Bride By Choice Read online

  His face had been pale before, but at this it became a greyish colour, as though he were dying. ‘Be careful what you say,’ he whispered.

  ‘Why? Should I be afraid of you?’

  ‘No, I think perhaps you should be afraid of you. You’re on the verge of saying things that will make it impossible for us ever to find our way back to each other.’

  ‘There is no way back. I made a mistake. Luckily I saw it in time.’

  He put his hand over her mouth. ‘Hush. Don’t talk like that, Elena. For pity’s sake, leave us some hope.’

  ‘Don’t call me Elena. She’s someone else, someone you can manipulate because she’s stupid. And I have been stupid, haven’t I? Everything about our marriage suddenly fell into place so neatly-too neatly. It was always obvious but I wouldn’t see it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look me in the eye and tell me you had nothing to do with me getting that job at the hotel.’

  ‘What on earth-?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘I called Erik and suggested you were ideal to work there, but you are. Axel Roderick wouldn’t have given you the job otherwise.’

  ‘But you did call him and fix me up with a job in Sicily-to suit yourself?’

  He stared. ‘If you want to put it like that. I just thought I was taking care of the problems. I knew you still wanted your career, and this way you could still have it and marry me.’

  ‘You manipulated it,’ she repeated. ‘You wanted me, so you pulled all the right strings.’

  ‘Yes, I wanted you,’ he shouted. ‘I’d have done anything to get you to marry me. You make it sound like a crime.’

  ‘I just wonder what would have happened when it suited you to make me leave my job and stay at home all day. More string-pulling, and suddenly I wouldn’t have a choice.’

  ‘You really believe that I’d do that to you?’ he asked, aghast.

  ‘I don’t know. I told you, I don’t know you any more. All I know is that I walked right into something I always promised myself I’d avoid. There are too many unanswered questions. You say Sara was being spiteful, but it’s true about you and Heather. You are very close. I’ve seen it, but I thought it was just brother and sister-’

  ‘So it is! What the hell are you suggesting. That Heather and I-?’

  ‘What happened when you went to England and sent for her to join you, and she promised to be with you that night?’

  There was a long silence. As it stretched on and on she knew that she’d made a dreadful mistake. Lorenzo looked like a man who’d received a mortal blow. Before her eyes he grew older, wearier. It was there in his face that he’d given up on something. Given up on her? On hope? On love?

  ‘If you’ve been thinking that of me,’ he said at last, ‘then I’m surprised you got as far as the altar.’

  ‘I kept hoping to talk to you-that we might clear it up-’

  ‘Talk? Between me and the woman who thinks I slept with my brother’s wife? How you must have despised me all this time. What is there to talk about?’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘What could we say to each other, you and I?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said dully.

  He stared at her in a kind of horror. ‘You never understood how much I loved you. It happened right from the start but I wouldn’t face it because I knew you didn’t want me. All that friendship talk was just a cover for the fact that I was off my head about you. I thought about you non-stop. I thought about you when I should have been working.

  ‘I nearly went crazy when I had to leave New York. I was jealous as hell of Erik. I kept wanting to beg you not to marry him because you belonged to me. Yes, belonged to me. Mine. Nobody else’s. I’m a Sicilian, and that’s how we think. Sorry about that, but it’s true. It’s not modern, not liberated. It’s Sicilian. If you marry me, you belong to me. But what you never thought of was that I belonged to you. In my heart and mind I was yours, your property to do as you liked with. I’d have done anything you asked, anything at all. I’d have lain down and invited you to walk over me if it made you happy. And, be honest, Helen, that’s a damned sight more than you could ever say.’

  She stared at him, stricken. It was true.

  Lorenzo spoke his next words with a bitterness that she could never have imagined from him. ‘I loved you more than I’ve ever loved anyone, or ever will again. But now-I think it would have been better if we’d never met.’

  She became aware of a rumbling noise growing louder. Cars had begun to arrive, doors banged, footsteps thundered and suddenly a vast crowd flooded into the room from the terrace.

