Night of Fire Page 13

  And here is my plea: marry this girl, make a life with her— it will not change what we have known together. None can steal that from us. I want to think of you as happy.

  Thank you for making me brave, for returning to me my heart and soul. I will ever remember these days in Tuscany as among the best of my life. In some ways, we have had the purest and best of love, and should respect that.

  If you care for me even a little, you will not write to me again. If you do, I will burn your letters without reading them. Allow me my dignity in retreat. Allow this time to be unsullied in our memories.

  I will never forget you.

  Cassandra

  "No!" He crumbled the letter in his fist and dashed after the maid, taking her arm too fiercely. "When did she leave? With whom?"

  The girl's eyes were wide with fear. "Three hours. Guilliame drove her."

  "Thank you." He turned and ran toward the doors, heading for the stables to find the wagon-master. He would tell him where Cassandra had gone. Only three hours—he should be able to catch her.

  His father emerged from the library, blocking his way. "Do not, Father," he said, his limbs jumping with the need to run after her before she could make this terrible mistake. "I have no will to tangle with you now."

  The old man shook his head. "No, son," he said, and Basilio was startled at the use of the filial term.

  He frowned, thrown off by this unexpected response. "Then stand aside sir, and allow me to go after her

  —we have unresolved matters between us."

  "First you must listen to me."

  "And what will you tell me?" Bitterness edged his words. "I have just come from Count diCanio's house, where I gave my bride a fistful of flowers. What more do you want me to do?"

  The dark eyes were grave, and Basilio unwillingly saw that the lines on his father's face had deepened.

  "You have done the right thing."

  "Have I?" He stepped closer. "She is a child. She does not want a husband. She wants the cloister, as she has since we were children. And I do not wish that child as my wife. It smells of disaster."

  As if he had not spoken, the elder Count turned heavily to the banks of windows. "She was a great favorite of your mother's—a very pretty girl who visited you in Florence. She would have been no more than six, I suppose. You mother liked having her come to visit, for she was bright and sweet and very determined to be a nun, even when she was quite small."

  A faint sense of dread moved in Basilio. He did remember the girl, tiny and laughing, with yards of black hair, sitting with his mother on summer afternoons. She had charmed them both. "I remember."

  "You mother worried that she would grow to be too beautiful to be hidden in a nunnery, and her father was greedy and a gambler. The scene was set, even then, for the disaster that brews now for Analise.

  Your mother—" the word grew rough. He laced his hands stoically behind his back, regained control.

  "Your mother asked me to protect her when the time came."

  Basilio made an impatient sound. "I know this! Why are you telling me all over again when I have agreed to the marriage?"

  "The English woman. How did you meet her?"

  He shook his head, wondering why it mattered. "She is a writer. I read some of her essays." Wearily, he sat at the table and put his head in his hands. "I thought she was a middle-aged widow."

  "She threatened me."

  Basilio raised his head in time to catch the quirk of his father's mouth. To his surprise, his father chuckled.

  "What was her threat?"

  A lift of a shoulder. "It does not matter." He turned, his face not unkind. "Any man can understand why you fell in love with her, Basilio Fierce, strong, beautiful."

  Too much emotion. Basilio raised his hand. "No more, Father. Please."

  "If you do not marry Analise, her father will give her to Tortessi."

  Heavily, Basilio rose. "I know. Excuse me."

  He climbed the stairs to the chamber he'd shared with Cassandra. When he opened the door, the scent of her—musk and wildflowers and cloves—enveloped him. It brought the memory of her hair, trailing over his arm.

  A feeling like a knife wound seared the middle of his chest. His flesh burned with sensual memories—the smoothness of her skin, the sweetness of her kiss, the throatiness of her laughter. He thought of the long conversations they'd shared, and the simple, rare, deep pleasure he'd found in a mind that engaged his own. His heart ached with the certainty that she was his only love, would ever be the only woman his soul would even recognize. It was more than passion, more than friendship, a combination that transcended both.

  How could he let her go?

  But even as he stared at the blue and green of the Tuscan hills, he knew that he already had. The only thing that could destroy the beauty of what they'd shared was his guilt, and if Analise married Tortessi, his conscience would never allow him to sleep again.

  So he would don this mantle. But even in his resolve, he could not halt the grief that swelled around him.

  He put his hand on the glass, wondering how he would bear it.

  Chapter 10

  Analise allowed herself to be garbed in the breathtakingly beautiful gown her mother had ordered from Rome. She did not protest, did not weep, did not smile. She lifted her arms when directed, turned her head when nudged, stood straight to let them tie her into her corsets. The voices of the women rose in waves of excitement around her, then subsided and rose again.

  Beyond the windows of the villa a heavy rain fell on the green Tuscan hills, and Analise watched it, thinking fancifully that the angels were weeping with her.

  In her hand, she clutched a letter that had come only this morning, a letter that had followed her from the convent to Florence to the villa, and only just arrived. It was the letter Basilio had asked her about that morning he had come to see her, demons in his eyes. Now she understood.

