The Italian’s Cinderella Bride Read online

  It was true. All his life he’d been even-tempered. That had changed in the last year, when rage would sometimes overcome him without warning, but he’d put his mind to controlling these outbursts, and succeeded up to a point. But these days self-control had a heavy price, and now the relief of allowing himself an explosion was considerable.

  ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ she asked.

  ‘You can buy me two,’ he growled. ‘Come on, let’s go, it’s getting dark.’

  Pietro grasped her hand firmly, so as not to lose her again, and reached for her suitcase. But she tried to hold on to it, protesting, ‘I’m quite capable of-’

  ‘Quit arguing and let go!’

  He took her to a small café overlooking the lagoon, and they sat at the window, watching lights on the water. She bought him a large brandy, which he drained in one gulp, at which she ordered another.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘So you ought to be. Of all the stupid, stupid-’

  ‘OK, I get the point. I’m stupid.’

  ‘Yes, no! I didn’t mean it like that.’ With horror he realised how his careless words might sound after what she’d been through. ‘I don’t want you to think-just because your head was injured-’

  Then he saw that she was giving him a quizzical half-smile.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said kindly. ‘You don’t have to tread on eggshells. Let’s leave it that I’m crazy but I’m not stupid.’

  ‘Stop that talk! You’re not crazy.’

  ‘How do you know?’ she demanded indignantly.

  ‘Why are you suddenly different? Last night you were half out of it, and today you’re ready to fight the world.’

  ‘Isn’t fighting better than giving in?’

  ‘Sure, if you fight the right person. But why me?’ he demanded, exasperated. ‘Why am I getting all your aggro dumped on me?’

  ‘You’re handy.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘I’d had a bad time yesterday, what with the flight and getting soaking wet. There’s nothing like half drowning for making you depressed. But I’ve sorted myself out a bit now. Why are you glaring at me? What have I done wrong now?’

  ‘All day I’ve had nightmares about you wandering Venice alone, confused, miserable. I was sorry for you, worried about you-and now you’re fine.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry about that. Last night the pressure made me slip back to my bad time, but I’ve pulled myself together.’

  He wasn’t totally convinced. Her smile was too bright, not quite covering an air of strain, and he guessed that part of this was presented for his benefit. But certainly she was mentally stronger than he had feared.

  ‘I’m glad you’re better,’ he said, ‘but you’re still not ready to go wandering off among strangers. Whatever you may have thought, I didn’t want you to go.’

  ‘Of course you did-’

  ‘Woman, what will it take to stop you arguing every time I open my mouth?’

  ‘I don’t know. If I think of something I’ll make sure you never find out.’

  ‘I’ll bet you will.’

  ‘I was just so embarrassed when I found out about your wife and child.’

  ‘You needn’t be,’ he said, pale but speaking normally. ‘They died nearly a year ago. I’ve come to terms with it by now.’ Abruptly he changed the subject. ‘I’m ready for something to eat, on me this time.’

  She knew he wasn’t telling the truth. He was far from coming to terms with his tragedy. His eyes spoke of a hundred sleepless night, and days that were even worse. He looked like a man who could be destroyed by his feelings, and, strangely, it made her feel calmer, as though in some mysterious way they were alike; equals in suffering, in need.

  ‘As long as you know that I’m sorry,’ she said slowly.

  ‘You’ve nothing to feel bad about. You’ve even done me a favour, giving me something to think about apart from myself.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ she said fervently.

  He gave a faint smile. ‘You too?’

  ‘I’ll say. After a while you get so bored with yourself.’

  He ordered a meal, and while they waited he took out his cell phone and called Minna.

  ‘It’s all right, I’ve found her,’ he said. ‘If you’d just make up her bed-oh, you have. Thank you. Then I shan’t need you again today. Have an early night.’

  ‘That was my housekeeper,’ he explained, shutting off the phone.

  ‘And she’s already made my bed up?’

  ‘She never doubted that I’d bring you back.’

