The Bookseller's Daughter

THE BOOKSELLER'S DAUGHTER A COMPLETELY HEARTBREAKING AND GRIPPING WORLD WAR 2 HISTORICAL ROMANCE DANIELA SACERDOTI BOOKS BY DANIELA SACERDOTI The Bookseller's Daughter The Italian Island The Lost Village The Italian Villa Glen Avich Quartet Watch Over Me Take Me Home Set Me Free Don’t Be Afraid Seal Island Series Keep Me Safe I Will Find You Come Back to Me AVAILABLE IN AUDIO The Italian Island (Available in the UK and the US) The Lost Village (Available in the UK and the US) The Italian Villa (Available in the UK and the US) CONTENTS Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Epilogue The Italian Villa Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Hear More from Daniela Books by Daniela Sacerdoti A Letter from Daniela The Italian Island The Lost Village For Alison Duff PROLOGUE VENICE, NOVEMBER 1930 The whimpers and cries of a frightened child fill the air, seep out of the open window and linger on the moonlit canal: the child is me. In my nightmare, the same that comes to me almost every night, I see my parents’ faces at the window, while the flames rise behind them. The books in our shop are turning to ash and flying up into the night sky. My mother’s eyes meet mine one last time, terrified and yet relieved that my sister and I are out of the blazing hell. I’m only six years old, but already a lifetime of fear and sorrow is in my heart. I flail and kick away the covers and find myself sitting up in bed. I rub imaginary ash off my face… I open my eyes, and there’s darkness all around me, except for the white moonlight pouring in from the window and pooling at the end of my bed. I must still be asleep, I must still be in the dream, because my mother is there, bathed in silver rays, her long dark hair down to her waist, her arms by her side. My mother, who died that night of fire and destruction. She cannot be here, in the world of the living—she belongs to the dream world. But if I’m not awake, why does it all feel real—the bedsheet against my skin, moist with my sweat; the cold and damp in the air, drifting up from the misty waters of the canal; the soft noise of my teeth chattering in fear? Yes, I’m awake. And the woman I see in front of me is a szellem: a ghost. My father warned me against spirits and golems and demons; he told me they can take many guises, they can beguile and deceive. But I can’t stop myself—I call her name to the rhythm of my galloping heart: “Mamusia, Mamusia!” I’m torn between yearning and dread. I long to throw myself in her arms, but I know she’s not of this world. The apparition looks like my mother, but when I fix my eyes on her face her features seem to shift and lose their contours, and I can’t quite see her. Fear has the best of me, and I stay put, my chest rising and falling under my nightdress, so fast that black spots appear at the edge of my vision. Her hair is like an inky cloud, and the skin of her arms is as white as the moonlight. For a moment, a moment so fleeting that I’m left wondering if it even happened—her face takes shape, and there she is, my lost mother in all her beauty and grace, just the way I remember her. The face that used to look down on me when I was about to drift away to sleep, coming close for a goodnight kiss. “Mamusia,” I whisper again, and in the bat of an eyelid she’s standing beside the calendar hanging on the opposite wall, with its list of saints’ days beside each date. She seems to take the moonlight with her, because the wall is now immersed in dim, white light. My mother’s arm travels up slowly, slowly against the wall, until it reaches the calendar, the back of her hand touching the paper. She bends all her fingers but one and lingers there. She’s about to open her mouth, but suddenly the air seems to vibrate and melt. This liquified air is dark, and it appears as a small, slight figure, an apparition more like an etching than a ghost. It has shape, but no substance—and yet it covers my mother, it eats her and drags her back wherever they came from. I scream in fear again, not whimpers this time, but a true scream of terror that startles even me. The last dredges of the apparitions fade away, and I’m alone once more. But for a few minutes only. Jacopo, my brother and protector, has heard me screaming. Every time I have a nightmare, which is often, my cries travel down the canal to his room, around the corner from mine. He leaps from his balcony to mine, over the small stretch of water, to comfort me. He hasn’t jumped off the windowsill yet, but I have already run to him. I’m clinging to his waist, while he murmurs words of comfort and strokes my hair. I look up to his face; he’s silhouetted against the moon, and to the eyes of a little girl he looks like the prince from a storybook. “I saw a ghost,” I whisper with my lips against his shoulder, but already I doubt myself. Did it really happen? “It was just a dream,” he assures me and holds my hand. I feel the reassuring shape of his fingers holding mine, a patch of rough, puckered skin making a round mark on his palm: he’d burned himself on a hot poker as a toddler. “Are you sure?” I ask. “Absolutely sure.” I want to believe him, but why would my father