Lucy Gordon - Wife By Arrangement

It was too late in the year for a honeymoon on the boat, so they went to the airport the next morning. Angie came with them. Bernardo was still implacable and she was going home. They saw her off to England before catching the flight to Rome. After that they were going on to Paris. It was partly a working trip, as they visited their biggest customers, but Heather enjoyed becoming part of the business. In Paris they toured the couturiers and she acquired a new wardrobe that she wore for entertaining Renato’s customers in the evenings. French was one of the languages she’d studied, hoping to rise in Gossways, and she spoke it well enough to get by.

‘I shall start getting suspicious,’ Renato said as they got undressed in their suite at the Hyatt Regency. ‘I keep getting too many compliments about la belle Madame Martelli, très chic, très merveilleuse.’

‘I’m just trying to do you credit.’

‘Hm!’ His tone was deeply cynical and she chuckled. He was helping her off with a little black number she’d worn for the first time that night, but something provocative in her laugh made his hands move faster, more determinedly. The next moment the little black dress was lying in ruins on the floor and she was in his arms.

‘Renato-’

‘Shut up, I’ll buy you another,’ was the last thing he said before he silenced both of them. And in a few seconds the movement of his lips and hands had driven all else from her mind.

After their first lovemaking she had slipped easily into the rhythm of passion, so that she found herself wanting him at all times, day or night. At first her own eagerness embarrassed her slightly, but that soon passed, and with every day she learned something new about physical love.

She knew that she pleased him as much as he pleased her because nothing was too good for her. He rarely spoke of feelings, never his own. Nor did he often say a word to her that opened doors into his mind. But she had only to express a wish to have it granted.

Once he said a strange thing. As she sat looking at yet another gift of jewellery, he said abruptly, ‘You think I overdo it, don’t you?’

Thinking only to tease him she joked, ‘Not at all. After all, you did once offer me twenty thousand to sleep with you.’

But she regretted it when she saw his brows snap. Renato wasn’t without a sense of humour, but he found it hard to laugh at himself. He didn’t vent his displeasure on her, but he grew quiet in a way she was learning meant that he was upset. And when she said, ‘I was only teasing,’ he brightened too quickly.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’m just in a strange mood. Where shall we eat?’

After which the subject was closed, despite all her efforts to raise it and put things right. Nor did she ever wear the jewellery because every time she tried he found fault with her appearance, until it had to be abandoned.

Jewellery was the least of it. Soon after they returned to Sicily she happened to mention the day she’d arrived, when he’d told her Lorenzo was soon flying to New York.

‘I was going to turn my pea shooter onto you, but then you said I was going too, so I had to put my pea shooter away.’

‘You fancied New York?’

‘I’ll say. That’s one of the really annoying things about you-’

‘Among so many-’

‘Definitely-the way you take the wind out of my sails when I’m getting good and mad at you.’

They were in bed, relaxing after making love. He grinned at her, curled up in the crook of his arm. ‘You enjoy getting mad at me, don’t you?’

‘It’s one of my more enjoyable hobbies, yes.’

‘Go on looking at me out of those glittering eyes. It gives me pleasurable thoughts and makes all the effort of landing you worth it.’

‘Landing me? I’m not a fish.’

‘But you were a challenge.’

‘Yes, I know some of the devious methods you used. You were supposed to be persuading Gossways to take me back on the programme, but you never called them.’

Something in his silence told her the monstrous truth. ‘It’s worse than that, isn’t it?’ she demanded, sitting up sharply. ‘You called some buddy among the big shots and made him promise not to have me back.’

‘I admit nothing.’

‘You don’t need to…’

‘You’ve got smoke coming out of your ears again.’ He sat up and reached for her. ‘Very pretty smoke, mind you…’ The last words were muffled as she thumped him with a pillow hard enough to send him right off the bed. He grabbed her as he went, and they ended up on the floor together.

‘I thought if I could make you mad enough with me-’ he tried to explain as he grappled with her wriggling body ‘-you’d marry me just for the pleasure of-in my mother’s charming phrase-kicking my shins every day. Ouch!’

‘Oh, stop making a fuss. I only used my bare foot.’

She managed to get free and climb back onto the bed, but he followed her, pinning her down. She looked up at his face, furious, her breasts rising and falling. ‘I’m warning you Renato, I’m good ’n’ mad.’

