Lessons of Desire (13 page)

He shrugged. "You may be correct. He may see me that way, even within the friendship we have now."

She suspected Greenwood did see it that way, but she thought Elliot did as well. Their manners toward each other reminded her of the comfortable friendship and masculine love revealed by fathers and their grown sons when a close relationship has matured.

If so, Matthias Greenwood was an important person to Elliot.

Of course he was. Elliot was here, wasn't he? He had come to Positano to discuss his new research even though the student had surpassed the teacher as a historian.

Eating this humble meal on this stone floor removed them from the world. His frank description of his father had nudged open a door to an intimacy more appealing than that created by physical pleasure. Tins reminded her of the mood she enjoyed with her friends.

"Why are you so curious about Greenwood, Phaedra?"

She examined the relaxed familiarity they shared and debated her response. "I am very interested in him."

"Hell, he is old enough to be your father."

She almost laughed at his exasperated tone, but the hot annoyance in his eyes checked her. He was jealous. She found that hopelessly old-fashioned and presumptuous, but adorably so. She wanted to giggle, not scold.

"You misunderstand. Elliot. He knew my mother, and has been kind enough to try to answer some questions I have about a few things."

"What things?"

"My mother may have had a secret lover her last years."

He frowned. "Richard Drury—"

"Not at the end. There was another."

"And Matthias knew who it was? He lived in Cambridge then, and although he visited London sometimes ..."

"He is a perceptive man. He was not surprised when I suggested there may have been another man in my mother's life. This lover also dealt in antiquities, and Matthias was able to tell me the names of some men in her circle who did. Many of her close friends put me off with denials. I suspect they did not want the world's image of Artemis Blair to be changed. But he was honest with me and I am grateful to him."

He puzzled over what she said, and appeared both curious and skeptical. "Why would you ask for names, Phaedra? Perhaps there was no lover at all if her friends denied it."

"I think there was, because of something my father wrote in his memoirs. This man, whoever he was, was a criminal."

His expression darkened. "Another reference without a name? Another bit of gossip that will destroy a reputation?" He was on his feet in an instant. He strode away, stared at the wall, then turned to face her. "Better if you burned it, or locked it away forever."

"That might spare your family, but it will not spare my mother's last lover."

"Why not?"

She wrapped the cheese in its damp cloth. "Because even if the memoirs are not published, I will annotate this part to my satisfaction, and I will deal with this man in my own way."

His mood did not lighten, his frown did not cease, but cautious curiosity showed in his eyes. "You speak calmly, but with bitter resolve. What did your father write about this man that you feel you must now identify him?"

She scrambled to stand. She brushed off the black gauze of her skirts. "He wrote that this man seduced her, then betrayed her in a most dishonorable way that led to her death. I need lo discover if it is true."

"It is ambiguous at best."

"Not so ambiguous. There was more. I am not completely mad in thinking I can identify this man. Only half so."

She strolled to the center of the chamber and looked around. "If we might be here for days, we should domesticate tins place." She upturned a basket. "It might serve as a stool if you can remove the handle."

He fetched the knife sent up with the food. He set the basket on the windowsill's stones and set to sawing. "You should not put too much stock in what your father wrote about your mother. He was a lover spurned and that can cloud a man's judgment."

She picked up the blanket that covered the straw and checked its cleanliness. She eyed some metal hooks set into the stone vault above. "My father understood what he had and did not have with my mother. He did not write with bitterness, but as a man who had seen the woman he loved misused."

Elliot sawed away, but his expression of resolve was not for the basket handle. "Tread carefully as you annotate his words on this, Phaedra. Do not accuse the wrong man or impugn a good one."

"If he is a good man, he has nothing to fear from me or from the memoirs. No good man does."

The basket handle gave way just then. It broke under the pressure he put on the knife. A harsh crack sounded off the stone vaults, as if Elliot's temper had snapped at her last sentence.

They spent the next hours more pleasantly, speaking of friendlier things. Phaedra's friend Alexia had recently married Elliot's brother Hayden and they speculated on that match and what had and had not brought it about. The gossip lightened the mood wrought by their first conversation.

Elliot continued to mull it over, however. He had not missed her tone or her expression when she spoke of the lover who had betrayed her mother.

Phaedra was no curious tourist the way she had claimed. She was a woman on a mission. For some reason it had led her to Naples. It was why her humor had improved about his delay in taking her to Pompeii. Her investigation may have even been at the bottom of her friendships with Marsilio and Pietro.

For all he knew her every act, her every word, since that day he stood in the garden, had been part of her plan to learn about her mother's last months and the man whom she blamed for her mother's decline and death.

She gave instructions about arranging their humble abode while they chatted. At her request he managed to tie the rope lo one of the vault's hooks and secure its end to the stone floor with its metal hooks. She draped the old blanket over it to create a private corner into which she placed the chamber pot that Matthias's servants had sensibly added to one of the baskets.

Dusk was settling when all was done. With the new blanket on the straw and the upturned basket for a stool, Phaedra had created a rustic but serviceable home. For one person.

A low-ceiling space existed below tins highest tower chamber. He expected he would be making do there unless he could charm an invitation out of the queen to share her sanctuary.

"You have a talent for domestic organization, Phaedra. Is that the result of making do without servants?"

"I think that I learned to do it well because my mother did it so poorly. That proved useful because I needed the skills when I was sent off to fend for myself."

