Gino’s Arranged Bride

CHAPTER TWELVE

THAT night the family, minus Alex, celebrated with the supper Nikki had prepared. It was pronounced a triumph, and Nikki, fired with culinary genius, began making plans for the welcome home feast for when Alex returned with baby Laura.

There had never been any doubt about the name. The story of the birth had spread all over Belluna and now, wherever she went, she was greeted with cheers, and even applause.

She had become part of Belluna. If everyone’s reaction hadn’t told her, the naming of her new niece would have done. She had earned their respect, and was no longer an outsider, watching from the sidelines as her fate was decided.

As Alex had always known would happen, Rinaldo’s grouchiness vanished when he was no longer afraid for his wife’s safety. He doted on his new daughter, and openly treated his sister-in-law as a heroine.

‘The men of this family are so soft-hearted,’ Alex said to Laura, smiling, one evening when she had put the baby to bed. ‘When I was pregnant Rinaldo used to ask me a thousand questions to see if I was all right. You heard him. Now he asks a thousand questions to see if little Laura is all right. I’m really becoming sidelined.’

‘Oh, yeah!’ Laura said cynically, and Alex laughed. She glowed with the confidence of knowing where she belonged with her child, her man, her place in the world. It was the thing Laura most envied her.

One evening, as they were putting the baby to bed, Laura said, ‘Alex, do you realise that you don’t need us any more?’

‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘Everything’s going well for you. The harvest was a record, the danger’s over-’

It wasn’t entirely a surprise when Alex became a little vague and self-conscious.

‘Actually-’ she began.

Laura smiled. ‘Go on.’

‘There was a little more to it than that. Even without the baby, Rinaldo and I wanted Gino to come back and see us as we are now, married and loving each other, a true family. Otherwise in his mind we’d have stayed frozen in time, as we were on the day he left, and that would have been bad for him, for all of us.

‘Rinaldo needs his brother. Little Laura needs her uncle, and me-well, I suppose I need to know that I didn’t do him any permanent harm.

‘This last year Rinaldo and I have been so happy, but there’s always been a shadow spoiling it, the fear that he might never be happy again.’

She looked hopefully at Laura, who nodded but stayed silent.

‘Laura, we so much want you all to stay,’ Alex said on a note of pleading. ‘Belluna is Gino’s home, his birthright. I don’t think he can really settle anywhere else. But maybe I’m wrong. I can see he’s changed this last year. It’s not just that he’s older. He’s more thoughtful. He’s found another life with you, and maybe he doesn’t need this one any more.’

‘No,’ Laura said at once. ‘You’re not wrong. I’ve been thinking the same thing. Before your letter arrived I told him he should come back here. I was so afraid that he’d sell up, then discover too late that it had been a terrible mistake.’

‘Ah, you understand him. I thought you would. You wouldn’t let him make a really bad mistake.’

‘You’re very kind,’ Laura said wryly, ‘but our marriage isn’t-as you think. Did he tell you that I proposed to him?’

‘No,’ Alex said, looking at her strangely. ‘I know that Nikki was a part of your decision, but not that you actually made the proposal. But so what?’ She gave a very Italian shrug. ‘Non è importante.’

‘Of course it’s important,’ Laura said, astonished. ‘It’s the wrong way around.’

Alex shrugged again. ‘Marriages happen as they happen. My own marriage was delayed because Rinaldo wouldn’t say he loved me until the harvest was in, and he could pay off the mortgage. Have you ever heard anything so absurd? Then, of course, he got impatient and harvested the grapes too soon, so they weren’t worth so much. Honestly, the foolishness of men!’

‘But I asked Gino to marry me because Nikki wanted him to be her father.’

‘And that’s the only reason? You didn’t love him? Or have you only come to love him since? You’re not going to deny that you do love him, are you?’

‘No,’ Laura said, smiling and shaking her head. ‘Of course I love him. How could any woman help loving him? Oh, sorry-I shouldn’t have said that?’

Alex laughed. ‘It’s all right, I agree with you. I love him dearly. He’s very lovable. But it’s not the kind of love I share with Rinaldo. That comes from another world. Gino is like my younger brother. In fact, he is my younger brother now.’

