The Color of Light (15 page)

Rafe plunged into the crowd, leaving the heiress open-mouthed and speechless. “Tango,” he commanded the lead singer as he strode past the stage, pulling a discarded Mardi Gras mask over his eyes. The band halted halfway through the first chorus of
Bad Moon Rising.

Too far away to stop him, Levon saw Rafe moving single-mindedly across the Great Hall, shouldering aside the very people they were there to court. Frantically scanning the room for the cause, he spotted Tessa, and almost immediately afterwards, Lucian Swain, making out with the new painting instructor on the dance floor.

“Don’t do it, Rafe,” he muttered to himself. “Don’t give it to them. Don’t give them what they’re looking for.”

“May I have this dance?” said a voice with a graceful British accent. A man in a mask was standing in front of her, tall and slim in a tailored tuxedo, extending his hand.

She was looking down, shaking her head.
Go away, can’t you see I’m dying here?

“Tessa,” he said gently. She glanced up, her eyes blurred with tears. Behind the mask, the gray eyes were kind, filled with compassion.

“Look into my eyes,” he said. “Keep looking into my eyes.”

She raised her head, fixed her gaze on him like he was a lifeline. Hesitantly, she put her hand in his, and he drew her out onto the dance floor.

With one swift movement, he pulled her close. Arranging her body as if she were a doll, he placed her left hand on his upper arm just above his bicep, pushed her elbows up till they were parallel with the floor. He turned her so that they were both facing the same direction, his cheek just touching the top of her hair. Finally, he rested her palm lightly against his.

The band, consulting furiously with each other in hushed whispers, seemed to agree on something. The music began, an edgy minor key
melody. Suddenly, he lunged forward, driving her back. The steps had a slinky staccato beat. Slow slow,
quick
slow. Slow, slow,
quick
slow. She could feel his other hand between her shoulder blades as he spirited her around the floor.

The streetlamps on Bleecker light my way,

As the moon casts its cold glow on the day.

Gazing up at her windows I yearn until morning,

And then I slink home again, until evening comes dawning.

They made a striking couple, the slender, elegant masked man and the pale girl with the pre-Raphaelite hair. Other dancers fell away as they glided around the pool of light in front of the stage.

Lucian and April were still swaying slowly back and forth in their own private world near the corner of the stage. As he pivoted Tessa past them, Rafe’s elbow just nicked Lucian’s shirt. He looked up to see who had sideswiped him just as they whirled past. His mouth fell open.

“What is it, baby?” April asked, touching his arm.

“Nothing.” he said, giving her an artificial smile. “I just need a bit of a breather.”

“Then let’s go find a place where you can…” and here she paused with a naughty smile,
“breathe.”

“No,” he said, and tucked himself into the crowd that had formed around the dance floor. “Let’s just watch for a while.”

At the dessert table, someone tapped David on the shoulder. “Have you seen Tessa?” Portia was asking urgently.

“No,” he said, trying to seem casual. Sara was hotly jealous of his female friends. “Why?”

“Because Lucian and April are on the dance floor now, and it looks like he dropped something down her throat and he’s trying to find it with his tongue.”

“Whoa.” Concerned now, he craned his neck, searched the crowd. There was a seething mass of onlookers over by the dance floor.

“I know that song,” said Portia, frowning. “What is it?” The bass line ran counter to the synthesizer, carrying the melody, a wistfully seductive tune.

Trailing Nick, Gracie joined them now, looking worried. “Have you guys seen Tessa?”

“I’ve seen Tessa,” said Ben, looking a little stunned. “Come on.”

Through his jacket, through his shirt, he could feel her heart knocking against his chest, booming through his body.

It was a long time since he had danced the tango. Paris, 1939. The body never forgets.

He’d been unable to suppress a gasp of desire as his fingers touched the bare skin between her shoulder blades. The warmth of her palm in his hand sent shudders along every nerve pathway.

Tessa’s feet hardly touched the ground. He pivoted her around his knee, maneuvering her backwards or forwards or sideways, deftly guiding her with the pressure of his hand on her back, or his hip against hers. Arms outstretched, he advanced on her, sweeping her clear across the floor with predatory ferocity; then they reversed positions, she the aggressor, he retreating sinuously backwards to the plaintive cry of the melody.

