Sweet Unrest (9 page)

Eleven

When I came through the trees, I was disappointed to find the clearing empty. Alex wasn’t around. Not wanting my fair skin to burn any more than it already had in the Louisiana sun, I walked toward the beautiful old oak that anchored the far end of the pond. The ground around it was soft with thick grass that had taken hold in the shade of its branches, so I sat down at the base and pulled out the binder holding the pictures.

I looked over the first few images, sorting them out on the ground in front of me, but when I reached the prints of Thisbe’s cabin, I felt the same sense of unease sift through me as I had when approaching the real thing. So I closed the binder and leaned back to rest for a bit in the coolness of the tree’s shade.

When I opened my eyes, Alex was sitting next to me, as golden and beautiful as he’d been earlier that day. The lines of his face were softer, though, and his jaw didn’t have the tightness I’d noticed then. His eyes were clear and bright. Their green depths reminded me of the lushness of the forests in the North—a living, fertile color I hadn’t encountered anywhere else in the overheated Southern summer. He was looking at me with such intensity that it fairly took my breath away.

I’d had short-lived relationships before and flirted with crushes, but I’d
never
had someone look at me the way Alex was looking at me at that moment.
Love. Hope. Safety
. The feelings coursed through me with reckless abandon.
I loved him
, which was a ridiculous thought. I didn’t even
know
him. But the feeling was there, deep inside me and so sure I couldn’t dismiss it.

And that’s when I knew I was her again—Armantine. This was only another dream. And for a single heartbeat I hated her, because I knew he wasn’t really looking at me. For that single heartbeat I wanted him to, but the brief burst of anger I felt couldn’t survive the feelings of love and trust and desire welling up from her. Knowing what she felt for him—I couldn’t help but feel it too.

They were sitting under the oak, inches apart. His hand was close to hers, their fingers barely brushing, and I could feel her delight at his closeness. But I could also feel a new sense of fear bubbling up inside of her.

Something had happened. Something had shaken her and made her remember how impossible everything about their situation was. As much as she wanted to stay there with him, she was terrified of what would happen to her if she let him know he held her heart.

He looked at me—her—and smiled. It wasn’t the half-cocked mocking grin he’d given me that afternoon by the pond. “You can trust me, you know,” he told her, his voice soft and urgent.

But she
didn’t
know. I could sense the doubt that kept equal measure with her hope.

“I mean you no harm, Armantine. Truly. I could never harm you,
ma chère
.” His words were serious, but the endearment rolled off his tongue too easily and I could sense her withdraw at its casual use.

“You may not mean to, but … ” Her voice came out deeper, huskier, with a breathless quality it didn’t have before in the studio. “I must go,
monsieur
.”

“Are we back to that, then?” His voice darkened. “Shall you refuse me the privilege of using your name now, as well?” His words were sad, but they were laced through with a coldness born of frustration.

“No,” she said softly. “You may use my name, but only when we are alone. It’s not proper otherwise.” Her heart ached even as she said the words. She loved the intimacy of being allowed the privilege of calling him Alexandre, but her fear that he might shatter her fragile world held her back.

“Then we shall be alone again, yes?” He took her hand and covered it with his own. “You will promise me that?”

I willed her to accept him even as I felt her withdrawing. “I can’t make such a promise,” she whispered. “I should never have come here.” She started to gather the charcoal pencils that had fallen into the grass near her skirts and placed them, along with sketches she’d made of the pond and of him, into her bag. They were, she realized with a sudden certainty, the only thing she’d ever really have of him.

“I shouldn’t be here.” She didn’t look at him as she stood up. “Can you take me back?”

“Why?” He rose to his feet and grasped her arms, the word coming out dangerous, low, and with a thread of pain running through it.

Armantine paused, considering her worlds carefully. “I have nothing to offer you.” She met his eyes. “Except what I cannot. What I
will
not.”

