Secrets of Castillo del Arco Read Free Page A

colouring, with dark eyes and hair, but that was where the similarities began and ended. Raoul was taller, broader, more imposing. He made Consuelo look almost
small
. ‘Do you two know each other?’
    ‘Consuelo and I are old friends,’ Raoul uttered slowly, in a measured tone that suggested they were anything but. ‘Aren’t we, Consuelo?’ The other man’s eyes skittered with something approximating fear before he turned to Gabriella, tugging on his tie.
    ‘Phillipa said the priest wanted to say a few words,’ he said, ignoring the other man as much as it was physically able. ‘He’s waiting for you to arrive to begin. Now.’
    ‘Phillipa called you?’ Was that the phone call that had kept him so long? That was odd. Her friend had never before called Consuelo; Gabriella wasn’t convinced Phillipa even liked him. Unless Phillipa had figured—correctly, as it turned out—that her phone would be off and that Consuelo, with his twenty-four-seven phone addiction, would be a better bet. She nodded. At least thatmade some kind of sense. ‘Then we should go. Raoul, can we offer you a lift?’
    Consuelo stepped closer alongside her, tugging at her arm. ‘Look, the car’s waiting. We should get going.’
    Raoul smiled. ‘Thank you for your kind offer, Gabriella, but I wish to have a few words with your grandfather before I make my own way.’ He lifted his hand, capturing one of hers as he raised it to his mouth, pressing his warm lips to her skin, his dark eyes glancing up at her as dark tendrils of his hair fell free from his ponytail to dance around the sharp angles and shadowed recesses of his face. ‘Until we meet again, Bella,’ he said, using his old pet name for her, an endearment she hadn’t heard in over a decade.
    But he had remembered
.
    And then those same eyes turned to meet the other man’s and somehow turned ice-cold in the interim. ‘Garbas,’ he said with a nod, so simply that it took Gabriella only a second to realise he’d dismissed the other man out of hand. Consuelo felt it too, for he took her hand and tugged her away.
    Raoul watched them disappear along the misty path, unable to suppress a growl when Garbas looped a proprietorial arm around Gabriella’s shoulders and pulled her in close.
    For his benefit, he had no doubt. Umberto had been right about the hyena sniffing around, watching and waiting for his chance to strike—not that he would see a penny of Gabriella’s fortune if Raoul had anything to do with it. Not now the dogs were closing in.
    It hadn’t taken much. He’d known there would be dirt and plenty of it if he just dug deep enough. Now he just had to sit back and wait. It wouldn’t be long and then Gabriella would be safe from his clutches.
    Gabriella.
    Bella
.
    Forgotten for years, lost under the weight of time, yet still the endearment had come to him automatically, as if all he had to do was see her before it tripped from his tongue. Yet she looked so different now from the last time they had met. When had twelve years ever passed so profitably? For him, it had been a period of loss, betrayal, death and ultimately of his own self-imposed exile. For her, it seemed those years had worked some kind of magic, transforming her from a gangly child into a very beautiful woman.
    They might just as well have been living on different planets.
    Huddled alongside the grave, her coat lashed tightly around her slim waist, her glossy chestnut hair coiled behind her head, she had been almost unrecognisable from the child he remembered, yet he should have seen it coming. Her mother had been beautiful after all, half-English-rose, half-Italian-royalty, her father the
crème de la crème
of French aristocracy. Her heart-shaped face somehow captured the best of all of them: her mother’s cat-like eyes and smooth-as-silk complexion, her father’s passionate mouth. Beautiful. Fragile.
    Much too good for the likes of him.
    What had Umberto been thinking? Dealing with the likes of