The Man from Tuscany

Thankfully my nausea wasn’t too severe, and I wasn’t showing yet. My clothes, though, didn’t fit as easily as they once had and if I didn’t want to be escorted down the aisle with my burgeoning midriff half-hidden behind a massive bouquet, we had little time to lose.

“We thought two weeks from now, on the seventh of November,” Brian said, when asked about a wedding date.

“But that’s far too soon!” my mother objected. “Why, I’m not sure we can even get a decent wedding dress by then, let alone a place to hold a reception. What’s the rush?”

“The holiday season’s coming up, and that’s always busy,” he explained. Then, with charming diffidence added, “And I’m an impatient groom. I don’t want to wait until the new year. Anna might change her mind about taking me on as a husband.”

“We’d prefer something quiet and intimate anyway,” I said, playing my part as eager bride. “With the situation in Europe as bad as it is, a big, splashy wedding seems rather tasteless.”

I’d effectively shifted attention away from us and back to the ever-present topic of the war. “You’ve got a point,” my future father-in-law agreed. “It’s just a matter of time before America’s in the thick of it, so you might as well enjoy yourselves while you still can.”

I substituted an aquamarine silk suit with a matching hat for the long white gown and bridal veil I’d always imagined I’d wear on my wedding day. Genevieve, in dove-gray, was my only attendant.

Brian and I were married in my parents’ drawing room, in front of a handful of guests, with a pale November sun shining through the windows. After a champagne lunch, he and I slipped away for a two-day honeymoon in Connecticut.

Ironically I was able to continue as Dr. Reese’s patient because, for a wedding present, our parents bought us the house in Wakefield. We were very lucky. If they had questions about the haste with which Brian and I had rushed into marriage, they chose not to say them aloud. We were, to all intents and purposes, a blissfully happy couple, beginning a long life together. No one but Brian knew how often I cried myself to sleep at night.

CHAPTER FIVE

A FLIGHT ATTENDANT came by to spread linen place mats over their tables and offer drinks. “They’re getting ready to serve dinner, Gran, and you’re losing your voice,” Carly said, glad of an excuse to halt the story before she said something she’d regret.

Her earlier resentment had come flooding back, burying any fledgling sympathy she’d felt for Anna’s blighted love affair. Her grandpa Brian was a hero in his own right and deserved better than to be another man’s stand-in. As for Marco Paretti, he had a lot to answer for, seducing an innocent girl and leaving her pregnant. Anna might have been a virgin when they met, but Carly would bet her last dollar the same couldn’t be said about him. He was smooth, though; she’d grant him that.

“A glass of white wine, please,” she told the flight attendant. The mood she was in right then, she could have downed a whole bottle and it wouldn’t have numbed her indignation. How she was going to stomach a whole summer with the man who’d stolen her grandmother’s heart and served her grandfather the leftovers, she couldn’t imagine.

But the in-flight meal couldn’t last forever, and before long Anna was rooting through her stack of letters, clearly impatient to pick up where she’d left off.

Resigned, Carly settled in for the next installment.

I HIDE A SMILE , aware that I haven’t made a fan of my granddaughter quite yet. The mutinous set of her mouth reminds me of her mother when she was a teenager.

“I’d discovered a gem in Brian,” I begin.

Although unfailingly tender with me, not once during those first few weeks did he press me to consummate our marriage. My health and the well-being of my baby were his primary concerns. Gradually, though, acceptance of what I couldn’t change softened the raw edges of my grief a little, and by Christmas I was prompted by both guilt and gratitude to become in fact the wife I was in name. Difficult though it might be, I knew I’d have to make the first overtures.

Our house looked very festive, with a large wreath on the front door, a Norfolk pine in the living room and evergreen swags along the mantelpieces. On Christmas Eve, after we’d placed our gifts under the tree, we went upstairs and, as was our habit, prepared for bed separately in the privacy of the bathroom. Neither of us had ever seen the other naked. That night, though, instead of putting on my usual flannel nightgown with the long sleeves and high neck, I appeared in the bedroom wearing the silky, rather naughty gown Genevieve had given me as part of my trousseau. By then I was well into my sixteenth week, and despite the tragedy that had marked its beginning, pregnancy agreed with me. My skin glowed and my hair fell thick and lustrous to my shoulders. Genevieve’s gift was made for a woman with the kind of lush curves I now possessed.

Brian was already in bed, reading with the pillows propped at his back, but when he glanced up and saw me, the book fell from his hands and slid to the floor.

Climbing in beside him, I placed my hand on his chest. “You seem surprised,” I said—a vast understatement, considering he was almost glassy-eyed with shock, “but it’s about time, wouldn’t you say?”

A somewhat ambiguous invitation, no doubt, but he understood what I was really saying. “Are you sure, Anna?”

