The Truth Behind Their Practical Marriage (Penniless Brides 0f Convenience Book 3) Read online

  ‘And here was I thinking that beneath your coat there was a rigid wall of muscle, when it’s just padding. I should have brought my parasol, at least then I’d have a weapon.’

  He swore to himself as another part of him threatened to become rigid when she squeezed his arm playfully. He was acutely aware of her every touch—the brush of her skirts with the hint of warm limb beneath, the cushioned bump of her thigh or the sharp nudge of her shoulder, her fingers twined around his arm. Was it the same for her? She certainly made no attempt to maintain distance between them, but perhaps that was because she didn’t notice! Yet in the café where they met this morning, when their hands were resting on the table, their fingers just brushing, there had been one of those moments when their eyes met and he was sure she felt that awareness of the contact that was both a pleasure and a pain because it wasn’t nearly enough. He swore again, shaking his head at himself. He was a mature thirty-year-old, not an overeager juvenile.

  Though he couldn’t deny it was both a relief and a pleasure to learn that side of him wasn’t after all quite dead. How long had it been since he’d felt so free of cares and glad to be alive? Not that he could remember ever feeling quite like this before, and besides, he didn’t want the past to intrude on a day like this, with the sun shining, and with a woman so vibrantly full of life on his arm that he was able to persuade himself, just for now, that his slate had been wiped clean.

  ‘Welcome back.’ Estelle smiled at him again. ‘You’ve no idea that you do that, have you? One minute you’re here, the next minute, the shutters come down. Don’t worry, I promise not to pry into your darkest secrets if you promise not to pry into mine.’

  ‘I can’t believe you have any.’

  ‘I don’t have any thoughts at all. Sure, didn’t I tell you,’ she said, thickening her accent just as he did when jesting, ‘that I’m as empty-headed a female as any man could desire.’

  ‘You’ve a very low opinion of my sex.’

  ‘I’ve a very low opinion of those of your sex I’ve encountered on my travels. That’s a very different thing. Yourself excepted of course—in fact, in future it would be easier if you just assume that you’re the exception to every one of my rules.’

  ‘Thank you kindly, but surely—Estelle, you must have encountered some more worthy specimens in three countries over the space of so many months.’

  ‘You’re right, I’m probably being unfair, but my experience has not been particularly positive. It comes of being single and female and—well, looking as I do.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘People make assumptions—women too, to be fair—that red hair denotes a passionate nature would be to put it kindly, more crudely an indiscriminate one. Of course not all men are like that, I do know that. Certainly those on the list my sister gave me have been extremely respectful.’

  ‘Diplomats, I assume?’

  ‘For the most part, and all of the utmost good character. Why is it that good character seems to go hand in hand with boring character?’

  ‘I sincerely hope that once again I’m an exception to your rule?’

  ‘You are indeed, though I notice you didn’t deny having something to hide when we were discussing dark secrets earlier.’

  She was teasing, but her smile faded at his expression. ‘Everyone has regrets,’ Aidan said, ‘I am no different.’

  Would Estelle see him in a very different light if she knew the truth? Fortunately, he’d never know. There would be time enough to face up to the past when he returned to Ireland, but for now he wanted to savour this welcome respite, a chance to remember the person he’d once been, and to enjoy being that person again. It was just a pity that he’d not met her earlier, for the clock was already ticking on their day-old acquaintance.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said, covering her hand with his. ‘My only recent crime is that I’ve been less than assiduous in my studies this last month or so, and frittering away my time. I reckon I’ve been waiting on you turning up.’

  ‘The fates must have conspired to bring us together then. Though I didn’t realise it until we met yesterday, I’ve become rather bored with my own company.’

  They had arrived in a little piazza on the outskirts of the old town. There had been a food market earlier, judging by the tatty bits of greenery that were strewn around. Water spouted from a worn lion’s head into a small fountain in one corner. Estelle cupped her hand to drink from it, yanking it back when she remembered that she was still wearing her gloves.

