From Venice With Love: Secrets of Castillo del Arco

Her friend laughed. ‘Okay, so I thought you were being rash and I was worried about you. But I’ve seen you with Raoul, and do you really think I would interfere in anything, or in your dealings with anyone, who had obviously made you so happy? It is clear Raoul loves you with all his heart.’

Gabriella wrapped her arm around her friend and squeezed her tight, for she had needed to hear that. ‘Thank you so much for that. Because it is crazy, how fast this has all happened. But I love him so much. I love him with all my heart. I want to spend the rest of my life with him.’

She turned away then, pretending to be interested in the sparkle of the diamond-encrusted pearl earrings in her lobes, wondering where the hell the knock on the door she was waiting for to tell her it was time to start the ceremony was, knowing she should take courage from her friend’s words.

It is clear Raoul loves you with all his heart.

Was it clear? She wanted it to be true. Because still he had not said the words to her. And then she thought again of the words he had said to her, letting them lend her strength …

Some things do not need to be said for us to know them to be true.

And she knew he would say it. He was just waiting for the right moment. Like tonight.

A sizzle of raw heat slid down her spine and sparked a fire deep in her belly. Tonight they would consummate their marriage in that place where it had first happened, under the lover’s alcove.

She could hardly wait.

She heard a knock on her door and felt a hand on her arm, seeing Phillipa in the reflection in the mirror. ‘It’s time,’ her friend said.

The chapel was lit with burnished golden light, the sun already descending over Venice and gilding the assembled guests. There weren’t a lot, not that Gabriella noticed anything once she saw Raoul standing at the front waiting for her, his hair blue-black under the light, slicked back into his signature ponytail, his dark suit showing his height and the breadth of his shoulders to perfection.

And, although she believed in Raoul with all her heart, although she knew that he loved her, still she looked for some kind of sign—something to confirm that she was not acting crazy, agreeing to marry a man so quickly. Something to confirm he was the man she wanted, who wanted her.

She watched him say something to Marco standing alongside him, when the music heralding her entrance started. Marco glanced up and stopped him with just a tap to his shoulder and a nod, and Raoul stilled and turned around.

Their eyes meet across the small chapel and she felt the impact of his like a blast of heat. Raoul, her soul seemed to whisper, relief infusing every part of her as their gazes tangled and meshed, knowing nobody could look at her that way unless he truly loved her. Unless he was her soul mate. Nobody else could make her feel so alive, so desired.

Phillipa turned to her and beamed. ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Did you see the way he looked at you? This guy is seriously in love.’ And then she threw her smile and turned, setting off slowly down the aisle.

‘I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.’

It was done.

Raoul felt the rush of success lift the weight of a promise made to a dying man clean from his shoulders in a tidal surge. But then he made the mistake of looking down at his new bride, who was watching him through that veil with those damned cat-like eyes, anticipating his kiss, full of expectant hopes, dreams and wishes; the tide crashed right back over him.

‘I love you,’ she mouthed and he wanted to run right then and there from the chapel. Guilt crashed over him. Hadn’t he done enough? He’d married her, hadn’t he?

He’d never wanted her love.

But people were waiting; the priest was waiting, and she was waiting. She looked more like a goddess than any woman had a right to, every diamond hanging from her ear, every bead on her dress, even the moisture in her eyes, catching the light so that she sparkled before him like a glass of fine champagne waiting to be sipped.

So he forced himself to smile. Forced himself to look at her like a man who had realised his ultimate dream and had not just fulfilled a promise to a dying friend. He lifted the veil that separated them and dipped his head, curling a hand around her slim neck and trying not to think about how good she felt under his hand, how taut her skin was, how smooth. Then they kissed and he tried not to think about how good she tasted—sweet, ripe and willing. While the ‘willing’ was difficult enough to forget, it was her whispered, “I love you,” that tortured him the most.

Because she wouldn’t love him when this was over.

She would never speak to him again.

She would hate him for ever.

