The Tuscan Tycoon’s Wife

CHAPTER TEN

THE meal was drawing to a close. The plates had been cleared and there were coffee and liqueurs on the table. A hush fell on the conversation, as though everyone recognised that the time had come.

‘Does everybody have a glass?’ the count demanded. ‘Splendid. Then I have an announcement to make.’ His eyes fell on Leo and Selena.

Oh no! she thought. This is to tell us that he’s arranged our marriage in St Marks, and we just have to fall into line.

‘As you know,’ Francesco went on, ‘soon we will all be going to Tuscany for the marriage of our dear Leo and Selena. A joyful occasion, made even more joyful by what I have to tell you.’

A pause. He seemed uncertain how to go on. Selena relaxed. At least it wasn’t the wedding.

‘It’s another wedding I wish to speak of tonight,’ Francesco continued. ‘One that we thought-that is, we have been in some confusion all these years-but now that things are clear-’

He looked at Guido. ‘You tell them,’ he said. ‘This is your story.’

Guido took the floor and addressed Leo. ‘Uncle Francesco’s trying to tell you that it was a mistake about your mother’s marriage all those years ago. She never was married before. So her marriage to our father was valid, and you’re legitimate.’

In the thunderstruck silence Selena saw Leo turn pale. Then he managed some kind of laugh.

‘Very funny, little brother. You were always good for a joke, and that’s your best yet.’

‘It’s no joke,’ Guido said. ‘It’s all been proved. That man who turned up alive, saying Elissa was his wife-Franco Vinelli. They were never married. Vinelli had been married before, in England. He was an actor, in a Commedia dell’ Arte troop, and they toured all over.

‘He married an Englishwoman in a register office. When his tour ended he just abandoned her. He seems to have thought an English civil ceremony wouldn’t count when he got back to Italy.’

‘He was right,’ Leo said firmly. ‘It wouldn’t be recognised over here, not in those days.’

‘But it was,’ Guido said. ‘There was an international convention, saying that if a marriage was valid in the country where it was contracted then it would be recognised in any other country that was a signatory. Both England and Italy were signatories, so the marriage counted here.

‘He was a married man when he took Elissa to wife, which means that she was a free woman when she married our father. Their marriage was legitimate. And so are you.’

‘What do you mean it’s all been proved?’ Leo demanded. ‘What can be proved after all this time?’

‘It can be done, with a little ferreting around.’

‘Which I’ll bet you did.’

‘Sure. I never wanted all this, never pretended about it. It’s all yours.’

Leo was looking around him with a trapped look.

‘This is nonsense,’ he said. ‘You have to forget it.’

‘It’s the law,’ the count roared. ‘It cannot be forgotten. You are my heir, and that is how it should be. You’ve always been the eldest son-’

‘The illegitimate eldest son,’ Leo said firmly.

‘Not any more,’ Marco reminded him.

‘You keep out of this,’ Leo ordered him, ‘You-you banker!’

Marco poured himself a drink, unperturbed.

‘It’s too late to change anything,’ Leo insisted. ‘I don’t believe in this so-called proof. It wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny by a lawyer-’

‘It already has,’ Guido said. ‘It’s been gone over and over by lawyers, sworn statements, properly notarised, records from the English registers.’

‘What does Vinelli say?’ Leo challenged. ‘Bring him here to face me.’

‘Vinelli died last year. He had no family, and nobody near him knew about that English marriage.’

‘There must be somebody.’

‘There’s only written records.’

‘I’ll bet you thought of every detail,’ Leo fumed.

‘You bet I did.’

‘You’re loving this, aren’t you?’ Leo flung at him.

‘Every minute.’

‘That’s fine for you but what about-’ Leo’s eyes fell on Selena, pale and distraught, watching him beseechingly. ‘What about us?’ he finished quietly, taking her hand.

She rose and stood beside him. The sight of them side by side seemed to alert the others to the fact that something was really wrong. This wasn’t the joyous announcement that Count Francesco had counted on.

The count began to huff and puff. ‘Well, I must say, I expected better than this,’ he said. ‘It should be a great day.’

‘Having your life overturned doesn’t make for a great day,’ Leo said firmly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse us, Selena and I will go upstairs. We’ve got some talking to do.’

They walked from the room, hand in hand, and broke into a run as soon as they were out of sight. They didn’t stop until they reached his room.

‘Leo, they can’t do this to us.’

‘Don’t you worry, I won’t let them.’

But she heard the uncertainty in his voice and it made her shiver. She’d always known him light-hearted in the face of any challenge, as though nothing could ever be too much for him. Now she sensed that he didn’t feel confident of overcoming this.

‘You know,’ she said huskily, ‘some people would dream of this. They’d say we were being unreasonable. Suddenly you’re an important man with a great inheritance. Why aren’t we glad?’

