The Italian’s Cinderella Bride

CHAPTER FOUR

‘TELL me,’ Pietro urged again. ‘I know you’re trying to be very realistic about everything, but sometimes feelings aren’t realistic. After all that’s happened-is it possible that you still love him?’

He checked himself, sensing that his voice sounded too intent. Emotional pressure was bad for Ruth. He must try to remember.

‘Can you still love a man who’s treated you in such a way?’ he continued more calmly.

‘Treated me how? That’s what I don’t know.’

‘He didn’t stick around, you know that.’

‘But maybe I told him not to, like he said.’

‘Maybe.’ He didn’t sound convinced. ‘But what do you feel now?’

She shook her head helplessly.

‘How can I tell “then” and “now” apart? I remember how totally I loved him then.’

‘And you feel that love now?’

‘Yes-no-maybe, but it’s really just another hologram. Press a switch and it would probably vanish. Oh, hell! What’s the point of talking? I’ve got to discover the reality and look it in the eye.’ She smiled with a hint of mischief that disturbed his heart. ‘Maybe then I’ll spit in its eye.’

‘Reality may hit you harder than you imagine.’

‘Then I’ll hit back harder still. You don’t think I’m going to be beaten by a bit of reality, do you? That to it!’ She snapped her fingers.

‘Have you ever let anything get the better of you?’ he asked, honestly curious.

Making a face full of wicked glee, she replied, ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’

She gave a crow of amusement and he joined in, regarding her with admiration. But as his laughter faded hers went on, and there was a note in it that alarmed him.

‘Ruth, it’s not that funny,’ he said gently.

‘Yes, it is, it’s hilarious. It’s the funniest thing that ever happened. Can’t you see that?’

‘No,’ he said, gathering her shaking body into his arms. ‘I can see a great many things. You’d be surprised how much I can see. But I can’t see that.’

He held her tight, feeling her shaking intensify until he thought her laughter would change into tears. But something else happened. Suddenly she stopped shaking and he felt her shoulders stiffen. Gently but firmly she drew away and disengaged herself, saying in a changed voice, ‘OK, I’ve decided.’

‘Why does that scare me?’ he asked, trying to make light of it.

‘I’m not going to go on like this, living off your charity and wondering if Gino’s going to come home, and if he does, will he help me. That’s just leaving your fate in someone else’s hands, and nuts to it.’

‘Good. Keep going.’

‘I’m going to get a job, find somewhere to live, make my own way. If Gino comes back, he does. If he doesn’t, I’ll get on with life some other way.’

‘Fine. While you look for a job you can work for me for a while.’

‘I said no charity.’

‘Will you stop bristling like a hedgehog? You’d be doing me a favour. My other assistant didn’t come in today. She’s pregnant and having a hard time. If you’ll come in for a few weeks I can give her a leave of absence. She’ll get the rest she needs, I’ll get your language expertise, and everyone’s satisfied.’

She thought for a minute.

‘And I’ll pay you rent?’

‘I don’t need-’

‘It’s that or nothing.’

Where did she get the gall to make terms with him? he wondered.

‘All right, we’ll do it your way.’ He added lightly, ‘And I’ll wager that’s something you’re used to as well.’

She smiled. ‘Who knows?’ she said.

‘I have a feeling it’s going to be interesting finding out.’

When Ruth had gone to bed he sat by the window, looking out at the water, wondering if it had really only been two days since she’d come storming into his life, half drowned, half mad-as she would have put it-totally undefeated. Already it felt like a different universe.

The door opened and Minna looked in.

‘Do you want me for anything, signore?’

‘No, thank you, Minna. We’ve done the dishes.’

‘I keep asking you not to do that. It’s my job.’

‘Ruth insisted. You can’t argue with her.’

Minna gave him the motherly smile of someone who had worked for his family all her life, and had assumed possessive rights.

‘I’m so glad,’ she said. ‘It’s about time.’

‘No,’ he said hastily. ‘Minna, it’s not like that.’

‘Of course it isn’t. I don’t mean that at all.’

‘Then what?’

‘I came in earlier, and as I passed this door I heard you laughing.’

He remembered that Ruth had started to laugh at her own predicament and he’d joined in until amusement had collapsed. But Minna hadn’t heard the anguish.

‘Do you know how long it’s been since you laughed?’ Minna asked, regarding him with the fond concern that all his servants felt, although they were careful to hide it.

‘A long time,’ he agreed. ‘But don’t-read anything into it.’

‘Of course not, signore. It’s just that it’s nice to hear you laugh again.’

Ruth awoke next day to find a thin strip of brilliant sunlight on the floor. Leaping out of bed, she pulled back the shutters on the windows, and was almost thrown back by the blinding light that streamed in. Rubbing her eyes, she finally managed to look out onto the Grand Canal.

