The Veranchetti Marriage

by Lynne Graham

  It was her fault he had been, she acknowledged guiltily. How many times had she referred to previous sufferings? Had that been to punish him for his absence then? She did not like the picture. He was sincerely worried about the baby, and she was not an invalid.

  “I think the doctor was right. It’s not going to be as it was before, and even then there was no danger of a miscarriage,” she pointed out.

  Alex stiffened. “Why does it have to be like this?” he drawled in weary bitterness. “All I ask of you is that you have this baby and love it, even though it is my child.”

  She blinked back stinging tears. “You don’t have to say that to me, Alex. Don’t you understand? I panicked, my nerves probably made me feel sick!” she teased shakily. “You don’t have to feel…”

  “Guilty?” His eyes were dark and sombre. “I took no care of you that night. I thought only of my own needs. This did not need to happen.”

  She frowned, cursing the childish recriminations she had hurled. “Alex, I’m an adult too. I didn’t think either, and it’s not…it doesn’t have to be a disaster. We both want this baby, don’t you see? That’s something we can share.”

  His ebony brows pleated. “It will be all that we share. We will live separately in the same household. That is what you wanted from the very beginning. It was unreasonable of me to demand anything else.”

  Shot from shock to the unalterable discovery that what she had once believed she wanted was now as far removed from her present feelings as Alex appeared to be, she searched his face dazedly. “Unreasonable?”

  “Yes, it was. You saw more clearly than I. We must hope that we make better friends than lovers,” he quipped smoothly. “It will certainly be less explosive.”

  Her fingers knotted into the sheets. “Friends?” she parroted to herself.

  Alex vented a humourless laugh. “I see the prospect confounds you, but why not? How else may we live together peacefully? When I forced you to marry me, I asked the impossible from us both. I have accepted that.”

  “Yes.” She saw that he had reached that acceptance. He had dug down to the roots of his desire for her and exorcised it. If he no longer viewed her as a sexually attractive woman, he could banish his jealousy. Friends. Her mind boggled. She didn’t want Alex as a friend, she couldn’t suddenly switch off now. It was too late.

  He smiled at her ruefully. “So you see, there will be no further distressing scenes between us. I feel a lot happier knowing that.”

  It was just as well somebody was in the mood to celebrate. Kerry wasn’t. Didn’t he see that those days on Kordos had been a necessary period of adjustment? Before that ghastly scene on the beach had erupted, a new and fragile understanding had been under formation, in spite of his jealousy. His behaviour had shattered her that day, and perhaps, she grasped now, it had shattered him too. He was really acting quite predictably. He saw a fault in himself. He rooted it out. After all, she might be the cause of the fault, but he was truly stuck with her now. Alex had brought logic to bear on their problems, and Alex’s cool logic had never been less welcome.

  * * *

  APART FROM a little nausea during the flight to Pisa airport, she was fine. The closer they got to journey’s end, however, the more tense she became. Casa del Fiore had been her prison during their separation. She associated the eighteenth-century villa with unhappy memories. But evidently sentimentality had no such hold upon Alex.

  The house was on the outskirts of Florence, set in the lush, rolling hills of the Tuscan countryside, which was already blossoming with the softening green veil of spring. The day they had viewed Casa del Fiore, it had been surrounded by an overgrown meadow of wild flowers, its dulled and neglected fa;alcade gleaming a faint pink in the dying sunlight. After the agent had gone, Alex had tumbled her down and made love to her among those flowers. She reddened and paled again with self-loathing. Memory looked like being her sole comfort. He had got tired of her even before that fight, she was convinced of it. When had Alex ever denied himself anything he still wanted?

  “Welcome home,” he murmured as the limousine swung between the tall, eagle-topped pillars at the foot of the long driveway.

  Casa del Fiore seemed to drowse in the blaze of the noonday heat, the soft yellow walls of the rambling villa complemented by the terracotta roof tiles. The arrow-shaped cypresses lining the avenue cast thin shadows in the car’s path.