‘That’s how I saw him,’ Laura mused. ‘Or thought I did. But for me it didn’t work. I think I was in love with him then, although I didn’t know it. By the time I admitted it to myself we were already married, and now I’ll never know how he really feels about me.’

‘You never talk about it?’

‘What is there to talk about?’ Laura asked simply. ‘If you marry without saying you love each other, the subject somehow never comes up again.’

‘And I suppose he didn’t tell you what he said in his letter to Rinaldo?’

‘No.’

‘I think perhaps you ought to know.’ Alex reached into a drawer and pulled out a sheet of blue paper, that Laura recognised as her own. But when she held it out Laura shook her head as soon as she saw the words.

‘I can’t read Italian. And besides-’ she struggled with temptation ‘-should I read Gino’s letter if he doesn’t want me to?’

‘Of course you should,’ Alex said robustly. ‘I’ve no patience with that way of thinking. How would the world ever get by if nobody ever did anything they shouldn’t? I’ll translate for you.’

Laura gave up. In truth she was longing to know what Gino had said about her.

“‘Now I have something to tell you,”’ Alex read, translating as she went. “‘The two of you always said that I would find someone of my own, who would be to me what you are to each other. I didn’t believe you, but it’s happened. Her name is Laura, and if she knew I’d described her in such a way she’d be surprised, and perhaps angry with me. We married a few weeks ago, and they’ve been the happiest weeks of my life, even though I know I’m only second-best to her. The fact is that Laura only married me for the sake of her daughter Nikki, a lovely child, who has adopted me as her father. Laura’s actually in love with another man, but he insulted Nikki so she turned her back on him, and made do with me instead.”’

Laura turned away to hide the emotion on her face. Even to Alex she could not reveal what it did to her to hear what she meant to Gino like this, at a distance.

Second-best? Made do with him? If only he knew!

Alex was still reading.

“‘Bit by bit we’re forming what I hope and believe is a happy marriage, although it may be some time before she accepts me completely. I can be patient, however long it takes, for she is worth waiting for. All my life, if necessary.”’

Alex lowered the letter and looked at Laura.

‘Is he right?’ she asked. ‘Are you in love with another man?’

‘No, of course not. Steve was just-’ Laura made a helpless gesture ‘-we went out for a while, and I would have married him for security. After he’d gone I found I didn’t mind.’

‘Did you ever tell Gino that you don’t mourn this man?’

‘No, we don’t talk about feelings. When I proposed I told him he could have all the freedom he wanted, even girlfriends, as long as he was a good father to Nikki.’

‘Good heavens!’ Alex began to laugh. ‘And you’re surprised that the poor man is confused? I don’t wonder he doesn’t discuss feelings with you. You’ve got him walking on hot coals. He still thinks you’re doing everything for your child.

‘Mind you,’ she added, turning fondly to the cradle, ‘I understand that. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for this little one. I think Gino would understand as well, because he has a father’s heart.’

She gave Laura a special smile. ‘Have you told him?’

‘I-no. I wasn’t sure myself until recently. I’m waiting for the right moment, but I’m not sure when that will ever be. I was hoping for some sign that he loved me-’

‘And you think you haven’t had it? What do you think that letter was all about?’

‘Yes, he implies it in a roundabout sort of way, but he never comes right out and mentions love.’

‘Perhaps that’s hard for him,’ Alex said shrewdly. ‘The last time he told a woman he loved her it was here, at Belluna, in front of a crowd. He went down on one knee and told her of his love. And when he’d done that, she rejected him and married his brother.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘I should think that declaring love to a woman is the most difficult thing in the world for him, even if he were sure of her feelings. And he isn’t sure about yours at all.’

‘I should have simply told him,’ Laura said, nodding as understanding came to her.

‘So, it’s time to put it right,’ Alex said firmly. ‘You’ll have to try to forgive me, but I’m going to interfere in your life again. I’m afraid I’m just one of nature’s “fixers”.’

Laura regarded her sister-in-law and a slow smile spread over her face.

‘What did you have in mind?’ she asked.

