Fruit of the Golden Vine (7 page)

Silvana tensed. They’d entirely underestimated this man, and he was reveling in demonstrating it to them. “What makes you think I’m so inclined?”

“My lady, I’m no fool. Take up my offer, enjoy your release and stop tormenting my poor Ada. Her mother is oblivious to the effect you’re having on her, and I intend to keep it that way.” Sebastian stroked his beard. “For my part, I don’t blame Adelina. She’s only a girl. But you will cease provoking her heart, do you understand?”

Silvana glanced at Rafael, who nodded. Damn it. “Yes, I’ll take you up on your offer.”

“Excellent. You’ll have a wonderful night. The Vine is a different world. I want you both to cherish it.” Sebastian broke a potato with the edge of his fork. “Look at that color! An incredible vegetable. Buttered with garlic, it becomes beyond words. Yet I can’t persuade Bruna to cook them. She thinks they’re poisonous.” He chuckled. “Servants and their superstitions.”

Rafael drained the last of his wine and wiped his lips. “You have your own superstition, do you not?”

“Ah, you’ve caught me. Yes, it is perhaps a touch eccentric of me.” Sebastian winked. “To be candid, there’s another reason I’ve clung to my daughters as long as I have—I’d miss them terribly. The way they run about the manor bickering with one another. Lise’s charming drawings. Ira’s prim chatter. Entering the study to find Ada curled up with a book, her dour little face fixed for a moment by a wondering smile. The innumerable jewels that adorn a proud father’s life.”

“You weren’t disappointed to not have a son?”

“Oh, naturally. A lad to help with my business, to watch him as he grew into a man…but my daughters may give me grandsons yet. And if you and Ira did become so blessed, I would hope that one might find his way into my household someday.”

A handsome woman in middle-age sauntered to the tableside and rested a hand on Sebastian’s shoulder. She spoke into his ear, and he nodded. “Dear guests, this is the one whom we merely call Velvet. She arranges consolation for lonely hearts.”

“The way the old man describes it, I’m destined for sainthood,” said Velvet, a thin smile lifting her lips. “Bastian, may I be of service here? This handsome fellow would cause a stampede among my girls. That is, assuming he’s as gentle as he’s fetching, and not another of your drunken lout friends.”

“Unfortunately for your girls, this handsome fellow may yet be my son-in-law. His sister, however, would like to spend the evening with Nerine.”

“Is that so? Nerine will be delighted. My lady, would you care to come with me?”

Silvana took a sip of her wine and set it aside. Rafael patted her arm as she rose. “Have a good evening, the both of you,” she said. “When you finally find those carousing friends of yours, Sebastian, I’d thank you to give them no well-wishes from me.”

Sebastian laughed so hard that he rocked the table. “You see? Now the pretense of civility is down, we’re all far more entertaining people.”

Velvet took Silvana’s hand and led her across the crowded tavern floor. Tobacco smoke plugged Silvana’s nostrils and scratched her throat, and her eyes watered from the biting ash in the atmosphere and the shifting half-light. Velvet seemed undeterred by the gloom, and she pushed aside men twice her size without hesitation or apology.

The smoke thinned as they approached a flight of stairs. “I’ll lead the way, dear heart,” said Velvet and ascended clutching the skirt of her long red dress.

As she neared the uppermost step, the sound of female conversation built in volume, mingled with the occasional clinking of a glass and the plucking of a harp. Velvet directed Silvana into a candlelit, cloyingly perfumed room filled with scarlet drapes and crimson couches. Several women occupied the room, draped over couches and kneeling on red cushions. Oil portraits on the walls depicted more women still, as if the living ones weren’t sufficient.

Silvana remained in the doorway while Velvet marched into the room. Her earlier seductive wiggle had been abandoned somewhere halfway up the stairs. “Nerine. Wake up, you sloth.”

A tan, lithe woman dressed in loose, translucent red silks stirred from the corner of a divan and opened her heavily shadowed green eyes. “I was merely meditating, mistress. A rehearsal for the day I abandon this life and become a nun.”

The women around her giggled, and Velvet sniffed. “I can only imagine what you’d get up to in a convent, you perverse beast. As it so happens, I’ve brought you your favorite thing.”

