‘Gina?’ she whispered.
She had not seen her since their schooldays, but the more she stared the more certain she was that it was Gina, a woman not a girl now, the promise of bud-like beauty she had shown at thirteen now in full, ripe perfection.
Offhandedly, Domenico said, ‘Yes. Didn’t I tell you? I must have forgotten in all the flurry over the wedding. After she left art school she needed a job where she could work at her paintings part-time, so I asked her to be my housekeeper. She runs Ca’ d’Angeli for me.’
She stared at him and then at Gina, and knew, understood, at last. They were lovers, Gina and Domenico. She watched the glance flash between them, the intimacy and passion, secret, hidden, yet burning like wildfire on the Venetian night air.
Everything was clear to her now: her marriage was a farce, a mockery, a lie. Domenico wanted her money but he did not want her. She hadn’t imagined the reluctance in their bed. He had forced himself to make love to her because he wanted to get her pregnant, to make sure that his child would be the heir to everything she had inherited from Carlo, but he had hated every second of it. He hated her.
His eyes slid away from hers. There was a stain of dark red along his cheekbones. ‘You must be tired. I’ll show you to your room, send up a light supper on a tray.’
Did they think they could fool her? Now that she had seen them together. Were they hoping to go on lying, cheating, deceiving?
She walked towards the open front door without replying. In the Caribbean the people talked of zombies, the dead who walk again, brought back by voodoo, yet who feel nothing, their bodies empty of everything but the power of the snake god. Vittoria moved in that lifeless, dead fashion, a blank, fixed, empty smile on her face.
‘Welcome home,’ Gina murmured to her, in a throaty voice, but she was looking at Domenico, her slanting green eyes shining in the lamplight.
Antonio came out of the house and took her luggage. He had moved to Ca’ d’Angeli a week ago. As their eyes met Vittoria saw he already knew the truth about her marriage. His face was angry, protective, full of pity for her, and that woke her out of her dead spell.
His pity hurt. She had thought she was making a brilliant marriage, envied by everyone she knew. Now she saw what she could expect: humiliation, secret mockery, furtive whispers everywhere she went in this beautiful, sly, stealthy city, where what you saw was only the sunlit surface dancing over dark, secret waters where death, decay and corruption hid.
‘I’ll show you the way, Contessa,’ Antonio said, and she followed him into the house and up the wide, marble stairs, listening to the echo of her own footsteps, the echo of all that had perplexed her these last years but which was now so crystal clear.
Domenico had put off marrying her as long as he could. How long had Gina been his lover? All this time, in America?
Far below the front door closed with a heavy clang. Were they in each other’s arms, kissing? They had been apart all this time, while Domenico was with her in Milan before the wedding and afterwards in the West Indies. She had felt the desire between them as they stood there, waiting to touch each other again, hunger written on their faces.
Agony tore at her. Domenico. She had thought he was hers at last, but he wasn’t, would never be. Gina possessed him.
She followed Antonio up to the second floor and into a large room hung with dark red velvet curtains at the windows and around the four-poster bed. A fire burned in the great hearth, logs from which bluish flames leapt, crackling, but it couldn’t warm the room, which was chilly yet at the same time stuffy from centuries of dust and cobwebs.
Antonio put down her luggage and looked searchingly at her.
She met his glance without showing her pain, jealousy and rage.
‘Tell me everything you’ve found out,’ she said.
Chapter Fourteen
Venice, 1998
After four days in hospital Laura was allowed to leave. ‘You’re lucky. You have healthy young flesh and you’re healing quickly,’ the surgeon told her, his black Italian eyes caressing her face, the curve of her breast, her body under the cotton robe, not offensively, merely with admiration. ‘But you must rest that shoulder. Don’t start work yet, and lie down as much as possible. I’m afraid we need the room or I would have you here longer.’
‘That’s okay, I feel fine.’ She smiled at him. It was partly true: she was feeling much better, although it still hurt at times as she shifted in bed, and she was taking pain-killers three times a day. She hated being in pain: it made it hard to relax or think clearly. You were always on edge for the next hot stab in your flesh.
She could bear that, though, now that she knew Sebastian had not attacked her.
And, of course, he hadn’t sent those letters. She was convinced, and could see that the police agreed with her, that the letter-writer and the would-be killer were one and the same person. So who had sent the letters?
When Sebastian was allowed to see her, on her second day there, she had smiled at him, eyes feverishly happy, and held out a hand that shook. He had knelt by the bed and kissed it with an intensity that made her light-headed. ‘It wasn’t me who attacked you. You thought it was, didn’t you? I saw that look you gave me, just before they put you in the ambulance. But it wasn’t me, Laura. I love you – how could you think I’d do that? I wouldn’t hurt a hair on your head.’
Tears welled up, one splashed down her cheek. ‘I know. Sebastian, I know it wasn’t you.’
He leant over her and brushed his mouth over her wet eyelids, slowly, gently. ‘Cara, carissima, it hurt like hell to know you were scared of me.’
‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she half sobbed. ‘I was so scared, in so much pain, just after it happened. I didn’t know what I was doing.’
‘If I get my hands on the guy—’