[Barbara Samuel] Night of Fire(Book4You) (28 page)

Still, he wanted to roar out his rage at the loss of the beauty and the words and the love. That politics should have made a mockery of three lives, three passions. It was beyond unfair. It was deepest cruelty.

He stood and bent to pick up his shoes. A noise from above halted him, sent him to hide in the shadows.

Cassandra drifted out onto her balcony. She was cloaked in something white that blew in the soft breeze of the night, and her hair was loose, flowing over her shoulders and arms and back. She came to the railing and rested her elbows on it, her face lifted up to the night. Around her was that profound stillness.

Her hands rested together, utterly calm.

A pale wash of moonlight illuminated her face, and Basilio saw that she was weeping silently. The tears streamed over her cheeks, making spikes of her lashes.

He stepped out of the shadows and quietly began to speak. "These are the moments of a poet's heart: a plum, a star, a woman's shoulder, shining in moonlight."

The stillness in her body rippled, and she peered into the darkness. "Basilio?"

It was no acddent that he was here. With a swell of joy, he scrambled up the tree again, unquestioning.

He nearly ran the length of the branch, feeling it sway dangerously as he reached the end, and he made a leap for the solid footing of her balcony floor. Then he stood there, words gone, only looking at her.

She stared at him for a moment, and he could not tell if she would laugh or scowl. Then suddenly she was flying toward him, and Basilio caught her in his arms tightly, a small cry coming from him as her body, which he had thought never to hold again, pressed hard into him.

And then they were kissing, kissing madly, deeply, both of them weeping, salt on their lips and tongues, their hands touching hair and backs and waists and hips in renewal, in joy, in hunger.

They broke apart, gasping. "I came home and read your poems," she said softly. "I couldn't bear it before, but tonight I couldn't bear not to." Tears welled in her eyes. "They're so beautiful, Basilio."

Basilio touched her face, stroked her skin, drank in the depth of her dark eyes. "And every word is devoted to you, my love."

Her hands went to his face, to his hair. "I know," she whispered. She leaned forward and put her forehead against his neck, and a long, broken sigh came out of her.

It shattered him. Very gently, he kissed the top of her head, stroked the long length of her back, felt her hair slide over his fingers; his body flooded with so much emotion he almost couldn't breathe.

And if that had been all, it might have been enough to appease him. But their embrace grew warmer, and he felt her breasts, free beneath her nightrail, pressing into his ribs, felt her back arching a little under his hands.

Suddenly she stiffened and the face of Analise rose in his mind. She pushed a little against him, and with shame in his heart, he let her go. "Cassandra—"

She shook her head. "We must not sully what was, with something as tawdry as this." Her eyes shone with sorrow. "I do love you, Basilio But this cannot be."

He bowed his head. "I know." But he could not quite let her go. "I miss your company. There is no one like you in the world, and we do not have to let that go. Can we not just sit here under this moon and talk?"

She wavered.

"I give you my word that I will not touch you again."

She took a breath and smiled softly. "No,

Basilio. Not like this." She moved away, her posture very straight and sure. "Go home, my love, so you do not have shame to haunt you the more."

"She does not love me, Cassandra."

Her smile was sad. "So say all men who have wives, to the mistresses they would take."

Anger rose in him. "You spoke with her. You know I do not lie."

"Yes," she said. "And I know you cannot bear the appearance of lies. If we do this thing, guilt will devour you. And me."

He turned to go, but it gave him a tearing sense of resistance, and he halted. "No. Not this." He backed against the balustrade, his hips firmly anchored to cold metal, and crossed his arms. "You stand there, on the other side. We are friends, Cassandra, no more. We will not indulge our passions."

Sadly, she smiled. "You must be stronger than I, for it will be too difficult for me, too dangerous, to face you under the temptation of a moonlit night." She shook her head. "I am not that honorable."

"Ah." Clambering over the rail, he said, "Then I will go out to this branch, far from your greedy hands, and we can talk that way. Yes?"

She laughed softly. "Very well." When he made his way on to the branch, she made a squelched, terrified noise. "Be careful!"

Settling easily in the dip of the branch, grasping a handhold on a neighboring arm, he said, "So—shall we compose letters?"

"Letters?"

"Yes." He lifted his head, a warmth in his heart, and said, "Dear Cassandra: I have been meaning to write to you about this wonder that is your city. It is not like any place I have ever visited before. It is not a woman, this city," he said with cocked head. "He is a shipshape old colonel, with a thick mustache, who smokes too many cigars."

Her laughter, low and devastatingly alluring, rang out. "Dear Basilio: I had not thought that before about London, but you are right to some measure, though I have glimpsed the woman of London, too. She is mysterious and wise and very old, hiding secrets in her bosom from long ago, letting out only little bits of magic for the odd mystic willing to listen. If you are quiet on Midsummer Night's Eve, you can hear her singing along the river."

"I would like to hear that singing."

"Yes, you would like it." She leaned on her arm, her hair spilling down over the railing. "Dear Basilio," she said quietly, "I have been wanting to write to you about Venice."

He went still, waiting, a little ache in his heart that she had seen it without him.

"When I think of it," she continued, "I remember the red-streaked sky at sunset. The way fire seems to hang in the sky and dance on the water." She made a soft noise. "And you. I think of you when I think of Venice. You were with me every step. Every moment."

He pressed hands into the bark of the tree. "I wish that I had been, that I'd seen her with you the first time."

But he had been at home in Tuscany with his wife. "This is such madness, Basilio."

There was too much tension building between them, and he lightened his voice. "Oh, yes, madness." He laughed softly. "Tonight, I nearly climbed into your bedroom and was halfway up the tree when I stopped, and thought I must have gone insane. And I climbed back down."

