[Barbara Samuel] Night of Fire(Book4You) (11 page)

She paused and touched her mouth, wondered if she were brave enough to even write about that kiss.

Tossing back a heavy handful of hair, she dipped her pen.

And now, Basilio. What will I remember of him when I must leave this enchanted place? His
beautiful hair, tumbling free around his face as he played with the dog on the beach. The white
arch of his bare foot. The taste of his kiss, like plums, like morning, like all the magic that has
ever been in the world. I had not known a kiss could be like that.

It is Basilio, born of this golden light and the sensual feast that is his country, who has freed me,
introduced me to this new side of myself. How did he know she lurked all this time within me,
when I did not know myself?

She smiled, so very, very pleased, and scattered sand over the ink, put down her pen, and stretched luxuriously in the warm room. Suddenly aware that she felt damp and sticky, she called for a bath.

And even that was a wondrous discovery, a discovery of her own body. She grew aware of it in a way she had not been since earliest adolescence had turned her scrawny scarecrow of a body into something softer and amazingly more interesting. As she bathed, she was aware of the whiteness of her thighs and the weight of breasts bumping her arms; she noticed the crook of her elbows and the joints in her toes. A queer, sinuous something kept moving under her skin, making her feel both exhilarated and uncomfortable.

As she sat letting Kate put up her hair, she looked at her own mouth in the mirror and saw that it seemed very red. That brought a shocking and heady vision of a naked Basilio to her mind—those strong shoulders and his naked ankles, and everything in between. It made the restlessness under her skin tremble, and she shifted irritably, making Kate pull her hair. "Sorry," she muttered.

As a widow, Cassandra could have taken a dozen lovers by now and no one would have blinked. She'd certainly had her fair share of aspirants for the position, some of them quite handsome and witty. She had never wanted any of them. Didn't want their hands on her, their wet lips soiling her, their grunts in her ears.

But when Basilio had kissed her the way she'd longed to kiss him, there had been no reserve in her—

only a rushing need to join to him, to press herself as close as possible, to
inhale
him. His tongue had thrust inside and her knees had nearly buckled with desire. His breath and her own had grown harsh and needy, and it had only seemed natural.

But he'd clasped her closer and closer, and she'd suddenly become aware of the rigidness of his sex jutting into her belly, and a cold, tight terror had closed her throat, choking off her joy. She had run away, bewildering him, she knew.

But when he'd wandered into the courtyard below the balcony, she'd been awash again with heat, longing for him, especially because of the despondent look on his face.

Hot and cold. But at least the heat held promise. A promise of healing.

The maid finished with her hair and Cassandra dismissed her. With a pounding heart, she went to peek over the balcony and see if Basilio awaited her, or if he still slept. When she saw that the courtyard was empty, her disappointment was sharp and deep.

She backed away from the balustrade, putting a hand to that erratic beat of her heart. Wanting him, not wanting him, delirious one moment, terrified the next. Was she falling in love with him?

The answer was absurdly obvious: of course she was. She had been in love with him long before they ever met. He'd engaged her heart and soul with a rare beauty of spirit. Long before she had heard his voice, long before she'd ached to touch his hair, she had loved the man she'd grown to know in those letters.

And even had she not known him before, was it not de rigueur to fall in love in Italy?

Where would it lead? He was betrothed. She felt a pinch of guilt over that, but only a little one. If he had already been married she would not have considered a dalliance, but if she were gone before his bride arrived, there was no wrong on his part—not in a political alliance. And in truth, the very fact of his looming marriage made it safer.

Freedom! A widowed young woman on holiday, a sophisticated and learned woman, might take a lover and merely count it as one of the great pleasures of travel.

If, indeed, she could follow through on her wish to take a lover.

Thoughtfully, she pulled the shawl into points at her belly, realizing for the first time how many scars her husband had left on her, left in dark places where they would never show. What if they were permanent scars? What if he had ruined her forever?

All she had with Basilio was this small, golden space of weeks, here in this magic and beautiful world.

