The Veranchetti Marriage(17)

A brown forefinger confidently brushed a straying strand of vibrant hair back from her cheekbone, and his breath fanned her cheek. “It’s like a sunset, your hair. A glorious, multicoloured sunset,” he growled half under his breath. “The very first time I saw you I imagined it cascading over white pillows…”

The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten her dry lips. They had gone from troglodytes to sunsets to pillows. He lowered his head and ran the tip of his own tongue erotically along the same path, hunger burnishing his golden eyes, a devouring, smoulderingly sexual hunger which tightened his hard bone structure and sent Kerry into shaken retreat. “Later…” Alex practically tasted the word.

No, there wasn’t going to be a later. Her colour high, she spun and recognised the tall, dark young man standing watching them. “Mario?”

“Kerry.”

Alex’s younger brother bent to kiss her cheek. While she had been away, he had grown to manhood from a lanky and boyish sixteen. He backed off again awkwardly, stuck for the verbal social niceties to fit the occasion. Nicky streaked past them. “Nonna!” he hollered at the top of his voice.

On the threshold of the crowded drawing-room Kerry stilled in surprise. Her son went hurtling cheerfully towards the thin woman with the patrician features seated in a wing-backed chair by the fire. His grandmother, Athene. He gave her an exuberant hug and grabbed her hand. “Come and meet my mummy.”

Oh, my God, Kerry thought, feeling Alex’s hand welding to her spine like a bar preventing retreat. “He’s her favourite,” he divulged.

But only next to her firstborn son, Alex. Athene looked upon Alex with a fierce pride which only dimmed when her eyes slid to the wife by his side. A cool kiss was pressed to her cheek. “You are welcome,” Athene said graciously.

She was threaded through the gathered cliques. Alex was one of six children, with three sisters and two brothers. Between them they had about thirty offspring, or so it had always seemed to Kerry. Both the sisters and the daughter-in-law conformed in the Veranchetti clan. They maintained their husbands’ homes and raised children and shopped as if there was no tomorrow…real exciting stuff, Kerry thought wryly. Entering this old-style family was like stepping back a century in women’s rights to a time where the men were still men and the women were delighted they were. Alex’s rule here was supreme. By some quixotic quirk of heredity, none of his siblings had an ounce of his drive and self-assurance. They followed him like a flock of sheep. His sisters adored him and his brothers admired him. His opinion was sought on the most minor decisions.

The general warmth of her reception surprised her. Athene’s frosty smiles were the equivalent of a red carpet. It seemed that her supposed infidelity remained a secret within the family circle. Her discomfiture eased and Nicky bounced along beside her, showing off by introducing her to all and sundry.

“Nicky is so like you,” Alex’s middle sister, Carina, exclaimed.

“Me?” Kerry laughed. She only ever saw Alex when she looked at her son. His amber-brown eyes, black hair and lean, above average height all echoed his paternity.

“Your smile…he has your smile and your liveliness.” Carina patted the seat beside her. “How does it feel to be back?”

But I’m not back, I’m only passing through…where? Dear heaven, where were they spending the night?

“A little strange,” Kerry admitted truthfully. Yet there was a subtle difference to her own responses. She was no longer overwhelmed by the opulence and the formality which Athene insisted upon. It wasn’t Kerry and it never would be, but she didn’t feel a failure simply because she did not fit the family female mould. It was over four years. A woman did a lot of maturing in that time, she acknowledged.

“I am pleased that Alex and you are together again,” Carina declared carefully. “Mamma was…er…disturbed by the divorce, and Alex cut himself off from the family for a long time. He…how you say…? Dug himself into work. Alex, he’s like Mamma. Too strong…you understand?”

“No,” she said frankly.

Carina moved a plump beringed hand. “He can’t bend, he can’t talk of what he really feels…you know? But where would we be without Alex to tell us what to do?”

Heaven? “I don’t know,” said Kerry dutifully.

“Alex is the clever one in the family. We were lost when he was too busy for us, but I think we learned that Alex had a life to lead of his own,” Carina confided, her round, dark eyes resting ruefully on Kerry’s face. “Before, if he was not at the office or abroad, you would find him having to help one of us…eh?”

