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Dark Fate
CHARLOTTE LAMB
A Marriage of Minds…"It's fate - even when we're miles apart the link between us holds!" Saskia thought that two years was long enough to confirm that she would never be reunited with her estranged husband, Domenico. But it seemed there was no end to the strange bond that had existed between them: Domenico was waiting for her when she arrived on vacation in Venice!Saskia had always had the uncanny ability to read Domenico's mind, so she was unnerved to find that now he, too, knew what she was thinking. Once again, she was somehow tied to him physically and mentally, and there seemed to be no escape. Except that, in Domenico's eyes, a happy marriage should be completed with children… .
Dark Fate
Charlotte Lamb
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#u8c582d2c-501d-520f-998e-9de2d3ec15e7)
CHAPTER TWO (#udf3c9aa4-9301-571d-9a12-5b4f538b51fa)
CHAPTER THREE (#u72736ae7-6d0e-5ea0-9a3a-3c9216067c69)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
AS THE lights went down in the theatre, Saskia suddenly knew Domenico was there.
Not only was he there, but he had seen her too, at the same moment. At the very instant that she sensed his presence she felt the surge of his rage and it was like being hit by lightning. Her whole body reacted with a jerk of terrible shock.
Sitting beside her, Jamie felt her shudder, and looked round at her, his face concerned, whispering, ‘Toothache back again?’
She drew a shaky breath and lied without stopping to think.
‘Just a jab; it’s gone now.’
In the blueish dimness cast out into the upper reaches of the rococo theatre by the footlights she glimpsed Jamie’s curly brown hair, his rugged, weatherbeaten face; and Jamie could probably see the gleam of her blue eyes, the shimmer of her skin. She bent her head and the shining bell of her dark auburn hair fell forward so that he couldn’t see anything more of her. It was instinctive, to hide her expression and the feelings she was afraid might show in it; Jamie knew very little about her—she had only ever told him what she felt he really needed to know, and she didn’t want him to know any more, especially about Domenico.
‘Sure?’ Jamie whispered, leaning closer. ‘If you need them, I’ve got some paracetamol in my pocket. I thought they might come in useful in case your tooth started playing up again.’
That was typical of Jamie, not only because he was warmly sympathetic to anyone in pain, but because he was so intensely practical and thoughtful in the way he responded. Jamie never simply used words; he immediately put his concern into action.
She lifted her head again to give him a faintly wavering smile. ‘You’re amazing; thanks, Jamie. I might take a couple in the interval.’
She had been to the dentist earlier that day to have some work done on a back tooth which had begun aching after she bit on a toasted almond, the decoration on a pastry served to them at dinner at their hotel last night.
Saskia had been kept awake half the night by toothache. The tour operator had made arrangements for her to visit a Venice dentist, and while the others had been taking a gondola tour of the smaller canals in the city Saskia went off to have the offending tooth excavated and filled.
She hated going to the dentist, and particularly hated having a tooth drilled, but anything was better than being kept awake with pain.
‘Tell me, why is toothache always worse at night?’ she had asked the dentist, who had laughed, then given her an admiring look which dwelt longest on her dark red hair and slim, rounded figure before he explained.
‘At night you have nothing to take your mind off it.’ He had smiled again. ‘Unless you are married!’
Saskia had flushed slightly, and the dentist had jumped to a very false conclusion, saying quickly, ‘You are not offended, signorina?’
‘No,’ she had assured him and he had smiled at her again, relieved.
‘You speak Italian very well, signorina.’
‘Thank you, signore,’ she had gravely answered, not explaining why she spoke his language so fluently. For two years she had been lying to people, and Saskia hated being forced to do it yet could see no way out of it. If she told a single soul the truth she might be putting herself at risk. The only safety lay in living a lie.
‘You don’t live in Venice?’ the dentist had asked and she had shaken her head.
‘I’m only here for a few days.’
‘You must go to the opera while you are here; there is a wonderful new singer at the Fenice this season,’ he had told her, his face lighting up with the excitement of the enthusiast.
‘Yes, we are being taken there tonight!’
‘Ah, La Traviata is playing at the moment; you’re so lucky to see it in the Fenice—that is where the opera was first performed, you know! Verdi wrote it especially for the Fenice, but the audience didn’t like it; it wasn’t a success, at first, not in Venice. But the Fenice is the most beautiful theatre in the world. Seventeenth-century, originally, although it was burnt down and rebuilt early in the nineteenth—even London does not have a theatre that old!’
‘Covent Garden Opera House is very old, too,’ Saskia had mildly suggested, but he had made a disparaging noise, shaking his head.
‘Much too big, too ornate and pompous. I don’t like those huge theatres. The Fenice is small, intimate, elegant.’
Looking around the theatre when they arrived Saskia had had to admit that his enthusiasm was understandable; the décor of the theatre was delightful, and as always with theatres of that period glittered with gilt and was swagged with elaborate stucco, the ceiling full of cherubs flying from all corners.