The thought gave her a soft swell of melancholy. It was hard to imagine, even now, what it would be like to return to her old life. She felt much changed in the space of a few days. How much more change would be wrought in weeks? And how much more by a lover's hands?

Moments
, Basilio said. She would take them with her, safely tucked into the folds of her mind, where no one could ever touch them.

Moments
. She would enjoy what
this
moment, this very night, would bring. She would not allow memories of her husband to steal her joy in Basilio's touch. She would not let fear of her own shifting perspective sully the beauty of this place. For now, she would think only as a poet, alive to her senses and the beauty of moments.

When she arrived downstairs, she smelled freshly baked bread and roasted meat, and it made her mouth water. Peeking outside to the courtyard, she saw with disappointment that it was still empty. From a room to the left came the sound of servants and glassware tinkling. She drifted in that direction, trailing her shawl, peeking into rooms as she went.

A woman came from the room at the end of the hall. "Good evening!" she said to Cassandra. "I am to bring you to the library, he said."

Basilio came out then, calling an order over his shoulder. He wore a dark coat and waistcoat, breeches and tall boots. His hair was caught back from his face, brushed into submission. He looked every inch the Count, powerful, controlled, serious—all but the betraying smears of ink on his fingers. She grinned.

When he spied her his expression changed, going swiftly between joy and consternation. "Ah good! You are awake."

Some current pulled her to him, but another held her where she stood. The servant, perhaps sensing the tension, scurried away, shaking her head. Cassandra looked up at him, wondering what to say. "Good evening."

He put his hand on his chest. "I—this—" He shook his head, and she would have vowed there was a flush on his face, making his lashes seem even thicker, darker. "I hope you will forgive me, Cassandra, for my heedlessness last night. This morning."

"Forgive you? No, I cannot do that."

His head came up abruptly. "No?"

"That would mean confessing how wicked I was, and you made me promise I would not."

A smile broke his soberness, a smile of relief and pleasure. "Then we are again in good accord. I worried all night that you would run away."

She could only look at his mouth, at the movement of his finely cut lips against the whiteness of teeth, at the glimpse of his tongue, forming the words. "No," she said softly.

"I thought we might eat in the house tonight." An soft incline of his head. "Not alone."

"The servants as chaperones?"

He clasped his hands behind his back. "It seemed wiser."

His eyes held earnestness mixed with sensuality, a combination that made Cassandra feel oddly weak.

"What a good man you are, my Basilio," she said quietly. "I felt it in your letters, but I have not known a man with so much kindness."

"It is not kindness," he said, and there was a hint of darkness in those words. "I do not wish to frighten you, not ever." He bowed with exaggerated manners over her hand. "Come! You must be very hungry indeed."

"Oh, yes! And it smells magnificent."

"No pain in the head?"

She slapped his arm lightly with her fan. "You were not to mention my indiscretion, sir."

"But where is that bold woman who said we should be drunk sometimes? I liked her. Send her back to me, immediately."

Cassandra chuckled as they entered the grand room, heavily ornate with dark woods and heavy hangings and an enormous chandelier dripping with crystal. "Oh, my! You could entertain all of Tuscany in this room."

"Yes," he said with a weary sigh. "I have never liked it. We came here sometimes when I was a child, and it always seemed strange to me that a feast and ball should begin in a dark room with no view of the mountains or the sea."

"And yet here we are."

"It will do."

The servants laid the meal, tender broiled fish cooked in a broth she did not recognize but thought delicious. For a little while neither of them spoke very much, absorbed in the food and their hunger. "You have a very fine cook, Basilio," she commented. "When I leave, I'm going to bribe her to come with me."

He raised his eyes, smiling. "She will not go. She adores me alone." And there, she saw the wickedness he might contain, knowledge of women, and the things that pleased them.

"Tonight," Basilio said "we should tell a story of happy endings after adventures."

Cassandra grinned. "But that is the second day. This is our third."

"But we told no stories yesterday."

"Yes, we did! You told me of St. Catherine."

"I told a story, true. But you did not tell me one, so it is still second day."

Inclining her head, she said, "Will we have ten days, then?"

