Marco's Convenient Wife

The arrival of the doctor interrupted her private thoughts, and whilst he was looking at the baby the conte had dismissed the nursemaid to go downstairs and have her supper, an act of apparent kindness, which for some reason only added to Alice’s resentment of him. He had shown no concern at all for the fact that she had not eaten in hours. Not that she wanted to eat particularly; she still felt slightly nauseous and suspected that she might still be suffering from shock. But just whether that shock had been caused by the accident or by the conte himself, Alice was not prepared to consider.

The doctor quickly confirmed Alice’s own diagnosis that the baby was suffering from colic and was probably also slightly dehydrated. Surprisingly he openly admonished the conte for allowing such an obviously inexperienced girl to have charge of Angelina.

‘I understand what you are saying, Doctor,’ the conte had accepted, ‘but I have had no real choice in the matter. The girl was chosen to take charge of Angelina by her mother. She has been with her since the first weeks of her birth, and I have been reluctant to remove her from the care of someone so familiar, although I have now taken steps to rectify the situation since, like you, I have been concerned about the girl’s ability to be responsible for the needs of such a small child.

‘Miss Walsingham here has been employed by me to take over full charge of the nursery and of Angelina,’ he told the doctor, turning to indicate Alice. ‘She is English, as Angelina’s mother was, and a fully qualified nanny.’

The doctor looked at Alice appraisingly, before turning to say with very Italian male appreciation, to Alice, ‘May I say how fortunate I consider Angelina to be to have such a pretty companion.’ The avuncular smile he gave her before turning back to the conte, along with the twinkle in his eye, reassured Alice that he was simply being gallant.

‘You will have trouble on your hands, I’m afraid, my friend,’ he continued to the conte.

‘I do not know whether to commiserate with you or envy you for having so much distracting temptation beneath your roof.’

Alice felt her face starting to burn. What on earth was the doctor trying to imply…? That the conte might be tempted. By her?

However, before she was able to formulate her own thoughts, the conte himself responded to the doctor, telling him with razor-sharp crispness, ‘I have employed Miss Walsingham for her professional qualities as a nanny, and not because of her looks, and as for her ability to tempt our sex…Miss Walsingham’s contract with me precludes her from encouraging any hot-blooded and foolish young man to be tempted by her.’

The hard-eyed look he gave her scorched Alice’s skin.

‘And since she has already foolishly exhibited to me just how irresistible she finds temptation, I fully intend to ensure that her will-power gets all the support it might need, and in whatever form she might need it.’

Alice gasped. How dared he take such a high-handed attitude with her, and in front of someone else? She was acutely aware of the interested way in which the doctor was now studying both of them, his dark eyes twinkling as though he found something amusing in the situation. Well, he might do so, but Alice most certainly did not.

However, before she was able to speak the conte continued almost brusquely, ‘It is essential that Angelina has stability in her life. She has already lost far too much…’ His voice had become so sober that immediately Alice felt unable to take issue with him regarding the statement he had just made.

‘Ah, yes, that was a terrible tragedy indeed,’ the doctor agreed gravely as he finished his examination of the baby and handed her back to Alice.

To her astonishment, as she reached out to take the baby the conte forestalled her, taking hold of his daughter himself and saying over Alice’s head to the doctor, ‘Miss Walsingham was involved in a thankfully minor accident earlier today, and I think it would be a good idea if you were to check her over…’

‘No. There’s no need. I’m fine,’ Alice responded immediately, bridling at the conte’s inference that she was almost as incapable of making her own decisions as the baby he was cradling against his shoulder with fatherly expertise.

At some point he had removed his jacket, and the fine white cotton of his shirt did very little to conceal the dark muscularity of the torso that lay beneath it. Alice could even see the shadowing of his body hair. And she actually felt her muscles threaten to go weak. Fortunately she was able to tense them against such betrayal as she forced herself to focus on the waiting doctor and not her employer.

‘I am perfectly all right,’ she insisted.

And it was, after all, the truth. That nauseous headache she was still suffering had simply been caused by the heat and her own intense emotions. The minute bruise she had sustained was luckily concealed by her hair, and there really hadn’t been any need for the conte to draw attention to her health!

