The Man from Tuscany

Dumbfounded, I stared at him. “You can’t be serious!”

“Why not? We’re both single and unattached. My prospects are good. I’m twenty-four and ready to settle down, and you need a husband. No doubt people will talk and add up dates when your condition becomes obvious, but they’ll assume the baby’s mine and that’s what matters. Based on our lifelong friendship and the fondness we have for each other, I’d say that all adds up to a pretty compelling reason to plan a wedding as soon as possible.”

I pause in my story, turning to Carly. “He was offering me an easy solution, and the temptation to take him up on it was huge. Although he was nothing like Marco, your grandfather, Carly, was the sort of man any woman would be proud to call her husband, and believe me when I say I was well aware of that fact. He was tall, strong and good-looking. An avid sailor, crack golfer and former high school basketball star. More than that, he was kind and generous and intelligent.”

She nods mutely and I go on.

We shared a similar background, Brian and I, and if I’d never spent a summer in Italy, I might very well have married him anyway. But “I can’t let you do this,” I protested. “You don’t deserve to be smeared with my scandal.”

“Does your baby deserve to be labeled a bastard, Anna? Consider that before you turn me down.”

His observation brought home the wider implications of my situation. Those other options—an illegal abortion, or adoption—were out of the question. How could I deny my baby, when his father had taught me that nothing is shameful or forbidden in the expression of true love? Yet to subject a child to the shame of illegitimacy was equally unacceptable.

Still, I made one last stab at resistance. “What about our parents? Won’t they be suspicious?”

“Don’t worry about them,” Brian said with a laugh. “They’ve already got us halfway down the aisle. They’ll be happy to push us the rest of the way.”

“It would be the ideal solution,” Genevieve murmured.

Brian squeezed my hand. “And definitely best for the baby.”

Suddenly, from the ashes of my dreams, a tiny miracle presented itself. Part of Marco was growing inside me. I owed it to him to give his child the best possible life, and because of Brian’s generosity and decency, I was in a position to do so.

“You don’t have to decide right away,” he said, taking my silence for uncertainty. “Think it over, and let me know when I come home on the weekend.”

But making up my mind on the spot, I said, “I don’t need to wait that long. I’ll marry you, Brian, and I promise you now that you’ll never regret it. I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy.”

His smile suggested I’d done him the world’s biggest favor. No one watching would have guessed that ours would be a marriage of convenience. “Then start making plans. I’ll speak to your father on Saturday.”

I never learned exactly what transpired between my father and Brian that next weekend. They remained in the library quite a while, their voices an indistinct rumble beyond the thick oak door. But by Sunday, I was wearing an engagement ring and that night, our two families celebrated our upcoming wedding with dinner at the yacht club.

Thankfully my nausea wasn’t too severe, and I wasn’t showing yet. My clothes, though, didn’t fit as easily as they once had and if I didn’t want to be escorted down the aisle with my burgeoning midriff half-hidden behind a massive bouquet, we had little time to lose.

“We thought two weeks from now, on the seventh of November,” Brian said, when asked about a wedding date.

“But that’s far too soon!” my mother objected. “Why, I’m not sure we can even get a decent wedding dress by then, let alone a place to hold a reception. What’s the rush?”

“The holiday season’s coming up, and that’s always busy,” he explained. Then, with charming diffidence added, “And I’m an impatient groom. I don’t want to wait until the new year. Anna might change her mind about taking me on as a husband.”

“We’d prefer something quiet and intimate anyway,” I said, playing my part as eager bride. “With the situation in Europe as bad as it is, a big, splashy wedding seems rather tasteless.”

I’d effectively shifted attention away from us and back to the ever-present topic of the war. “You’ve got a point,” my future father-in-law agreed. “It’s just a matter of time before America’s in the thick of it, so you might as well enjoy yourselves while you still can.”

I substituted an aquamarine silk suit with a matching hat for the long white gown and bridal veil I’d always imagined I’d wear on my wedding day. Genevieve, in dove-gray, was my only attendant.

Brian and I were married in my parents’ drawing room, in front of a handful of guests, with a pale November sun shining through the windows. After a champagne lunch, he and I slipped away for a two-day honeymoon in Connecticut.

Ironically I was able to continue as Dr. Reese’s patient because, for a wedding present, our parents bought us the house in Wakefield. We were very lucky. If they had questions about the haste with which Brian and I had rushed into marriage, they chose not to say them aloud. We were, to all intents and purposes, a blissfully happy couple, beginning a long life together. No one but Brian knew how often I cried myself to sleep at night.