"It will need to be eleven now. Unless we miss stories another day, in which case it will have to be twelve."

She laughed and plucked a handful of berries from a glass dish. "I will think of a story of adventure with a happy ending. Ah! I know one."

His eyes glittered. She tried not to look at his mouth, but it drew her eye, and she remembered the lush pleasure it had delivered. Seeing her gaze, he blinked slowly, touched her hand. "Tell me."

"It is the tale of my brothers, who killed a man in a duel over my sister's honor, and fled England, fearing for their lives."

"A duel! Really?"

"I did not write of it in my letters?"

"No. You only spoke a little of your family, now and again."

She almost spoke her first thought aloud:
because I wanted to keep you to myself
. Instead, she said,

"Perhaps I was afraid I would look very dull by comparison."

"Never!"

"You have not heard the tale, sir."

He laughed. "So I have not. Please continue."

So Cassandra told him about her sister Adriana, who had been very wicked as a young girl and taken a lover and scandalized all of polite society, and of her brothers, who had called the lover to a duel, and killed him, then fled for five years, fearing the gallows. She told what she knew of their adventures, surviving an uprising in the islands, and plagued by slavers who had nearly stolen Gabriel, and living with Indians. "And then they came home again, whole and well, to try to rescue my sister again, but she was already married."

"Rescued from marriage? Did she not want him?"

"Not at first. She lives now with him in Ireland."

"And your brothers?"

"Oh, Julian has become quite the English gentleman. Gabriel—" she hesitated. "He has marked his own path, always." Pleased and full, she sighed and leaned back. "How is it that I tell stories of my life and you tell stories of the world? I think I need one from your life, sir."

He tsked, pursed his lips. "Perhaps I do not know one."

"No happy ending at all, ever?"

He raised his brows, his mouth rueful. "That is a very sad thing, is it not?"

"Yes," she said. "Very."

He rose. "Come. This room oppresses me. Let's retire to the library and look through the manuscripts.

Would you enjoy that?"

Oddly, it held no appeal. She looked toward the garden. "Can we not walk, instead? I love the light."

"Of course." It was smoothly said, the liquid voice of an accommodating host.

"Have I offended you, Basilio?"

He let go of a breath, gave a soft laugh. "No, Cassandra. It is only that I am trying so very hard to be civilized."

"Must you be?" She frowned. "I do weary of civilization. Perhaps we should run to wildest Africa and shed our clothes and titles and live like natives."

That made him laugh, without that edge of restraint. This was the Basilio she knew, robust and full-throated. "I believe I would enjoy that."

He held out his arm and she lightly clasped his elbow, and they wandered through a set of doors to the broad courtyard. "But I have heard there are very large insects in Africa. Perhaps we'd wish to keep a few of our clothes."

"All right. But only a very few." She looked to both sides of the wall and thought it wiser to stay away from the orchard. Pointing in the other direction, she said, "Where does that path go?"

"To olive groves, and then to the garden. There is a fountain. Would you like to see?"

"I would." The light was softer than it had been the evening before, dusty, perhaps, or heavy with coming rain. "Is it going to rain?"

"I think it may. Will you mind terribly?"

She shook her head.
She would not mind anything as long as he was with her
. They walked down the hill, following a path that wound around an impressive stand of olive trees that was ringed with the same tall, dark fingers of trees she had seen everywhere.

With every step, Cassandra grew more aware of her wish to have him kiss her again. A scent of soap came from his skin, and it whispered over her senses, enticingly spicy. She found her gaze on his feet in the boots and remembered the sight of his toes and feet, and a pulse, low in her groin, shocked her. She looked away and took a breath. He felt a little stiff beside her, a little formal, and she wondered if the same sort of thoughts were in his mind.

She wished she had the courage to ask, but she found herself prattling instead, asking the name of this grass and that tree, and that flower, growing wild in an outcropping of stone. He answered with polite enthusiasm, and when they came to the garden he released her to the fountain, which shot from a mirroring pool contained in a great granite bed. Around it grew banks of lavender whose leaves cast off an alluring perfume.