“Oh?” Nerine sat upright, and her lips, which were painted a shimmering purple, parted in a subtle smile. “You mean this treasure is for me?” She unfolded herself from the divan and approached Silvana, who looked up at the taller woman while trying not to let her interest show. “What a gorgeous design you have on your face. Was it painful?”

“Not more than I could withstand.”

Nerine cupped Silvana’s chin. “Whoever engraved it was brave. A woman this beautiful…it would be a sin to deface you.” Her free hand stroked Silvana’s neck. “May I ask your name, or shall I refer to you merely as an angel?”

“Take her to a room, for God’s sake,” Velvet said. “Have the decency to be indecent behind closed doors.”

“Come with me, angel.” Nerine placed an arm around Silvana’s waist and guided her down the hall and into a bedchamber. An enormous four-poster bed draped in shimmering crimson silk took up most of the room.

Nerine closed the door and wandered the room, relighting extinguished lanterns, while Silvana sat on the end of the bed and admired Nerine’s slender legs. “My name is Silvana, by the way.”

“A beautiful name.” Nerine stretched out on the bed, one hand supporting her head, and admired Silvana. “You ought to take off your boots, my beauty, so that you can sprawl upon these sheets.”

Silvana untied her laces and slipped her feet loose. She settled among the cushions, and Nerine slid closer. “Much better,” she said, creeping her fingers into Silvana’s hair. “We’ll have some fun tonight, you and I.”

“Do you really enjoy this? Or are you forced into it?”

Nerine traced the line of Silvana’s jaw. “No woman chooses her profession in these parts, my love.”

Silvana stopped Nerine’s hand with a gentle touch. “I won’t bed you against your will.”

“I hear the defiance in your voice, and it makes me tremble.” Nerine brushed her nose against Silvana’s cheek, and her breath grazed Silvana’s skin. “You pity me, don’t you?”

Silvana put her hand on Nerine’s thigh. The heat there was almost enough to make her lose her composure, but she kept herself steady. “Not pity. I respect you. That’s why I’m reluctant to take advantage of you.”

Nerine kissed Silvana’s neck. “You are my respite, sweet angel. Don’t turn me away. I want to know the nectar of your lips. I want to savor the secret between your legs. It’s been too long since my last woman.” She loosed her blouse and lifted it over her head. Her breasts fell, and the burnished skin of her stomach glowed beneath the candlelight. “Take the fire of your indignation and turn it into passion, lover. Let us spend the entire tonight entwined, as only women can…”

As Silvana looked upon Nerine’s bared torso and felt Nerine’s fingers tracing their way across her skin, an impulsive hunger moved through her. She leaned in to steal a kiss, and as their lips and tongues combined, she pulled Nerine into her lap and caressed her bare breast. Her finger brushed a stiffened nipple. Nerine shivered, laughed and kissed Silvana harder.

Nerine reached for Silvana’s belt, and Silvana sank back into the cushions and closed her eyes.

From the depths of her mind rose an image of a child—no, a girl, a young woman, standing before a three-headed giant. One head was her mother, one head her father, and the final head an unforgiving world.
And she replies, ‘I’m not afraid of you, because I was born of the sun and stars.’
And the giant fell to its knees.

A hand worked its way between Silvana’s thighs, its fingers parting and stroking. Silvana arched her back and moaned.

Now came the memory of a woman, fingers shivering against the golden curve of a goblet, lips turned in the wondering smile of one in rhapsody, eyes trembling with the promise of tears.
I want to lose my breath in a thrill of wonder, to open my eyes each day to some new enchantment…but instead I live in unhappiness, and each year brings me closer to something even worse.
A hand tracing the silver tree upon her cheek, its fingers shaking.

Goddess, the longing in that touch…

“I can’t.” Silvana pushed Nerine away. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Nerine withdrew, her lips set in a pout. “I thought you were enjoying yourself.”

“It’s not your fault. You’re beautiful and I want you, but I can’t.” Silvana sighed. “God knows I normally could.”

“If your heart is stopping you, not your body, then there must be someone else. Am I right?”

Silvana inspected the back of her own hands. The rest of her body still seemed young enough, but nothing could disguise those creases about her knuckles, each one speaking of some long, unhappy year. “Come lay your head in my lap, Nerine, and we’ll talk. About love. About moonlight. About all the tears we long to shed and never will.”

Nerine’s expression softened. “As you will, my angel. As you will.”