Gino spent the day in Florence attending a meeting of local grape growers. The light was dying as he returned home in the early evening.

‘Gino.’

As he entered the house he looked around for Laura, but it was Alex’s soft voice that reached him from halfway up the stairs.

‘Where’s Laura?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Will you do me a favour?’

‘Of course. Just let me see Laura first.’

‘I think she’s out.’

‘Think? Don’t you know? Is she driving around alone? It’s getting dark.’

‘Look for her later. I need you to go over there,’ she pointed to the house facing them on the far side of the valley. ‘I was there today and I left my bag. Please Gino.’

He was too good-natured to refuse her, but he would gladly have done without this.

‘Fine, I’ll go, but I wish I knew where Laura was. I need to talk to her.’

‘I can’t think why,’ Alex said with a touch of irony. ‘You never seem to say anything to the purpose.’

Something strange in her manner got through to him.

‘Alex, what’s going on?’

‘Something that should have been “going on” before. You ought to have told Laura long ago that you loved her, but since you lost your nerve I did it for you.’

‘You what?’

‘I told her how much you loved her. She didn’t believe me at first, so I read her your letter.’

‘Alex, you wouldn’t dare!’

‘My dear boy, I’d have done anything to stop you wandering around, treading on eggshells. Gino, it was all nonsense about that other man. She never loved him. She said so. She said a lot of other things too, but she’ll have to tell you herself. I’ve given you a start. The rest is up to you.’

Gino had come halfway up the stairs to her, his face a mixture of shock and wild hope. Now he turned to descend, then thought better of it and took the last few stairs in a leap.

‘Alex,’ he said, ‘Alex, my dear, dear sister!’

She kissed him. ‘Go on with you.’

‘But where can I find her?’

‘I meant go and get my bag.’

‘Yes, right.’

He went back down the stairs and out into the car. Rinaldo, who’d been watching from a doorway, mounted the stairs to his wife, his eyes warm as they rested on her.

‘What are you up to?’ he asked, suspicious and tender at the same time.

‘Up to? I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean that I saw your bag ten minutes ago.’

‘Did you?’ she said vaguely. ‘You must have imagined that.’

‘No, I didn’t imagine it. And I repeat, amor mio, what are you up to?’

Alex smiled.

‘I just thought that after what Laura did for us, it’s time we did something for her.’

Gino normally regarded himself as a man who was quick on the uptake, but he was within a couple of hundred yards of the house before it dawned on him that he’d been set up.

He stopped the car and sat there quietly, his eyes on the building, rearing up in the fast-gathering gloom. As he watched he saw a small light in one of the windows, as though someone had put on a lamp.

If you were superstitious, you might think that the ghost walked. Or, if you were a man in love, you might think that someone was waiting for you, impatient because you’d taken so long.

For a long time he hadn’t thought of himself as being in love with Laura, because their relationship had come about so strangely that they had missed out the romantic, mysterious stage.

Or perhaps he hadn’t wanted to admit the truth to himself.

But if you desired a woman so powerfully that her every movement was a delight and you woke up thinking of last night’s lovemaking, and spent the rest of the day looking forward to the next night-and if, in addition, you were moved by the longing to take all her troubles from her, so that the knowledge of her defencelessness could make your bones melt in your body-well, did you call that love?

And if, in your stubbornness and pride, and perhaps cowardice, you still refused to call it love, what else could you possibly find to call it?

Suddenly something came back to him: the night he’d returned home to the farm and found Alex in Rinaldo’s bed, both of them asleep. Rinaldo had rested against her breast, in the circle of her arms.

In the past Gino had flinched from that picture, but this time he looked at it head-on, and understood its true meaning for the first time.

Rinaldo had lain against her like a man seeking refuge, and there had been protectiveness in the way her arms curved about him, enfolding him in a circle of safety.

Rinaldo, the powerful, the harsh, the dominant, had turned to Alex because she was a strong woman, and offered him a refuge. Beneath the rough outer shell he was defenceless in ways only she had divined.

And he himself-Gino had only just understood-was precisely the opposite. His laughing, easy manner had always fooled people into thinking him boyish and unreliable. But, in truth, he was the stronger man.