When the injection the dentist had given her had worn off the tooth had begun to ache again, but she had taken some pain-killers and the pain had ebbed away gradually during the afternoon. She had almost forgotten about the tooth until Jamie mentioned it, but now that she had thought of it again she felt it give a dull throb.
Pain was like that. If you ignored it, it often went away, but the minute you thought about it again, back it came.
She had been able to forget about Domenico for hours on end over the last few months. Now the pain was back; far worse than toothache and far harder to cure.
The audience around her were humming along with one of the better known arias being performed on stage at that moment. Italian audiences knew all the words and loved to join in with the performers, especially when a famous song had a good tune to it, and celebrated having a good time: wine, women and song. Saskia stared at the vivid party scene on stage, dancers whirling around, people raising champagne glasses to each other, but her mind was elsewhere.
It hadn’t once occurred to her that Domenico might be here tonight or she would never have taken the risk of booking for the opera; in fact, she would never have come to Venice at all if she had even dreamt that she might see him there.
Domenico was passionately fond of opera, of course, and went to La Scala, in Milan, frequently. He would never miss any performance of La Traviata there, especially by a soprano as fine as the woman singing the heroine, Violetta, tonight, but she never remembered him visiting Venice.
Apart from going to the opera, or to concerts, Domenico was engrossed in his work. He often went abroad, to America, or other parts of Europe, he visited other parts of Italy, and when he was at home he occasionally gave dinner parties, and went to them, but they usually had some business connection. Everything in his life had to fit in with his business.
‘I have no time for inessentials,’ he had often told her impatiently, when she tried to persuade him to take her to see a light-hearted film or play, or take a holiday in the sun somewhere.
She had often had a secret feeling that he saw her as inessential; a frivolity, a toy he had picked up in an idle moment and enjoyed playing with, but did not actually need.
Domenico had been essential to her; or, at least, she hadn’t been able to imagine life without him at one time. It was only when the pain hurt too much that she had fled. There was a limit to love, she had finally been forced to realise, or rather, a limit to how much you could bear in the name of love.
She hadn’t seen him since the night she left his house; she feverishly ached to see him now, and at the same time was terrified.
Where was he sitting? Not close to her, she was sure of that, but within sight of her, because he had seen her, before the lights went down.
There was no point in looking around, trying to see him in the darkened theatre. It was full; not a seat vacant in the house, which, the tour operator had told them, was normal for the Fenice. The Venetians loved opera. This particular production had been a runaway success as soon as it opened. The new soprano had a miraculous voice and was lovely to look at, too: black-eyed, with long, silky black hair, worn dressed up in the party scene, but loose and flowing when she was in her bedroom. Her voice had sensuality and so did her slim, sexy body and she had a way of walking across the stage that made every man in the opera house catch his breath and sigh. You couldn’t get a seat for months ahead, the tour operator had also told them, pleased with himself for having booked ahead long ago.
‘How’s the tooth now?’ asked Jamie.
Behind them someone hissed, ‘Shh...’ in an affronted voice.
Jamie made a rueful face at her and looked back at the stage.
Saskia’s eyes wandered restlessly. A sea of faces surrounded them; pale glimmering circles in the gloom, all eyes fixed on the party scene taking place on stage.
Which face belonged to Domenico?
She closed her blue eyes, concentrating on finding out exactly where he was sitting. It didn’t always work; so much depended on the other person giving off strong enough signals.
Slowly she turned her head, like a radar dish, homing in on his emotions. Anger; black and dark red, she could almost see it in the darkness, like a smouldering fire, which was how she found him, knew when she was looking in the right direction.
He was sitting in a box on the left-hand side of the stage.
She opened her eyes and looked that way, saw the silky curtains swagged and held back with tarnished gold tassels, and between them the stark outline of his head, an immediately familiar silhouette.
He was sitting turned towards her, not towards the stage. She couldn’t see his face from this distance, but she didn’t need to see him. She knew what she would see if the lights came back up again: black hair brushed back from a high, bony forehead, chiselled features, cold grey eyes, a strong jawline and a mouth which was hard and reined in, yet hinted at potential passion. Domenico was not cold in bed; far from it. He was a possessive and demanding lover, but he kept his emotions in one compartment and his working life in another. The two were never allowed to meet.
Tonight, though, his emotions were uppermost; across the theatre she picked up what he was thinking, feeling, and it made her flinch and tremble.
Jamie felt her betraying movement, turned again and looked at her anxiously. ‘Is it getting worse?’
Everyone began to applaud at that moment, some of the men actually getting to their feet, calling out the soprano’s name and blowing her noisy kisses, throwing her red carnations.
Under cover of the uproar, Saskia whispered, ‘Jamie, I think I’m going to have to go—you stay, though; I don’t want to spoil the evening for you.’
‘I’m sure that if you take a couple of pills they’ll help,’ he urged.
She risked a quick glance towards the box where Domenico sat. His head was still turned their way. She knew he was watching them. He couldn’t see their faces or hear what they were saying, but if she got up to leave Domenico would follow her, catch up with her.
At the back of the box in which he sat she saw a faint movement, a darker shadow which detached itself as Domenico lifted his hand in a commanding gesture. A man came forward, bent to listen to him.