Kerry nodded honestly. Alex had always been very much in demand. If they bought a new house, if someone was ill, if there was marital dissension or problems in business—they called Alex. In the past she had resented those constant encroachments into what little time they had together as a couple.

“I think you will find this has changed,” Carina murmured, and her sincerity made Kerry feel uncomfortable, for the less she saw of Alex in their present relationship, the happier she would be.

After dinner, served in the lofty-ceilinged dining-room, Kerry inwardly accepted that they were obviously expected to stay the night here. Coffee was served in the drawing-room, and she found herself seated with Athene, everybody else steering a rather deliberate passage to leave them in privacy.

“We have had our differences in the past,” Athene delivered with a regal inclination of her silvered head. “But you are Alex’s wife again now and these must be set aside. I want you to know that I did not want the divorce. I begged Alex to reconsider. Our family has never had a divorce before, and you were expecting my grandson. In the light of your remarriage, it is clear that Alex should have listened to me.” Before she could reply, Athene added smoothly, “We will not speak of this again.”

The conversation became general, and Alex’s other two sisters, Maria and Contadina joined them. As usual, all the men were on the other side of the room. Kerry’s mind began to wander restively. She would have to share a bedroom with Alex tonight. Some wedding night it was going to be, she reflected tensely.

“You’re in your usual rooms,” Athene informed her later on, and Kerry’s cheeks warmed.

She mounted the stairs, smothering a yawn. The resident nanny had marshalled Carina’s children and Nicky off to bed earlier. It was comforting to find their bedroom suite changed beyond recognition. She felt less like a woman in a time warp. Then she had to admit that there was very little left of the happy, gauche and outspoken teenager she had been when she first came to this house. With hindsight, she disliked Athene less for the callous and cold snubs dealt to her behind Alex’s back.

What a ghastly shock she must have been to Athene’s snobbish and ambitious hopes for her eldest son! Alex’s bride had been a chirpy teenager, who wore her thoughts and her feelings on her sleeve and hurled herself into Alex’s arms when he came home, regardless of who was present. Her confidence had not lasted. She had lived on the periphery of Alex’s busy schedule, and the shopping trips, the endless rounds of polite socialising which had filled his sisters’ days, these had driven her up the walls with boredom.

“Alex…of all my sons,” she had once heard Athene proclaim to a close friend. “Marrying a little nobody with no breeding and no background. She will always be an embarrassment to him. Wherever she goes she is late. Her taste in clothes is indescribable, and she gossips with the maids…”

In remembrance, a rueful grin lit Kerry’s lips. How terribly lonely she had been here, and yet how afraid that the criticisms were just ones. But the memories no longer bit with venom. She had let her insecurities grow out of proportion, and Athene, still reeling in those early days from Alex’s choice of bride, had received a vengeful pleasure from pointing out her failings. Once they had moved to Florence, Kerry had evaded every effort Alex made to draw his family back into their lives. It must have been very hard for him. Naturally he had thought she was being unreasonable. Athene had never dared to be malicious when he was around.

Why was she thinking this way? Why was she seeing her own faults and making excuses for his? He had neglected her. He had refused to see that she wasn’t the rich idle wife type. When she had become pregnant the sense of being trapped had grown stronger, for Alex had used her condition as an excuse to keep her tied to the house in Florence those first few months. Vickie had had a strong influence on Kerry then. It had not been difficult for Vickie to heighten Kerry’s resentment of Alex’s possessiveness. But Alex had grown up with a mother and three sisters who automatically deferred to him. If he had loved her…how could he really have loved her? she asked herself cynically, irritated by the tenor of her thoughts.

He came into the room and shed his jacket. She kept on reading her magazine doggedly.

“This won’t work,” he breathed. “We can’t live like strangers and hope to give our son a happy environment.”

“You should have thought of that.” His reasonable tone, the sombre cast of his appraisal were, however, disconcerting. She had expected a return of the anger and the obduracy he had briefly displayed during the flight.