Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection) (26 page)

What folly it is to suppose that we act of our own accord, that we make decisions from independent thought and with recognition for only our own desires. I thought that if ever I went to Allain, it would be in loving necessity. I did not guess it might also be, in some small degree, in anger.

Violet saw the two men as Allain was handing her into the carriage that would take her back to the hotel. They were standing in an arched opening of an arcade just down the street from the house of the comtesse. One of them turned to stare in their direction. He nudged his companion and pointed. Immediately the two of them set off at a run toward a low-slung black carriage that waited further along the way. When Violet and Allain’s carriage pulled away from the entrance of the house, the driver of the dark vehicle picked up his whip. He had to jockey for position for a few seconds among the equipages of the other guests that were lining the streets. As the carriage Violet and Allain were riding in reached the corner, the other vehicle pulled out and then fell in some distance behind them.

“Did you see?” Violet asked, turning to Allain. “Those two men again, following us.”

A grim expression settled over Allain’s features as he shifted position to look back through the small oval window set behind the seat.

“You don’t think — can it be that Gilbert sent them?” Violet went on hesitantly, then answered herself. “Perhaps not, since there has been so little time. Yet who else would have reason?”

He made no answer, though he met her gaze for long moments there in the darkness of the carriage. Facing forward once more, he reached for her hand, taking it in his warm clasp, holding it as if he meant never to let go. To Violet, his silence increased the sense of peril that hovered in the moment.

She could feel the quickening beat of her heart, sense the fine weave of his coat as a roughness against her arm. The heat of his body seemed to penetrate the layers of cloth, the silk of her gown and petticoats, which lay between them. Longing beat upward from somewhere deep inside her, rising with the pulsing of a headache behind her eyes. She felt a little giddy with it, even a little reckless. Thoughts chased themselves in confusion across her mind, narrowing to a single impulse. Slowly she opened the fingers of the hand he held, until her palm pressed against his.

“You are trembling,” he said, a trace of concern laced with wonder in his voice.

“Only a little.”

“Are you cold?”

“No,” she answered, “I’m not cold at all. Is — is the other carriage still behind us?”

He turned his head to look, then gave a short nod of assent.

“What if,” she began, then paused to clear her throat of an unaccountable obstruction. “What if Gilbert has had someone watching us before tonight?”

“I suppose it’s possible,” he said in low tones, “though I would rather not think it.”

“Nor would I, and yet some things must be faced,” she replied. “The question is, what must we do about it?”

“There are many things we could do,” he said, his voice hard-edged with despair. “I could finish the portrait and we could bid each other adieu. You could become a dutiful wife and remain in your assigned place except when escorted by your husband. I could leave Paris. Or you could go.”

“No,” she said sharply.

“Then, if these men are in truth hirelings of your husband, we can let them report what they may. There is little enough they can say.”

“Or,” she said softly, “we can elude them.”

“For what purpose? They will soon discover you are only returning to your hotel.”

“Unless I do not return.”

A stillness came over him. His fingers upon her hand tightened in a painful grip, then relaxed as he realized what he was doing. His gaze as he watched her in the dim light given off by the outside carriage lantern was penetrating. Quietly, he said, “Where else would you go?”

“That is the question,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper and her lashes flickering downward to conceal her eyes. “Can you think of nowhere that I might be hidden and safe?”

“Violet—”

That single word was taut with passion and denial.

She moistened her lips. “Please. I — I cannot bear that Gilbert shall control what I do, who I see or where I go, a moment longer.”

It was long seconds before he replied, and then his voice was brusque, almost harsh. “I will no doubt be damned for it,” he said, “but neither can I.”

Allain leaned forward to give an order to the coachman that sent the carriage rattling at a faster pace along the street. As he leaned back again Violet caught his arm, holding tightly. She took a deep breath, feeling the tight press of the bones of her corset into her ribs. As he reached to hold her she turned her face into his shoulder, closing her eyes.

Violet had no idea how Allain intended to outdistance their pursuers; the winding streets of the older portion of the city allowed little in the way of evasion. However, he directed their passage through the intricate ways, with clear commands. At last they came to a tree-lined thoroughfare near the outskirts of the city. It was wider but still hardly less constricted than the older streets, for it was as crowded with carriages as had been the avenue before the house of the Comtesse de Fourier. There appeared to be a soirée in progress at the imposing mansion set back among the plane trees. As the carriage slowed to thread its way through the vehicles, Allain ordered it to a sudden halt.

“What is this place?” Violet asked.

“The home of the Pontalbas. The daughter-in-law of the baron is entertaining tonight also, and was kind enough to send me a card of invitation.”

Before Violet could speak, he opened the carriage door and stepped down. Reaching inside, he lifted her out bodily. He directed the coachman to drive on and find a place for his rig as if his master and guest had decided to descend and go inside. As the carriage rolled on along the street Allain guided Violet quickly among the other standing equipages.

She could hear the noise of the black carriage approaching behind them. It was a relief when Allain stopped beside a maroon barouche. He pulled the door open and guided her inside even as he called over his shoulder to a man in livery who had stepped forward from among a cluster of drivers.

“Tell your master I have need of his barouche, a matter of urgency. He may have the use of mine, provided he returns it in good time tomorrow.”

“Ah, M’sieur Massari, I should have known it was you!” the man returned in low tones. “My master will be honored to be of service.”

Allain sketched a brief salute and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. “This carriage belongs to a friend,” he said to Violet in a hurried undertone, “a man of understanding.”

