Wife By Arrangement

CHAPTER FOUR

ON THE journey home Heather took a fascinated look at the stern, where a jet ski, big enough for two people, was fixed.

‘Would you care to try it?’ Renato asked.

‘I’d love to,’ she said eagerly.

Slowly the jet ski was winched down to the water. Renato leapt down and took the front seat, and Heather eased her way into the seat behind him. She had just time to wrap her arms about him before they roared away across the water. The speed, noise and vibration took her by surprise and she tightened her arms, turning her head sideways and pressing herself against Renato’s broad back.

‘All right?’ Renato roared back at her.

She could barely make out the words through the noise, but she yelled back, ‘Fine!’

It was true. The vibration was taking her over, coming up through every part of her flesh, her thighs, her stomach, her breasts where they were pressed against Renato’s back. The water rushed by, lashing her with white foam, whipping up her excitement in the most physically exhilarating experience of her life. Renato’s body was like a strong column in her arms. She clung onto him, eyes closed, relishing his warmth.

At last he slowed and brought the jet ski to a halt.

‘Wahooo!’ she cried.

‘You enjoyed it, then?’ he said, turning his head and grinning at her.

‘Oh, yes!’ she said happily. ‘Oh, yes, I did! Where are we?’ She caught sight of the boat, which looked tiny in the distance. ‘It’s miles away.’

‘These things travel very fast. Another few minutes and we’d have been out of sight of the boat.’

A mad impulse seized her. ‘Let’s!’

‘You want to go on?’

‘And on and on and on!’ she cried out, throwing her head back and carolling up to the sky.

‘Heather, what’s got into you?’ He was laughing, but he sounded half alarmed at something wild and uncontrolled about her.

‘Nothing. Everything. The whole world!’

‘I think we should go back.’

‘Never. I want to go forward. Start her up.’

‘Right!’ Something he’d heard in her voice got to him and he kicked the engine into life, swinging away towards the horizon, then driving forward across the endless water.

Soon the Santa Maria was out of sight. For some reason Heather found that knowledge thrilling, as though she had cut loose from all safety and restraint in a way she’d never felt able to do in her life before. The sense of freedom was mindblowing. She unwrapped her arms from Renato’s body and rested her hands lightly on his shoulders. Now she felt quite safe this way. She was invincible. Nothing could happen to her.

But the next moment they swerved sharply. Caught off guard, she tried to grip his shoulders more tightly, but it was too late. There was nothing to hold onto, and then she was flying through the air to land in the water with a crash.

At this speed it was like slamming into a brick wall. For a dreadful moment everything went black. She was half unconscious, sinking, sinking into the depths that went on for ever, and the horror was engulfing her. Somehow she managed to fight back to the surface, but she was still dizzy and fighting for consciousness. Through water-logged eyes she glimpsed Renato speeding away from her, unaware that she’d vanished. She screamed after him, knowing he couldn’t hear her. Then she was sinking again, into deep, deadly water, and despair.

She fought back up again, but she knew she could drown before he even knew that she’d gone. When he returned it would be too late. She felt her consciousness start to fade as weights dragged her down for the last time, and the world grew darker…

The arms that seized her seemed to come from nowhere. She could see nothing, but she could feel herself being forced upwards. There was light above, air, gasping relief. She had her arms about Renato’s neck, clinging to him.

‘I looked back and you were gone,’ he said, his voice hoarse with fear. ‘What happened-?’

‘I don’t know-I can’t-’

‘Never mind. Thank God you’re safe.’

The jet ski was a little way off, having stopped when he dived into the water for her. Now he swam over, using his one free arm, and clambered aboard, keeping firm hold of her with one hand. Then he hauled her up in front. ‘I want you where I can see you,’ he growled. ‘You vanished beneath the water-and I didn’t know where to look.’

His horror matched her own. She clung to him, trembling violently. ‘I thought nobody would ever find me,’ she gasped.

‘It’s all right, hold onto to me. Hold on tightly to-’ a shudder racked him ‘-to your brother.’

He made a moderate pace back to the ship, with Heather sitting sideways, clinging onto him. She was beyond thought. She just didn’t want to let him go. Her consciousness was coming and going in waves. At last she felt herself being hauled aboard, then Renato lifting her and carrying her below to her cabin, then darkness.

When she awoke, Angie was there with her.

‘Hello,’ her friend said, smiling. ‘Surprised to see me? Renato called Bernardo on his mobile, and asked him to bring me to the harbour. I came on board a couple of minutes ago. Trust you to get in the wars.’

Heather was recovered enough to say wickedly, ‘I hope you weren’t interrupted at too difficult a moment.’

