Lucy Gordon: Husband By Necessity

‘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-’