CHAPTER FIVE

A FLIGHT ATTENDANT came by to spread linen place mats over their tables and offer drinks. “They’re getting ready to serve dinner, Gran, and you’re losing your voice,” Carly said, glad of an excuse to halt the story before she said something she’d regret.

Her earlier resentment had come flooding back, burying any fledgling sympathy she’d felt for Anna’s blighted love affair. Her grandpa Brian was a hero in his own right and deserved better than to be another man’s stand-in. As for Marco Paretti, he had a lot to answer for, seducing an innocent girl and leaving her pregnant. Anna might have been a virgin when they met, but Carly would bet her last dollar the same couldn’t be said about him. He was smooth, though; she’d grant him that.

“A glass of white wine, please,” she told the flight attendant. The mood she was in right then, she could have downed a whole bottle and it wouldn’t have numbed her indignation. How she was going to stomach a whole summer with the man who’d stolen her grandmother’s heart and served her grandfather the leftovers, she couldn’t imagine.

But the in-flight meal couldn’t last forever, and before long Anna was rooting through her stack of letters, clearly impatient to pick up where she’d left off.

Resigned, Carly settled in for the next installment.

I HIDE A SMILE , aware that I haven’t made a fan of my granddaughter quite yet. The mutinous set of her mouth reminds me of her mother when she was a teenager.

“I’d discovered a gem in Brian,” I begin.

Although unfailingly tender with me, not once during those first few weeks did he press me to consummate our marriage. My health and the well-being of my baby were his primary concerns. Gradually, though, acceptance of what I couldn’t change softened the raw edges of my grief a little, and by Christmas I was prompted by both guilt and gratitude to become in fact the wife I was in name. Difficult though it might be, I knew I’d have to make the first overtures.

Our house looked very festive, with a large wreath on the front door, a Norfolk pine in the living room and evergreen swags along the mantelpieces. On Christmas Eve, after we’d placed our gifts under the tree, we went upstairs and, as was our habit, prepared for bed separately in the privacy of the bathroom. Neither of us had ever seen the other naked. That night, though, instead of putting on my usual flannel nightgown with the long sleeves and high neck, I appeared in the bedroom wearing the silky, rather naughty gown Genevieve had given me as part of my trousseau. By then I was well into my sixteenth week, and despite the tragedy that had marked its beginning, pregnancy agreed with me. My skin glowed and my hair fell thick and lustrous to my shoulders. Genevieve’s gift was made for a woman with the kind of lush curves I now possessed.

Brian was already in bed, reading with the pillows propped at his back, but when he glanced up and saw me, the book fell from his hands and slid to the floor.

Climbing in beside him, I placed my hand on his chest. “You seem surprised,” I said—a vast understatement, considering he was almost glassy-eyed with shock, “but it’s about time, wouldn’t you say?”

A somewhat ambiguous invitation, no doubt, but he understood what I was really saying. “Are you sure, Anna?”

Just briefly, the last time I’d made love nibbled at my mind before I managed to shut out the memory. “Very,” I said, and slowly undid the buttons on his pajama jacket. “You are my husband, Brian.”

Our lovemaking was slow and very sweet. He was nervous, and endearingly clumsy because of it. “I’ve never done this before,” he muttered, lifting the hem of my gown with trembling fingers.

I couldn’t say the same, but I wasn’t any sort of expert, either, so we stumbled on together, discovering each other in the dark because we were too bashful to leave the light on. And for the first time in my marriage—perhaps even in my entire life—I gave of myself unselfishly, caring more about pleasing someone else than my own needs.

After, we lay with our hands joined. “Merry Christmas,” I whispered.

“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Wexley,” he said. Then, after a pause, “How are you doing really? ”

For a moment I was tempted to take the question at face value and tell him I felt wonderful. But he wasn’t asking about our lovemaking, and if I had to identify the greatest strength in our marriage, it was that we never lied to each other. Now was not the time to start.

“Some days are better than others,” I admitted, “but it’s becoming easier, and I have you to thank for that. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You’ll never have to find out, honey,” he said. “I want you to be happy again, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I said, and it was true. That it wasn’t the same sort of love I’d known with Marco didn’t make it any less real.

He reached down and boldly stroked the slightly convex dome of my abdomen. “When are we going to come clean with our folks about this?”

We were spending Christmas Day with both families at his parents’ house. “Perhaps tomorrow would be appropriate—a sort of bonus gift. Apart from anything else, we can’t put off telling them much longer.”

“I’m surprised they haven’t already noticed,” Brian remarked.