Angie’s smile was both impish and mysterious. ‘There’ll be others. Let me help you get dressed and we’ll go ashore.’

‘I’ll just put something over my swimsuit-’

‘What swimsuit?’

Then Heather realised that she was wearing a towelling robe and nothing else. She tried to remember taking off her bathing costume, but her last memory was of Renato laying her down on the bed and kicking the door shut.

‘Did you-?’

‘Not me,’ Angie said. ‘You were like that when I got here.’ Her face was demure but her eyes were mischievous. ‘It’s all right. I won’t tell Lorenzo.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Heather said hastily, feeling a blush start in her face and spread all over her body. ‘Let’s just go home.’

On Angie’s orders Heather spent the next day in bed. She slept like a log and awoke feeling good. But when Baptista or Angie dropped in, she thought she sensed a certain tension that they wouldn’t talk about. She couldn’t ask Renato, because he didn’t come to see her at all.

At last Angie explained. ‘Renato called Lorenzo in Stockholm to tell him to come home, but he’d never checked into his hotel and nobody knew where he was. So everyone got a little uptight. But it turned out that he was already heading this way.’

‘He was coming home anyway?’ Heather asked.

‘I guess he couldn’t bear being away from you. He’ll be here later today.’

The knowledge galvanised her to get up, and by afternoon she was looking her best for Lorenzo. As soon as the car stopped he hurried up the steps to clasp her in his arms. He seemed tense and distraught, but she put that down to concern for her safety, and when he said, ‘Where’s Renato? I have to talk to him, now,’ she guessed he was going to berate him for allowing her into danger.

‘Darling, I’m all right,’ she said.

‘We’ll talk later,’ he told her. ‘Later. Renato.’

He vanished into the house and she didn’t see him again that day. Angie and Baptista made her go to bed early, and when she awoke next day the sun was up and Lorenzo was waiting for her at breakfast. He was pale but composed, and he smiled as he promised her he hadn’t quarrelled with his brother.

They saw little of each other after that. Renato didn’t send him abroad again, but kept him at Head Office in Palermo. Each morning the two of them would leave early for work, and return late.

Heather had no time to miss him. She was enjoying her flowering relationship with Baptista. The old woman showed her all over the house, and she began to understand a little better the family into which she was marrying. Renato had said, ‘If you marry one Martelli, you get the whole pack of us,’ and it was true.

Looking through photograph albums, she saw the wedding pictures of the young Baptista and Vincente Martelli, the extravagantly beautiful bride barely coming up to the shoulder of her unsmiling groom. He looked several years older, and stood straight and uncomfortable. His face was uncannily like that of Renato today.

Then the early pictures of Renato himself, always looking straight into camera, his dark eyes full of challenge, his mouth uncompromising. Right from the first this had been a young man who knew who he was, what he wanted, and how he was going to get it.

Then Lorenzo appeared, curly-haired, angelic, bringing forth Heather’s answering smile. At last there was Bernardo, grave-faced, always standing a little apart, looking as though he wanted to be anywhere else.

‘And soon there will be more photographs,’ Baptista said, ‘when we welcome you into the family.’

Baptista suffered from a weak heart, and spent much of her time resting, but one morning she appeared at breakfast looking strong and cheerful, and invited Heather to take a short trip with her, although wouldn’t say where they were going.

‘I would have invited Angie as well,’ she said as the car took them inland, ‘but she and Bernardo had already made plans.’ She gave a conspiratorial smile.

‘I’ve never seen Angie like this before,’ Heather admitted. ‘Usually she’s a bit-well-’

‘Love ’em and leave ’em,’ said Baptista robustly. She was proud of her grasp of English idiom.

‘Yes, but she seems really absorbed in Bernardo. I wonder about him, though.’

‘He’s a very difficult man, but since Angie has been here I’ve seen him happier than ever before. She may have more to contend with than she imagines, but it will be so nice for all of us if it works out.’

Inland Sicily was more sparsely populated than the coast. Now they were in the rural heartland, where goats grazed within sight of the ruins of a Greek temple. Their way was briefly barred by a flock of sheep, driven by a little nut-brown man with a gap-toothed grin. He nudged his flock to the side and hailed Baptista, who hailed him back.

‘We’re on my land now,’ she explained. ‘I have a small estate, a village, some olive groves, and a little villa. It was my dowry.’

At last they saw the village, called Ellona, clinging to the side of the hill. It was a medieval place with cobblestones, tiny houses and only two buildings of note. One was the church, and the other a pink stone villa with two staircases curving up the outside.

The midday heat was at its height, and they sat just inside the house, at a French door looking out onto a terrace, with the net curtains moving gently in the faint breeze.

