The Italian's Cinderella Bride. Lucy GordonЧитать онлайн книгу.
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There came a sound that sent a pleasurable shiver down Ruth’s spine—a long wail, coming out of the darkness, echoing from wall to wall before dying away into the distance
“Do you know what that is?” Pietro asked.
“Yes, it’s a gondolier, signaling that he’s coming around a blind corner,” she said. “There he is.”
As they watched, a long shape drifted into sight, turning toward them—the gondolier plying his oar at the rear, and in front of him a young man and woman in each other’s arms.
I must tell her now, Pietro thought.
From down below the lovers looked up, then smiled and waved, as though wanting to share their happiness with the world, before vanishing under the bridge.
I will tell her, but how will she take it?
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The Italian’s Cinderella Bride
Lucy Gordon
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
Lucy Gordon cut her writing teeth on magazine journalism, interviewing many of the world’s most interesting men, including Warren Beatty, Richard Chamberlain, Roger Moore, Sir Alec Guinness and Sir John Gielgud. She has also camped out with lions in Africa, and had many other unusual experiences which have often provided the background for her books. She is married to a Venetian, whom she met while on holiday in Venice. They got engaged within two days.
Two of her books have won the Romance Writers of America RITA® Award, Song of the Lorelei in 1990, and His Brother’s Child in 1998, for the Best Traditional Romance category.
You can visit her Web site at www.lucy-gordon.com.
Look out for Lucy Gordon’s next
Harlequin Romance® in December
THE ITALIAN’S MIRACLE FAMILY
Dear Reader,
I love the chance to write about Venice. It is like no other place in the world with its freedom from cars, its mysterious silences, its sudden dangers and above all its unique atmosphere of romance.
I know about that atmosphere, having myself fallen under its spell. Some years ago I took a holiday there, met a Venetian, became engaged to him in two days and am now Venetian by marriage. So the Grand Canal and the Rialto Bridge have a special meaning for me, but it is the little places that mean even more—the tiny bridges, the narrow canals with washing strung across them, the backstreets where a couple can lose themselves, hopefully forever.
This is what I have tried to celebrate in my story of Pietro and Ruth, two lost souls who found each other with the help of a magical city.
Warm wishes,
Lucy Gordon
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER ONE
WHEN lightning filled the room, Pietro went to the window and looked out into the night.
He enjoyed a storm, especially when it swept over his beloved Venice, flashing down the Grand Canal, making the historic buildings tremble. To those who sighed over the beauties of Venice he would say that ‘his’ city was not the gentle, romantic site of legend, but rather a place of savage cruelty, treachery and murder.
Thunder crashed, engulfing him and the whole Palazzo Bagnelli, then dying, so that the only sound was the pounding of the rain on the water.
In the dim light he could just make out the Rialto Bridge looming up to his right, its shuttered windows glaring like blind eyes.
From beside him came a soft whine, and he reached out to scratch the head of a large, mongrel dog.
‘It’s all right, Toni,’ he said. ‘It’s only noise.’
But he kept his hand on the rough fur, knowing that his friend had an affliction that made him nervous, and Toni moved closer.
Now it was dark again and he could see his own reflection in the glass. It was like looking at a ghost, which was apt, considering how ghostly his life was.
Even the building around him seemed insubstantial, despite its three floors of heavy stone. The Palazzo Bagnelli, home of the Counts Bagnelli for six centuries, was one of the finest buildings of its kind in Venice.
For many years its great rooms had been filled with notable personages; servants by the hundred had scurried along its passages. Lords and ladies in gorgeous clothes had paraded in its stately rooms.
Now they were all gone, leaving behind one man, Count Pietro Bagnelli, with neither wife nor child, nor any other close family. Only two servants were left, and he was content with that.
These days he invited nobody to his home, living a solitary life in a few rooms in a corner of the building, with only Toni for company. Even to himself it had a sense of unreality, especially in winter. It was only nine o’clock but darkness had fallen and the storm had driven everyone inside.
He moved away from the window towards another one at the corner, through which he could see both the Grand Canal and the narrow alley that ran alongside the palazzo.
The spectre in the glass moved with him, showing a tall man with a lean, face, mobile mouth and deep set eyes. It was a wry, defensive face, the eyes seeming to look out from a trapped place. He was thirty-four but his air of cautious withdrawal made him seem older.
Beside him Toni suddenly became agitated. He was big enough for his head to reach the window, and he’d seen something outside that made him scrabble to get closer and demand his master’s attention.
‘There’s nothing out there,’ Pietro told him. ‘You’re imagining things. Dio mio!’
The exclamation had been torn from him by a flash of lightning, even more blinding than the last, that had turned everything white. By its light he thought he’d seen a figure standing below in the alley.
‘Now