She drew a sharp breath. The bodyguards. She had forgotten them. He could send them round here to get her! She should run, now.
On the point of getting up she hesitated, biting her lip. Oh, what was the point? If she got away now, he would still be able to trace her through the tour firm. The theatre management would tell him who had booked those seats, and which hotel the tourists were staying at in Venice.
Oh, why didn’t I realise how risky this holiday was? she thought grimly. It was crazy to think of coming to Italy, any part of Italy; but after two years she had begun to think there was no need to be so nervous or take elaborate precautions against running into him again.
She didn’t know Venice at all, and, remembering that Domenico never went there either, she had decided it would be safe enough, especially as this would be a coach tour, constantly moving on each day until it reached Venice and halted there for a few days. There shouldn’t be any risk.
Wrong! she thought, shuddering. She should have stayed in England, in obscurity, where he could never find her. This was his country, his territory; she had made a serious mistake in coming here. Although if she hadn’t come to the opera he would never have known she was here, probably.
She wasn’t even able to enjoy the opera. She had hardly noticed anything that happened on stage—the girl in the lovely dress whirling around, singing, now that her party guests had gone and she was alone.
Saskia sighed as the girl’s singing broke through her own agitated thoughts, and the man beside her looked sharply at her again, leaning over to ask, ‘Toothache getting worse?’
She nodded. ‘At the end of this act, I’m going, Jamie. You stay, though; I really don’t want to ruin your evening.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ he whispered. ‘I’m not letting you walk through the city alone, especially when you’re not well.’
It was typical of him to insist on that. Jamie Forster was a warm, kind-hearted, friendly man who cared about other people. He wasn’t either ambitious or dynamic; all Jamie wanted was to enjoy his life, have plenty of friends, and earn enough to live on, comfortably.
He ran a garden centre, which he had inherited from his late father, in a small country town about forty miles from London. Jamie loved working in the open air, with growing things; he had large but capable and sensitive hands, green fingers, which could make anything grow. He almost casually pushed tiny plants into the earth and they sprang up rapidly, vigorous and hearty. His work was more than a hobby, it was a passion, perhaps his only real passion.
Saskia had grown fond of him since she started working there two years ago, but she had never let him get too close because there was so much she had never told Jamie about her past. She was not free to get involved with anyone. Luckily, although Jamie was clearly fond of her, too, he had never shown any sign of being in love with her. If anything, they were such good friends that anything more intimate was almost out of the question. Jamie had had a girlfriend until a few months ago when they had a big row and broke up because Jamie was more interested in his work than he was in his girlfriend. Now and then he took Saskia with him to parties, but only as a friend; Jamie had never even tried to kiss her.
But would Domenico believe that when he knew that she was on holiday in Italy with Jamie? Saskia bit her lip, her eyes flicking towards where Domenico sat, his head a dark silhouette in the glow from the footlights.
Of course he wouldn’t.
He must not meet Jamie. She was terrified of his reaction if he did. Domenico had an ice-cold manner, very controlled, and yet under that ran burning lava which could erupt without warning and devastate those it touched.
Jamie couldn’t possibly cope with Domenico in that mood. Nor could Saskia; she never had been able to; he terrified her when the frozen surface of his manner cracked and the fire beneath leapt out.
A moment later, to her relief, the first act finally came to an end. Saskia ruefully clapped with everyone else as the soprano whirled off stage and the curtains closed. She loved La Traviata, the romantic, piercingly sweet music and the tragic storyline, the nineteenth-century décor, the wonderful clothes the women wore at that time, the heartbreak of that last act. All day she had been waiting on tenterhooks for this evening.
Yet she hadn’t really been aware of anything that was happening on stage!
As the audience began to get up, Saskia ran for the exit, swerving round other people, pushing past anyone who blocked her way, muttering apologies. She didn’t look round to check if Jamie was following. She was too busy concentrating on getting out of the theatre before Domenico or one of his bodyguards caught up with her.
She was already a street away before Jamie panted up beside her. ‘Hey! You almost lost me! I stopped to explain to Terry that we were going back to the hotel; if he didn’t know we had left he would have panicked when he counted up heads and found two missing.’
She gave him an apologetic look. ‘Oh, you should have stayed; I’m sorry I’ve ruined your evening, Jamie! I know how much you were looking forward to La Traviata.’
‘It isn’t your fault; you didn’t ask to have toothache tonight!’ he said with a resigned sigh. ‘It’s just fate.’
No, he was wrong, Saskia thought. It wasn’t fate that had planned this evening; it was her own stupid folly. If she hadn’t come to Italy she would never have been in this theatre, she would never have seen Domenico again.
Yet...why had Domenico been there? Had fate been busy, after all?
They came to one of the rounded corners which were so typical of the labyrinthine streets of Venice which curled round and round like the inner spirals of an ear, and Jamie paused, looking up at a street name painted on the wall.
‘We go left here, don’t we?’
‘I can’t remember!’ Saskia looked around anxiously. She wanted to get as far away from the theatre as possible, quickly. She did not want Domenico to catch up with them.
