DREAM LOVER (15 page)

“Nicolo, I have something…” Rochelle stopped abruptly when there was a sharp rap on the bedroom door.

“Do not leave,” he whispered as he threw the covers back and reached for his robe.  “I am coming,” he bellowed as another, more impatient rap sounded at his door. 

Rochelle burrowed beneath the blankets, mortified by the idea that whoever it was might push their way into the room and find her in Nicolo’s bed.  It was silly of her really.  There wasn’t a single member of his family who would dare enter his room if he forbid them to do so, but she knew his mother suspected they were lovers and didn’t put it past the horrid woman to send one of his burly cousins up to find out for sure.  They’d try to banish her from the mansion, and then she’d be forced to tell them the secret she’d been keeping since she’d first come to work at the Covelli estate, and she didn’t want to do that. 

She lived for the moment when she could stand before Nicolo’s mother and announce that not only was she married to him, but also that she was not the lowly housemaid they all believed her to be.  Adriana Covelli had ice in her veins when it came to Rochelle, ever since she’d come across her and Nicolo in the gardens one evening.  They hadn’t been doing anything except admiring the stars at the time, but perhaps it had been the guilty look they’d exchanged that made his mother suspicious there was far more going on than star gazing.  In a clipped tone, Adrianna had dismissed Rochelle and the woman had been positively acidic to her since.

Nicolo was muttering oaths under his breath when he returned.  “That was my cousin, Damian,” he explained, his expression dour as he let his robe drop to the floor and started to get dressed.  “It seems my mother neglected to tell me there was a dinner party this evening.”

Disappoint rolled over her in waves.  “Do you have to go?”

“I am sorry, mio amore, but the guest of honor is a very important businessman.  I have been trying to set up a meeting with him for over a month now, and a social setting may be just what I need to get my foot in the door.”  Nicolo smiled indulgently at the pouting woman in his bed.  “Do not worry.  I will be back in plenty of time to whisk you away and make you my wife just as we planned.”

Rochelle watched him dress, wondering how it was possible to feel her heart race and yet feel the heaviness in it too.  She climbed out of bed and retrieved her robe, but not before she made sure Nicolo got a good view of what he was tossing aside for a boring business colleague.  Turning her nose in the air, she tried to skirt around him to make a haughty exit, but he was too fast and caught her around the waist, bringing her up hard against his chest.

“Tomorrow you will be Mrs. Nicolo Covelli,” he said thickly.  “Do not send me away knowing you are angry at me for leaving you alone right now.”

She smiled up at him.  “Only if you promise to make it up to me later.”

“You have my word on it.  Now go up to your room and take a nice long bath, then meet me in the gardens in three hours.”

Three hours seemed like forever but it would give her time to make herself beautiful for Nicolo.  She gave him a kiss that was deliberately sensuous and promised to keep him distracted while he dined with his family and their guest.  Rochelle was quite pleased with the pained expression on his face when she extracted herself from his arms and waltzed over to the wall where a wood carving of an eagle hung.  Casting a backward glance to insure he was still suffering at having to leave her, she blew him a kiss, then reached up and pulled the eagle’s head towards her. 

There was a soft click as the latch on the hidden doorway was sprung and a few seconds later Rochelle was standing on the other side, desperately trying to squelch the ominous feeling of foreboding that seemed to permeate the air as the door closed behind her.  She was being ridiculous, Rochelle told herself.  It was jittery nerves because she was eloping with Nicolo tonight and nothing more.  Still, she couldn’t quite dispel the uneasy feeling as she made her way down the narrow passageway and scurried up the stairs to a second hidden doorway leading into her attic bedroom.

When she’d first come here in the guise of a maid, she’d quickly formed a close friendship with the housekeeper, Estela.  After it became obvious that Rochelle had stirred Nicolo’s interest, she’d confided in Estela about who she was and why she was there, which is how she ended up with a room of her own in the attic, while the other live-in maids had to share the larger room below hers.  Estela had insisted on helping her clean out the attic so she wouldn’t have to bunk with all the other young women, which had done nothing to endear her to the any of the maids, but they didn’t dare say anything for fear Estela would fire them.

Rochelle had no idea there was a passageway leading to Nicolo’s bedroom, or that it ran through the entire house and eventually lead to an underground tunnel.  It was only after she’d become Nicolo’s lover that he surprised her one night by slipping into her room and showed her how to open the door so she could go to him every night without fear of being caught.

“How many other lovers have sneaked through the secret passageway to join you in your bedroom?” she’d asked one night, though she’d been twisted into knots just imagining Nicolo with another woman.

Nicolo must have sensed she needed a straight answer because he hadn’t even attempted to make light of the subject.  “You and I are the only ones who know about it.  And just so you can put your mind at ease, the only woman who has ever shared this bed with me is you.”

She’d gazed up at him warily.  “You expect me to believe your father doesn’t know about it when he’s the one who had the mansion built?  And if you’re hedging the truth about that, how can I believe it when you say I’m the only woman you’ve invited into your room for the night?”

“It is the truth, cara mia.  Father purchased the land then flew back to Italy to finish up his business affairs and left me in charge of the construction.  I was a young man, barely twenty-three at the time, and it had always been impossible to leave the house without one of the servants or security people informing my parents, so I had a second set of plans drawn up that included the passageway.  You will just have to believe me when I say you are the only woman…the only person at all that I have trusted enough to tell.”

Now as Rochelle finished getting dressed and began brushing out her hair, she felt almost sad that she wouldn’t be using the passageway to get to Nicolo’s bedroom anymore.  There was something sinfully exciting about stealing through the narrow corridors while the rest of the house slept, but it was worth giving up to become his wife.  Her stomach gave a nervous flutter and she pressed her hand to her abdomen, a warm smile curving her lips.  Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing Nicolo had been called away before she could give him his gift: the news that he was going to be a father.