His brows drew together as he puzzled out the meaning of her words, and then he seemed to understand. His frustration seemed to roll off of him in dangerous waves. “You are worth far more than you suggest, Armantine. You mean much more to
me
than what you suggest.” He searched her face for some affirmation, and the anger in his eyes eased to disappointment. “I thought you understood that?”

“What is there to understand?” Her voice was gentle, but it carried in it all of the pain of her regret. At the sound of it, he eased his grasp on her.

“I am not toying with you,
mon coeur
,” he murmured. Releasing one of her arms, he traced the line of her jaw with a single fingertip. “I want you,” he told her as his fingertip followed the line of her throat, down across her collarbone until he reached edge of the scooped neckline of her dress. “I will not lie to you, love. Not a moment goes by that I do not think of you. Of your beauty and your fire and the light you have brought into my life.” His finger followed the neckline of her dress, dipping down to the soft swell of her breasts and then back up, sending little frissons of heat and awareness across her skin. “Not a moment passes that I do not think of us. Of our future. Of what it would be like to have you as my own,” he whispered.

“I know you don’t mean to toy with me, Alexandre.” She said his name softly, her voice hitching with desire even as she pulled away. “But there is no future for this. For what is between us.”

“You are wrong,” he told her, his voice thick with meaning.

“I wish I were.” She smiled sadly. “I wish I could imagine the future as you do, but I know otherwise.” Reaching up, she brushed a stray lock of hair back from his smooth forehead. She knew immediately it was a mistake and started to draw back, but he grasped her wrist and covered her slim hand with his own.

“Can you not learn to imagine it?”

She ruthlessly pressed down the hope she felt at his words until it was no more than a pinpoint of light in her otherwise dark future, and then she firmly pulled away.

“You do not believe me.” He watched her face as he let her go. “Or do you not want me as well?”

“How can you not see that this is impossible?” she asked, her voice trembling with regret and her eyes stinging with tears.

They stood like that for what seemed like an eternity—the heat of the day swirling around them, the sun glinting off the gold in his hair, and Armantine waiting for him to turn away from her. He, the first man who had looked at her and seen past her beauty to her very self, who was as interested in her thoughts on art and life as he was in the curve of her waist or swell of her breast. But she knew he would eventually turn from her, would eventually leave.

I wanted to reach out and touch him, to plead for him not to go. I wasn’t sure if the feelings were mine or Armantine’s, but all that mattered was that I had no control. I was a passenger in her body, nothing more.

Alex reached down to his boot and withdrew a knife. It flashed in the sunlight, as bright as his eyes had suddenly become. Fear sifted through Armantine, and in an instant we both remembered him crouching over a broken body, a bloodied knife glinting in his hand. Though she believed he was not the one who had killed the girl, she watched him cautiously just the same.

He stepped closer to the oak and stabbed the blade into it, again and again. Wary of the violence with which he assaulted the tree, she inched forward slowly, trying to see what he was doing, but then he stopped and turned back to her. He’d carved two lopsided, primitive-looking, interlocking letter A’s into the weathered trunk. The tightly coiled spring in Armantine’s chest eased a little at the sight.

“I promise you this,” he told her, his voice thick with emotion. “I have searched for you too long to let you go now. I will find a way to make you believe in my promises, and someday long after now, we will bring our grandchildren to this very spot and show them this tree, this place where I pledged myself to you.”

“Alex—” Her voice was shaking, and I knew what she was going to say. She would refuse him again, even as she wanted to accept him completely.

“No,
ma chère.
There has been enough talk. Enough fear.” He framed her face with his broad hands. Gently, he smoothed back her hair. Armantine turned her face into his hand, reveling in its warmth and strength until he turned her face to him again. He traced the lines of her face reverently, as though he was memorizing them the way a cleric might learn a holy book. Gently, his fingertips learned the gentle swell of her cheeks, the arch of her brows, and, finally, the rough pad of his thumb brushed across the lips she so desperately wanted him to kiss.