Anticipation bubbled in her veins as Raoul handed her into the vaporetto and then tucked her in beside him. The wedding and reception had been everything she’d ever dreamed of and more, every little girl’s fantasy come true. And now she was anticipating a wedding night that was her big-girl fantasy come true, the night she’d been dreaming of ever since he had proposed those few long weeks ago.

It was late, the moon already wearying of the night, and she didn’t mind at first that he had little to say. They’d spent a night talking, laughing and being congratulated, barely having time to speak to each other. So it was good to have the time to sit in the curve of his arm and contemplate the coming pleasures.

With every passing minute she felt anticipation coil and grow inside her. Tonight they would once again join the parade of nymphs, satyrs, gods and goddesses engaged in the act of love. The thought brought a secret smile to her face. She snuggled in closer to her new husband, breathing in his signature scent, relishing it, knowing that from tonight it was just one more pleasure at her disposal.

‘I love your scent,’ she murmured, nestling closer, thinking about returning to the palazzo and spending their wedding night in each other’s arms in the lover’s alcove. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of it.’

Something about the way his body stiffened and shifted against her made her look up. She noticed the lights around them looked wrong; they seemed to be heading away from Venice instead of towards it.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

‘The airport.’

‘Raoul,’ she said, half-disappointed they were not going straight home to the apartment, half-delighted that he had gone to some trouble to make this night special. ‘You actually planned a honeymoon and you didn’t tell me? Where are we going?’

‘Spain.’

‘Tonight?’ she said with a tinge of regret. ‘But it’s already so late, and I was hoping …’

‘It’s not far,’ he said abruptly, apparently more interested in looking out to sea in the direction they were going than looking at her, and letting whatever she was hoping slide right on by. ‘You can sleep on the plane.’

She swallowed down the bubble of disappointment. It was thoughtful that he’d wanted to surprise her, really it was, but she didn’t want to sleep on a plane. Not tonight. Not when she’d been hoping that soon she would be once again lying with her new husband in her big, wide bed—their big, wide bed—amongst the nymphs and satyrs, joining them once again in their endless celebrations of the flesh, only this time as a married couple.

But, while it was sweet he’d wanted to find somewhere more special for their first married night together, something seemed wrong.

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Of course’

‘Are you sure? Something seems to be bothering you.’

‘It’s nothing,’ he said.

And then she remembered. ‘Didn’t your family have a place somewhere in Spain once?’ she asked, remembering a snippet from her past. His head snapped around towards her, but before she could read anything in his eyes his mobile phone rang.

He pulled it from his pocket and checked the caller ID before holding the phone up to his ear and turning away. ‘Excuse me, I must take this call …’

Gabriella jerked awake as the car came to a halt. She’d slept fitfully, first on the charter jet and then in the back of the car that had been waiting for them at the airport when they had landed.

‘We’re here,’ Raoul said beside her. She stretched and blinked, wondering where the resort was when she could see nothing through the gloom and swirling mist except a glimpse of grey stone walls that were just as quickly swallowed up again.

She yawned, bone weary, wondering what time it was as a light snapped on somewhere, turning the outside world a glaring white as her door was pulled open. ‘Marco,’ she said, shivering as he helped her alight to the misty outside world, a world that carried the scent of salt and sea and the sound of surf crashing somewhere nearby. ‘How did you get here so quickly?’

He nodded. ‘Natania and I left straight after the ceremony to get things ready. Welcome, Signora del Arco.’ Through her weariness shot a burst of pleasure. She was a married woman now and the idea was still so novel it sent a thrill coursing through her. A married woman, as of tonight—soon to be married in every sense of the word. She shivered again, this time less due to the cold and more to the anticipation of what was still to come.

‘Did you hear that, Raoul?’ she said, looking around for him, but he mustn’t have heard or was thinking about something else—because he was scowling, his features tight as he rounded the car from the other side.

‘Get the luggage, Marco,’ he snapped, before turning perfunctorily to her. ‘It’s cold out here. Let’s go inside.’

