'You smile like the cat with the cream,' the Contessa murmured.
'This is very good sponge-cake.' Jorja still felt shy of revealing her feelings, though she sensed that the Contessa was in no doubt of them.
'Do you like to cook?'
'I was cook, housekeeper and gardener when I lived at home.' It still felt a little strange to Jorja that her days were no longer ruled by domestic tasks; that she had only to press a bell and a maid came to do her bidding. Leisure was a luxury she had never enjoyed before and she still had twinges of guilt about it.
'I expect your father misses you very much.' The Contessa spoke with a warm note of confidence in her voice.
'I——' Jorja bit her lip, 'I haven't heard from him since I married Renzo. He didn't attend our wedding—he thought it wrong of me to—to marry the man who had been engaged to my sister. Father adores her, you see. He has always wanted her to have everything she has ever wanted, but I—I didn't take Renzo away from her. I never dreamed that I would ever be his wife. It just—happened.'
'I think, cara, that you have permitted yourself to be overshadowed by Angelica.' A slight frown drew the lady's fine brows together as she took notice of Jorja's distress. 'You are a charming person in your own right, and I consider it unfair of your father to make you feel in any way guilty. Is Renzo aware of this?'
'Oh yes.' There swept over Jorja a painful recollection of the scene which had taken place at the rectory; she sometimes felt that she would never forget how her father had reacted ... as if she were breaking some unspoken vow never to be anything more than his unwed daughter. It hurt, deeply, that he should want her denial of all the pleasures which Angelica sought so greedily.
'You have gone far away in your thoughts, child.'
The attractive cadence of the Contessa's voice brought Jorja out of those' disturbing realms where now and again she tried to find an answer to questions she dare not ask.
'I was thinking of Duncton, where my father's rectory is. I never thought to leave it, madre,' Jorja smiled with a touch of restraint. 'Life had taken on a pattern which seemed as if it would never change.'
'Then my Renzo threw a pebble in the pool, eh?'
'At the time it seemed more like a boulder,' Jorja laughed, a catch in her throat.
'You were overwhelmed, cara?'
'Totally.'
'You couldn't refuse him, eh?'
'He wouldn't let me.'
'Did you try to resist him?' His mother looked both amused and inquisitive, for the side that a mother never sees of her son is the one he presents to other women.
'I did try,' Jorja confessed. 'I believed—and still believe—that he has never forgotten Angelica.'
'My dear --'
'It's all right,' Jorja lied, 'I'm able to understand my sister's hold over men. When we were children and we used to dress up, she was always Fata Morgana and our mother made her one of those medieval hats with the veiling. I think she'll always be a heart-breaker.'
The Contessa gazed at Jorja in a fraught silence. 'Are you saying that your sister broke my son's heart?'
Jorja hesitated, seeing so vividly in her mind's eye the dark and passionate anger of his face when he had shown her the shameless letters which had spelled out in detail Angelica's pursuit of his brother.
'I believe she closed the door of his heart,' Jorja said quietly, 'and I sometimes think she is locked inside... as he believed her to be.'
'Believed her to be?' The Contessa leaned forward, her Latin eyes intent upon Jorja's face. 'What kind of a game has Angelica played with my son's feelings? There is more to all this than I've been told, is there not? What really happened between Renzo and your sister?'
A sudden anxiety gnawed at Jorja, for the Contessa held a hand to her left side, as if her palpitations had been set off by her need to get at the truth. She had to be soothed and led away from such a dangerous pursuit.
'Exactly what he told you.' Jorja spoke with a composure she certainly didn't feel. 'Angelica has always been restless and inclined to leap from one enthusiasm to another in a short space of time. There's a difference between being a wife, especially to a man of Renzo's temperament, and being a fashion model always on show. Her enthusiasm for marriage suddenly left her; she couldn't give up the glamour of being a cover girl.'
'You will swear to that—that you are not hiding things from me? It would be like Renzo, with his secretive nature, and it's all too apparent that he can twist around his finger a young and inexperienced wife and make you do just what he wants. You would be no match for him—you might even be a little afraid of him.'
