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       CHAPTER ONE

      SHE began to run on the morning of her wedding-day—a cool May morning—before the sun was up.

      She had been awake all night, moving restlessly around her Islington flat from room to room, unable to sleep. Each time she caught sight of herself in a mirror she saw the panic in her eyes, their blue so dark that it was almost black. She looked strange, unfamiliar, her face white against the fall of her long, straight black hair, her lips bloodless, quivering.

      In a corner of her bedroom on a padded hanger hung the long white dress inside a transparent plastic bag.

      ‘It looks like a butterfly in a cocoon,’ Lara had said when she’d come round to see Gabriella two days ago. Her cousin had given her a thoughtful glance. ‘Is that how you feel, Gabi? As if you’re waiting to break out into a new life? I remember I did. I suppose it’s the biggest change in a woman’s life, getting married. Life is never the same again.’ Then she’d looked more sharply at Gabriella and frowned. ‘Are you OK? You don’t look like a joyful bride somehow—getting cold feet? We all do, you know.’

      ‘I don’t believe you did!’ Gabriella had been startled; she would never have expected Lara to have any nerves about anything; her cousin was a capable, confident, assertive woman, just as her mother had been. Nobody ever believed that she and Lara were first cousins. They couldn’t have been less alike.

      Lara had nodded, looking amused. ‘Don’t sound so surprised. I’m human too, you know! I remember I was so nervous that I couldn’t eat for days beforehand. When I came out of it I was on my honeymoon and starving. I couldn’t stop eating; Bob began to think he’d married a food-junkie.’

      Gabriella had laughed, but she didn’t laugh now as she stared at her wedding-dress. She had bought it in a bridal shop in London; it had caught her eye at once because it was so romantic—white satin and lace, Victorian-style, low at the neck, with a tight waist and a full crinoline-like skirt which had palest pink satin rosebuds scattered here and there.

      It had needed some alterations—a tuck here and there—and she had had two fittings before it fitted perfectly, yet now she couldn’t remember what she looked like in the dress. She couldn’t think of anything but the fear which had begun to tear at her last night, like a wild animal shut inside her breast.

      He had noticed, of course; he noticed everything, his narrowed grey eyes searching her face remorselessly, and she hadn’t been able to hide her fear or her sick recoil. But all he had said was, ‘Get a good night’s sleep, Gabriella. Tomorrow is going to be a long day. Just one more day, though, and then we’ll have several weeks of sunshine and peace, just the two of us alone.’

      He had bent to kiss her again and she had stiffened involuntarily, hearing the echo of his words like a deadly threat. ‘Just the two of us alone…alone…alone…’

      At least his kiss that time had been as light as the touch of a moth’s wing and soon over. She hadn’t met his eyes, or looked at the hard, insistent angles of his face.

      Gabriella was only five feet two but he was a big man, well over six feet, and although he dressed expensively, in smooth city suits most of the time, the body beneath was lean and spare, powerfully muscled. He had tremendous energy too. She had always known that he was a dynamic man in business—his whole career bore witness to that—but with her he had been different. She had been deceived by his coldly controlled face, and the tight rein on which he kept himself when he was with her. She had got the impression that he was not sexually demanding,