                        ***

Rachel sat bolt upright, her breath coming in ragged gasps.  She was pregnant!  Oh, God, Rochelle Beaumont was pregnant when they did those horrible things to her.  Tears streaked down her face as she stumbled out of bed and made a mad dash to the bathroom where she threw up until there was nothing left in her stomach but churning acid.  After rinsing off her face and giving her teeth a vigorous brushing, Rachel trudged back to the bedroom feeling like death warmed over. 

Why was this happening to her?  Why was she reliving the last few hours of that poor woman’s life?  Was it coincidence that the story of Rochelle’s life had begun to rewind only after she’d come to stay at the Covelli mansion, or was that the catalyst?  And what possible reason was there for it?  Did Rochelle simply want the truth known, or was her restless spirit hoping that Rachel could somehow undo the atrocities that had been committed? 

She glanced at the clock and was a little shocked to see she’d only slept for an hour.  Where was Nic?  What was taking him so long?  She wanted to tell him about the dream while it was still fresh in her mind.  Thinking it would be a good idea to write down what she remembered so she didn’t leave anything out when she recounted the dream to Nic, she started for the desk to search for a notepad to write on.  It was then that Rachel’s eyes lit on the wooden eagle mounted to the wall, the same eagle Rochelle had used to open the hidden doorway.

She stood in front of the carving for several minutes, excited by the prospect her dream might actually have led her to a secret passageway to Rochelle’s room,
but a little frightened too.  With a shaky hand, she reached up and curled her fingers around the eagle’s head,
giving it a tug. It didn’t budge.  Maybe it had been just a dream after all and none of those things had really happened.  Rachel shook her head.  Celia had already confirmed much of it, and getting the door to open would substantiate that what she’d just dreamed had actually happened too.

Drawing in a deep breath, she gave the eagle head a good, hard pull, the air expelling from her lungs with a whoosh when the latch sprang and the door opened just a crack.  She stood there for an eternity, trembling violently as she stared at the sliver of an opening, scared to death that Rochelle’s ghost was going to come flying out at her.  When nothing happened, she berated herself for being such a coward and stretched out one tentative hand to open the door. 

Rachel could just make out the staircase leading up at the end of a short corridor and managed to muster enough courage to take a couple of steps inside. 
There was nothing to be afraid of
, she forced herself to take a few more steps,
nothing to fear but fear itself
.  She’d almost convinced herself she was brave enough to make it all the way up the stairs without falling to pieces when the door suddenly slammed shut, immersing her in total darkness.

The bottom dropped out of Rachel’s stomach, and it took every ounce of self-control she had to keep from hurtling herself at the door and pummeling it with her fists.  As it was, the only reason she wasn’t screaming her head off was because her throat was so constricted no sound could have possibly escaped anyway.  Stretching her arms out in front of her, Rachel cautiously inched her way back the way she’d come until she felt solid wood beneath her fingertips.  She flattened her palms against the wall and began a slow sweep, but whoever had constructed the hidden doorway had obviously been instructed to make it as undetectable from this side as it was from the other.

Thinking there had to be a latch of some sort, she continued to run her hands over the wall as the mounting panic attack threatened to override any rational thought that still remained.  It occurred to her that a person could wander through the narrow corridors for hours and never find a way out without the aid of a light.  And if Nicolo had made the walls sound proof too?  Rachel shuddered at the thought she could die in here and no one would ever know. 
Walled up just like Rochelle Beaumont.
    

Walled up, yes, but not as helpless as Rochelle had been, she told herself.  That was her shinning hope and she grabbed onto it with dogged determination.  Maybe she couldn’t locate the doorway to the room she and Nic had shared, but the one to Rochelle’s room would be at the top of the stairs she’d spotted just before the door closed.  Making her way in the dark was terrifying enough but the occasional brush of cobwebs against her face rankled nerves that were already so raw Rachel was surprised she could still function.

As if stepping through the doorway without putting something down to keep it from closing hadn’t been stupid enough, she’d also been incredibly foolish and hadn’t put her shoes on first.  An oversight that was made painfully obvious when she discovered the stairway leading up by ramming her bare toe into it.  The incline was steep but the steps weren’t nearly as narrow as the ones they’d climbed to get to the servants quarters, and the guardrail provided a sense of security that she sorely needed at this point in her little adventure.

Rachel was breathing hard by the time she reached the top, though it had more to do with being scared half out of her mind than the exertion of climbing the stairs.  After searching in vain for the outline of the door and then spending even more time trying to locate a latch, she finally realized how futile it was and dropped down onto the floor to have a good cry. 

                       ***

Nic rubbed the back of his neck.  He was doing his best to stay focused on what Celia was saying but was suddenly so anxious to get back to Rachel it was all he could do to sit still.  Something was wrong, he could
feel
it.  He tried to convince himself he was being foolish.  After all, what could possibly go wrong when all Rachel was going to do was take a bath and then stay in the room until he returned?  Despite his own sound rationale the feeling persisted, and when Celia’s story finally came to its sad conclusion, Nic gave her a hurried thank you and all but bolted from the room.

He took the stairs two at a time and barreled into the bedroom, frantically moving his head from side to side as he called out her name.  The damp towel left hanging over the rack in the bathroom was proof Rachel had taken a bath just as she’d said she was going to, but where was she now?  Nic scanned the room, noting the rumbled bedcovers and the pair of shoes she’d been wearing this morning that had been casually kicked off beside the bed.  His brows furrowed.  Surely she hadn’t wandered off without putting her shoes on?