  ‘Now I remember. Gino once said that none of your servants ever doubted that you could do everything you said you would. It’s an article of faith, and practically heresy to doubt il conte.’

  He made a wry face.

  ‘It sounds devoted but actually it’s just a way of controlling me.’

  ‘I suppose people’s expectations can be like handcuffs.’

  ‘Exactly. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always tried to keep my head down and not be il conte any more than I have to. But it doesn’t work. I’ve got the name hanging around my neck, and that great palace. How can any man live a normal life in a place like that?’

  ‘It must be grim if you’re there alone.’

  ‘I’m not exactly alone. Minna lives there, and Celia, a maid. And Toni.’

  ‘I love Toni,’ she said at once. ‘He’s so big and shambling. I’m not sure why but he looks terribly vulnerable.’

  ‘I got him from a rescue centre. Nobody else wanted him because he’s epileptic, and I suppose they thought it might make him aggressive. It doesn’t. Quite the reverse. When he has a fit he just lies there and shakes.’

  ‘Poor soul,’ she said, shocked. ‘So you gave him a home because he had nowhere else to go.’

  ‘Well, if I did he’s repaid me a thousand times. He’s the best friend a man ever had.’

  But still, Ruth thought, shivering as she recalled that great empty building, it must make for a lonely life, with only his memories for company. She wondered about his wife, and how much he must have loved her to have been reduced to such bleakness by her loss. And she shivered again.

  ‘Where did you go when you slipped out this morning?’ Pietro asked.

  ‘Looking for places I’d been before, but I didn’t do so well. It’s all so different in winter. I went to a little café where we’d been together. We sat outside, and I remember the sun shining on his hair, but today I stayed inside because it was drizzling. I can’t do it on my own. I’ll have to wait until he returns. Or maybe I could go to see him.’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘It has to be here, where you were together.’

  Pietro knew he must keep her with him at least until he’d spoken to Gino. Earlier that day he’d sat by the lagoon and put through a call on his cell phone. A female voice had answered. Pietro had left a message for Gino to call him, but nothing had happened.

  He’d sent a text, stressing the urgency but not mentioning Ruth’s name. Now, hours later, while Ruth was drinking her wine he did a hasty check under the table, but found nothing.

  ‘How did you find me?’ she asked.

  ‘With the help of a few hundred friends. Venice counts as a great city because it’s unique, but in size it’s little more than a village. We all know each other. Sooner or later I found someone who’d seen you, and could point me in the right direction. I even knew what your new coat looked like.’

  ‘So I’ve been under surveillance?’

  ‘In a nice way. You can’t hide anything from your neighbours in Venice, but it can be comforting to have so many people look out for you.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Most of them said something about how I shouldn’t be out so early in the cold, and I should be careful not to get lost.’ She gave a sigh of pleasure. ‘It was like being protected by a huge family.’

  ‘We do that,’ he agreed. ‘Venetians are so different from the rest of the world. We try to look af
ter the others.’

  Except Gino, who had simply deserted her, he thought. He wondered if she were thinking the same, but she gave no sign.

  ‘Go on telling me about your day,’ he urged.

  ‘Oh, you’d have laughed if you could have seen me. I had all sorts of impractical ideas, take a gondola ride, feed the pigeons in St Mark’s Square, go to look at the Bridge of Sighs. Something really did come back to me there-the first time I got cross with him and we ended up bickering.’

  ‘About the Bridge of Sighs?’

  ‘Yes. Gino spun me the whole romantic story, how it had been named after the sighs of lovers. I thought that was lovely until I bought a guide book and discovered that the bridge connects the prison to the Doge’s Palace, where trials were held. So the sighs came from prisoners taking their last look at the sky before going to the dungeons.’

  Pietro began to laugh. ‘You quarrelled about that?’

  ‘Not quarrelled, squabbled. I like to have the truth.’

  ‘Rather than a romantic fantasy? Shame on you.’

  ‘I don’t trust fantasies. They lay traps.’

