Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection) (9 page)

Violet, searching his face, grew aware of the heavy beat of his heart under her hands, which were trapped between them. The dark lavender-blue outer ring of her brown eyes darkened and her own fringe of jet-black lashes swept downward again.

She was released abruptly.

“Forgive me, my lady!” the man said, stepping back, holding his arms stiff at his sides as he inclined his head in a bow.

She had known he would speak with an accent, however slight, even before she heard him. “No, please,” she said softly, “I must thank you.”

“I beg you won’t. What I did, it was nothing.” He looked around him, his gaze lighting on his hat lying in the wet road with its crown crushed by a carriage wheel. Beside it lay her parasol with the handle in two pieces and its broken ribs poking through torn and fluttering silk. Around them, the rain began to quicken.

“Your umbrella is as useless as my hat, I think, or I would retrieve it for you.”

“Please don’t try,” she murmured.

“No, but you must have shelter. Come.”

With his hand on her arm, he pulled her with him toward the cast-iron pavilion. She went willingly enough, catching up her unwieldy skirts for the quick dash. Their footsteps skimmed over the wet grass, then they were pounding up the low steps and ducking under the water streaming down from the steep slate roof. Violet’s skirts whirled around her, then settled as she came to a halt and turned back toward the open doorway.

It was amazing how dark it had grown there under the shadows of the trees with the closing in of the storm. The noise of the rain was like the rushing of a cataract as it assaulted the new spring leaves and pounded the grass, rattled on the slates overhead, and splattered on the pavilion steps.

Violet, watching the rain as if mesmerized, gave a small shiver and rubbed her arms with her hands. The chill came, she thought, from inside, for her arms were covered by the sleeves of her green velvet jacket with its peplum waist. There were drops of rain beaded on the velvet, and she stripped off her gloves to brush at them in distress. The fabric would be quite ruined and she had worn it no more than twice. Gilbert would not be pleased.

The man beside her spoke in low tones. “It is irregular, I know, but since there is no one to present me, perhaps you will permit me to introduce myself?” He inclined his head briefly. “I am Allain Massari, my lady, at your service.”

“How could I be so ungrateful as to refuse to know you?” she said, giving him her gloved hand. “But you are not English, I think. French perhaps? Or is it Italian?”

Amusement sparkled in his eyes. “My mother was Italian and French; my father claimed no particular country as his own, but enjoyed many, especially England. I am many things, then, but prefer to think of myself as simply European.”

Was that another way of saying that he had no right to his father’s name, so had taken that of his mother? She could not embarrass him by asking. In any case it made no difference, since it was unlikely their acquaintance would be a long one. These thoughts ran quickly through Violet’s head before she realized with a start that they were no longer speaking English. “Ah, you are very fluent in French, m’sieur.”

“I felt you would be more comfortable. I am right, am I not?”

She assented, telling him of her Louisiana French background, before she went on. “And are you equally at home in Italian?”

“I have a lucky facility with languages,” he said dismissively, then frowned a little as his gaze rested on her cheek. He reached to draw a handkerchief from his sleeve. “You will allow me one small privilege further?”

He touched her chin with the fingers of one hand, tilting her face toward the little light that was available. Using the handkerchief, he blotted the raindrops that stood on the skin of her forehead and the smooth planes of her face, and even those that clung to the ends of her lashes.

Violet knew she should have stepped back away from him or at least protested; instead she stood quite still. His hands, she saw, were beautifully shaped and well cared for, but carried hard ridges of calluses on the fingers and across the palms. They were the mark of one who practiced often with a sword. It was intriguing, that knowledge. She allowed her gaze to search his face, noting the strength of its bone structure, assessing his absorption in his task.

He accepted her quiet scrutiny, until, suddenly, he looked straight into her eyes.

What happened then seemed beyond belief, yet, at the same time, inevitable.

He let the handkerchief in his hand fall, so it drifted down to catch on her wide skirts, then glided in snowy folds to the floor. A softly whispered phrase that might have been a plea or an imprecation damning himself rose to his lips, though in what language she could not tell for the thunder of her heartbeat in her ears. With infinite care, he lowered his head and touched his lips to hers.

It was a kiss of such gentle sweetness, such reverence, that it touched her to the heart. She felt the rise of tears, tasted their saltiness, even as her mouth throbbed under his and her blood began to froth in her veins with the effervescence of champagne. She felt glorified, transfigured in some way, so that who and what she was no longer mattered. It was as if she had discovered a part of her that had been missing, as if that piece had just locked in place, so it could never be lost again. The only thing important was the moment, and the feelings that made it her own.

He raised his head, his gaze on the trembling, coral-pink softness of her lips. Slowly, as if exercising a perilous restraint, he stepped away from her until his back and taut shoulders struck the upright post of the pavilion. He turned from her then, grasping the post with one hand in a grip so tight that the tips of his fingers turned blue white with the pressure and the structure creaked somewhere in the metal beams above them.

“Forgive me,” he said in ragged tones, “my manners — but I meant no disrespect, I swear it.”

“Please, don’t.” Her words were so quiet he might not have caught them if he had not been straining to hear. “I — I was also at fault.”

He shook his head. “You will think that I am a trifler who took advantage. It isn’t so — or rather, it is, but it was not deliberate.”

“I — realize.” She glanced at his broad back, then back down at her clenched hands.

“Do you?” He turned to face her then, but kept his distance.

Her lips trembled into a smile. “I think that had you intended it, you — might have used more address.”

Relief and laughter sounded in his voice as he said, “I would like to think so.”

