To Marry a Tiger (20 page)

And so Ruth had sat down opposite Mario, so placed that she had only to raise her eyes to see him whenever she would. It was tempting, she found, to watch him all the
time;
to follow the expressions as they flitted across his face, and to admire the hauteur that his large, broken nose gave him in repose. She herself could eat practically nothing. In the most ridiculous way, although she managed to look quite calm on the surface, she was suffering from butterflies in her stomach. It was something in the way Mario looked at her from time to time and, even more, the knowledge that once the others had gone out, he was bound to insist that the time had come for them to come to some sort of an
understand
ing. The very thought of the land of understanding he might
insist
on gave her a nervous feeling that nothing would quell.

She made a gallant effort at light conversation all through the first course. It was strange, she thought, how one was able to divide one’s mind in two, keeping the surface for polite chatter, while the underneath was frozen into immobility by sheer fright and worry.

“P-Pearl doesn’t like travelling much on her own,” she said in answer to a polite remark of Roberto’s. “She doesn’t know any language except English and, if people don’t speak that, she feels cut off.”

“And what languages do you speak?” Mary-Anne asked .her languidly.

Ruth coloured a little in case she should be thought to be boasting. “I can speak French quite well,” she said. “I spent last winter learning Italian at evening classes, but I—but—”

“Ah!” Mario teased her gently. “So that’s why you insist on referring to me in the third person! I shall have to teach you the proper way to address your husband!”

Ruth blushed violently, but she had perfect control over her voice as she answered: “We were told we wouldn’t have the need to be anything other than formal.”

“I knew the moment I set eyes on you that you had led a sheltered life!” Mario riposted.

“So you repeatedly said!” she told him bitterly.

He looked at her with warm amusement. “I wonder why you should resent it?” he questioned lightly.

She felt a strong desire to laugh. “It was the beginning of all my troubles, you may remember!” she said.

His eyes held hers, although she would have preferred not to be so open to him. “So that’s what you think,” he said.

But at last the meal came to an end and Roberto went to get the car while the women prettied the
m
selves and fetched their wraps against the cool of the evening.

“We shall be very late,” Mary-Anne told her son. “Don’t wait up for us,” she added meaningly.

He grinned at her and went out with them to help them into the car and to say goodnight to his uncle. Left to herself, Ruth would have liked to have taken refuge in the kitchen with Giulia, but Giulia scorned her help with the washing up. It was obvious that she didn’t really like having anyone else in her kitchen, a point of view that Ruth was bound to respect, and so she wandered back into the
salotto
,
with Saro following close at her heels.

She was fidgeting with the flowers when Mario came back. He stood in the doorway, watching her for a few minutes in silence. She saw him finally and the colour flooded into her cheeks, although she gave no other sign that she had noticed him.

“That is a very matronly occupation!” he said with a smile.

“
Matronly
!” she repeated. “Oh, Mario, how could you?” She gurgled with laughter. “You are the most uncomplimentary beast I’ve ever met!
”

“I knew we
sh
ould get back to your sheltered life sooner or later,” he said in resigned tones.

She lifted her chin. “It wasn’t as sheltered as all that! I’m not saying that most of the men we knew didn’t prefer Pearl, but I did have some boy-friends of my
own!
”

“And the pleasant knowledge that they were the ones who could see further than their own noses
!”
he suggested.

She was
s
hocked. “How can you say such a thing?” she demanded of
h
im. “And that’s something that
I
want to talk to
you
about! I think you owe Pearl an apology for the way you’ve treated her!”

He raised his eyebrows. “Indeed?” he said haughtily.

“Yes,
indeed
!”

“I can’t see that she has any cause for complaining. I think I’ve been very nice to her—”

“But you shouldn’t have been!” Ruth told him hotly.

“I can’t think why not!”

She could think of several reasons, but none of them were ones that she felt able to discuss with him.

“She’s more vulnerable than you think!” she said desperately.

“And rather less so than you think,” he answered.

Ruth cast him a wary look and very nearly ruined the whole flower arrangement by snapping off one of the blooms right at the top of the stem. Mario reached out a hand and took the remaining flowers out of harm’s way. In doing so, he somehow managed to capture both her hands in his and drew her gently across to the sofa, sitting her down beside him.

“Suppose you tell me what sent you rushing off to England,” he suggested.

“I can’t!” she said baldly.

His hand tightened on hers. “Am I supposed to guess?” His voice was charming, but inflexible.

“It’s all so silly!” she exclaimed. “I can’t imagine how I allowed myself to be put in such a ridiculous position!” She gave him a petulant look and was immediately sure that he would make her regret it. “You must see that the only way you can get rid of me is to let me go home!”

“I must be very obtuse,” he said gently, “but I can’t remember that I ever said I wanted to be rid of you.”

“You didn’t,” she acknowledged.

“Then it was something I
did
that gave you this unfortunate idea?”

“No, of course not! But nobody wants to be married to someone he doesn’t know—D-does he?”

“Perhaps not,” he agreed.

Ruth bit her lip, completely miserable. “So there you are! You don’t have to be!”

He leaned back, looking at her out of lazily smiling eyes.
“
But I had the oddest feeling that I knew you very well from the first moment I saw you,” he said in mild, conversational tones.