Damp, miserable January seemed to have vanished without a trace. Now the light glittered on the water, showing the great canal snaking away, alive with boats. At this time of day they weren’t romantic gondolas but prosaic barges ferrying supplies to shops, hotels and restaurants, and carting rubbish away.

Ruth saw some of them pull into the side at the base of the Rialto Bridge, where people came forward to help unload them and carry their contents up to the shops that lined both sides of the bridge. Instinctively she leaned out and waved to the men on the water, and they waved back, grinning.

Another boat pulled into a small landing-stage by the palazzo, where a tall, powerfully built young man was waiting. Only his back and the top of his head was clearly visible, but Ruth could make out that he was wearing jeans and a tight-fitting short-sleeved vest that showed his muscular arms.

As the boxes were dumped onto the landing-stage he reached for the heaviest one, and hoisted it easily onto his shoulder with a sinuous movement that twisted his whole body, until it straightened up, untroubled by the weight. Ruth smiled, dispassionately admiring the casual display of grace and strength. Then the man raised his head a fraction and she saw that it was Pietro.

He didn’t see her, and was gone before she could react. It left her with a strange feeling, as though she’d seen him and not seen him. In a few days of his company she’d perceived him through the prism of her own need, and entirely missed the things that stood out so sharply now.

But this morning, for a split second, she’d had the chance to observe him only as a man, stripped of the irrelevant details that concealed his true self, a man with vibrant physical attractions that made him stand out from other men. The moment had passed and he was Count Bagnelli again, but the memory remained, a source of mysterious pleasure. She tucked it away for future consideration.

To her eyes the whole world was bright, alive, hopeful, and it perfectly matched her mood. Last night she’d come to a resolution, to take her fate in her own hands. It had made her feel reborn, and now she could almost imagine that Venice was doing its best to encourage her.

I’m just being fanciful, she thought. I’ve got to stop that.

But she remembered Pietro saying how Venetians were like a family, offering a generous welcome. Perhaps she wasn’t being so fanciful after all.

By the time she joined Pietro he was more soberly dressed, ready for the shop.

‘I’m a new woman,’ she informed him. ‘And I’m going to do something spectacular to prove it.’

‘What?’ he asked, grinning.

‘Switch on my cell phone,’ she declared with a comical air of anticlimax.

‘It’s been off all this time?’

‘I switched it off at the airport in England, and since then I’ve had other things on my mind. Now’s the time to find out that all the mighty of the world have been queuing up to talk to me. Oh!’ She stared at the screen.

‘Anyone mighty?’ he asked.

‘The publisher who’s been giving me work. I sent him a book I’d translated from Spanish into English about a week ago. It’s surely too soon for a reaction.’

But the text message was, ‘Vital you call at once.’

There were two other texts in increasing agitation.

‘I must have made some ghastly error,’ Ruth said worriedly.

‘Don’t jump to conclusions,’ Pietro advised her.

‘But it’s obvious. There was me, thinking I was doing so well and I was making a foul up all the time.’

Pietro took her by the shoulders and gave her a gentle shake.

‘Hey, steady on. You don’t know any of this. Don’t put yourself down. You’re a new woman today, remember?’

‘That’s a joke. I’ve been fooling myself.’

‘And I say you haven’t. Now, stop panicking, call him and find out what he wants.’

As before she felt herself growing steady under his influence.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Fine.’

‘Use my phone,’ he suggested suddenly, picking up the receiver. ‘Give me the number.’

She did so and he dialled, giving her the receiver. After a minute a man’s voice answered.

‘Hallo, Jack? It’s me? What did I do wrong?’

Before Jack could answer Pietro reached forward and pressed the loudspeaker button on the phone so that Jack’s voice boomed out for him to hear.

‘Wrong? Nothing. Everything’s fine. Señor Salvatore is well pleased. He’s a very difficult man, you know. His books have to be translated perfectly, or else! The book you did is the first in a trilogy, and he wants you to do the other two.’

Pietro gave her a thumbs up, and she beamed at him.

‘I’ve been going crazy,’ Jack continued, ‘not able to get hold of you, and him screeching that it’s you or nobody. Now I can get back to him and tell him that you’ve agreed to do them.’

Pietro shook his head.

‘But I haven’t agreed,’ Ruth said, taking her cue from him.

Jack’s reply was almost a yelp. ‘Yes, you have, you have, you have! Please, Ruth, don’t argue. Think of my blood pressure. You’ve already given it a bad time.’

‘No, Jack, I’m giving it a very good time,’ she responded with spirit. ‘I’m the answer to your prayers, remember?’

‘Only if you say yes.’

‘I’m thinking about it.’ Seeing Pietro make a gesture of rubbing his fingers against his thumb, she added, ‘What about money?’

‘I’ll up the money.’

‘Double it,’ Ruth said remorselessly.

‘One and a half.’