She met his gaze for a long instant. Turning slightly from him to stare out into the park, she said, “I am married.”

There was a small silence before he answered. “I know. I saw the ring.”

Violet looked down at her hand where a ruby surrounded by diamonds surmounted the shining gold circle on her finger, the traditional marriage ring of Gilbert’s family. Closing her fingers into a fist, she folded her arms, tucking the ring away out of sight. At the same time a heated feeling moved over her as she wondered if she had assumed too much in telling this man of her marital status, as though it could make a difference to him.

He spoke again. “Where are you staying while in London?”

“Just a hotel,” she said, without giving the name. “We will be here only a few days more before moving on to see other sections of Britain. Afterward, we cross the channel to France.”

“Paris, of course.”

She nodded her agreement. The quiet, made murmurous by the rain, which fell more gently now, stretched between them. She sent him a quick glance from under her lashes, but he seemed to be absorbed in some thought that made him frown. She swallowed. In stifled tones, she said, “My husband will be expecting me at the hotel. I should return as soon as possible.”

“I will find a hackney for you when the rain stops.”

“That would be very kind.”

“No,” he said, “only necessary, though I would prefer that it was not.”

There was an odd, hollow finality in his voice. Still, he did not move for long moments. Nor did she. They stood gazing at each other instead with wide eyes and faces pale with strain.

Beyond the pavilion, the rain had begun to slacken. As the clouds moved on and the day grew brighter, the light took on an unearthly green cast, as if the misty atmosphere was made of atomized emeralds. Somewhere a bird called, a note of piercing supplication held achingly long. There was no answer.

He put her in a carriage a short time later. Violet gave him her address since it was necessary for him to call it up to the hackney driver. He stepped back then with a formal bow, perfectly correct, entirely respectful, though the gaze that held hers was dark gray with reluctance. Violet inclined her head in reply and lifted a gloved hand in farewell. As the carriage drew away she looked back to see him standing straight and still, staring after her.

Gilbert was not at the hotel after all when Violet returned. She was grateful for that small mercy. It allowed her time to change out of her damp velvet and silk with the help of a hotel maid, then send the costume to be dried and brushed in the hope of saving it. It also gave her a respite in which to ring for the tea she needed to banish the chill inside her, time to regain her composure while she drank it.

She was sitting in her blue wool dressing gown before a small coal fire in her bedroom fireplace when her husband returned. She set aside her cup in order to pour out tea for him. He came forward to press his lips to her forehead before turning his back to the fire and reaching for the refreshment she offered. He smelled of stale linen and smoke from the cheroots he knew she disliked. Unaccountably, her hand shook as she passed the cup over, so that it rattled in its saucer.

“Any success with the cabinetmaker?” she asked in haste to cover that moment of awkwardness.

“Very little. Most of the chests and sideboards being manufactured in England these days are designed for cramped little chambers like this hotel room. I cannot seem to make them understand that something on a more grand scale is required for the higher ceilings and wider rooms of our Louisiana climate. They think in terms of low, closed spaces to combat cold rather than tall and open ones to escape heat.”

“I would have thought that with the present interest in India, which has the same warm climate—”

“Ah, the English. They expect India to accommodate itself to their ways — which means their furnishings — rather than the other way around.”

“But the beautiful screens and fabrics of the Eastern empires, not to mention porcelain ware and brass-inlaid tables, seem to be in fashion.”

“Mere decoration, not furniture,” he said dismissively. “I am thinking of looking for older pieces such as might have come from the large manor houses in the countryside. They should have a more workable scale.”

“An excellent idea,” she murmured since she knew it was what he expected.

He sipped his tea before he went on. “But it might be better to give up here and cross to France at once. With this war on, there is such confusion and congestion at the ports from the military supplies bound for troops in Turkey and the Black Sea that there could be serious problems in shipping furniture back to Louisiana. The general opinion seems to be that it can only get worse.”

Her husband, Violet knew, was not displeased to be in Europe during this contretemps in the Crimea. He took a keen interest in the furor pitting the leaders of Great Britain, France, Austria, and Prussia against Czar Nicholas I of Russia, who was attempting to control the fate of Turkey, the country known as the “sick man of Europe.” Each morning without fail, Gilbert went out for a newspaper in which to read the latest telegraphic reports on the war activities. The last news had been the disembarkation of British and French troops at the Black Sea port of Varna, sent to protect Constantinople from Russian attack.

“You think there will actually be fighting?” she asked.

“The English people seem to be caught up in the war spirit. It looks as if Aberdeen and his cabinet must order an invasion of the Crimea before summer to satisfy the public outcry, if for no other reason.”

“An attack on the Russian naval base at Sevastopol?”

“Precisely.” His answer was clipped short.

It annoyed Gilbert when she displayed too much understanding of subjects he considered to be in the male province. Violet knew it, still she persevered. “As England and France are allies, would we not have much the same problems shipping furniture from French ports?”

“Napoléon the Third is not so committed to depressing Russian pretensions in Turkey, therefore the French preparations for war are not as far advanced. There should be no great difficulty so long as we don’t linger here.”

Violet tilted her head. “I have no objection, of course; still, there is so much we planned to see, Bath and Brighton, the Lake District — not to mention Scotland and Wales.”

“We can always return, perhaps late in the year, when war activities will slack off as the armies go into winter quarters. As for Bath, we can make a small detour in that direction. I believe that an opportunity for you to drink the water is of sufficient importance for the concession.”

“Yes, of course,” Violet said, though her voice was compressed.

“But what of your morning,
chère
?” her husband went on. “You found the toweling?”