[Barbara Samuel] Night of Fire(Book4You) (5 page)

No more.

They dined alone in the courtyard, not even servants to disturb them except to be sure there was wine enough, and bread enough, and a soft musky cheese, and delicately shredded meat. It was food they ate with their fingers, lazily.

Cassandra marveled at all of it—the simple pleasure of the food, the warm scent of the air, Basilio himself. As they sat there the sun dropped toward the sea, a blazing violet and yellow ball sinking lower and lower into the distant water.

She realized, in a slow way that seemed to go with the way the air hung in rose gauze around them, that she had not fidgeted. She felt no need to leap up or move a foot or tap her fingers on the glass. It was enough to sit here, listening to birds and drinking her wine, and grazing on the feast Basilio had ordered for them.

"Look at the birds," he said, pointing. "They're busy drawing the curtain of night."

"Ah, the poet emerges!"

His eyes glittered. "Perhaps." Pushing away his plate, he leaned back comfortably, crossing one ankle over his knee. "But I was thinking, it is our first day, and perhaps we should begin with why we have gathered here to tell our tales."

"Mmm," she said, pleased at the reference to Boccaccio. "I am afraid I have no entertainment to offer, sir. I came only out of greed, because I was promised a glimpse of rare manuscript pages."

"No tale at all from a woman who makes her life with her pen? How did she come to love the feel of that pen in her hand, I wonder?"

She smiled at his challenge, then sipped her wine, peering out to sea. "I have not seen the sun disappear that way, swallowed by Neptune, since I was a child." She cut a glance at him to see if he noticed she, too, could capture an image.

The wide dark eyes tilted up at the corners a little in acknowledgement. "And why not?" He picked up his own glass and settled back.

"When I was a girl, my mother died in the islands, in Martinique. My father did not want to return to England, where he had been happy with her, so he sent for us: my brother and my two sisters, and my cousin who lived with us."

"So many of you!"

"And we added two sisters and a brother before we finished." She lifted her brows. "It's a great blessing that we all lived, in spite of the fevers and the travel."

That soberness, that hint of deepest sorrow, moved over his dark eyes. "Yes."

Too late, Cassandra remembered he had lost his brothers and mother to fevers only a short time before.

She put her hand on his sleeve without thinking. "Oh, I have been thoughtless! Forgive me."

He looked at her hand and Cassandra wondered if she ought remove it, if it was too familiar. But selfishly, she wanted to touch him, feel the shape of his forearm beneath the fabric of his coat. A small, guilty pleasure.

And because he seemed captured by the sight of her hand against his sleeve, she was free to drink in his face without fear of giving the wrong impression. Each time she was caught by some new detail. It was his lashes now, not long, but very lush and thick and black. When he abruptly lifted those lashes, they trimmed the depth of darkest irises with a kind of extravagance that made her unwilling to shift her gaze.

He put his hand over hers. "It should not be only sorrow that comes when I remember them," he said quietly, "for while they walked here, they gave me great joy. There is where my heart should go when I think of them."

Such large eyes for a man, so expressive and deep. Cassandra peered into them, feeling no oddity in her need to see within, no need to turn away even when the moment stretched to two and three and four, the world quiet but for the simplicity of looking directly into his eyes—and allowing him to look back into hers. His index finger traced the shape of her thumbnail.

Then—she was aware of the shift, a flicker, perhaps, in those eyes—it seemed they drew a little closer, then apart again at nearly the same instant. She took her hand away and put it in her lap.

"Tell me your tale, Cassandra. And then I will tell you mine."

So she told him of the long, terrifying journey to Martinique when she was six and believed in sea monsters. They'd been caught in a terrible storm for three days, where the ship pitched and rocked dangerously, threatening hourly to spill them into the hungry waves. But they had survived and gone on to the island, where they discovered the rest of her father's family—Monique, the slave who had been his mistress before he returned to England and married, and then again when his heart was shredded in grief over the loss of his wife in childbirth, and Monique's children: Gabriel, the eldest of all of them, and Cleopatra, the youngest.

In Martinique, Cassandra had discovered books and words and writing, and the pleasure of her own company. Away from the strictures of English country life, Cassandra had made up her mind that she, too, would be a writer.

