Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection) (51 page)

“Yes, Giovanni,” she repeated in gentle, musical tones.

She slid to her knees beside the bed then. Holding his hand with both hers, she rested her forehead on his good shoulder away from his bandaging. As her hair drifted forward to cover her face, she allowed the healing tears to fall.

A
PRIL
24, 1855

I received a visit from Gilbert today. He came to offer his condolences. He had heard, he said, of the death of the artist. He heard it when he arrived in Florence. I asked him how long he had been in the town. He claimed only two days. I wonder.

I am amazed. He suggests that we return to New Orleans together. He will continue with his buying while I do as I please until the time comes that was set for his return in his original itinerary. A year from now we will sail for home. In the meantime I may do as I please.

I intend to. My plans have been made.

Once in New Orleans, Gilbert will accept the child I have borne as his and will never open his lips again to speak otherwise. He will make me a gift of the town house and will visit me there from time to time, in the daylight hours. In return I am to pretend that all is as it was before between us.

How cynical I have become, and how hard. I agreed. Why not? It makes matters so much easier.

Gilbert seems chastened.

Poor man. He thinks it is possible that everything may one day be the same as before.

I know better, I know far better.

JOLETTA SAT HOLDING THE JOURNAL pages
against her chest. She wiped away a little moisture that had gathered under her eyes. She had read the end of Violet’s odyssey before, but not in Italy where it had happened. That made it more poignant somehow.

A large part of her sadness was for Violet, but a portion was also for herself. The losses in her life had been so many. The latest of these was someone who might, had things been different, have been a lover like Violet’s Allain.

No. She wouldn’t think about that.

Violet’s last cryptic entry troubled her just as much now as it had the first time she saw it. It didn’t seem quite like her at all. More, she could not quite understand Violet’s easy agreement to return home with Gilbert after everything that had gone before. Violet had done just that, she knew, however; everything Joletta had ever heard about her great-great-great-great-grandmother’s life told her it had happened exactly that way.

Had Violet agreed to the reconciliation in order to return home to New Orleans and her relatives and friends without the necessity of explaining an estrangement? Had it been for the sake of her baby, so that little Giovanna could have an unsullied name and the benefits of a close-knit family? Was it for security, perhaps, for herself and her child, or had it been from the need to leave the sorrow she had found in Europe behind?

What had happened in Egypt in that lost year? Why had Violet not stayed on in Italy as she herself had hinted she might?

Another question was why Gilbert had asked her to return with him. Was it for love, or only to save his pride? Had it been to gloat over her, or to test her attachment to Italy, forcing her to choose between it and her old way of life?

And was the reason Violet agreed, perhaps, because she thought it a just revenge that her husband be forced to give his name to the child of the man he may have had murdered?

Still, Joletta wanted to know more, such as why Violet had stopped writing in her journal, and how she had felt about taking up life again, however changed, with Gilbert.

There was also Giovanni. Joletta had a great need to know what had become of him. She suspected, but she did not know.

There was no way to tell these things at this distance in time, and so there was a sense of things left unsaid, unfinished.

As irritating as it might be, the real world was like that, she thought, untidy, with loose ends left quietly flapping down the years.

And yet, there was an idea taking shape in Joletta’s mind about the journal. It was fascinating that the original of the pages she held in her hands was not the book that Violet had begun when she started out on her grand tour. That fact opened up possibilities that had not been there before. Anything could have been done to the revised edition; events and dates could have been changed, things added or omitted or twisted slightly to suit Violet’s purpose.

There was no real reason to think Violet might have done such a thing. She had been keeping the journal for herself after all; there was no one she needed to impress, nothing she need have concealed. If she had been trying to keep her clandestine affair from posterity, all she need have done was to destroy that record of it.

Regardless, there were things Joletta wanted to check, both in Italy and back home in New Orleans.

The sound of a knock at the door interrupted the quiet flow of her thoughts. She knew who it was. She not only recognized the knock, but had been waiting for it, both consciously and unconsciously, ever since she returned to the hotel.

Rone stood with one hand propped on the door frame as she opened the door. He looked her up and down, an appraisal that seemed to satisfy him, since he gave a slow nod.

“Think you’re smart, don’t you?” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“You know very well what I’m talking about.” He shouldered past her and stopped in the middle of the room to look around before he went on. “It’s enough to make a man wonder if you didn’t do it on purpose.”

She shut the door with a snap. “I didn’t ask you to watch over me like a mother hen. I’m a grown woman and have a perfect right to leave my hotel room without your permission.”

He kept his back to her, surveying the twin beds with which the room was furnished as he said with deliberation, “You must have known when you did it that all bets would be off.”

“Meaning?”

“Exactly what you think it means. I’ll move my things in here before bedtime.”

She moved around to face him. “Try it, and I’ll have the hotel manager call the police. I really will.”

