Magical Weddings (34 page)

Caterina had not known what to think when she had seen him standing there. Her heart had leaped, only to quickly drop like a stone when she realised he had heard everything. She did not want him obliged to help. She wanted him to want her freely.

It was all such a mess.

“You left soon after you offered to take me with you,” she said, “Where did you go?”

“I went to get my belongings,” he said tersely, obviously unwilling to share conversation.

“And after that?” Caterina pushed. “I heard you come in with your bags and speak to my father while I was learning the magic and then I heard you go out again.”

Matheo cast a quick look behind them and then said, “I went to speak with Guido. I needed to be honest with him and tell him why I was leaving and who I was leaving with.”

“I see.” Caterina wondered if there would come a day in the future where she would wake and not begin the day with counting the number of people she had hurt through one thoughtless action. “What did he say?”

“Hardly anything useful,” Matheo muttered under his breath and increased his pace so that she had to half-jog to catch up with him.

What did that mean? Had Matheo gone to Guido to offer him the chance to steal away with her and when Guido refused, he felt stuck with her? Another layer of guilt settled across her shoulders.

“I appreciate that this is not how you envisaged your grand adventure beginning,” she said, carefully, “but are you going to remain angry with me for the duration?” She suspected she deserved to hear him say ‘yes’ but she was already feeling the nerves gather as they drew closer to the dock.

“You think that is why I am angry?” Matheo asked coming to an abrupt stop, a look of shock on his face. “Because my original plan to travel is dead in the water?”

She stood in the middle of the narrow street, slightly out of breath, aware that time was short, but knowing she needed to get to the boat with everything cloudy between them clear.

“No,” she answered quietly. “I expect it has more to do with the fact that you have witnessed a reckless streak in me. I disrespected something I did not fully understand and now I have not only changed what was supposed to happen to me, I have affected several people along the way.” She forced herself to face whatever truth shone in his eyes. “You must feel now as if you cannot trust me. As if I might act impulsively and put us both in more danger.”

Matheo shook his head as he reached out to hold her hand. “Caterina, I am angry because the Doge’s reach is long. Perhaps it is even long enough that we must live the rest of our lives under a blanket constructed of lies to protect your identity. That kind of living carries a cost.”

“I do not care.” Not as long as I am with you, she thought selfishly.

“Well you should care. Do you not see how you deserve more? How all of us wanted more for you?”

When he tugged on her hand to try and resume walking she refused. “I do see that,” she told him plainly. “I will have to live every day knowing that one impetuous action has led to all of this. But Matheo, if you get us on that boat I will work every day to make recompense.”

Matheo put down his bag and reached out to brush his thumb down her cheek. “You do not need to make recompense,” he told her softly. “You simply wished for something different. There was nothing malicious in it. You recognised you and Guido were not suited and you tried to prevent a disaster.”

“But now you are stuck with me,” she moaned.

“But now I am free to be with you,” he insisted, wrapping her in his arms and whispering into her ear, “It is what I always wanted, but not in the way I wanted you to have it.”

“I do not care. Truly. As long as I am with you, I-,”

Suddenly Matheo tensed, turned his head a little and then swore under his breath. Reaching down he grabbed hold of his bag and with his other hand wrapped tightly around her upper arm, started hurrying forward again.

“Do not turn around,” he instructed. “I think the two guards from last night are following us.”

“But how did they find out so quickly?” Caterina asked as she tried desperately to keep pace with him while not drawing more attention.

“Stop!” called the guards in unison.

Instead Matheo did the opposite, increasing his speed as he pulled Caterina along the street. The narrow street opened up as the dock came into view. Surely they would make it?

Her gaze skirted over the water’s edge and out to the big ship in the distance. They had to make it. They had to.

“Caterina, if I tell you to run, I want you to promise me you will run for your life and you will not look back.”

“But I can help, I can-,”

“Promise me. There are numerous places to hide in the docks. You will find one and wait for me, understand?”

“Matheo,” she could not form more words. Her heart was in her mouth. She turned her head to nod at him that she understood.

His eyes were fierce with feeling as he said, “I will find you, I promise. I love you. Now run!”

Palazzo Ducale, Venice 1615

Caterina looked down at the scratches she had scored into the wooden work table.

Twenty.

So today would have been her wedding day.

Not that she cared about that.

No.

All she cared about was Matheo and whether or not he had been captured by Maria’s guards too, or worse, whether he had been killed.

Fresh, hot tears, formed behind her eyelids.

Surely she would know in her heart if his life had been extinguished?

Dashing away her tears, she sucked in a breath and refused to succumb to the dark thought that he was no longer out there in the world.

She had to keep hoping.

Hope would keep her strong.

Strength would keep her alive.

Matheo would not want her to die in this tower where Maria had locked her up.

She
did not want to die here in this cold, damp place.

Pushing up from the table, she paced as far as the heavy chain around her ankle would allow and as she paced she tried very hard not to think about anything bad befalling Matheo.

She tried instead to think about what it would have been like, the two of them onboard that boat to freedom.

As her imagination swirled to life, she thought about the two of them travelling to wonderful new places, enjoying their lives together.

It was what she had begun doing while waiting in her hidey-hole at the dockyard. Over and over again she had told herself that Matheo would find her, and whenever the fear that he would not had started to overtake, she had called on her imagination to calm her down.

This was not how their story was supposed to end.

But when her hiding place had been discovered, it had not been by Matheo, but by Maria’s guards. They had dragged her out from between the cargo crates, kicking and screaming for her life. She remembered becoming so fierce as she scratched and clawed at them that something foul-smelling had been placed against her mouth and then…nothing.

