The Reluctant Husband

The doctor studied her with narrowed eyes and a frown. Frankie looked with expectant triumph at Santino, but Santino was already lifting something off the enormous dressing table and extending it to the older man.

‘What’s that? What are you showing him?’ Frankie demanded jerkily, falling fast into the grip of nervous paranoia.

‘One of our wedding photographs, cara mia.’ Santino shot her rigid stillness a gleaming glance from beneath luxuriant black lashes and tossed the silver-framed photo onto the bed for her perusal.

Without reaching for it—indeed her fingers chose to clutch defensively into the bedspread instead—Frankie stared down fulminatingly at that photograph. Her throat closed over, the strangest lump forming round her vocal cords. There she was in all her old-fashioned wedding finery, sweet sixteen and so sickeningly infatuated that she glowed like a torch for all to see, her face turned up to Santino’s adoringly. Shame she hadn’t had the wit to notice that Santino’s smile had more than a suggestion of stoically gritted teeth about it than a similiar romantic fervour!

Quite irrationally, her eyes smarted with tears. Suddenly she appreciated that whether it was fair or not she really did hate Santino! He hadn’t had to go through with the wedding. When he had realised the gravity of the situation they were in, surely he could have smuggled her back out of the village again and sent her home to her mother in London? She refused to believe that he could not have found some other way out of their predicament, rather than simply knuckling down to her grandfather’s outrageous demand that he marry her!

The doctor was opening his bag when she lifted her head again. Throwing Santino an embittered glance, Frankie cleared her throat. ‘This man may once have been my husband but he is not any more. In fact—’

‘Cara...’ Santino chided in a hideously indulgent tone.

‘He stole my car!’ Frankie completed fiercely.

Carefully not looking at her, Dr Orsini said something in a low, concerned undertone to Santino. Santino sighed, contriving to appear more long-suffering than ever.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ Frankie’s voice shook.

The older man was too busy shaking his head in wonderment.

Santino strolled to the foot of the bed. ‘Francesca...’ he murmured. ‘I know I am not your favourite person right now, but these wild stories are beginning to sound a little weird.’

Her jaw dropped. She flushed scarlet and experienced such a spasm of frustrated fury that she was dimly surprised that she did not levitate off the bed. She slung Santino a blazing look that would have felled a charging rhino. It washed over him. For the very first time she recalled Santino’s wicked sense of humour. His sensual mouth spread into a teeth-clenchingly forgiving smile, white teeth flashing against his sun-bronzed skin. ‘Grazie, cara...’

‘You will be relieved to learn that the X-rays were completely clear,’ Dr Orsini told her in a bracing voice. He didn’t believe her; the man did not believe a word she had said!

‘X-rays...what X-rays?’ she mumbled.

‘You were X-rayed last night while you were still unconscious,’ Santino informed her.

‘Last night...?’ she stressed in confusion.

Santino nodded in grim confirmation. ‘You didn’t regain consciousness until the early hours of this morning.’

‘Where was I X-rayed?’ she pressed.

‘In the infirmary wing of the Convent of Santa Maria.’

Am I in a convent? Frankie wondered dazedly, her energy level seriously depleted by both injury and shock upon succeeding shock. In a room kept for the use of well-heeled private patients?

‘Your husband was most concerned that every precaution should be exercised,’ the older man explained quietly. ‘Try to keep more calm, signora.’

‘There’s nothing the matter with my nerves,’ Frankie muttered, but she couldn’t help noticing that nobody rushed to agree with her.

Her head was aching and her brain revolving in circles. While she endured a brief examination, and even answered questions with positive meekness, on one level she was actually wondering if she was still unconscious. All this—the strange environment, the peculiar behaviour of her companions—might simply be a dream. It was a most enticing conviction. But there was something horrendously realistic about Santino’s easy conversation with the doctor as he saw him to the door, apologising for keeping him out so late and wishing him a safe journey home. Her Italian was just about good enough to translate that brief dialogue.

As Santino strode back to the foot of the bed, Frankie reluctantly abandoned the idea that she was dreaming. With an unsteady hand, she reached for the glass of water by the bed and slowly sipped.