'I—I'm not --' Jorja denied. 'Truly, Angelica prefers the limelight to being a wife. Can you imagine Renzo allowing his wife to be photographed for the magazines?'
After a moment of thought his mother shook her head and leaned back against her cushions. 'But you think Renzo still cares for her—despite his marriage to you, cara?'
'Angelica is very beautiful --'
'Aren't you beautiful?'
'Not in her way.' Jorja shook her head, her hair glistening in the sunlight which made the garden room so pleasant, gently air-cooled as it was, and restful with its banks of green plants and the cool sound of the fountain playing upon the water of the fish pond.
'Her more apparent way, eh? Her awareness of being attractive to men so that when she walks she moves her hip-bones a little more, and wears her clothes just a little tighter than you wear yours.'
Jorja gazed at Renzo's mother and realised that she had not been entirely fooled by Angelica, unlike the Reverend Michael who thought the sun shone out of her eyes.
'She has always been the outgoing one,' Jorja smiled, and tried not to remember to what extent Angelica had flaunted herself. It would be horrendous if their father ever learned of her activities in the world of show business. It would shatter all his fine-spun illusions about her, and Jorja feared that it would break him. When angels fell from grace, those who looked upon them as something special were the ones who suffered. There wasn't enough sensitivity in fallen angels for them to be damaged; it was their admirers, their lovers, and their doting fathers who limped away with their illusions badly bruised.
'I'm glad—pleased at the way things have rearranged themselves.' The Contessa smiled to herself and seemed to be listening to the music which came in rich bursts, giving way suddenly to silences broken again by the melody which Renzo was matching to the mood of a film.
'Renzo has in his veins the Italian love of romantic music,' his mother said, her eyes velvety dark as she listened to what he was creating. 'Naturally I would have liked him to be a serious composer, one who would create symphonies, or operas in the style of Puccini, but he has a mind of his own and does only what it pleases him to do. Are you artistic in any way, Jorja?'
'I admire artistic people but I have no special talents, madre.'
'I think you may have a talent for creating repose,' the Contessa said thoughtfully. 'Have you noticed that Renzo uses his walking stick less and less? I believe he always had a dread that he would fall down in public and lose his Latin dignity, so the stick became a fixture with him. Now he begins to cast it aside, as if his inhibitions about his leg are no longer as manifest as they were. He has told you of his accident?'
'Only the barest outlines.' Jorja wanted to hear all she could about him; she wanted to make contact with the young Renzo, before he suffered physical trauma and had to cope with a damaged leg after having the full use of his body.
'Both my sons were extremely active, and they were also very competitive. They were racing against each other when the accident took place; their horses leapt the same obstacle and crashed head on. Renzo's mount went down and in its agony rolled on him until not a bone was left intact in his left leg. He was rushed into hospital and they wanted to amputate the leg, and it was only my obstinacy that made them rejoin the bones with steel pins, though the kneecap was beyond their skill to save.'
The Contessa spread her ha
nds in a speaking gesture. 'Poor boy, he was in such pain for such a long time, and it was during that time that a change took place in him. He and Stelvio drifted apart, for the accident put years between them. No longer could they slam tennis balls at each other, leaping and running about the hard court, laughing and cursing each other in the light-hearted way of young men. No longer did they swagger into a ballroom and take for their dancing partners the most attractive girls there.
'From being a young man of physical activities, Renzo became a man of intellectual pursuits. He took up again the music he had lost interest in and there is no doubt that it helped him to bear the pain of his leg. I know there were times when he was furious with me; when he would have preferred an artificial limb to one that gave him no rest. But he and Stelvio were always handsome and full of the machismo which makes women go weak at the knees. I couldn't bear him to wear a prosthesis. I felt certain he had the tenacity to overcome the discomforts of his leg until it finally healed and became less of a burden to him, but in the process he changed. He grew into a man whom it became difficult to—know.'
The Contessa's eyes were sombre as she brooded upon her relationship with her eldest son. 'A mother does what she thinks best for her children, as you will discover for yourself, Jorja. I hope—pray that I shall live long enough to hold Renzo's child in my arms.'
