Secrets of Castillo del Arco Read Online Free PDF

watched him watching her over the rim of her glass, liking the way he watched her, wondering if he liked what he saw.
    And she knew she was in danger of reading too much into this. She was feeling things and hearing things that couldn’t possibly be there or mean what she thought. And for all his talk of new beginnings and expressions of regret that it had been so long, he would most likely disappear from her life tonight and not even Umberto would be there to bring him back to her.
    After all, this was Raoul, and her teenaged fantasies had been just that—fantasies. She put her glass down before the alcohol might convince her otherwise. ‘You visited Umberto the week before he died?’
    Across the table Raoul stilled. ‘Umberto told you that?’
    She shook her head and the lights in her hair danced under the lamps. She’d worn it up for the funeral, a severe knot at the back of her head, but time and the damphad worked tendrils loose, so now the ends softly framed her face. ‘No, his nurse. He died before—before I made it home from London. I was too late to see him.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, praying that his visit had done nothing to hasten his old friend’s death and prevent his granddaughter one last opportunity to see him.
    ‘I think he knew he was dying and he didn’t want me there.’ She looked at the ceiling and pressed her lips together in a thin white line. ‘He sent me away, you know.’
    ‘I didn’t know.’
    ‘Phillipa was almost due to give birth. Her husband was overseas and booked to get back—there should have been plenty of time—when a coup closed all the airports. He was stuck in a war zone and she was frantic with worry; little wonder the baby came early. And I didn’t want to leave Umberto, but he told me he was fine and that I must go to help my friend. He promised me he would be fine …’
    He took her hand, squeezed it in his own. ‘He was looking out for you. He was trying to spare you.’
    ‘By denying me the opportunity to share his final days, his final moments?’ She hauled in a breath and shook her head. ‘Why don’t I feel blessed in that case? Instead, I feel cheated. I didn’t even get a proper chance to say goodbye.’
    ‘Bella,’ he said, his hand stroking her cheek, his thumb wiping the moisture welling from her eyes, ‘He didn’t want you to see him like that.’
    ‘But why wouldn’t he want to say goodbye to me?’
    ‘Because maybe he wanted you to remember him as he was before, strong and happy, not confined to a bedwith a battery of machines beeping out his existence while you waited for them to fall silent one by one. He loved you too much to subject you to that.’
    She sniffed and rested her cheek against his hand, staring blindly at the table as if considering his words. She looked lost, a little girl in a woman’s face, a little girl who had suffered too much already in her short life; a beautiful face that was no hardship to stare at, no hardship to caress. Even with leaking eyes and tear-streaked cheeks, even with that trembling bottom lip, she was indeed a beauty. Even without her fortune in waiting, she would be a catch.
    What a waste
.
    For she deserved only the best. She deserved happiness and love and a good man who could give her both.
    She deserved so much more than a man who would marry her simply to fulfil the terms of a promise.
    And that wretched knot he seemed to endlessly carry with him grew in his gut, twisting, tangling and pulling tight. Why was he even considering going through with this? Garbas would be no threat now. Garbas could not hurt her. So he should just take her home, say goodnight and walk away. He should let her go. If he had any sense at all, he would just let her go. Umberto would never know.
    Except he had promised.
    And
he
would know.
    Besides, perversely perhaps, a part of him was beginning to think it would not be such an impossible feat to get her to agree to marry him. Indeed, the longer he was with her,