“Fine. I’ll tell them it’s a lovers” quarrel. And you can explain to Italian males with amorous dispositions why you’re objecting in Florence to something that was perfectly fine in Venice.”

“Even Italian women can change their minds!”

He looked thoughtful. “Maybe I’ll tell them you’re holding out for marriage and won’t let me back in until I agree.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.” His blue eyes appeared steel gray with determination.

She breathed deep and let it out slowly before she said, “Maybe I’ll tell them you’re a con artist who seduces women for what you can get out of them.”

His eyes narrowed. “Is that what you think?”

“Why not?” As he stood scowling without even attempting an answer, she went on: “But you don’t have to go through this charade just to get Violet’s journal. You stay in your own room, and you can have it. To finish reading, I mean, not to keep — for what good it will do you.”

“You mean that?” The challenging tone was abruptly gone from his voice.

She nodded as she turned away. Her tone flat, she said, “Allain died.”

“No.” He sounded as if the death had happened at that moment, to a close member of his family.

She gave a slow nod as she moved to sit on the foot of one of the beds. It struck her as odd that she had known how he would be affected by the news. But she had known; that was why she had thrown it at him.

“I suppose it had to be,” he said. Glancing toward the other bed, he stepped nearer to lower himself to the foot of it. “There was never any mention of him in Violet’s life in New Orleans. It was always possible that she broke off with him, but I couldn’t see her doing it. And he didn’t seem the type to let her.”

She sent him a quick look, but he was staring at his hands. A vague idea surfaced in her mind. Before she could stop herself, she said, “Do you remember what you said in England, when I asked you about the language of the flowers?”

“Not really; probably the first thing that came into my head.”

“You mentioned rosemary.”

“Oh, everybody knows that one,” he said with a dismissive gesture. “"Pray, love, remember."
Hamlet.
”

“Not everybody knows it.” The words were dry.

He looked at her, his gaze suspicious. “What are you driving at?”

“Nothing, nothing at all.”

She should have known better. Things didn’t work like that, reincarnated lovers born again to be together. It was just entertainment for people with overactive imaginations, nonsense that was not at all helpful in dealing with the present problem. Eyewash, as Mimi would have said.

“Who killed Allain?” Rone asked.

She lifted a brow. “How do you know he was killed?”

“People’s cholesterol counts must have been sky-high in those days, but he didn’t seem the kind to keel over with a heart attack. Besides, somebody had tried to do him in at the train station.”

“Well, apparently it was the same people, but I don’t know that; Violet doesn’t say and I’m not sure she ever knew. I think Gilbert was skulking around, myself — somebody was seen watching the villa. I wouldn’t put it past him to have hired men to do the job. He wasn’t rational.”

“Old Gilbert didn’t seem to know much about women; he brought a lot of his problems on himself. But he did have a thing or two to try his temper.”

“You’re defending him?” she said in disbelief.

“I’m just saying it’s the dull, uptight men who are sometimes the most jealous. And a jealous reaction to a wife’s straying was not only to be expected back then, but excused a lot in the way of mayhem.”

“So Gilbert seemed to believe.”

“I’ll grant you he went about getting his wife back the wrong way.”

“But he got her back. That’s what I find so hard to believe.”

“Yes and no,” Rone said.

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t exactly get her back, I’d say, since they never really lived together afterward.”

“Who told you that?” Joletta’s question was as sharp as the frown between her eyes.

“Natalie’s mother, when she was explaining how Violet got into selling perfume,” he answered without altering his look of concentration. “Anyway, it seems to me that to be married to a woman but not allowed to touch her because of something you did yourself would be a form of torture.”

The parallel was there, she thought, if she wanted to accept it. Rone was not allowed to touch her because of something he had done also.

Or was that what he was saying? Maybe she was reading too much into it. She should really stop using her imagination and listen only to the words.

“You feel sorry for Gilbert?” she said.

“Don’t you, at least a little? Sure, he was a prude with the personality of a stump, your typical Victorian man. But he went off to Europe with a beautiful young wife and his dreams for a nice town house and a family, and he came back with nothing. A year later he puts a chased-silver dueling pistol to his head and tries to blow his brains out. He makes a mess out of that, too, winding up an invalid.”

“I always thought he was hurt in some kind of accident.”

“It was called an accident. According to Estelle, the story was that he was cleaning the pistol. Had to keep the scandal quiet, I suppose.”

“He lived for years,” Joletta said, her voice low as she reflected on old deaths, old tragedies caused by hasty words and acts undertaken in anger. After a moment she said, “I think I’ll see if I can find Allain’s grave tomorrow.”

“You know where to look?”

“A church near the villa, though where exactly, I don’t know. I can call Signora Perrino.”

“Or drive out and look around,” he said, his tone tentative. “I still have my rental car.”

It was an offer if she cared to accept it. She couldn’t do it. He was from the enemy camp. Before she could answer yes or no, however, he went on.

“Are you hungry? If you went out for dinner, I missed it.”