Something was definitely on his mind, she gathered. He’d been abrupt ever since they’d left the wedding. Or maybe he was just as tired as she. Still, she wished for the warmth of his arm around her or even the warm gesture of walking hand in hand. She realised he had barely touched her since the vaporetto trip across the water. ‘What is this place?’ she asked, still wearing her heels and cautiously following him up a short flight of ancient stone steps worn low by the footprints of a hundred generations. ‘Where exactly are we?’

‘Galicia,’ he said. ‘On the Atlantic coast of Spain.’

Around them the mist swirled, danced and kissed her bare skin with cold, damp lips, while above them rose high stone walls that looked grim and austere and that disappeared into the fog. The surf continued to crash unseen somewhere below.

A door opened before them, massive and heavy with enormous iron fittings. Natania was there to welcome them into the massive entrance hall, looking rumpled and sexy, but sullen with it, as though their arrival had inconveniently interrupted the other couple and she’d had to hastily pull her clothes back on.

‘Do you want something to eat?’ she asked unconvincingly, looking from one to the other. Gabriella waited, hoping Raoul would say they were going straight to bed.

‘You show Gabriella to her room,’ he surprised her by saying instead. ‘I’ll be in the study. Unless,’ he said, turning to her, ‘You’re hungry?’

She was too shocked for a moment to respond and she wasn’t sure what bothered her more: the talk of her room instead of ours, or the fact he was not coming with her. ‘Not at all, but …’

‘Then Natania will show you upstairs. You must be tired.’ He kissed her on the cheek, a platonic kiss, a benevolent kiss. A kiss that went nowhere near to being the kind of kiss she was looking for this night of all nights. ‘I will see you in the morning. Sleep well.’

‘This way,’ Natania said, bangles jangling on her wrists as she headed for a curving staircase, a sound that jangled on Gabriella’s already shot nerves. But there was no way she was going to follow the woman when her new husband was already going in the other direction.

‘Raoul!’ she said, her heels clicking on the flagstone floor. She caught up with him halfway across the floor, took his arm and attempted a smile and a laugh, as if there had been some kind of mistake. There had to have been some kind of mistake. ‘It’s our wedding night, Raoul. Surely you’re not going to spend it in the study working all night?’

Something in his expression softened. He touched a hand to her hair. ‘I’m sorry, Bella.’ It was the first time, she realised, he had used his pet name for her today. ‘But it is very late and there is something I must attend to. And I thought you would appreciate a rest after our long day.’

‘Can’t it wait?’

‘No.’

‘Then I will wait for you, Raoul. You have to sleep some time.’

He just looked at her, and his dark eyes looked so empty it chilled her all the way to her bones. ‘As you wish.’

She pushed up on her toes and kissed him on the lips, brazenly letting her breasts press against his chest, lingering there so could be in no way unclear as to whether she would rather sleep or make love, no matter how long his work took or what time he came in. ‘I wish.’

Natania was waiting for her on the stairs, her dark gypsy eyes missing nothing of the exchange.

‘He’ll come up when he’s finished,’ Gabriella said with a brightness she had to plaster on to make stick. ‘If you just show me the way.’

Natania said nothing, merely performed a slow blink of her wide eyes and turned to lead the way up the long staircase, her bangles again sounding too bright and discordant for the grim setting and Gabriella’s equally grim mood.

A long gallery met them lined with heavy drapes, heavier furniture and paintings of windswept cliffs and boiling seas. A castle featured in one, severe and solid, complete with battlements and turrets, clinging to the edge of the cliff like it was part of it. This castle? she wondered. It could be, judging from the interior, dark and brooding, like a slumbering giant waiting for the light. Not exactly the honeymoon resort she’d been anticipating. Then again, she thought with a pang of hurt, so far this was nothing like a honeymoon.

‘What is this place?’ she asked, catching Natania up outside a door.

‘Castillo Del Arco,’ she said, leading her into the big high-ceilinged room. ‘It is, Raoul’s other place.’

‘It’s very—grand,’ she said, wondering how she could subtly ask where her husband’s room was.

