Secrets of Castillo del Arco (18 page)

She looked up at him, chilled to the bone, knowing there could be only one man who would have made him promise such a thing. ‘My grandfather made you promise to marry me?’

‘He was dying, Bella. He was worried about you.’

She remembered the visit he’d made before Umberto’s death, the conversation he’d skirted around when she’d asked him for the details. But it was too impossible to believe, too horrendous; hysteria built inside her like magma ready to erupt at any moment. ‘You promised to marry me because my grandfather asked you to?’

‘He wanted to be sure you would be safe when he was gone.’

She put the heels of her hand to her forehead, the drumming in her temples growing louder, the pressure growing heavy and insistent behind her brow. It was insane. Did he actually realise what he was saying?

Suddenly she couldn’t sit. She sprang to her feet, pacing the floor. ‘And you agreed to this? You said,
anything you ask, Umberto; of course I will marry her?’

‘I tried to tell him—’

‘You told him you would marry me—so you lured me into a loveless marriage only to dump me in a godforsaken castle in Spain where your dead wife rides shotgun—’

‘
No!
I told him it wouldn’t work. I told him I would make no kind of husband. I told him you would hardly be safe with me—a man who had not been able to save his own wife. How could you be safe with me?’

‘And yet you still said yes. You took me to Venice and you set out to seduce me. You made love to me! I thought you loved me, Raoul. When you held me in your arms and you made love to me, I thought you
loved
me! But you lied, every one of those times you kissed me. Every one of those times we lay in bed together, every one of them was a lie!’

He took a step closer and held out one hand to her. ‘No, Bella.’

She turned away. She never wanted to touch him again. ‘And all the time you couldn’t wait to be rid of me. You couldn’t wait to drop the pretence and dump me.’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

She spun back around. ‘You deceived me!’

‘What choice did I have? Marry you, or say no to Umberto and watch Garbas get his greedy hooks in you?’

She stilled, her breathing hard and frantic in her chest, her mind seizing on the one thing that finally pulled the pieces together. ‘This is all about Consuelo? Grandfather was so worried about my friendship with him that he would get his henchman to marry me? Why couldn’t he have just warned me if he was so worried?’

‘Would you have listened—you, who always sees the best in everyone? You, who could not believe he was a criminal even when he was charged with fraud by the police? Try to see it from Umberto’s point of view: Garbas knew you would inherit as soon as you turned twenty-five. Umberto wanted to ensure you would be safe from his greed.’

She shook her head. ‘Even if what you say is true,
what danger is Consuelo to me now that he’s been charged?’ And even as she said the words a creeping suspicion filtered into her psyche, no more than a floating piece of black silk on the wind at first, it took shape and form and became three-dimensional and ugly.

‘You were responsible for that, weren’t you. It was no surprise to you that day of the funeral—no surprise that Consuelo had disappeared. Because you already knew. You were the one who tipped off the authorities. You—you wanted to be sure he could not touch me. You got Consuelo arrested.’

‘He’s a criminal, Bella. It’s no more than he deserves.’

She blinked, appalled at his implied confession, horrified by the sheer magnitude of his machinations—all to ensure she would marry him. ‘You don’t even try to deny it. You always hated Consuelo. Always!’

‘And why wouldn’t I hate him? He was the one who called me asking for money one too many times and, when I refused and told him he was a fool, he gloated that I was the fool and that his brother was having an affair with my wife! He gloated that I was the last to know, that everyone—
everyone
—knew and were laughing about me behind my back.’

A bolt of lightning squeezed through the shutters; a blast of thunder rent the skies and rumbled long into the distance.

‘Consuelo’s brother died here …’ she said.

‘Manuel was having an affair with my wife. He was supposed to be a friend. They were
both
supposed to be my friends.’

‘And you were so worried I would marry someone
who did the dirty on you that you put me through all this. How considerate of you.’

‘He’s a scumbag, Bella. You deserve better.’

