Wake Unto Me (8 page)

Read Wake Unto Me Online

Authors: Lisa Cach

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Historical, #Europe, #Love & Romance, #Girls & Women

BOOK: Wake Unto Me
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Caitlyn shrugged, affecting nonchalance. “We don’t put much stock in genealogy where I’m from.” Caitlyn grimaced as if hating what she had to say next, then went on in an apologetic tone, “It’s assumed that you’re kind of a loser if you have to sink to boasting about your family in order to impress people.”
Daniela gaped at her, then shut her mouth and narrowed her eyes.
Caitlyn met her glare and held it. She might be a little nothing from nowhere, but she’d be damned if she’d let herself be talked down to by a girl who had nothing but other people’s ancient accomplishments to brag about.
Brigitte giggled nervously, the sound only adding to the tension in the room.
Amalia cleared her throat. “We are all tired. Maybe it is time for bed,” Amalia said, and ushered her friends toward the door.
“
Bonne nuit, petite Americaine
,” Brigitte said brightly, wagging her fingers in farewell.
“I hope she is not one of the ‘ugly Americans,’ ignorant and loud!” Daniela whispered to Amalia, but loud enough for Caitlyn to hear. “It will be too bad for you, to have to live with someone like that.”
“Enough!” Amalia hissed, pushing her out the door.
“Good night, sleep tight,” Daniela called mockingly to Caitlyn, the familiar idiom sounding strange in her faint Spanish accent.
“
Buenas noches
,” Caitlyn said, glad she remembered a few basic phrases from the one Spanish class she’d taken. “
Que descanses
.” She was rewarded with a flare of surprise in Daniela’s eyes, and then the girls were gone and she was alone with Amalia.
“I am so embarrassed,” the princess said. “Daniela—” She shook her head. “Anyway, I meant to be here when you arrived, but then Brigitte arrived, and I had to go out to dinner with them in Sarlat. It is Brigitte’s first day back after … well, after some very difficult times, but you do not want to hear about that now.”
Amalia sat on the foot of Caitlyn’s bed, her dark blue eyes looking hopefully into Caitlyn’s own. “We can begin anew, yes?”
It was the faint hint of uncertainty in Amalia’s eyes that softened Caitlyn’s heart. “Yes, let’s,” Caitlyn said, smiling.
Amalia grinned. “I promise, tomorrow they will be very ashamed of themselves, but they will be too embarrassed to admit it and apologize.”
“Have you known them long?”
“A year and a half, but friendships grow quickly here. We are so isolated; there is very little for distraction.”
Caitlyn laughed ruefully.
“What is it?”
Caitlyn shook her head. “I thought that all of France would be like the movies I’ve seen of Paris: full of people riding bicycles down cobbled streets, a baguette tied on behind.”
“And a little red beret?” Amalia laughed. “Maybe an accordion player singing
La Vie en Rose
?”
Caitlyn grinned. “Yes. Museums and cheese shops on every corner, and castles everywhere. I didn’t know the rural parts were so … rural.”
“But at least you were right about the castles, even here, among the farms,” Amalia said. “You have not been to Europe before?” she asked tentatively, as if afraid of causing offense.
“I hadn’t been on a plane before yesterday.”
“
Vraiment?”
Truly?
“
Oui, vraiment.
Truly. You won’t tell
them
, though, will you?” Caitlyn asked.
Amalia shook her head, then got up and started getting ready for bed. “What made you decide to come here? Or did you not have a choice?”
“You make it sound more like a penitentiary than a school.”
Amalia made a face and shrugged her shoulder. “I like it well enough, but some of the girls, they feel as if they are in prison. They miss boys and the city, shopping, clubbing. Which is perhaps why some of them were sent here by their parents.”
Caitlyn’s shoulders sagged dramatically. “I’ve sent myself to reform school.”
A laugh trilled from Amalia’s throat. “No, no, it’s not like that! Or not
completely
like that. Think of it more like a convent.”
Caitlyn’s mouth turned down, making Amalia laugh again. “Would you believe that I came here for the education?” Caitlyn said.
Amalia climbed into bed and turned off her lamp. “It is a good school. Not perhaps the very best academically, but if you want a good education, you can get one here.”
Caitlyn put her laptop away and crawled under her covers. When she turned off her own bedside lamp, the room fell into darkness, broken only by the gray rectangles of the windows and the green digital display of her clock. Caitlyn pulled the covers up under her chin and rolled onto her side, facing the shadows where Amalia lay. “Did you have a roommate last term?” she asked, hoping Amalia was not done talking for the night. Caitlyn already liked her, and was eager to form some sort of friendship.
“She was expelled.”
“Why? What did she do?”
“She brought her boyfriend into our room for a weekend while I was away.”
Caitlyn was shocked. “Oh.”
“Madame Snowe is very strict about such things.”
“I have to meet with her tomorrow morning.”
“Agree with everything she says. Don’t question anything. The sooner you escape, the better.”
In the dark, Caitlyn couldn’t tell if Amalia was joking. “She’s that bad?”
“Life is easier if you do not attract her attention. Now we must sleep, or else you will not wake in the morning and you will be late, and that would be very, very bad.”
With that unhappy threat lingering in her thoughts, Caitlyn rolled onto her back and forced herself to close her eyes, convinced that sleep would never come. She lay for what felt like hours.
And then the noises started.
CHAPTER
Six
 
