Some Sunny Day (38 page)

Dispiritedly she stepped back from the front door and was just about to turn and walk away when abruptly it opened and Ricardo was standing there.

‘Rosie!’ There was shocked concern in his voice, instead of the guilt Rosie felt he should have been exhibiting.

‘I expect you know why I’m here,’ she challenged him determinedly.

‘Oh, my poor little love, what’s happened to you? You look so sad and thin.’

‘I am not your love,’ Rosie repudiated angrily. ‘I’ve come about the letter you sent to my father.’

A huge smile illuminated Ricardo’s face. ‘You have his letter? He wrote me that he had sent one to you. Oh, Rosie, it is just as I knew it would be. He wants your happiness above all else…’

Ricardo had taken hold of her arm and was drawing her into the small hallway, closing the door behind her so that they were enclosed in the cottage’s warmth.

‘You are wet and cold. Come and sit by the fire. You shouldn’t have walked here on a night like this. I had already asked if I could have time off
tomorrow to talk to you. Ah, but it warms my heart, my Rosie, to know that you were as impatient to see me as I have been to see you. I have missed you so much.’

This wasn’t what Rosie had expected. Doggedly she stuck to her guns. ‘You had no right to write to my father.’

Ricardo had opened the door into the cosy sitting room whilst he was talking to her and now she could see the log fire burning in the inglenook fireplace. The room was simply furnished with the bits and pieces he had been given, and immaculately clean and tidy. Her father, with a seaman’s habit of neatness, would approve of that. Rosie closed her eyes, squeezing back the painful sting of her unwanted tears. She had not come here looking for ways in which her father would approve of Ricardo.

Ricardo was still holding her arm. Angrily, Rosie wrenched it free. She could see the happiness fading from Ricardo’s face along with his smile as he registered her antagonism.

‘You are angry with me,’ he said quietly.

‘Yes,’ Rosie agreed. ‘I am – very angry. You should not have written to my father.’

‘How else could I have presented myself to him and asked for his permission to marry you?’

‘I had already told you why we could not be together; you knew about my mother, you knew how my father feels about Italians.’

‘I knew certainly how you
believed
he felt,’
Ricardo acknowledged quietly, ‘but it seemed to me when I put myself in his place that no matter how much the behaviour of your mother had hurt him, his love for you must mean that he would want your happiness above all else. And indeed, his letter to me confirms that this is so.’

‘Of course he’s going to say that, but that doesn’t mean that it’s what he really feels. I’m all he’s got. He needs me.’

‘When you marry me your father will have a whole new family. He will have a son-in-law and grandchildren, have you thought of that?’

‘You say that now but—’

‘I say it because it is what I mean. I shall be proud to have your father as my father-in-law, Rosie. I shall honour him as he should be honoured, and so will our children. He will always be assured of a home under my roof. That is the Italian way, you know that.’

Rosie could feel herself weakening. ‘What makes you think that he will want a home under your roof?’

‘I think it because he has written to tell me it is so,’ Ricardo told her simply.

‘Can’t you see he’s just saying that because of me, to make me feel better? But I know how he really feels.’

‘Do you? Or is it that you have changed your mind and are using your father as an excuse to end things between us? Is that what this is really all about, Rosie? Are you not the girl I thought
after all, but too much of a coward to say what is in your heart?’

‘No. It is not that at all,’ Rosie denied furiously.

‘So you do love me still then?’

How neatly he had trapped her, she recognised. ‘It is not my love for you that matters.’

‘Your father wouldn’t agree with you about that. He says that your feelings, your love are more important than anything else, at least to him. Have you thought, Rosie, how unhappy it would make him to see you unhappy?’

‘He wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t told him.’

‘Do you really think he wouldn’t have guessed that something was wrong? He loves you very dearly. Think, Rosie, if you had a child and they loved someone but felt for your sake they had to keep that love hidden, think how you would feel. Would you rejoice because they had protected your feelings, or would you grieve for their pain?’

Rosie already knew the answer. ‘You mustn’t do this to me. It isn’t fair.’ Her voice broke as her feelings overwhelmed her.