‘I know. I’ve just got a fresh bruise to prove it.’

‘Let go of me.’

‘When we’ve had a talk about this-’ His eyes roved over her nakedness, and his speech slowed as though something had distracted him. ‘It’s-important to talk,’ he said at last. ‘That’s what-’ his gaze seemed riveted by the sight of her nipples, rosy and expectant ‘-that’s what-good marriages-are made of-’

‘Talking?’ she said breathlessly.

‘Confidence between-’ his fingertips brushed one nipple ‘-husband and wife-trust-where was I?’

‘Trust-’ she gasped.

‘Trust-and shared values-honour-’

‘Honour? You? The most devious, conniving, manipulative- Don’t stop!’

‘I wasn’t going to,’ he whispered against her skin, continuing the work that had driven her half wild. After that there were no more words, no thoughts, just sensations, need and blinding nothingness. The end was explosive enough to blot out the world, leaving only heat and swirling darkness, and somewhere a man with strong arms and powerful loins to bring her joy.

In a sense that was just the trouble. There was joy, bliss, ecstasy, but not precisely happiness. Not unhappiness either, for how could any bride be unhappy with a husband who gave her all his attention and took her to new lands of sensation she’d never dreamed of before? But not to be unhappy wasn’t the same as being happy. Especially when she realised that sometimes he would use their sexual harmony to distract her from subjects he wanted to avoid.

She never gave their conversation another thought until a week later he put the tickets for New York into her hands.

‘What’s this?’ she gasped.

‘Call it a second honeymoon.’

‘But we’ve barely got back from our first.’

He shrugged. ‘I have business in New York. Of course, if you don’t want to come-’ He reached for the tickets but she seized them and backed away, laughing.

They were in New York for a week, and although he looked in on the odd customer, it never seemed to Heather that this was a vital part of his schedule. She wondered if he’d done it only to please her, but while he murmured many passionate words when they were alone in the night, he never spoke a tender, loving word by day, and his manner, although pleasant, didn’t invite her close. Sometimes it was like living with two men.

When they returned home she became more involved in the running of Bella Rosaria. She was wise enough to let Luigi keep the reins in his experienced hands, but subject to his advice she visited her tenants, discussed their problems, and began to make decisions. The revenues that came in were her own. Renato refused to make any claim on them, and even insisted on giving her a wife’s allowance. She would have liked to refuse but didn’t because she suspected that he would be hurt. It was no more than a suspicion, because she had to guess his feelings, but she sensed that she’d got this one right.

Because of his reticence she couldn’t speak out about her fast growing feelings for him. She guessed that it had been growing for some time, but she only discovered its strength when he had to be away for a week. She wouldn’t have thought it possible to miss one person so much. It wasn’t just her senses that longed for Renato, but her heart craved him night and day. It was their first separation since their marriage and it was almost unbearable.

It was nothing like the gentle pleasure of loving Lorenzo, which now looked more like a feeble infatuation with every day that passed. This love was savage and all-powerful, wiping out lesser feelings, leaving her helpless and desperate.

Their reunion was overwhelming, and somehow she was sure she would find the moment to hint at her feelings and hear something about his own. But his most enthusiastic talk was of deals he had done, and there was something in his cheerfulness that kept her at a distance.

AS WITH any properly conducted business arrangement the terms of their marriage were adhered to on both sides. Renato had promised Heather a place in the firm, and one day she came home from shopping to find him regarding her with a teasing look.

‘How would you like to take a trip for the firm?’ he asked. ‘I need someone to fix up some deals in Scotland.’

‘But isn’t that Lorenzo’s territory? In fact he’s in England right now-’

‘He’s got some unexpected problems that are going to keep him there,’ Renato broke in hastily. ‘If you take over Scotland it will ease the pressure on him.’

She was ambitious for the chance. Even so, her first thought had been, I’ll have to be away from him. But Renato seemed delighted at the thought of her going.

Next day she was on a flight to Edinburgh. She booked into a newly opened luxury hotel on Princes Street, and spent the next few days selling Martelli produce all over the most exclusive parts of the city, including the hotel itself. Her trip was a triumphant success, but it was spoiled for her by a persistent ache of loneliness that wouldn’t go away.