Tender Is The Tyrant

by Violet Winspear

  She turned then to leave the bridge, and saw someone striding out of the mist towards her. She moved back slowly until the parapet of the bridge brought her up short. Her face was a strained triangle, her mist-wet hair clung to her thin young neck. ‘Go away,’ she said. ‘I’ve had enough for one evening.’

  ‘Do you really imagine I would go away and leave you here?’ he asked. His face looked grim. ‘What a childish thing to do, to run out of the theatre in a flimsy dress and coat—it was a good thing the doorman saw you and could tell me which direction you had taken. Knowing how you like bridges, it seemed reasonable to suppose that you would come and mope on this one.’

  ‘Mope?’ she echoed. ‘I's that what you call it, when my aunt lies ill in hospital and you keep the news from me—just for the sake of your blasted ballet?’

  ‘What good would it have done your aunt if you had moped all over the palazzo tonight instead of dancing Giselle? Knowing about your triumph will help her to get well, I am sure of that. I was sending a wire to the hospital when you ran out of the theatre in such a foolish hurry.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and gazed at him with wide eyes as he put a hand to her damp hair and felt it.

  ‘You really are a child,’ he said, and closed a protective arm about her. ‘I see the lights of a cafe on the other side of this bridge. Let us go there and have some hot coffee.’

  ‘That would be nice.’ They began to walk across the bridge towards the soft lights of the cafe, and the music. His arm felt warm and strong about her, and so secure. ‘Thank you for sending a wire to Aunt Pat, signor. It was kind of you.’

  ‘I can be kind.’ She felt him glance down at her, and caught the sardonic note in his voice. ‘It quite shocked Venetia that you should think me heartless.’

  ‘Not heartless—exactly.’ Lauri forced a laugh to cover the tears in her voice. ‘But Venetia has seen more of your—your loving side than I have.’

  ‘I don’t quite follow your reasoning.’ He stopped walking and turned her to face him on the misty bridge. ‘Why should Venetia know more about that side of me than anyone else?’

  ‘Because you love her,’ Lauri said simply.

  She heard him catch his breath, and then caught hers as his hands tightened painfully on her arms. ‘I have known Venetia for a long time, she is a very good friend of mine, but where could you have got the idea that I love her?’

  ‘You said you did, the day we went to the Villa Nora.’ Lauri was shaking with nerves, coldness, his nearness and her fear of giving herself away to him. She tried to pull away from him, but the more she pulled the firmer grew his grip until she found herself right up against him.

  ‘That day on the island—you said the woman you loved was on the island.’ Her heart was pounding, for his hands were slipping up her sides and one arm was curving round to hold her. ‘Signor—please—’

  ‘Please, do what?’ he mocked. ‘Were you jealous when I said the woman I loved was on that island? I hope you were, carina, for often I have felt jealous.’

  ‘You?’ she gasped, her hair in a stream over his arm as he bent to her, smiling in the brilliant way that must have ravished her heart long ago.

  ‘I can be jealous and fierce and all the things that a man is with the woman he loves.’ His eyes held hers and searched them as the mist drifted about them and everything was muffled but the pounding of her heart ... and his.

  Maxim’s heart, joined to hers and beating into her, heaven riven in two as his mouth in sudden impatient hunger crushed to nothing all her questions, and supplied all the answers.

  ‘You were on that island, were you not?’ he whispered fiercely. ‘I wanted then to kiss you awake, into a woman, but first you had to dance and lose those fears from your childhood. That was why I was ruthless with you, why I made you dance tonight. I will never make you dance again, my love, if you don’t want to.’

  She smiled and rested against his shoulder, and felt his lips brush her temple. ‘I must dance in London for Aunt Pat,’ she said softly. ‘You won’t mind, Maxim, if I go to her tomorrow?’

  ‘I am coming with you,’ he said at once.

  ‘But what about the company?’ Lauri looked at him in such sheer amazement that he burst out laughing.

  ‘Bruno can take care of the company. For now, my love, you are my first consideration. For always, come to that.’

  ‘For always?’ The words sounded so lovely, so secure, so rich with promise. ‘Oh, Maxim!’

  ‘You want to belong to me for always?’

  She nodded, and suddenly shy of his dark, handsome, worldly eyes, she pressed her face to his chest. ‘How is it possible that you love me?’ she whispered. ‘I’m so naive about a lot of things, and you’re so’ wise. You know so much. Won’t I bore you?’

  ‘Naive is the word,’ he mocked gently. ‘As I warned you once before, don’t ever change, carina. I love you exactly as you are, all heart, nonsense and innocence. So innocent, my pet. Too unspoiled to know that I meant to have you from the first moment I looked at you.’

  His left eyebrow quirked above a wicked dark eye. ‘You would not have been able to run fast enough if you had known that, eh?’

  ‘What is I had fallen in love with someone else?’ she teased in her turn.

  ‘The gods would not have been that unkind to me, after I waited so long to find someone like you. You are everything to me, Laurina. Your every gesture, every smile and dancing step is dear to me.’

  And there on that old Venetian bridge, where lovers had kissed down the centuries, Lauri and her love pledged their love in the old, old way.

  A gondola sped beneath the bridge, and the voice of the gondolier rose rich on the misty air. Marry young, girl. Marry while the leaf is green...