Lucy Gordon - Rinaldo’s Inherited Bride

Still she could not be certain that he was awake, although his eyes were open. She touched his face gently.

‘Rinaldo,’ she whispered, ‘talk to me.’

At last he seemed to focus on her. He looked drained, and when she put her arms about him he clung to her.

‘Was it a bad dream?’ she asked.

‘No. Something came back to me at last. It’s been there all this time, hovering just out of sight. I’ve tried so often to remember-’

‘And now you have?’

‘Yes. It was the day my father died. I got to the hospital before Gino and I had a few moments alone with him.

‘When he saw me, he tried to say something. His face was swollen and he couldn’t get the words out-just the words, “Sorry”. He said that over and over. I can still see his eyes-they were desperate. He wanted so much to tell me something, but he couldn’t manage it.

‘I kept waiting for him to tell me, but then I realised that it wasn’t possible. So I took his hand between mine and told him everything was going to be all right. He seemed quieter. And then he died.’

‘What do you think he wanted to say?’

‘I think it was the mortgage. He knew what was going to happen, and he was trying to tell me that he was sorry.’

Rinaldo shook his head as though trying to clear it.

‘I don’t know how I could have forgotten that,’ he said. ‘It was as though my mind just blanked it out.’

Alex took him in her arms, speaking gently.

‘With all that happened that day, and the state you must have been in, it’s not surprising. You needed to be ready to remember.’

‘And I’m ready now, here in your arms. All this time-I blamed him-but he did try to warn me.’

‘He never meant you to find out the way you did,’ she said.

‘That’s right. He didn’t just abandon us without a word, the way I felt he had. That might have been unreasonable, but it was how I felt. Now it’s different. It’s as though I’d got my father back again. You did that.’

Her heart sang at his praise, but she said, ‘It would have happened anyway.’

‘No, it happened because I found peace with you. That peace had to come first, before I could be reconciled with him. Now I am. He’s in my heart once more, and I’ll never lose him again-because of you.’

Suddenly he clung to her. ‘Don’t leave me,’ he said desperately.

‘Never in life. As long as you need me, I’ll be here.’

‘I’ll always need you. There was no warmth or light before you came.’ He rested his head against her. ‘Suppose you’d never come here, and we’d never met?’

‘But we did,’ she murmured. ‘Maybe we were always bound to meet. Do you remember that first day?’

‘At Poppa’s funeral? Yes.’

‘I think I knew then that you were going to be something important in my life. I didn’t know what, but I knew it wasn’t going to be indifference.’

‘No, we could never have been indifferent to each other,’ he murmured.

‘And in those days it looked like we’d be enemies.’

‘Is that what we were?’ he whispered.

‘Oh, yes.’ She smiled tenderly. ‘We had to be enemies first before we could be anything else. It’s not a bad way of getting acquainted.’

‘Yes, we did that,’ he agreed with a faint smile. ‘Now we have to get to know each other in another way.’

‘You think we don’t know each other?’ she asked softly.

He didn’t answer at once, but he raised his head and their eyes held, full of deep, shared knowledge. They knew each other.

‘I’m looking forward to the rest,’ he said. ‘Being with you every day, learning all about you, the things you like, dislike. Growing old with you, becoming part of you, making you part of me.’

‘I am part of you,’ she said. ‘I always will be.’

‘I feel as though I’ve spent the last years wandering in a desert. And you’ve brought me home.’

She kissed him repeatedly, not in passion but in tenderness. There had been passion and there would be passion again, but for now their embrace was an assertion of profound peace and trust between them. At last they slept again, still holding each other.

When Alex found herself drifting back to the surface she wasn’t sure whether it was happening naturally or because of some other reason. Despite her feeling of fulfilment she was pervaded by an uneasy awareness of something wrong.

Slowly she opened her eyes.

Gino was standing at the end of the bed, staring at them both with a face full of shock and disillusion.

F ORa long moment Alex couldn’t move. Inwardly she was weeping. Dear Gino, so generous and affectionate, the last man she would ever want to hurt! But his face was telling her that he was stricken to the heart.

Rinaldo was sleeping with his head against her, his whole attitude that of a man who had come home to the place where he belonged. Her arms were about him in a way that would have told Gino how things were between them, even if nothing else did.

‘Gino!’ Her lips formed his name without sound.

Still he neither moved nor spoke, while his face seemed to grow paler every moment. Alex reached out a hand to him.

Then he moved, backing away to the door, his eyes, filled with bitter betrayal, fixed on his brother and the woman he loved.

Despairingly she gave Rinaldo a little shake, awaking him. When he saw his brother he tensed and gave a soft groan.

Gino had reached the door, shaking his head as though trying to deny what his eyes saw. Then he vanished.

‘Gino!’ Rinaldo shouted.

He hurled himself out of bed, pulling on his jeans and racing to the door almost in one movement. Alex sat with her head in her hands, devastated by the sudden catastrophe, torn with anguish for Gino, who didn’t deserve to be hurt like this.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Please, no! Oh, Gino, Gino!’

Huddling on her clothes she went down to where Rinaldo had caught up with Gino in the room that led to the veranda. The tall windows had been thrown open, showing the low table, and the chairs where the three of them had spent happy evenings.

Gino was striding about the room, as though his pain was something he could leave behind. He turned when he heard Alex and she was shocked by his face.

It was as though all the youth had drained out of it, leaving it haggard and joyless. He looked from one to the other.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked. ‘It wouldn’t have been difficult, would it? Hell-the way you pulled the wool over my eyes, pretending to be enemies, letting me believe what I wanted. The only thing I don’t understand is why?’

His eyes were cold and hard as he faced Alex. ‘Did it give you some sort of pleasure to lead me by the nose?’

‘I didn’t-truly I didn’t-’

‘Don’t insult my intelligence, Alex. All this time-’

‘But it isn’t all this time. You talk about Rinaldo and me pretending to be enemies, but it wasn’t a pretence. When you’ve seen us quarrelling it’s been real.’

‘So what changed?’

‘Nothing changed,’ Rinaldo said quietly. ‘What we felt for each other was there all the time, but we didn’t know it. Or maybe we suspected, and were fighting it. I resented her at first, you know I did. I didn’t want to fall in love with her, but I couldn’t help myself because she’s a wonderful-’

‘All right,’ Gino said harshly.

‘I’m sorry,’ Rinaldo said. He seemed cast down in a way Alex had never seen before, and she realised that in his own way he too was devastated. He loved his brother, and it was tearing him apart to quarrel with him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I just hoped you’d understand-’