[Barbara Samuel] Night of Fire(Book4You) (4 page)

When she awakened much later, Cassandra called her maid, who was full of complaints and dire warnings as she dressed Cassandra's hair and helped her don a gown of green brocade she'd brought specifically for this night. Cassandra only half-listened, her gaze captured by the haze of light falling on the hills beyond her balcony.

The long gold fingers pointed out valleys and crags and high outcroppings of white rock that had been hidden earlier, and she felt a stab of excitement over what else might be revealed in another hour or another day. In the middle of Joan's complaint about the servants who'd slept all afternoon, she said,

"Joan, look there. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful in your life?"

"I like the view out my mum's window better."

Cassandra brushed the girl's hands from her and moved to pull the drapes aside. A soft wind, considerably cooler than it had been earlier, touched her face. "I shall need my shawl, I believe. The gold." When Joan fetched it, Cassandra tossed it over her arm and slipped out, a quick eagerness in her step that she'd not felt in years.

With a sense of wonder, she realized she was as close to giddy as she ever allowed herself to be. It was a surprisingly pleasant sensation, and as she walked down the cool hallway to the main salon, she hummed lightly under her breath. The strange foreboding of earlier seemed as distant as England itself, made of old fears and lingering guilts, no more.

Though she heard servants about, Cassandra did not see anyone else as she made her way through the rooms, poking her head into a salon, then a library which tempted her mightily—did he keep the manuscripts here?—but she forced herself to keep going. The rooms were arranged around the gardens and courtyard, every window open to the astonishing view of fields and groves falling away to the sea.

She emerged into that courtyard. The paving stones were warm beneath her slippers, even as shadows crept out from the building from the westering sun. With a rush of anticipation, she realized that not only the moon would slide into the sea, as Basilio had promised, but the sun as well. It was a sight she had not seen in many years.

There was no one here, and Cassandra wondered if she ought to go back to her room until Basilio had returned. But she was too restless to be able to tolerate the slow quiet of that view. She would explore the gardens instead.

But just as she turned for the path, she heard a burst of laughter and Basilio himself came through the break in the trees, his hands filled with some ruby-colored fruit. A man walked with him, perhaps the steward, but Cassandra could only stare at Basilio. His coat and waistcoat were gone, leaving his simple shirt to blow against his body the tie loose enough she could glimpse his chest and part of a sculpted shoulder at the opening. The thin fabric of his sleeves billowed white and full against his forearms.

She wanted to run to him, run and greet him with the fullness of her pleasure. Instead, she forced herself to remain still by the wall, as if she were captured once more by the glory of colors drenching the landscape—but it was Basilio who filled her vision, who made her chest hurt. Words from his letters spilled through her mind, now lent richness because they echoed in his physical voice:
I labor to capture
the music of the night. Imperfectly. Always imperfectly
.

When he saw her, his unguarded face blazed with light. He called out happily, "Cassandra! Come see what I have brought you!"

Unable to quell a smile of happiness, she moved toward him, unable, too, to keep her feet from flying over the bricks. He hurried toward her, lifting his hands with his prize, his laughter spilling out into the late gold day.

The perfection of moments, Cassandra thought, and then saw what he carried in his long-fingered hand.

"Plums!" she cried happily, and took one from the many.

"Take more! They came just this minute from the trees. I picked them for you."

She gathered more out of his palms and held one in her fingers. "It's warm!"

He laughed and bit into one, those white teeth splitting the skin, juice spilling on his lip. "Taste it!"

Cassandra stared at him for a moment, overtaken by a vivid, intense wish to lick that syrup from his lip.

She brought a plum to her own mouth, and bit into it. It exploded against her teeth, spilling hot dark juice into her mouth, as warm as sunlight, sweeter than sugar. "Oh!" she cried.

Trying to keep it from dripping down her chin, she bent over, laughing, and sucked from her fingers.

"Wonderful!" she cried, and tossed the pit aside to devour another greedily. A tiny stream of juice trailed down her hand and she laughed again. "Messy!"

His eyes glittered. "This is why we are alive. Plums!" He extended his hand, and she saw that his fingers were also juice stained. "Come. Let's gather more for the others. You will like even more taking them off the tree."

There was no way to resist him, and though it was utterly unlike her, Cassandra tossed her shawl over one shoulder and reached out to allow him to grasp her sticky hand with his own.

Only then, when he halted for the tiniest span of time, enclosing her hand tightly in his, as she drew close to his body and smelled the sunlight in his hair, and saw his chest moving with a breath that seemed too fast, when she caught the soberness beneath his laughter, only then did she feel again the foreboding, mixed with sharp yearning.

In him. In her.

