The Man from Tuscany. Catherine Spencer
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“Why not? We’re both single and unattached. My prospects are good. I’m twenty-four and ready to settle down, and you need a husband. No doubt people will talk and add up dates when your condition becomes obvious, but they’ll assume the baby’s mine and that’s what matters. Based on our lifelong friendship and the fondness we have for each other, I’d say that all adds up to a pretty compelling reason to plan a wedding as soon as possible.”
I pause in my story, turning to Carly. “He was offering me an easy solution, and the temptation to take him up on it was huge. Although he was nothing like Marco, your grandfather, Carly, was the sort of man any woman would be proud to call her husband, and believe me when I say I was well aware of that fact. He was tall, strong and good-looking. An avid sailor, crack golfer and former high school basketball star. More than that, he was kind and generous and intelligent.”
She nods mutely and I go on.
We shared a similar background, Brian and I, and if I’d never spent a summer in Italy, I might very well have married him anyway. But “I can’t let you do this,” I protested. “You don’t deserve to be smeared with my scandal.”
“Does your baby deserve to be labeled a bastard, Anna? Consider that before you turn me down.”
His observation brought home the wider implications of my situation. Those other options—an illegal abortion, or adoption—were out of the question. How could I deny my baby, when his father had taught me that nothing is shameful or forbidden in the expression of true love? Yet to subject a child to the shame of illegitimacy was equally unacceptable.
Still, I made one last stab at resistance. “What about our parents? Won’t they be suspicious?”
“Don’t worry about them,” Brian said with a laugh. “They’ve already got us halfway down the aisle. They’ll be happy to push us the rest of the way.”
“It would be the ideal solution,” Genevieve murmured.
Brian squeezed my hand. “And definitely best for the baby.”
Suddenly, from the ashes of my dreams, a tiny miracle presented itself. Part of Marco was growing inside me. I owed it to him to give his child the best possible life, and because of Brian’s generosity and decency, I was in a position to do so.
“You don’t have to decide right away,” he said, taking my silence for uncertainty. “Think it over, and let me know when I come home on the weekend.”
But making up my mind on the spot, I said, “I don’t need to wait that long. I’ll marry you, Brian, and I promise you now that you’ll never regret it. I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy.”
His smile suggested I’d done him the world’s biggest favor. No one watching would have guessed that ours would be a marriage of convenience. “Then start making plans. I’ll speak to your father on Saturday.”
I never learned exactly what transpired between my father and Brian that next weekend. They remained in the library quite a while, their voices an indistinct rumble beyond the thick oak door. But by Sunday, I was wearing an engagement ring and that night, our two families celebrated our upcoming wedding with dinner at the yacht club.
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.
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