  She had chosen this house, not Alex. Her enthusiasm had been undiminished by the mountain of improvements required inside and out, and Alex had let her have her way. She had flung herself into transforming the drab interior, struggling with Italian workmen brought up to “Domani” and forever going over her head to talk to Alex, who had never had the time or the interest to deal with them. When he had left, she had stopped decorating, leaving only a few rooms complete.

  Nicky scrambled out of the car first, eager to explore. Alex had never brought him here. He had closed the house up with only a caretaker. The staff were all new, smilingly grouped in the front hall. The ghastly cherry-red carpet she had mistakenly chosen for the floor still darkened the entrance.

  Lucrezia, the housekeeper, beamed at her cheerfully and, as soon as the introductions were over, Kerry forgot about Alex and went off to explore. It was like moving into a timeslip. Everything was exactly as she had left it. The kitchens were still untiled. The rooms she hadn’t touched were still empty and shuttered. An incredible medley of styles reigned supreme wherever her immature taste had lingered. The rear sitting-room still rejoiced in lamentably quarrelsome floral fabrics.

  “I gather you didn’t use the house at all,” she remarked, hearing his step behind her. “It’s pretty hard on the eye, isn’t it?”

  “I like it. It’s bright, warm,” he replied almost abruptly.

  Upstairs, her throat closed over in the doorway of their bedroom. For once her efforts for a cohesive scheme had come together. But the pale lemon-washed walls, the abundance of gorgeous fabric at the windows and over the bed made her turn away. How could he bring her back here? Didn’t he have any sensitivity at all? Everywhere she looked she saw a frail, drooping shadow of herself in the past. Welcome home, indeed!

  Brown fingers linked slowly with hers. “Was it a mistake to bring you back? You loved this house.”

  Irritably she rammed back her own eerie spectres. Alex suffered from no such imaginative qualms. “Where will we put Nicky?” she asked, walking down the wide, sunlit corridor to glance into empty rooms. She had furnished one guest-room. He hadn’t changed that, either.

  “I’ll use the dressing-room off our bedroom,” he replied as if he could read her mind.

  She gave a brisk nod, colour rising to her cheeks. Project one was evidently to furnish the room through the communicating door for Alex’s occupancy. “I’ve got a lot to do,” she mused.

  “You mustn’t overtire yourself,” he ruled. “I will be here. Ask me to help with anything you wish.”

  Unexpectedly, she laughed. “Alex, the last time I showed you a wallpaper book, you spread a file on top of it.”

  “I must often have hurt your feelings,” he remarked with unsmiling gravity. “It won’t be like that again.”

  “I’m not expecting you to immerse yourself in household trivia,” she said dully, recoiling from his sacrificial attitude.

  Later she watched him from the bedroom window. Nicky was kicking a ball towards him and throwing a short-tempered fit when Alex kicked it back past him. Shorn of his jacket and tie, his black hair tousled by the breeze, he looked remarkably relaxed as he scooped his son up and hugged him with an unashamed affection which jerked her own heartstrings with envy. He looked happy. He had put a wall between them that she didn’t want, and he looked happy. He had only battled with his pride when he decided that they should opt for a platonic marriage.

  When she was in bed, she thought of him lying in the narrow confinement of the single just through the wall while she tossed in more space than she could find comfor
t in. You’d better get used to it, she thought, Alex never changes his mind about a decision.

  When she slept, she dreamt that she was locked inside a house without windows or doors. Everywhere she ran in her frantic need to escape she came on another stretch of blank wall. Her eyes flew open, a sob on her lips. Alex was bending over her. “It’s only a dream…hmm?” he soothed, and the fear went out of her. “Do you want me to bring you a drink?”

  Drowsily, she shook her head. She bit her lip, and then said it anyway, “Don’t go…”

  Alex stilled at the foot of the bed, already in the act of leaving her. Stark embarrassment flooded her as she registered his surprise and reluctance. But the slither of his silk robe marked his agreement. “Go back to sleep,” he murmured as he slid quietly into the other side of the bed.

