The Dream Thief (17 page)

She wasn’t. God knew she wasn’t.

Lia sighed again and leaned
forward to drop her head in her hands. Nineteen years old, a virgin who’ d
never even known an actual kiss—yet she knew all about making love. She knew a
human man’s taste, and his body heavy over hers, and the wild pleasure of him
inside her, every night. She did whatever he asked of her, everything he asked.
She did things she’d never known a man and woman could do together.

Touch me here. Like this.

Take
me in your mouth.

Lie
back.

Put your arms above your head.

Do you feel this, Lia? Tell me.
Tell me how I make you feel.

Tell me what you want me to do to
you.

No wonder she couldn’t sleep.

And she was so
tired,
and
so
cold….

She was cold. She sat up to push
back the curtains of the window and saw that the clouds of this morning had
caught up with a vengeance; the sky had bruised into heavy purple, swallowing
the sun. They were winding through what appeared to be rows and rows of gaunt,
woody grapevines, starkly beautiful, almost endless. At the blur of the horizon
were blue-veined mountains with their peaks veiled in storm.

She drew the sheepskin around her
knees a little higher. It was going to snow.

Even as she thought it, the first
of the flakes tapped the window, holding its shape just a heartbeat before
sliding away. The next three did the same, and the fourth stuck. In less than a
minute the window was edged with white.

She kept her hands tucked under
the folds of her new worsted cloak and watched the grapevines gradually vanish
under powder. In all the distance there was nothing that indicated a town or a
village, not even a farmhouse for all those grapes. The light was dwindling and
the carriage bumped on.

The sound of hooves against
packed dirt was a steady, even staccato…it was a rhythm she knew now down to
her bones, in her sleep, thump-
thump,
thump-
thump,
like a
lullaby…when she closed her eyes she could see it too, gray hooves, brown
dirt…the outline of horseshoes and mud printing through the clean new snow….

And the grapevines were sleeping
through the cold, and the wild geese had their heads bent under their wings,
and the mice in the great house were silent against the baseboards, listening
to the wind, eyes open, whiskers twitching….

She knew that house. She knew,
suddenly, where they were.

Lia came awake just as the
driver’s slot above her snapped open, sending a wash of cold air over her face.
Zane’s fingers entwined with the metal grille.

“Amalia. There’s what looks like
an empty mill up ahead. We’re going to have to take shelter there.”

“No.” She climbed over the seat
to kneel just below him. “Keep on this road. There’s a villa farther along.
They’ll take us in.”

His fingers vanished; he bent
down to see her face.

“A villa?”

“Yes. It’s not far.”

His
tricorne tilted low over his eyes. Snow dusted his collar and shoulders. “Are
you certain?”

“Yes.”

“Forgive me. Might I inquire
how
you are certain?”

“I—” she began…but it wasn’t a
dream, not really; it felt more like a spell. Like what happened
in
the
dreams, when she saw things that should be impossible to see.

“It’s ruddy cold up here, my
lady. I don’t fancy us being mired in a blizzard.”

“Zane,” she said, leaning up to
him. “It
will
be there. Just another minute.”

He observed her a moment longer
from under the brim of his hat. She heard the coachman make an inquiring noise.
The horses began to slow.

“No,” he said, turning back to
the driver. “We’re going on.”

She kept the curtains open, so
that when they rounded the next curving turn she could see the lights shining
through the snowfall and just make out the fuzzy, leaden shape of buildings,
low-slung against the grapevine hills.

“The Grand Tour!
Most
romantic! My dear.” István Hunyadi turned to his wife at his side. “Do you
remember our journey to Vienna, all those years past? The boulevards! The
food!”

“The dancing,” said that lady,
with a tip of her silver-wigged head.

“Yes, yes. You were graceful as a
dove.”

Hunyadi was a humble winemaker,
or so he claimed. Zane doubted very much that was all the man did. Lia had been
correct: this lonesome, twinkling place in the hills was nothing less than a
villa.

They had been greeted at the gate
by heavyset men bundled in scarves. The men spoke no French at all, so the
gypsy had been the one to explain their situation, his voice rising when the
gatekeepers had not seemed inclined to grant passage. The snow was falling
thick and fast by then, and Zane was already calculating how long it would take
them to slog back to that derelict mill, when one of the men held up a hand and
barked an order to let them through.

The man had been looking at the
carriage door, at the window. Zane had no doubt that Amalia was there looking back
at him.

If his fingers hadn’t been numb
and his nose a block of ice, Zane would have had them turn about anyway. But
the gypsy clucked at the horses, and they eased inside.

At the entrance to the main
house, more men rushed to greet them—footmen, Zane had supposed— but once he’d
gotten a better look at them, he realized they weren’t. They wore no livery,
done up instead in furs and plain wools in earthen colors, their hair shaggy
and unkempt down their backs. He’d taken Lia’s arm and kept her close as they
ducked through the snow into the atrium, a wide, stone-lined mouth that seemed
to swallow them whole with the closing of the doors.

The villa was made up mostly of
limestone. The rugs beneath their feet were Persian. The paintings on the walls
were oils. There was a series of pressed-glass lamps swaying gently from the
ceiling; they were colored violet and burgundy and gave off a pirate’s glow.

Zane
put his lips to Lia’s ear. “Do you know who lives here?”