‘Double. You need me, remember?’

‘Anything, anything. Will you be home soon?’

‘No, I’m staying in Venice a while. You can send the books to the Palazzo Bagnelli.’ To Pietro she mouthed, ‘What’s the full address?’

He gave it to her and she passed it on to Jack, who assured her that the two books would be on their way to her immediately.

‘And the money for the one I’ve just finished,’ she reminded him. ‘That’ll be in my bank account any day now, won’t it?

He groaned. ‘You drive a hard bargain.’

‘Of course. I’m the best.’

She switched off and looked up to find Pietro’s eyes meeting hers. Together they crowed, ‘Yes!’

‘You cheeky so-and-so,’ she reproved him. ‘That’s why you wanted me to use your phone.’

‘I’m merely concerned for your welfare.’

‘You merely wanted a good snoop.’

‘They can be hard to tell apart,’ he conceded. ‘I’m used to worrying about you. I can’t just stop.’

‘I guess I don’t really want you to stop. I could still fall flat on my face, and who’ll pick me up, if not you?’

‘As long as that’s understood. I’m Chief Picker Upper-until you no longer need one.’

‘That’s a long way off,’ she said, suddenly serious. ‘The new woman is only skin deep, for the moment.’

‘I hope this doesn’t mean you won’t have any time for me. I could really do with you in the shop.’

‘I still want to work there. I can translate in the evenings. When do I start?’

‘How about this morning?’ His tone became joking again. ‘I’d better get some work out of you before the rest of the world beats a path to your door.’

‘They want me,’ she breathed. ‘They want me and nobody else.’

‘Of course they do. You’re the best. They know that because you told them.’

Ruth aimed a swipe at him and he ducked, grinning. Minna, entering at that moment, nodded as though she’d seen something that confirmed what she already believed. Understanding her, Pietro grimaced, wishing it were possible to explain that she’d got it wrong. Ruth had reached out to him in her need and vulnerability, and in caring for her he’d found a strange kind of peace. But he knew Minna would never understand this.

Like everyone who worked for him she was just waiting to celebrate the day when he found another wife and emerged from the darkness that too often engulfed him. But none of them understood how far from happening that was, and how determined he was to keep a distance between himself and all women.

Ruth was different. Her unique situation meant he could care for her without dread of the outcome.

By now Ruth was beginning to know the way to St Mark’s, down this calle, across that little square, across a bridge, until they came out near the cathedral and crossed the piazza to the shop.

Mario, forewarned of her arrival, was lyrical in his relief. Together he and Pietro showed her the ropes, but then Pietro wisely stood back and let them put their heads together. Free from his employer’s eye, Mario admitted that his French was patchy.

‘I just about get by,’ he said, ‘and so far there have been no disasters, but if you-’

He broke off with a pleading look.

‘Don’t worry,’ she told him, smiling. ‘French is one of my languages.’

But her first chance to prove her worth came, not with a foreign language, but with an Englishman who spoke with a strong regional accent. Seeing Mario floundering Ruth stepped in, becoming a conduit again until the man was out of the shop.

‘He said he spoke English,’ Mario protested.

‘He did,’ Ruth said. ‘But you have to come from a certain part of England to understand it. Never mind. We sold him an expensive package, and that’s what really matters.’

‘Spoken like a true entrepreneur,’ Pietro said appreciatively.

‘You have a gift for finance,’ Mario agreed.

‘I never knew that before. I’m just a language teacher-why, that’s it! That’s it!’

She struck her head and did a little dance of delight.

‘Now I remember, I was friendly with one of the other teachers, and I used to visit her at home. She had a dog with epilepsy.’

‘That’s excellent,’ Pietro said. ‘Bit by bit, we’ll win. Now you and Mario had better go off and have lunch together before we confuse the poor fellow any more.’

From the first she’d been at ease with Mario. Over lunch she explained briefly that her memory was sometimes vague, owing to an accident. There was no need to mention Gino.

‘That’s why some of the things you hear me say don’t seem to make sense,’ she said.

‘Like about the dog? Thank you for telling me.’

He told her about his life, which might be described as sedate. He still lived with his family, under his mother’s thumb from the sound of it. He’d worked in the shop for five years and his admiration for Count Bagnelli was enormous.

‘Mind you, he’d be annoyed if he heard me call him that,’ Mario admitted. ‘He never uses the title if he can avoid it. In fact I think he actually dislikes it, says it’s more trouble than it’s worth.’

‘Now that sounds like an affectation,’ Ruth said decidedly.

‘Oh, no, he’s never gone in for a lot of display. He started the business because he preferred to work for a living. He doesn’t consider administering his estate working.’

‘You mean, he doesn’t have to do it?’ Ruth asked. ‘I thought the Bagnellis must have lost all their money.’

‘He’s one of the richest men in Italy.’

