Night of Fire Page 6

  He rounded the great bed and reached out, capturing the fluttering of her hand in his own. "Tomorrow is soon enough, if you must," he said. "Tonight, let me show you the village and the feast." His smile held edges of melancholy, and Cassandra was pierced that she should have put that in his heart.

  Even now, when calm surrounded him like a cloak, when whatever he'd felt on the beach was carefully hidden, Cassandra felt some invisible part of herself flow forward and put ghostly hands on his cheeks, a ghostly mouth against his lips, her breasts against his chest.

  Oh, this was impossible! Impossible. She swallowed, blinked the vision away. "Basilio, I—"

  "Shh." Slowly, he opened his hand and flattened his palm against hers. Oddly moved by the formality of it, Cassandra met it. A promise. His palm was strong and flat, her own soft and giving, and it seemed to her that the flesh between them began to heat, to burn, as they stood there.

  "Only for tonight, Cassandra," he said quietly. " A few hours more, that is all."

  In his face she saw goodness and passion, intelligence and laughter. A traitorous thought flashed through her: she did not wish for marriage. She only wanted a lover. Why could she not take this one, where she found him, and leave before their sin could lead to pain?

  Afraid to look at him and show what was in her immoral heart, she only looked at his hand, a shimmering hunger pulsing through her bones. The air around them burned. It was dangerous. There was some portent in it for them both, but she found herself nodding. "All right. I will stay another day or two."

  His hand slid against hers. "You will not be sorry, my Cassandra. I promise."

  She took her hand away and met his gaze soberly. "Do not promise what you cannot deliver, sir. You cannot ever know the truth in another's heart. Only your own."

  "So it is," he said. Tucking his hands behind his back, he gave a short bow, and left her.

  Cassandra sank down to the bed, her hands loose on her lap. Her palm burned oddly and she lifted it, expecting to see some imprint left from his flesh, but there was nothing. Only the pale white flesh of her hand, as it had always been. She closed her fingers over her palm as if to save the impression, and thought again she should have not been swayed.

  Then, with the same sturdy practicality that had marked her life, she scowled. Such drama! What could happen in a day or two to unravel anything at all?

  At dusk, they rode the short distance down the hill into the village. Tall narrow trees made sharp shadows against the sky, and a breeze swept off the heat of the day. Birds whistled evensong, and from some hidden place, a cow lowed. Cassandra breathed it in with pleasure, feeling the strain between them ease under the soft force of that peace. "And here is the wonder of travel, right in this moment," she said.

  "Tell me."

  "I do not know the name of those birds who make that song. And I have no idea what I'll see when we round that bend. And I lift my nose to the air and smell things I've never smelled on the wind."

  He gave her a swift, bright smile. "Yes. But those are the very things that frighten many people away. It could be a band of robbers around that bend. Or an ugly little town. The food might be very strange and you won't like it."

  "But it might be something so delicious I would want to cook it myself forever and ever."

  "Always the same choice in life: fear or joy? Do we awaken worrying, or ready to embrace? Do we fret or celebrate?"

  "I think," Cassandra said slowly, "that I have done my share of fretting and worrying. It was your letters that showed me that fear was not the only way."

  "My letters might have reminded you, but the gift was there in you all along." He raised his head. "That child on the edge of the world dreamed of beauty, yes?"

  "Beauty, yes," she replied. "But not particularly as a source of joy."

  "How could beauty not give joy?"

  "It frightened me," she said honestly. "At times when I ventured out at evening in Martinique, and there was some blooming crimson, and the air blazed with the sound of birds and insects and the sea, and there was so much life, so much intensity, I would run back in my room and cover my head."

  "You?"

  Suddenly embarrassed at revealing so much, she lifted a shoulder. "Only sometimes."

  "No, no—you mustn't run from this. What did you fear?"

  "Oh, I don't know, Basilio," she answered in discomfort. "Perhaps I was only frightened because my mother died there."