  Analise burned with shame over her weakness. She had known she ought take her vows, but she had been too afraid to defy her father. If the letter had reached her, it would have given her courage enough.

  And now she also understood that the young beautiful Count was a pawn as much as she. What hope could such a marriage have of ever bringing joy?

  But it was too late. Because she had been a coward, she would be married today to a man who did not want her. She had resolved to do her duty in this marriage, but the angels knew her heart. They wept in her place, because she could not disappoint her mother and father by doing so.

  A servant girl from the village, hired especially to help Analise with these preparations, whispered, "

  Bellissima!" her hands clasped under her chin.

  Analise turned to the long, smoky colored mirror. Dispassionately, she viewed her beauty. Very thick dark hair and smooth olive skin, and her best feature, blue eyes, which startled against the darkness of her hair. Her figure was like her mother's, full at bust and hip, and much had been made of that bust so it flowed indecently into the square bodice of the pale gown. "A fichu," she said firmly, and held out a hand.

  The girl made a token protest as Analise tucked it in.

  "Do you know the Count?" she asked.

  "Oh, yes! You will be pleased, my lady. He is young and healthy and beautiful." She adjusted the back of the fichu carefully. "It is said he is kind, good to his servants. Such a man does not beat his wife, no?"

  "Thank you." The girl had given the reassurance Analise needed.

  "They're waiting."

  Analise hesitated, looking over her shoulder to the dark clouds. There was still time for a miracle.

  "Please," she prayed silently. "Let me go back!"

  The girl was young, too young. Basilio turned to her in the silence of the chamber that had been prepared for them and his wretchedness increased a hundredfold. Yet whatever he felt, there was no wretchedness in the world so deep as that of his young bride.

  She stood, tiny and straight, adorned in her great cloak
of dark hair, and raised her eyes to his. He had expected a virgin's terror, but in the enormous and extraordinary blue eyes, there was something else. A fire, dark and turbulent; one he would not have anticipated in a sixteen-year-old, never mind one so gently reared. "We have sinned here today, sir," she said suddenly, her chin lifting.

  "Sinned?" He halted in the act of removing his neckcloth.

  From her bodice she took a folded parchment. He recognized his hand on the letter. "It came too late," she said, her mouth tight. "Had it come only one day sooner, I would have heeded its message. It came to me here, following me from Corsica."

  He let go a snort of humorless laughter, bowing his head. "And had I acted in true conscience and faith when I first knew my heart, you would have had the letter one day sooner." Regret knifed through him, then he raised his head. "God's will is done now, and we are bound."

  "God's will?" she echoed with a fine irony. Twice today he had seen intelligence in her. But of course she would have access to knowledge in the convent that she could not have gained else-wise. "Is it?"

  "That I cannot answer." In sudden decision, he turned and locked the door so no servant could disturb them. When he turned back, purpose in his step, she shrank away, and he shook his head. "Do not fear me, Analise. I had no more wish for this than did you." From the desk he took a knife and cut his finger—not so obviously that it would be noticed, but enough to bring welling drops of blood to the surface.

  She watched him silently as he strode to the bed and, a little to one side of the center, smeared the blood on to the sheets. "There," he said, turning back. "It is done."

  She closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands, her bravado dissolving in the soft trembling of those long white fingers. Gently, Basilio led her to the bed and pulled the coverlet over her. "It would be better if you untied your gown," he said quietly. "Sleep now."

  "Thank you," she whispered, reaching out a hand.

  He nodded. "Sleep," he said again. Shedding his coat, he settled at the desk, looking out to the rain pouring beyond the windows. With only a single taper to cast flickering light on the page, Basilio took up his pen, and the words frozen in him for a month came pouring free. He wept as wrote, and once was so overcome that he put his head in the curve of his elbow, waiting for it to subside. But write he did. And every word held Cassandra's breath, and the curve of Cassandra's breast, and the sound of Cassandra's laughter.

  He wrote until his pen fell from his fingers, leaving a small blot in the shape of a star across the page.

  Then he fell, exhausted, into sleep.

  Chapter 11

  On a cold, wet November night, Cassandra opened the door to her London house. Only then, looking at her familiar things with new eyes, did she understand how very much she had changed. The servants had lit fires and her cook had prepared a comforting English meal—roast beef and potatoes and carrots.

  Cassandra praised it and ate it because she was hungry, but her mouth craved olives.

  In the great basket of correspondence that had collected during her travels, there were three letters from Basilio. She took them out and put them on the table, telling herself she needed to burn them. It would be cleaner.

  But she was too hungry for a the sound of his voice in her head, and she opened the first.

  10 August 1787

  My dearest Cassandra,

  As I write this, you are bent over your translation, and I am besotted with the bend of your white neck, by the small curls that have escaped your attempt to tame that wild hair, the seriousness of your brow as you bend over your work. I dare not say what is in my heart, for this is too new, and I sense that you were badly wounded and will need time to see that I am different.

  But here, in this letter I will mail to be waiting for you when you return to your house in Piccadilly Street, I will confess the truth: I broke my betrothal, and there is but one wish in my mind— that we shall spend our days together, all of them.