Just briefly, the last time I’d made love nibbled at my mind before I managed to shut out the memory. “Very,” I said, and slowly undid the buttons on his pajama jacket. “You are my husband, Brian.”

Our lovemaking was slow and very sweet. He was nervous, and endearingly clumsy because of it. “I’ve never done this before,” he muttered, lifting the hem of my gown with trembling fingers.

I couldn’t say the same, but I wasn’t any sort of expert, either, so we stumbled on together, discovering each other in the dark because we were too bashful to leave the light on. And for the first time in my marriage—perhaps even in my entire life—I gave of myself unselfishly, caring more about pleasing someone else than my own needs.

After, we lay with our hands joined. “Merry Christmas,” I whispered.

“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Wexley,” he said. Then, after a pause, “How are you doing really? ”

For a moment I was tempted to take the question at face value and tell him I felt wonderful. But he wasn’t asking about our lovemaking, and if I had to identify the greatest strength in our marriage, it was that we never lied to each other. Now was not the time to start.

“Some days are better than others,” I admitted, “but it’s becoming easier, and I have you to thank for that. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You’ll never have to find out, honey,” he said. “I want you to be happy again, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I said, and it was true. That it wasn’t the same sort of love I’d known with Marco didn’t make it any less real.

He reached down and boldly stroked the slightly convex dome of my abdomen. “When are we going to come clean with our folks about this?”

We were spending Christmas Day with both families at his parents’ house. “Perhaps tomorrow would be appropriate—a sort of bonus gift. Apart from anything else, we can’t put off telling them much longer.”

“I’m surprised they haven’t already noticed,” Brian remarked.

But I’d been wearing concealing clothes, and also I wasn’t very big for four months, which had been a concern until Dr. Reese assured me there was no cause for alarm. Our parents probably attributed the reason I was blooming to our wedded bliss.

“Marriage must suit you,” my mother had commented just a few days before. “You lost so much weight and seemed so listless after you came back from Europe, and it’s good to see you looking more like your old self again. For a while, we were worried that you’d picked up some sort of ailment while you were in Europe.”

Would they immediately jump to a different conclusion when we shared the news? I wondered.

Echoing my question, Brian said, “The first thing they’ll ask is when the baby’s due.”

“I know.”

Approximately May 31, Dr. Reese had predicted. A scant six months after the wedding, which in itself could lead to unfortunate speculation about who the father might be, since I’d been on the other side of the world when I’d conceived.

“We don’t have to be too exact,” he suggested. “Let’s tell them you’re due in the summer and leave it at that. From all I’ve read, first babies especially don’t adhere to a rigid timetable. Just because we happen to know this one’s going to be born ahead of schedule doesn’t obligate us to share the news with anyone else. Once he puts in an appearance, the excitement of having a grandchild will be all our parents care about.”

“But they can count,” I said. “Sooner or later, they’ll figure out I was pregnant when we got married.”

“They’re probably already wondering, Anna, considering how we rushed the wedding, but I doubt they’ll be so crass as to make an issue of something they can do absolutely nothing about. If they do, though, I’m perfectly prepared to tell them it’s none of their business.”

One reason I loved my husband was that he took problems I tended to blow out of all proportion and put them in perspective. “This is one lucky baby, that he has you to look out for him,” I murmured sleepily.

He pulled me closer and tucked the covers more snugly around us. “It’s not a matter of luck. It’s about doing whatever you can for the people you care about.”

A S HE PREDICTED , our parents were thrilled at the idea of a grandchild, and if they were indeed suspicious about the timing, they chose to ignore it.

Once the news was out, the baby became the favorite topic of conversation, almost overshadowing the worsening situation in Europe. Our mothers vied to see who could knit faster, then joined forces on shopping sprees to Boston, coming home loaded with parcels. By February, I had enough infant clothes to outfit an orphanage. My parents bought the crib; Brian’s, the baby carriage. My father rescued from the attic the antique cradle I’d slept in as a newborn and applied a fresh coat of varnish.

Brian put in long days at the college during the early part of the new year, hoping to complete his studies by the end of the spring session. During the hours he was gone, I kept busy setting up the nursery and fulfilling my social obligations as a married woman.

Helped by my mother’s housekeeper, I learned to cook, and tried to have the evening meal prepared when Brian came home. We ate by candlelight, in the dining room, using our everyday china and silver-plate cutlery. On weekends, when we often entertained, I brought out the fine china and the sterling.

“Were you really happy during those early months, Gran?” Carly asks hopefully.

“In all honesty, darling girl, no, I was not. Too often at night, Marco stole in while I slept. My dreams—sometimes painful, sometimes glorious but always vivid—took me hostage. I relived those precious weeks we’d shared, hearing his voice, seeing his face. Some days, I’d wake up smiling and happy—until reality intruded and made me cry.”

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