  ‘But so does the truth sometimes,’ he pointed out quietly.

  She didn’t answer in words, but she nodded.

  ‘I got very lofty and humourless,’ she said after a while. ‘I told Gino sternly that he had no right to tell lies just to make things sound romantic when they weren’t. D’you know what he said?’

  Pietro shook his head.

  ‘He said, “But, cara, one of the prisoners was Casanova, the greatest lover in the history of the world. You can’t get more romantic than that.”’

  He had to laugh at her droll manner. ‘Did you forgive him?’

  ‘Of course. You have to forgive Gino his funny little ways.’

  He noted her use of the present tense, as though Gino were still a presence in her life. Was this how she explained his desertion to herself? Gino’s funny little ways?

  Ruth went on talking about her day, putting a light-hearted gloss on it, while he watched her with a heavy heart. A stranger would never have known the anguish that lay behind her flippant manner. But he saw it, because it was like looking at himself.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘T HE trouble with you,’ Pietro said at last, ‘is that you’re not organised. You need to do this properly, with someone who knows Venice and who can keep an eye on you to stop you doing something daft.’

  ‘Well, I’m interviewing applicants for the position,’ Ruth said promptly. ‘There’s no salary, unpredictable hours and it needs to be someone who can put up with me.’

  ‘I’ll consider myself hired.’

  ‘I haven’t offered you the job yet,’ she protested in mock indignation.

  ‘Fine. Shall I wait at the end of the queue? If you’re wise you’ll snap me up while I’m on offer.’

  ‘Now which one of us is mad?’ she chided him.

  ‘Fifty-fifty, I’d say. It’s best that way. We may be the only people in the world who can cope with each other.’

  ‘But haven’t you got your firm to run?’

  ‘I have a good manager, and January isn’t busy.’

  They left the restaurant and wandered back to the path by the water just as a vaporetto approached the landing stage.

  ‘That’ll take us down the Grand Canal as far as we need to go,’ Pietro said, seizing her hand and beginning to run.

  They made it onto the great water-bus just in time, and laughed, holding themselves against the rails until a wave made the boat lurch, sending her stumbling against him. He steadied her, reminded again how insubstantial she was.

  But then she gave him a cheerful smile and he realised that it was only her body that was frail. Tonight he’d glimpsed her cheeky fighting spirit, and he liked it.

  ‘Shall we sit down for safety?’ he asked.

  ‘No, thanks, I’m fine.’

  Ruth fixed one hand onto the upright rail and leaned slightly over the side, gazing down into the water rushing by. With a sigh of resignation Pietro wound an arm about her waist, holding her safe. It was simpler than remonstrating with her.

  But it was a mistake, bringing back the previous night when she’d put her arms about his neck, kissing him again and again in the joy of eager young love. It had been so long since a woman had kissed him that he’d tensed, holding himself still, not responding to the shock, then waking her gently.

  To his relief she hadn’t seemed to know what had happened, and he’d managed to block it out of his mind. But it was there again now, her lips on his mouth, her body pressed against his, sweet and vulnerable. He tried to banish the memory, knowing that he had no right to it. It belonged to Gino, to a man who hadn’t cared enough to claim it.

  As soon as they got home he bid her goodnight and hurried to his own room to check his cell phone, but there was no message. Annoyed, he dialled, and, to his relief, Gino answered.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, I know you said it was urgent,’ came his cheery voice. ‘But I’m a bit tied up.’

  ‘Then get untied and talk to me about Ruth Denver.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘What about her?’ Gino asked in a thin voice.

  ‘She’s here.’

  ‘What? How?’

  There was no mistaking the tone of his voice, Pietro thought grimly. Gino was aghast.

  ‘She came to find you. She needs your help to recover from her injuries. Gino, you said she dumped you. You never mentioned an attack.’

  ‘Look-it’s not-The attack has nothing to do with it. She did dump me.’

  ‘That’s not what she says.’

  ‘What-exactly does she say?’