"So, you see, I have good memories of myself when I see the sun sink into the sea. Memories of what I saw before the world saw something else."

"Ah, bravo! That's a very good story to begin. Thank you."

"And now yours, sir." She allowed him to pour another splash of wine into her glass, though she knew she should halt it soon. It was heady wine, musky and rich, and she could feel it tingling in her blood.

"How came you to be sitting here tonight? How came the poet to his words?"

He let go of a humorless laugh. "I am no poet, madam."

She regarded him steadily. "Ah. I see I am to protest and insist you do not know the worth of your own talents. Shall I beg for a couplet?"

A hand flew to his chest. "The lady's tongue is sharp!" That glitter returned to his eyes. "As sharp as a hidden dagger."

"Sharp as the knock of a creditor on a poet's door."

"Sharp"—he paused, eyes shining—"as the blue edge of lightning on a summer's eve."

Cassandra laughed, and it felt as if something were breaking free within her, as if the laughter were washing away some barely acknowledged miasma. "Your story, braggart!"

"It is only very simple. And sad, too."

"Melancholy makes a story sweet."

"So it does. I am the third of three brothers. Giovanni was the oldest, five years more than me. Then Teodoro, my father's favorite. Then me, the favorite of my mother."

"Poor Giovanni!" she said. "Left out."

"Oh, no. Because he was the favorite of the ladies."

"Ah! I see."

"We grew up very rich, very happy. Giovanni was glad to be the heir, for he loved figures and counting and playing Count in his cape. Teo, though, he was very smart. With my father, he doubled our fortune, in times that were not good." He frowned. "He had no compassion, I fear, but he was a very good businessman."

"A common coupling."

"It is true of my father, as well." A quick, dismissing lift of a shoulder. "The first thing I remember is lying in a bed, listening as my mother read poetry to me by the light of a candle. Every night, she allowed me to open her book to any page I wished, then she would read aloud that poem." He spared a glance at her.

"It was her intent to lull me to sleep, but often, she read three or four or five poems."

Cassandra imagined him as a small boy, those dark eyes even more enormous in a child's soft face, the tumble of curls in disarray, and understood how a mother would find her favorite in such a boy.

"This did not please my father. I do not know why he hated me, but I felt it even when I was small."

"Hate?" Cassandra echoed. "Surely that is too strong a word.

A slow shake of his head, a small frown. "No. It is true." A brush of his hand. "It did not wound me, I did not like him."

Cassandra smiled. "You had your mother."

"I did. She did not like to leave me in his care when she traveled, and since their marriage was not a happy one, she often traveled to Florence and Milan, and took me with her. We went to the opera and to the playhouse and lectures, and when it came time to decide what profession I should take, it was my mother who fought for me to go to university. I was very happy there, but my father wished for me to work with him, traveling for his interests." He gave her a bland look. "You do see where my story goes?"

She nodded sadly.

"The fever swept through the countryside like a scythe. My father fell ill with it first. Then Giovanni, then my mother, then Teo. My father was out of his wits for days and days, and could not think for a long time after. And when he awoke, all that was left of his family was the son he loathed."

"Did you sicken?"

He bowed his head a moment and sighed. "No. I had been in Venice on my father's business." He straightened, signaling an end to the tale. "It was a year after those terrible days that I read your essay and found there was laughter in me still." He smiled. "And I wrote that letter, so now I sit in the dark with you."

"Have you mended matters with your father?"

He stood to light a brace of candles in an iron candelabra. "We do not speak unless we are required. He must have an heir, after all, and there is no other but me." With a hand he encompassed the villa and courtyard. "This place he saved for Teo, and it burns that he was forced to give it to me, and that eventually I will also hold his other properties. But what can he do?"

Cassandra remembered his bitterness in one of his letters, his rejection of his riches and the position of a noble. "Do you still loathe it so much?"

Candlelight flickered over his brow, sharpened his nose as he looked toward the horizon, lost now in the darkness. "This land belonged to my mother. It was her dowry, so I am glad to keep it safe for her. And I loved my brothers. If I do not keep the trust, their lives will have had no meaning." He sighed and waved both hands in a gesture that brushed it all away. "Enough! I have no wish to think of sorrowful things this night. In payment for your good story, allow me to show you one of the Boccaccio manuscripts."

