to his temples, driving fingertips deep into the veins that pounded like drums. God, but could this nightmare get any worse?
The name Garbas was seared on his soul, the letters burned deep, so deep that his bones ached at its mention. It was a name he’d hoped he’d heard for the last time a long, bleak time ago.
Yet he should have known that ridding himself of this curse would never be that easy. The Garbas family was like a black hole, sucking life from the world around, devouring anyone and anything in its path. He turned back, moved closer to the bed, needing to know despite himself. ‘What does he want with Gabriella?’
‘He’s been sniffing around her like a hyena waiting for a carcass, waiting for her to turn twenty-five when she can claim her inheritance.’ The old man paused, catching his breath, although the rise and fall of the covers over his chest was barely discernible. ‘He knows I would never permit her to marry him. So now he waits for me to die before he makes his move.’
Raoul nodded. ‘Hyena’ was right. It was the way his kind operated: scavengers; scum, the lot of them. Only their massive wealth gave them entree into high society, lending them a veneer of respectability so brittle it was a wonder it didn’t shatter every time they drew breath. And now one of them was after Gabriella? ‘She doesn’t know?’
Umberto scoffed. ‘He would hardly tell her the truth. She knows only that his brother died in tragic circumstances. She thinks that gives them something in common.’ The old man sighed and gave a hint of a wistful smile as he shook his head. ‘I have tried to warn her but Gabriella sees only the good in everyone—even the likes of him. And all the time he plays her like a fish on a line, knowing he has the advantage of time. So, you see, I have no one to turn to but you. You must marry her, Raoul,’ he said, lifting his head shakily from the pillow in a supreme effort that saw the cords in his neck stand out tight, his watery eyes turn glassy in their intensity. ‘You must keep her safe. You must!’
He collapsed back into the pillows to catch his breath, the rapid beep of machines filling the void, while Raoul sat down by his side and bowed his head, his thoughts in turmoil, conflicted beyond measure.
Damned if he would let a Garbas worm his way into Umberto’s granddaughter’s fortune. Damned if he would ever let that happen after what he had suffered. But Raoul was the last person who could keep her safe.
Besides, did Umberto really think it would be such a simple matter to get a twenty four year old woman—any woman, for that matter—to agree to marry him? Why should she give him a second glance when he could give her nothing in return? She would be some kind of fool if she did.
He took his friend’s hand again, half-wondering, half-knowing that this would be the last time they met. ‘Umberto, old friend—my friend—I love you with my life, but this makes no sense. There must be a better way to keep Gabriella safe and I will find it. But I would be no kind of husband for your granddaughter.’
‘I’m not asking you to love her!’ he blustered from the bed, the machines beside him going into overdrive. ‘Just marry her. Keep her safe!’ The door burst open, a nurse rushing through, pushing the visitor aside as she checked her patient.
‘Visit’s over,’ she snapped out without looking over her shoulder. ‘You’re upsetting my patient.’
Raoul raised his face to the ceiling in supplication and frustration. When he looked back at the bed where the nurse fussed, checked and adjusted drips and machines, his old friend looked so forlorn and desperate and beyond tired, a shadow of a man who had once been great. It struck Raoul that his last moments, his last days, should not be wasted in worry such as this, even if it meant promising the impossible so that he might at least die in peace. Umberto deserved that at least.
‘I’ll marry her, old friend, if that is what you ask,’ he said, ignoring the warning scowl he earned in reward from the nurse, grinding the words out between his teeth as the wire in his gut pulled inexorably tighter and trying desperately not to think of the cost to them both. ‘I’ll marry her.’
Three weeks later
WINTER had come early, the late-September day dressed in drab colours as if the planet itself was mourning the death of her grandfather. But the inclement weather found only empathy with Gabriella D’Arenberg, the damp air and misty rain matching her mood as she stood beside her grandfather’s flower-strewn grave in the Cimetiere de Passy. Then the last of the mourners whispered condolences and pressed cold lips briefly to her cheeks before drifting away along the path.
She would leave shortly too, once Consuelo had returned from the call he had excused himself to take, and they would join everyone at the hotel where the caterers were no doubt already serving canapés and cognac. But for now Gabriella was happy to be left alone in quiet reflection in the cold, dank stillness of the graveyard. Here, under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, there was nothing to intrude, the sounds of the city barely penetrating the stone walls.
Until a dark shadow made her gasp and look around.
He appeared out of the fog, tall, broad and dark as night as he moved stealthily between the funeral sculptures, the winged angels and fat cherubs suspended ghost-like in the swirling mist as he passed. A shiver of recognition—or was it of relief?—washed through her and bizarrely, for the first time that day, she felt warm.
Raoul.
She had seen him at the service; it had been impossible to miss his dark presence in the back of the tiny crowded chapel. Her heart had lifted at the prospect of seeing him again after so many years, only to exit the chapel to a bubble of disappointment when she had found him nowhere amongst the mourners gathered outside.
Raoul, who with his intense black eyes and passionate mouth had been her every adolescent fantasy—dark fantasies she’d had no right to imagine. Wicked fantasies that brought a blush to her cheeks just thinking about them. And, when she’d got news that he’d married, she’d cried for two days solid. She’d cried for him a year later when she’d learned of his wife’s death. Thank God he had no idea about any of it or she could never face him now. Thank God she was over all that.
The crunch of boots on gravel grew louder, his long leather coat swirling about his legs, his hair pulled back into a ponytail that served to accentuate the strong lines and angles of his chiselled features. His eyes, if anything, were even more intense than she remembered under that dark slash of brow. Tortured, even. And something about that intensity frightened her a little, just as if his purposeful stride held a portent of danger, sending a tremor skittering down her spine.
The mist, she thought in explanation, as she continued to log his approach with her eyes. The cold, swirling air …
The air shifted and parted before him and then he was there, standing before her, a mountain of blackness in a mist-shrouded world, so tall that she had to tilt her head back to look up at him and his unflinching expression. He didn’t smile. She didn’t expect him to, not really, not this day.
But this was Raoul, an old family friend, so she dismissed her feelings of foreboding and danger and ventured a nervous smile of greeting, slipping her hands instinctively into his as easily as she had once done, relishing their instant warmth, thinking, you came. ‘Raoul, it’s so good to see you.’
For a moment he seemed to tense, and she wondered if she’d