'Madre --' Jorja knelt down by the chaise-longue and rested her cheek against the Contessa's thin hand, on which her rings seemed to weigh heavily, being of the type with wide gold bands embedded with gems. 'Your operation will give you a new lease on life. They perform miracles these days with all the new technology and know-how and in a very short time you'll be feeling on top of the world.'
'It would be nice to think so, cara.'
'You must believe so, madre,' Jorja spoke fervently. 'Having faith is half the battle, and you had it where Renzo was concerned. You knew he'd beat those devils that screamed in his leg day and night, and even yet they sometimes nag at him so they must have been fearful. I wish --'
Jorja paused, biting her lip and still shy of revealing her innermost feelings to anyone ... those emotions which each day grew more intense, so that she almost feared their presence, budding and strengthening and thrusting their roots deep into her heart. It was almost as if love was a tree that grew inside people, spreading branches which could only grow strong and evergreen in the glow of a mutual love.
'What do you wish, cara?
'That I could have been with Renzo when he was recovering from his accident. I—I should like to have held him and been able to comfort him a little. Pain is at its worst in the middle of the night, isn't it? I was only a schoolgirl when my mother died, but I remember how my father always kept a night-light burning beside her bed, and no matter how late the hour, he would softly read to her from one of her favourite books. Her door was always left ajar, so Angelica and I would hear his voice, reading or murmuring comfort, and in a way it comforted us to know she was never alone at night with her pain.'
Jorja sighed. 'That's how I remember my father, keeping vigil beside our mother until the night she quietly passed away. He came to our room and took us to see her at peace, and after that I've never been afraid of death. It's a long, quiet sleep, with no more anxieties, no more hurting, and I like to believe that our souls turn into birds, or maybe dragonflies, skimming over water with the sun shining through their wings.'
'How dare you discuss such a subject with my mother!' a voice rapped out from the archway into the garden room. 'Are you quite without a grain of sense, or too juvenile to realise what you're saying?'
Jorja slowly raised her head and gazed at Renzo in frozen surprise. He stared back at her with stone-hard displeasure, and once again they were like strangers, two people whose temperaments were only in tune when desire leapt and engulfed them in its flame. Now there was only the chill of his anger and it seemed to touch Jorja to the bone.
'I—I didn't realise --' she stammered.
'Renzo,' his mother sat up straight on the chaise-longue, 'your tone of voice is uncalled for. Look what you have done to Jorja, she has gone ash-white.'
'She has no right to introduce into this house, in your presence, a subject so morboso, and I have every right to chastise her for it. Death! Souls into birds! She's talking like a schoolgirl instead of a grown woman, and there are no excuses for her!'
The lash of his words drove Jorja to her feet. 'Excuse me!' She rushed blindly past Renzo out of the room, almost hating him for his own insensitivity. She knew he was worried about his mother and the operation tomorrow, but did he have to hurl abuse at her in order to relieve his tension? And if he had to hurl it, couldn't he have waited until they were alone?
Jorja glanced about her as if she didn't know which way to run. She didn't want to go upstairs to the suite which held too many reminders of him, and almost by chance she opened the door of the library, went quickly inside the book-lined room and closed the door behind her.
She leaned against the solid panels, counting the seconds until she felt certain he hadn't followed her. Only then did she sink down into a wing-backed chair, in the silence of a room where the passions of men and women were contained within leather bindings.
She could hardly believe that he had spoken so harshly to her in front of his mother, not at all like a man with a new wife, but like a man impatient with his marriage. He had surely undone all her attempts to make them appear happy, normal newly-weds. After all, it was what he had wanted, that his mother should believe they were in love and he had no regrets about his break with Angelica.
Jorja felt a bleakness edged by anger that he should treat her to such an outburst when all week long she had done her best to please him. She shivered anew at the Latin ferocity of his attack, coming upon her so suddenly, in the midst of confiding to the Contessa the belief which had helped her to bear the loss of her own mother when she was a mere child.
