To Marry a Tiger (14 page)

“Does it feel like home?” Mario asked her.

She was astonished that he should have read her mind so exactly. “In a way,” she said.

He laughed. “It is a good night for bandits!” he teased her.

“You forget,” she retorted w
ith
dignity, “I am not afraid of bandits!”

“Have you no qualms at all? What if a Sicilian bandit should jump out at us this minute?”

She refused to be disturbed. “With the whole village looking on?” she murmured. “Besides,” she added, “I have you to protect me!”

He looked at her, but it was too dark for her to see what he was thinking. “Remember that!” he said.

They left the village behind them and walked through the vineyards. They were nearly home.

“My uncle Roberto appears to approve of you,” Mario said, half-laughing. “Did my mother send him?”

Ruth forbore to answer. “I like him very much,” she said instead.

“Do you?” He was silent for a minute. “You like us all, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she answered truthfully.

He sighed. “It is not a Sicilian emotion,” he said at last. “To us an emotion is scarlet, jet black, or white. We never dwell in the pale greys!”

If she were honest, Ruth thought, she would have to tell him that she didn’t
e
ither. In the past, she might have done, but only because she. had never known any other.

“How exhausting for you!” she said with a smile.

“How English of you!” he retorted.

“Why not? I am English,” she reminded him.

He laughed at her, and she discovered that she liked it. “A quibble! An accident of birth!” he teased her.

Her heartbeat quickened. Did he
know
?”
That reminds me,” she said practically, in a voice that wobbled woefully nevertheless. “I must take my passport to the British Consul—”

“I will do it for you tomorrow,” he cut her off. His voice was as cold and withdrawn as ever and her spirits sank accordingly. Somehow she had managed to ruin the moment and not even their arrival at the house could make up for the lost opportunity. And she didn’t know when there would be another—There might never be another
!
She knew a moment’s panic and dreaded having to walk through the front door into the revealing light. She was tired and she felt defeated, and she didn’t think she could hide either fact for long from Mario’s
searching eyes.

Mario’s people pressed closely round them as they stood on the doorstep and faced the circle of prou
d
faces. There was laughter as he slipped his arm round Ruth’s waist, and more when he kissed her on the cheek. “Goodnight,” he called out to them.

“Goodnight! Sleep well!” they answered with mean
ing.

T
he door opened behind them and Ruth hurried into fee
hall
, bitterly aware of the colour in her cheeks.

“I’m going to find Saro,” she mumbled to Mario. “
Giulia,
shut the back door, so he won’t have been able
to get in by himself.”

He stood at the foot of fee stairs, irritated and yet withdrawn. “I should have thought he could have slept in the stables!”

“But I like his company!” she insisted.

“You will spoil him! He is not a lap-dog. His job is to
catch rats in the outhouses. How can he do that if you
will bring him into fee house?”

Ruth eyed him defiantly. “I don’t believe he ever kills
anything
!” she muttered.

“Then we had best get another dog! Mario said
wi
th
crushing effect.

“Then Saro can be my dog!”

Mario’s expression softened. “If you like, he agreed. “You have probably already ruined him for his job.” Ruth didn’t wait for him to change his mind. She rushed through fee kitchen, pretending to herself that
s
he was truly anxious for the dog, when she knew quite wel
l
that she would have jumped at any chance to get away from Mario until she had sorted out the chaotic emotions feat seethed within her. She was not helped by the almost liquid quality of the night air and the sound of song from the villagers, serenading them from fee front garden. It was a bitterly ironic moment, for she couldn’t think how happy she would have been if all their good wishes had come true.

The dog came out from his hiding place at the first sound of her voice, his tail lashing his sides in his enthusiasm and delight. He ran before her into the kitchen, ignoring Giulia’s wail of anguish as she saw him, and rushed on up the stairs, pausing only to scratch softly at the door of Ruth’s room.

“
I take him out!” Giulia shouted up the stairs. “I come now!”

Ruth smiled down at her. “No, leave him,” she pleaded. “He’s not doing any harm!”

Giulia went back into the kitchen, muttering imprecations under her breath. Ruth looked after her in a haze of indecision. Was it for her to make the first move? She didn
’
t know. She caught sight of Pearl’s fair head in the hall beneath her and instinctively pulled back into the shadows so that she wouldn’t be seen. The singing had stopped and the villagers were going home. She could hear them calling out to one another, laughing and joking, as they went.

Saro scratched more imperatively on her door and Ruth went to let him in. He jumped up on to her bed and scratched himself with uncalled-for energy.

“You’ve probably got fleas!” she told him crossly. He paid no attention. When he had finished scratching, he lay down flat on the bed and watched her every movement as she took off her dress and made herself ready for bed. She took a quick shower in the bathroom near her room, summoning up her will-power to cope with fluttering indecision that had seized her.

She had brushed her hair three times over before she came to any decision. If
s
he was Mario’s wife, she told herself, then Mario’s wife she would be!

She took a deep breath to give herself courage and
went over to the communicating door between their rooms. Her hand was shaking a little as she reached out
to the
door knob and turned it. But the door refused to open
.
It was only then that she realised that he had
locked
it. With a rush, she flung herself on her bed
beside
Saro, and burst into tears. She cried until she co
uldn’t
stop and she was still sobbing when she fell as
l
eep just before the grey light of dawn began to creep over the horizon.

