But he had laughed when she muttered about her hope that he had a key. He had asked her if she would like to join him for supper. While she ate he had dredged out her life story and her ambition to study Fine Art at university. His manservant had intervened to announce that the caretaker was now available, and Alex had appraised her disappointed face and said, “Would you like to dine with me some evening?”
“When?” she had breathed, making no attempt to conceal her delight, and he had laughed again. That was how it had begun.
From the start she had feared that Alex thought she was too immature for him. At thirty, he was already head of the empire his late father had left him. As the eldest in his family he had assumed weighty responsibilities at an early age. In comparison, Kerry had been between school and university, and as carefree and unfailingly cheerful as Alex was serious. It was an attraction of opposites. Her dippy sense of humour and her penchant for disorganisation had fascinated Alex…but much against his will.
Their short courtship had been erratic. Alex had tried to keep their relationship cool. Kerry had been wildly and quite frantically in love with him, and probably the whole world including Alex had been painfully conscious of the fact. The one strong card she had had then, without even realising it, was Alex’s almost fanatical possessiveness. One afternoon her door had been answered by another man when Alex called unexpectedly.
Roy had been one of Vickie’s friends. He had only come to collect stuff that Vickie had let him store in her guest room. Kerry had merely offered him coffee. Alex had misunderstood. By the time that was cleared up, all pretence of playing it cool was over. Alex was laying down the law like Moses off the Mount. Somehow he had started to kiss her, and not as he had indulgently kissed her before. Things had got out of hand and perhaps, knowing Alex, they had done so more by design than accident. He had swept her off to bed in a passionate and stormy mood. Afterwards he had looked down at her and murmured, “Now you are mine, and damn your age, we’re going to get married.”
It had been a breathless, whirlwind romance. Alex had bowled her parents over with his well-bred drawl and cool self-assurance. Kerry had not had a similar effect upon his family. She had soon appreciated that, behind the polite, cosmopolitan smiles, they all thought Alex was marrying beneath him and, what was more, choosing a female totally untutored in the talents required of a Veranchetti wife.
But, possessed as she had believed herself to be of Alex’s love, Kerry had had no doubts. Their beautiful wedding had been followed by a fabulous honeymoon in the West Indies. Alex had then calmly dumped her in Rome with his mother. Athene had disliked Kerry on sight and nothing had given Athene more pleasure than when she was guilty of some social or fashionable gaffe. Within six months, even Kerry’s even temper was strained. Confined as she was to an existence of idle ease, it had seemed to her that Alex had only married her to imprison her. He jetted back from abroad, swept her arrogantly off to bed and brushed aside her justifiable complaints with a maddening air of masculine indulgence.
He thought she was too young to run a household of her own. He didn’t think she ought to travel with him. All the women in his family had always stayed very properly at home, awaiting their menfolk. The first cracks had come early in their marriage. Lonely, isolated by her poor Italian and family indifference, Kerry had been quietly clambering up the walls when Vickie took a job with a Venetian fashion house.
Against Alex’s wishes she had gone to Venice to spend a week with her sister. Alex had flown into Venice and dragged her out of Vickie’s apartment as if she was a misbehaving child. She had flatly refused to go home with him. She had not given way. As a result, Alex had labelled Vickie a bad influence.
Amazingly he had, however, agreed to buy them their own house shortly after that episode. They had moved to Florence, and while Alex had grudgingly said that Vickie was welcome to visit, he had not been prepared for Kerry to visit Vickie in Venice again. The crunch had come over Vickie’s birthday party. Alex had been in London when she phoned him to ask him to attend the party with her.
She had already been in Venice when she called, which had not precisely soothed Alex’s ruffled feathers. “You realise that if you remain there you are putting our marriage in serious jeopardy,” he had smouldered down the phone. “Per Dio I was wrong to marry a headstrong teenager, but do we have to advertise our differences to the world?”
He had also cast several unforgivable remarks on her sister’s moral principles. Kerry had come off the phone angry and upset.
“I warned you,” Vickie had drawled ruefully. “Foreigners are different. Alex would have given you a marvellous affair, but he’s no fun at all as a husband. My God, he’s locked you up and thrown away the key! He’s made you pregnant because he wants to tie you down even more. Don’t you see what he’s doing to you? He’s suffocating you!”
Sooner than cast a wet blanket over Vickie’s enjoyment that evening, she had done her best to put up a sparkling front. She remembered little about the later stages of that crowded party. She did recall dancing with an American photographer called Jeff, and he had made her laugh. She must have had too much to drink. The next morning, Vickie had frantically shaken her awake and Jeff had been lying in the bed beside her. A split second later Alex had appeared in the doorway, and if she hadn’t been pregnant, she honestly believed that Alex would have killed her there and then in the kind of crime of passion Latin countries understood. Without a single word he had turned on his heel and strode out of the apartment.
Jeff had beat an incredibly fast retreat. Kerry had simply been in shock, horrified that she had gone to bed with another man. Vickie had blamed herself for the whole scenario.
“I didn’t give a hoot what you did last night,” she had cried. “I thought it was time you got to let your hair down, but how could I have known that Alex was going to arrive at seven in the morning and practically force his way in?”
It hadn’t been Vickie’s fault. In a maudlin, depressed state of mind, Kerry had had to accept that she had fallen into bed with a virtual stranger. It was an unbelievable six months before she set eyes on Alex again. She had returned to their home in Florence to find that he had moved out. Within a week a lawyer arrived and served separation papers on her. It had seemed so important to her then to try and tell Alex that Jeff had not made love to her. A woman knew when she had made love, just as Kerry had known later that day when she calmed down enough to be sensible.
In response she had tried hard to trace Jeff before she left Venice, desperately grasping at the hope that he would tell her exactly what had taken place between them. Unpleasant as she would have found such an embarrassing confrontation, at least she would have had the proper facts. And at the back of her mind had lurked the rather na;auive prayer that Jeff might have some mitigating circumstance to proffer, or even some innocent explanation which would turn the entire episode into a storm in a teacup.
But she hadn’t even had a surname or an address to work on. Vickie had disclaimed all knowledge of him, confessing that she didn’t even know who had brought him to her party, and voicing the opinion that it was a matter best left alone. In her unsuccessful efforts to find him, Kerry had clutched at straws, stubbornly refusing to see the point. That she had been touched at all would be sufficient for Alex. A kiss, a caress, a shameful frolic in the dark…it made no difference. It was not the degree of the offence, but the betrayal of trust.
Those months of pregnancy in Florence had been a nightmare. She had stayed indoors all the time, torturing herself hour by hour with guilt, and praying that Alex would eventually relent enough to visit her. He hadn’t. His family had left her alone, too. Heaven knew what he had told them. She had finally had to face the fact that Alex had not been satisfied with his marriage before Vickie’s party. Why then should he even be prepared to listen to her when she had