She had awoken with a head that felt as heavy as a cannonball, to find herself in this claustrophobic round-walled room, with its miniscule window, too high up in the cold brickwork for her to see where she was.

As soon as Maria had visited her, her suspicions that she was being kept somewhere in the palazzo were confirmed. She had wanted to demand where Matheo was, but what if Maria told her he was dead? How would she bear it? So she had kept silent, all the time searching Maria’s face for some clue as to his fate.

It had taken five visits for her to realise that if she was to survive the mental torture of not knowing what had happened to Matheo, she must never show Maria how much she wanted the answer.

At first Maria had been kind, bringing her food and blankets and demanding a guard wrap the hands that she had fought with in bandages so they would heal.

But Caterina had known Maria only wanted her hands to heal so that she could begin lacemaking again. Frantically, Caterina had looked around for her bags, but the turret room was empty, bar the bed with its blankets and the table with its plate and cup.

Laughter had bubbled out of Caterina then.

“What is it?” Maria had asked, a flash of fear showing for the first time in her eyes. “Why would you find your imprisonment amusing?”

Caterina had withdrawn back into silence.

She may be being held captive but at least Maria would never get from her what she wanted most. There was no way Caterina could perform even rudimentary magic without the stones her mother had given her. No, Maria would remain trapped inside the mental cell she had created for herself when she had decided she could not live in the world with a scar on her face.

Caterina realised it was better to be trapped physically than mentally.

She still had her imagination.

She would use it to fire her creativity and find a way to wait for Matheo, or get herself out of this place herself.

The day Maria declared her hands healed enough to try work Caterina asked her, “Where do the Doge and Dogaressa think you are, when you come to visit me?”

Maria had hesitated and then, as if in the mood for conversation, replied, “They think I am out being courted.”

Caterina had smiled.

“It is not an outright lie,” Maria had insisted. “When you complete the first dress, I will have any man I want begging to court me.”

Caterina’s mind raced. Other than hope, time had become her most precious commodity. She would bide as much of it as she could.

“It may take a while for the magic to take,” Caterina warned Maria. “I have been brought here against my will. I am hungry, cold and tired, with hands that do not work as well as they used to. Will you kill me if the magic does not work the first time?”

Maria frowned. She could not seem to tell if Caterina was in fact asking to be killed, or whether, she was asking to save her life.

She was asking to save her life.

The more she knew of her fate when Maria discovered the magic was non-existent, the better she could plan.

“You are certain that the magic will restart eventually?” Maria asked carefully.

“That depends. Do I have your word that I will be released after making your magic wardrobe of dresses?”

“Of course,” Maria answered, her eyes darting briefly to the left before her gaze settled back on Caterina.

Caterina had been studying Maria carefully since her captivity.

Her captor had just lied to her.

Now she knew that she had as long as it would take her to produce a complete wardrobe, before Maria took severe action.

The following day Caterina asked for paper and charcoal. If she was to make the perfect magic dress, she told her captor, she needed first to sketch the image in her head.

She worked without break throughout the night and the next day. Sketching and re-sketching, then drawing it out in intricate detail. From the minute the first lines appeared on the page, she understood she was actually creating a dress not for Maria, but for herself were she free to do so.

She was designing the dress she would have hoped to wear on her wedding day and when she was completely satisfied with the design she asked for needles and thread to begin the lacework.

As she worked the lace, day after day, night after night, she thought of ways to get out of the palace.

Caterina was weaving her own slice of time.

Whenever Maria visited to check her progress, it was as if she could not bring herself to demand Caterina rush such exquisite workmanship, and all the while Caterina carefully stitched, she nurtured the hope that today was the day Matheo would find her, or that today was the day that one of the guards would make a mistake and she would get free.

Now, as her pacing pulled too much on the leg-iron, Caterina stopped and went back to sit at the table. Instead of running her fingers over the grooves she had carved into the table and thinking about wedding days and if she would ever get one with Matheo, she pulled the dress towards her and picked up her needle.

All she had left to complete was the long train she had decided to add.

Quietly she began to work the lace.

She might not have the semi-precious stones her mother had given her, or be able to remember the incantations she had been told, but the true magic she breathed into every stitch on the dress was hope.

Hope that she would not always be imprisoned here.

Hope that she would see Matheo again.

Hope that they would have a life well-lived, together.

Hope that even if she never wore this dress, it would survive and find someone other than Maria to appreciate its magic.

Museum of Fashion, Bath, England 2015

Cait glanced at her watch as she punched in the access code to the staff door of the museum on the lower ground floor of the famous eighteenth century Georgian Assembly Rooms.

Barely seven o’clock in the morning.

At least ninety minutes before staff started arriving and she would need every one to check each task off the final run-through list she had made the night before.

That was always providing she had put everything she needed to on the list, she thought as nervous acid bubbled away in her stomach.

Rosie and Guy’s wedding was tomorrow.

The lace exhibition opened to the public two days later.

Muttering aloud she said, “Two huge days ahead of you and who are your thoughts consumed with..?”

Blue-green eyes twinkling with warm humour and then darkening with the sexy spark of interest popped into her head.

“Exactly,” she answered herself, exasperated. “Matthew-bloody-Searle.”

Morning, noon and night he managed to effectively present himself at the forefront of her mind, pushing Rosie and Guy’s wedding and the exhibition unceremoniously out of the way in the process.

Early mornings were the worst. Having spent all night dreaming about him as a masked stranger flirting with her at a ball, or running with her through a maze of narrow streets, or more recently, alone and as if he was searching tirelessly for her, she woke each day exhausted and on the edge of believing she had made a mistake and that they were weirdly destined to be together.