  ‘Here, let me,’ Aidan said, making a cup of both his hands.

  She hesitated only for a second before dipping her head and drinking. Her tongue brushed against his palm. He exhaled sharply. She stopped drinking. Their eyes locked. Water dripped down his fingers on to the cobblestones. A droplet glistened on the indent of her top lip. He brushed it away, heard her exhale as sharply as he had done. She stepped towards him. His heart was pounding. Her hand fluttered up to his cheek. He dipped his head, she lifted hers, and their lips met. Icy cold water, warm flesh. He felt dizzy with the delight of it, allowed himself a moment to relish the sheer pleasure of it, before stepping back.

  Her face, shadowed by the brim of her bonnet, reflected his own feelings—wide-eyed, flushed, uncertain, as if she had imagined it. ‘Estelle,’ he said, then stopped, for she shook her head, and he had no idea what to say anyway.

  ‘Do you like churches?’ she asked. ‘Not grand cathedrals but workaday churches, I mean, like that one, that smell of incense and candles and the congregation. Do you like them?’

  At this moment, he reckoned if she’d asked him if he liked pickled herring he’d have told her it was his favourite food, but in fact he did like churches, the sort she’d described, very much. ‘I do,’ he said, taking her arm again. ‘Shall we go and take a look?’

  * * *

  It was a lovely church, as far as Estelle was concerned, with no cavernous nave or fresco-adorned ceiling, but a simple affair with plain wooden pews, a scrubbed flagstoned floor, and a wooden altar. The icons on each of the side chapels were not painted by any master, though they were so old that the painted panels were cracking, but the flowers were fresh, and the church had the peaceful atmosphere of a place well used by the devout.

  She wandered off on her own, trying to calm her racing pulses. She’d been kissed before. A good many kisses had been snatched from her or pressed upon her, during her early travels, before she’d become adept at spotting the warning signs, but she didn’t count those as kisses. Received and never freely given, they had variously disgusted, repelled or angered her. But Aidan’s kiss was very different. Firstly this, her first real kiss, had been as much her doing as his. She’d wanted him to kiss her, and he had duly obliged. Secondly, she was certain he wouldn’t have, if he’d thought for a moment he was forcing himself on her. Which was why she wanted to kiss him again. That, and the fact that it had been too brief, that first kiss. It had made her feel as if she were flying and melting at the same time, and that was the most important reason of all.

  Was it wrong of her to want to kiss him again? Aidan had been on the brink of apologising. Yet he had been the one to end it before it had really begun. He doubtless worried that he had taken advantage of her innocence. Which he hadn’t because she’d wanted him to kiss her and he knew that, because otherwise he wouldn’t have.

  She was going round in circles. Exasperated, Estelle rolled her eyes at herself. For goodness sake, it was just a kiss! A delightful kiss, but hardly one fraught with danger, not in broad daylight in the middle of a piazza. A delightful moment in a delightful day that she refused to spoil by analysing it any further.

  She’d made a full circuit of the church now, and joined Aidan where he was standing beside a rather battered harpsichord.

  ‘Well,’ he asked her, ‘is it to your taste? The church, I mean?’

  ‘Very much. In the cathedral of Santa Maria del
Fiore, in any of the big churches in this city actually, you feel as if God is so remote as to almost not be present. Here, you feel He is so much more approachable, as if you could just sit down there and talk to Him. Do you think that’s an odd thing to say?’

  ‘If it is, then that makes oddities of both of us for I feel exactly the same. Clodagh fears that I’ll return to Ireland a convert to Catholicism. I told her that it would be no bad thing,’ Aidan said, ‘for it would give me something else in common with the majority of my tenants. But my sister, though a liberal in many ways, is very much a traditionalist when it comes to the subject of religion.’

  ‘Are you likely to become a convert?’

  He shook his head, smiling wryly. ‘That would require me to have strong feelings on the subject, and I don’t. Look at this now. You claimed to be able to play almost any instrument, a church harpsichord should present no challenge.’