I knew if he tried, she would let him. And I knew what it would cost her. His gaze never left hers as he pulled her into his arms and his lips descended to meet hers …

And that’s when I woke up.

“Of all the stupid things,” I mumbled to myself, rubbing the nap from my eyes and trying to shake off the vividness of the dream. Apparently I could dream about being drowned multiple times each week without once missing out on the terrifying end of
that
, but when I dreamt about a gorgeous Frenchman, I manage to miss the best part.

“Do you often talk to yourself,
ma chère
?” His familiar voice came from nearby, and I froze at the sound of it. I looked down at my hands and was relieved to see my own pale skin flecked with freckles, my grandmother’s ring on the middle finger of my right hand. I twisted it to keep from pinching myself in front of him.

“Maybe,” I said, finally raising my head to look at him. I half expected him to be wearing the smart black suit from my dream, but he was dressed in the same clothes he’d been in before. His shirt was freshly laundered and his pants were a soft, dark gray.

“Do you always sneak up on people when they’re sleeping?” I added, lifting one eyebrow in his direction and trying to affect a wryness I didn’t really feel.

He looked different in other ways too. The dream’s faded tones had dampened the intensity of his green eyes and washed out the gold spun through his hair. In the dream, it had been brushed back away from his face, but now it was the slightest bit mussed and fell lazily over his forehead. In real life he seemed more human, somehow.

“I did not want to disturb you. You looked like a painting, sleeping there with your fiery hair and fair skin.” He was looking at me the way the Alex of my dreams watched Armantine, and my breath hitched in my throat. “You looked too picturesque to be real.”

I stood up and stretched my stiff muscles, trying to ignore my reaction to him. “The crick in my neck is definitely real,” I told him tartly, not wanting him to see the effect he—or his words—had on me. My emotions were too close to the surface because of the dream—they were still too close to what
she
had felt.

I found myself wondering again about the picture we’d found that morning. About whether there had truly been an Armantine, or if I’d only imagined a similarity between the daguerreotype and the girl I dreamt about.

“So, are you talking to me now?” I asked. It seemed an easier question—or at least a less crazy one—than the others crowding my head.

“But of course. When have I not talked to you?”

Slowly the desire aroused by the dream was fading. “This morning, for starters,” I reminded him. “You have something against Piers?”

“It is of no concern,” he said with the type of certainty used by someone who has always gotten his own way.

“Right.” I started picking up the pictures I’d spread out on the ground in front of me. The combination of my morning at Thisbe’s cottage and dreaming about Armantine’s volatile emotions had left me too exhausted and confused to deal with Alex’s evasions and half answers.

“I’ve angered you,” he said, a look of confusion on his face.

“No. Not really,” I hedged. “It’s just been a long day.”

“You should stay away from the witch’s home, Lucy.”

The change in topic was abrupt, but his face conveyed a stony seriousness that made me pause.

“I doubt Thisbe was a witch,” I said. “Besides, she’s been dead a long time, and I have a job to do.”

“Please.” He choked on the word, like he wasn’t used to using it. “It is a very dangerous place. Will you stay away from there? For me?”

“No,” I told him tartly, even as my pulse stuttered at the earnestness of his request. “I told you, I have a job to do and I’m not letting anyone’s superstitions keep me from doing it. I promised my dad I’d help him out and I don’t break my promises. Besides, I barely know you, and from your little disappearing act today, I’m not even sure I want to.”

As I struggled with the loose prints, I managed to drop the binder that held the others. The photographs tumbled out as it fell, like leaves to the ground.

“What are those?” he asked, pointing to the images scattered at my feet.

“Just some shots I took of the house and grounds.” I bent to scoop them up before they could blow away.

He leaned over to look at them. “This—” He gestured to the photos. “It is your work?”

I nodded, and he seemed amused. “I should have known.” He shook his head. “Will you show me?”