Or so she had thought.
Raoul drove the last few kilometres with a growing sense of dread. It wasn’t the approaching storm, but the fear that Gabriella had already left. What had she to stay for, after all? He had left her. There was nothing for her here.
But as he neared the castle something else caught his attention and froze his blood solid. There was a light on that shouldn’t be there, a flickering light in the turret room—just as there had been that day all those years ago.
And suddenly he wasn’t afraid that she had already left.
He was afraid that she had stayed …
* * *
The wind howled around the windows, cold fingers searching for a way in, the shutter banging endlessly, threatening to shatter what was left of her already bruised and battered nerves. She put the picture down and crossed to the window, testing the latch. It was stuck, probably grown shut through years of disuse.
Down below she could hear the surf smashing against the cliff, sending spray raining skywards. The window budged, little by little. If she just pushed a little harder, it would come unstuck.
He took the stairs three at a time, bellowing for Marco and Natania, wishing Gabriella would stick her head out of a door and demand to know what was wrong, fearing all the time that she would not—that he was already too late.
He reached the landing and turned right, standing panting and gutted when he saw it—the door to the turret room open, the flickering light from the lamp dancing down the stairs.
‘Gabriella!’ he shouted, leaping onto the stairs. ‘Gabriella, where are you?’
She pushed against the glass with all her weight just as the clap of thunder burst from the skies, but it was the feeling that someone had just called her name that had her looking over her shoulder at the same moment the window finally gave. She didn’t have time to see if there was anyone there; the wind clamped icy fingers around the open window and flung it open, dragging her from her feet. She screamed, clinging to the catch, her legs battling for purchase on the window sill while the surf boiled and spewed on the rocks below.
‘Nooo!’ he roared, feeling the past come crashing back, dark and horrific.
This could not be happening again!
He flew across the room, red spots before his eyes, the colour of blood in the white sea foam. He caught hold of her leg and then her waist. ‘Let go!’ he yelled at her. Her fingers were still wound deathly tight around the window clasp.
Finally she seemed to realise he had her and let go. He spun her inside, into his arms and against his frantically beating heart, stroking her hair with one hand, keeping the other wound tightly around her while the wind swirled and screamed into the room. ‘What the hell were you doing?’
‘The shutter was banging.’
‘No,’ he said, relief giving way to anger. ‘What the hell were you doing in here?’
She pushed him away, ran her hands through her hair as if she was fine, but she was trembling and as white as a ghost, her chest rising and falling quickly as she tried to catch her breath. ‘I was looking for a password for your computer so I could book a flight out of here. I found a key instead.’
‘And you thought you’d go exploring?’ Behind them the shutter and the window both slammed, rain slanting inside, feeling like icy needles against their skin. He growled and yanked the shutter closed before securing the window.
‘You told me it was a store room.’
‘It is.’
The storm let loose outside, the thunder overhead, lightning piercing the gloom and letting loose a fresh burst of rain against the shutters. ‘You didn’t tell me what it stored. You didn’t tell me you kept it as a shrine to the woman you love.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘What else could it be? No wonder you said you never wanted another wife. You already had one—all her photographs, all her mementos, locked away safe and sound for whenever you wanted to spend a moment or two with her. I never believed you slept downstairs near the kitchen. This is where you spent the first two nights of our marriage, isn’t it? Tucked away with the memories of a dead woman!’
And he cursed himself for thinking he could lock away his past behind a closed door and keep it there for ever. ‘You have no idea how wrong you are.’
‘Am I? You brought me here because you couldn’t bear to be apart from her. You married me, but once we were here you had no use for me. Because there was no room for me in our marriage, not when you had her.’
‘No!’
‘Because you are still in love with her!’
‘No! That’s where you are wrong. If this room was kept as a shrine, it was as a shrine to my own stupidity—a reminder of how naive a man can be when he believes in love.
‘I stopped loving Katia a long time ago when I discovered my love was worth nothing. When she used this room to betray me!’
She looked around uncertainly. ‘Katia …?’
‘She brought her lovers here. Her little secret room, her love nest, complete with an escape route in case someone came looking. In case I called for her.’
She shook her head, holding her arms around her waist, her hair stuck down around her face. ‘I didn’t see any escape—’
‘There is a railing outside the window—or there was—and footholds in the rock. Easy enough when the weather was fine, perilous when it was not. But she didn’t seem to care. It was a game she played, you see, a risky, dangerous game—trying to outsmart me, and succeeding. Until that storm-ridden night.’
She swallowed, remembering the surging sea, angry and frothing below the castle like a wild animal snapping and snarling to be fed, and felt a chill run down her spine. She could not imagine trying to be out there with just a railing and footholds between her and the violent sea. ‘Katia died here, didn’t she? She and her lover fell to their deaths.’
‘Now do you understand why I keep that door locked?’
He turned away, closing his eyes to blot out those images, his hands fisting in his hair. But he could still picture the scene just as clearly as if it had happened yesterday—Manuel, already disappearing from view as Raoul had run up the last few stairs into the room, roaring and almost frothing at the mouth in his fury and rage; Katia urging Manuel to hurry, as she herself had taken one look at Raoul, her eyes bright with the thrill of the game, her hair whipping around her face and her laughter still ringing out in his mind.
He had been so angry and filled with rage, rage that filled the black empty hole from where his heart had been ripped; he had been paralysed with shock. His feet had been stuck to the floor while his world, his dreams and his love had disintegrated around him.
For she had betrayed him.
She had laughed at him.
And, even when he had heard the grating, tearing sound of metal from rock, even when he had heard Manuel’s cry as he had fallen from the broken railing—even when he had heard Katia’s desperate cry as she had realised the game was no longer fun—he had stood there a moment too long, transfixed, broken and shattered, wondering what the hell had gone wrong.
A moment of inaction he would pay for for his entire life.
He reeled away from the window. What use was a pathetic lock? He should have bricked up the door to this poisoned room and its sordid memories years ago.
He felt her hand on his shoulder. ‘Raoul …’
‘Don’t,’