by Lucy Gordon
‘And of course you’ve enjoyed setting me up.’
She tilted her head. ‘That’s Columbine’s nature, I’m afraid. Harlequin will just have to learn to cope with her.’
‘Will she always be with him?’
‘Always in his hair,’ she assured him.
‘Always in his life, in his heart?’
‘Wherever he wants me.’
He kissed her again. When she opened her eyes they were dancing past Roscoe, whose eyes were popping at the sight of her. It would soon be time for explanations, but just now she wanted to talk to nobody but Guido.
‘When did you know?’ she asked.
‘It was your green eyes. Jenny’s are blue. And then Marco and Leo told me Jenny had left, so I couldn’t have been dancing with her.’
‘Did the plan work?’
‘Like a dream apparently. They took her to a little church where a priest was waiting. By the time Roscoe sees them again they’ll be married. And talking of marriage, I have a confession. I can’t make you a countess. Uncle Francesco is going to get married and have a son, to cut me out. He’s promised.’
‘Don’t be silly! As though I cared about being a countess.’
‘Then there’s nothing standing in the way of our marriage.’
‘I didn’t say-’
‘You have to marry me, after all those things you said to Marco.’
‘I haven’t spoken to Marco since the ball started.’
‘You started this dance with him.’
‘Yes, but that was you.’ She eyed him with suspicion. ‘And what am I supposed to have said?’
‘You said you couldn’t live without me, and you’d die if I didn’t propose.’
‘In your dreams!’ she said wrathfully.
‘But you already fill my dreams, carissima, and you always will. What’s a poor fool to do?’
She couldn’t help laughing at his serpentine way with the facts. She was dealing with a master of deception. But not all deceptions were bad.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m quite prepared to marry you to save you from going into a decline. Don’t do that! I’m ticklish!’
‘That’ll teach you to get funny with me,’ she murmured into his ear, so that the soft whisper of her breath sent him into a whirl.
‘Darling,’ he said ecstatically, ‘am I going to be a hen-pecked husband?’
‘Definitely.’
‘You’ll teach me how to say, “Yes, dear”, “No, dear”?’
‘Can’t start too soon. And if you’re out late I’ll be waiting for you with a rolling pin.’
‘I adore you!’
‘I hate to break up the happy dream,’ Marco said, appearing beside them, ‘but Signor Harrison is getting agitated.’
He and Leo stationed themselves protectively as Roscoe approached. Dulcie removed the diamond necklace and handed it to him.
‘I promised Jenny I’d see this safely returned,’ she said. ‘She didn’t feel she could accept it since she was doing something that you wouldn’t like.’
‘And just what does that mean? Where the devil is she?’
‘Signora Lucci is just leaving for her honeymoon with Fede,’ Guido announced. ‘The bride and groom are very happy.’
Roscoe’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you talking about? Where’s my Jenny? If she thinks she can defy me-’
‘She’s already done it,’ Dulcie said. ‘She’s married the man she loves. Please Roscoe, try to be happy for her.’
‘Happy? You did this. I trusted you, and I ran up bills to keep you here. Well, you can pay for all those posh clothes Lady Dulcie, and see how you like that!’
Guido stepped forward. ‘As Dulcie’s future husband let me say that I’ll be glad to refund you every penny you spent on her clothes-and then dump the lot in the lagoon. And if you dare speak to her like that again, you’ll follow them. Do I make myself plain?’
Roscoe squared up to him, but there was something about Guido at the moment that made his courage fail. He took a step back, covering his retreat with sharp fire.
‘I’m done with the lot of you. And you can tell that precious pair that they’ll never get a penny of my money. Not a penny.’
‘Good,’ Guido said. ‘Stick to that. They’ll be a lot happier.’
Roscoe gaped. He just didn’t understand.
‘He won’t stick to it,’ Dulcie said when Roscoe had stormed off. ‘Like she said, he doesn’t have anyone else.’
‘My boy!’
Francesco bore down on them in grandeur. He kissed Dulcie, wrung Guido’s hand and flung his arms out as if to say that he’d brought the whole thing about.
After that there were toasts and then more toasts, and the ball went on into the early hours. A light was already appearing on the water as the gondola procession wended its way back, and the family was left alone. Francesco embraced Dulcie again.
‘I knew as soon as I met you that you were the only woman who could keep him in order,’ he declared.
‘And what about you, Uncle?’ Leo demanded with a grin. ‘Guido says you’re making plans too. One wedding begets another.’
The count raised his hand for silence.
‘This is true. I have finally managed to persuade the only woman I have ever truly loved to become my wife.’
While his nephews looked at each other in bafflement he went to the door, opened it, and reached out to somebody outside. In a gentler voice than they had ever heard him use, he said, ‘Come, my darling.’
There was a tension-filled pause, then Count Calvani’s future bride appeared, and everybody stared with astonishment.
‘Liza!’ Guido gasped.
‘I have loved her for years,’ Francesco said simply. ‘Many times I’ve begged her to marry me, but she always refused. She said I would be marrying beneath me, which is nonsense, for she is the greatest lady in the world.’
Liza smiled at him, and for a moment they could all see her as Francesco did, as the sweet-faced girl who’d come to work there nearly fifty years ago, and won the young count’s heart on the first day. She was arthritic, elderly, and she was the greatest lady in the world. For a moment Dulcie’s eyes misted over.
Guido was the first to embrace Liza and call her ‘Aunt’. Marco and Leo followed.
‘There’s no escape for you after all,’ Marco told Guido with a touch of malicious relish. ‘You’ll have to put up with being the count.’
‘Get lost,’ Guido growled.
