Dark Fate

Venice was such a maze of tiny streets and squares, alleys and canals. She hadn’t orientated herself properly yet, and, anyway, had a very poor sense of direction. She could get lost even when she had a map in her hand.

Jamie asked a man walking past and got directions; they started off again and as they approached their hotel at last she began to relax and feel safe. Domenico couldn’t catch up with them now.

She knew he had lost them completely. She didn’t need to see him to be sure of that. She could feel it; his anger, his frustration, as he realised she had got away again. He was searching the streets around the theatre, she sensed, as if she were watching him; moving with that prowling lope which was characteristic of his tall, loose-limbed, long-legged figure, while his eyes flicked, quick and intent, along alleyways, into empty, moonlit squares, hunting for her.

She knew what he was feeling, although not exactly what he was thinking. Domenico was too clever for her to be able to divine his thoughts. She could only tell what he was thinking when his feelings and his thoughts merged, were one. That rarely happened with Domenico, although with some people it often did.

She had discovered her gift many years ago, when she was a child; she hadn’t understood it then, and it was intermittent, so unpredictable, that sometimes months would go by before it happened again, that sudden flash of awareness of what someone else was thinking. Saskia had actually wondered if she was imagining it for a long time, until she reached puberty and it began to happen more frequently. At that age she had experimented with it, turned it almost into a party game for her friends, and been able to check that she was really picking up their thoughts and not imagining them.

Not that she could read everything in their minds, or do so at will, but if ever they were very angry, or upset, or frightened she could tune into those emotions, tell them what they were feeling exactly.

It always amazed them, it even frightened some, who would keep away from her after one such experience, seeing her as someone weird, alarming, even dangerous. People did not like the idea that you could read their minds and know what they were really thinking, even though she assured them that her glimpses of their minds were fragmentary and arbitrary.

‘It’s like picking up radio waves,’ she had told Domenico once. ‘Like voices coming out of the air. I hear what people are thinking...but only if they’re very excited or upset; it only happens when there’s an extra charge of electricity in their brains, I think, boosting the signals so that I can pick them up. Anger or fear or happiness...I always pick up strong emotions.’

‘I can see I’ll have to be careful of you,’ he had said, those grey eyes of his watching her sardonically, and she hadn’t needed to tune into his thoughts to know that he didn’t believe her, he thought it was all nonsense, crazy imagination on her part.

Domenico did not believe in other dimensions—in horoscopes or signs of the zodiac, fortune-telling, mind-reading, the tarot, palm-reading or second sight. Saskia didn’t believe in most of them, either; she had often tried to explain that she didn’t do any of those things, she didn’t even pick up other people’s thoughts voluntarily any more, she hadn’t since her teenage years. She would be glad to stop doing it, especially now, she found it more and more disturbing, but she didn’t know how to switch it off or shut it out.

‘It just comes,’ she had said. ‘Out of nowhere, whenever there’s a crisis, or someone is really upset.’

Domenico had shaken his head at her, his mouth crooked and incredulous. He hadn’t understood or believed a word of what she said; it didn’t fit in with his view of the universe or human nature.

He had a clear, diamond-hard, ice-cold mind; logical and rational. Domenico was a perfectionist, about himself, his job, even his life. Even her, she began to realise. Domenico expected her to be perfect, too.

Perfect in looks, in the way she dressed and behaved, in everything she did, the perfect wife for a powerful man like Domenico Alessandros and, he expected, in time, the perfect mother of his no doubt equally perfect children.

Perfection was a hard act to sustain. Saskia was bitterly aware of being human, of failing in some areas of her life, of weaknesses, inadequacies which she could do nothing about, and which, she began to be afraid, Domenico would never forgive in her, when he recognised her imperfection.

He was not a man who forgave easily, and she had failed him. That was why she had run away from him, dreading the icy contempt of his stare, the cutting lance of his voice. She wasn’t normally a coward, but Domenico’s anger had frightened her; still frightened her.

Two years away from him and yet she still couldn’t face him and she knew now, after picking up his feelings across the theatre, that Domenico still hadn’t forgiven her, either. His pain and rage were still as bitter.

‘You’re very quiet—is the pain worse?’ asked Jamie anxiously as they collected their keys from the reception clerk and turned towards the hotel lift.

She made a wry, self-mocking face. ‘Would you believe...I’ve got a headache now, as well?’ It was true; her head was thudding as if a little man were perched on top of it banging hammers. She groaned. ‘This isn’t my day, is it?’

‘You must take two of these pills with a glass of water, and then ring Room Service and ask them to bring you some hot chocolate to help you sleep,’ Jamie told her, handing her a packet of pain-killers, as the lift slowly moved up to the third floor on which their rooms were situated.

‘Thanks, Jamie. I’m sorry...’ she began again, and he shook his head at her, smiling.

‘Forget it. I’ve had toothache, I know how you must be feeling. I often think there’s no pain worse. My mother often says she’d rather have a baby than toothache any day!’

They walked along the hotel corridor quietly. As they reached her door Jamie paused and looked down at her. ‘Now, you get to bed as soon as you’ve drunk some hot chocolate; and if you don’t feel better in the morning we’ll make sure you see a doctor, or go back to that dentist and ask him to take another look at your tooth!’

‘I’m sure I’ll be over the worst tomorrow. I probably just need a good night’s sleep. Goodnight, Jamie.’

Saskia didn’t bother with hot chocolate; she took the pills and went straight to bed, but although her headache soon died away she couldn’t get to sleep for hours. She lay awake in the dark, listening to the soft lapping of water against the piers outside the hotel which fronted the Grand Canal, fighting waves of panic as bad as anything she had felt two years ago.