‘So what is fair? Is it fair that we should spend our lives apart, each yearning always for the other? You have told me already to find someone else but that can never happen, for no girl could ever mean to me what you do. I am sorry if I have angered you, but I was desperate, Rosie. I couldn’t bear to lose you, and when Mary told me about your father, and told me to write to him and throw
myself on his mercy, I knew that that was what I must do. Surely you can trust and believe in your father’s love, Rosie?’

‘Yes, of course I can.’

‘Then surely too you can trust and believe him when he says that he is happy to give us his blessing and that the bitterness he holds against Aldo is held against the man and not his race?’

Rosie opened her mouth to answer him but before she could speak she was overcome by a paroxysm of coughing that left her ribs aching with pain.

‘You are not well,’ Ricardo told her immediately.

‘It’s just a bit of a cough, that’s all,’ Rosie told him tiredly, and then shivered so violently that her teeth chattered together.

‘Come and sit down by the fire and get warm whilst I make you a hot drink. You should not have walked here tonight in the rain.’

‘I’m all right,’ Rosie insisted, but she still let him guide her towards the chair closest to the fire and push her gently into it.

‘Let me take these boots off and put them on the top of the range to dry them out a bit.’

‘I can take them off myself,’ Rosie protested, but somehow it was easier to lie back in the chair and let Ricardo remove them for her. This continual coughing left her so wrung out and exhausted sometimes, it was an effort just to breathe.

‘Your feet are so cold and wet.’

‘My boots leak, and we are not allowed to have another pair because of the shortage of material for them with the war.’

Ricardo had removed her wet socks now and was chafing her cold feet between his hands.

It was so cosy here in the cottage with him, being cosseted like this. She felt so tired that she could fall asleep right here in the chair. Another fit of shivers gripped her body, and then she sneezed.

‘You need what my English grandmother used to call a mustard bath,’ Ricardo told her, ‘but I don’t think I have any mustard.’

Rosie managed a weak laugh. ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she told him.

‘Your breeches are wet and I don’t think it is a good thing for you to be sitting in damp clothes, especially when you are not well already.’ Ricardo was still holding her feet in his hands. To Rosie’s shock he bent his head and kissed them lightly, causing a delicious feather-light tingle of pleasure to warm her body, followed by a sharp surge of anxiety. They were all alone here in the cottage. Ricardo was a very passionate man. He loved her and he knew that she loved him. He had her father’s permission to court her. In Ricardo’s eyes might all of this mean that he felt he had every right to the kind of intimacy they had not previously shared?

He had released her feet and was standing up. Did she feel anxious or was that tightening
sensation inside her more excitement and anticipation than apprehension?

‘I am very conscious of the fact that your father has put his trust in me, Rosie.’ Ricardo’s voice had deepened and thickened. ‘We are alone here together, and there is nothing I want more than to claim you as my own, but I am honour bound to think of your father and to act as though his gaze is upon me and his judgement hanging over me, for I am not just the man who loves you but the man who will one day be his son-in-law, and the father of our children and his grandchildren. I want you to know this before I say to you what I am going to say and to understand that my words and my actions are motivated by my concern for your health, and that they do not contain anything I would not want your father to witness. Do you understand?’

Rosie nodded.

‘Good. I am now going to go upstairs and bring down for you a warm dressing gown. Whilst I am in the kitchen, making you a hot drink and filling a hot-water bottle for you, you are to take off your wet clothes and put it on. I give you my word that I shall not come in until you say that I may do so.’

‘I can’t do that,’ Rosie protested, although in truth she was so cold and wet that there was nothing she wanted more. ‘I have to get back to the hostel.’

Ricardo shook his head firmly. ‘No, you cannot go back there tonight. You are not well enough.
In the morning I shall go and see the warden and explain to her the situation, and I shall ask as well that she arranges for the doctor to come out and see you. There is no point in arguing with me, Rosie. I am acting now not just as your husband-to-be but also in the place of your father,’ Ricardo told her sternly. ‘This, I know, is what he would want and expect me to do. When your father and I finally meet face to face, I want to be able to meet him as a man of honour.’

‘You
are
a man of honour, Ricardo,’ Rosie told him in between her increasing bouts of shivers. ‘You are the most honourable man I know.’