Alex’s beauty and charisma had caused him misery, but he knew now that he would never have been happy with her. She was too independent to need him as he must be needed if he were to know peace and fulfilment.

But Laura’s vulnerability had spoken to him from the first moment, although it had taken time for him to understand. She could be strong and resourceful. The child’s birth had proved that. But for her daily life she needed the strength he had to offer, and his heart had chosen her because she called forth the better part of himself. They completed each other, just as Rinaldo and Alex completed each other. There could be no stronger union than that.

The light was still there in the window. Gino started the engine and drove the rest of the way. As he went into the house, he knew what he would find.

‘Hello,’ she said, smiling at him.

‘Hello,’ he said, gazing at her.

She was enchanting, her face illuminated by the glow of the lamp. When she put out her hand he took it in his, gently caressing her fingers with this own.

‘What is it?’ she asked when a sudden alert look came into his face.

He raised her right hand to study the thing that had caught his attention. It was a small filigree ring on the centre finger.

‘Nikki gave me that,’ she said. ‘She won it at a fair. You’ve seen it a thousand times before.’

‘Yes, but I never realised-’

And suddenly he was back in the hospital, rambling feverishly to the woman who sat with him, speaking in a warm voice, full of hope, saying ‘Time to forget and love again.’

He’d denied it, but she’d pleaded, ‘Suppose she loved you. Don’t you want to be loved as well as to give love?’

Then he’d drawn her hand closer and brushed his lips over it, feeling the rough outline of a ring on her finger.

A filigree ring.

‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ he asked now. ‘In the hospital, that time.’

‘Yes, it was me.’

‘Why did you never tell me?’

‘I couldn’t while you loved Alex so much.’

‘I thought I did. But you said such things to me while I was in that fever-about a woman who loved me as much as I loved her. Who did you mean?’

She shook her head. ‘You know who I meant.’

‘But I need to hear you say it. Tell me that you love me, Laura, please.’

‘I love you,’ she said simply. ‘I have for a long time. I always will.’

‘And I knew I loved you soon after we married,’ he admitted, ‘but I didn’t know how much. I had to come back and see Alex again to realise what a small part of my life she was. You are my life. My whole life, now and for ever. You and Nikki. The three of us.’

She placed his hand on her stomach. ‘Four,’ she said.

She put down the lamp quickly to go into his arms, and as they held each other tightly she felt the shadow between them finally pass away.

‘There’s so much I wanted to say to you,’ he said, ‘But I could never forget that you only married me for Nikki’s sake.’

‘I thought I did. I had to tell myself something like that, as a kind of protection. I was scared to admit how much I loved you, even to myself. I couldn’t believe that I really meant anything to you.’

He kissed her. ‘You were right when you said that I had to come back. You’re wiser than I. You knew the past had to be dealt with. Even though I loved you, it wouldn’t have been complete without this.’

He took her face between his hands, searching it anxiously. ‘What happens now?’

‘I called England this afternoon, to tell them they can buy the house. We can use the money to put this house in order.’

‘It’s all settled, isn’t it?’

‘It was settled before we arrived. Alex chose this place ages ago, but do you know why? Look.’

She picked up the lamp and went to the window, staring across the valley to where they could see the lights of the house he’d just left. Some of them were on, but there was one darkened room, where he could just see a gleam of light, as though an answering lamp had come on.

‘We’ll always be within sight of each other,’ Laura said. ‘When it’s dark, we can look out and see their lights, and they can see ours. It had to be here and nowhere else.’

She raised the lamp high, moving it back and forth. As Gino watched, incredulous, the pinpoint of light in the far building, also moved back and forth, as though in answer.

‘Who’s doing that?’ he asked.

‘Alex of course,’ she said calmly.

‘You and Alex-friends?’

‘Friends and allies, as sisters ought to be. Look.’

She moved the lamp again, and back through the darkness came the answer, the ancient, unmistakable message, that he’d thought never to find again.

It was the same message that he’d discovered in Laura’s arms, in the circle of her love, and it was wonderfully, overwhelmingly right that it should be she who evoked it for him now, shining across the darkened valley.

All’s well. Welcome home!