In the Venetian's Bed
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Susan Stephens
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CHAPTER ONE
NELL FOSTER’S shout brought the people strolling along the narrow street to an abrupt halt. The scene froze in a distorted snapshot. On the cobbled calle above the canal a tall, dark man was holding a limp blonde child in his arms. From the gondola swaying gracefully below him, a young mother thrust out her arms in alarm.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing with my daughter?’ On the pretext of helping her to disembark the gondolier had passed Molly to a stranger!
Nell’s voice sounded shrill in the oppressive silence of the ancient backwater, and shock made her actions disjointed as she hurried to disembark. She stumbled on the treacherous moss-coated steps, forcing the man holding Molly to lurch out and save her. She shook him off angrily. Molly was like a rag doll in his arms, the soft breeze feathering fronds of baby hair around her face.
‘Give her to me now!’ People stared. Nell didn’t care. She had one goal in mind, and that was Molly. While they had been travelling along the canal at a snail’s pace with no means of escape Molly had fallen asleep so heavily Nell hadn’t been able to wake her. It was an unnatural sleep that terrified Nell. And now this man had taken Molly from her.
‘No.’ The deep, faintly accented voice was brusque and uncompromising.
He was refusing? Nell looked for support, but there was something so commanding in the man’s manner that, rather than attempting to help her, people were already starting to move away.
Used to wielding authority, she guessed, he was in his mid to late twenties and expensively though casually dressed. He was groomed in a way only the rich had time for—pressed trousers, crisp shirt, and with a lightweight sweater slung around his shoulders that she would have needed superglue at the very least to keep in place. He made her feel shabby, frightened and very angry.
‘Stand out of my light.’ Dipping his head to look her in the eyes, he rapped the words at her.
‘Give my daughter back to me!’ Nell met and held his gaze. She had no intention of moving one inch. What, and leave Molly in the arms of some man she didn’t know?
‘Don’t,’ he warned, stepping back when she tried to take Molly from him.
‘Don’t? What do you mean, don’t? That’s my daughter you’re holding.’
Dazzling black-gold eyes equally full of determination locked with Nell’s.
‘You’ve had a shock. You’re unsteady on your feet. If you fall into the canal, who will rescue you?’ He glanced at Molly lying insensible in his arms, turning the question into a rebuke.
A few locks of inky black hair had fallen into his eyes as he spoke—the only part of him that had resisted perfection. Nell resented absorbing that much about him. ‘We need help. Can’t you see?’ She fumbled for her phone while the sun beat down on her shoulders, making it impossible to breathe. The man holding Molly seemed to exist in a bubble of air-conditioning.
‘You’re overwrought,’ he said coldly.
Overwrought? ‘Are you surprised?’ She watched with mounting anger as he pulled out a phone and flipped it open. It seemed like another tactic to avoid giving Molly back to her. ‘Who are you calling?’
He paused with the mobile halfway to his ear. ‘An ambulance.’
‘An ambulance?’ Nell’s mouth dried. Briefly, her mind refused to accept the possibility of an ambulance coming down the canal. But she knew there had to be some means by which emergency cases could be transported to hospital in Venice.
Emergency cases? Molly was only eighteen months old! She’d never had a day’s illness in her life.
Nell stared at the man more intently. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
He pressed his lips together and shook his head as he listened to the voice at the other end of the phone line.
Nell gazed at Molly lying in his arms. She was almost frightened to touch her own daughter. Molly looked so frail, as if all the life had leached out of her.
The man started speaking rapidly in Italian. Nell had found the language an interesting challenge earlier, but now it was just a hostile barrier she couldn’t cross. Her heart jerked as his phone snapped shut. Why didn’t he say something? Couldn’t he see she was desperate for information? But all his attention was focused on Molly. His brow was furrowed and she could see he was worried. It endorsed her own fears. Why wouldn’t Molly wake up? No one slept like this unless there was something seriously wrong.
When he moved she followed him into the shade. ‘Will the ambulance be long?’
‘No.’
‘So, do you know what’s wrong?’ She ran a hand through her hair. Why should she assume he knew anything? But she was desperate. She didn’t know what was happening, she didn’t know him—she didn’t know anything. ‘Who are you?’
Panic was rising inside her chest. She fought it back, forcing herself to concentrate as he started to say something. She couldn’t afford to go to pieces.
‘I’m a doctor—a medical practitioner.’ He held her gaze fast in a blaze of self-assurance.
