A Sicilian Husband - Kate Walker [61]
‘I know. Megan told me.’
And because of that she had known just how much Gio had loved his Lucia. She had understood the lightning-strike of true passion when it had hit. Hadn’t she felt something of the same when she had first set eyes on Gio in that hotel bar? She hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him then and hadn’t been able to put him out of her mind ever since.
‘She also said that you and Lucia threatened to run away together if your parents didn’t agree to the marriage.’
‘The fuitina?’
Gio paused in his restless pacing and his mouth quirked up at one corner.
‘Yes, we threatened that—both families thought we were far too young to know our own minds. They wanted us to separate—live a little—before we committed ourselves to each other. But we had no doubts.’
‘What exactly is a fuitina?’
Terrie knew that she was just asking the question to keep the conversation going and because she didn’t know what else to say. She had to take a couple of much-needed seconds to pull herself together, adjust to the bruises on her heart where Gio’s words had landed, unknowingly wounding her, and the unfamiliar Sicilian term seemed the best possible distraction she could find.
‘It’s from Sicilian history—but sometimes it still happens today. Basically it just means running away together and it was used as a declaration of how serious your feelings were. It was a way for young lovers to be able to sleep together without moral condemnation.’
‘And would you have done it?’
She didn’t need the answer. It was there in his face; in his eyes. He would have done that and more if it had been the only way to win his Lucia.
‘We both would. But in the end we didn’t have to do anything quite so drastic. Our parents agreed to our engagement if I promised to concentrate hard on my studies, work at my training to be a lawyer. We were nineteen when we married.’
‘So young.’
‘Yeah—but we just couldn’t wait any longer…crazy, weren’t we?’
‘But perhaps you guessed, perhaps you sensed that it wasn’t going to be—that you weren’t going to be together forever. Perhaps you wanted to grab at what you had while you had it.’
She’d hit a vulnerable point there, Terrie thought, watching his eyes cloud. Wanting to erase the distress, she rushed on.
‘Tell me about her—what was she like?’
Did she really want to know this? she wondered as soon as she asked the question. But, strangely, as Gio started to speak she found that, contrary to what she had expected, his memories didn’t hurt. Instead she found they intrigued and absorbed her, telling her so much more about the man himself as he told her about the woman he had loved and lost.
She learned what he had been like as an adolescent and a young man. How hard he had worked to become the lawyer his mother wanted him to be—and to be able to support his new young wife in spite of the fact that his family was rich in its own right. She discovered the interests they had shared together, the simple joys that meant so much more than huge, great gestures. The personal, intimate things between a man and his wife.
But she also found out the deepest, most important things about Gio himself. She learned how he loved, why he loved. She learned how he felt about honesty and faithfulness; how he had handled the arguments, the problems and the disappointments that came the way of every marriage. He told her of his joy when he had learned that Lucia was pregnant, the magical moment when his son was born. He told her of his dreams of a large family, dreams that were tragically never to come true.
And she learned how he had suffered and grieved when Lucia had been snatched away from him far, far too soon. He didn’t trouble to hide the tears then; clearly felt no shame at the way they filled his eyes, dampened his cheeks and left the lush black lashes clumped together in thick, dark spikes. And Terrie respected him for that. And her heart twisted in sorrow, for both Gio and poor, pretty Lucia, who had not