‘
He’s
a scumbag?’ She looked up at him, wondering how she could ever have imagined that she loved him—someone who manipulated people, facts and the truth to gain his own ends. ‘So what the hell does that make you?’

She saw him flinch. She was glad that she could cause him half the pain he had caused her. ‘The joke’s on you, of course,’ she continued. ‘For I had no intention of marrying Consuelo. Yes, I liked him—but as a friend, that was all. Maybe you might have given me some credit for making my own decisions.’

‘You think he would have left you alone, knowing you were coming into your inheritance? Don’t kid yourself. It was the money he was interested in.’

‘Maybe you’re right. It would not be the first time I had fallen prey to a man who wanted nothing more but to use me and abuse me for his own purposes.’

‘Bella, listen to me …’

‘Why should I, when all you have ever told me is lies?’

‘No. Hear me out. Yes, what I did was wrong, but I was bound by a promise I had made to a dying man. I would marry you, I had decided, but I was going to let you go—once I knew you were safe. I wanted you to find someone worthy of you, who loved you for who you were and not how much money you had.’

‘How very noble of you. And meanwhile you lock me up in some cold, barren castle in Spain and pretend you
are not interested in me. Or were you pretending when we did make love?’

‘That was never a pretence.’

She nodded but she could not bring herself to look at him. ‘Maybe. But your love was. That’s where I have an issue. Our marriage is a sham, Raoul, a complete and utter sham. I want a divorce as soon as it can be arranged.’

‘Bella—Gabriella—please, give me a chance to explain. I left today because I was disgusted with myself. I had promised myself I would protect you. I would keep you safe, and when it was safe I would let you go where you could find the love of a good man—a worthy man. I would not stop you.

‘Except I did not realise I was already falling in love with you. I thought that, if I didn’t say it, it wouldn’t matter, that it wouldn’t count. But last night, when we made love in the storm, and afterwards in my bed, I could not deny what had already happened to me in Venice. And today, instead of fleeing, I had to turn around to tell you. I love you, Gabriella. I had to come back and ask for your forgiveness and to tell you I love you with my life.’

She laughed. Insanely. Manically. Whether it was a delayed reaction to the shock of almost falling from the window onto the rocks below, or a reaction to the callous way he had treated her, she didn’t know. But the sound was cathartic, strengthening her, increasing her resolve. ‘And now, when everything else has come unstuck, you serve up with the one thing you know I have
been waiting for. The one thing I have been begging for you to say all along.’

‘Bella, it’s not like that.’

‘Isn’t it? Isn’t this the last card you have to play, the final roll of the die? Your last feeble attempt to keep me prisoner in a loveless marriage? But it won’t work, Raoul. Not now. Because I don’t believe you. And, even if I did, it doesn’t matter any more because I don’t want your love. Not if this is the way you show it.’

‘Gabriella …’

‘No,’ she said, standing strong now with a new resolve. She’d been a fool but she had survived, and she would keep on surviving all by herself. ‘I don’t want to know. Just arrange that divorce, Raoul. I want to be free of you and I want it now.’

M
ARCO
told him she was there, waiting for him at the sea door—with the signed papers, no doubt, though why she hadn’t sent them via her lawyer he had no idea. Maybe she thought she had left something here.

He was on his way down to her when he spotted it, the paperweight sitting on his desk, the paperweight she had bought for him that day in Murano. He lifted it up to the light, watched the way its dark layers spun and floated around the blood-red core, the darkness lightening as the layers rose until they faded into the clear glass. He shook his head.

Even Gabriella, who had always seen the good in people, would not make the mistake of selecting such a thing for him again.

He remembered the way she had presented it to him, intending it to be a parting gift, except he had not been able to let her go. Not then.

Except he had not realised why.

What a fool he had been.

He sighed, replacing it on his desk. It was all he had of her now, and even that was more than he deserved.

She was waiting in the gondola, looking more beautiful
than he had ever seen her, a soft pastel dress showing off her long, tan legs, her hair braided around her face, falling free around her bare shoulders. Just looking at her was enough to slice his broken heart anew.