If that was meant to reassure her, it had the opposite effect. All the panic and fear drained out of her to be replaced by dread. She had been brought up to trust and respect the medical profession, and she’d had no reason to change that opinion until a catastrophic event had pulled the wool from her eyes.
‘My name is Dottore Luca Barbaro.’
The man had moved on smoothly to introductions, Nell realised. It was as if she were watching a horror film in slow motion, a film that had no connection with her life. ‘Dr Barbaro,’ she repeated distractedly.
‘That’s right.’
He sounded as though he expected her to fall on her knees and give thanks.
‘Well, now that you’ve made your call, Dr Barbaro, you can give my daughter back to me!’
‘Don’t you trust me?’ His brow furrowed.
‘Trust you? Why should I trust you?’
‘You’re in shock,’ he said, sounding irritable. ‘It’s better if I hold her.’
Better? What could be better than for a child to be held by its own mother? ‘I’m not in shock. Give her to me.’ The urge to rip Molly from his arms was growing every moment, but she couldn’t risk manhandling Molly, not when there was something so obviously wrong.
Nell’s mind darted about, trying to land on a sensible course of action, but nothing made sense—especially this man appearing out of the blue to take charge of their lives. ‘Have you been following us?’ she said suspiciously.
‘Following you?’ His eyes mirrored his impatience.
‘Oh, so you just happened along. And you tell me you’re a doctor. Quite convenient, don’t you think?’
‘Why should I lie to you? I am a doctor. I live just over there.’ He jutted out his chin to indicate some building.
She didn’t look. She had no intention of staring at a place she had no wish to see. ‘And you were standing by your window when our gondola floated past?’
‘Your gondolier rang to warn me you were on your way.’
That seemed so incongruous, it had to be impossible. Then Nell remembered the gondolier had made a call. It was so easy to be seduced by ravishingly beautiful and apparently unchanged Venice, and forget how easily the modern world coexisted with the old.
‘Luck was smiling on you,’ he remarked.
‘Luck?’ It was Nell’s turn to snap.
‘Lucky for you your gondolier knew me and where I live. Marco only had to ring to check that I was in, and then he brought you straight here.’
‘He brought us here intentionally?’
‘He was trying to help you.’
A fact that seemed lost on the child’s mother, Luca thought. He eased his neck. His head was thumping. Sleep deprivation had finally claimed him. This was supposed to be his day off, but when the call came suggesting a worrying case, his time on duty had slipped into its third day. That didn’t matter. The patient came first. The patient always came first.
‘The gondolier brought you here as quickly as he could.’ His tolerance levels, thin at the best of times when dealing with civilians, were at an all-time low. While one part of his brain knew it was routine for the mother to be concerned and emotional, the other, more forceful side resented her interference. The result? He was spitting out words to drive his message home. And the message was: Leave me to deal with this. I don’t need to be here, I don’t want your thanks, just don’t expect me to be your emotional support when I have a job to do.
But there was no nurse here to take the woman away. Grinding his jaw, Luca attempted to calm her down. Human decency demanded that much of him. ‘Marco could see you needed a doctor, so he brought you to me. Didn’t you tell him you needed help?’
‘I didn’t think he understood.’
‘He didn’t. Lucky for you he used his initiative.’
Oh, forget human decency. He was just too damn tired, and the child needed all his attention. Besides, there was something else nagging at him—something that meant he had to be harsh. Feelings, thoughts, all of them inappropriate, were swimming round his head, pulling his eyes to her body when they should be on the patient.
He didn’t need this. A particularly harrowing shift had left him tired and susceptible—how else could he explain the way he was reacting to her?
Luca turned back to the patient in his arms before he had chance to lock eyes with her mother.
‘What are you doing now?’ Nell tensed as he inspected Molly’s fingernails.
‘You’re going to have to put your mistrust of doctors on hold while I check my patient.’
His patient? Her baby. Her life. Nell gritted her teeth. And as for putting her mistrust on hold…! Didn’t this just underline everything she felt about doctors? Didn’t this man’s detached manner justify all the ugly emotion welling inside her now—emotion so close to hatred it was impossible to tell the difference?
‘So, what exactly are you checking, Doctor?’
‘Oxygen levels.’
‘And you can do that just from staring at my daughter’s hand?’
‘I can see if the nails are pink and healthy, or if they are tinged with blue.’
‘Blue? Let me see!’ Fear welled in Nell’s throat. She had no medical training to draw on. She didn’t know if Molly’s nails were pink enough. What kind of mother didn’t know the colour of her own daughter’s nails? Why hadn’t she noticed the colour of Molly’s nails when she was well so she had something to compare them with now?