‘I hate it,’ the other woman said. ‘It is a bad place.’

Gabriella wandered into the vast room. So this was to be her room. Clearly it was not Raoul’s. It was too soft, with its patterned wallpaper and rich, red velvet curtains; a fireplace lit with gold flames ran along one wall, a four-poster bed standing proudly against its opposite, an ornately carved blanket box at its foot. There was a door alongside the bed, and she opened it, curious to see if it led into Raoul’s room—hoping—and immediately was disappointed when she found only an en suite.

Natania’s words finally wormed their way into her consciousness. She spun around, reminded of Phillipa’s warning in the frisson of fear that ran down her spine. ‘Bad? In what way?’

But Natania wasn’t listening. Marco had arrived with the luggage someone else had clearly packed for her and he was leaning down, kissing her.

Gabriella disappeared into the bathroom, feeling simultaneously shocked, breathless and guilty that she had witnessed the intimacy, even though logic told her she had done nothing wrong. I’m just tired, she told herself; strung out. She took a couple of deep breaths while she ran cold water over her wrists, willing the colour in her face to subside.

But there was no way she could will away her own desires, or the buzz of need that bloomed, insistent and pulsing, deep in her belly and tight in her breasts. For it should be Raoul with his mouth on hers; Raoul in her bedroom.

Damn.

Marco had left when she returned; Natania was busy unpacking her luggage. ‘There’s no point doing that,’ she told her. ‘We’ll only have to repack it all when I shift rooms tomorrow.’ Because there was no way she intended to let herself be shunted off into her own room another night. ‘Right now I just want to crawl into bed.’ Natania’s eyes flared with a wild flame that told her that was exactly what Natania intended herself—except she would not be spending the night alone in hers.

‘If you are sure …’

Gabriella just nodded, the beginning of a headache tugging at her temples. ‘You go.’ At least one of us might as well have a good night. She was just leaving when Gabriella remembered. ‘Natania, what did you mean when you said this was a bad place?’

The other woman gave her a look of such abject pity that she was almost crushed under the weight of it. ‘I am sorry, I should not have spoken of such things. Good night.’ And with that she was gone.

What things?

She prowled the room, wanting to shriek at the closed door, at the walls, the bed and the rich, dark drapes. She wanted to shriek with the insanity of it all. This was her wedding night. Her wedding night! And yet here she was, tucked away in a lonely room in a castle on some godforsaken stretch of coastline shrouded in mist.

And where the hell was her husband?

She threw off her sandals and flung them across the room, where they smacked into the wall and it was still nowhere near satisfying enough.

What the hell did he think he was doing?

Nobody worked on their wedding night. Nobody!

Thunder boomed in the distance, a low, rumbling growl that went on and on and echoed her own rumbling discontent. A flash of lightning painted the room with the curtains’ vivid red.

Damn it! Natania would know where he was. She should just have asked her. Barefoot, she rushed to the door and pulled it open to the darkened hallway. She could see nothing and nobody, until another clap of thunder that seemed to shake the very walls was followed by a light so bright it transformed night into day.

And there, at the end of the long passageway, she saw a shadowy figure—Natania?—disappearing into a room.

She called out to her but the sound was lost in the sudden crash of rain on the windows and the doors as the castle descended once again into blackness, only a thin, ghostly glow through a window at the end of the passageway providing any illumination.

She wanted to follow the woman, but right now she was probably already in the arms, if not the bed, of Marco. Did she really need to interrupt them in the act of love-making? Did she really need to remind herself of what she herself would have been doing—should have been doing—if only her husband had not decided to abandon her on their wedding night?

What would they think of her? The lonely bride, still in her wedding gown, searching desperately for her husband.

She had seen the pity in Natania’s eyes. Did she really need to see more?

The rain pelted down on the roof and walls until the pounding itself sounded like thunder. She shivered. It was freezing out here in the dark passageway; her head was thumping and she was tired beyond measure. Bone weary. Across the room the fire crackled in the hearth; the bed looked cosy and inviting. And down the end of the passage the thin, grey light was just a shade lighter. It was later than she thought. It would be dawn soon.

