From Venice With Love. Alison Roberts

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