‘But that great empty palace is like a building that’s been abandoned and left to rot.’

Mario shook his head vigorously.

‘You can’t have seen much of it, or you wouldn’t say that. It’s kept in perfect condition. Any crack is mended at once, before it can spread. Every piece of furniture is protected by dust covers. But it’s empty, except for a few rooms where he lives alone, or as much alone as he can manage. There used to be dozens of servants in the palazzo, but he sent them to work on his estate, and shut most of the rooms up.’

He gave an envious sigh.

‘You should have seen it ten years ago, when the old count was still alive. He was a man who enjoyed the high life, and Pietro was the same. The reputation he had! Casanova lived again! I was in my teens and I lapped up the stories. I swore I’d be the same when I was older but-’

He shrugged and looked down at his unimpressive person. Ruth smiled in sympathy.

‘So Pietro had a big reputation with women?’ she said curiously.

‘The biggest,’ said a voice just behind her, and Ruth turned to see a large middle-aged woman with a motherly face.

‘Hallo, Jessica,’ Mario greeted her. ‘This is Ruth who’s coming to work in the shop. Jessica owns this place.’

When greetings had been exchanged Jessica got back to the subject that clearly fascinated her.

‘I’ve lived in Venice all my life, and you never saw anything like it. There wasn’t a woman in town who wouldn’t have taken him to her bed. But he only slept with the best, very stylish ladies.’

‘I suppose they were all aristocrats, like him,’ Ruth suggested.

‘No!’ Both her companions shook their heads vigorously as though to advance such an idea was to miss the point.

‘He didn’t care about titles,’ Jessica said. ‘Why should he, when he has one of his own? But they had to be outstanding, not just beautiful, but with a certain “something extra”, to make him proud.’

It was clear that she considered Pietro a credit to Venice.

‘The Palazzo Bagnelli was the best place in town to be entertained,’ Mario agreed.

‘They took on extra staff for parties,’ Jessica added. ‘I’ve worked there myself many times.’

‘But now there’s only Minna and Celia,’ Mario observed, ‘and people say he only keeps them out of kindness, that he’d prefer to be completely alone.’

‘But how can any man live like that?’ Ruth wondered. ‘And why?’

‘It’s been that way since his wife died. She loved entertaining too. The place was always full of people and light. Then she died and the lights went out.’

‘I knew he was a widower,’ Ruth says, ‘but he avoids all mention of her. What was she like?’

But before he could answer there was a cry of ‘Hey, Mario!’ from a couple of his friends who had come in, and in the flurry of introductions the subject was lost.

Ruth was left wondering. There were so many things she wanted to ask about Pietro, but everything she learned only seemed to deepen the mystery. It was impossible to connect the light-hearted playboy of Jessica and Mario’s description with the man who now lived like a monk in dark solitude.

She took some papers home to continue studying the firm. Pietro explained a good deal to her, and they spent a pleasant evening working. But when she’d gone to bed she remembered how Mario had said she couldn’t have seen much of the palazzo. Gino had taken her over the building, showing it off with a proprietorial air that she now realised had been part of his performance. She hadn’t noticed much about the condition of the place. She had been too dazzled by the young man.

Now she realised how little she’d thought of him today. Pietro had occupied her thoughts more. Mario’s words, ‘Then she died and the lights went out,’ were haunting.

The building had never seemed so dark and silent, as though the man whose heart had died with his wife had turned it into a tomb, where he could wait until the day he would be with her.

She went to the window, looking out to where the landing-stage bobbed in the water just below her, then ran her eyes down the length of the building, until they fixed on a portion that jutted out slightly with windows on three sides.

She blinked, wondering if she had only imagined the man standing there. But no, it was Pietro.

Why did he go to that part of the house? What had happened to draw him to that room at night, and what made him stand there, so deadly still?

She thought of the night when he had rescued her, and her heart went out to him, looking so much in need of rescue himself. Putting on a loose robe, she slipped out into the corridor and turned in the direction that she guessed he was.

There were no lights here, just the reflection of the canal coming through the windows at the end of the corridor. Dimly she could make out the great marble staircase leading down, and she began to descend, her bare feet making no noise.

When she was nearly at the bottom she saw that a large double door was open, and turned towards the room beyond, which she could just make out was a nursery, with an elaborate cradle in the corner. This was where his child would have slept, if it had lived.

Pietro was there, standing by the window, so still that he might have turned to stone. This was the second time today that she had watched him unaware, she realised. But how different from this morning when she’d seen him at his handsome, athletic best. Now he looked like the loneliest man on earth, and she longed to go in and speak to him, but lacked the courage. When he turned she stepped back, keeping out of sight.

He walked out, moving heavily, and she retreated farther into the darkness, knowing that she must not invade his solitude, and there was nothing that she, or anyone else, could say to him. He passed on without noticing her.