"Did you really?"

"I was thinking of Anichino," he said with a rueful laugh. "Do you remember? You read his story to me that first night, in Italian, and you spoke of sex and I was already dizzy with wanting you, but I wanted you to be free to speak of sex, too."

"I remember."

He looked at her. "I sat beneath that tree, and I thought I should go home to Tuscany, hold my memories in my heart, and take up the life of a normal man. And then you came out, with tears on your face—tears I knew were for me. Is that a sign?"

"A sign of our dishonor, perhaps," she said with a broken sigh. "Or that we have been seduced by the devil—because your wife is

God's own. Even I saw that in the course of a single hour."

"She is that. And it weighs on me at times."

"Weighs on you? How so?"

"What if my work was to resist this marriage with her, to stand strong against forces that were not in alignment with God's wishes? What if you were sent to keep me from marrying her, and I was not strong enough to stop it?"

"You did try."

"Not quickly enough. Not when I first knew." It troubled him still. "She missed my letter by only one day."

A soft sigh. "Then she was not meant to have it."

He shrugged.

As if it troubled her, too, Cassandra said more lightly, "Do you know, Basilio, I think you've upset all of London with your passion? Even my brother has an odd gleam in his eye these days, a spark of something that has been missing."

"A season's entertainment," he said dismis-sively.

"Oh, no. More than that." Earnestly she rose on one elbow. "So much more. I had not read them before this afternoon, it's true. I was afraid. But after I came home, I read them. All of them." A wave of emotion rose in her throat. "They are so beautiful."

"They are all for you, Cassandra," he said.

"I know," she whispered. "You must go now,

Basilio. Good night." She hurried inside, a wraith, a missed destiny, and closed the doors behind her.

He made his way back down, his thoughts bemused. What if his suspicion were correct? That Analise was meant to take her vows and he'd been meant to stand up to their fathers, and that Cassandra had been sent for that purpose?

He put his shoes and coat back on, and let himself out of the gate. If it were so, how could he put things right now?

And how could he ever discover the truth of God's will, with his own desires and selfish needs in the mix?

He walked all night, puzzling it. By morning he knew only that he must try.

Analise, her head covered in a cap, a basket on her elbow, had a pair of scissors with her in the garden.

Though a man was paid to tend the place, Analise had asked him to leave the task of cutting the flowers and trimming herbs to her. Every morning, she brought out this basket and rounded the neat beads, cutting off spent blooms and choosing flowers for vases. It was a most pleasant activity and reminded her of the days at the cloister, when she could pause and pray to the saints who stood sentinel around those courtyards. There were none here, but Analise put offerings to St. Catherine at the foot of a fountain.

Sometimes she thought the place was under the benevolent eye of St. Francis, for it was filled with birds and little animals who grew brave with her, even if the cat and dog had come with her, which they nearly always did.

She was kneeling to trim a lavender plant into a neat round when a sudden skittering of squirrels told her an intruder lurked. She raised her head to see Basilio come through the garden gate in the golden morning.

A Basilio she had never seen.

His hair fell loose down his back, a wild tumble of extravagant curls, and his coat was flung over his shoulder, held with one careless finger. He did not see her and she didn't call attention to herself, struck by some new aura that surrounded him, as golden as a halo. He moved loosely, slowly, pausing to lift his head to the sunlight, his eyes closed, a benevolence of expression on his beautiful face.

Unselfconsciously, he plucked a rose and held it to his nose, his thoughts deep within.

Analise smiled to herself. Here was the Basilio she remembered from childhood. Though he'd outgrown his boyish softness, there was that bemused wonder in his expression, all the more pleasing in contrast to the dark bristles of unshaved beard of his chin.

"Good morning!" she called. "If you like to smell things, come sample this lavender."

She startled him into a different mode, and was immediately sorry. The wonder disappeared under a guarded sobriety. He smiled politely and came toward her, his limbs not so loose now, but stiff with—

what? Guilt, perhaps?

It made her smile all the more. Although the world tended to confuse her chosen purity for stupidity, she was not uneducated to the ways of men and women. Animals and birds and humans, all were driven to mate, and she was wise enough to understand that Basilio's expression this morning was one of a man who had been with a lover. Did he think she would mind?

She rose and held out a trio of lavender blossoms. "You looked very happy when you came through those gates, Basilio. I hope I did not chase that contentment away."

He could not quite look at her. Distantly, she admired the cut of his bold nose beneath that broad brow

—a striking face. "No, no," he said. "I was—I—" He shrugged. "I walked. All night."

Analise did not allow a chuckle; it would mortally offend him. Instead, she turned her attention to a sturdy stand of rue and broke off a handful of last year's seed pods. "These, too," she said. "Smell them. I love them."

He followed her instruction, holding the crushed pods in his palm. "Very nice."

"It is good to see you less sorrowful, Basilio," she said, smiling.

Guilt—yes it was!—flickered over his eyes. He bowed his head. "I should never have brought you to England."

"Nonsense," she said briskly. "I am learning new things. That is good for me." Picking up her basket, she made her way toward the doors. "Come. I am sure you must be very hungry." This time, she could not help a faintly ribald smile.

Perplexed, he only looked at her for a moment. "You are as puzzling to me now as you were as a child."

She shook her head. "The only puzzle is that there is no mystery, Basilio. I am exactly what I appear to be, and that is most unusual."

"I suppose it is."

"You needn't look for anything more than what is, I promise."

He smiled, and it was a smile that went all the way to his eyes. Slinging one arm around her shoulders like a brother, he said, "Well, I am very hungry, Analise. I want a breakfast big enough for a boar."