Christmas in Venice

Christmas in Venice
Lucy Gordon

Lucy Gordon cut her writing teeth on magazine journalism, interviewing many of the world’s most interesting men, including Warren Beatty, Richard Chamberlain, Sir Roger Moore, Sir Alec Guinness, and Sir John Gielgud. She also camped out with lions in Africa and had many other unusual experiences which have often provided the background for her books. She is married to a Venetian, whom she met while on holiday in Venice. They got engaged within two days.

Two of her books have won the Romance Writers of America RITA® award, Song of the Lorelei in 1990, and His Brother’s Child in 1998 in the Best Traditional Romance category.

You can visit her website at www.lucy-gordon.com

Christmas in Venice

by

Lucy Gordon

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

JUST a few more minutes—just ten—then five—then they would reach Venice, the city Sonia had sworn never to set foot in again. As the train rumbled across the lagoon she refused to look out of the window. She knew what she would see if she did. First, the blue water, sparkling under the winter sun, then the roofs and gilded cupolas, gradually emerging from the mist on the horizon. It was perfect, magical, a sight to lift the heart. And she didn’t want to see it.

Venice, the loveliest place in Italy, in the world. She’d come here once before, and later fled, blaming it for her misfortunes. But for the summer beauty of the city she might never have been tempted into a disastrous marriage to Francesco Bartini. She knew better now. She’d fled Francesco and the heartbreakingly beautiful surroundings where they’d met, vowing never to be seduced by either of them again.

She tried not to think of him as he had seemed to her then, smiling, at ease with himself and everyone around him. He wasn’t handsome—his features weren’t regular enough for that, his nose too large, his mouth too wide. But his eyes were dark and full of delicious wickedness, his smile was brilliant, and when he laughed he was irresistible. She’d been enchanted by his charm and good nature, the speed with which he’d fallen in love with her, as though he’d been only waiting for her to appear to recognise the love of his life.

‘But that’s true,’ he’d said once. ‘Why delay when you’ve met “the one”?’

He’d been so sure she was ‘the one’ that he’d made her believe it too. But Venice had helped him, with its beauty, its glitter of romance that was there around every corner. Venice had helped to deceive her into thinking a holiday flirtation was a lasting love, and she would never forgive Venice for that.

So why was she coming back?

Because Tomaso, her father-in-law, had begged her, and she had always liked him. Even in the bad days of her marriage the hot-tempered little man had always made her feel how fond of her he was. On the day she left he had wept, ‘Please, Sonia—don’t go—I beg you—ti prego—’

Officially, she was only returning to England for a visit, to ‘see how she felt’. But none of them were fooled, especially Tomaso. He knew she wasn’t coming back.

He’d held onto her, weeping openly, and his wife, Giovanna, had regarded him with scorn, because who cared if the stupid English wife left? She’d been a mistake from the start and thank goodness Francesco had realised at last.

Tomaso had wept despite his wife, and Sonia had wept with him. But still she had left. She’d had to. But now she was back, because Tomaso had begged her.

‘Giovanna is very ill,’ he’d said, the day he turned up at her London apartment. ‘She knows she treated you badly, and it weighs on her. Come home and let her make her peace with you.’

‘Not home, Poppa. It was never a home to me.’

‘But we all loved you.’

And that was true, she reflected. With one exception they had all loved, or at least liked her: Francesco’s sisters in-law, his three brothers, his aunts, his uncle, his endless cousins, had all smiled and welcomed her. Only Giovanna, his mother, had frowned and been suspicious.

How could she return? It was nearly Christmas. Travelling would be a nightmare. Worse, she would have to see Francesco again, and what would they say to each other after the last dreadful meeting in London? He’d followed her there to make one final effort to save their marriage, and when it failed he’d been curt and bitter.

‘I won’t plead with you any more,’ he’d raged. ‘I thought I could convince you that our love was worth saving, but what do you know of love?’

‘I know that ours was a mistake,’ she’d cried, ‘if it was love at all. Sometimes I think it wasn’t—just a pretty illusion.’

He’d given a mirthless laugh directed at himself. ‘How easily you talk love away when it suits you. The more fool me, for thinking you had a woman’s heart. Well, you’ve convinced me. You want no more of me, and now I want no more of you. Go to hell in your own way, and I will go in mine.’

She’d never seen him like that before. In their short marriage he’d been angry many times, with the hot temper of the Latin, flaring now and forgotten a moment later. But this bitter, decided rejection was different. She should have been glad that he’d accepted her decision, but instead she was unaccountably desolate.

She’d tried to be sensible. She’d told herself that that was that, and she could draw a line under her marriage.

But the very next morning she’d woken up feeling queasy, and known that everything had changed. There had been tests but the result was never in doubt. She was carrying Francesco’s child, and she’d learned it the day after he’d stormed out declaring he wanted no more of her.

She heard his voice many times repeating those words. She heard it every time she reached for the phone to tell him about their baby, and it always made her pull her hand back, until at last she no longer tried.

So when Tomaso had arrived in London his eyes had opened wide at the sight that met him.

‘You’re having his child and he doesn’t know?’ he demanded, shocked.

It had touched her heart the way he never doubted the baby was Francesco’s. But Tomaso had always thought the best of her, she recalled. It made it hard to refuse him, although she’d tried.

‘How can I go back now?’ she’d said, indicating her pregnancy. ‘When Francesco sees me like this it will revive things that are best forgotten.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Tomaso had reassured her. ‘Francesco is courting someone else.’

She’d suppressed the little inner shock, the voice that cried out, ‘So soon?’ After all, she had left him. He was a warm-hearted man who wouldn’t stay alone for long. She had no right to complain.

She insisted that Francesco must be warned before she arrived, and Tomaso telephoned his son and gabbled something in the Venetian dialect which Sonia had never been able to follow. When the call was over he’d announced, ‘No problem. Francesco says the baby is yours. He won’t interfere.’

‘That’s fine,’ she’d said, trying to sound pleased.

Well, it was fine. It was exactly what she wanted. If he wasn’t interested in his own baby that suited her perfectly. And if she was being unreasonable, so what? She was eight months pregnant and entitled to be unreasonable.

Because she was so close to her time they couldn’t fly, and had embarked on the twenty-four-hour train journey. That was how she’d made her first trip, because she’d booked at the last minute and couldn’t get a flight. So she’d approached Venice by train over the lagoon and seen it rising from the sea in glory.

Tomaso glanced at her as she sat, refusing to go to the window. ‘After all this time, don’t you want to see Venice welcoming you back?’

‘Oh, Poppa, that’s just a pretty fantasy,’ Sonia protested, smiling to take the sting out of the words. ‘Venice deals in pretty fantasies, and I made the mistake of taking them seriously.’

‘And now you make the mistake of blaming the city for being beautiful,’ he replied.

‘So beautiful that I fell in love with it, and thought that was the same as being in love with a man.’

He was silent, but regarded her sadly.

‘All right, I’ll take a look,’ she said to please him.

But the sight that met her wasn’t what she had expected. Where was the magic, the gradual appearance of gilded cupolas touched by the sun? How could she have forgotten that this was late December? A dank mist lay on the sea, shrouding the little city so that there was no sign of it. When at last it crept into view—reluctantly, it seemed to Sonia—it had a glum, heavy-hearted appearance that reflected her own feelings.

At the station she tried to carry her own bags but Tomaso flew into a temper until she let him take them. He commandeered one of the taxi boats, and gave the driver the name of her hotel. The Cornucopia.

Of course, he didn’t know that this was where she’d stayed that first time. No matter. She would enter the Cornucopia again and banish her ghosts.