No wonder she was so tired. She would lie down for a while to get warm. And maybe Raoul would come to her when he had finished his work like she had asked him to. She would wait up for him.

And tomorrow—today—things would make more sense. They had to.

He stood at the rain-streaked windows, looking out into the bleak nothingness of the storm, wishing bleak nothingness for his mind to erase all thoughts of the woman lying upstairs waiting for him.

Right now she would be confused and angry. He could deal with those things, he expected them. It was the hurt he could not deal with; the hurt he knew she must be feeling.

But she was tired, she would sleep. And soon she would understand that this was the way it had to be.

‘It is done, Umberto,’ he said, gazing unseeingly into the night through the rain-streaked windows. ‘And I hope you are satisfied.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

HE HADN’T come.

It was after midday when she awakened to the sound of Natania bringing in a tray, and the sickening, hollow feeling that Raoul had not come to her bed.

Natania swished open the long curtains with a flourish to reveal a bright blue sky and turned to watch her through hooded eyes. ‘Raoul asked me to check on you.’

‘That was very considerate of him,’ Gabriella said snippily, her disappointment turning to anger, thinking it might have been just a tad nicer if Raoul had come to check on her himself. ‘And how is my husband today?’

The woman gave a lazy shrug. ‘I have learned not to ask such questions.’

‘Because you don’t like the answers?’

‘Because sometimes it is better not to know.’

Gabriella didn’t agree. She had a few questions she intended to ask, and she wanted to know the answers. She padded to the window while Natania poured the coffee, and her gaze was met by a scene of staggering beauty. The castle was built on some kind of rocky headland with a small sandy cove off to one side. Below them the sea foamed white onto the rocks at the foot of the cliff, a sea lit with sparkling diamonds and so dazzlingly blue, it rivalled the brilliant sky for supremacy. Everything looked bright and calm and perfect.

So different from last night with the fog and the storm; maybe she had been overly tired and feeling melodramatic with it. Already she felt better, brighter, just for feeling the warmth of the day through the glass. She would feel much better again when she had talked to Raoul.

Armed with Natania’s directions to the library, and feeling refreshed after breakfast and a bath, she wandered the passageways of the labyrinthine castle. Even in daylight it was a gloomy place, filled with dark timber furniture, beams and heavy wall-hangings, all seemingly impenetrable to the outside sunshine. She shivered in her sundress and light cardigan—a choice inspired by the sunny view from her window rather than the ambient temperature—and wondered if it ever warmed up inside.

There was hush all around her, no other signs of life, and only the tick of a grandfather clock at the top of the stairs intruded on the silence, jarring her nerves as she wended her way slowly down the long staircase. She treaded lightly, careful not to make any noise herself, feeling like she must comply, and only hesitated when she neared the bottom step, knowing the sound of her low heels on the flagstones would echo in this vast space. So unnaturally quiet it was almost as if the castle, that sleeping giant from last night, was awake and waiting, holding its breath, and she didn’t want to be the one to make it spring into action …

Suddenly there was the creak of a door, a bang. And so lost was she in her quiet world that she jumped and gasped.

‘Gabriella! There you are, at last,’ Raoul said, smiling as he strode towards her. ‘I thought you were going to sleep all day.’

He took both her hands and kissed her cheeks, and she drank in his scent, letting it feed into her soul, letting it comfort her. And here, two steps up, so she could look him in the eyes, she told him, ‘I waited for you.’

He tilted his head, a lock of his black hair falling free from his ponytail and curling around his eyes, his expression truly contrite. ‘I’m sorry, Bella.’ He used his pet name for her again at last, giving her a glimpse of the man she thought she had married. ‘I finished way too late. I didn’t want to disturb you.’

And in the rational light of day her concerns of last night seemed overblown, exaggerated.

‘Come on,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘How about I give you a tour so you can find your way around? And then I suggest lunch down in the cove where the wind will not bother us. Natania has promised to make us a picnic basket.’