She carried the wineskin and the cup to the window facing the town. After a few errant splashes, she filled the cup from the skin's arching stream and offered it to him.

He joined her at the window and drank. Beyond the long shadow of the tower Tarpetta's men had made a camp at the base of the promontory. From the distant sounds of their laughter they appeared relaxed and in good spirits.

"Why did you begin fending for yourself?"

She appeared very lovely in the gathering silvery light of dusk that entered tins window. Behind them the opposite opening allowed in the flaming colors of the sun's final glory. Those rays illuminated the back of her hair, turning her locks into blazes that contrasted with the cool transparences of her white skin as she looked west.

"My mother believed that women learn dependency from their parents. We are taught to fear independence and then lured into rejecting it even when it is attainable. Therefore, when I received a legacy from her brother, she encouraged me to leave her house and live on my own before I grew complacent in my adult dependency on
her
."
She paused while she calmly stretched to see the ground closer to the tower. Another little camp stood there, populated by five old women and Carmelita Messina.

"I was sixteen," she added, still distracted by the scene below.

Her attention on the camps ensured that she did not see his reaction. "You were a child." He tried to keep condemnation out of his tone. Phaedra would not like criticism of her mother, and he had no desire to argue with her now.

She still watched the promontory. "Yes, I was a child. However, there are many girls sent into marriage at that age. I suspect that is a more startling fate. They are too young for their parents' plans, and I was too young for mine as well. She did not remove herself from my life, so it was not a rejection of her duties to me. She helped me hire a housekeeper so I did not live alone the first years. I visited her often and we saw each other almost as much as when I lived under her roof."

She made it sound almost normal and sensible. He could not accommodate the image of Phaedra at sixteen in her own household, with no protection or supervision except that provided by a paid woman. His cousin Caroline who had come out this season was so childish that one wanted to lock her away for another ten years.

Of course Phaedra Blair had probably not been so childish at that age, not so innocent of the world. Artemis had raised her daughter to walk alone and make her own way. Still, it angered him to picture it. The woman should not have used her own child as an experiment to prove that her radical ideas had merit.

"At the time I did not mind, and it has all worked out as my mother expected. Once a woman tastes such freedom she will never relinquish it. However, when she died—I felt some anger then. I rather wish she had waited so I could have spent those last two years with her. She did not anticipate that her time was so short, of course."

"I cannot imagine the independence you describe. Even as a man I do not live such a singular life."

"It matters not if you still reside in Easterbrook's great house. As a man you are by your gender free."

"I do not speak of the law or of customs or finances, but of living. I am not alone or unfettered by others. There are my brothers ever-present in my life, and other relatives with claims on me. I am theirs and they are mine. Even if my brothers and I grow to hate each other, the burdens of life are shared."

Her expression turned wistful, beautifully so. "I would have liked to have a sister or brother. That would have been nice, especially now."

Now that she was all alone was what she meant. She had chosen a path that would leave her forever alone too, unless likelier mother she had an illegitimate child. He realized that she understood what she sacrificed. She did not discount its value. She had weighed it all, if not al sixteen then when she married. He did not think the cost worth the prize, but he had to admire her bravery.

She appeared a little sad. He felt bad for forcing her to face her loneliness. "I expect your friendships help to replace the family you do not have."

Impish lights danced in her eyes. Her humor and spirit surfaced out of the depths of her thoughts. "In a way, but not family as you described yours. Some are like sisters and brothers, a few have even been like the most benign of husbands, but the bonds are not permanent As I grow older I may wonder if I have been blessed with more independence than any person would want."

Which meant she wondered already.

The oblique reference to her lovers subtly altered the mood between them. He could not stand so close to her in this light and not think about making love to her. Images and inclinations had prodded since he walked up the stairs hours ago. Thai low stimulation boiled higher with her words. He thought he saw a challenge in the way she regarded him.

Suddenly the desire bound them as starkly as it ever had. She made no effort lo thwart its power. Soon his teeth were on edge. Never in his life had he met a woman who so boldly acknowledged the sensual excitement that can exist before a kiss or touch.

With any other woman he would act, just as he had with her in the past. He had not forgotten her parting words that last night on the balcony, however. If she were good to her threat right now he might not muster the honor to allow her to deny him.

She provoked the worst of his blood, a current that flowed from his father. He wanted to reach for her and embrace and caress and devour. The temptation to use pleasure to coerce her to submit to her own hunger, and to him, threatened to overpower what was left of his good sense.

He walked away from her. He picked up the pistol and one of the blankets and kept going, down the stairs. The alternative was to risk behaving like the worst scoundrel, or else becoming one of those pitiable bees, buzzing and begging for the queen's favor.

Phaedra watched the sun dip into the sea. Purple and orange lights continued to color the water in silken streaks while dark slowly closed in. Down in the boat the men waved at her and called tip friendly greetings. They appeared to have a few wineskins of their own and had grown more amiable as a result.

She found the one big candle sent with the provisions and lit it. She set it in a corner where the night breeze would not blow it out. She heard Elliot moving about down below, perhaps trying to find some comfort on the floor with that sole blanket beneath him.

Her body had not entirely calmed since he left, nor had her thoughts strayed far from their last minutes together. Hot pulses continued to gently throb, coaxing her attention. Usually she only had to contend with that when Elliot was near, but it appeared her body knew he was close enough and would not give her relief. Her breasts remained tight and full, their tips reading to ever>' movement she made when the fabric of her dress brushed them.