‘Because it’s a nightmare,’ he said. ‘Me, a count. The country bumpkin, which is all I’ve ever wanted to be. Do you want to be a contessa?’

‘Are you kidding? I’d rather be a cow-pat.’

They clung together, seeking reassurance from each other, but each knowing they were fighting something that could suffocate them.

There was a knock on the door, and Dulcie looked in.

‘Your uncle wants you in his study,’ she said to Leo. ‘He’s got papers to show you.’

‘Hell!’

‘Best get it over with,’ she said sympathetically.

When he’d gone Selena said, ‘How do you feel about this? You were going to be a contessa, and now you’re not. How can you smile?’

Dulcie laughed and shrugged. ‘I’ve had enough of titles to last me a lifetime. Being a countess never made my mother happy.’

‘Your mother-is a countess?’ Selena echoed.

‘My father’s an earl, that’s a sort of English count.’

‘And you live-like this?’ Selena indicated their surroundings.

‘Goodness no!’ Dulcie laughed. ‘We never had two pennies to rub together. My father gambled it all away. That’s why I had to work as a private detective. I couldn’t do anything else. Having a title doesn’t qualify you for a proper job.’ She looked at Selena, suddenly alert. ‘Selena, what’s the matter? Are you ill?’

‘No, I’m not ill, but I’ve stepped into a crazy house.’

Another knock on the door. This time it was Harriet, and behind her a servant with a trolley bearing champagne. While Dulcie began to pour, Harriet stretched out on a sofa and kicked off her shoes.

‘Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,’ she said. ‘You-would-not-believe the commotion that’s going on downstairs.’

‘We would,’ Dulcie chuckled, handing the other two a glass each. ‘We’re well out of it.’

‘Leo and Guido were practically coming to blows,’ Harriet said cheerfully. ‘Leo says he’s going to wring Guido’s neck. Oh, by the way, Liza would have come with me, but she’s a little tired, and she’s gone to bed. Actually I think it’s her English that’s troubling her. She doesn’t speak it very well and she’s afraid you may be offended.’ This last was to Selena.

So that was the countess’s excuse, Selena thought glumly. That was how these people operated. No out-right snub, nothing you could take offence at. Just a half-truth that left you clutching at shadows.

She downed the champagne, which she suddenly needed badly.

Leo waited until the house was quiet before he slipped out of his room. Propriety be blowed, tonight he needed to be with Selena.

But when he opened her door he found her bed empty and no sign of her. He switched on the light to be sure, then switched it off again and went to the window. The Grand Canal lay before him, silent, mysterious, melancholy in its beauty. Many a man would envy him, the inheritor of all this, but it was his wide, rolling acres that called to him.

And his instincts told him that there was another trouble coming, and that was the one he dreaded.

Something caught his eye and he looked to see where the palace made a right angle to itself. Through the large windows he could see a white shape wandering through the great rooms.

Like any self-respecting palace this one had its ghosts, but none like this. Leo left the room quickly and hurried down through the building, across the marble floors that echoed the lightest footsteps.

He found the ghost in the ballroom, walking forlornly along the huge windows that went from floor to ceiling. All around them shone decorations of gold leaf. Above them hung gigantic crystal chandeliers, silent in the gloom.

He spoke her name softly, and she turned to look at him. Even in this light he could see her face well enough to know that it was distraught. The next moment they’d thrown themselves into each other’s arms.

‘I can’t do it,’ she cried. ‘I just can’t do this.’

‘Of course you can,’ he soothed her, stroking her hair although his heart was full of fear. ‘You can do anything you set your mind to. I know that, even if you don’t.’

‘Oh, sure, I can do anything that takes grit and bull-headedness, but this-it would crush me.’

That was what he’d been afraid of. But he wasn’t ready to give up.

‘We wouldn’t be trapped here all the time-’

‘We would in the end.’ She pulled away from him and began to pace restlessly. ‘Look at this room. Dulcie would be at home here because she was raised in a place like this. Harriet would be all right because it’s full of antiques. But me? I just spend my whole time hoping I don’t bump into things.’

‘It would be different in time,’ he pleaded. ‘You’ll change-’

‘Maybe I don’t want to change,’ she flashed at him. ‘Maybe I think there’s nothing wrong with the way I am.’

‘I didn’t say-’

‘No, and you never will. But the truth is the truth, whether anyone says it or not. Leo, we don’t just come from different worlds. It’s different planets, different universes. You know it yourself.’

‘We’ve overcome that before.’

‘Yes, because of the farm. Because of the land, and the animals, and all the things we both love. It didn’t matter where we came from, because we were heading in the same direction. But now-’ she looked around her in despair.

‘We don’t have to spend much time here-we’ll still have the farm-’

‘Will we? This was going to be Guido’s inheritance, and now he’s lost it to you. Aren’t you going to have to give him yours in exchange?’