  ‘Disgraciatu! Disgraciatu!’ The cry filled the room and Helen was never sure who’d uttered the words. Her father, perhaps, bearing down on her in a towering rage.

  ‘My daughter!’ he shouted. ‘That my daughter should do this! And with the whole city looking on.’

  ‘Poppa, I’m sorry it happened that way-’ she tried to say.

  ‘You’ve brought shame on your family,’ he screamed. ‘You’ve dishonoured your promise, dishonoured your father-’

  ‘Wait.’ Lorenzo laid a hand on Poppa’s arm and he immediately tried to be calmer.

  ‘I offer my apologies to the Martelli family,’ he choked. ‘I am shamed to the dust.’

  A look of disgust passed across Lorenzo’s face. ‘Nothing that has happened today has shamed anybody,’ he said firmly. ‘Elena changed her mind, as she had the right to do. In time, we will both be glad that she had the courage.’

  Helen was standing by the bed, holding onto one of the posts, feeling as though all the strength had drained out of her after the anguish of the last few days. But at the realisation that Lorenzo was going to defend her she fixed her eyes on him.

  It wasn’t totally a surprise. She had always known that he was generous. But for him to stand up for her now, when he was lacerated by humiliation, brought tears to her eyes.

  But her father was still in full flow.

  ‘You are kinder than she deserves,’ he cried. ‘But to leave you at the altar-there can be no forgiveness for such a cowardly, disgraceful act.’

  ‘I hope you are wrong,’ Lorenzo said, very pale. ‘Because I myself once committed just such an act. A year ago I walked out on my wedding, in the same cathedral.’

  Poppa blenched as he realised that Lorenzo could construe his words as an insult to himself. ‘That is quite different-’ he hurried to say.

  ‘It is not different at all,’ Lorenzo said firmly. ‘I was granted forgiveness, and I am the last person who should blame Elena. Nor will I allow anyone else to blame her. She had her reasons-’ he took a choking breath ‘-good reasons. The blame is mine.’

  That silenced them for a moment, but then Giorgio shouldered his way to the front. Either he hadn’t heard Lorenzo’s words, or he was too full of rage and disappointment to take them in.

  ‘You fool!’ he screamed at Helen. ‘You had your chance-a chance for all of us-and you threw it away.’

  ‘Be silent!’ Lorenzo warned him.

  Giorgio ignored him. ‘You think only of yourself,’ he bawled at Helen. ‘You get some stupid idea in your head and your whole family has to suffer. Shame on you.’

  ‘That’s enough!’

  At first nobody recognised that the fierce command had come from Lorenzo, so unlike himself did he sound. Gradually the room grew quiet, and they all turned to see a stern faced man where a boy had once been.

  ‘I forbid you to say another word,’ Lorenzo said, speaking slowly and emphatically for Giorgio’s benefit. ‘You have nothing to say to Elena Angolini. Not a thing. She hasn’t harmed you, and I shall not allow you to harm her.’

  ‘You will not-?’ Giorgio scoffed.

  ‘I will not allow,’ Lorenzo repeated coldly.

  Giorgio cast him a belligerent look which made Renato and Bernardo start forward, but Lorenzo halted them with a gesture. They stepped back. They had seen something in their brother that had never been t
here before and their faces expressed their satisfaction.

  ‘Get out of Sicily,’ Lorenzo said.

  ‘Who are you to-?’

  ‘Get out now, on the afternoon plane. A car will take you to the airport. Collect your passport and leave this minute. If you don’t, bad things will happen to you.’

  Nobody had ever seen Lorenzo like this before. Giorgio made one last effort at assertion, but it amounted to no more than taking a deep breath, and collapsed at once. He began to inch backwards through the crowd that parted for him, until he turned and ran. His wife slipped out after him, and the others began to drift away too.

  When only the Martellis were left Lorenzo turned to his family.

  ‘I would like to speak to Elena alone, please.’