‘You can’t be expected to know everything.’
And now he could read minds? She doubted he was trying to placate her. In any case, she didn’t want his understanding: she wanted facts. ‘How can I help if you don’t tell me what’s going on?’
‘You can’t help,’ he said flatly.
‘So a mother’s care is worth nothing?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ he said wearily.
‘Then give her to me.’ Nell’s tone sharpened.
He levelled a gaze on her face. ‘If you want me to assess her medical condition you’ll leave her where she is.’
‘You’re a doctor and you don’t know what’s wrong with her yet?’
‘I can’t be certain—’
‘But you must have some idea.’
‘Stop pressing me for answers. You should try to relax—’
‘Relax?’
‘All right, then, how about trusting me?’
‘Why should I trust you? I don’t know you. You could be anyone!’
‘Look, just stay calm, or move away. You’re disturbing my patient.’
Nell held her ground. ‘Your patient is my daughter! If you’re not capable of helping Molly then I’m going to find someone who is.’
‘Where?’
He fired the word back at her. She flinched and fell silent.
‘If you just stay calm everything will be all right,’ he told her.
The man’s assurance infuriated her. He had intoned the platitude in the way Nell was beginning to think must be dished out along with the accreditation MD. ‘And maybe I could stay calm if I thought you had any idea what was wrong with my daughter.’
‘I can’t be sure of anything yet.’
‘Or you don’t know.’ She had been too trusting once before, and that had ended in tragedy. She wasn’t going to make that same mistake again. Not with Molly.
When her husband, Jake, had been killed in a car accident, Nell hadn’t known that Molly’s father might have survived had the junior doctor mistakenly sent to tend him at the roadside been properly trained. Later, in Casualty, she had believed the medics had been trying to save Jake’s life, not covering for their colleague’s mistake. When they had finally admitted Jake was dead it had come as a complete shock to her. There had been no warning, no preparation at all.
It had been a life-changing event that had led to Nell starting a campaign to help others in a similar plight. That campaign was now a charitable trust with volunteers countrywide in the United Kingdom. People who could liaise with the medical staff within a hospital and give whatever support was required to a patient’s relative or friend.
This Luca Barbaro seemed too glamorous, too young, to be an experienced doctor. Very like the young medic who had tended Jake. Nell’s heart lurched.
‘Can you call the hospital? Tell them I want someone there as soon as we arrive—a paediatric consultant, someone experienced. The best!’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’ His voice was bordering on sarcastic.
‘Not good enough,’ she said sharply.
His answer was to lock his fingers under Molly, as if she was about to do something stupid like snatch Molly from him. Or was it just to drive home the message that he was in charge?
He leaned over the canal at a perilous angle to peer down it—with Molly in his arms. Nell’s hands balled into fists. Molly’s tiny frame suspended over murky water! Her head was banging with tension by the time he straightened up to stare at her in silence. Did he expect her to start a conversation—about the weather, maybe?
‘You should tell me your name.’
Her eyes had to be registering astonishment, Nell knew. This wasn’t some social gathering where it was mandatory to engage in small talk. She didn’t want to chat with him. She didn’t want to get to know him. She didn’t want to tell him her name. ‘Perhaps you should tell me what you know about Molly’s condition.’
Nell’s brave front dissolved as Luca Barbaro held her gaze. There was something in his eyes that made her heart lurch with dread. How bad was it? Why didn’t he say something to reassure her? Was it because there was nothing to say?
‘You’ll have to tell me your name sooner or later.’
A doctor possessed any number of strategies for winkling out facts from distressed relatives, as she knew only too well, but giving her name as Molly’s next of kin was mandatory. ‘My name is Nell Foster,’ she offered stiffly.
‘And the child’s name?’
‘My daughter’s name is Molly.’ Nell had drawn herself up, thinking she was ready for him. But the moment she spoke Molly’s name her self-assurance disappeared. Molly was the one fixed point in her life, a point around which everything else in her world revolved. Everything she did, thought, or planned was for Molly. As tears welled behind her eyes, she only managed to hold herself together by staring fixedly at her baby.
‘Molly Foster,’ he murmured. ‘Very nice.’
The tender note in his voice took Nell by surprise. Her mouth tightened. She didn’t want his smiles or reassurance. She wanted the answer to one simple question: why had Molly been taken ill?
‘So, Molly…’
She refocused, hearing his crooning tone. No one spoke to Molly like that except for her.
‘Is this your first visit to Venice, Molly?’ he continued, oblivious to the distress he was causing.
