But, still, there was a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach and he put his foot down.
She slipped the key into the lock where it fitted like a hand in a glove and held her breath, turning it with a solid click. She looked around, wondering if anyone had heard her. But Natania was busy in the kitchen and Marco was with her. Besides, the way the wind outside was building, nobody would possibly hear.
She turned the knob, easing it around, her heart hammering in her chest as she pushed open the door. It was dark, soft, grey light filtering in through a grimy window, dust motes playing in the shifting air. She found a switch and flicked it to and fro but nothing happened. And then she could see enough in the dim light to make out a dresser, an oil lamp on top, a stack of boxes in one corner and a circular staircase rising up on the other side of the room.
Everything was musty. The dust tickled her nose and she thought about leaving. Some kind of store room, he had said, and she could believe him. Clearly she had imagined it when she had thought she had seen someone entering.
But why would Raoul keep it locked and why would he secrete the key in his desk downstairs?
Something banged upstairs and she jumped. Then it banged again. A shutter come loose in the wind, she guessed.
The staircase beckoned. Maybe the answers were upstairs, in the turret room itself. She found matches by the lamp, lifted the glass and held a match to the wick, hissing and spluttering, filling the glass and the room with soft white light. Then, holding it carefully, she started to climb the creaky stairs.
Outside the wind started to howl, a sound that conspired with the banging to make a home in the back of her neck, prickling as if someone unseen had run their finger along her skin.
She shivered. Next she’d be seeing ghosts. Warily, tentatively, she peered through the hole at the top of the stairs, the doorway to the turret room. It was dark but for the shutter slamming repeatedly against the wall letting in a thready glow of grey light. She stepped up into the room, holding out the lamp as she circled, stunned beyond measure.
It was someone’s idea of a fantasy bedroom, something from The Arabian Nights or similar. The bed was low and covered in rich red silks and brightly coloured cushions with gold trim and tassels, dusty now, but still a glorious splash of colour. The walls were hung with jewel-coloured silk wall-hangings and covered in portraits: a ballerina, stunningly beautiful, photographed in costume in every ballet imaginable, Swan Lake, Giselle, Romeo and Juliet.
And there on the dresser was a close-up of her laughing into the camera, beautiful, glamorous and so full of life. Gabriella put down the lamp and picked up the picture in her hands.
To Raoul, she had written in large, elegant letters. All my love, Katia.
Katia. Raoul’s first wife.
A chill went down her spine. This was Katia’s room, kept as it must have been when she was alive. Kept locked and preserved, like some kind of shrine.
Was that why he hadn’t wanted another wife? Was that why they had come here, to be close to his first wife. Because he was still in love with Katia?
Pain lanced her heart. She’d thought she had sensed something holding him in reserve. It had not been there when he had made love to her; he had loved her then.
Or so she had thought.
Raoul drove the last few kilometres with a growing sense of dread. It wasn’t the approaching storm, but the fear that Gabriella had already left. What had she to stay for, after all? He had left her. There was nothing for her here.
But as he neared the castle something else caught his attention and froze his blood solid. There was a light on that shouldn’t be there, a flickering light in the turret room—just as there had been that day all those years ago.
And suddenly he wasn’t afraid that she had already left.
He was afraid that she had stayed …
* * *
The wind howled around the windows, cold fingers searching for a way in, the shutter banging endlessly, threatening to shatter what was left of her already bruised and battered nerves. She put the picture down and crossed to the window, testing the latch. It was stuck, probably grown shut through years of disuse.
Down below she could hear the surf smashing against the cliff, sending spray raining skywards. The window budged, little by little. If she just pushed a little harder, it would come unstuck.
He took the stairs three at a time, bellowing for Marco and Natania, wishing Gabriella would stick her head out of a door and demand to know what was wrong, fearing all the time that she would not—that he was already too late.
He reached the landing and turned right, standing panting and gutted when he saw it—the door to the turret room open, the flickering light from the lamp dancing down the stairs.
‘Gabriella!’ he shouted, leaping onto the stairs. ‘Gabriella, where are you?’
She pushed against the glass with all her weight just as the clap of thunder burst from the skies, but it was the feeling that someone had just called her name that had her looking over her shoulder at the same moment the window finally gave. She didn’t have time to see if there was anyone there; the wind clamped icy fingers around the open window and flung it open, dragging her from her feet. She screamed, clinging to the catch, her legs battling for purchase on the window sill while the surf boiled and spewed on the rocks below.
‘Nooo!’ he roared, feeling the past come crashing back, dark and horrific.
This could not be happening again!
He flew across the room, red spots before his eyes, the colour of blood in the white sea foam. He caught hold of her leg and then her waist. ‘Let go!’ he yelled at her. Her fingers were still wound deathly tight around the window clasp.
Finally she seemed to realise he had her and let go. He spun her inside, into his arms and against his frantically beating heart, stroking her hair with one hand, keeping the other wound tightly around her while the wind swirled and screamed into the room. ‘What the hell were you doing?’
‘The shutter was banging.’
‘No,’ he said, relief giving way to anger. ‘What the hell were you doing in here?’
She pushed him away, ran her hands through her hair as if she was fine, but she was trembling and as white as a ghost, her chest rising and falling quickly as she tried to catch her breath. ‘I was looking for a password for your computer so I could book a flight out of here. I found a key instead.’
‘And you thought you’d go exploring?’ Behind them the shutter and the window both slammed, rain slanting inside, feeling like icy needles against their skin. He growled and yanked the shutter closed before securing the window.
‘You told me it was a store room.’
‘It is.’
The storm let loose outside, the thunder overhead, lightning piercing the gloom and letting loose a fresh burst of rain against the shutters. ‘You didn’t tell me what it stored. You didn’t tell me you kept it as a shrine to the woman you love.’
‘Is
