Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection) (37 page)

“There’s plenty of paint and canvas here if you want to try.”

“Oh, I doubt I have the talent.”

“You sketch well, I’ve seen the things you do in your journal,” he said seriously.

She only shook her head with a smile. She had been doing a sketch of him on the back of a journal page at the same time he was painting her. It was a tolerably accurate likeness, but failed to capture the warmth of his personality, at least to her eyes.

He gave her a direct look. “What did you have in mind to do, then?”

“I don’t know, really.”

“Music? We could buy a piano for you. Or you might try writing, since you seem to enjoy keeping your journal.”

“I like music very much, but prefer to listen to someone else. As for my journal, it’s like second nature, spreading my thoughts out on paper, but I’m not sure I have stories or poems inside me.”

“You underestimate yourself, I think,” he said seriously. “But what shall it be, if not these things?”

“Maybe I’ll take in needlework,” she said, and laughed aloud at the look of total disapproval he gave her. “I was joking, but there may be something else just as tainted with trade that will take my notion.”

He put down his brush and wiped his hands before coming to kneel beside her chair. “Do what you will, so long as you remain near me.”

She reached out to wipe at the paint smear on his chin with the soft pad of her thumb. “As long as you want me.”

“That won’t be so very long,” he said, catching her hand, carrying it to his lips, “only one or two short forevers.”

Such phrases, as sweet as they might be to hear, were as close as they came to speaking of the future.

Violet wondered at times how long they would go on in this way, but when she tried to speak of it to Allain, he made some jest or proposed some treat, or went out and bought her another bonnet or bauble. She came finally to understand that it was not a subject he wanted to explore. She was not certain he had a plan or a timetable to give her.

There had been no more incidents such as the one at the train station. If they were being watched or followed, they could not tell it. The waterways did not encourage such things, of course.

Regardless, there was something not quite real to Violet about the procession of days. She thought of writing to her family, her two sisters and the wife of Gilbert’s youngest brother, who had been a friend since childhood, but could find no words to explain what had happened. They would, she knew, want explanations. They would require to be told when she meant to return to Louisiana, if she would ever return. They would want to know about Gilbert, if he was going to divorce her, whether he would complete his sojourn in Europe. The answers to so many of these questions did not depend on her, and so she could not give them. The time for writing, then, never seemed right.

Because she had not contacted them, had told no one she had left Gilbert, given no one news of her whereabouts, she received no letters, no news from home. It was as if she had been cut off from the world and all she knew.

Allain was loving and constant and endlessly reassuring, yet she could not prevent herself from wondering what she would do if he left her. She had no resources of her own. She could send to Louisiana for the means to return there, but it could take weeks, even months, before her relatives could arrange for her passage, and how was she to live in the interim?

That was, if she could return to New Orleans at all. If she took up residence in that city again, she would be forced to live in disgrace, a fallen woman, one who had left her husband for a sordid affair with an artist. It hadn’t really been like that, not at all, but she knew the gossip mongers of New Orleans well, and it would be impossible to convince them otherwise.

Somewhere deep inside, she was afraid. She didn’t know why she felt this buried edge of incipient terror; she only knew it was there.

That was, perhaps, the reason she was not surprised when, late one evening, there came a mighty hammering on the door of the house.

Savio answered the summons, then mounted up the stairs to see if Signor Massari wished to receive the two gentlemen who were below demanding his presence. Savio’s thin face was stiff with umbrage as he handed over the visiting cards that had been presented to him.

Allain stood frowning down at the cards in his hand for long moments. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. Inclining his head, he said, “Inform them I will be with them shortly.”

“What is it?” Violet said when Savio had disappeared back down the stairs. She put her hand on Allain’s arm in unconscious supplication.

“Don’t worry; it has nothing to do with Gilbert,” he said as he covered her fingers with his own. “It’s only something that should have been taken care of long ago.”

She could not press him; she had no right to pry into the life he had lived before they met. Yet she didn’t want him to go; every instinct forbade it.

“Is this really necessary? Suppose it’s a trick?”

He drew her to him and took her face in his hands, pressing his lips to hers before he said, “I love your concern, but there is no possibility of deception. Trust me. I’ll only be a moment.”

He was gone considerably longer.

She did not mean to eavesdrop. It was the sound of raised voices that drew her out onto the loggia. The visitors had left the house and were standing almost directly below on the stone landing where their gondola waited. Allain had walked outside with them.

One of the callers, an older gentleman judging from his voice, was holding his raised fist before him and his face was twisted with frustrated anger. He spoke in French, yet with such an odd, guttural accent that it was almost unintelligible.

“You could have such power as you never dreamed. I say to you that the time will come when you will mourn what you have thrown away.”

“I want no part of it, now or ever,” Allain said, his voice edged with grim implacability. “Your country is not mine, nor has it ever been.”

“Pigheaded fool. We would have risked all for you; it would have been an honor. The shame of this violation of trust is on your head.”

“I will bear it.”

“So will your country. Such a ripeness as is fast coming — you could have saved lives, changed everything. Everything!”

“Or nothing,” Allain said, the words weighted with tiredness, as if it was an old argument. “Some things cannot be changed in decades, even centuries. My father tried.”

“Ah, yes, your father. He promised freedom, justice, but they never came. Our hearts cry for them still, but must cry in vain. Remember it. Remember it well.”

“That much,” Allain said, “I can do for you.”