She was much shaken. “In—in Naples?”

He looked surprised. “No,
not
in Naples! In Naples, I am sorry to say, I hardly noticed you at all. You stood in the hotel foyer and glared at me in the most shrewish manner. If I felt anything at all, I felt rather sorry for Pearl having to face you every time she came in from a date!”

“Oh?” Ruth said coldly.

He smiled. “I didn’t know then that far from swooning if a man were to kiss you, you would kiss him right back!”

“Oh, I
didn’t
!”
she denied with considerable indignation.

He put his hand under her chin and forced her to look at him. “How can you tell such lies?” he mocked her.

Very easily, she assured him mentally. “Well, if I did, it was only because you took me by surprise,” she said grudgingly.

He laughed. “And that is an even more shocking thing to say!” he reproved her.

“Besides,” she added primly, “you said you never refused a challenge and I told you I didn’t either!”

“Oh, I see! You were meeting a challenge! How strange that you should immediately run away!”

She gave him a look of pure dislike. “I
hate
you!” she told him fiercely.

He pulled her into the circle of his aims and she
was surprised to discover that she was more than comfortable with her head on his shoulder and with her hands tucked into his.

“More lies?” he asked her with so much laughter in his voice that her indignation died a sudden death, no matter how hard she tried to resuscitate it. She tried to sort out the chaotic thoughts that went through her mind and ended with hoping very much that he was shortly going to kiss her again.

“Is my mother right?” he asked when it was quite clear that she was too engaged in her own thoughts to go on arguing with him. “Do I ask too much of you?”

Ruth struggled for a long moment with her conscience. It seemed base to tell him that he did, when she knew that anything less would have been unworthy of them both. It was that that made her previous friendships with any man seem trivial by comparison.
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife
! Nor had they been! They had passed by without leaving so much as a ripple on the even tenor of her days. Only with Mario it had been quite different. From the moment he had come into her bedroom she had been lost. First he had made her laugh and then he had tormented her: lastly, he had kissed her and she had been vanquished! There was no denying that she had fallen very deeply in love with him.

“Well? Do I ask too much?” he prompted her.

It would be different if he had fallen in love with her too, but he hadn’t.
Was
it too much to ask of her? That she should love him so completely and gain in return his interest, his children, and his wretched S
icilian
honour? No, she admitted to herself with honesty, it was not too much. She would rather anything than not have him at all.

“Well?” he prompted her again.

A smile trembled on her lips. “No,” she admitted, “you don’t ask too much
.
”

“Not more than you have to give
?”

“No.”

“Then you are content to stay here as my wife?”

She nodded, aware of a constriction at the back of her throat. “Yes,” she said.

“And be the mother of my children
?”

“Y-yes
.
”

She felt a tremor of laughter run through him. “And be the typical Sicilian wife with nothing better to do than to seek the approval of her husband?”

“
I suppose so,
”
she said with such marked reluctance that he was hard put to it not to laugh outright.

“
And
,”
he said provocatively, “allow me to kiss any pretty girl who comes my way
?
”

That was too much
!
“
No!” she flared up. “I will not! You are
my
husband—” His laughter was too much for her. She snatched her hand out of his and made a wild swipe at him, but he was far too strong for her. In a flash he had both her hands caught in his and pinned them behind her in the small of her back.

“I daresay,” he said, laughing s
traight into her face,
“
that you are the only pretty girl I shall want to kiss! Vixen!”

He let her hands go as his lips met hers. She thought he would crush her ribs and she gave a little sob of protest. He was not much more gentle after that, but for some reason she no longer seemed to notice. Her hands crept up behind his shoulders and she pulled him closer still. What did it matter that he was not in love with her? If he could kiss like this, and this, she must be happy!

Giulia knocked on the door, which set Saro off barking. Ruth pulled herself together with difficulty and sat bolt
upright, with her hands clasped in her lap, while Mario went to the door to see what the maid wanted.

“My sister is agreeable to coming in in the morning,” she called to Ruth from the open door.

“Oh? Good,” said Ruth.

Giulia looked from one to the other of them, her eyes sparkling. “I’ll say goodnight,
signore, signora
! Shall I lock up before I go?”

“Please do,” said Mari
o
.

Giulia came further into the room, making a great deal of noise as she relentlessly checked that each and every shutter was properly secured for the night.

“I
’
ll leave the front door for Signor Roberto,” she assured them cheerfully. “I have no doubt they will be late back!”

Mario leaned against the doorpost, watching the two women with amusement. He didn’t seem to mind at all that Giulia knew he had been kissing her, Ruth thought resentfully. To him, it seemed perfectly natural that he should kiss his wife when and where he would, but she was not yet ready to face the world—as
his wife
! But why not?

She stood up, feeling decidedly weak at the knees.

“I—I think I shall go upstairs to bed,”
s
he managed.

“So early?” Mario demurred, his voice quivering with laughter.

Giulia frowned at him. “It has been a long day for the Signora,” she reminded him reproachfully. “She will be feeling lost with her sister gone! You go to your bed,
cara
! I have turned down the bed for you ready and laid out your nightdress—”