‘Gabriella,’ he said, relishing the taste of her name on his lips. ‘Would you not come inside?’

She smiled a little, or maybe she just pressed her lips together, and shook her head. ‘I thought we might meet on neutral ground. Or, in this case, neutral territory at least.’ This time she did smile and he noticed for the first time the strain lines around her eyes, the tightness in her features, as though she was battling to keep herself in control. ‘Will you join me?’

She could have asked him to fly to the moon with her and he would have said yes. As he climbed aboard, he noticed the folio tucked by her side. ‘You brought the papers?’

‘I brought them.’

And something inside him died, something unreasonable—because it was unreasonable to hope that she had changed her mind after all he had put her through, even if he wished it could be so. He had spent two months in his own personal hell, wishing he had done things differently, wishing he had never agreed to Umberto’s deathbed wishes, wishing he had been man enough to follow his gut and refuse.

But he had not refused, and now she had come with the papers that would be the death warrant to their marriage.

‘How did you know to find me here?’ he asked as the
gondolier gently negotiated the vessel into the wider canals, and she smiled again, easier this time.

‘Lucky guess. I figured that not even you would want to stay in that mausoleum of a castle a moment longer than you had to.’

Even he had to smile at that. ‘It is good to see you, Bella.’

She blinked up at him. ‘And you.’

‘You could have posted the papers.’

‘I know, but there were still some things I didn’t understand. I have spent two months trying to hate you. Two months trying to forget. But there are still some things that will not let me go.’ She shook her head. ‘I could not ask those things by mail.’

‘What things?’

‘Like the ghost story you told me that foggy night we were here in Venice—the story of the merchant who lost his wife to two brothers. That was no legend. That was your story, wasn’t it?’

‘It was mine.’

She breathed out. ‘You made it sound like the merchant had killed them both. But it wasn’t like that, was it?’

‘It might as well have been.’

The gondola slipped along the canals, turning this way and that, the movement of the boat strangely soothing despite the subject matter.

‘So tell me.’

And it was his turn to pause. ‘I should have seen it coming. She was a ballet dancer, as you know, famous the world over. But she was at the end of her career, and
she craved the adulation of the audience. I should have known she would never be happy with just one man when she was used to the adulation of a crowd. Everyone but me, it seemed, knew about her secret room. I think in the end she hated me because I didn’t know, that I was foolish enough to believe that she actually loved me.

‘And, when I found out it was true, I was in such a rage, it was no wonder that even in the midst of a storm they fled from me. I could not have saved Manuel—the railing was old and rusty and pulled away from the stone—but Katia …’

He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘She cried out and I was so angry, so tortured, that for a moment I could not move. And when I did it was too late.’

He felt her hand slide between his and he opened his eyes in surprise. She smiled sadly. ‘How do you know you would have reached her in time?’

He shook his head. ‘That is my curse. I will never know.’

She gazed up at him. ‘That’s why you feared you could not keep me safe, isn’t it? You feared you could not keep anyone safe.’

‘How could I keep anyone safe? I could never trust myself again.’

‘But you did save me, Raoul. Don’t you remember? When the wind caught that window and pulled me from my feet, you were there to stop me falling. You saved me, Raoul.’

He shook his head. ‘I surprised you. I made you turn. If I hadn’t come …’

‘I could have fallen. But you saved me.’ She nodded
then, taking a deep breath. ‘I think I understand now, at least some of it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking these last two months. Remembering. Pulling those weeks apart and trying to work out what happened. And I keep coming back to you trying to walk away. That night in Paris when you put me in a taxi and strode into the rain—you were walking away from Umberto’s promise then, weren’t you?’

‘I didn’t want to hurt you. If there was another way to keep you safe, I would do it. But you would not let me.’

‘Because I came to your hotel in the morning.’

‘You wanted my help to defend Garbas and when I refused you were going to do it all by yourself. I had to get you out of Paris.’

‘And so you brought me here to Venice, to seduce me, to convince me to marry you.’

‘Bella, I’m not proud of what I did.’