‘I ordered English tea in your honour,’ Baptista said, with a note of triumph.

‘It’s delicious,’ Heather said, sipping the Earl Grey. ‘Deliziusu.’ She pronounced the Sicilian word very deliberately, to differentiate it from the Italian, delicioso. Baptista smiled.

‘Already you are becoming a Sicilian,’ she said.

‘Well, I learned some Italian to get on in the store, and Sicilian isn’t too hard if you remember how often it uses “u” where Italian uses “o”. I’ll get the hang of it.’

‘What matters is that you are working hard to become one of us, just as I knew you would.’

‘I’ll tell you something,’ Heather said impulsively. ‘I’ve only been in Sicily a few days, but as soon as I arrived I had such a feeling of-of rightness. I don’t know how else to say it, but it’s as though everything was conspiring to tell me that this is where I belong. I’ve never had that sense before.’

‘Then you have come to the right place, and the right people.’ Baptista made a sweep of her hand, indicating the sunlit landscape, down the valley, across to Palermo, with a faint glimpse of the sea beyond. ‘See, the very land welcomes you.’

‘This place is so beautiful. Did you live here when you were a child?’

‘No, but we visited sometimes in the summer, when the city was too hot. It was my property, to be kept in good condition so that it could be a fine dowry when my marriage was arranged.’

‘Arranged?’ Heather echoed, not sure she’d heard correctly. ‘An arranged marriage?’

Baptista chuckled. ‘Of course. Arranged marriages were very common, and even today-where there is property-’ she gave an eloquent shrug. ‘They often work out very well, despite what you think.’

‘But what about love?’

A faraway look came into Baptista’s eyes. ‘I was in love once,’ she said softly. ‘His name was Federico. I called him Fede. He was a fine-looking boy, tall and strong with dark, speaking eyes, and hands that could hold a woman so gently.’

She smiled, looking at something deep inside herself. ‘Of course, a well brought up young girl wasn’t supposed to notice things like that, but he was the most handsome young man in Sicily. All the girls were crazy for him, but I was the one he loved.’

‘What happened?’ Heather asked.

‘Oh, we never had a chance. He was a gardener, and in those days rich girls didn’t marry gardeners. In fact they still don’t. He used to work here and grow such beautiful roses, just for me. He said that whenever he saw a rose, he thought of me.’

‘What happened?’

‘My parents separated us. He was sent away and I never saw or heard of him again. I tried to find out what had become of him, for I thought if only I could know that he was well I might find a sort of peace. But I never managed to discover anything. He had vanished into a void. That was the hardest thing of all to bear.’

‘Vanished?’ Heather echoed, shocked. ‘Do you mean that-?’

‘I don’t know,’ Baptista said quickly. ‘He vanished. It would be nice to know, one way or the other, but I suppose now I never will.’

‘You still think of him-after all these years?’

‘He was my one true love, and no woman ever forgets the man who is that,’ Baptista murmured with a touch of wistfulness. ‘I cried for weeks, and was sure my life was over. My parents arranged marriages for me and I refused them all. After several years they were growing worried. I was already twenty-five, a late age for a girl of my generation to marry. Finally they suggested Vincente. He was a good man, although very dull. But I wanted children. So I married him, and I was glad.’

‘You fell in love?’

‘No, not I with him, nor he with me. But we became dear friends.’ She gave Heather an impish smile. ‘How easy it is to embarrass the young. You are wondering if I knew about my husband and Bernardo’s mother. Of course I did, and it wasn’t the end of the world. I’d had my love, and the happiness I knew in that short time will stay with me all my days. I was glad Vincente could also be happy.’

‘But are you saying that-that love doesn’t matter in marriage?’

‘I’m saying there is more than one kind of love. Vincente was my dearest friend. As friends we loved each other, and our marriage was strong. When our little girl died we wept in each other’s arms.’

‘You had a daughter?’

‘Our first child. She died when she was six months old. Her name was Doretta.’ Baptista took her hand. ‘If she had lived, I hope she would have grown up like you, gentle, sweet-natured and strong.’

Heather laid her other hand over Baptista’s and looked at her with eyes that were suddenly blurred.

‘We haven’t known each other very long,’ Baptista said, ‘but sometimes a few days is enough-as you and Lorenzo have discovered. I knew from the first that you were the daughter of my heart, as surely as if I’d given birth to you. Bella Rosaria would have been Doretta’s dowry. Now it will be yours.’

‘You mean-you’re giving it to Lorenzo-?’

‘No. I am giving it to you.’

‘But-I couldn’t possibly-’

‘If you refuse, you will break my heart,’ Baptista said simply.