The ride back was one of the more uncomfortable in Silvana’s memory. Rafael stared out of the window, his brooding slouch suggesting a man whose dice had landed poorly. Sebastian sat on the opposite bench, eyes shining like fresh-minted coins. Nobody spoke, but Sebastian’s cheerful expression said enough. The spider had retreated into its burrow, but only after laying waste to certain hopes and illusions, and it was now clear who held the upper hand.

Sebastian bid them goodnight in the lobby. Rafael and Silvana climbed the staircase and trudged through the shrouded hallway toward their bedrooms. When they reached the adjoining doors, which were set before a great arched window overlooking the vineyard and the luminous night sky, Rafael caught Silvana’s shoulder.

“Silvie, I’m sorry,” he said. “That must have been humiliating for you.”

“Don’t worry about me. What happened at the gambling tables?”

“Nothing but my dire luck. Sebastian was full of cheer and good humor, a father-in-law apparent. But there’s a threat in his every word and a warning in each gesture. We were wrong to take him so lightly.”

“Perhaps we should leave while we can.” Silvana gazed upon the ranks of vines, which were twisted silver beneath the moon. “I hate this balmy air, these scented winds. I want to taste frost in my lungs again.”

Rafael held her around the waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. “What are you talking about? You enjoyed the change, you told me.”

“I’m tired of the travel, Rafael. I want to lie among the old barks, my arms around a woman who shares my love. I want the moon to peer through the branches and kiss our faces. I want to feel the pulse of the earth against my back…”

His sigh moved through her chest. “What’s happened to you? You were enjoying yourself. All the taverns, the wine and revelry, the maidens you’ve left lovesick from here to the coast. You cursed me for wanting to return so soon.”

“Perhaps I feel the need to punish myself for our deception. The blood will call, remember? And it calls me to that cold darkness I understand.” Silvana drew her hands into fists. “What are we becoming? That woman, Irena, expects so much from you…what right do we have to use her so?”

“Not so loud.” Rafael stepped back from the embrace. “We can’t talk about this, not here.”

Silvana turned from the window. “You’re still determined to go on with this charade then?”

“It’s only a half charade, Silvie.” Rafael shrugged. “Everything will end as it should. Just don’t start getting religious on me. We’ve tried to leave all that behind.”

“Yes, but it’s odd. On a night like this, it almost feels possible to believe.” Silvana turned the handle of her door. “Goodnight, Rafael.”

“Goodnight, sister.”

Silvana walked into her bedroom and quietly shut the door. She wasted no time undressing and burying herself beneath the silken sheets. A sliver of moonlight fell on her bed, and she rolled into it, wanting to sleep beneath that silver caress. Her thoughts dissolved into dreams.

The tree, that endless tree…

The earth breathed. The soil was slick, and her feet slipped. Suspended in the sky above her, Rafael burned, as was his nature.

“
Old roots wend deep.” The old woman stroked her cheek. Why wouldn’t she leave them be? They were only children. “The blood will call.”

“
Silvana, run with me.” Rafael extended his hand, but he blazed too brightly for her to touch.

She had no patience for the sun. She craved the sweet mystery of the moon.

Her brother’s light faded, but the skeletons of the forest remained, their cryptic branches pointing toward the stars. She was born not of her mother, but of the heavens. No—that wasn’t her. That was someone else. She was born of the earth, of the deep, winding hollows. Only there could she escape this terrible presence that swept through the night. This guilt. This yearning. Adelina.

Silvana buried herself in the loam. Her body rotted, and what little remained crept into the depths, until she was inhaled by the trees and reborn.

Goddess, take me…

A quick knock woke her, and she sat upright. Morning light suffused the room. “Come in,” she said.

Adelina entered behind a platter of food. “Good morning! I’ve brought you some breakfast.”

“Oh.” Silvana had to end this budding courtship now, for Adelina’s sake, yet how could she do so without seeming cruel? “Am I allowed to eat in the bed?”

“You’re a guest, so you can get away with it. I wish I could.” Adelina sat on the bed with the platter balanced on her knees. Her gaze—tender with unconcealed longing—lowered to Silvana’s bared shoulders. Silvana tugged her sheets higher, and Adelina blushed and looked away.

“I’ve brought you some warm scones and jam,” Adelina said. “Some water in the jug there, and a little flask of milk. And there’s an apple.”

“So there is.”