since the moment we met, and now—’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said happily.
‘Except with me?’
‘Except with you.’
‘Kiss me—kiss me—’ His lips were on hers again before she had the chance to speak. Suddenly she was aware of everything in the world about her. The sun had never been so warm, the air so sweet, life so worth living.
Bernardo drew back a little. He was shaking. ‘We must go on to Montedoro,’ he said unsteadily. ‘I don’t trust myself to be alone with you.’ He kissed her briefly one more time. ‘Let’s go.’
Reluctantly she placed her hand in his and followed him to the car. She was moving in a happy dream, and it lasted all the way up the mountain.
Montedoro was in its full summer prosperity, bursting with tourists. To make the chaos worse, it was market day, and fifty stalls were crammed into the tiny piazza at the highest point of the little town. Every stall keeper greeted him with a cry of, ‘E, Signor Bernardo,’ and inclined their head courteously to Angie. Sometimes he merely waved and passed on. Sometimes he stopped to talk, always introducing her, and she became aware that she was being watched curiously on all sides.
They stopped for tea at a tiny convent where the Superior, Mother Francesca, welcomed him as a benefactor and a small, elderly nun made him swear not to leave until he’d tried her new batch of cakes. He solemnly promised, and Angie found herself eating the most delicious almond cakes she’d ever tasted.
Again she could feel the curious eyes on all sides and a frisson went up her spine. It was almost as though Bernardo was showing her to ‘his people’ for a purpose. But that was nonsense. This was a brief flirtation. Nothing more.
But her inner questions were like wisps of smoke. What was happening was out of her control.
While she was just trying to decide on another cake she heard someone knocking on the front door. The sound was faint, muffled by the thick stone walls, but she could just make out that the door was opened, for the knocking ceased, to be replaced by shouting, and the sound of a child crying. Then there were footsteps in the corridor. Mother Francesca hurried out and returned a moment later, looking troubled.
‘A little girl has been knocked down in the street and Dr Fortuno is away,’ she said. ‘So they’ve brought her to Sister Ignatia, our infirmary nurse.’
Bernardo glanced quickly at Angie who immediately said, ‘I’m a doctor. Can I help?’
‘I’d be so grateful,’ the nun replied. ‘We’re worried in case the child has some broken bones.’
The convent infirmary was a small room, with a bed, equipped for little more than first aid. On the bed was lying a little girl of about eight, crying bitterly. With her was an old woman dressed in black. She had a lined, nut brown face and white hair, covered by a black headscarf. Sister Ignatia spoke to her in Sicilian, indicating Angie, and immediately the old woman was up in arms, standing between them and letting forth a stream of Sicilian whose meaning was only too clear.
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