Lucy Gordon - Wife By Arrangement

When they returned home she became more involved in the running of Bella Rosaria. She was wise enough to let Luigi keep the reins in his experienced hands, but subject to his advice she visited her tenants, discussed their problems, and began to make decisions. The revenues that came in were her own. Renato refused to make any claim on them, and even insisted on giving her a wife’s allowance. She would have liked to refuse but didn’t because she suspected that he would be hurt. It was no more than a suspicion, because she had to guess his feelings, but she sensed that she’d got this one right.

Because of his reticence she couldn’t speak out about her fast growing feelings for him. She guessed that it had been growing for some time, but she only discovered its strength when he had to be away for a week. She wouldn’t have thought it possible to miss one person so much. It wasn’t just her senses that longed for Renato, but her heart craved him night and day. It was their first separation since their marriage and it was almost unbearable.

It was nothing like the gentle pleasure of loving Lorenzo, which now looked more like a feeble infatuation with every day that passed. This love was savage and all-powerful, wiping out lesser feelings, leaving her helpless and desperate.

Their reunion was overwhelming, and somehow she was sure she would find the moment to hint at her feelings and hear something about his own. But his most enthusiastic talk was of deals he had done, and there was something in his cheerfulness that kept her at a distance.

AS WITH any properly conducted business arrangement the terms of their marriage were adhered to on both sides. Renato had promised Heather a place in the firm, and one day she came home from shopping to find him regarding her with a teasing look.

‘How would you like to take a trip for the firm?’ he asked. ‘I need someone to fix up some deals in Scotland.’

‘But isn’t that Lorenzo’s territory? In fact he’s in England right now-’

‘He’s got some unexpected problems that are going to keep him there,’ Renato broke in hastily. ‘If you take over Scotland it will ease the pressure on him.’

She was ambitious for the chance. Even so, her first thought had been, I’ll have to be away from him. But Renato seemed delighted at the thought of her going.

Next day she was on a flight to Edinburgh. She booked into a newly opened luxury hotel on Princes Street, and spent the next few days selling Martelli produce all over the most exclusive parts of the city, including the hotel itself. Her trip was a triumphant success, but it was spoiled for her by a persistent ache of loneliness that wouldn’t go away.

On the last day she called home just to hear his voice, but he was out and wouldn’t be back that day. The violence of her disappointment almost winded her. She pulled herself together and went out to work, forcing herself to concentrate, and ending up with a full order book that she was eager to show Renato.

But she saw him a lot sooner than she expected.

Returning to the hotel, she was pulled up short by the sight of Renato and the manager sitting together in the bar. Her first reaction was stunned delight. They rose to greet her, all smiles, and her husband complimented her on the deal she’d done with the hotel.

‘Your wife is a true Martelli, Renato,’ the manager said. ‘She drives a hard bargain.’

‘And not only here,’ Renato agreed. ‘All over town, apparently.’

So that was it. Her brief hope that he’d been missing her died stillborn. He was here as a businessman, finding out the skills of his newest sales rep, ‘all over town’.

While the manager was ordering drinks, Renato looked at her glowering face and observed, ‘I’d hoped you’d be more pleased to see me.’

‘I don’t like being checked up on,’ she muttered.

He seemed disconcerted, then pulled himself together. ‘It’s not exactly that-’

‘I think it is,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I don’t blame you, but let’s drop it.’

No more was said. In the evening they were the manager’s guests for dinner, and the two men toasted her. That night in their suite she displayed her order book and received her husband’s wholehearted praise. She tried to look behind his eyes, but he wouldn’t let her, and when he embraced her, smiling, and said, ‘Let me show you just how pleased with you I am,’ she stopped worrying about anything else but the delight to be found in his arms.

They stayed another two days, while she finalised her deals. He made a few suggestions but otherwise didn’t interfere. On the last night they celebrated over a meal which they had served in their bedroom, ‘for the sake of convenience,’ as they both delicately put it. And when the time came they were glad there were only a few steps to travel.

As they lay languorously entwined in each other’s arms afterwards he murmured, ‘You’re not really annoyed that I came here, are you?’

‘I thought you had important business to see to?’

‘What could be more important?’

‘Ah, yes, I might have been losing money hand over fist, mightn’t I?’

‘You forget, I first met you as a demon saleswoman,’ he reminded her lightly.

But this sparring wasn’t enough for her. Surely now, when they lay so close, she could nudge him towards greater frankness?

‘But what do we really know about each other?’ she asked. ‘In bed, a good deal. Outside, very little.’

‘Nonsense. You know a lot about me. Devious, conniving, manipulative-I forget the other words you used but it sounds as though you know me very well. Besides-’ he became serious, ‘-in bed a man and a woman find their greatest truth.’

‘Yes,’ she said wistfully, ‘but not their only truth.’

‘How much do you think the other truths matter?’

‘Not much now, maybe. But later-as the years pass-’

‘Leave the years to take care of themselves,’ he said easily.

She made a cynical sound that would have been a snort if she hadn’t been a lady. ‘That from you-the man who has to plan everything years ahead.’

He didn’t say anything for a while, but at last he asked in a strange voice, ‘Are we talking about Lorenzo? I’d rather not, but if so, then yes, I admit it. I try to plan too much. Your marriage to him would have been a mistake. I knew that the day we went out on the boat, but it was too late. What could I do? Seduce my brother’s fiancée?’

