To Marry a Tiger by Isobel Chace Read Free Book Online

stupid, but at least I meant well!”
    “Spare me your good intentions!” Mario stormed at her. “It is well known which roads are paved with them!”
    Ruth bit her lip. An irrepressible urge to giggle defeated her. “I always knew Pluto lived about these parts,” she said. “Are you he, by any chance?”
    Mario looked impossibly angry. “Are you joking?”
    The desire to giggle left her. “I’m sorry,” she said.
    “Anyway, what do you know about Roman legends?” he said crossly. “That story was bo rn in Sicily. Did you know that?”
    Ruth nodded solemnly . “Do you think the underworld was the same place as Hell?” she asked him.
    “No, I do not. Nor am I any relation to Hell’s guardian, whatever you might think! Am I really so impossible?”
    She cast him a shy look. To tell the truth she didn’t find him impossible at all. She was a little frightened of him, she thought, particularly w hen he glared at her down his long nose, but she could quite easily grow used to that. He was, she discovered with some surprise, a great deal nicer than she had supposed.
    “No,” she said in a stifled voice, “I don’t find you impossible.”
    “Nor I you. In fact I am becoming more reconciled by the minute to our marriage—”
    “Don’t be silly!” she reproved him.
    He sat on the end of her bed, a slight smile on his face. “I wish it could be as easily resolved as you think,” he sighed. “But this is Sicily, my dear, not the green fields of England. There’s not a soul who won’t believe that we spent the night together and, in Sicily, there is only one conclusion that can come of that . I must marry you as soon as possible!”
    “But I’m going back to England. I don’t care if they do doubt my honour!” Ruth said heatedly.
    “It is my honour which is in question,” he replied.
    “But why should you care?” she wondered.
    “Perhaps because I do live in Sicily. If your advent had been a little less public, we might have put a good face on it. But Giulia has already spoken to her family and so on. Nor,” he added wryly, “do I suppose that you had the good sense to stay close to the house all day yesterday?” One glance at her face told him that she had not. “What did you do?” he asked her.
    “Henry Brett took me to see the new scheme,” she confessed humbly.
    “So the whole village saw you!” he groaned.
    “They saw us both,” she admitted. “We had lunch in the little restaurant there.”
    He groaned. “And watched you come back here, I suppose?”
    She was silent. She was wise enough to know that she had very little understanding of the Sicilian code of behaviour. Wryly, she remembered how she had warned Pearl about their peculiar ideas of honour that forced any compromised girl into marriage whether she wished it or not. She had never even remotely suspected that it might happen to her!
    “That isn’t all,” she blurted out finally. “On the boat, I shared a cabin with your aunt, and I told her all about it!”
    “You did what?” The menace in his voice was unmistakable.
    Ruth’s hand went up to her mouth. “You shouldn’t have addressed your letter to Miss Arnold,” she countered. “You must have known that I am the elder sister!”
    “A nice point!” he said nastily. “I wondered what excuse you had for reading your sister’s letter.”
    “Her name wasn’t even mentioned!”
    Mario laughed without any humour at all. “And so you supposed that I was writing to you? On a few minutes’ acquaintance?”
    “No, I didn’t,” Ruth admitted. “But I had to do something! I knew you were out to hurt Pearl, and now that you can’t, you’re going to hurt me instead!” She tried valiantly not to cry, failed, and wiped the tears angrily from her cheeks. “Well, you won’t!” she tossed at him. “I don’t care—that!—for your honour, so there!” She flicked her fingers at him, more than ever annoyed by his laughter.
    “Truly, my love, I shall not hurt