  Estelle sat on the stool and opened the lid reverentially. The keys were worn, but when she struck some experimental soft chords, she discovered that the instrument was perfectly in tune. Her fingers twitched, feeling the connection, as if the harpsichord was begging to be brought to life. ‘I shouldn’t, not without permission,’ she whispered.

  ‘There’s no one around,’ Aidan replied, ‘go on, I dare you.’

  Bach’s French Suite flowed from her fingertips to the keyboard, and she was quickly lost, playing her favourite movement, the fifth, meaning to stop there but finding her fingers flying on to the next and then the next as the music swooped and soared around the small church. She brought the seventh to a flourishing close, resting her hands on the keys and breathing deeply with the kind of intense satisfaction that only music could provide.

  Aidan’s applause made her eyes fly open. She blushed deeply. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean...’

  ‘Please don’t apologise. That was quite breathtaking.’

  ‘You told me you’d not a musical bone in your body.’

  ‘Estelle, you made me feel as if I had heartstrings that were being plucked. You have a rare talent.’

  ‘Raw talent, perhaps. I’ve never really had any lessons.’

  ‘Then you’re even more talented than I thought. You played for almost fifteen minutes without sheet music and as far as I could tell you didn’t make one mistake.’

  ‘I should think not, the number of times I’ve played that piece. We had hardly any sheet music when I was little, so the few we had, I played over and over again. That was one of them.’

  ‘You’ll think this sounds fanciful, but it was as if the music poured straight from your heart through your fingers and on to the keys and then into the air, filling the church with beauty.’

  She stared at him, quite dumbstruck for a moment. ‘That is possibly the loveliest compliment anyone has ever paid me.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe. Anyone who has heard you play...’

  ‘They are few in number. My sisters, mostly, so they’re bound to think I’m good.’ She closed the lid of the harpsichord, frowning. ‘I wonder if that is why Phoebe opened her restaurant, because she needed some independent approbation of her cooking. I never thought of that before.’

  ‘Perhaps you should play in an orchestra.’

  Estelle shuddered. ‘It was a family joke, that Phoebe would open a restaurant and I would establish an orchestra, but I never thought of it as anything other than a bit of fun. I don’t like to play for strangers.’

  ‘Then I’m extremely honoured.’

  ‘You’re not a stranger, I thought we’d agreed that yesterday.’

  ‘We did, and now we’ve known each other almost two days, I suppose we should consider ourselves old friends. Look Estelle, what happened earlier...’

  ‘Please don’t apologise,’ she interrupted hastily. ‘You must know perfectly well that I wanted you to kiss me. There’s nothing to apologise for, or to discuss. I’m twenty-five years old, Aidan.’

  He held his hands up. ‘But if we were in England...’

  ‘I’m a woman of independent means, with a mind of my own and I’m not in England. I’m beginning to wish that we hadn’t kissed now.’

  ‘Well I’m not, despite the fact that I know we shouldn’t have.’

  ‘Oh. Good. Then why are we arguing?’

  ‘I’ve no notion at all.’

  ‘Can we forget about conventions and rules, and what we ought to do, and what people might say? Forget all about the real world for a little while?’

  ‘You’ve no idea how much I crave that.’

  There was the slightest tremor in his voice. She touched his arm tentatively. ‘What did I say to upset you?’

  ‘Nothing. Your playing moved me, that’s all.’

  She didn’t believe him, but she didn’t want to upset him further, and having agreed to forget about the real world, she didn’t feel she had the right to enquire either. ‘It was written for the organ, that piece. You don’t get the full majesty of it on a harpsichord.’

  His smile was grateful. ‘You do know there’s an organ here too?’

  ‘It’s quite usual for a church to have both. A pipe organ is operated by a lever which works enormous bellows. It’s very strenuous work and tends to be saved for high days and holidays, since it’s difficult to find volunteers for the task. The rest of the time a harpsichord will suffice.’

  ‘Are the bellows too strenuous for a feeble mathematician, do you think?’