  Through the ultra-cautious words Pietro could sense the cogs and wheels of the lad’s mind turning, and it filled him with dismay.

  ‘She says you spent a loving evening together at the restaurant, then you were attacked by thugs. After that she lost her memory. When she saw you again she didn’t recognise you.’

  ‘Oh, she recognised me all right. We didn’t have a loving evening. She told me it was over. I haunted the hospital until I knew she was better, but when she saw me she told me to go. Why do you think I never got in touch with her again? Because that was what she wanted.’

  Pietro groaned, not knowing what to believe.

  ‘What did she mean about me helping her with her injuries?’ Gino asked.

  ‘She has gaps in her memory and she wants you to help fill them.’

  ‘That explains a lot. Pietro, this is one very troubled lady. She doesn’t know what really happened and what didn’t.’

  ‘All the more reason for you to come back and help clear her mind.’

  ‘But surely I’ll just confuse her more? What’s that?’ Gino’s voice sounded as though he’d turned his head to reply to someone. Then it became stronger again. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. There’s someone at the door.’

  The line went dead.

  Pietro cursed, knowing that Gino had made an excuse to escape.

  He was more worried than he wanted to admit. It was just possible that Gino’s version was correct, and Ruth was so disturbed that she didn’t know what had really happened. She’d even partially admitted that.

  But then he recalled her smiling as she said, ‘You have to forgive Gino his funny little ways.’

  There had been a kindly tolerance in her voice that simply didn’t fit with the picture Gino was trying to paint. That was surely the real Ruth, forgiving and generous?

  For some reason he wanted to believe this of her. But how could he tell when even she didn’t know the full truth about herself? For the first time he fully understood the implications of her confusion, and how it might prove to be a nightmare, not only for her, but also perhaps for him.

  Over breakfast next morning Pietro said, ‘I have a few things to check, then I’m ready to take up my new position as your right-hand man.’

  ‘Look, that was only a joke,’ Ruth said hastily. ‘I don’t really exp
ect you to give up your time to me.’

  ‘You may have been joking. I wasn’t. You should try to relax. The more you worry, the less clear your mind will become.’

  The rain had gone and it was a fine morning as they set out to walk to St Mark’s Piazza. Along the way the shops were opening, the owners arranging goods outside, smiling as they saw Pietro. Most of them hailed him, and some eyed Ruth with a look that said, ‘Ah, you found her, then?’

  She smiled back, relishing the feeling of being enveloped in kindness.

  Through squares, along calles so narrow that she could touch both sides at once, and over tiny bridges, they finally reached the huge piazza. At one end was the glorious cathedral. On the other three sides were elegant arches, behind which were commercial establishments. One of these was Pietro’s headquarters, a place where trips and hotels could be booked and various necessities hired.

  ‘I’ll introduce you to Mario,’ Pietro said. ‘He’s a brilliant manager, although a little too meek for this violent city.’

  ‘Violent?’ Ruth queried. ‘But surely it’s a gentle, peaceful place. That’s why they call it La Serenissima?’

  ‘La Serenissima is only serene on the surface. Underneath it’s another story, sometimes a cruel one.’

  She had a partial demonstration as soon as they entered, and she saw Mario, a young man with a plump, amiable face and an air of innocence. He was trying to cope with a middle-aged woman who was talking loudly and furiously.

  ‘It’s no excuse to say that they’re booked up-’

  ‘But, signora,’ Mario pleaded, ‘if that trip has no spaces left for that date, what can I do? Perhaps the next day-’

  ‘I want that day!’ she snapped.

  Mario looked frazzled.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Pietro murmured.

  In seconds he had the matter under control, convincing the lady politely but firmly that tantrums would get her nowhere. He even managed to persuade her to book for the following day. Mario watched, almost with tears in his eyes.

  When the woman had gone, Pietro introduced the two of them.

  ‘Padrone, I’m so sorry,’ Mario started to say.

  ‘Forget it,’ Pietro said kindly. ‘Nature just didn’t design you to be a forceful man.’