But then he tugged her hand and they tumbled down the hill to the orchard, laughing and free and young under the gold sun of Tuscany, so far away from all she had known or would ever know again.

For this time, she would live only in the moments he offered in their perfection.

Basilio washed and dressed for dinner with all his nerves burning. His cologne stung the newly shaved rawness of his jaw. His scalp tingled with the bristles of his brush, his legs prickled at the touch of his breeches; even his feet in their boots were more aware than usual of the feeling of stockings, leather, a hard heel.

Dangerous
. When he had finished, he went to stand in the doorway that looked down to the courtyard and paused. There below stood the reason for his distress: Cassandra, cloaked in that uncommon stillness. She looked out toward the valley, only the bright tendrils of loose hair moving. He wanted to touch that stillness, as a man would put his hand in the water to make it shimmer.

What made her so watchful? With a catch in his throat, he thought of the way her eyes—so distrustful!—

had shifted to joy when he made his simple offering of plums. It made him feel protective, that distrust and the vulnerability below it. Her letters had hinted of dark times, but he did not know what they had been.

He did not know her at all. How much of a life could one pour into a few lines on a page?

She raised her face to the breeze and he found himself breathing in with her, filling his lungs with the air she took in.

How much of one's life could go into those lines? Very little. But his soul had gone into his, into the letters and the poetry and essays he'd dared to send her. In some matters, she held more knowledge of him than any person on earth. And while there had been more reserve in her words, he believed she had given the same to him: knowledge of her secret wishes for herself, for her work, for the world.

And if she had been the woman he'd imagined, his Cassandra-of-the-Letters, who wrote such earthy and witty essays, there would have been no trouble. Cassandra-of-the-Letters was middle aged and barrel-bosomed, bawdy of tongue and quick of gibe. She had carved by her will a place in a world that did not wish to make room for her.

The image made him smile. He would have loved her in that form. He would have taken joy in showing her his world, lighting her laughter, feeding her, and giving her adventures to write about. He did not know how she had so captured him, but Cassandra-of-the-Letters had made him more himself than he had been in five years, ever since his father had insisted that Basilio leave his studies and travel on behalf of his business. Neither of his brothers had the command of languages that Basilio claimed, so he'd had no choice.

In those years he'd discovered new wonders about the world and had uncovered a gift for travel writings, but his poetry had languished, frivolous, forgotten.

Until he began corresponding with Cassandra-of-the-Letters. He couldn't say why it returned to him then

—could not have pointed to a particular word of encouragement she'd offered, or a moment he had decided it was time to see again what he might write. It had simply trickled back to him, a word here, an image there, until the music of poetry ran again beneath every moment of every day, as it had when he was a boy, giving a sheen to ordinary moments, a polish to painful duties.

Yes, Cassandra-of-the-Letters had given him that.

The real woman was so much more astonishing. Not merely her beauty, which pierced him as it must most men. But the poise that was so rare in one so young; a protective bearing that spoke of disappointments, and hidden away somewhere deep, fear.

Her youth and beauty dismayed him. Even without the letters, he would have been drawn to such a woman. That his beloved friend's soul and mind should be so enclosed was a greater danger than any he could have imagined for himself. Had he known, he would never have issued his invitation. He wasn't sure how he would resist the temptation of devouring her, of nibbling through that thin skin to let the passion flow into him. He did not know how he could stop himself from that, from making love to the woman who had captured his mind, and now would snare his soul if he could not find some way to resist the lure.

But resist he would. For honor, he must.

Resentment burned in him. Resentment at God, and his father, who had put him here where he did not belong, shouldering a mantle meant for his brother. Resentment that it would now steal from him the one happiness he might have claimed.

For he did not lie to himself in this. He would have moved the earth to claim her.

But because his freedom had been stolen, he would instead spend his life married to the woman his father had betrothed him to. A political marriage, uniting two families, a marriage to continue the proud and ancient Tuscan line to which he belonged. A marriage that would take place in one month.

In spite of his resentment, he knew he must do as he was bid. Not for his father, whom he had always hated, but for his mother—who had loved the girl, Analise, and had always been pro-tective of her. A strange, otherworldly child who had seen visions before she was six, and who was too beautiful to be allowed to be a nun when her father could gain so much from her marriage, Analise had been in need of a champion. Basilio's mother had nearly badgered his father to make the betrothal between Giovanni, his oldest brother, and Analise. When his brothers died, the obligation fell to Basilio.

Though he was not a religious man, he crossed himself and asked for assistance from the Virgin Mother, to resist the woman of his heart, to be strong in the face of temptation. To go and laugh, and give all of his mind and all of his soul if he wished, but no more.