The yell was drawn from her by the sudden tightening of Alex’s hand on her own, almost crushing her with its power.
‘Go with it!’ she said, wincing. ‘And the next one. Come on-come on-Alex, everything’s fine. I can see the head. It’s lying the right way round. Not a breech birth.’
Even through the pain that swamped her Alex managed a smile of relief. Ten minutes later the child emerged easily into Laura’s hands.
‘It’s a girl,’ she said, wrapping the infant hastily in her linen jacket.
Alex was looking in her baby’s face with passionate fondness, but she glanced up at Laura.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Without you-’
Laura found that her eyes were suddenly blurred. She brushed the tears aside, and when she looked up again she could see another car through the rear window.
‘It’s Rinaldo and Gino,’ she said.
She got out and went towards them as Rinaldo slammed on his brakes and leapt out, his face distraught.
‘For God’s sake!’ he shouted.
‘No panic! The baby’s born safely. Go and see.’
He rushed past her into the car.
‘Are you all right?’ Gino asked, looking at her anxiously.
‘Yes, and Alex is going to be fine when she gets into hospital. It’s a girl, perfect as far as I could see.’ She gave a slightly hysterical laugh. ‘There was no breech birth. Alex was worrying about nothing. So was Rinaldo.’
‘Worrying about nothing?’ he asked. ‘When the birth happened so fast and without warning? Suppose she’d been alone out here when it happened? But for you there might have been a tragedy.’
That startled her.
‘Well-yes-I didn’t think. Anyway it’s all over now.’
He regarded her fondly. ‘Is that all you have to say about being a heroine?’
‘The most scared heroine in history. I shall be glad when that ambulance-oh, thank goodness, there it is!’
They went to the car, whose door was standing open. Rinaldo was in the back seat with his wife and daughter. His head was bowed over the infant, concealing his face, and it took Laura a moment to realise that he was sobbing violently.
Alex had one arm around her child. The other hand was stroking her husband’s head. For just a brief moment she glanced up and her eyes met Laura’s, and the two women exchanged a smile of total understanding.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THAT night the family, minus Alex, celebrated with the supper Nikki had prepared. It was pronounced a triumph, and Nikki, fired with culinary genius, began making plans for the welcome home feast for when Alex returned with baby Laura.
There had never been any doubt about the name. The story of the birth had spread all over Belluna and now, wherever she went, she was greeted with cheers, and even applause.
She had become part of Belluna. If everyone’s reaction hadn’t told her, the naming of her new niece would have done. She had earned their respect, and was no longer an outsider, watching from the sidelines as her fate was decided.
As Alex had always known would happen, Rinaldo’s grouchiness vanished when he was no longer afraid for his wife’s safety. He doted on his new daughter, and openly treated his sister-in-law as a heroine.
‘The men of this family are so soft-hearted,’ Alex said to Laura, smiling, one evening when she had put the baby to bed. ‘When I was pregnant Rinaldo used to ask me a thousand questions to see if I was all right. You heard him. Now he asks a thousand questions to see if little Laura is all right. I’m really becoming sidelined.’
‘Oh, yeah!’ Laura said cynically, and Alex laughed. She glowed with the confidence of knowing where she belonged with her child, her man, her place in the world. It was the thing Laura most envied her.
One evening, as they were putting the baby to bed, Laura said, ‘Alex, do you realise that you don’t need us any more?’
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘Everything’s going well for you. The harvest was a record, the danger’s over-’
It wasn’t entirely a surprise when Alex became a little vague and self-conscious.
‘Actually-’ she began.
Laura smiled. ‘Go on.’
‘There was a little more to it than that. Even without the baby, Rinaldo and I wanted Gino to come back and see us as we are now, married and loving each other, a true family. Otherwise in his mind we’d have stayed frozen in time, as we were on the day he left, and that would have been bad for him, for all of us.
‘Rinaldo needs his brother. Little Laura needs her uncle, and me-well, I suppose I need to know that I didn’t do him any permanent harm.
‘This last year Rinaldo and I have been so happy, but there’s always been a shadow spoiling it, the fear that he might never be happy again.’
She looked hopefully at Laura, who nodded but stayed silent.
‘Laura, we so much want you all to stay,’ Alex said on a note of pleading. ‘Belluna is Gino’s home, his birthright. I don’t think he can really settle anywhere else. But maybe I’m wrong. I can see he’s changed this last year. It’s not just that he’s older. He’s more thoughtful. He’s found another life with you, and maybe he doesn’t need this one any more.’
‘No,’ Laura said at once. ‘You’re not wrong. I’ve been thinking the same thing. Before your letter arrived I told him he should come back here. I was so afraid that he’d sell up, then discover too late that it had been a terrible mistake.’
‘Ah, you understand him. I thought you would. You wouldn’t let him make a really bad mistake.’
‘You’re very kind,’ Laura said wryly, ‘but our marriage isn’t-as you think. Did he tell you that I proposed to him?’
‘No,’ Alex said, looking at her strangely. ‘I know that Nikki was a part of your decision, but not that you actually made the proposal. But so what?’ She gave a very Italian shrug. ‘Non è importante.’
‘Of course it’s important,’ Laura said, astonished. ‘It’s the wrong way around.’
Alex shrugged again. ‘Marriages happen as they happen. My own marriage was delayed because Rinaldo wouldn’t say he loved me until the harvest was in, and he could pay off the mortgage. Have you ever heard anything so absurd? Then, of course, he got impatient and harvested the grapes too soon, so they weren’t worth so much. Honestly, the foolishness of men!’
‘But I asked Gino to marry me because Nikki wanted him to be her father.’
‘And that’s the only reason? You didn’t love him? Or have you only come to love him since? You’re not going to deny that you do love him, are you?’
‘No,’ Laura said, smiling and shaking her head. ‘Of course I love him. How could any woman help loving him? Oh, sorry-I shouldn’t have said that?’
Alex laughed. ‘It’s all right, I agree with you. I love him dearly. He’s very lovable. But it’s not the kind of love I share with Rinaldo. That comes from another world. Gino is like my younger brother. In fact, he is my younger brother now.’
‘That’s how I saw him,’ Laura mused. ‘Or thought I did. But for me it didn’t work. I think I was in love with him then, although I didn’t know it. By the time I admitted it to myself we were already married, and now I’ll never know how he really feels about me.’
‘You never talk about it?’
‘What is there to talk about?’ Laura asked simply. ‘If you marry without saying you love each other, the subject somehow never comes up again.’
‘And I suppose he didn’t tell you what he said in his letter to Rinaldo?’
‘No.’
‘I think perhaps you ought to know.’ Alex reached into a drawer and pulled out a sheet of blue paper, that Laura recognised as her own. But when she held it out Laura shook her head as soon as she saw the words.