A Season for Love (25 page)

"I'm leaving in the morning," he told her, the assured timbre of his voice barely touched by a husky catch. "I came to say good-bye."

She had known the moment would come, but it caught her completely unaware. Her body congealed on her and she seemed detached from it, as if she had no control over limbs that felt like stone.

She finally forced a stiff nod, not trusting herself to speak. "Oh, God, Ronnie!" he emitted in an explosive rasp. The door was pushed aside with a spontaneous shove, and Drake was in the room. She was enveloped into shaking arms that felt like a bands of steel, and her cheek rested against the warm velvet texture of his jacket.

"Ronnie," he whispered, his hand stroking hair that was as silky as her caftan.

She looked up into his eyes. The vivid sapphire blue that met his gaze was clear but tremulous. Her lips were quivering, parted, sweetly moist.

He lowered his own to them, tenderly, lightly, reverently. He drew away, searching out her eyes, then the band of his arms tightened around her, and she was crushed to him, his kiss this time passionate, giving, taking, thirsting, bruising with intensity.

He would devour her.

Yet she met him with equal fervor, her fingers clinging to his broad shoulders, her nails digging into velvet. She noticed no pain as his lips consumed her, only the hunger and need that grew within both of them like wildfire. She accepted, she demanded in return, her tongue seeking his in a harmonious duel of longing that deepened with endless space. His fingers wound tightly through her hair, arching her neck, holding her for his driving demand in a grip from which she desired no escape. And when his mouth finally left hers, it moved tenderly down the exposed length of her throat, tasting, touching, flowering soft butterfly kisses.

He suddenly released her, only to lift her into his arms. Ronnie was delirious with him, drugged in the sensuality that was his tenderest touch as well as his passion. She was ready to forget everything. . . .

But she sensed a withdrawal from him as he laid her gently on the fur spread. Not the harsh withdrawal he had often displayed before, but a controlled, determined withdrawal that wrenched apart her heart and left it as torn and bleeding as his. Wild, passionate lovers, they were oddly, uniquely, moralists. It was Pieter's house.

He touched her forehead with his lips and moved away. For a moment longer he watched her, drinking in, absorbing, her beauty: the exquisite form molded by the silk caftan; the burnished sable hair softer, more lustrous, than the fur it was spread upon; the clear blue eyes, clearer than the sky, deeper than

indigo; her face, delicate, regal, more finely sculpted than any piece of marble, ingrained with indomitable character.

The woman who had taught him the meaning of love, of loyalty and devotion.

He turned and left the room, a panther disappearing into the night.

Ronnie watched him go with a sense of emptiness that was overpowering. Her fingers moved shakily to her bruised lips, to the flesh still feeling the ravishment of his mustache and slightly 
rough cheeks.

She didn't cry—the pain was beyond that. And she didn't sleep again that night.

Chapter Nine

"I thought I'd never live to say it, Veronica, but you do look like hell."

Ronnie glanced up sharply from her third cup of coffee, praying the caffeine would put life in her veins.

Pieter looked surprisingly well.

She attempted a smile for him. "I thought I'd never live to say it," she retorted, "but you are a conniving, devious, and very, very wonderful man." She sobered. "But it's no good, Pieter. I'm going with you to Maryland."

He had been standing too long, even for the good health he was displaying. He took a chair beside her and tenderly touched a lock of her hair with a sigh. "I expected that you would fight me. You and Drake."

Ronnie closed her eyes, stricken afresh with a tug of war in her mind that was half guilt and love for Pieter, and half pain and love for Drake.

"Forgive me, Pieter," she murmured quietly. "I never meant to hurt you—"

"Veronica," Pieter interrupted, lifting her chin. "You are a priceless gem, so very rare, so very fine. I have nothing to forgive."

"Oh, Pieter, it wasn't right—"

"No!" he protested with a righteous vehemence that reminded her fleetingly of the great artist and man he had been before the illness had played havoc with his emotions and mind. "What wasn't right was us, Ronnie. Me in particular. The years you 
gave me, a sick old man clinging to a goodness and youth too devoted to do anything other than accept self-centered abuse. But no more, Ronnie. I will never throw you out of this, your home, and I will love you as my dear friend for the rest of my life and thank the gods for the time that you gave me. I will be delighted to take you to Maryland with me, as my very good friend, but we never will make our marriage legal. You and Drake are very right for each other, Ronnie. You will make him a marvelous wife."

