Husband By Necessity

by Lucy Gordon

  A stern sense of propriety made him try to ignore the thought-after all, she was a guest in the house. But there was no ignoring the impish way she looked up at him, or the way his own body was responding to the thought of her nakedness.

  ‘This is all wrong, you know,’ she called.

  ‘What’s all wrong?’ he asked, suspicious at not understanding her.

  ‘It’s Juliet who’s supposed to stand on the balcony, and Romeo who looks up from below.’

  Her voice carried sweetly on the night air, like the singing of nightingales, and he could only look at her dumbly.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ she asked, her head on one side, like a pretty, expectant little bird.

  ‘Yes-I was going to ask if you rose to see the dawn. It will be very soon.’

  ‘I expect it’s lovely.’

  ‘It’s lovely here, but even more so in my home, because it is so high.’ He took a deep breath and forced himself to say, ‘I’m glad to see you now, because I have to leave very early tomorrow, to return there.’

  ‘Oh.’ That was all she said, but the disappointed droop in her voice was more than he could bear. The next words came out despite his determination that they shouldn’t. ‘Perhaps you would care to come with me.’

  ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘We leave very early.’

  ‘No way!’ she almost squeaked, trying to remember the sleepers in the house and express her outrage at the same time. ‘I get up early when I go to work. I’m on holiday.’ She almost danced with indignation.

  He grinned, enchanted by her. ‘I’ll wait for you. Now be off back to bed, or you’ll oversleep.’

  She laughed and vanished. Bernardo stayed a long time looking at the place where she’d been. He knew he’d done something dangerous to his peace. If he was wise he would write her an apologetic note, leave it with a servant, and depart at once.

  But he wasn’t going to. Because suddenly he didn’t want to be wise.

  Next morning was a bustle of departure. Lorenzo was off to Stockholm to finish some work before the wedding. Renato was taking Heather sailing so that she could decide whether to accept the offer of his yacht for the honeymoon. Angie politely declined the offer to accompany them, explaining that she was going to the mountains with Bernardo.

  ‘You be careful,’ Heather warned.

  Angie smiled, thinking of last night, and the way the silver moonlight had limned Bernardo’s chest and the muscles of his shoulders and arms. ‘Where’s the fun in being careful?’ she murmured to herself, as she got into the shower.

  She chose her clothes thoughtfully. White jeans, with a deep blue silk top that turned her eyes to violet. It was slightly stretchy, and clung in a way that showed what a nice shape she had. Dainty silver sandals and a silver filigree necklace and matching earrings completed her appearance, and a discreet squirt of a very expensive perfume provided the finishing touch.

  She was prompt, but even so he was waiting for her beside his car, a four-wheel drive, made for rough terrain. It was like the man, nothing fancy, but powerful, uncompromising, made to last.

  He swung out of Palermo and into the countryside. After a while they began to climb, and before long they’d reached a small village with narrow, twisting streets. At the top of a hill stood a pretty pink villa with two curved staircases on the outside.

  ‘This village is Ellona,’ Bernardo told her. ‘It mostly belongs to Baptista. So does the villa. We used to live there in the summer. In fact, that was where-’ He braked suddenly as a chicken darted across the road and uttered something in Sicilian that sounded like a curse.

  ‘What did that mean?’ Angie asked.

  He coloured. ‘Never mind. I shouldn’t have said it.’

  ‘Go on with what you were saying. That was where-?’

  ‘I forget. Look at the scenery just up here. It’s magnificent.’

  It wasn’t just her imagination, she thought. After the first slip of the tongue he’d retreated back in on himself and, when she tried to follow, he’d warned her off. She wasn’t foolish enough to persist.

  Away from the fertile coast the landscape of Sicily changed, become harsher, more barren.

  ‘All the prosperity is on the coast,’ Bernardo said. ‘In-land we live as we can. There are crops, sheep, goats. Sometimes we do well, but it’s a precarious existence.’

  ‘We?’ she asked.

  ‘My people,’ he said simply. ‘The ones who depend on me.’

