[Barbara Samuel] Night of Fire(Book4You) (33 page)

"Like my grandfather chair!" His eyes crinkled at the corners. "And what did it say?"

"Oh, I don't know. Warm things. Fatherly things." She lay back in the thick grass and looked up through the branches. The leaves were so thick they were nearly a roof, with only the smallest chinks of light passing through. "I thought if I ever ran away, I would live here."

Basilio, too, fell back in the grass. His body angled away from hers, but his head was close enough she felt his curls against her ear. "Did you want to run away?"

"Not particularly." She folded her hands over her stomach. "But it did seem an exciting adventure in the novels I read."

"I wanted to run away with gypsies and dance all night long."

Of course he had. "You did not write a poem about gypsies. Now you shall have to."

"Mmm." The word was so lazy, she knew he was as sleepy as she. She closed her eyes. Birds twittered and insects hummed, and she could hear the distant shout of a man, perhaps working in his field.

Moments, Basilio had said. Perfect moments. This would be one she'd save: lying peacefully in the grass with Basilio nearby, his hair against her ear, his simple presence making her feel whole. Impulsively she reached for his hand, and found it coming toward hers. Their fingers twined and fell to rest.

Behind her eyelids, Cassandra saw plums, and then just the color of plums. She was aware of her banked need of him and was oddly content to simply feel it, rising and falling with her breath, pulsing now here, now there, as if looking for some break in the wall so it could come spilling out.

His thumb drifted over her index finger. Hers touched the heart of his palm. Love, pure as morning light, moved through her, and somehow mingled with the color of plums. "I think," she said quietly, her eyes still closed, "that Boccaccio would have liked days like this very much."

There was no answer, and Cassandra turned her head to see if he'd fallen asleep. He had not. His dark velvet eyes were fixed on her face, steady and deep and full of love.

They moved at once, she scrambling to her feet with a pounding heart, he pulling his hand free, turning away from her. She brushed her skirts, giving him time, and realized with a sinking heart that they could not even allow this small measure of companionship. Danger and temptation lay at every turn. With a pricking of new loss, she turned away, trying to find the words to send him away, finally, for good. She felt him behind her, warm and close but not touching her. His breath wafted over her neck as he spoke.

"My love," he whispered softly into her hair, "my love, my love. My only, only love."

"Stop."

"I cannot. It is the truest thing there is to say."

"There is no honor in it."

"Then perhaps I care no more for honor."

She shook her head. "If that were true, I would not love you. And God help me, Basilio, I love you with all my heart."

"Such an ordinary phrase."

A soft, breathy sigh. "She is so kind, so good, so… holy." She raised her head. "And she is beautiful, Basilio. Perfection. How can you bear to let her down?"

He met her eyes honestly. "She kissed me last night."

"And?"

"I felt her against me, her breasts and her woman smell. I tried to want to put my hands in her hair, and touch her body—"

"I do not want to know that much."

"But you opened this, and must listen now." He lifted his eyes to hers. "Analise is beautiful, and kind, and"

—he frowned—"unique. I like her." His mouth tightened. "But touching her was like kissing a sister. It horrified me."

"It would not always be that way."

"Perhaps it would not. Perhaps I can learn. I want children. I want to do what I must—and if you had not appeared in my world as you did, perhaps it would have been bearable." He shook his head. "But it is not bearable now, and I do not know what to do, Cassandra. I look at it from every direction, and each way leads to trouble for one or the other of us." Slowly, he drew a leaf through his fingers. "We are trapped, all three of us, in a net of the world. I cannot leave her to the wolves who would devour her.

Yet I cannot bear to think of my life without you in it."

"I sent her to you," she confessed suddenly. "I went to see her and urged her to be a real wife to you. I told her not to be afraid, that you would be a gentle and good lover to her."

"She did not care for it—the kiss." He looked up at the dappling of gold and green light above them, frowning. "I think that my mother was right to worry over her, and I must wonder why God made a woman so beautiful who was meant to only serve Him." "But to God, are we not all beautiful?" He made a soft sound of laughter. "So we must be." He leaned close to her again. "But Analise was made for the pleasures of men. One man.

God must know that, too."

"Perhaps He meant to teach a lesson to men: to stop trading on the physical attributes of women."

His lips turned down in surprise, and Cassandra had to smile. "You had not thought about that," she said.

"No." A faint scowl pulled down his brows. "But perhaps you are correct. And if that be so, what lesson then, for us?" The frown deepened. "For me?"

"I don't know," she said. "But surely if there is a lesson in Analise and her vocation, there must be a lesson to us, too."

"I am not a religious man," he said. "I dislike bowing to lessons or fate."

"But you opened the box," she said, reminding him of his earlier words. "And now must see it through.