  "Perhaps." He rode a moment in silence, and Cassandra hoped the subject now closed. He knew too much of her already. "But let me ask you—what did that little girl see, truly?"

  She would not escape, and with a little roll of her eyes, she confessed. "I saw monsters in everything in those days. Everywhere. The flowers sometimes looked like they could house evil fairies. And the birds were telling them I was there."

  His laughter, soft and warm, held no note of mockery. "Ah! It is as I thought—it was only that writer's imagination in you."

  "Did you have such imaginings?" she asked in surprise.

  "Not so many frightening ones. I believed a chair was alive for a long time, however."

  "A chair?"

  "It was a big chair, with thick arms. I liked to sit there and read, and I pretended it was a very kind grandfather who let me sit on his lap."

  "I see." And she did.

  "And there was door in our house in Firenze that I could not bear to pass at night, for fear that some evil creature would come out and pull me inside of it." He made a roaring sound.

  She laughed. "I do wish I had not been so serious all the time. Very, very serious." She mockingly assumed an expression of deepest concentration. "I had no time for frivolity. I meant to accomplish things, work hard. Study."

  "Not I," he said with a chuckle. "From the time I was very small, I wandered, exploring, hoping for some new wonder around every turn."

  "Did you find them, the wonders?"

  "Often." He looked at her. "When you go, you should take time to visit Venice. She will please you."

  "Oh?" Odd how he'd plucked her thoughts that way. "Why?"

  "Venice—she is a goddess of love, adorned in the richest of fabrics and earthiest scents; she is a gypsy, taking lovers as she wishes, seducing all who breathe her perfumes." He tucked his tongue in his cheek and waited for her reaction.

  She laughed lightly to cover the quick catch of her breath. "A very dangerous place, then!"

  "Very dangerous. And very exciting." His attention was snared by something. "Ah, listen! Do you hear that?"

  Music, exuberant and bright, reached them. "The festival?"

  "Yes. You will like this very much, I promise."

  They rounded the last bend, and the village bloomed below them. They stopped on the street for a moment beneath the setting sun, a light that competed with the dozens of lanterns and torches lining the square. Little shops and houses rounded three sides of the broad area, paved with golden stone. On the fourth side was a beautiful church, ablaze with hundreds of candles that made the stained glass windows seem alive with brilliant shards of color. The villagers were out en mass. Little girls had laced red ribbons through their hair, and some of the women wore red skirts. They all rushed toward the center of the square, where a great bonfire had been laid.

  Cassandra was enchanted. "It's beautiful!" she cried. "What are they honoring?"

  "Fire night," he said. "Long ago, the villagers were dying of plague, and in great distress they prayed to the patron saint of the village—St. Catherine of Siena. Do you know her?"

  "A little. She wrote." Cassandra smiled. "I've made it my business to know the women in history who put pen to paper."

  "I see. Well, St. Catherine is a local legend, for she visited our humble little village and washed her feet in the spring, and it is said to be blessed by her. So when the plague came, the villagers prayed and prayed in the church they had built in honor of her."

  "And there was a miracle."

  "Of course. But not qui
te the one you would imagine. Do you see how this village is not so old as the ones you saw as you came through the countryside?"

  Cassandra had not noticed till now, but it was true. Many of the villages boasted medieval towers and ancient houses. Many of these were old, but only a century or two. "Yes. Why?"

  "Because St. Catherine brought a fire to the village. It destroyed everything in its path, eating up the buildings and the surrounding trees. The people who were well enough fled to the fields and could do nothing to stop it—they stood and watched it burn for two full days. It ate the bodies of the plague dead, and it ate the hay and grass, and even the sick they had left behind."

  "How terrible!"

  He lifted a finger with a smile. "No, no. It was a miracle. Because the fields were not touched, so there was food for harvest. And plague never came again to our little village—St. Catherine saved it by letting it burn."

  Cassandra looked back to the square, where the fire was lit with a great cry, and the music started up again. Red ribbons fluttered against dark hair, and the flames shot up into the sky, and she thought of the villagers watching the whole town burn to the ground.

