Lucy Gordon - Husband By Necessity

‘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.