The Secret Daughter of Venice
By Juliet Greenwood

Presented by the author and publisher, I have an extract to share with you of The Secret Daughter of Venice as part of a Random Resources Blog Tour.

This extract comes from early on in the story when Kate, the heroine, retreats to her room in a faded Tudor mansion near Stratford-upon-Avonafter an argument with her father. Not only is he refusing to tell her anything about her past, or her true parentage, but is determined she will remain at home and marry a conveniently rich man to restore the family fortunes, rather than follow her heart and become a painter, and to find her lost mother.
Reaching her own room, Kate curled herself tight on the window seat. Outside, thelast of the light was beginning to fade from the landscape. A faint hint of woodsmokehung in the air, drifting up fromthe remains of cooking fires in Brierley-in-Arden, safein its hollow, while the breathy hoot of owls echoed across the surrounding undulationof woods and fields.Before the war, there had always been the distant glow of light from the lampsand candlesas night fell, but now the village was muffled in blackout darkness. Crouching, like all the villages throughout England and far beyond, waiting for thedeep drone of bombers overhead.Kate had painted the scene so often in her sketchbook in daylight hours thatshe could still see it in her mind’s eye. The walls of the kitchen garden, with its neatrows of vegetables and the tall wigwams of twigs and canes supporting theramblings of peas and beans between espaliered trees of peach and apple. Thefields beyond, once more turned into the growing of cabbages and potatoes, just as they had been during the last war. The war to end all wars, which had left so manyfathers and uncles, sons and brothers as no more than names on the memorial nextto the duck pond on Brierley’s village green.The house felt emptier than ever. Hollowed out without the creak of footstepsin its vastness, the distant murmur of voices emanating from the bedrooms as hersisters dreamed of their futures, or her brothers discussed some plan or other to takeoff in the Austin to walk in the Lakes, free from Papa’s eagle eye. She even missedWill, who as the son and heir, could not be contradicted. During his last return onleave from France, he had been particularly loud in joining the condemnation ofMussolini, for whom he had particular scorn. At least Hitler and Spain’s Franco wereproper soldiers, he had declared, not a fat vulgar little man like il Duce.

Closing the blackout curtains, she lit her candle, and turned her attention to the flyleaf of the leatherbound book of Shakespeare’s sonnets balanced on her knees. For Katerina. Not Kate, not Katherine. Her real name. She rolled the word around her mouth as she traced the swirl of the writing, spidery, faint, as if the writer barely had the strength to hold the pen. Katerina. The page wavered in front of her. That was her first memory of Arden House. A bewildered little girl with salt spray in her hair, abruptly torn from everything she knew, shivering in the silk dress made for the heatof a Mediterranean summer, her skin absorbing the penetrating damp of the booklined room. And the strange man who had brought her here, standing tall and severe, and so very old in a child’s eyes, instructing her to call him ‘Papa’. She was to speak only English, he’d told her, and be Katerina, the inconveniently foreign child no longer. ‘You are Kate,’ Leo Arden had said, with the severity of a school master instilling discipline in a class. ‘Kate Arden. You have no other name. It does not exist. It never existed. And you will look a damn fool if you try to say otherwise. You don’t want those who love you to be ashamed of you, do you?’
His blue eyes had sharpened at her silence, as the child’s instinct for survival had fought the rebellion within her soul. She had seen something flicker in their depths. Love? Guilt? Or, she had begun to wonder as she grew older, if it had been simply distaste. Regret, even. That first evening he had abruptly turned away towards the children, all older and bigger than her, crowding at the door, curious, but waiting for permission to step inside.‘ Say hello to your brothers and sisters,’ he had said, propelling her towards them. Katerina. On the window seat, Kate felt the silence of the house creep around her. Could there really be a message left for her in amongst the lines of verse, interspersed by the fantastical illustrations? She shivered, remembering the deep cold that had settled in her bones in her first terrified days at Arden House; and the feeling of absence–absence of familiar heat, of earth brittle with lack of moisture and yet rich with the scent of lemons and olive groves, rosemary and wild thyme. The absence, most of all, of love. The window rattled as a night breeze tore at the leaves turning towards their autumn brittleness and sent the rafters protesting in sympathy. Kate held the volume tighter, as the wind became the creaking of rigging in her mind, the frantic flapping ofa sail, the crash of waves againstthe hull of the boat taking her into the unknown. Then she was back there, in the terrace under the vines, her ears filled with childish screams–her screams–as she was dragged away, helpless, from the strong arms that loved her. The Secret Daughter of Venice. The paper is stiff and brittle with age as Kate unfolds it with trembling hands. She gasps at the pencil sketch of a rippling waterway, lined by tall buildings, curving towards the dome of a cathedral. She feels a connection deep in her heart.

Venice. England, 1941. When Kate Arden discovers a secret stash of drawings hidden in the pages of an old volume of poetry given to her as a baby, her breath catches. All her life, she has feltlike an outsider in her wealthy adoptive family, who refuse to answer any questions about her past. But the drawings spark a forgotten memory: a long journey by boat… warm arms that held her tight, and then let go.
Could these pictures unlock the secret of who she is? Why her mother left her? With war raging around the continent, she will brave everything to find out…
A gripping, emotional historical novel of love and art that will captivate fans of The Venice Sketch book, The Woman on the Bridge and The Nightingale.

About the Author