  ‘Aidan, you can’t possibly mean—the harpsichord is one thing but I would not be comfortable playing the official church organ without permission. It would be sacrilegious.’

  ‘There is no one to ask. Do you honestly think God would mind?’ Aidan said, ushering her towards the instrument. ‘I take it this lever is the bellows. How do I...?’

  ‘Slowly!’ Laughing, Estelle sat down, flexing her fingers. ‘And regularly—like you’re pumping water.’

  She tested a chord, and it blared out, making Aidan jump and making her laugh more. She played a series of intricate scales, and then, with a theatrical flourish, the opening bars of Bach’s most famous piece for the organ, the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, before launching into the piece, playing it with a dramatic gusto that had Aidan, as she had intended, struggling to contain his laughter as he worked the bellows. When she was done, collapsing over the keyboard herself in gales of laughter, he applauded with a gusto to match her own, calling bravo, and it was only when he ceased that the pair of them realised he was not alone in his applause.

  ‘Mi scusi,’ Estelle said, jumping to her feet, horrified.

  But the priest smiled, extending his hand. ‘I didn’t know our humble organ could produce such a wonderful sound, signora. It was a pleasure to hear. Music is one of God’s gifts and we can celebrate Him in many different ways. You seem such a nice young couple. Please, feel free to come in and play any time you are passing.’

  ‘He thinks we’re either married or engaged,’ Estelle said with mock horror when they got outside.

  ‘We are,’ Aidan said.

  ‘What!’

  He grinned. ‘Engaged in the business of being friends. What else!’

  * * *

  The next day, their meanderings brought them to another part of the city and another dusty little piazza where a few rickety wooden tables had been set outside an osteria.

  ‘I think we might claim one of those,’ Aidan said, ‘what do you think?’

  ‘I think you know perfectly well that you didn’t need to ask,’ Estelle replied.

  The wine was rough, but the ribollita, a peasant soup made of stale bread, tomatoes and beans, Estelle pronounced delicious. ‘More a stew than a soup, and very filling, which is just as well,’ she said, eyeing the next dish with some trepidation. ‘I didn’t quite catch what this was?’

  ‘Lampredotto. Tripe. I fear it’s an acquired
taste. I can just about manage a couple of mouthfuls.’

  ‘I cannot contemplate even that.’ She grimaced. ‘What are we to do? I can’t possibly send back my plate untouched. It would be the ultimate insult. I can imagine how Phoebe would feel.’

  Aidan took a large glug of wine, before quickly tipping the contents of her plate on to his. ‘Oh, no,’ she protested, appalled, ‘you’ll be ill.’

  ‘Ah but I’ll have the compensation of feeling noble.’

  ‘Aidan Malahide, you are a true knight errant,’ Estelle said, quite seriously, ‘let me pour you some more wine to help it down.’

  He nodded, concentrating on the task in hand, and she concentrated on keeping his glass full. ‘Not so bad,’ he said when he had done, pushing his plate aside with a sigh of relief. ‘I expect an Italian would feel much the same, confronted with crubeens and cabbage.’

  ‘What on earth is a crubeen?’

  ‘You call yourself Irish! A boiled pig’s foot, of course. Have you really never tasted it?’

  ‘Have you?’ she asked, narrowing her eyes.

  ‘I have it served every Saturday—to my old grandmother’s receipt.’

  ‘That is a fib!’

  Aidan laughed. ‘It is. My old grandmother, what little I remember of her, wouldn’t have known the way to the kitchen. A woman with a strong sense of her own importance, and a strict proponent of the rule that children should be seen and not heard. Clodagh and I used to dread having to visit her. Once a month my father took us—she lived in a town house in Kildare itself, my father having had the presence of mind to forcibly relocate her from the castle when he inherited—or perhaps it was my mother’s idea, I’m not sure. Anyway, for some reason my grandmother favoured me very much over poor Clodagh. At tea there would always be a big slab of cake and a glass of milk for me, while my sister was given water and a dry biscuit.’

  ‘What on earth had Clodagh done to offend the old lady?’