  It moved her deeply. "Thank you, Basilio."

  He smiled gently. "I knew it would please you. Come—there is not only fire, but piles of food baked in honor of that harvest that was spared, and it is our duty to eat it."

  All through the evening, Basilio ached with pride and desire. Cassandra dove into the festival with gusto

  —sampling every tidbit offered to her, and praising it wildly. She danced with the women, and listened to the long, rambling story of a very, very old man who was captured by the fire of her hair. They all loved that hair, and the little girls coaxed her into letting it down. "For St. Catherine!" they cried. It burned his eyes, that glittering fire.

  He drank very little, fearing he could not control his hunger if wine seeped into his blood. Even so, he was drunk on her. Drunk when she rushed up to him and took his hand and dragged him into the peasant dance, drunk when a tendril of bright hair trailed over his coat sleeve, drunk when she threw back her head and laughed and her throat, white and smooth in the night, was exposed to his gaze. He loved that long neck.

  She was swept away by the dance, into the embrace of the peasants. Stung by the loss, Basilio retreated to a bench in a dark corner, watching her. How could he return to his old life, take up the press of honor and the weight of his duties, and leave her here, dancing in his memory forever? He drank the sight of her, freed by night and the festival and the delight of the villagers. She seemed the embodiment of all the poetry he'd ever heard, every sonnet he longed to write, every beautiful word and syllable ever uttered.

  She laughed, and the sound seemed to ring out above the tumult, though he knew it was only his imagination that he could hear it. He wanted to reach out and capture it, hold it in his hand, in his heart, forever, and it burned in him that he could not.

  Why not?

  The traitorous thought rose through his brain, clear and pure. Why not? She was nobly born, a suitable wife. She was beautiful and cultured, and even spoke Italian. Why couldn't he simply chose her over the wife his father had chosen for him?

  Madness lay in that direction—he knew very well why not. However much he loathed his duty, he would do it. This marriage would align the two families and create a powerful, prosperous union for them all.

  Already rich, they would become richer. Already powerful, they would near equal the princes.

  But more than that, Basilio could not dishonor the wishes of his mother. She had loved Analise, had championed her, and upon her death bed had reminded Basilio's father to protect her.

  Had either of Basilio's brothers lived, one of them would be making this marriage. Because he had been spared, Basilio had to fulfill the promise that had been cut short. A sacrifice, he thought with pain, looking at Cassandra, but not the same as death. For Giovanni, for Teo, for his mother, Basilio had to resist her.

  A gray-haired woman with a red skirt plopped down beside him, breathing hard. "I am not so young as I was," she said, laughing, a hand to her chest. "But you, my handsome lord, you are young! What are you doing, sitting here in the dark, brooding? Go dance!"

  He shook his head. "I am content to watch."

  "She is beautiful, your woman."

  "She is not my woman," he said more harshly than he intended, and gentled it. "Only my good friend."

  The old woman's eyes shined, dark and wide, and Basilio saw the beauty she'd once been. "Friend!" she cried with the frankness of the elderly. "Pah!"

  He smiled reluctantly, trying to remember her name. "Yes, friend. We have written letters for a long time.

  She only came to visit, to see the countryside. Next, she goes to Venice."

  Just then, a little boy with a headful of thick black curls tugged at Cassandra's skirts. She swooped down and picked him up, swinging him around, her hair and skirts swirling out around her. The boy laughed and put his hands on her face. She kissed the fingers lightly, easily, and that single gesture slayed him.

  Basilio put his head in his hands. "She is only my friend," he said.

  The old woman—her name suddenly came to him, Lucia—put her hand softly on his back and said nothing.

  Dawn hovered at the horizon before they made their way back. Despite his best intentions Basilio had drunk a lot of wine, as had Cassandra, but there was no danger. The horses knew the way, and ambled up the road in the damp. Fog wisped around their feet and tangled in the forest branches.