  When morning came, his head was against her shoulder, his thick hair brushing her chin, his arm lying heavily over the swell of her breasts. A mixture of hunger and tenderness gripped her as his dark lashes lifted and she merged with slumbrous gold. Immediately, he shifted away from her warmth. “I don’t think sharing a bed is a very good idea,” he murmured sardonically. “The next time something goes bump in the night, I shall leave a light on for you.”

  She forced a laugh and watched him depart, but she was stung to the quick, almost certain that he had seen the helpless invitation in her eyes. Her energies, it seemed, would be pinned more rewardingly to the house. Alex no longer found her an unbearable temptation.

  The next few weeks were both tranquil and busy. She had the hall carpet lifted to reveal the beautiful pale pink Gavorrano marble beneath, and she engaged an interior designer. Alex was talking about setting up a branch of Veranchetti Industries in Florence and shifting his staff from Rome. She was astonished, but gradually came to appreciate that the concession was in keeping with an Alex determinedly taking an interest in every detail of the household upheaval and prowling round baby boutiques in her wake. At every opportunity Alex was proving that she could have no cause to complain of neglect. His enthusiasm and his good humour were daunting, but then he never did anything by halves, and, had his efforts to please led him into her bedroom, she could have been ecstatic. Unfortunately, Superhusband went to his own bed every night, and did not appear to be finding it a strain.

  They came home from a shopping expedition in Florence one afternoon and there was another letter from Steven awaiting her. Alex passed it to her with a brilliant smile. “He likes to keep in touch, doesn’t he?” he quipped. “Perhaps you will want him to visit with us this summer.”

  Leaving her pole-axed, he strode off into the library. Had it been her imagination that he was jealous of Steven? What a lowering admission it was that the hint of a dark, brooding scowl from Alex on the subject of Steven would have made her day!

  The same post included a letter from her mother, who wrote that she was rather concerned about Vickie. She had not been home since Kerry’s departure. “She’s very strained over the phone, not like herself at all,” Ellen wrote. “Do you think there’s a man involved? I hoped that she might have confided in you.”

  Kerry hadn’t heard from Vickie, nor did she expect to. She assumed that Jeff’s appeal to her sister had failed, and that with it his desire to unlock the past had waned. It was now almost four weeks since he had called her from Athens. Sooner or later, she would have to write to Vickie. She didn’t want their parents upset by the discovery that their daughters were mysteriously at loggerheads. But it was still too soon for Kerry to face penning that letter. Her anger had subsided, and much of her bitterness, but she was still paying the price of that morning through her marriage.

  The following morning, Lucrezia brought her breakfast in bed. Alex came in with Nicky, her son bouncing up and down with exuberant excitement. Still half asleep, she surveyed them.

  “It’s your birthday,” Alex said drily.

  She blinked, for she had completely forgotten. “Happy birthday!” Nicky cried, thrusting an envelope on top of her cup of tea and settling a luridly coloured box beside it.

  “Happy birthday.” Alex pressed cool lips to her flushed cheek and presented her with a card. It was all very restrained and polite.

  His card was one of those ones with no message. Admittedly, he would have had to sack Florence to find a card with a blurb suitable to their association. What it did have, though, was an enormous key taped inside.

  Kerry looked at him hopefully. The key to the communicating door between their bedrooms, she thought wildly, for the lock was empty on both sides.

  “It’s a surprise,” he proffered with an oddly tense smile. “We need to go out to fit the key to a door.”

  Disgraced by her own imagination, she nodded. Eating breakfast was impossible after that. Nicky was left at home and Alex drove them into Florence. He parked by the Arno and took her walking through the narrow, crowded streets.

  “Am I going to like it…the surprise?” she prompted doubtfully.

  “I hope so…I think so.” The cool, sensual mouth curved into an almost boyish smile as he guided her off the Via Tornebuoni. “I thought of it in Greece.”

  He had been thinking of her birthday that far back? She could only be complimented. He grabbed her hand impatiently. “Close your eyes,” he instructed, and his arm folded round her to move her on another few steps before turning her round. “Now you can open them.”

