From Venice With Love: Secrets of Castillo del Arco

Because she wouldn’t love him when this was over.

She would never speak to him again.

She would hate him for ever.

Anticipation bubbled in her veins as Raoul handed her into the vaporetto and then tucked her in beside him. The wedding and reception had been everything she’d ever dreamed of and more, every little girl’s fantasy come true. And now she was anticipating a wedding night that was her big-girl fantasy come true, the night she’d been dreaming of ever since he had proposed those few long weeks ago.

It was late, the moon already wearying of the night, and she didn’t mind at first that he had little to say. They’d spent a night talking, laughing and being congratulated, barely having time to speak to each other. So it was good to have the time to sit in the curve of his arm and contemplate the coming pleasures.

With every passing minute she felt anticipation coil and grow inside her. Tonight they would once again join the parade of nymphs, satyrs, gods and goddesses engaged in the act of love. The thought brought a secret smile to her face. She snuggled in closer to her new husband, breathing in his signature scent, relishing it, knowing that from tonight it was just one more pleasure at her disposal.

‘I love your scent,’ she murmured, nestling closer, thinking about returning to the palazzo and spending their wedding night in each other’s arms in the lover’s alcove. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of it.’

Something about the way his body stiffened and shifted against her made her look up. She noticed the lights around them looked wrong; they seemed to be heading away from Venice instead of towards it.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

‘The airport.’

‘Raoul,’ she said, half-disappointed they were not going straight home to the apartment, half-delighted that he had gone to some trouble to make this night special. ‘You actually planned a honeymoon and you didn’t tell me? Where are we going?’

‘Spain.’

‘Tonight?’ she said with a tinge of regret. ‘But it’s already so late, and I was hoping …’

‘It’s not far,’ he said abruptly, apparently more interested in looking out to sea in the direction they were going than looking at her, and letting whatever she was hoping slide right on by. ‘You can sleep on the plane.’

She swallowed down the bubble of disappointment. It was thoughtful that he’d wanted to surprise her, really it was, but she didn’t want to sleep on a plane. Not tonight. Not when she’d been hoping that soon she would be once again lying with her new husband in her big, wide bed—their big, wide bed—amongst the nymphs and satyrs, joining them once again in their endless celebrations of the flesh, only this time as a married couple.

But, while it was sweet he’d wanted to find somewhere more special for their first married night together, something seemed wrong.

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Of course’

‘Are you sure? Something seems to be bothering you.’

‘It’s nothing,’ he said.

And then she remembered. ‘Didn’t your family have a place somewhere in Spain once?’ she asked, remembering a snippet from her past. His head snapped around towards her, but before she could read anything in his eyes his mobile phone rang.

He pulled it from his pocket and checked the caller ID before holding the phone up to his ear and turning away. ‘Excuse me, I must take this call …’

Gabriella jerked awake as the car came to a halt. She’d slept fitfully, first on the charter jet and then in the back of the car that had been waiting for them at the airport when they had landed.

‘We’re here,’ Raoul said beside her. She stretched and blinked, wondering where the resort was when she could see nothing through the gloom and swirling mist except a glimpse of grey stone walls that were just as quickly swallowed up again.

She yawned, bone weary, 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.’