‘You will trust me then? Tonight?’ he emphasised. ‘In all things?’

Rosie looked up into his face and was overwhelmed by the force of her love for him. ‘Yes,’ she told him truthfully.

She had removed her damp clothes, kneeling on the rug in front of the fire, stripping right down to her underwear, and now she was wrapped snugly in the large warm dressing gown that smelled so wonderfully of Ricardo.

‘Here is some special coffee for you,’ he told her, coming in with a mug of rich dark coffee that smelled so strong she wrinkled her nose.

‘What’s in this?’ she demanded after she had taken a sip.

‘Brandy,’ Ricardo told her. ‘It will help to warm you and help your cough, so drink some more.’

Obediently Rosie did so, pulling a face and telling him, ‘Ughh, it tastes awful.’

‘But it warms the stomach, sì
?’

‘
Sì
,’ Rosie agreed and then giggled. She felt oddly light-headed, and somehow almost carefree, as though a huge weight had suddenly been lifted from her shoulders.

‘I will take your wet clothes and put them to dry over the range,’ she heard Ricardo telling her. ‘They are a wonderful piece of equipment for a cottage such as this, provided you know how to deal with them. I confess it took me nearly two weeks to learn how to keep it in without using too much fuel.’

Rosie laughed. ‘You’ve done very well. I’ve heard that they are well known for being difficult to deal with.’

‘You are warmer now?’ Ricardo asked her.

‘Much. But I don’t need a doctor, Ricardo,’ Rosie told him gratefully and then gasped as she suddenly started to cough so violently that Ricardo had to hold her mug of coffee. ‘The cough gets worse in the evening,’ she defended herself. ‘But I’m all right really.’

‘You are too thin, and whilst,
cara
, I would dearly like to think that you are wasting away on my account, it seems to me that you are not as well as you want us all to think.’

‘People have enough to worry about, without worrying about me as well.’

‘That is typical of you, Rosie, that you don’t want to cause others concern.’

She stood up, careful to keep the dressing gown wrapped tightly around herself, surprised to discover how pleasantly light-headed she felt. ‘I think you put too much brandy in my coffee,’ she told him solemnly.

‘It will help you sleep.’

‘Will it? Do you know, Ricardo, I don’t think I want to sleep. Dear Ricardo,’ she smiled beatifically at him, ‘I do love you so very, very much. Do you truly believe that my father doesn’t mind about us?’

‘Yes. I truly believe it,’ Ricardo assured her.

Rosie exhaled on a small happy sigh and then stood on her tiptoes and leaned forward to wrap her arms around Ricardo’s neck so that she could kiss him.

‘Rosie…’

‘Don’t you want me to kiss you, Ricardo?’ she reproached him. ‘I thought that you would.’

‘Rosie, I do,’ he assured her, his voice muffled, ‘but…Rosie…’

But it was too late. Rosie was pressing irresistible and eager little kisses all over his face.

‘Rosie…’ he protested thickly.

‘Ricardo?’ Rosie whispered back against his mouth. ‘Did I tell you how good it feels when you kiss me?’

The logs hissed and crackled in the fireplace as the wind buffeted the cottage. Rosie made a small ecstatic sound as she pressed herself closer to
Ricardo, lost in the wonder of what they were sharing. This was the first time they had truly been alone together, the first time they were free to whisper and kiss and touch, safe in the knowledge that there was nothing between them and no one to see them.

Rosie had stopped hugging Ricardo’s dressing gown round herself when she had reached up to wrap her arms around his neck and now
she
was the one to whisper softly to him, ‘Touch me, Ricardo…properly…here,’ she emphasised, taking his hand and placing it on the warm swell of her breast.

How was it possible for something as simple as a man’s touch to give her so much pleasure? She felt dizzy with delight on the intoxication of it, yearning eagerly for more, but Ricardo was already pushing her gently away.

‘This is not what your father would expect of me, Rosie. Not now, before we are married. And besides, you do realise, don’t you, my darling girl, that it would be totally wrong of me to take you to bed in your present condition?’

‘It’s just a bit of a cold, that’s all,’ Rosie protested.