  They obeyed at once. None of them would have defied the commanding man who stood there. Only Baptista hesitated, stepping up to Helen and kissing her cheek. She looked at her son, who responded with a brief smile and said almost inaudibly, ‘Thank you, Mamma. Now, please go. And send us some coffee and sandwiches.’

  ‘I don’t need anything,’ Helen said.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ he told her firmly. ‘You need strong black coffee, and then you’ll have something to eat.’

  It was a voice she had never heard from him before. She stared at him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  W HEN Fede had led Baptista from the room Lorenzo took hold of Helen’s arms and moved her until he could push her gently down to sit on the bed.

  ‘Helen, I want you to listen to me very seriously,’ he said, still speaking in the new tone, as though it wasn’t really Lorenzo, but some older, more serious man who had taken his place. ‘Somehow we have to deal with this mess.’

  ‘We? It’s my mess. I’ll sort it.’

  ‘You can’t. Not alone. We have to present a united front.’

  Her laugh had a touch of hysteria. ‘What did you do last time? No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘It’s a fair question. I vanished for several days. Your way is more courageous.’

  ‘Sure, I’m a real heroine, aren’t I?’ she said bitterly.

  ‘Yes, you are. With all that pressure from your family and mine, with me so determined to marry you at all costs that I never gave you time to think-you found the guts to say no to the lot of us. Good for you, although-’ his mockery was directed at himself, ‘I can’t say I’m feeling great about it right now.’

  ‘You’re actually defending me?’

  ‘What should I do? Rail about how shocking it is to leave someone at the altar? Me?’

  ‘But you’re a man. Remember telling me that a woman just couldn’t do such a thing in Sicily?’

  ‘That was long ago, and we were making jokes. I said many things-ah, Helen, the things I said!’ He voice shook suddenly and he moved away so that she couldn’t see his face.

  His pain was almost tangible. She wanted to reach out to him, but she’d shut herself off from that, forever.

  There was a knock on the door. She darted to the window, not wanting to be seen by the servant who’d brought the tray, and went out onto the terrace. From here she could see the courtyard where there were still several cars, and suddenly Giorgio and his wife emerged.

  After a moment Lorenzo came to fetch her. He too stood watching Giorgio’s departure, until the man himself became aware of them, regarding him from above. An ugly grin split his face, and he raised both hands until the back of his knuckles were against his forehead, the index fingers pointing upwards, so that the effect was of a pair of horns. Then he dashed for the car.

  Horns. The sign of the cuckold.

  ‘Did he mean-?’ Helen began, incensed.

  Lorenzo shrugged. ‘He’s an ignorant man. Forget him.’

  He led her back inside. ‘Perhaps you should change?’ he suggested.

  Most of her clothes were packed up in suitcases, ready for the honeymoon, but she found a pair of jeans and a sweater and took them into the bathroom. When she emerged Lorenzo had poured her a coffee and set out some sandwiches. She recalled her mother, whose solution to all problems was food, and realised, with a sense of shock, that Lorenzo was caring for her in the same way.

  She took some of the sandwiches he pressed on her, and drank the black coffee, heavily sweetened, because somehow this new Lorenzo understood that she was in a state of shock even greater than his own.

  ‘Aren’t you having some too?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I don’t need it.’

  He would get drunk later.

  She wondered what was happening downstairs where a multitude of guests must be fed and, more difficult, given some sort of explanation. The enormity of what she’d done suddenly hit her like a hammer.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ she said, sitting down on the bed suddenly.

  ‘What is it?’ He sat beside her.

  ‘All those people down there-all that food-the wedding cake-’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said lightly. ‘We’ve done this before.’

  ‘How can you make a joke of it?’

  ‘It’s better than weeping.’ But then the attempted humour fell from his face, and she caught a glimpse of the reality, an emotional man hurt to the heart and near breaking point.

  ‘How would you like me to act, Helen? Like your version of a Sicilian male, wield a knife, threaten blood vengeance on you and your family to the third generation? That’s what we do, isn’t it?’ A bitter mockery of her and her prejudices underlay the calm tone. ‘And you know what?’ he went on wryly, ‘Part of me would like to do all those things. But it’s not my style, and I don’t think I could carry it off.’

