Husband By Necessity

Angie laughed. ‘I wish Dad could hear you. He never encouraged us to follow his footsteps. I remember him saying, “Whatever you do, don’t go into medicine. It’s a dog’s life and you won’t get any sleep for years.” Of course, we all did. But I must tell you—’ she eyed Bernardo mischievously, ‘that in England a man doesn’t get respect just for being a man. In fact—’

‘Go on,’ Bernardo said with a smile far back in his dark eyes. ‘You are longing to say something that will be “one in the eye” for me.’

‘When I took my medical exams, it was a point of honour with me to get higher marks than either of my brothers. I did too.’ She giggled as gleefully as a child. ‘They were so mad.’

The smile had reached Bernardo’s mouth. He was regarding her with delight. ‘And your Papa?’

‘Before the exams he said, “Go for it!” and afterwards he said, “Good on you!”’

‘And what did your brothers say?’

‘Before or after they’d put arsenic in my soup? They just doubled up with laughter at the thought of what I had in front of me.’

‘And what was that?’

‘Four years of post-graduate work. General medicine, general surgery, accident and emergency, obstetrics, gynaecology, paediatrics, psychiatry and general practice.’

‘It sounds terrible,’ Bernardo said, half laughing, half frowning.

‘It was. I think it’s made as nightmarish as possible to discourage the weaklings. But I’m no weakling. Look at that.’ She clenched her fist and bent her arm in a ‘Mr Muscleman’ pose.

Bernardo laid tentative fingers on the barely perceptible bulge. ‘I’m terrified,’ he said with a smile. ‘All these qualifications, and you’re only—’ he regarded her warily. He’d been going to say ‘only a little girl’ but decided hastily against it.

‘I’m twenty-eight years old,’ she declared, ‘and a lot tougher than I look.’

‘You could scarcely be less,’ Bernardo observed, with an admiring glance at her fairy figure.

She laughed and ran a few steps ahead of him to where the path vanished into a tunnel of trees, and turned, skipping backwards, teasing him. As holiday romances went, this one showed signs of going very well. He didn’t run after her as another man might have done, but simply held out his hand, watching her, until she stopped skipping and laid her fingers lightly in his palm.

Hand in hand they strolled among the trees, while a sense of enchantment crept over her. It was nothing he said or did. He wasn’t the most handsome man in the world. He wasn’t even the most handsome man she’d romanced, but his looks pleased her deeply. The smile that had started at the airport was growing by the minute.

‘I think this garden is wonderful,’ she sighed, gazing around her.

‘Yes, it’s perfect,’ he agreed.

A touch of constraint in his voice made her look at him quickly. ‘But you don’t like it?’

‘I’m—not comfortable with perfection,’ he said after a moment. ‘For me, it is too precise. A man cannot feel free in a place like this.’ He checked himself abruptly and gave a polite smile.

‘Where can he feel free?’ she asked, her interest growing every moment.

‘When he’s up high among the birds, where the golden eagles fly so close that it feels as though he’s their brother.’

‘Golden eagles?’ she echoed eagerly. ‘Where?’

‘In my home in the mountains. I come here very little. My real home is Montedoro.’

‘Let me see—monte means a mountain, and “oro” is gold. Is that right?’

‘You know Italian?’

‘My mother’s sister married an Italian. When I was a child we visited them every summer.’

‘And you are right. It is “mountain of gold”.’

‘Because of the golden eagles?’

‘Partly. But also because it’s the first place the sun touches at dawn, and the last place it leaves at sunset. It’s the most beautiful place on earth.’

‘It sounds like it,’ Angie said wistfully.

He gave her a curious look. ‘Would you—?’ He broke off with a grunt of embarrassed laughter. ‘That is, I wonder if—?’

‘Yes?’ she encouraged him.

Bernardo drew a deep breath while Angie waited eagerly for what she was sure he was going to say.

‘Hey—Bernardo.’

He came back to himself with a start. Angie had the strangest feeling of waking from a dream. And there was Lorenzo, coming along the path, hailing them. ‘Time to get ready for dinner,’ he called.

As Angie returned to the house with the two of them she was disappointed but not discouraged. Bernardo wanted to show her his home, she was certain of it, and she was every moment growing more eager to learn all about him. The evening lay ahead, and if she couldn’t tempt that invitation out of him, she was losing her touch.

She joined Heather in their room and threw herself onto her bed, putting her hands behind her head, with a sigh of pleasure.

‘C.H. or S.A?’

‘S.A.,’ Angie said happily. ‘Definitely S.A.’

Heather looked alarmed. ‘You be careful!’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Angie said innocently.

‘Oh, yes, you do. I’ve seen you when you’ve set your heart on twisting a man around your little finger. You’ve got all the tried and tested tricks and a few you invented. But Bernardo doesn’t strike me as a man to be fooled with.’

‘He isn’t,’ Angie confirmed. ‘He’s terribly serious and thoughtful.’ She chuckled. ‘That’s why he’s going to be such a challenge.’

‘I give up.’

‘Yes, do, darling. I’m beyond redemption.’

For dinner she wore a dress of blues and greens in the kind of glowing shades that belonged on a peacock. Many blondes couldn’t have got away with it, but Angie looked like a star. She wondered if Bernardo would think so.

She had her answer as she descended the great stairway a little behind Heather, and had the satisfaction of seeing Bernardo look right past the bride, the official guest of honour, to seek out herself. There was even more satisfaction in the subtle change that came over him at the sight of her. He became more alive, every inch of him responding to her as intensely as she was responding to him. She felt a tingle of happy expectancy deep inside as he took her hand and began to take her around his friends and family, introducing her.

Now that she had a chance to study Lorenzo more closely she realised how delightful he was, and she could understand her serious minded friend being bowled over by him. Perhaps he was a touch immature, but his looks and charm were both overwhelming, and no doubt he would soon grow up.

But she couldn’t warm to Renato, who struck her as an unpleasant, cynical man, harsh and overbearing. He was tall and splendidly built, but although there was no doubt about his physical attractions, and he greeted her pleasantly, she disliked him, and she could see that her friend was going to have to fight him some time soon.