‘Yes, it is,’ Nell answered for her daughter stiffly. The rational side of her brain told her that he was watching for signs as he spoke to Molly, clues that might help him to arrive at a diagnosis. The emotional side of her brain didn’t trust him to get it right. She didn’t trust any doctor.
And then he glanced up as if sensing her appraisal. She must have swayed, because the next thing she knew his free hand was under her arm and he was steadying her, and the sensation was shooting up her arm like…
She pulled free with surprise. It was hard to believe his touch had affected her so acutely. How could she respond to a man at a time like this? It disgusted her. It was as if her body was tuned to a different frequency from her mind and she had no control over it. As he moved she was forced to move with him to stay close to Molly, but she took care to keep her distance from the man holding her.
‘That’s better,’ he said infuriatingly, as if Nell had moved into the very spot he would have chosen for her. ‘You should stand well back from the canal. You’ve had a shock and we don’t want any accidents.’
We? She guessed that was the type of nursery-speak he used in the hospital. It was exactly the type of thing she had made it her crusade to abolish.
‘Molly needs you to be strong. She’s very poorly. You do understand that?’
Nell’s stomach clenched with fear. ‘Of course I understand.’ But she didn’t understand any of it. How could Molly be so sick? She wanted him to say it was a mistake. She wanted Molly to wake up.
‘Take some deep breaths, Nell. It will help.’
Nell’s face was hostile as she stared up. She wasn’t the one in need of help here! And she felt Barbaro’s use of her first name as another outrage. While she had been waiting in the hospital for Jake she had noticed that all the patients were addressed by their first names. She had also noticed that no one called out, ‘Hey, John,’ to Jake’s consultant, but had addressed him respectfully as Mr Delaware. She had resented it then, she resented it now. But she had to let it go. Resentment didn’t help Molly. She recommended breathing exercises to her volunteers to use in moments of stress, and tried them now. Gradually the muscles in her chest began to release—but he was leaning over the canal again.
‘Must you do that?’
Rocking back on his heels, Luca Barbaro stared down at her. ‘I’m looking for the ambulance.’
Did that give him the excuse to expose Molly to risk? ‘Well, don’t do it while you’ve got my daughter in your arms. Or give her back to me.’
‘No.’
She couldn’t risk a tussle that might land them all in the water. She had to content herself with stroking Molly’s brow, which had grown warm and clammy. Her chest was working like a miniature bellows, while her cheeks were unnaturally pink. ‘Does she have a fever?’
‘I’ll know more when we reach the hospital and I can run some tests.’
‘So, in fact, you know damn all?’ Hot and cold waves of terror were washing over her. She knew she shouldn’t shout, or lose her cool, but some atavistic instinct was shouting at her to take Molly and run…find help. But where would she run to? She was lost in the maze of backwaters that made up the hidden face of Venice. This calle was a long way from the regular tourist trail with its friendly vendors and signposts to the main attractions. Her knowledge of Italian was minimal, and she would lose valuable time trying to find her way back to the Grand Canal…time Molly might not have.
Nell’s heart pounded as her mind filled with a deep and unreasonable hatred of Venice. Everything that had seemed so beautiful, so charming when they had first arrived had turned an ugly face on them. She glanced around, wondering if the dilapidation harboured the blight that had infected Molly—or the water, perhaps? The unusual silence of the traffic-free centre, which so recently she had enjoyed, now represented isolation; the lack of signposts seemed now to be a ploy to confuse the unwary tourist. And worst of all, Venice had welded her to this stranger, a man who said he was a doctor. And even if he was a doctor, for all she knew Luca Barbaro was a podiatric surgeon, happier sawing off bunions than treating children! But she was stuck with him. She couldn’t risk setting out on her own with Molly and getting lost.
It was her fault. She shouldn’t have brought Molly so far from home for a holiday. But then Jake’s accident had happened at the end of their road—on familiar territory…The policewoman sent to break the news and comfort her afterwards had said that was where so many accidents happened, when people let their concentration slip after a long journey. And of course, it hadn’t helped that Jake had had a secret life to distract him. It was hardly surprising he’d gone off the road.
The accident had happened on a Friday night, when Casualty was like a war zone. She had been locked inside her thoughts, fearing the worst, hoping for the best, when the scream came. It had been a woman’s scream, a scream that connected with Nell on so deep a level she had known her whole life was somehow wrapped up in it. When they finally allowed her into Jake’s room, no one had warned her that he wasn’t alone. The last thing she had been expecting to find was a young woman with a tiny baby in her arms, weeping by her dead husband’s bed.