‘And I wouldn’t hurt you for the world,’ Heather said at once. ‘Thank you.’

After all, she thought, the property would return to the family on her wedding day. And that was so close now that the gift probably wouldn’t happen until the actual wedding.

But Baptista had another surprise for her. She rapped on the floor with her walking stick, and when a maid looked in spoke a few words in Sicilian. A moment later two grave-looking men, dressed in black, entered the room, carrying papers.

‘This is my lawyer and his assistant,’ Baptista explained. ‘The papers are all ready for signature, and they will act as witnesses.’

‘You mean now?’ Heather asked, slightly aghast.

‘There will never be a better time,’ Baptista said calmly taking up a pen.

‘Signora-’ Heather said urgently.

‘In a few days it will be right for you to call me Mamma,’ Baptista observed. ‘Why not now? It would make me so happy.’

‘And me-Mamma.’

‘Bene! Now be a dutiful daughter and don’t argue.’

A few moments later Heather found herself the owner of an estate. They all marked the occasion with a glass of Marsala, and the lawyers departed.

‘Now I’m feeling a little tired,’ Baptista announced. ‘I’ll go and lie down for a while, and you can look over your property.’

As she wandered through the rooms of the elegant little villa Heather knew she’d found the true home she wanted. It was the perfect size for two people in love, and just close enough to Palermo to make it feasible for her and Lorenzo to live here.

Plans were forming in her mind. Since she could travel with him it would be easy for her to involve herself in his work. Baptista had a seat on the board, and was all for Heather taking an interest in the firm. She and Lorenzo could work together and then retreat to this magic place and make their own world.

And when their world began to grow she knew exactly the room she wanted for a nursery. It was at the back of the house, overlooking the magnificent, flower-filled gardens. She stood at the window a moment, mentally redecorating this room in pastel shades, then hurried down to explore the grounds.

Here the air was heady with a thousand scents. Tall trees shaded her progress and birds called overhead as she wandered in a place of pure enchantment. Always she was within sound of rushing water, and sometimes she came upon little fountains, cut into the walls.

Suddenly the path widened into a small arbour, almost separate from the rest of the garden. Everywhere she looked there were roses, pink, white, yellow, climbing roses, trailing roses, full blooms and small tight buds. And in the centre a bush of brilliant crimson blooms that was in itself a declaration of love.

‘I thought you would find this place,’ Baptista said.

Heather turned and saw her standing there, leaning slightly on her stick.

‘I saw you from my window, and wanted to show you my special place myself.’

‘Did he-?’

‘Yes, Fede began it for me. It was his way of saying what he dared not say in words.’

She indicated a small wooden bench and they sat there together.

‘Over the years I have tended this place with love and it has grown. I’ve protected the plants so that they survived the winters, taking them into greenhouses, or even the house. Some are still the original plants that he put here. Some are from cuttings.

‘And I have taken cuttings to the Residenza, and put them in my garden there. But here, in this spot, was where he said to me that no other woman would ever exist for him besides me.’

She pointed to the glorious red blooms. ‘We planted that together, and I have never let it die,’ she said softly. ‘If he came back now, I could show him that bush and say, “See how I have loved it for your sake.”’

‘And I shall love it for yours,’ Heather said softly.

‘I knew you would. And when they bury me, and my coffin is piled high with formal tributes from people I cared nothing about, will you make sure a single bloom from this bush lies hidden there somewhere?’

‘Of course I will. But don’t you want Lorenzo or Renato to do that for you?’

She shook her head. ‘When the time comes Lorenzo will sob and forget everything but his grief. You will have to be strong for him then. And Renato is a good man, but there are things about the heart that he doesn’t understand.’

‘Just about everything, I should think,’ Heather said, and the two women exchanged a smile. ‘Of course I’ll do this for you,’ she promised.

‘Then I can be peaceful, for it was troubling me that there was nobody I could rely on to do this.’

‘You still love him, after so long?’

‘Not as I think you mean it. Passion is long dead. What matters then is someone to sit with you in the evening sun: someone who will talk and hold your hand, and smile at you with eyes that say, “Let us go, unafraid, into the twilight together.” Sometimes at dusk I’ll come and sit here, and remember. But always I sit alone. I am growing old, my dear daughter, and my heart aches for what I shall never have.’

She tucked her hand in Heather’s arm, and slowly they made their way back to the house.

Lorenzo’s reaction later that night was strange. After the first surprise and pleasure, he said, ‘I wonder how Renato will take this. He always hoped to own Bella Rosaria one day.’

After which Heather braced herself for recriminations, but Renato went up to his room without giving her more than a brief nod.