Quite why she felt so resentful and hostile towards his apparent concern for her health, she didn’t know. Perhaps it had something to do with the anger she felt towards him that he could actually employ a woman he considered to be guilty of attempted theft to look after his daughter—who surely should matter far, far more to him than any mere material possession!

Reflecting now in the middle of the night on what had been said then, Alice reminded herself that the agency had told her before she’d left London that her prospective employer was looking for her to make a long-term commitment to her charge, and that she would be asked to sign a contract to that effect, but she had overlooked that fact in the turmoil of the accident and its aftermath. Now, however…

Quickly she got out of her bed and walked across to Angelina’s cot. She was the reason that Alice was now awake, her instincts alert to the baby’s distress even in her sleep. Angelina was lying awake, whimpering softly. Gently Alice lifted her out, checking her temperature and her nappy.

Her skin felt reassuringly cool, but her nappy needed changing, and Alice decided this would be a good opportunity to give her a small extra feed.

She suspected that she was slightly underweight and maybe even a little malnourished. If she was a slow feeder, then her young nurse might have become impatient.

Holding her tenderly against her shoulder, she padded into the room adjacent to the nursery proper, which had been converted into a temporary but very well-equipped kitchen, with everything to meet the baby’s needs.

She had already prepared some bottles of formula before going to bed, and as she removed one from the fridge and started to heat it she studied the baby’s face.

Her mother might have been English but she looked completely Italian. She had her father’s dark hair and eyes, and Alice suspected she had also inherited the conte’s determined chin.

For a baby of six months she was a little on the small side. As she looked at her with grave, worried eyes Alice couldn’t resist dropping a tender kiss on her forehead as she smoothed her baby curls.

She was adorable, but so vulnerable. Alice ached to protect and care for her; so much so, in fact, that she could almost actually feel a soft tug on her own womb as she held her.

Poor baby. No mother and a father who couldn’t possibly love her as she needed to be loved.

In his own bedroom, Marco frowned as he heard over the intercom the soft, cooing sounds of love and tenderness that Alice was making to the baby.

He, like her, had woken at the first sound of Angelina’s distress. His concern over the nursemaid’s ability to take proper care of the baby had led to him having a sophisticated baby-alarm system installed in the nursery suite so that he could hear if Angelina cried.

Indeed he had been halfway towards the bedroom door when he had realised that Alice had picked her up.

He’d employed Alice primarily so that Angelina would have someone else to bond with other than himself, but also to give himself the freedom to concentrate on his busy professional life, so now he was surprised to recognise that he actually felt almost a little put out at the speed with which the baby was responding to her.

Alice Walsingham!

What was it about this pale, infuriating Englishwoman that was making him feel such ridiculous and unwanted things? Showing him such intimate and dangerous images; images of her lying beneath him in the soft heat of a summer night, her blonde hair spread against his pillows as he threaded his fingers through it and held her so that he could kiss that tempting mouth of hers into reciprocal passion; images of her holding a dark-haired child in her arms, a boy child who was not Angelina, but his child!

Marco didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at his own folly.

Alice was a young woman who was quite obviously not very good at hiding her feelings, and he had seen the wariness and hostility in her eyes when she looked at him!

Those were feelings he would be wise to allow her to indulge in—for both their sakes.

There was a considerable amount of discreet family pressure on him to marry. He was after all the head of the family, but as yet…

Marriage. Now why on earth had thinking about Alice Walsingham sent his thoughts in that direction?

He belonged to the modern century and there was no way he could ever feel comfortable in any kind of ‘arranged’ marriage, but, on the other hand, at thirty-five he had seen enough marriages and relationships go wrong to feel a certain cynical wariness about the permanence of what his contemporaries called ‘love’.

Against his will he suddenly found himself thinking that his mother would have liked Alice.

He could hear the soft sucking noises Angelina was making as Alice fed her, and with shocking, nerve-wrenching immediacy he was suddenly once again visualising her holding a baby in her arms, her face soft with maternal love, her breasts bare…

Grimly he banished the image. That was not the way he wanted to see her, not even in the privacy of his own thoughts, and it was most certainly not the way he wanted or intended to think of her.

He was a man, he reminded himself, and it was a long time since he had had a sexual relationship with a woman. Maybe so, but that had not bothered him until now.