What lesson to us, Basilio?"

He watched the light play over Cassandra's hair, red and gold, and struggled for answers. He did not want to claim the lesson he thought was being given here—that the world had failed Analise, who wanted to serve only God, so it fell to Basilio to protect one of God's own. "I cannot answer. Were you brought to me so I might compose better work? Because I did. But then, what of you? What did you learn?"

Her face grew radiant. "I learned to be free, Basilio. I learned there are good and kind and honorable men in the world apart from my relatives. I learned there is beauty in moments." She took a breath, her hand fluttering to her throat. "I learned that making love can be beautiful."

"I wish there was some way to make this right, my Cassandra." He sighed. "I fear there is not— that we will spend our lives writing letters, thinking of this moment, and of those other moments we've shared."

He tucked his hands behind him to avoid the temptation of touching her. "We will have children with others, and learn to be happy, but there will always be this part that is apart, separate. It makes me so sad to think of it."

"But maybe that's part of our lesson: to accept the moments we are given!"

"I had already learned that lesson."

Suddenly earnest, she stepped forward. "I do not much care for the male sex in general. I do not wish a husband." A faint crease appeared on her brow. "I wish I might have children, though. And you must promise to write to me of yours."

"Are we ending it this way, then? I will go back to Italy with Analise and give her children and write to you on summer nights?"

"I think we both know there is no other answer."

Cassandra stood with him by his horse as afternoon began to slant toward evening. Mindful of the all-too-curious eyes of her sisters that might be watching from the windows, Cassandra kept her hands clasped loosely behind her back. Basilio's mouth was tight with his own misery at this parting. She wanted only to go inside, take him to her bed, and lie there all night with him, making love and eating and talking.

"You must go," she said, taking a step backward to release him. "The road is not safe after dark."

"Cassandra, I do not think I can—"

"Do not say it. We both know you must."

He scowled. "What will anything be worth to me if I lose you? Nothing!"

"And I will mean nothing if you lose your honor," she said patiently. "We have been over this ground too often, my love."

He nodded, but Cassandra saw with a ripple of worry that he did not appear convinced. "Come to see me in London before you go," she said. "Bring Analise and we will have a farewell dinner."

He sighed, and with an obvious effort, changed his expression, lifting his eyebrows in a rueful expression.

"How can we both care so much for the woman who stands between us?"

Cassandra smiled her agreement at the irony. "Go. She will worry if you are late."

Finally he mounted his horse and lifted a hand, and rode off down the road. Cassandra watched him, a thudding melancholy mixed with the joy of the hours they'd shared. She watched him until he was out of sight, then turned to the house. A figure stood on the steps, gilded by the long fingers of sunlight: her sister Phoebe, leaning on her cane, her pale brown hair kindly painted with gold by the sun.

Cassandra did not want to break the spell over her senses, and with any of her other sisters, would have stalked toward the house and brooked no question. But Phoebe was different, had always been different.

She was the most like their father, and not only in appearance. The same depth of human understanding lived in her, the same kindness. One could not brush her off.

It pained Cassandra to see the lines of effort around Phoebe's mouth as she leaned on the cane, one hand pressed to her lower back. She had taken a nasty spill from a horse and broken her leg quite badly, which caused her still to limp, though the physicians said it would heal completely with time. The more serious and lingering malady was pain in her back, which Cassandra suspected was nearly constant. She could neither sit nor stand for long, but said walking helped her, so she hobbled with her cane and her dogs across the fields whenever the pain grew intense.

"Are you going to walk?" Cassandra asked.

"Yes. I was giving you a little privacy to part with your poet." She smiled, and Cassandra saw their father twinkling from the bright blue eyes. "Very dashing. I nearly swooned. Ophelia is still looking for the smelling salts."

Cassandra chuckled, grateful for the faint mockery in her words. "Ophelia faints over everything. You, on the other hand, have never swooned in all your life." She gestured toward the field. "Would you like a companion?"

"If you do not mind." She took Cassandra's elbow to get down the stairs, letting go when they reached open ground.

"When do you leave with Adriana?"

"Oh, of course, you didn't hear." She smiled happily. "We've had a letter from Leander this afternoon.

He's on his way home, so I am not going to go to Ireland."

Leander and Phoebe had been very close as children, and exchanged long, frequent letters. "Phoebe, that's wonderful! When will he arrive?"

"I don't know." A spasm moved through her back, and though she tried to hold a straight face, Cassandra could feel the sudden rigidness in her body. When it passed, she took a breath and added,

"He says he knows treatments for this malady that he's learned in India."

They both laughed. Leander was given to wild enthusiasms.

"It will be worth exploring."

"Yes." Phoebe looked at her. "So, do you wish to talk about him, this beautiful poet who is obviously besotted with you?"