  It is not simple matter, of course. My father is going to be very, very angry with me when he hears the news. He is likely reading my letter in this moment— oh, anger is not a fine thing on his face.

  No, it will not be simple. And I will not speak of this to you except in this letter, which you will not see until you return to your home, but you are my heart, my love, the very blood that runs in my veins. It was fated that we should find one another across such vast distances, fated that our hearts should become one.

  I am so certain of this, that it is not merely passion that binds us— sweet though passion may be!

  — but a union of souls that were born to be entwined, that I am willing to let you leave me, return to your home, and see that what I say is true. No time or distance or practicalities will dim what has been born here in these precious days.

  I am so certain that naught will dim this that I say now, come, Cassandra— or if you cannot, I will come to you. Be my love, be my wife. Let us together make a mosaic of joy from our days.

  There are no words in any language to express the depth of my feeling for you, so I leave you with the simplest of them all: Ti amo.

  Your Basilio

  With a cry, Cassandra scooped them into her hands and threw them all into the flames, her hand over her mouth as she fought the swell of grief in her.

  It was over. Over.

  Part Three

  England May 1788

  Come to me in the silence of the night;

  Come in the speaking silence of a dream;

  Come with soft rounded cheeks

  and eyes as bright

  As sunlight on a stream…

  CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

  Chapter 12

  It was one of those early spring days that appear from nowhere, laden with the promise of what was to come. Cassandra felt the difference in the air when she awakened. Drawn by something she couldn't name, she carried a cup of chocolate with her to the newly greening garden and breathed it in with a sense of emerging from a winter cocoon. Until that moment, she had not realized how deep and long her lethargy had been.

  It seemed she had barely moved in the dark, short days of winter. She had taken callers, returned to an erratic schedule of salons, and done her work, but all of it had been done mechanically while Cassandra hibernated.

  Perhaps that was why, when Julian arrived late in the day, and urged her to come out with him to see a new singer at the opera, she found herself agreeing. Sitting with him in the box, waiting for the music to begin, she watched with amusement as one mama after another spied Cassandra's imminently suitable—not to mention dashing—brother, the Earl of Albury. One by one, they found excuses to stop by to speak a word, the eligible daughter in tow, of course. Julian was unfailingly polite, often even witty and charming, but he was equally skilled at dismissing them.

  After one such mama and her awkward, obviously mortified daughter left, Cassandra laughed. "Why, I believe you are the most eagerly sought bachelor in all of England, Lord Albury."

  "Which is why you are here as my protection, my dear. Were you absent, I'd be forced to entertain them and listen to the silly chatter all evening." He scowled, and the expression hinted of the darkness and secrets that lurked below his elegant features. "I have no intention of taking one of these witless women to wife."

  Cassandra smiled. "Eventually, I expect you will be forced to. An heir and all."

  "No," he said. "I will not marry." He plucked a loose hair from his sleeve. Cassandra admired his long, graceful hands, smiling a little.

  "No?" she echoed. "But who will be the next Earl, then?"

  He shrugged. As if to distract her, he raised one arched brow. "Surely you understand the wish to avoid matrimony."

  His pale gray eyes were too sharp by half. Cassandra turned her head. "I had one terrible hus-band. I'm in no hurry to hand myself over to another."

  "Exactly." He smiled, that cool, aristocratic expression that would no doubt send the mamas into swoons.

  "Lovers
are plentiful, after all."

  Cassandra laughed lightly. "I wouldn't know. Is there some beauty you've been keeping?"

  "Why do you think we're attending the opera?"

  "Oh, Julian, what cliche! An opera singer?"

  "Dancer, actually."

  She inclined her head. "I'm pleased, I think. We worried about you, when you came back from your adventures."

  That flicker of distance, of sorrow appeared, then was gone again. He took her head. "As we have worried since your return from abroad. Will you never speak of what happened, Cassandra?"

  She managed a light, bored shrug. "Ah, only a silly love affair turned sour. No more than that."

  "You are in much improved spirits this evening."

  "How could I fail?" She spied another hopeful mother headed their way, and laughed, directing his attention. "I have come to the opera with the most popular gentleman in London."

  With a nearly imperceptible smile, he stood to greet the newcomers.

  At last the musicians began to tune their instruments and the steady stream of marriage-able girls trickled off. Cassandra settled herself in readiness for the opera, which she always enjoyed.

  When she looked across the opera house, there he was. Out of place, and so unexpected that she gaped for a long, silent moment before she could fit her mind around the fact that it was him.

  Basilio.

  Here, at the opera.

  In London.

  Blackness prickled at the edges of her vision. She realized she had not breathed, and sucked in a breath, but she could not look away.

  Behind him was a man she vaguely recognized, a ruddy-faced lord from a county near her estate, which only made it all the stranger. Two women had settled at the front of the box, but the men continued some deep discussion, their heads bent together, one graying, the other darkest black.

  A flash of memory hit her like a blow; her hand, white as moonlight against the jet of his hair, the curls leaping around the turn of her finger—