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I’ll betray you,’ he raged. ‘You think my love is worth so much less than yours?’

      ‘No, I’ve never thought that. But those seven years matter. I know you don’t think so now, but one day you’ll see it.’

      ‘You mean, give me enough time and I’ll learn to agree with you?’ he said, with a touch of a sneer.

      ‘When you see me getting old before you, getting lined before you, losing my strength while you still have all yours—then—’

      ‘Then what?’

      She forced herself to say it.

      ‘Then you’ll realise what a mistake you’ve made. But there’ll still be time to escape.’

      ‘Your opinion of me is really down there in the dust, isn’t it?’ he asked quietly. ‘All this time I thought we loved each other. But you were humouring me, treating me like a child to be indulged.’

      She tried to deny it, but the words wouldn’t come. Dreadful as it sounded, might this be true, even a little? She’d taken it on herself to make all the decisions in their relationship, without telling him.

      On the first day she’d concealed her real purpose in being there, and then she’d concealed her age, always telling herself that she was doing it ‘for the best’. Wasn’t that what mothers did? Perhaps she’d had no right?

      Suddenly he began to speak more gently.

      ‘Listen to me, Della. I’m asking for more than your love. I want everything about you—the whole of your heart and mind and your body—for the rest of your life. I want to know that you trust me enough to commit to me, instead of arranging things for an easy escape.’

      ‘An escape for you—’

      Her answer roused his anger again.

      ‘Oh, no—that’s the gloss you’ve put on it, but it’s your pride you’re protecting. If I prove as shabby as your expectations—well, you’ve arranged it that way, haven’t you?’

      ‘I’m only leaving the door open for you—’

      ‘No, you’re practically pushing me through it,’ he raged. ‘It looks generous, but it’s actually a form of control. You say how long we’ll last, you arrange the conditions of the break-up—my God, you’ve even written the scene! You come back suddenly and find me in the arms of a luscious beauty. What then, Della? Do I stutter something like, You weren’t meant to find out this way?’

      ‘Don’t,’ she whispered.

      ‘Or how about, Della, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. Yes, I think that would be better. Or haven’t you written my lines yet?’

      He drew a long, shaky breath before continuing.

      ‘But our love—or what I thought of as our love—isn’t some damned programme you’re planning, where you can cut and edit and rewrite until it’s just what you want.’

      She was silent, stricken to the heart by this judgement—so cruel, yet so alarmingly near the nerve.

      He came close and laid his hands on her shoulders. He was in command of himself now.

      ‘I meant what I said, Della. It has to be marriage and total commitment—or nothing. I’m not asking you to give up your career. Just relocate. You can produce your programmes from here as well as London. But I want you for my wife—not a glorified girlfriend with an escape clause, who treats me like an idiot. I want to know you trust me to be a husband, not an inferior to be guarded against because he’s bound to let you down.’

      ‘That’s a terrible way to put it,’ she said, aghast.

      ‘It’s how I see it.’

      ‘Carlo, all you see is what you want. You once told me of how you go after things you’ve set your heart on. But you don’t know the reality of marriage, and I do. I’ve endured two, and I know how feelings die. Not all in a moment, but inch by inch: the little irritations that loom large when they happen for the thousandth time, the moments of boredom, the times you want to bang your head against the wall, the unending day-after-dayness of it. You have no idea—’

      ‘And neither do most people who marry,’ he interrupted her. ‘Follow your argument and nobody would ever get married. But they do it anyway, because they love each other enough to take the risk. And because it’s how they show their trust in each other. If you don’t trust me enough to marry me, then we have no future together—not even the few months you’ve allocated me.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, searching his face.

      ‘I want your promise now, or it’s finished. When you go to England, don’t bother coming back.’

      She gasped. ‘You don’t mean that.’

      ‘I do mean it. You’ve been playing with me, and it stops here. Before you leave I want us to tell my family that we’re going to be married. Mamma’s expecting the announcement anyway, and we’ll leave her planning the wedding.’

      ‘My darling, I can’t do that.’

      He drew back, looking at her coldly.

      ‘Of course you can’t. The answer was always going to be no, wasn’t it? It was no from the very first moment. It was no when everyone saw us together at the party and knew that I worshipped you. You saw what they were thinking—what I was thinking—and you let us all think it. You could have told me the truth at any time, and you chose not to.’

      ‘No,’ she whispered, horrified. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

      ‘Wasn’t it? Look me in the eye and tell me honestly. Was there ever one second when you really meant to marry me?’

      ‘Carlo—’

       ‘Answer me!’

      ‘I don’t really know what I meant. I always knew that I ought to refuse, but—’

      ‘But it would have been inconvenient. Isn’t that it?’

      ‘No, I just couldn’t bear to. It was lovely, and I wanted it to last. Sometimes I deluded myself that it might even be possible. I didn’t want to admit that it couldn’t happen, so I put it off and put it off.’

      ‘Very convenient,’ he said softly. ‘The truth is that you made a fool of me.’

      ‘I swear I didn’t.’

      ‘Then prove it. For the last time—will you give me the commitment I want? Because if not we have nothing more to say to each other.’

      Her temper rose. ‘Are you giving me an ultimatum?’

      ‘I suppose I am.’

      ‘Don’t do that, Carlo. I won’t be bullied, and certainly not into marriage.’

      ‘I suppose that’s my answer,’ he said softly.

      ‘It has to be.’

      ‘All those nights you lay in my arms and whispered to me—all those dreams you let me indulge—you knew I was living in a fool’s paradise, and you left me there because it was more convenient that way.’

      ‘It could never last. You can’t see that now because you want me—’

      ‘Della, I am not a little kid to be protected. Don’t insult me.’

      ‘All right,’ she said, tortured by this scene, unable to endure more. ‘Maybe you were right when you said I’m trying to protect myself, so that I don’t have to be around to see the disillusion come into your eyes. I don’t want to know the moment when you ask yourself how the hell you could have done anything so stupid. I don’t want to see you avert your eyes so that you don’t have to look at what’s happening to

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