He’d told her to look in his eyes, and she obeyed, gazing up at him as if her life depended on it. Her eyes were dark like Sofia’s, yes. Those extraordinary eyebrows, without a doubt, also Sofia’s. But the rest was her own; the unruly lion’s mane of titian hair, the sweet expression of faith and trust.

He swept her past Lucian Swain. There was an indefinable look on his face, caught somewhere between admiration and envy, like a little boy who sees someone else playing with a toy he has put aside.

Rafe twirled her around one last time, then slid his arm down to the small of her back, arching her over backwards till she was almost touching the floor. Tessa flung her head back, let her arms drop, her fingertips brushing the floorboards. Her hair cascaded to the ground like a waterfall, the ambient light turning it to a river of gold. There were exclamations of stunned admiration from the audience that had formed around them, breaking into spontaneous applause.

Rafe watched an ecstatic smile bloom across her raspberry lips. His arms still around her, he could feel her chest heaving up and down, feel her
warm breath. Her lips parted, and he could see the pink tip of her tongue behind her teeth. As the last haunting bass notes sounded, he realized he wanted her, wanted her in the most achingly human way.

The entire student body hooted their approval. The crowd around them clapped harder, calling for more.

Tessa looked up into his extraordinary face. Soft, sensual mouth. Eyes the color of shadows and fog. She thought she saw something clear inside them, like storm clouds drifting apart. Gazing up at him, a scant few inches from her face, she felt her suffering lift, take flight.

Portia clapped so hard her hair started coming loose from her bun. Gracie shouted, “You go, girl!”

Lucian Swain stood with his hands at his sides, emotions flitting across his face like ghosts. Watching him, April Huffman finally understood the real extent of the relationship between the artist and his assistant.

Helplessly rooted to the spot where he stood with his longtime girlfriend, David Atwood watched Raphael Sinclair bend over Tessa Moss, and felt a guilty stab of envy and desire.

Standing near the cheese table with Bernard Blesser, Whit Turner noticed the intensity with which the founder of the school was regarding his work-study student and slowly, emphatically, nodded his head up and down.

Rafe held her a moment longer than was necessary. A hush came over the crowd, followed by whispers.
What’s going on? I can’t see. Is he going to kiss her?

And then slowly, gracefully as a cat, he straightened, returned her to her feet.

The crowd exploded into applause. Tessa was laughing, her cheeks pink with exhilaration and exertion. Rafe bowed deeply, backed away, gestured at his partner. Tessa flounced a clumsy little curtsy, made more charming by the yards of crinoline.

And then, just like that, it was over. The band plunged into
Don’t Fear the Reaper.
The crowd dissolved, moved towards the tables or back onto the dance floor.

Portia fought her way through the last circle of party guests between her and her friend.

A man, apparently in a rush to reach the dance floor, bumped her, glanced frantically around, cursed, hurried off in another direction. With a start, Portia realized it was Lucian Swain.

Suddenly, she recognized the song Harker’s band had played during Rafe and Tessa’s sultry dance. The words leapt out at her.

With the face of an angel and the hands of a Beast,

My love is a poison, there is no release.

As the moon casts its cold glow on the day.

The streetlamps on Bleecker light my way,

As my footsteps draw closer, you’d better pray.

While the moon sinks behind Bleecker Street.

Standing on her tiptoes, craning her neck, she searched the Great Hall. The room was thick with tall, aristocratic-looking men, but none of them was Raphael Sinclair. Fear stirred in her heart. Tessa was gone.

11

T
hank you,” she said. In the confusion after the dance ended, he had grasped her hand and made a dash for the back stairs. They ran up all four flights to the studio floor and threw themselves on an ugly crushed-velvet couch one of the students had dragged in from the street and laughed with sheer exhilaration.

“For what?” he said lightly. “For dancing with the most beautiful girl at the party? I should thank
you.”

They drifted through the darkened studio floor, the only light an orange glow coming from the Exit sign in the sculptors’ studio.

“What was that tune the band was playing?” he said curiously. “I asked them for a tango.”