Then, she had been obsessed with grief and fear and guilt; she had constantly been afraid that Domenico would find her, would track her down and confront her at any minute.

The hard physical exercise of working in the garden centre had helped to get her over those first months. She had not worked so hard for a long time; her muscles had ached heavily in the beginning. She would come in from work, muddy, weary, her skin filmed with sweat, have a long, hot bath in water scented with pine, trying to relax her muscles and ease their aching, and then she would eat a light supper in front of the electric fire before going to bed early. After one of those baths, having been out in the fresh air all day, she would find herself falling asleep the minute her head hit the pillow, and, although at first she had had nightmares every night, slowly over the months those bad dreams had stopped.

She had one tonight, though. Even though she eventually went to sleep, she woke up in the early hours, crying, trembling, and sat up in bed, staring at the paling sky without seeing it, remembering what had happened at the opera last night, wondering if Domenico had discovered that she was one of a group of tourists staying in Venice that week, or if he had believed she was there privately, with the man who had left with her.

For once she wished she could tap into private thoughts at will, but it didn’t happen. Her mind was blank. Perhaps Domenico was still asleep? But somehow she knew he wasn’t; she felt sure he was awake as well, and that he had had a bad night, too. It was no comfort to be sure of that.

She couldn’t stay in her room all day. At seven-thirty, Saskia slid out of bed, went into the bathroom and took a shower, put on a robe just as her breakfast arrived—orange juice, rolls, black-cherry jam, coffee.

She tipped the waiter, who opened the shutters for her, letting in the golden glory of a Venetian morning. When the man had gone, Saskia sat down on her balcony and ate her breakfast, reading the Italian paper which had been sent up on her tray.

She stiffened as she glanced down a business page and Domenico’s name leapt out. Hurriedly she read the short item, and understood why he was in Venice. If only she had known! She would never have come here at this precise moment.

Jamie had said to her last night, ‘It’s just fate,’ without realising quite how accurate she was in using those words. Fate had made Jamie suggest a trip to Italian gardens for them both, to get ideas for the garden centre at home; and fate had ordained that that garden trip should end with a few days in Venice before they flew home. Fate had been busy organising Domenico’s life, too. He was here, on business; she might have known. Domenico was in the process of negotiating with one of the major Italian hotel chains; he was planning to take over some of their top luxury hotels for his own chain and the chairman of the other company lived here, in Venice, so Domenico had come to Venice.

After breakfast she dressed in a simple apple-green linen dress, slid her feet into flat white shoes, and put on make-up, brushed her hair, before going down to meet up with Jamie and the others on the tour.

This morning they were going back to the Accademia art gallery, which they had already visited once, but which was so crowded with marvellous paintings that they had barely scratched the surface in their earlier visit.

‘This time we are going to concentrate on Giovanni Bellini,’ their guide told them, and launched into a long talk on the famous Venetian painter. Saskia tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but her mind kept straying back to her own problems. They were here for another two days. Even if she took a plane back to England this morning, Domenico could easily trace her, through the tour operators, get her address and track her down.

What am I going to do? she desperately wondered, following the others out of the hotel on their walk through Venice to the Accademia building.

She hated the thought of running away again, leaving her job, her friends, the little home she had set up over the past two years, having to start again, somewhere else, lying, hiding, maybe even running again at some future time.

Yet was she strong enough, even now, to face Domenico? Her courage failed her at the very idea.

They had been in the Accademia for an hour when Saskia felt that familiar flash inside her brain, as if an electric spark jumped between two points.

She looked hurriedly around, and saw him instantly, at the other end of the room, a tall, lean figure dressed casually, in shades of brown: chocolate-brown brushed-cotton jeans, a matching brown cashmere polo-neck sweater, and worn over that a golden-tan brushed-suede waistcoat under a dark brown leather flying jacket. It all looked haphazard, thrown on in a moment’s whim, but Saskia knew Domenico was dressed by the best Italian designers; someone had put that look together, charging an arm and a leg for doing so!

He wasn’t looking at her, he was standing in front of a painting by Bellini which Saskia’s group had seen earlier: The Virgin and Child in the Garden. Domenico was staring fixedly at the mother and child, and the pain in his mind made tears sting under her lids.

She hadn’t paused in front of the altarpiece while the tour director was talking about it, she had walked on to the next picture. She hated to see paintings of mothers and babies. She hated even more to feel the anguish Domenico was feeling; it brought back her own, welling up inside her like an inexhaustible fount of tears.

She couldn’t bear it. Deliberately she wrenched herself away from those memories, and began to hurry towards the door. He hadn’t seen her yet; she could escape before he did.

But even while she skimmed a circuit of the room, avoiding him, she couldn’t stop watching him, remembering the tanned and powerful body under his casually elegant clothes, her mouth drying in helpless sensuality. It seemed an eternity since she had touched him, seen him naked, held him in her arms. She would have died to have him just once more.

She was almost at the door, almost out of sight of him, when Domenico’s head turned abruptly, as if a string had jerked it round.

He swung, his eyes leaping straight towards her, and she froze in mid-step, staring back, intensely shocked, hearing her heart thudding, her blood running, her body vibrating in response to a realisation that stunned her.

Domenico hadn’t known she was there behind him. He hadn’t seen her or heard her until now; it had not been one of his five senses that told him she was in the room and it wasn’t simply that he had suddenly sensed she was there.

No. It had never happened before, but just now, for the first time, Domenico had picked up her thoughts, her feelings, as she had so often picked up his. He had felt the passion with which she was watching him, even though he hadn’t known she was there, behind him, and across the room she felt the heat of his answering desire, like flames leaping out when you opened a furnace door.

CHAPTER TWO