‘Do you mind very much?’ Dulcie asked gently.
‘Are you still going to marry me?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Then I don’t mind anything else.’ He took her hand possessively, drawing her away from the others and leading her out to the peace of the garden.
There they faced each other with truth between them at last.
‘No masks now,’ she whispered.
‘No, masks, carissima. Never again. Not between us.’
He took her face between his hands, searching it, as if for the first time; seeing there everything he wanted in life, wondering how he could ever have been so blind.
‘Say my name,’ he begged. ‘Mine, not Fede’s.’
‘Guido,’ she said softly.
In response he spoke her own name, over and over, making it music.
‘How could I have misunderstood you?’ he asked. ‘I knew from the start that there was only truth and honour in you. The rest was an illusion.’
‘Darling, it wasn’t,’ she began to protest.
‘Yes it was,’ he said quickly. ‘I saw it clearly today. You were so unhappy that you weren’t yourself. It coloured everything you did, as though someone else was doing it. Now the real you has come back, the woman I couldn’t help loving.’
‘You’re saying dangerous things,’ she said, swiftly laying her fingertips across his mouth. ‘I can’t live on a pedestal. I’m human. I’ll disappoint you and fall off.’
‘Ah, but you can’t,’
he said eagerly. ‘Because I’m going to make sure you’re never, ever unhappy again. So that solves the problem, don’t you see? It’s easy.’
She made one last effort. ‘Don’t think me better than I am.’
‘I shall think of you what I please,’ he said, smiling and stubborn.
He was incorrigible, she thought. And he always would be.
She had told him that she was as she was, but the same was true of him. It was buried deep in his nature, this need, not merely to love but to idolise. He’d tried being angry with her, and hated the feeling so much that in future, if disillusion threatened, he would tap-dance his way around awkward facts, so that his precious image of her would remain undisturbed. And so, throughout all their years together, she would be incapable of doing wrong in his eyes.
It was wonderful, but it was an awesome responsibility. For a moment she almost quailed under it, but his eyes were upon her, full of warmth and passionate adoration. He’d laid a heavy burden of trust on her, but his love would always be there to bear her up.
He drew her close and kissed her. It was nothing like the tormenting kisses they’d given each other last night, after the dinner with the Luccis: nor the exuberant embrace of the ballroom. This one was quiet and full of many promises. One journey had brought them safely home into each other’s arms. Another journey was about to begin.
‘Now you’re mine,’ he said quietly. ‘And I shall never, never let you go.’
Three months later there were two weddings at St Mark’s Basilica. It wasn’t a double wedding because Liza dreaded being the centre of a large crowd and Francesco, after loving her so long, would do anything she wanted.
So they married quietly in a small chapel, with only the Calvani family present, and as soon as the wedding was over the new countess insisted on busying herself with the final preparations for the second wedding next day, to which most of Italian and English society had been invited.
At the reception and dance afterwards the two bridal couples took the floor, amid applause. And there was another couple, drawing curious eyes as they danced in each other’s arms.
‘Marco and his fiancée seem very happy,’ Guido observed as they paused for champagne.
‘You sound surprised,’ Dulcie said. ‘I thought you liked Harriet when we went to their party in Rome a few weeks ago.’
‘I did. I do. It’s just that there’s something about that engagement that I don’t understand.’
‘Well, it certainly came about very suddenly,’ Dulcie agreed. ‘Harriet just appeared out of nowhere, and suddenly they were engaged.’
‘Are they in love, do you think?’
Dulcie regarded Marco and his fiancée, Harriet d’Estino, gliding gracefully by. ‘I don’t know,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘But you’ve got to admit that what happened at that engagement party was very strange.’
‘Strangest thing I ever saw,’ Leo observed over her shoulder. ‘Marco was a lot more upset than he allowed to appear. You know how he keeps his feelings to himself. And he wouldn’t tell the world he was in love, either.’
‘More fool Marco,’ Guido said, his loving eyes on his bride.
The wedding was a lavish extravaganza, which neither of them had wanted, but also which neither of them noticed. Today they were the centre of a performance, wearing the glamorous masks that the world expected, playing their parts to perfection. Tonight all masks would fall away, and so now they could be patient, waiting for their moment.
Nobody knew the honeymoon destination. Several were mentioned-New York, the Bahamas, the south of France-but never confirmed. Only Liza knew that when, late in the evening, they slipped away from the reception, they headed, not to the airport, but to the landing stage where a gondola awaited, with a familiar gondolier keeping it safe.
‘Fede!’ Guido shook his friend’s hand warmly, and Dulcie kissed him.
‘Here it is,’ Fede said, indicating his gondola. ‘Jenny asked me to say sorry she left the reception early. She was feeling a bit queasy, and Roscoe got rather over-protective.’
‘How is the future grandfather?’ Dulcie asked.
‘Trying to take over, but we’re resisting. He’s almost as hard-going now as when he was hostile, but Jenny’s happy, and that’s all that matters.’
He helped to settle Dulcie in the boat, handed the oar to Guido, and retreated, waving.
Dulcie sat facing Guido, her bridal veil billowing around her. ‘Let’s go home,’ she said. ‘Our real home.’
He began to ply the oar. ‘You’re sure you want to have our honeymoon there? We could still fly away if you like. Anywhere in the world.’
‘But we have the world waiting for us,’ she said softly.
He headed out into the Grand Canal, then turned the gondola into the small canals for the short journey home.
The palace and its turmoil slid away from them. The glitter faded into the distance. Music floated faintly across the water. Under the stars Harlequin and Columbine drifted in an endless dream.
Lucy Gordon
***
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