‘Are you hungry?’ Santino enquired calmly.

Frankie shook her head uneasily. Her stomach felt rather queasy. She snatched in a deep, quivering breath. ‘I want you to tell me what’s going on.’

Santino surveyed her with glittering golden eyes, his eloquent mouth taking on a sardonic curve. ‘I decided that it was time to remind you that you had a husband.’

Frankie froze. ‘For the last time...you are not my husband!’

‘Our marriage was not annulled, nor was it dissolved by divorce. Therefore,’ Santino spelt out levelly, ‘we are still married.’

‘No way!’ Frankie threw back. ‘The marriage was annulled!’

“Is that really your belief?’ Santino subjected her to an intent appraisal that made her pale skin flush.

‘It’s not just a belief,’ Frankie argued vehemently. ‘It’s what I know to be the truth!’

‘And the name of the legal firm employed on the task...it was Sweetberry and Hutchins?’ Santino queried.

Frankie blinked uncertainly. She had only once visited the solicitor, and that had been almost five years earlier. ‘Yes, that was the name... and the very fact that you know it,’ she suddenly grasped, ‘means that you know very well that we haven’t been married for years!’

‘Does it?’ Santino strolled over to the windows and gracefully swung back to face her again. ‘A marriage that is annulled is set aside as though it has never been in existence. So would you agree that if our marriage had been annulled so long ago I would have no financial obligation towards you?’

Confused as to what he could possibly be driving at, Frankie nodded, a tiny frown puckering her brows. ‘Of course.’

‘Then perhaps you would care to explain why I have been supporting you ever since you left Sardinia.’ Santino regarded her with cool, questioning expectancy.

‘Supporting...me?’ Frankie repeated in a tone of complete amazement. ‘You?’

‘I was expecting Diamond Lil to show up at the La Rocca hotel. The little Fiat was a surprise. A chauffeur-driven limo would have been more appropriate,’ Santino mused silkily.

Frankie released a shaken laugh. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been working for the past three years. I support myself. I have never received any money from you.’

Santino spread fluently expressive lean brown hands. ‘If that is true, it would appear that someone has committed fraud on an extensive scale since we last met.’

Her lashes fluttering in bemusement, Frankie studied him closely. He didn’t look as angry as he should have done, she thought dazedly. ‘Fraud?’ she repeated jerkily, the very seriousness of such a crime striking her. ‘But who...? I mean, how was the money paid?’

‘Through your solicitor.’

‘Gosh, he must be a real crook,’ Frankie mumbled, feeling suddenly weaker than ever, her limbs almost literally weighted to the bed. Santino had been paying money towards her support all these years? Even though she hadn’t received a penny of it, she was shattered by the news. Feeling as she did about him, she would never have accepted his money. He owed her nothing. In fact she felt really humiliated by the idea that he had thought he did have some sort of obligation towards her.

‘Forse...perhaps, but let us not leap to conclusions,’ Santino murmured, strangely detached from the news that someone had been ripping him off for years.

Frankie was thinking back to that one meeting she had had with ancient old Mr Sweetberry in his cluttered, dingy office. He had looked like a character out of a Charles Dickens novel, only lacking a pair of fingerless gloves. When he had realised that her marriage had taken place in a foreign country, he had looked very confused, as if it hadn’t previously occurred to him that people could get married outside the UK. In fact he had reacted with a blankness which hadn’t impressed Frankie at all. Her mother had then pointed out that Mr Sweetberry didn’t charge much for his services and that they could not afford to be too choosy.

‘Possibly,’ Santino remarked, ‘the guilty party might have been someone rather closer than your solicitor...’

Someone in Sardinia, someone on his side of the fence, she gathered he meant. Enormous relief swept over her, her own sense of responsibility eased by the idea. She felt incredibly tired but she still felt that she had to say it again. ‘I really wouldn’t have taken your money, Santino.’

Santino sent her a winging smile, alive with so much natural charisma that her heartbeat skidded into acceleration. ‘I believe you,’ he said quietly. ‘But the culprit must be apprehended, do you not think?’