“He must be, if he won’t mind you borrowing it,” Violet answered.

“He has taken mine before, with less reason.”

They both fell silent, drawing back into the darkest corner of the seat as the black carriage drew nearer. It rolled past with the two men inside sitting forward, their attention on the other carriage, which Allain’s coachman was drawing to the side farther along the street. Some distance away, the vehicle carrying the two drew up. No one emerged. The men apparently assumed, as Allain had intended, that their quarry had been put down at the house entrance to attend the second social event of the evening.

Long minutes crept past. After what seemed a small eternity, Allain’s coachman, who had climbed down and vanished toward the back of the lighted house, materialized out of the darkness from the opposite direction. He climbed ponderously up to the box of the maroon barouche. A few seconds later the vehicle began to move. Their pace sedate, they pulled away from the Pontalba house and rolled off down the street.

As the barouche rattled past the black carriage sitting in darkness, Allain turned his broad back to it, taking Violet into his arms. The embrace would serve, he whispered, to block them both from view while making it appear that they were lovers bound for a tryst.

And wasn’t that true after all, Violet thought as she lay in his arms with her forehead pressed against the strong column of his neck. Wasn’t it?

The thoroughfare where Allain lived was empty when they reached it. They left the carriage several doors down from his so as not to draw attention to it. It seemed strange to walk slowly arm in arm to his door after the haste and excitements just past; at the same time there was a naturalness about it, like a homecoming.

The housekeeper opened the door for them. Her eyes widened as she saw Violet, but she spoke only to say that refreshments of wine and cheese with nuts had been set out in the studio against her master’s return. As Allain dismissed her she moved away toward the green baize door that led to the nether regions of the house, though she glanced back once with concern in her eyes.

Together, Violet and Allain climbed the stairs. Their footsteps on the treads were neither quick nor dawdling but deliberate, as if they were there for a purpose they both knew and accepted. His hand under her elbow steadied and supported but did not urge her.

Violet did not question what she was doing. That the two of them should be here at this late hour seemed inevitable; everything that had gone before had been but a prelude.

There was a single candle burning on a table against the wall next to the fireplace. When the door had closed behind them, they turned to look at each other in its wavering light. Violet felt her breath trapped, encased in the whalebone cage of her corset. Her eyes were wide and pensive, purple-edged with trepidation, yet as resolute as those of a novice before the altar. She waited.

Allain turned sharply from her. Moving to the candle, he picked up a handful of tapers from a box that sat beside it. He kindled one in the flame before moving to place it and the others in the tall corner candelabra. The blossoming flames as he touched the full row of candles to light enameled his face with gold and blue and orange, giving it the hard and lifeless look of an effigy in bronze.

Violet felt the first stirring of doubt. She took a step forward.

“Don’t,” he said, the word slicing even in its softness. “Please don’t.”

“What is it?” she whispered.

He moved back to where the tray was set with glasses and a dusty bottle of wine. He gave her a tight smile before he picked up the bottle and began to pour. His gaze on what he was doing, he said, “Second thoughts. An attack of conscience, or shame. I should be stripped and beaten for bringing you to this.”

She watched him for long moments while her pulse thundered in her ears. At last she said, “If there is shame, I share it.”

“No. I set out to seduce you from motives pure and impure, but most of all from base, overwhelming desire. I should have conquered it; I have no excuse for that failure.”

“Must there be one?” She beat about in her mind for some hint of what he was trying to tell her, but could find few clues.

“It is required, when so much is at risk.”

“Is this risk mine or yours?”

“Yours,” he said with roughness rising in his voice. “Yours alone, for mine was accepted long ago.”

She gave him a wavering smile. “Can I do less, then?”

“You must. Your safety depends on it.”

Did he think Gilbert would harm her if they were discovered? Somehow she did not think it was a consideration so mundane that moved him. What it might be, she could not imagine. Regardless, it made no difference.

“How can I think of safety when I am here?” she asked in low and strained tones. “How can I, and still be worthy of — of your roses?”

She put her hand to the blossoms at the corsage of her gown as she spoke, feeling their cool petals against her fingers. He caught her meaning, for he took a quick, uncontrolled step toward her.

“It’s I who am unworthy of your love,” he said, the words unsteady, “though you will always have mine.”

She reached out to him. As she moved her hand the roses she had touched shattered, the petals loosening, falling, sliding down the full sweep of her skirts in a rain of rose red. They settled to the carpet, where they scattered at her feet, shimmering in the dimness like droplets of blood.

She cried out with the sound of pain and loss and unreasoning fear.

A spasm crossed his face of resolution hard pressed, defended, and then abandoned.

An instant later he caught her close, murmuring softly as he leaned to lift her high in his arms. “Never mind, my heart, I’ll make you a path of roses, a bed, a bower. You will have roses all your days.”

“And my nights?” she whispered.

Carrying her toward the divan, he answered, “Especially the nights.”

He placed her among the Persian garden of silk draperies that softened the couch. Her hair, as he loosened the pins that held it one by one, uncoiled and trailed down her shoulder, mingling with the fringes of the draped shawls. He spread the long, curling tresses around her, his gaze soft with wonder and appreciation as he watched the candlelight shimmer in prism gleams among them. He cupped her face in the warm strength of his hands, then leaned to touch her lips with his own.

It was a benediction of sweetness, a salute of honor. Withdrawing a little, he held her gaze with the promise of his own while he lowered himself to recline beside her. She reached to press her fingertips to his mouth, tracing the line of his lips, their smoothness, their firm resilience.