  “Am I supposed to see something?” she muttered, gazing at the green and gold decorated windows of the apparently empty shop in front of them.

  He sighed. “Look up to the name.”

  What she read in flowing gold script immobilised her. Antiques Fayre—Firenze. While Alex employed the key in the door she tried to crank her jaw shut. Alex had bought her a shop?

  “Aren’t you coming in?”

  She stood inside the enormous interior on the dusty floor which was littered with packing cases and rubbish. It was easily four times the size of what she had left behind. “How…how did you get it? It’s so central. It must have cost a fortune…or is it rented?”

  Alex looked pained. “It belongs to you. I made the previous owner an offer that he could not refuse. At the price, he might have removed the rubbish,” he complained grimly.

  “You want me to go into business?” Kerry wished there was a seat somewhere around. Her legs were wobbly. She was afraid there was a catch, and this was some gigantic misunderstanding.

  “That was the idea, but…”

  “I knew there was a but.”

  “The baby,” Alex reproved and spread his expressive hands wide. “I didn’t know there was going to be a baby. Do you think you could wait until after its birth to start this place up? I am afraid it would be too taxing a project to begin now, but when the baby is born we can get a nanny…”

  She sagged. The but had not contained the tripwire she feared. Silence fell. She was in the trancelike hold of astonishment. Alex had opened the door of her gilded cage.

  He expelled his breath. “I know you like to be busy. You have so much energy. When the house is finished, Nicky at school, what would you do with yourself? I suggest you hire a manager so that you are not too tied to the business, but that is up to you.”

  She wanted to cry. When Athene heard about this, she would think her son had gone crazy. “You thought about this in Greece?”

  “I know how bored you were before at home. You needed more stimulus. This time I want you to be content in our marriage, and here you will have your own challenge, you will…”

  “Alex, it’s the most wonderful thing anybody’s ever done for me!” she interrupted extravagantly. In buying her this business, Alex had overcome his need to lock her up. She could see in his dark, set features that he was still questioning his own decision and was somewhat ambivalent about his own generosity. But what mattered was that he had done it for her despite his own fear of giving her this amount of freedom. She reached for his hand uncertainly. “You won’t ever have cause to regret this.”<
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  His ebony brows pleated. “I have to trust you. You were right when you said that. The problem was mine,” he stated tautly. “That day on the island, I shocked myself. It will never happen again. I promise you that.”

  Her bronze lashes veiled her stinging eyes. How like Alex it was to force himself into the very opposite of what he wanted when he realised that he was behaving unreasonably. She could have applauded his determination on a much less extreme show of trust than this, and suddenly she could see hope for them both, without Vickie or Jeff. Surely it was possible that, when Alex had dealt with his own gremlins, he would come back to her in every way?

  Five days later, Alex flew to Rome. He was due home for the weekend, but the afternoon passed without his appearance. Early evening, Kerry was perched on the window seat in the salon, wondering why he hadn’t phoned, when a little yellow Fiat came bowling noisily down the driveway. A tall blond man extracted himself awkwardly from the driver’s side and straightened. Vickie strolled round the bonnet and grasped his hand. Kerry froze. They had actually come. A minute later, Lucrezia showed them in.

  “Alex is in Rome, he isn’t back yet,” was the first thing Kerry said.

  In the uneasy stasis, Jeff stuck out his hand, a dull flush of red lying along his broad cheekbones, his other arm planted round her strained sister. “I don’t expect you to like me, but I’m four years older and wiser now,” he said wryly.

  “I guess you’ve been wondering what was going on,” Vickie said very quietly. “Jeff never knew that you and Alex split up that day. I don’t want you to feel he’s equally to blame. It was over two years before we ran into each other again. I started seeing Jeff, but I had to keep quiet about it. I couldn’t take him home, I couldn’t tell you about him. It was poetic justice, I suppose. I was caught in my own trap.”

  “I had absolutely no idea why Vickie was holding me at bay. If I had done, believe me, I wouldn’t have let it lie,” he stressed levelly.

  “The day you left me…I was upset,” Vickie muttered. “I phoned Jeff and I told him everything.”