The Scarlet Thread by Evelyn Anthony Page A

husband. She got up and followed him inside. They went down to the beach side by side. He didn’t hold her hand or say anything. He dived in ahead of her.
    Fiercely she argued with herself, trying to be calm. I don’t have to be jealous. She’s dead, she and her child. But I heard her name cried out instead of mine, and I saw the look on his face when he talked about her. But I love him so much I’ll have to submit .
    She followed him up to the house and into the bedroom, stripped off her bathing suit, and then threw herself on the bed. She lay there with her legs apart and her breasts swelling as she looked up at him.
    â€œI’m your wife, Steven, and I love you so much I could die. Forgive me.”
    He made love very kindly and gently, trying to gain her forgiveness, but she clawed and bit like an animal, as if her ferocity could bind him to her and drive out the dead. And she said, gasping in his arms, “You’ll forget her. I’ll make you forget her.… I’ll eat you alive till you can’t think of anyone else.”
    Desire drained away from him. “Behave yourself,” he commanded her, and she shrank back, wounded. “That’s not what I want from you. I pay for that, Clara. I don’t want it from my wife.”
    She spat a vile Sicilian insult at him, and he slapped her across the face. Two of the men patrolling the outside of the house heard their raised voices, looked at each other and shrugged. They were in shirtsleeves and slacks, shoulder holsters unfastened to allow instant access to their guns if anyone approached. They heard the new Donna Falconi shrieking hysterically at her husband, and one of them sucked up his saliva and spat.
    â€œI’d take my belt to that one if I was him. She needs the shit beaten out of her.”
    His companion grinned. “You ever see the Don lose his temper? Holy Jesus, he’ll kill the little bitch. Come on, let’s leave ’em to it. You take the south side of the house, I’ll go around the east. Giorgio’s keeping his eyes open out back.”
    They sailed for Europe on the Queen Elizabeth . They were reconciled because they had to be. The families were now bound by a far-reaching business alliance. There was too much at stake beyond their personal happiness, and they accepted this in their different ways.
    Steven argued with himself that Clara was still very young and her parents had spoiled her rotten. But she loved him, and he knew he must come to terms with her jealousy. It would pass in time, as she matured and her self-confidence grew. He had asked too much of her too quickly. He chided himself for having underestimated the fiery Sicilian temperament.
    When she cried and begged him to love her, he came very close to tenderness as well as sexual desire. They’d be happy, he insisted.
    Clara suffered. It was a new experience for her, and she was driven mad from loving a husband she couldn’t possess. She had led a charmed life, protected from the least disappointment or frustration. She was helpless in this situation, at the mercy of an unbridled temper and her passion. Suspicion tortured her, so that she watched him constantly. She tried to please him but was never sure she succeeded. She was beautiful, and the admiring looks of men aboard the liner told her that she could have anyone she chose. But the ghost of a dead woman mocked her in Steven’s arms. And the ghost of a dead child. That at least she could send quickly to its grave. She knelt by her bed at night and prayed to the Virgin and the saints to make her pregnant.
    She knew her father was delighted with the marriage. In calmer moments, she realized that he would dismiss a wartime love affair with a shrug and wonder what she was complaining about. He wouldn’t be pleased if there was trouble. He expected a good marriage, grandchildren to gladden his old age, and all the benefits of a treaty with Lucca Falconi. She