  If only she could comfort his pain, but she’d forfeited that right forever. She could do nothing but watch him suffer.

  ‘So,’ he said at last, ‘what are we going to do?’

  ‘The sooner I leave Sicily the better.’

  ‘No. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that you mustn’t return to New York.’

  ‘I can’t stay here.’

  ‘That’s exactly what you ought to do. Why should you run away as though you’d done something wrong, when we both know that you haven’t?’ He’d fixed his gaze at somewhere just over her left shoulder. ‘If you go back, can you imagine what your life will be like-your mother and father, that great oaf, making your life a misery?’

  ‘I shall have my job.’

  ‘Of sorts. Elroys won’t be pleased at you running out on the task they’ve given you here. You’ll be relegated to the backwaters. Stay at this job for a couple of years, make a success of it, then go back in triumph. But if you return now-it makes my blood run cold to think of you exposed to Giorgio’s vindictiveness when I’m not there to-’ He broke off.

  ‘To protect me? Say it.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You know I’m right. I made things go wrong for you. Let me help to put them straight again. You needn’t be afraid of my troubling you. All that is at an end between us. But there can still be a kind of friendship.’

  ‘After this?’

  ‘Why not? Heather and I became brother and sister. You and I had a good friendship. We should have treasured it for what it was, and not tried to overload it. Let me help you. Please, Helen.’

  He was right. The thought of going home wasn’t pleasant, but it had never occurred to her that she could remain here. Whichever way she looked the future seemed to be a blank.

  ‘If only I knew what to do,’ she said desperately.

  ‘But I know. You should heed your friend’s advice.’ He took her hands between his and she felt the warmth and strength from him flowing into her.

  ‘I’ll drive you to Palermo now,’ he said, ‘and you can move into the hotel. We’ll leave here by the back way so that you won’t have to see anyone. Just take an overnight bag and I’ll send your luggage on later. Leave all the explaining to me. And don’t worry. Everything is going to be all right.’

  Helen’s office in the Elroy-Palermo was spacious, r
ichly furnished with antiques, and only slightly less grandiose than Axel Roderick’s. From the start she had a lot of power since he’d recognised her flair and was eager for her to use it, as long as he looked good.

  The renovations were proceeding fast and it would soon be time for the grand opening. She was working an eighteen-hour day now, thankful that she had her own room in the hotel, and even more thankful that work left her no time to think.

  ‘By the way,’ Axel said to her one morning, ‘it seems that your Martelli connections are going to benefit us, even if you didn’t marry one of them. Well done for putting the company first.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Didn’t you negotiate the Martelli contract?’

  ‘I don’t interfere with the running of individual departments.’

  ‘Sure, sure, that’s the story. But why are they giving us rock bottom prices and their very best produce if not for you, eh? Well done! Keep it up.’

  He was convinced and there was no persuading him otherwise. And, since Helen could hardly complain to Martellis that their prices were too low, she was forced to accept the situation.

  Nobody could get to see her without an appointment, but she made an exception when her secretary announced that Signora Heather Martelli had arrived. It was two months since the aborted wedding and the first time she’d spoken to Heather since, and she wondered what they could possibly say. But Heather had brought her baby, and in exclaiming over him the ice was broken.

  ‘Did you hear about Angie’s baby?’ Heather asked as Angie cradled little Vittorio.

  ‘Yes, it was in the newspaper. Is Bernardo disappointed that it’s a girl?’

  ‘You must be kidding. He’s over the moon. His little piccina has only to gurgle and he turns to jelly.’

  ‘Bernardo?’

  Heather chuckled. ‘Yes, even Bernardo. It’s amazing what happiness can do to a man. You should see my Renato, always sneaking a few minutes off work to come and “see that Vittorio is all right”. And when he and Bernardo get together they swap baby stories. It’s helped to bring Bernardo into the heart of the family. He’s even going to take the Martelli name. That makes Baptista so happy.’