The older man made an exclamation of disgust. Turning, he strode to the gondola and stamped down into it with the other man at his heels. As they emerged from under the shadows of the loggia’s overhang, Violet saw that they were not the men from the train station as she had half feared. Nor did she think they were the pair who had followed Allain and herself in Paris.

They were substantial men, men who held themselves with dignified, almost military erectness. They were well dressed, their clothing correct from the silk cravats at their throats to the shine on the fine leather of their half boots. Regardless, there was about them an air of being uncomfortable in their present attire, as if something was missing, perhaps a weapon.

Standing in the gondola, the older man looked back at Allain once more. “Twice we have asked, and twice been refused. It is your right. Yet it is not so easy. There are others who will come.”

“Yes,” Allain said, his tone echoing as hard as the stone column where Violet rested her hand, “I know it.”

“We will not trouble you again, then, exalted one; we look on your face a final time. Farewell.”

Allain’s only reply was a bow, a brief gesture of decorum that seemed to have a ceremonial dignity. As the gondola shot away into the channel of the canal, he turned and reentered the house.

Allain was more silent than usual for the remainder of the evening. He sat staring at nothing, starting when spoken to, turning to her now and then with a look in his eyes that was weary, indecisive, and even, at times, distraught.

Violet waited for him to confide in her; she wanted to help him, to share whatever was troubling him. He said nothing, not immediately after the men had gone, not while the wick in the oil lamp burned down as they read, not later as they made ready for bed. She thought he meant to spare her, but she did not appreciate it. She felt shut out of his thoughts, cut off from his problem.

She woke in the night. There was no moon; the room was dark except for a blue rectangle where the window stood open to the wind from the sea. Allain stood naked in the opening, braced with his one arm on the frame.

“What is it?” she whispered.

He looked over his shoulder at her pale form in the dimness of the great, curtained bed. “Forgive me,” he said, his voice soft, “I should have left you unloved. It was selfish for me to take you, and to take you away.”

“What are you saying?” She sat up, clutching the sheets around her with fingers that had gone cold and numb.

“I wronged you. I destroyed your quiet, safe life, and can offer nothing so fine in return.”

His words had the sound of renunciation. A painful alarm constricted her throat, so it was hard to force words through it. “I need nothing more than we have.”

“I need it for you. And for our child you carry.”

The words, dropping so softly into the darkness, seemed for long moments to be without meaning. She drew a quick breath as they settled into her mind in patterns she could accept. “You know?”

“Some things announce themselves. The lovely ripeness of your body gives me pleasure beyond anything I ever dreamed; still, I wonder—”

“Yes?” She waited with held breath for him to complete what he had been saying.

“I wonder if Gilbert could be induced to believe the child is his.”

The despair that swept in upon her held her mute for long seconds. At last she said, “Perhaps it is his.”

“You have reason to think that it might be?” The words were tentative, but tight with doubt.

“Who can tell. I — had my monthly indisposition after Paris, while in Switzerland, but not since Lugano. There is reason to think that — that he could be.”

“I understand.” He turned toward her but moved no closer, instead resting his back against the heavy door facing. “It might be best,” he said, his voice holding the rasp of steel on a whetstone.

“No!”

The cry broke from her, ripping from her throat with all the anguish she could not deny. Hearing it, he crossed to her in plunging strides. Springing up onto the mattress, he caught her close with murmured words of love and reassurance. She struggled in his grasp, fighting him, refusing the easy reassurance, while her brain was alive with horror.

“Don’t, Violet, please,” he said, taking her hands in a firm hold. “It isn’t what I want! It’s only what may be best for you, and for the baby. It’s mine, I know that as surely as I know that it’s my own heart beating inside my chest — it could not be otherwise. But I have to think of the danger. No one must know you are going to have my child. I could not live if anything happened to you because of me.”

Her movements stilled as she heard the pain in his voice. “What danger?” she asked tightly. “Who were those men who came? What was it they wanted of you?”

A shadow crossed his face. “I would tell you if it would make it easier for you. It won’t. Please believe me.”

“I am to know nothing?”

“It will be better so.” His voice was bleak.

She clenched her hands into fists, swallowing hard before she spoke again. “But if Gilbert is to think the baby is his, I will have to go away — be with him.”

“Yes.” The single word was barely audible.

“How can I?” she cried. “How can I, now?”

He dragged her against him, holding her tight to his chest, burying his face in the soft cloud of her hair, which spilled loose around her shoulders.

“Dear God,” he whispered, “do you think I would permit it if there was any other way? The thought is like a dull knife tearing at my heart. You are mine, now and for all time; you will always be a part of my being, the partner of my soul. And yet, I would rather have you alive in his arms than dead in mine.”

“Even if being alive there is like death?” She closed her eyes tightly, the better to savor his strength, the scent of him, the closeness that might soon end. “Have I no voice in this decision?”

“Not if you love me.”

“That’s unfair,” she said on a ragged breath.

“What isn’t?” he whispered. “Oh, my Violet, I thought this war in the Crimea had changed matters, distracted attention, so it was possible for me to lose myself in my own pursuits and joys. I was wrong. There are those who are more determined than ever that I not be allowed to be anonymous, or happy. Your misfortune is that you became a part of my error.”

“I don’t count it a misfortune.”

She said the words plainly. She was growing more calm as she listened to the aching timbre of his voice, felt the trembling in his taut embrace.