  After a while he asked, ‘Does the height worry you? Some people get scared as the road twists and turns.’

  ‘Not me,’ she said bravely, although her eyes were getting a little glazed. ‘How high are we now?’

  ‘Nearly half a mile above sea level.’

  Higher and higher they went on the winding mountain road, while the glory of Sicily fell away beneath them. Everywhere Angie looked there were acacia and lemon blossom, and far distant she could make out the gleam of the sea.

  The scenery grew fiercer, grander. They were passing through pinewoods, then the woods were behind them and an upland plain spread out, with vineyards and, above them, a steep cliff with farmhouses.

  ‘The farmers abandoned them long ago,’ Bernardo said. ‘This is a harsh place to live in winter.’

  After a few more miles he pointed and said, ‘Look.’

  She rose in her seat, gasping in amazement and delight at the sight that met her eyes. Ahead of them was a village that seemed to have been carved direct from the very rock that reared up to a windswept promontory. What might have been a bleak and uncompromising scene was softened to beauty by the reddish colour of the sheer rock face. She sat back, gazing in wonder as they drove closer, and she saw that this was actually an enchanting little medieval town, whose delights had to be seen up close to be appreciated.

  ‘That’s Montedoro,’ Bernardo said. ‘Most of it is seven hundred years old.’

  They drove in through an ancient gateway and immediately began to climb a steep, beautifully cobbled street, the Corso Garibaldi, according to the signs. It was lined with shops, many of which seemed to sell sweets and pastries. Faces watched them curiously, and it was clear that everyone knew who Bernardo was. She wondered about the size of the village. From the outside it hadn’t seemed very big.

  He drove very slowly, for the streets were crowded with tourists. At one point a cart turned out of a street directly in front of them, forcing them to slow to a walk. It contained five people and was drawn by two mules sporting tassels and feathers. But what really drew Angie’s attention was the fact that the cart was brightly decorated in every possible place.

  ‘Is that one of the Sicilian hand-painted carts I’ve heard about?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘That’s right. My friend Benito and his son make a summer living giving rides in their carts.’

  Travelling so slowly, she had time to study the glorious paintwork. The wheels, including the spokes were covered in patterns, while on the main body were pictures of saints, warriors and dragons, all glowing in the brilliant sun.

  At the top of the street he swung right along a pretty street of grey stone houses, all with ironwork balconies, and at the end of that he swung right again, heading downwards to a building that Angie gradually recognised as the gate where they’d entered.

  ‘But-that’s-’

  ‘Montedoro is a perfect triangle,’ he said with a grin. ‘Now we’ll go up the Corso Garibaldi again, to my house.’

  When they reached the top she saw a small piazza with several boutiques, and a café with tables spilling onto the street, each one sheltered by a brightly coloured awning. He parked the car and headed for one of the shops, so it seemed to Angie, but at the last minute he swerved aside, to a lane so narrow that she hadn’t seen it. It went right to the back of the shop where it crossed with another lane. Here the space was so cramped and the houses so tall that it was almost dark. When Angie’s eyes were used to the gloom she saw a narrow door in the wall.<
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  ‘Welcome to my home,’ Bernardo said, throwing open the door to a world of magic.

  She entered with wonder. Instead of the dark hallway she’d expected, she found herself in a courtyard, open to the sky. Delicately arched cloisters went around the sides, and in the centre was a fountain whose water caught the brilliant sun on every droplet.

  ‘I never expected-I mean, I never thought you’d live in a place like this,’ she breathed.

  ‘My father bought it for my mother. Lots of the houses in Montedoro have these little courtyards, so that women and children could sit here, and not have to go into the outside world.’

  ‘A man who believed in the traditional ways,’ Angie observed.

  ‘Yes, and also because people were often unkind to my mother because they weren’t married. So he protected her.’

  ‘It’s incredible, how it’s hidden away,’ she marvelled. ‘From outside those shops you’d never guess that it was here, unless you knew where that passage was, and even then you might miss it.’