She
shook her head. But by then it was more than apparent who lived there, for he
was coming down the hallway toward them, a short, wide man wreathed in smiles.

“God’s grace, to be out with your
lady in such a storm! Come in, come in! You are welcome here!”

Hunyadi was dressed in velvet,
and he spoke fluent French. He bowed like a courtier and laughed like a bawd.
Zane was inclined to like him, if for no other reason than the man wore an
immense gold chain around his neck studded with rubies the size of quails’
eggs.

That, and he didn’t serve cabbage
at his table.

They had interrupted a pastoral
partie
de plaisir,
it seemed. There were a dozen other guests present, every one
of them done up in wigs and jewels, and painted faces with lips that curved
politely at Lia and Zane’s damp, bedraggled state. But as their host had
welcomed them, the guests could do no less. Two extra places were set at the
table, soup served, wine poured. Zane sat back in the soft candlelight and
began his careful ravel of lies and truth of how they had come to the kind
Monsieur Hunyadi’s door.

Lia seemed to hear none of it.
She sat clutching her wineglass, gazing off into the shadows. She wore the best
gown the
couturière
had to offer, a rich, deep green affair with black
lace and ribbons that paled her skin to alabaster. Even with her cheeks
scrubbed and her hair pulled back, she outshone every other woman in the room.
They knew it too, these blue-blooded Hungarians. Under thinly arched brows the
women exchanged whispers and glances and lifted their noses as they eyed her up
and down.

For a moment—just a moment, a
brief tick of time while the soup bowls were cleared—Zane allowed his gaze to
linger on a necklace of cobwebbed gold and colored gemstones. He imagined how
easy it would be to be a ghost in the hall. To wait until the wine was done,
and the banter finished, and everyone was conveniently asleep in their silent,
scattered rooms. There had to be enough trinkets in this villa to keep him in
satin and Spanish oranges for years. No wonder István Hunyadi kept so many
guards.

The necklace would be magnificent
on Lia.

When he glanced at her again, she
was watching him, her glass paused halfway to her lips. She looked slightly
alarmed.

He tipped his head and smiled
back at her, mocking.

“Do you enjoy the wine?” Hunyadi
asked Lia, oblivious. “Please, I beg to know. There are few things more
agreeable than the opinion of a beautiful lady.”

“It is lovely,” Lia said.

“Yes? Not too dry for your
taste?”

“Not at all.”

Hunyadi rubbed his hands
together, his eyes gleaming. “We use a different process here than the Germans,
you know. The fermentation alone—”

“Tell me, Lord Lalonde,” said
Hunyadi’s wife, “what brings you to our land? You have said you are on the
Tour, but I confess we do not see many English so deep into the countryside.”

“No,”
said Zane, giving her an attentive look. “And you might not have seen us, by
heavens, had we not had the good fortune to stumble across your generosity. My
beloved bride, you see,” he smiled once more at Lia, “has a very great fondness
for wine and winemaking. Her family maintains a substantial vineyard outside
Arcis-sur-Aubé. Good, hearty country stock, God bless her, but their Blanc de
Blancs is entirely exquisite. She insisted we venture deeper into your land
than first we planned. She’s heard splendid things about your Riesling.”

“Truly?”
Hunyadi shifted in his chair, the rubies on his chain gathering the light.
“We’ve had a very nice season, my lady. You will be interested to know the
harvest was late and the juices concentrated—”

“But you, Lord Lalonde,” purred
the wife, taking a deep breath, “what is it
you
enjoy?”

“Ah,”
replied Zane, still smiling. “I enjoy diamonds.”

Everyone
turned to see him.

“All precious stones, really, but
especially diamonds,” he continued, gazing straight into the wife’s avid eyes.
“It’s something of a passion with me, shall we say.”

“Do you
collect them?” asked a man down the table.

“Whenever possible.”

“Fascinating,” said the wife,
showing a row of even, yellowed teeth.

“You have done well to come here,
then,” announced someone new, an elderly gent with white curls down to his
shoulders. “The Carpathians are known for the quality of their mines. You’ll
find no better stones than ours.”

“Yes.” Zane lifted his glass. “So
I’ve been given to understand.”

Another course was served,
pheasant and trout, the red wine whisked away and replaced with white. The
servants here were dressed to match the dark, no paint, no wigs, just simple
frocks and chapped hands. They moved in utter silence; their eyes never lifted
from their work.

The wife stabbed her fork into
the broiled pheasant set before her. Her fingers glimmered with rings. “A happy
business for you indeed, Lord Lalonde. But where do you go from here? The best
jewelers are back in Buda, I fear.”

“We’re down to chasing legends,
Madame,” answered Zane. “Fool’s dreams, but amusing enough. I’ve pulled us all
this way to find a stone named
Draumr.
”

From the corner of his eye, he
saw Amalia stiffen.

“Perchance you’ve heard of it?”
he asked mildly.

“Draumr,”
muttered Hunyadi, tugging at his
lower lip. “
Draumr, Draumr.
It does sound familiar, I vow. A strange
name though, isn’t it? Not of our tongue.”

“It is a diamond?” inquired the
wife.

“Yes.”

“A very…large one?”

Zane’s
smile deepened. “Assuredly so.”

“What
is the legend that accompanies it, my lord?” asked another woman, tilting
forward into the candlelight so her emeralds sparkled with every breath. “Pray,
do tell us.”