style="font-size:15px;"> She snuggled closer. For she knew in her heart that he loved her, even though he still could not bring himself to say the words for whatever reason he must love her.
She knew it.
Until she woke in the morning to find him gone.
There was a letter on his pillow, barely a note, just two short lines:
I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
And the bottom dropped out of her world.
HE HAD gone. Some time this morning before light, according to Natania who had heard the car, he had left her.
Why?
‘I thought he loved me,’ she said, sitting in Natania’s kitchen, sipping sweet tea.
‘I told you this was a bad place. You should leave.’
Nothing had ever sounded so tempting. But where to go? Back to Paris, and the big empty house? Or Venice, where she would not be welcome if Raoul was there? ‘I don’t know where to go.’
‘You have a friend in London. Marco can take you to the airport.’
She bit her lip, thinking through the options. Wondering how Phillipa’s husband would take the news of her separation so soon after dragging his wife and young baby to Venice for the wedding. ‘I don’t know. I have to call her, see if it’s okay.’
‘Call her, then. Or email. There is a computer in the library.’
‘You’re right. I’ll book a ticket while I’m at it. Thank you, Natania. I’m sorry that we could not have met in better circumstances.’
The gypsy woman shook her head, setting the hoops at her ears dancing. ‘It is not your fault. I thought you were the one.’ She sent her gaze in a wide arc. ‘But it is this place. It is what it does to Raoul. It is what it reminds him of. It is a bad place.’
It was a toxic place as far as Gabriella was concerned. It got worse when she realised the computer was password-protected and she couldn’t even access her email account, let alone book a flight.
‘Damn you, Raoul,’ she snarled as she stared at the blinking cursor. On a hunch, she typed ‘Raoul’. No luck.
‘Raoul Del Arco’ met with the same ‘invalid password’ response.
Out of frustration she typed in ‘bastard’, half-expecting that one would work—but then, she rationalised when it didn’t, anyone could have guessed that; it was hardly secure.
She scanned the desk, looking for somewhere he might have jotted down the password, but the desk was irritatingly paper free. She pulled open a drawer, searching through the papers for something, anything, on which he might have written it down. But she could find nothing and slammed it shut.
The drawer on the other side got similar treatment. This one was almost empty though; mostly stationery supplies. A few pens. A stapler. A key.
That drawer got slammed shut too.
Damn!
Unless, she thought a moment later, there was a filing cabinet somewhere. She opened the drawer again, picked up the key, which was heavy, despite its small size, and ornately carved. Maybe it was not like any filing-cabinet key she had ever seen before, but then this was Raoul and his filing cabinet was no doubt antique.
She prowled the library, testing any piece of furniture with a lock, but most were already unlocked and the key did not fit. She studied it in the palm of her hand. Why keep a key that fitted no lock?
Then she remembered the door at the end of the passageway.
The locked door. And she wondered …
What had he done? Raoul drove aimlessly through village after village of simple white stone buildings and small fields set amidst the rocky hills, knowing only that he needed to get away—except there was no getting away from his own black thoughts.
For he had done the unthinkable. He had done what he had promised himself he would not do. He was supposed to keep her safe; he was supposed to protect her.
Instead he had given in to his basest self. He had taken advantage of her sweet body, and he had not been able to stop at just once.
And it didn’t matter that she had provoked him, that she had goaded him with her taunts and her words. Nothing mattered except that he was in the wrong, whichever way he looked at it. He had been in the wrong from the very beginning.
He had set out to marry her, to do anything it took to keep her and Garbas apart, and he had done that. But in the process he had lost Gabriella.
You don’t have to love her.
The old man’s words came back to him. He’d taken the words at face value. They had seemed cold but they had made sense. And he had intended to keep himself apart. He would not love her; he could not afford to, not if he was to set her free.
He hadn’t meant to love her.
He pulled the car to a halt near a horreo, a corn shed that looked like a miniature stone cathedral, his palms sweating on the wheel.
He hadn’t meant to love her.
But he did.
He looked at the horreo, reminded of the stone castle where he had brought her and then abandoned her. What would she be thinking? How would she be feeling? After giving her the cold shoulder since their wedding, they had shared a night of exquisite pleasure—he had lost count of how many times they had made love—and then he had cold-heartedly walked away.
His hands were sweaty on the steering wheel.
Their love-making had been so frantic and desperate that he had not even thought to use protection.
Even now she could be carrying his child.
What had he done?
He had run from the truth. He had not even been able to bring himself to tell her he loved her. Surely she deserved at least that?
But then, she deserved so much more. She deserved an explanation. She deserved his apology. After which she probably would not want his love.
But he had to tell her.
He put the car into gear and turned it around on the narrow road, only then noticing the dark bank of cloud that extended along the coast. And with a sizzle of apprehension he was reminded of another time, another day long ago, when the cloud gathered heavy over the castle and he had been rushing to get back.
Only to have his world crash and burn when he had.
He wasn’t superstitious; he