  ‘That’s the idea. Outside the world bustles, especially in summer, when this place is a tourist trap. Then all the shops open for the foreign visitors, and the great families from Palermo come up here to open their summer houses and escape the heat. But then summer passes, the visitors go, and only the basic population is left.’

  ‘How many would that be?’

  ‘About six hundred. It’s like a ghost town.’

  ‘How do the people live when there are no visitors?’

  ‘Many of them work in the vineyards you saw below. The Martelli family owns them and I run them.’

  Again she noticed the slight oddity in his speech, the way he spoke of ‘the Martelli family’ as though he wasn’t one of them.

  Deep in the house she heard the telephone ring. He excused himself and went to answer it. Left alone, Angie looked around the little courtyard. It wasn’t expensively tended and perfect like the garden at the Residenza, but it had an austere elegance that pleased her.

  She sat on the side of the stone fountain and looked into the water. Above her the impossibly blue sky was reflected clearly, and just behind her she saw Bernardo appear. He was looking at her, and she wondered if he’d forgotten that she could see his face in the water, because he wore an expression that made her catch her breath. It was the look of a man who’d been taken by surprise and held against his will. There was alarm, yearning, and a touch of wistfulness. Then he stepped back quickly and his face vanished. When Angie glanced up he wasn’t looking at her.

  A large woman of about fifty emerged from the kitchen. Bernardo introduced her as Stella, his house keeper. Stella greeted Angie in excellent English, informing them that wine and snacks were waiting for them, while she finished cooking the proper meal. The snacks turned out to be bean fritters, hot cheese and herbs, and stuffed baked tomatoes.

  ‘If this is only a snack, I can’t wait to see what the full meal is like,’ Angie mused.

  ‘It will be a feast,’ he said, pouring her a glass of Marsala. ‘Stella is delighted to see you. She loves displaying her cooking, and I so seldom bring guests here.’

  Glass in hand, he began showing her his home. Despite its beauty it was an austere place, with the bare minimum of dark, heavy oak furniture. The floors were covered with smooth flagstones with the occasional rag rug. The walls were plain stone or brick. There were some pictures, but they weren’t the valuable old masters of the Residenza. One was a photograph, an aerial view of Montedoro itself, touched by the sun and standing proud against the valley far below. One was a childish watercolour, showing the streets of the little town, and a man in the dark clothes Bernardo himself was wearing.

  ‘Yes, that’s meant to be me,’ he said, smiling as he saw her gaze. ‘It was done by the children of the local convent school after I paid for them to go have a day out.’

  Looking more closely, Angie saw the word Grazie along the bottom of the picture. ‘It’s charming,’ she said. ‘Do you often give them treats?’

  He shrugged. ‘A party at Christmas, a trip to the theatre. It’s a tiny school. It costs me next to nothing.’

  Stella appeared from the kitchen, anxious to speak to him, and while he turned away Angie continued looking around. One door stood ajar, and through the three-inch crack she could just see the end of a bed. After struggling with her better self for a moment she ventured to push it a little further open.

  The room was dominated by a large brass bedstead. The walls were stone, the floor made of red flagstones, with one rug beside the bed. There was one cane chair and one pine table on which Bernardo kept his few possessions. It might have been a monk’s cell, except for the old-fashioned picture of a woman by the bed. Angie had seen the portrait of Bernardo’s ancestor, but now she saw his mother, and realised how both of them were subtly blended in him.

  It was an intriguing face. The woman had been beautiful with a heavy sensual mouth that hovered on the edge of a smile. But there was something about the eyes, an ironic watchfulness, a refusal to compromise, that spoilt her for Angie. But she was being unfair, she reflected. This woman had been trapped in a situation that left her much to endure. She had coped, but Angie, a woman from a totally different culture, guessed it had twisted her nature out of true, and some of her tensions had been passed on to her son.

  The mystery about Bernardo deepened.

  She was too cautious to linger, and slipped out quickly before he returned.

