Читать книгу From Paris With Love Collection - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 74

MARCO 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.’

‘Maybe it’s not so bad, what you did. Or maybe why you did it.’

He turned towards her, trying to find a meaning to her cryptic comment. But she was looking ahead, avoiding his gaze, staring at the buildings now turning softly golden with the lowering sun. ‘They called me, you know, several times—Consuelo’s lawyers.’

‘What did they want?’

‘Money. I turned twenty-five last week. Consuelo thought I might like to donate to his defence fund.’

‘What did you tell them?’

‘That I had better things to do with my money. You were right; he would have sucked me dry.’

She looked at him then. ‘I went to the hospital where Consuelo’s foundation was based. I went to talk to the director to see what I could do about providing for a new foundation to support those children undergoing chemotherapy, those left in the cold without funding after the collapse of the foundation. He told me that someone had already taken care of it. That someone had already covered what they had lost in the foundation and more.’

She hesitated and looked up him with tears in her eyes. ‘That was you, Raoul. You funded the programme, so no child’s treatment would be interrupted. So those children’s lives might be saved.’

He saw the setting sun in her eyes, saw the golden light dance in her tears. ‘I felt responsible.’

Moisture tracked down her cheeks. ‘And for two months I have been trying to find a reason to hate you, to believe you had no heart—but everywhere I look, everything I remember, makes the pieces fall another way. And then, with learning of one generous act of kindness, I knew I was wrong. How could I hate a man who did such a thing?’

He smiled, her words a balm to his soul. ‘I am glad you don’t hate me, Bella. I have lived in hell these past months thinking that.’

She sniffed. ‘And so I was wondering …’

He lifted her chin with one hand and rubbed the tears from her cheeks with the thumb of the other; his touch made her catch her breath. ‘Tell me,’ he said, his voice a husky, deep whisper that carried an urgency that rippled through her bones.

‘You once said that you loved me. I threw it back in your face. I thought you were lying. But did you mean it? Was it true, Raoul?’

‘That I love you?’ He exhaled in a rush. ‘Oh, Bella, I know I have betrayed your trust. I know I hurt you so much. And God knows I didn’t want to fall in love with you. I didn’t think it was possible. But every time we made love, every time I looked at you, I couldn’t help but fall in love with you that bit more.

‘And it scared me, Bella. I knew you would leave me one day, and I knew it would kill me—so I tried to push you away, but it didn’t work.

‘Because I do love you, Bella, and I always will. And, if there is ever a way to make up for the way I have treated you, so help me I will track it down, I will pin it to the ground and I will spend my entire life making it up to you.’

‘Oh, Raoul.’ She put a hand to his cheek, felt the familiar brush of his blue-black beard against her palm, never wanting to have to remember what that felt like again. ‘I love you so much, Raoul.’

His mouth found hers and they kissed as the gondola slipped silently beneath the Bridge of Sighs.

‘About those papers …’ she whispered when finally they had come up for air.

‘What about them?’

‘Do you think it would hurt if we didn’t fill them in? If we gave our marriage another go? With just you and me this time. Nobody else. And no ghosts from the past.’

He smiled at her and her heart flipped over. ‘Definitely no ghosts from the past. Just you and me, starting again.’ He picked up her hand and kissed it. ‘You have made me the happiest man in the world, Bella. You have given me something I thought I would never have, something I thought I had forfeited any right to for ever: you have given me your love. And I will treat it like the treasure it is.’

He dipped his head and kissed her again, so sweet and rich with feeling this time that her head spun and the blood fizzed her veins until she was dizzy on bubbles and the hot taste of him in her mouth.

And that night, in the big bed in the lover’s alcove, they solemnly repeated their marriage vows, with the sirens, satyrs, gods and goddesses as their witnesses, smiling this time. Knowing this time it was for real.

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