That thought had been nibbling uneasily at the edge of his consciousness.

‘Guido’s not interested in farming, I can repay him in money. And if I have to I’ll sell some of the antiques in this place. Every single one if I have to.’

‘And we live on the farm and let your ancestral palace stand empty? Even I know better than that.’ She tore at her short hair. ‘If it was anywhere else you could simply move into the palace and buy up some farming land around it, but what can you do in Venice?’

‘Carissima, please-’

‘Don’t call me that,’ she said quickly.

‘Why, suddenly-now?’

‘Because everything’s changed-now.’

‘So suddenly I can’t tell you that I love you more than life? I can’t say that I don’t want this either, but it’ll be bearable if I have you?’

‘Don’t!’ She turned away, her hands over her ears.

‘Why mustn’t I say that your love is everything to me?’ he asked in a voice that was suddenly hard. ‘Because you can’t say the same?’

In the long silence that followed Leo felt his heart almost stop.

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered at last. ‘Oh, Leo, forgive me, but I don’t know. I-I do love you-’

‘Do you?’ he asked in a harder voice than she had ever heard him use.

‘Yes, I do love you, I do, I do-’ With every repetition she grew more frantic. ‘Please try to understand-’

‘I understand this-that you only love me on certain conditions. When things get tough, suddenly the love isn’t enough.’

He gave a bitter laugh. ‘It’s ironical isn’t it? If I lost every penny I could count on your love. If I was left to starve in the streets I know you’d starve with me and never complain.’

‘Yes-yes-’

‘If I had to sell the shirt off my back you’d sell the shirt off yours, and we’d fight the world together and be happy. But if I’m rich, that means trouble. You turn away from me and wonder if I’m worth loving.’

‘It’s not like that,’ she cried.

‘I’m the same man, rich or poor, but you can only love me if we have the life you want. But I want that life too. I don’t want all this either.’

‘Then leave it. Tell them you won’t accept. Let’s go back to the farm and be happy.’

‘You don’t understand. It can’t be done like that. All this is now my responsibility, to my family, to the people who work for us and depend on us. I can’t just turn my back on all that.’

He took her gently by the shoulders and looked into her face. ‘My darling, it’s still a fight, just a different one. Why can’t you stand by me in this one, as you would have done the other?’

‘Because we’d each be fighting a different enemy, and we’d end up fighting each other. In a sense we already are.’

‘This is just a little argument-’

‘But you fired the first shot in the war a moment ago, didn’t you notice? You said, “You don’t understand”. You’re right. And as we go on there’ll be a million things I don’t understand, but you will. And more and more you won’t understand the things that are important to me, and in the end we’ll be saying “You don’t understand” to each other a dozen times a day.’

They were silent with fear, each seeing the cracks in the ground beneath their feet that would soon become a chasm that love couldn’t bridge.

But not yet. They couldn’t face it just now.

‘Don’t let’s talk any more tonight,’ Leo said hurriedly. ‘We’re both in a state of shock. Let’s leave it until we’re calmer.’

‘Yes, we’ll do that. We’ll talk when we get home.’

That put it at a safe distance. In the meantime they could hide from what was happening.

He took her back to her room and kissed her cheek at the door.

‘Try to sleep well,’ he said. ‘We’re going to need all our strength.’

As soon as she had closed the door he walked away. He hadn’t tried to go in, and she hadn’t said, ‘Stay with me’.

Leo spent the next day closeted with his uncle, Guido and a brace of lawyers, while Dulcie and Harriet showed Selena Venice. For an hour she tried to make the right noises, but the truth was the narrow alleys and canals suffocated her.

They went into St Mark’s where Dulcie and Guido had married recently, and where Harriet and Marco would marry soon.

It was like being an ant, Selena thought, looking up into the ancient, echoing building. It was magnificent, splendid, beautiful. But it turned you into an ant.

She thought of the little parish church at Morenza, and was glad that her own wedding would be there, and not in this place that crushed her.

Dulcie seemed to understand, for as they left she took a close look at Selena’s face and said, ‘Come with me,’ and shepherded them both to the nearby landing stage, where there were vaporetti, the boats Venetians used as buses.

‘Three to the Lido,’ she told the man in the ticket booth. To Harriet and Selena she said, ‘We’re going to spend the rest of the day on the beach.’

Selena’s spirits had perked up as the boat headed out for the forty-minute journey across the wide lagoon. After all those alleys she was in the open at last. And when they reached the Lido, the long thin island that bounded the lagoon and boasted one of the best beaches in the world, she caught her first ever glimpse of the sea, and it cheered her even more. Now that was some open space!

They bought bathing costumes and towels in the beach shops. When they’d changed they hired a huge umbrella and sat beneath it, rubbing each other with sun cream. Dulcie told of the day she’d come here with Guido.