  "Should we have stayed out so long?" Cassandra whispered as the villa came into view. "Will bandits leap from the trees and slit our throats?" She rode close, challenge and mischief on her mouth, a boldness he had not seen before lighting her eyes.

  He laughed. "They are all asleep!"

  "I love your village, Basilio," she said with a happy sigh, "I plan to write a lovely essay about the festival."

  "You must send it to me."

  "Will you write about it, too? Oh, how could you resist it? All those little girls with red ribbons!"

  And a boy whose fingers she'd kissed. "I am so pleased you enjoyed it."

  "I think," she said with that exaggerated tilt of the head that spoke of a little too much wine, "that it was the best night I've ever known."

  "The best ever?"

  "Yes." She met his gaze, and he wondered which of them was the more reckless now.

  Wickedly, he tested that recklessness. "Better than a wedding night?"

  "Oh, that!" She waved her hand. "No, I did not care for that."

  She had never written or spoken one word of her husband, and Basilio suddenly wondered why. "You do not speak of your husband. Are you so sorrowful that he died?"

  She made an unladylike noise. "No! He was awful. I hated him."

  He was glad, and then, conversely, jealous. "You're a woman now, and can choose the next one freely.

  It will be better."

  "Are you fishing, sir?"

  "Fishing?"

  She smiled, a sly glitter in her eyes. "Asking if I have one in mind."

  "Oh. No." He frowned. "Do you?"

  She laughed. "No. I'm a most happy widow, and will never marry. Not ever. Marriage, for women, is a prison."

  "Not all marriages."

  "Well, my sister is content, I admit. But I do not value contentment." There was a stubborn set to her mouth. "I value freedom. And bravery. And tonight, I have both!"

  "Are you drunk, Cassandra?"

  "A little. Enough that I will have a headache tomorrow, I think." She inclined her head. "Are you shocked?"

  "No." He was besotted.

  "I do not allow it very often. But it seems to me that wine was invented so that we might put away all the dark things, all the sad things, all the worrisome things, just for a night. Tonight we all drank too much and danced and laughed too hard. Your villagers have the way of it. In my world, drunkenness is common, but offers no relief."


  "I think you are right, my Cassandra. Perhaps I should order an evening of drunken revelry once every six months."

  She laughed. "Perhaps I should order it as well—insist my sisters join me once a year for a great feast and dancing. My brother Julian needs to get drunk, I think," she added. "He has a heart that needs mending."

  They were suddenly at the stables. "Here we are," Basilio said. He quickly dismounted and went to Cassandra's side. "Allow me to assist you, my lady."

  "Assist me?" she echoed softly, and put out her hand. He put his hand on her waist as she swung free, and felt the muscles of her side move, beneath flesh, beneath silken fabric. He closed his eyes.

  She slid down, very close, closer than she needed to be, and instead of alarm, he felt the world align itself. Of course it would be this way, with dawn hovering on the edges of the landscape, with fog-muffled silence deep around them, her hair the only brightness in the world. He felt her against him, her breasts, her shoulders; her breath on his neck, her hair fluttering loose over his hand. Next to him, she felt very small. Her hand slid from his shoulder to his neck, her palm open against his throat, then against his jaw.

  He looked down, dizzy with wine and with passion, and saw the white oval of her face in the night, her eyes large and dark and sober. He raised a finger and touched her red, red lips, helpless to resist.

  "Do not say a word, Basilio," she said, her voice throaty. "This moment, this instant, I choose joy. I choose bravery." He felt the press of her breasts, the stiffness of her bodice, against his chest, as she lifted on her toes and put her hands on his face. "I choose one memory," she whispered, and pressed her mouth against his. Just once, very lightly and chastely—and all the sweeter for it.

  He'd only begun to smell her hair when she pulled away, smiling. "In the morning I will regret my boldness, and will be very angry with you if you remind me of my rashness."

  Holding himself very carefully, he said, "Not a whisper." Pulling away to ease the temptation, he took her hand and tugged her toward the villa. "But in return, you must promise not to be a blushing Englishwoman about it and want to hide your face."