  In one room the medieval atmosphere had been banished by a modern computer, a desk and filing cabinets.

  ‘This is where I do my paperwork,’ he said with a grimace. ‘Thank goodness for technology, so that I can do as little as possible.’

  On the far side were huge windows reflecting the blue of the sky, both slightly ajar. Angie strode over and threw them open to take a deep breath, and found herself looking straight down the long drop into the valley. She gasped and turned away, her head spinning.

  In a flash Bernardo was beside her, his arms about her waist, holding her steady. ‘I should have warned you that that window opens straight onto the drop,’ he said.

  ‘I’m all right. I haven’t much head for heights-it just took me by surprise. Phew!’

  ‘Come away from the window,’ he said, drawing her into the room. ‘That’s better.’

  His clasp about her waist was light, but even so, she could sense the steely power of the man, and it thrilled her. Her heart was beating in anticipation. They were so close that she could feel the heat of his body and inhale his spicy, male aroma. And surely he must sense her own reaction to him. Even a man so lacking in polish must know that he delighted her. Some things could be neither faked nor hidden.

  The next moment she met his eyes and saw in them everything she wanted. But he released her nonetheless, setting a careful distance between them and saying in a voice that wasn’t quite steady,

  ‘Stella will have lunch ready by now. We mustn’t keep her excellent food waiting.’

  The table was laid in a simple room next to the kitchen with red flagstones, white walls, and a pair of French windows that opened onto the cloisters. Through these a gentle breeze blew, and they had a view straight out onto the fountain.

  ‘It’s magic,’ she breathed, as they sat down to eat.

  ‘It is at this time of year. In winter, very few people would find it magic. At this height the cold can be dreadful. Sometimes I look out of my window and all I can see is snow and mist, cutting the valley off. It’s like floating above the clouds.’

  ‘But then you can go down and live at the Residenza?’

  ‘I could. But I don’t.’

  ‘But isn’t it equally your home?’

  ‘No,’ he said briefly. He glanced up and said, ‘I’m sure you’ve heard the story.’

  ‘Some of it,’ she admitted. ‘How could I help knowing when you’re so prickly about it?’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘At the airport, Lorenzo introduced you as his
brother, and you hurried to say, “Half-brother”. It was like you wanted everyone to know you were different.’

  ‘Not really. I just don’t like to sail under false colours.’

  ‘But isn’t that the same thing in different words?’ she asked gently.

  After a moment he said, ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

  ‘Why won’t you let yourself be one of the family?’

  ‘Because I’m not,’ he said simply. ‘I never can be. I was born a part of another family, my mother and my father. My name was Bernardo Tornese. To the people here it still is.’

  ‘Only to them?’

  He hesitated. ‘Legally I am Martelli. Baptista changed my name when I was still a child, unable to prevent it.’

  ‘But she must have meant to be kind, giving you your father’s name.’

  ‘I know, and I honour her for it, as I honour her for all her kindness. It can’t have been easy for her to take me in and live with the constant reminder of her husband’s infidelity.

  ‘She’s been good to me in other ways, too. My father bought this house and several other properties in the village, presumably meaning them to pass to my mother, and then to me. But when he died they were still in his name, and they became Baptista’s. She said they were mine by right, signed them over to me, and administered them until I was of age.’

  ‘What a magnificent woman!’

  ‘Yes. Her sense of duty towards me has never failed.’

  ‘But was it only duty? Perhaps she was fond of you as well?’

  He frown. ‘How could she be? Think how she must have hated my mother!’

  ‘Has she ever behaved as though she did?’

  ‘Never. She has treated me like her own sons, but I’ve always wondered what lay beneath it.’

  Angie was about to say something conventionally polite about Baptista’s motives when she remembered her impression of yesterday, that beneath the charming surface the old woman had a steely will.

  ‘How did you come to meet her?’ she asked.

  ‘She turned up here a few days after my parents’ death, and said she’d come to take me to my father’s home. I didn’t want to go, but I had no choice. As soon as I could, I ran away.’