Lucy Gordon - Rinaldo’s Inherited Bride

She’d longed to follow him as he’d walked away into the night, but his prohibition blocked her way.

When she saw the man moving between the trees she thought her imagination was reliving that first occasion. Then she realised that Rinaldo was really there, and in the moonlight she could just see him well enough to know that he was crushed.

She couldn’t bear it. Whatever he said, she must be with him. Hurriedly she pulled on a short nightgown and a light linen robe, thrust some slippers on her feet, and was out of the door, running down the stairs.

As she reached the trees she lost sight of him, and for a moment she was afraid he might have moved on. But then she saw him, sitting on a log, his hands clasped between his knees, his head sunk in an attitude of despair.

He didn’t hear her approach until she dropped down on her knees beside him.

‘Rinaldo- Rinaldo-’ There was so much she wanted to say, but she could speak only his name.

She put her hands on either side of his face. ‘Don’t turn away from me,’ she begged.

He didn’t try to turn away, but he sat looking at her with the saddest face she thought she had ever seen. It made Alex abandon words and pull his head down until his lips were on hers.

He almost resisted, but he had no power to hold out against her for long. The next moment his arms went about her, drawing her tightly against him in a long, fierce kiss.

She could feel his desperation and it made her wind her arms about his neck, pressing herself against him, giving to him with everything she had.

‘Alex-’ he tried to say.

‘No,’ she told him fiercely. ‘Not yet.’

‘Not yet,’ he agreed, the words almost smothered against her mouth.

Before this he had touched her face with his lips, but he had never laid them over hers. Now he did so and the feeling was as fiercely wonderful as her dreams had promised her. He kissed her with a hard, driving urgency, as though afraid that she would be snatched away.

She responded in kind, caressing his mouth feverishly, trying to draw him on to give her what she most urgently wanted from him at this moment.

But then she felt his shoulders turn to iron beneath her hands, his whole body tensed to put a distance between them.

‘Stop!’ he said hoarsely. ‘I must tell you something.’

‘Let it wait.’ She was gasping. She wanted him and words were an irrelevance that got in the way.

‘No, you must hear me out first.’

She forced herself to calm down, sensing that this was vital to him. When his hands fell from her she seized them, holding them between her own.

‘Tell me what it is that’s making you like this,’ she said. ‘It can’t be just the grapes.’

‘You don’t understand,’ he said so fiercely that she was startled. ‘If I’d been right, I’d have got top price and been ahead of the market. And that was what I wanted more than anything in life.

‘I wanted it so much that I blinded myself to the truth. I told myself I had to be right. When I tasted those grapes I found what I wanted to find. Idiot! Stupid, conceited clown! ’

She was shocked by the agony of self-condemnation in his voice.

‘I thought I could order things to be as I wanted.’ He gave a crack of mirthless laughter. ‘You’d think I’d have learned better than that by now, wouldn’t you?’

‘Please, don’t be so hard on yourself,’ she begged. ‘So you let your pride get in the way-’

‘Not pride, arrogance. I wouldn’t listen, would I? And now I’ve brought down my best hopes, and damaged the farm.’

‘But the rest of the harvest was good-’

‘Oh, yes, we won’t go under. We’ll survive, but not as prosperously as we should have done, because I was blind and pig-headed- because it mattered so much I couldn’t see anything else. ’

‘But what mattered that much?’ she asked.

He stared. ‘How can you ask? Isn’t it obvious?’

‘Not to me.’

‘I might have wiped out my debt to you, or most of it. For weeks I’ve lived and breathed that. I’ve thought of nothing else but the moment when I could repay you.

‘I told you I could have got the best price if I’d been right. And I blew it. All I can do now is pay you instalments, but I’ll still be deep in your debt.’

‘Oh, I see,’ she said. His words had raised a hideous possibility. She had been deceiving herself. He wanted her sexually, but he’d never lost the hope of getting rid of her in the end.

‘You don’t see at all,’ he said with soft vehemence.

‘You wanted to pay me off. Then everything would have been all right, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes, because then I could have said things to you that I can’t say while I’m your debtor. How can a man tell a woman what she means to him when he owes her money?’

She grew still, trying to see his face in the shafts of moonlight that slanted between the trees.

‘I suppose-that depends on what she means to him,’ she whispered.

He touched her face. ‘More than I can find words for. I’ve dreamed of the moment when I had no monetary reason for marrying you, because then you could believe that I loved you. All this time I’ve wanted to say something, but I told myself it must wait until I had money.’

‘To hell with your money!’ she said vehemently. ‘I don’t want it, I want you , and if you weren’t blinded with pride you’d have known that long ago.’

‘Would I?’ he asked with a touch of wistfulness that sounded strange from him. ‘Then perhaps I’m not a very perceptive man.’

‘There’s no perhaps about it,’ she breathed. ‘Why must the mortgage be so important?’

‘It’s important to me to come to you with my head high.’

‘You’ll always have your head high. Do you think I’d suspect you of being mercenary? How could I after you fought so hard to drive me off?’ She tried to lighten his mood with a mild joke. ‘Nobody could ever accuse you of sweet-talking me.’

He gave a brief smile, but she could tell he was only half ready to hear her.

‘I know you’re stubborn and hard and awkward,’ she said, ‘but would you really turn your back on me because of this?’

Sombrely he shook his head. ‘I could never turn my back on you,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I told myself I could, but it isn’t true. I must love you. I cannot help myself. But I wanted it to be right between us.’

Tenderly she touched his face. ‘You fool,’ she said softly. ‘You dear fool, don’t you know that it will be right between us if we love each other? Not because of money. Rinaldo, listen to me. What has money to do with us? From the first moment it got in the way, blinding us to what should have been obvious.’

‘I know you’re right. But it hurts me here-’ he pointed to his heart ‘-that I can’t approach you as an equal.’

‘Do you love me as much as I love you? Because if you do, we’re equals in the only way that matters.’

‘A thousand times more. I thought I was so complete in myself before you came. You showed me that I wasn’t. That’s why I fought you so hard. I’ve never fought anyone as hard as I’ve fought you.’

‘That’s how I know you love me,’ she whispered.

‘Ah, you understand-’

He had said he would not approach her with love while he was still her debtor, but now he knew that he had no choice. She had carried him over the barrier by the strength of her faith. He had nothing to do now but surrender.

To this fiercely self-sufficient man surrender was hard, all but impossible. But she could make it easy by turning it into a triumph.

He drew her to him again, exploring with hands and lips, and now she was free to yield to him utterly. Her fingers caressed the back of his neck, rejoicing in a freedom long desired and now achieved.