Her fingers clenched the arms of her chair, for she couldn't give way to hurt feelings. They had to take second place to the ordeal awaiting her mother-in-law, whose frail body was due to go under the surgeon's knife.
Renzo's harshness had to be forgotten even if she couldn't quite forgive him. At times he seemed to want to crush out the idealism which set her apart from Angelica. As if the finer tuning of her system forced him to realise that their likeness was only skin-deep.
The remainder of the afternoon slid into evening and Jorja was dressing for dinner when Renzo appeared from his connecting room, not yet in his dinner-jacket, his eyes upon her as he fastened his grisaille cuff-links.
Jorja's body tensed inside her dress of opalescent silk chiffon as she waited for him to speak. 'Are you sulking?' he asked.
'Are you?' she retaliated, but in a quiet tone of voice which offered him no argument.
'What were you thinking of?' He crossed the room towards her and stood tall and dark above her slim and glimmering figure, the white linen of his dress-shirt intensifying the darkness which could always take her breath away. 'Madre is unnerved enough without a discussion on the merits of dying. What gets into you, all those years of living in a house beside a churchyard?'
'Perhaps,' she admitted. 'But I didn't mean to add to your mother's state of nerves, I like her too much. It was to do with my father, the way he was with my mother, so kind and caring. I—I wouldn't set out to upset the Contessa for the world, and she didn't misunderstand me the way you did.'
Jorja turned away to the dressing-table and picked up one of her tiny drop earrings, quivering to the base of her spine when Renzo clamped her shoulders with his hands. 'I—don't want you to touch me,' she managed to say.
'So you are sulking, eh?'
'No.' She shook her head and held herself rigid. 'I won't quarrel with you, Renzo, because I realise how anxious you are feeling, but neither will I be snapped at and then have you lay hands on me as if nothing had happened. So let go of me, please.'
Instead he turned her to face him and with
all the ease in the world pulled her into contact with him. Then he regarded her as if waiting for her to try and get loose, his eyes slightly narrowed as she stood in an attitude of cool reserve.
'I'm not going to put up with this,' he said at last. 'I think I had every right to be annoyed with you, and that annoyance is fast returning. I'm not in the mood tonight to have dealings with an adolescent wife, so I'd advise you, Jorja, to snap out of this silliness and be of some support to me. You know I'm worried as hell.'
'I know you are,' she said quietly, 'but shouting at me in front of your mother doesn't help the situation. I—I had hoped to convince her that we're all right together.'
'Aren't we?' he interjected.
Jorja stood physically close to him but for once his closeness didn't excite her; she remained too aware of her lacerated feelings. 'The only time we achieve any harmony is when we're—there.' She made a graphic gesture towards the bed, shrinking inside at having made herself say the words.
He stared towards the bed and his face showed the bone-structure beneath the skin. The bed was made up for the night, with the lamps agleam at either side of it. The canopy reared above the wide comfort they had shared, locked in each other's arms. He hadn't abraded her then, with a voice hard as nails, or called her a juvenile without a grain of sense. He had thoroughly enjoyed himself with her, and a crushing kind of heat seemed to envelop Jorja as she remembered the intensity of his passion, making her feel as if she had to get out of this room, away from him.
'That's all you've wanted of me, ever since Sandbourne,' she said breathlessly. 'Every hour we've ever spent together has been no more than gratification for you, then you want to turn your back on me. You want to forget that I'm your wife, and this afternoon you really forgot it! You spoke to me as if I'm nobody, cutting me down to size as if all the time we've spent making love has left you feeling nothing for me—nothing!'
Her eyes blazed into his, the sheerest of blue, like that at the very centre of a flame. 'Oh God, I wish I could leave you tonight, Renzo, but we —we both know I can't. Your brother should be here, to share what's going to happen to your mother tomorrow, but instead I'll stay and share it for her sake. You—your brother—I believe you're both cut from the same cloth. I don't believe there's a scrap of difference between you —you competed as young men, but then it was horses and tennis. Now it's Angelica, isn't it? You've both shared her!'
The Honeymoon Page 15