‘Try to seduce her,’ she said firmly. ‘Don’t take it for granted that you’d have succeeded.’

He grunted. ‘What would you like to bet against my chances?’

She thought of the sensations that had almost drowned her as he rubbed oil into her back. But more than that was the moment of tender understanding between them as she held his wrist and looked at the scar. No passion then. Just an alarmed awareness of each other as people with thoughts and feelings.

‘Well?’ he persisted. ‘If I’d forgotten my honour that day, would you have forgotten yours?’

‘It was different. I was in love with Lorenzo.’

‘Love is a complication,’ he agreed. ‘Even when it’s an illusion.’

She longed to remind him of his own words about love-‘I believed in things I don’t believe in now’-and ask if he still meant them. Surely their closeness must have made him feel differently? But her courage failed at the last moment.

‘I guess we’ll never know the truth,’ she said lightly.

‘Probably not. But I knew how badly I wanted you, and I kept my distance. When Lorenzo took flight I was secretly glad, except that after that you hated me. I couldn’t blame you, but there seemed no way of approaching you.’

‘If Mamma hadn’t decided to arrange a marriage between us, would you have let me go away?’

‘No,’ he said simply. ‘I wanted you.’

Wanted, she noted. Not loved.

‘But when we talked you became angry,’ he continued. ‘She was the only one you would listen to.’

‘You mean-you were behind it?’

‘I knew what was in her mind. I could have discouraged her. I didn’t.’

‘But you hit the roof at the idea of marrying me.’

‘Only after you roared with laughter. What did you expect me to say after that?’

She stared at him. It was on the tip of her tongue to demand, But why didn’t you just ask me to marry you?

But she couldn’t say it. It would reveal too much about her emotions, and she was safer not doing that with a man who kept his own emotions hidden.

And that, of course, was the answer. Renato wouldn’t risk asking because it meant revealing himself. So he’d sought to negotiate a deal at arm’s length.

Now she remembered something else he’d said. ‘I would invite betrayal by expecting it.’

Not betrayal. She could never betray him. But withdrawal. A man who kept his heart hidden made it impossible for her to do anything else.

‘So Mamma was acting as your emissary?’ she asked lightly.

‘After the way you’d been hurt, an impersonal approach seemed wiser.’

It was all so reasonable. She wanted to scream at how reasonable it was. Or maybe she just wanted to scream that he had so little to offer.

Baptista was her tower of strength. After the marriage she had never relinquished her role as intermediary.

‘That’s what I call it,’ she observed one day as they sat together at Bella Rosaria, watching the rain. ‘Some people would call it being an interfering mother-in-law.’

Heather smiled and squeezed her hand. ‘You know better than that.’

‘Before you there was no woman who could make him stop and think, force him to forget his arrogance, and learn to trust and love again. So I “acquired” you because he needed you so much. But was I being selfish to you?’

‘No, Mamma. We’re very happy in many ways. And sometimes I can feel him wanting to reach out to me, but he always pulls back. How can I ever tell him that I love him?’

‘Must it be told in words?’

‘For me it must.’

‘I think his feelings for you were coming alive since before your first “wedding”. Maria vergine, how lucky we all were that Lorenzo had the good sense to abort it!’

‘Lorenzo?’ Heather echoed with a chuckle. ‘Good sense?’

‘He saw what needed doing to avert disaster, and he did it. How miserable you’d all be now if he hadn’t! He’s still rather irresponsible. But he’s developing into an excellent and sensible young man.’ She added with a twinkle, ‘But don’t tell him I said that.’

‘I won’t. Besides, if he became too sensible he wouldn’t be Lorenzo. Now, Renato is all good sense. It’s his driving force. He doesn’t love me because he doesn’t understand love. He understands need and want and acquisition. But he knows nothing about the heart.’

‘You are mistaken,’ her mother-in-law said firmly. ‘He simply hasn’t yet discovered that you matter to him more than anything else in the world. That will take time. Perhaps years.’

Heather said nothing, but in her heart she wondered if she could spend years waiting for what might never happen. She saw Baptista watching her, and knew that she wondered too.

Winter was passing, the rains eased off, leaving the soil rich and black for the spring sowing. Everywhere there was a sense of life renewing. Her first spring. Her first lambing. The harvest that was gathered in this year would be truly her harvest.

She was managing the estate well. Everyone said so, even Luigi, who really did the work of managing it.

‘You at least can’t be fooled,’ she chided him.

‘No fooling. You do well. You stand back and let me do my job. That’s clever.’

Her revenues were excellent. She spent as Luigi advised, otherwise practised thrift, and built up such excellent credit with the bank that she was able to assist Renato through a minor cashflow problem. There was pleasure in that, but it was lessened by his insistence on paying her a proper rate of interest, ‘to keep the books straight’. It was an entirely reasonable explanation, and she couldn’t find the words to explain her irrational sadness.

These days she saw little of Lorenzo, whose job occupied him abroad almost permanently. His next visit to England coincided with Renato’s departure to spend ten days in Rome. Renato didn’t suggest that Heather should go with him.

She spent a couple of days at Bella Rosaria and returned to the Residenza to find that Baptista was out visiting friends, and not expected back until late. In her room she unpacked, trying to ignore the feeling of restlessness that had seized her. She chided herself for being ungrateful. She had everything-almost everything that she could want. But it seemed that all the world was waking to new life and she alone was going nowhere.