Caitlyn lay frozen, listening, not yet daring to open her eyes.
There were murmuring voices, snippets of words, coming from the foot of her bed. Footsteps. A door closing.
Amalia?
But then she heard water, like someone pouring it from a height into a basin or pool.
There was no sink in their room.
Humming, an unfamiliar tune. Under the breath.
Male.
Caitlyn’s eyes popped open.
Orange light flickered in reflections off the paneled walls. She heard a crackle and pop, and smelled woodsmoke.
Fire?
Fire!
She sat bolt upright. Over the foot of the bed she saw orange flames on the floor across the room. It took her a long moment to realize that they were confined within the stones of a fireplace.
Relief ran like warm water over her skin … until she remembered that there was no fireplace in her room.
Where was she, then?
A shadow moved, and she heard a trickling splash of water again. Her line of sight was blocked by the corner of the curtained four-poster bed she was in—an unfamiliar bed, not the small twin in which she’d gone to sleep. She crawled cautiously toward the foot of the bed to take a look.
A naked young man slouched inside a round wooden tub, knees drawn up, his eyes closed, a sea sponge loosely clasped in one lax hand atop a knee. The water could not fully tame his hair, its bronze curls lying thick around his face. Firelight touched his features, and Caitlyn had a flash of memory: this boy, riding a horse across the countryside with a group of companions, turning to look in her direction as if he knew he were being followed.
The Knight of Cups.
“Raphael,” she whispered, the name emerging from her throat before she even recognized it. Of course. She was with Raphael. With the logic of a dreaming mind, she accepted her presence in his room as something that made sense.
“What is it now?” Raphael said in Italian, eyes still closed.
He’d heard her! Her dreaming mind knew that she didn’t speak Italian, but for some reason the meaning of his words was clear to her, forming in her head as he spoke.
“Please, I told you. I’m not hungry,” he said. “If you’ve brought food, take it away. All I need is some time to myself.”
Caitlyn hid behind one of the curtains by the post at the end of the bed, her heart racing. She peered out at Raphael. What was he going to think if he caught her in his bed, spying on him in his bath? He might think she was infatuated with him. Her soul cringed at the embarrassing thought. She had to get out of there before he saw her.
The fire crackled. Raphael’s brow puckered and he opened his eyes. “Beneto?” He turned around in the tub, water sloshing, and searched the shadows near the door. “Ursino?”
Finding nothing, he shrugged to himself and sank down lower in the bath, closing his eyes again. “Wonderful. Now I’m hearing things.”
This might be her only chance. She slid off the edge of the bed, dropping to all fours. She started to crawl toward the door, cursing silently as her long white nightgown got caught under her knees.
She made it five feet, ten feet, fifteen … She could see the handle of the door, a wrought-iron lever with a decorative spiral of metal at the end. She started to get to her feet, her back hunched.
“Stop!” Raphael shouted, and there was a sloshing splash of water.
Caitlyn yelped and sprang for the door, looking over her shoulder as she reached it and yanked on the latch.
He was right behind her, wet and angry, a towel loosely hung around his waist. He was fast—too fast. Caitlyn shrieked, and fumbled with the latch.
“I said, stop!” He switched to French. “Stop!”
The handle turned and she started to pull open the heavy door, but then he was upon her. He slammed the door shut with the side of his body, drops of water from his wet hair hitting her face.
Caitlyn yelped and danced out of his reach, running toward the bed like a frightened rabbit. She jumped onto the mattress and scrambled across.
The mattress
whumphed
as he leaped onto it, and then his hands were on one of her ankles. With one strong jerk he pulled her back to the center of the bed, her nightgown riding up her legs, and threw himself down on top of her, pinning her. He grabbed her wrists and held them above her head in one strong hand, while with the other he roughly searched her body.
“What did you take? Were you trying to steal the heart? Who sent you?”
She panicked. “Get your hands off me!” she cried with a French fluency unknown in her waking life, and bucked beneath him. “Stop it!” She raised her head and tried to bite him, snapping her teeth at his neck.
“Enough!” he shouted at her. He ceased his search and put his palm against her forehead, using it to pin her head down and keep her teeth far from his neck. He stared into her eyes, the force of his gaze turning her panic into something deeper and more frightened. She went still, sensing something dangerous in him.
“Who are you?” he asked in French, his voice low, but with a current of intensity in it that warned her she must answer.
“Caitlyn,” she gasped, her breath hard to find beneath his body weight and her own fear.
“Why are you in my room?”
She goggled at him. What could she possibly say?
He gave her a shake. “Why are you here?”
“To … uh …,” she fumbled, and then inspiration struck. “I, uh, I’m a servant and thought you might need help with your bath.”
He stared at her a long moment, and then the severity of his face softened into doubt. His hand on her forehead eased its pressure, and then slid gently down the side of her face, caressing her cheek. “Who sent you? Was it Giovanni? Or Philippe? Did they tell you I needed company?”
“No one sent me.”
A loud rapping at the door interrupted them. “Raphael?” a male voice called. “Are you all right?”
Panic flushed anew through Caitlyn, irrational thoughts of Madame Snowe and the rules against boys flooding her mind. “Don’t let him see me! I can’t be found alone with a boy! Please, I’ll be in so much trouble!”
He released her, and she climbed off the opposite side of the bed and hid in the shadows and curtains at the head, standing stiff as a bedpost within the brocade drapery. She closed her eyes and wished the person at the door away.
There was silence in the room. Caitlyn waited to hear Raphael or the other’s voice, but the seconds stretched into minutes and there was no sound. They were gone.
She realized with a sinking dread that she wasn’t in the room with Raphael anymore. She couldn’t hear her own breathing anymore, or feel her heart in her chest. She was somewhere else, somewhere bad.
No, not again …
Cold seeped over her skin, like frost on glass. She had the vertiginous sensation of falling, and spread her arms, grabbing for something to hold. She gripped something cold and damp that gave way beneath her fingers, and even though she knew what was waiting for her she opened her eyes.

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