‘He rubbed me with sun cream and I still managed to get burned, so he took me to his little bachelor flat and I was poorly for days.’ She smiled reminiscently. ‘It was very romantic.’

‘But if you were poorly-’ Selena said.

‘He looked after me wonderfully.’

‘But you didn’t-he didn’t-?’

‘No. We didn’t. That’s what made it so romantic.’

Later they ran down the beach to swim in the sea. Selena loved it. All work and no play had been the pattern of her life, and fooling around in the sun and the waves with no purpose but to enjoy herself was a novel experience. She began to think there might be something to be said for Venice after all.

But when the day was over and it was time to return, the great palace seemed to loom, waiting to swallow her up. It was actually very well lit, with huge windows that let in the light, but in her present mood the shades seemed to fall on her as soon as she entered.

She found Leo depressed but resigned.

‘There’s no way out,’ he said. ‘I’ve spent the day looking over my future with lawyers and accountants until my eyes have crossed. They’re trying to work out a way for me to compensate Guido financially, without having to sell the farm.’

‘Can it be done?’

‘If I spread it over several years.’

‘How is Guido about that?’

‘Great. He just shrugged and said, “It’s cool. Whatever.” He doesn’t care. He’s so happy to have dumped it on me that he’s like a kid out of school. And behind that juvenile charm he’s a very astute businessman. What he really lives off is his souvenir business and it’s making him a fortune. But of course I’ve got to do the right thing by him.’

‘And you’ll keep the farm?’

‘Yes, but life’s going to change for us.’

She nodded. ‘For us. Maybe I should have been in there too instead of being sent off to play.’

‘I don’t think anyone was trying to exclude you, it’s just that we were all talking Italian, and you wouldn’t have understood.’

He could have bitten his tongue off as soon as he said the last words, but she only smiled and said, ‘Sure.’

‘I mean, neither the lawyer nor the accountant speak any English, so we’d have been translating-’

‘It’s all right. You were absolutely right. It doesn’t really concern me, does it?’

‘Everything that happens to me concerns you,’ he said emphatically. ‘I’m sorry, darling, maybe you should have come in, despite the practical problems.’

She nodded, still smiling but still keeping her distance. But his face looked so desperate and weary that she couldn’t stand it.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said huskily, throwing her arms around him. ‘I’m a bitch to nag you when you’re unhappy.’

‘Just stay with me,’ he said, holding her tight. ‘Don’t leave me to struggle through this alone.’

‘I won’t, I won’t.’

He sighed. ‘I’ve got a confession to make. Uncle started on again about our wedding. According to him it has to be St Mark’s. I told him it was up to you.’

‘Oh, great! Blame me!’ She managed to smile. ‘You’d better say yes. You can’t start your new life by fighting with your family.’

‘Thank you carissima.’ He held her fiercely. ‘We’ll be out of here tomorrow.’

‘It’ll be all right when we’re home,’ she insisted.

But her words sounded hollow even to her own ears. She was full of dread, and she could sense that his own dread matched it.

She kept repeating to herself that everything would be all right when they were away from here. It was a mantra that kept her going as they packed their things next morning. Just a few more hours, a few more minutes-Even then she knew there was no real escape. They would have to return in a couple of weeks for Leo to sign papers.

‘You come alone,’ she told him.

‘I want you with me. After all, you said yourself that it concerns you too.’

‘But there’s nothing for me to sign. I’ll stay home and-’

‘And be there when I get back?’ he asked fiercely. ‘Will you?’

‘Of-of course I will.’

‘I want you with me,’ he repeated with a hint of mulishness around his mouth.

So he sensed it too, she thought.

It was like an ugly demon sitting on the floor between them, forcing them both to sidestep, but without ever admitting that it was there.

More than anyone it was the countess who unsettled her. Her English was so poor that they couldn’t communicate except through an interpreter, and then Selena didn’t know how to interpret her awkwardness. It might be shyness, unease, or downright disapproval. Selena reckoned she could guess which one.

In the last few minutes before they left the countess approached her. There was nobody else there, and in her hand she clutched a dictionary.

‘I speak-with you,’ she said in a voice that showed she was reciting prepared words.

‘Yes?’ Selena tried to look composed.

‘Things are-different now-your marriage-we must speak-’

‘But I know,’ Selena said passionately. ‘You don’t have to tell me, I know. How can I marry him? You don’t want me to, and you’re right. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong in your world. I know.’

A tense, haughty look came over the countess’s face. She took a sharp breath. The next moment there was the sound of footsteps on marble and she stepped back.

The rest of the family appeared, engulfing them. There were goodbyes, attempts at cheer. The boat was at the landing stage, then they were drawing away, the strip of water growing wide, and the problems were just beginning.