She had thought herself cried out, but the encouragement, coming from the man she had betrayed, brought a flow of wetness down her cheeks. "Pieter . . ."

"There, there," he soothed, able to touch her now with his newly directed love. As husband and wife they were stilted strangers; as friends they could care with unstinting empathy. "Don't cry, Ronnie. Your future will bring all the happiness you have been denied. You must marry Drake."

"And what of you?" Ronnie charged through her tears.

"I am going to return to Paris," he told her, "for whatever time I do have. I am going to face the world. I am going to live as the great Pieter von Hurst!"

Ronnie smiled with sad admiration. "You are the very great Pieter von Hurst," she said softly.

"But first"—there was actually a twinkle in his pale blue gaze—"I shall attend your wedding. The papers will love it! We will tell them that we are divorced, of course. I will allow no scandal attached to your name!"

"Oh, Pieter!" Ronnie laughed. "You are the priceless one! I don't care about scandal, I care about your health. I care about—"

"Drake O'Hara." Ronnie flushed unhappily, and Pieter continued. "Please, Ronnie, no more sadness. You gave me all I could ever ask for—the spring of your life. But it's winter now for me, Ronnie, summer is left for you. A season for you to love."

"Pieter!" Ronnie protested. "I will not accept winter. And though you want now so much to give, you can't give me Drake.

He's gone. There are other things between us that can't be settled."

"He'll be back," Pieter said with conviction. He cleared his throat, and his next words took a great effort. "I have never held you in my arms, Ronnie, not as a man, but if I had, I know I would defy heaven and earth to hold you again."

Ronnie winced inwardly, flicking away the final trace of tears with her lashes. The immediate future was before them, and nothing would alter the course she planned to take.

"I think," she said, rising in a businesslike fashion, "that we'll have to discuss Paris and my future at a later date." She poured a fourth cup of coffee for herself and the first for Pieter, adding the heavy cream he liked. "We have a doctor to see first."

"Yes," Pieter said lightly. "We have a doctor to see." He drummed thin fingers on the table. "Ronnie?"

"Yes?"

"Whether the prognosis is good or bad, I am returning to Paris. Alone."

She nodded, her fingers trembling slightly as she set the coffee cups down. He reached out bony fingers to clasp her hand. "The prognosis may very well be good."

She nodded again, gulped her coffee down, mindless that she scalded her tongue, and left the dining room on a mumbled pretext of packing.

Pieter watched her, praying for her sake more than his own that the prognosis would indeed be good.

Four weeks later they were again sharing coffee, again talking as they had so belatedly learned to do.

But the dining table was different, the place was different, even the lifetime and dimension seemed to be different.

They were celebrating Pieter's forty-third birthday, and the celebration was a real one. Just that afternoon Ronnie had held his hand in hers as they waited for the verdict from a team of doctors. Their hands had been clammy together, but their expressions stoic. Only the two of them knew how their hearts beat with hope—a hope granted this time. The disease was still incurable, but new treatments could give Pieter an unknown lease on life. A life far easier. With new medication, his existence could be almost normal.

Now they sat in the coffee shop of their hotel, looking out of the veranda on the magnificent display of fall colors that were adorning Maryland in a natural beauty. It wasn't the peak of autumn yet, but the reds and golds of the trees had never seemed brighter, nor the grass greener.

And Ronnie was laughing. Pieter hadn't seen her laugh during the entire month. Her eyes, though, even as her lips curled, remained haunted. And he knew why, but he couldn't reassure her. He could only play God so far.

He reached a hand across the table and enveloped hers. "I would like it very much, Veronica," he told her, "if you would go upstairs and don your prettiest gown. An old and grateful man would like to take you to dinner."

"Old, never," Ronnie protested. Pieter now was ageless. He was still going to die, and he knew it, but as he pragmatically told Ronnie, they were all mortal, all subject to only so many years of life. He had been given many more and he intended to live each day to the fullest.

"Well, then, you must dress up for a very dear friend."

"I'll be glad to." She squeezed his hand back.

"Go on now," he persisted. "I shall call at your door in an hour."

Ronnie left him and returned to her room, which was actually a luxury suite. She wasn't really in a mood to dress elaborately for dinner—the last weeks had been filled with tension and strain during the day and fitful dreams of yearning and loss at night— but it was Pieter's birthday, and he was a new man, so like the kind and mature patron who had adopted her and Jamie all those years before.