“Oh.” she said, smiling. “I don’t think I should tell you.”

“Oh, but now you have to tell me.”

They wandered on a little further down the center aisle as she mulled it over.

“Moonlight on Bleecker Street.”
He shook his head, not recognizing it. “It’s about a vampire,” she added sheepishly.

He stared at her. Then his eyes grew merry; he threw his head back and laughed at the joke. She laughed too, relieved that he wasn’t offended.

Pushing aside the curtain over her doorway, she entered her studio. By habit, she stopped in front of her drawing, the one with the naked girl and the man in the shadows.

“It’s Lucian, isn’t it.” he said.

She bobbed her head up and down once, with finality. The excitement of the moment was wearing off; affliction was stealing slowly over her features, transforming her lovely face back into a mask of sorrow.

“How did you two meet?”

She told him about the guest lecture at Parsons, offering herself as an assistant, her crush, his breakdown, rushing into the breach when no one else was left. It was an old story, an art world cliché. From such innocent beginnings had many similar calamities of the heart taken shape.

“Are you all right?” he asked gently. He reached out to touch her, to comfort her. But he didn’t dare; instead, he busied himself straightening a crooked postcard on her wall.

“I’m nothing,” she said, wanly.

“Nothing?” he repeated, perplexed.

“Not his girlfriend. Not his lover. Not a colleague. Not his friend. Just a nobody from nowhere who does his work for him.” She turned away from her drawing. “I thought we were going to be together forever.”

“Tessa,” he said. His voice was like an adagio in a minor key, melodic and sad. “You won’t believe me when I tell you this. No one ever does. But I’ve been to the same cold and lonely region of the damned. You think it’s the end of the world. You think you’ll never get past feeling this bloody awful. Get up. Go to class. Cry with your friends. Make art. Break some hearts. Soon, an hour will go by where you don’t think of him. A week. A month. I promise you. It will pass.”

This is the part where I maneuver her over to that niche by the door…I push the heavy curtain of hair from her neck and take the life running through her veins.

“You’ll see,” he said.

She had lost her hat, and her hair was an ocean of shimmering waves in the dark. Her bare shoulders glowed like marble, the summery scent of blackberries rising off of her like steam. There was a gnawing in his belly, the wrong kind.

He turned to Gracie’s side of the studio. A long sheet of butcher paper was tacked up on her wall, spanning the entire height of the divider. She had begun sketching out a floor-to-ceiling column of nudes, crones, women, children, all intertwined, rising up into the air.

“She draws like an angel.”

“She does.” Tessa agreed. She touched a chubby baby cheek with one finger.

Isaiah’s cheek. So pink and round. I’d never touched anything that soft.

“So…are you, like…dating her?” she blurted out.

“Dating her? Gracie?” he barked out a short, sharp laugh. “Good God, no. What makes you say that?”

She was fumbling awkwardly for words now. “That time you came to pick her up for a meeting, you…she…it seemed like…I thought…Oh God, I’m sorry.”

“We’re just on a committee together. Though I will confess, she certainly is fun to look at.”

Even in the dark he could tell she was blushing furiously. Tendrils of her miraculous hair were quivering. It was altogether charming. “Have your friends started working on their thesis projects yet?” he asked her, changing the subject.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

“Well then,” he said, “Let’s have a look.”

Directly across the aisle was the small space Graham shared with DJ. His wall was papered with dozens of heads, hands, feet, drawn with pen on notebook paper, napkins, envelopes, brown paper bags. Small clay figurines stood on a table made from sawhorses and an old door. Big, confident paintings were stacked against the wall, solid figures standing in contrapasto or reclining on pillows and drapery, blocked out in masses of glorious color.

“So, what are you looking for, Tessa Moss?” he mused. His voice traveled up and down like a musical instrument, lovely and melancholy. “The usual thing? Fame, fortune, beautiful lovers?”

“What am I looking for.” She pondered his question. “It would be nice not to worry about money…I could afford to buy that tube of genuine Old Holland Cerulean blue instead of the cheap imitation stuff. Maybe even get some Isabey Kolinsky sable brushes in the same trip. As for beautiful lovers,” she gave him a rueful look. “I just need one.”