Moving on an instinct she did not question, Cassandra rose and went to him, putting a hand on his chest.

"They would be proud of you, Basilio."

He pressed her palm close to his heart, and a button on his waistcoat made an imprint on her flesh. He made a soft pained noise; touched a wisp of hair with his other hand. "You are far too rich a temptation, my Cassandra," he said softly. "I am trying to think of only what lies behind this mask of beauty, but the mask is a wonder."

She wanted to kiss him. The desire came to her suddenly, fiercely, and with such power that it made her momentarily dizzy.

No. She could not bear to discover that Basilio was like all men in his baseness. Better to preserve the illusion that he was honorable and beautiful of spirit. Closing her eyes, she swallowed and stepped away, taking her hand back.

Quietly, he said, "Friends to lovers is an easy leap. Lovers back to friends—" he lifted a shoulder. "Not always so simple."

In a voice that held more betraying breath, she said, "Yes." She swallowed and looked up at him.

"Forgive me." She paused, wondering at her own boldness—but this was Basilio, the friend of her heart, and if she could not be honest with him, there was no truth in the world at all.

"You are too rare to be lost to me. A friend is so much more precious than a lover."

His face broke in a brilliant smile. "Yes!" He captured her hands and kissed them happily. "Friends we began; friends we will remain." With a light flirtatiousness, he inclined his head. "Though I hope you do not expect me to ignore the pleasure of attempting to capture your beauty in my poetry."

"I suppose I shall simply have to make peace with immortality."

He laughed and took her hand. "Come. Boccaccio awaits us."

In the broad, cool room, lined with shelves full of books and furnished only with a large heavy desk and two chairs, Basilio kept his treasures in a locked trunk. Along one wall hung his collection of rapiers, and Cassandra moved to them. "Are you a swordsman?"

He lighted a brace of tallows from the candle he'd brought with him. "I am."

"My brother Gabriel is a master—some have said he's one of the greatest swordsmen in Europe."

"Perhaps one day I will meet him—I should enjoy such a challenge." He gestured for Cassandra to take the heavy chair that sat before his desk. With a quirk of her lips, she settled, like a queen awaiting her subjects. Her gown, green and gold, glittered in the light, and her breasts and throat were white as cream.

Tendrils of that bright hair sprang free of the rest, more and more with each passing hour—a lock over her brow, down her cheek, across the straight white shelf of shoulder. He captured it all in his imagination so he could recreate it another day. What hue was that white? What tone, the red of her hair?

He set aside such thoughts and opened the trunk, then took out a small, cloth-wrapped bundle and untied it as he carried it over to Cassandra, putting it down before her and pulling back the cloth with a flourish.

Her reaction was all he could have asked for. A small intake of breath, a hand over her lips. Eyes to his face, hesitant, bright with excitement. "May I touch them? Or will it hurt them?"

"I would not ask you to only look at them."

Gingerly, she put two fingers on the top page, almost but not quite touching the words penned in ink. The parchment had darkened a little, and some of the edges were brittle and crumbling, but the fine strong hand remained, clearly readable. "Oh, imagine," she said softly. "His own hand, on this page."

"Yes."

She picked up the first and held it lightly between her fingers, careful to avoid the edges, and put it to her nose as if to inhale the essence. A prickle moved down his spine as he watched her; his breath caught high in his throat. Light edged her straight, sharp nose and the thin, fine eyelids, and he imagined pressing his lips to them, even imagined the jittery movements of her eye below, the bristle of lashes against his mouth.

He stepped away and pretended to be looking in the trunk, but a ghost of himself stood yet with her, putting a hand lightly on her shoulder, a finger into an escaped lock of hair. His ghost did what he dared not.

Cassandra began to read aloud in Italian, her throaty voice cascading over the syllables expertly, the sound soft and unimaginably sensual. He closed his eyes and listened, letting just that part of her come into his mind—the sound of her reading a passage about a wife kissing her lover, Anichino. When the story progressed, to Anichino creeping into the wife's room, he thought she would halt in feminine reserve, for the lover awakened his woman by putting his hands on her breasts.