The Italian's Token Wife

He made a hearty meal, and as soon as he had finished another, even larger bowl of pasta and sauce was placed in front of Magda.

‘Eat,’ the woman instructed, taking Benji from her. Balancing him expertly on her own hip, she turned to fill a cup with some water, and gave it to him to drink from with equal expertise. Surprisingly, Benji seemed perfectly happy with this, and started to gurgle.

The woman beamed, and addressed him in voluble Italian of which Magda caught only one word—bambino. Then, extracting a wooden stirrer from a large earthenware pot on the window ledge, the woman presented it to Benji—who grabbed it eagerly—and sat herself down opposite Magda.

‘Eat,’ she repeated, as Magda paused in her own consumption of pasta. It was totally delicious, and she was wolfing it down as eagerly as Benji had.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, still feeling intensely awkward as well as grateful.

The woman let her finish, amusing herself by entertaining Benji, who was in no way dismayed to be addressed in a foreign language. Magda watched covertly, between mouthfuls. The woman was obviously very experienced with children, and knew exactly what Benji found entertaining—which was largely banging the wooden stirrer on the table and trying to knock over the pepperpot.

Magda scraped the last of the tomato sauce with her spoon and gave a satisfied sigh. The woman looked across at her.

‘So,’ she announced. ‘Now we talk.’ She hefted Benji from one side of her lap to the other. ‘You tell me,’ she said in her heavily accented English. ‘Is Rafaello the father?’

A look of total stupefaction filled Magda’s face. Her mouth fell open in shock. Her reaction seemed to please the woman.

‘Well, that is one relief at least,’ she announced. The snap was back in her voice, and Magda, finally over-wrought by all the events of the day, found her throat tightening.

‘So,’ went on the woman relentlessly, ‘he has married simply to make his father angry. Idiota!’

Magda stared helplessly. She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what she could say. She had had no idea that she would be walking into such a volatile situation. But evidently it did not surprise the housekeeper—or so she assumed this woman must be.

‘Is he mad, finally to do this to his father?’ the woman exclaimed. ‘Always the same—always. Always they fight like…like the men of sheep…their heads—so!’ She slid one hand past Benji and made a fist, together with the other, and clashed the knuckles together, like rams’ horns impacting. ‘But this—this is the worst.’

‘I…I’m sorry,’ said Magda. It seemed the only thing to say.

The woman said something in Italian. ‘Well, well,’ she went on in English. ‘It is done now. So, if Rafaello is not the father of your child, why do you marry him?’

The bluntness of the question took Magda aback.

‘Um—Signor di Viscenti said he needed to be married for legal reasons by his thirtieth birthday. I…I agreed because…’

She felt silent. Suddenly it seemed shameful to admit that she had married a complete stranger for financial gain.

The woman’s eyes took on a shrewd expression.

‘He offers you money, yes?’

Colour stained Magda’s cheekbones. She looked down. ‘With…with the money Signor di Viscenti has promised me I can buy a little house for my son.’

The tch-ing noise came again. ‘And the father of your bambino? No, no, do not tell me.’ The voice sounded old and tired. ‘He has gone, no? It is always the same—the men do not care and the girls are foolish.’

She started to clear away the empty pasta dishes, handing Benji back to Magda. ‘Well, well, there is nothing to be done. But I tell you—’ a dark, warning look came Magda’s way ‘—after this his father will never forgive Rafaello.’

Sunlight pressing on Rafaello’s eyes made him groan. Slowly, he roused to an unwelcome consciousness, and then wished himself still in oblivion. He’d stormed out of the villa yesterday evening, his father’s curses still ringing in his ears. Tearing down the valley in his high-powered sports car, he’d replayed every ugly word that had been exchanged. His father’s incandescent rage and his own vicious taunting, telling him that thanks to his insistence on his son marrying he now had a daughter-in-law who came complete with a fatherless baby and who cleaned toilets for a living.

For ten seconds he’d thought Enrico would have a cardiac arrest on the spot—until his temper had burst out again and he’d rained down verbal abuse on his son for shaming the family name. As for Lucia, she’d been wearing an expression like Lucretia Borgia on a bad hair day—looking for someone to poison that could only be him.