CHAPTER NINE

RUTH was the last person down to breakfast next morning. She had expected a sound scolding from Giulia, who usually resented having to make coffee, or anything else, more than once, but Giulia had only wished her a good day, her whole face wreathed in smiles.

“Where is everyone?” Ruth asked her, put out by her unaccustomed attitude.

“They have already departed,” Giulia answered indifferently. “The Signor would not have anyone wake you in case you were tired.” She sighed gustily. “He has already gone about his business, but he said he would be back later. He has some business to do in Palermo.”

Ruth poured out her coffee. “Has my sister gone out too?” she inquired.

Giulia shrugged. “How would I know?”

Ruth gave her a look of gentle reproof and the Italian woman sulkily handed her a roll of bread. “She is waiting for the Signor,” she told Ruth reluctantly. “They go together to Palermo.”'

Ruth winced. “Oh, I see,” she said calmly.

She was glad when Giulia went back to the kitchen, leaving her alone to finish her breakfast. Her head ached and her mouth felt dry and she was utterly miserable. The world was an unyielding and unsympathetic place and she knew that she couldn’t put off telling her father about her marriage for very much longer. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what his reaction would be! Nor could she think that it would be favourable. How could it be? His staid, practical daughter, whose one ambition had been to teach, abducted by a Sicilian and forced into
marriage! It wasn’t the kind of thing that
happened
to her father’s acquaintances, or to anyone else she knew, come to that!

When she had finished her breakfast, she called Saro to her and set off up the garden to the cypress trees. It was a place she looked on as being her own, for she had never seen anyone else there. There she could sit and think to her heart’s content and there would be none to disturb her.

She sat on the fallen tog she had discovered there before and gazed down at the sea below her. Some sea-birds flew over the water, almost level with where she sat, their mocking call echoing her thoughts. Saro barked at something he had seen half-way down the cliff, but she ignored him. The sun beat down over her head, bleaching the colours from the scenery. To her, though, it was still perfection. If she could not find happiness here, then she would find it nowhere!

She was still sitting there when she heard the footsteps of someone coming towards her. She looked over her shoulder, frowning at the intrusion, and was surprised to see that it was Pearl.

“What are you doing here?” she asked her ungraciously.

Pearl collapsed in a heap beside her. “Giulia said you were up here, or rather she pointed in this direction when I said your name a few times. Even then she was quite nasty.
La Signora Verdecchio
—!”

Ruth blushed. “It does sound odd,” she admitted.

“Odd! It sounds like Mario’s aunt!” Pearl retorted. She looked at her sister curiously. “How does it feel?” she asked.

Ruth shook her head. “What are you going to Palermo for?” she countered.

Pearl pouted thoughtfully. “I see it’s still ‘Keep off the Grass’. Not that it’s any of my business—”

“No, it isn’t,” Ruth agreed heartily.

“Actually,” Pearl began, “I came along to have a talk with you. I figured it was about time somebody did!”

Ruth bit her lip. Why?”

“Let's call it sisterly affection—”

“Indeed?” Ruth put in dryly.

Pearl opened her blue eyes w
i
de. “Truly!” she exclaimed. “I was cross before, but I’m not any longer!”

“You don’t need to be,” Ruth said wearily.

Pearl considered this. “No, that’s true. But, Ruth, what are
you
going to do?”

Ruth looked at her young sister with some amusement. “What would you suggest?” she asked.

Pearl looked helpless. “I don’t know. Mario isn’t an easy person to manage. If you’d asked me before you came racing over to Sicily in a fit of righteous indignation, I’d have told you so! He doesn’t allow people to walk out on him!”

“So he told me,” Ruth affirmed.

Pearl gave her a look of unmixed respect. “What on earth did you
s
ay to him?”

Ruth shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t understand you!” Pearl burst out. “Do you
want
to be a doormat al
l
your life? He’ll walk all over you!” She eyed Ruth thoughtfully. “I suppose you’d like that!” she added with an aggrieved air.

“I might,” Ruth agreed, a little surprised at her own lack of shame.

“I never thought to hear you say
it
!” Pearl
marveled.
“Darling, you really must pull yourself together! I feel so sad and guilty because it
was I who got you into this. I’ll
just have to rescue you,
whether
you like it or not!”

Ruth lifted her chin forcefully. “Please don’t!”

“But, Ruth—”

“I can manage my own affairs!” Ruth went on grimly.

“But that’s just what you can’t do!” Pearl exclaimed, exasperated. “You—you’re positively
callow
when it comes to men!”

R
uth laughed helplessly. “Oh, Pearl! I’m not!”

“Well, you haven’t my experienced approach!” Pearl sniffed.

“I should hope not!” said Ruth, her lips trembling with laughter.

“Well, you haven’t! If you ask me, I think we’d better go back to England and the bosom of our loving family, and forget that we ever met Mario!”

“I can’t!” Ruth said flatly.

“What else
can
you do?”

“Stay here.”

“On your own?” Pearl looked dumbfounded. “He’d eat you up
!
Piecemeal
!”

Ruth straightened her back and lifted her head. “I don’t think he will,” she said slowly. “You see, one of the advantages of being callow, in fact downright green, is that you don’t break at all easily—”

“But he’s only got to find out that you’re in love with him!” Pearl protested.