"He was a scientist, then?"
"Not really, only concerned for me. The others, my siblings, paired off, you know. The three oldest, then the two baby girls, and my cousin with Phoebe, who is just younger than me. No one enjoyed the same things I did."
"Were you lonely?" Wind tossed his hair in his eyes and he shook it free.
"Not at all." Around them the sea rushed and rustled, eternal and somehow reassuring. "I enjoyed my own company, but he worried that I spent so much time alone."
"And he took time with you." A prompt, and an obvious one, but she gave him a brilliant smile for it, touched. What a good listener he was.
"Yes. He did. He took time for all of us, really. He was a very indulgent father."
"Is it from him you get your red hair?" He touched it idly. Casually.
"No one knows where I get this hair. I'm the only one." She tucked the shell into her palm and looked down again at her feet. "No, he was an ordinary looking man, in many ways."
"And you are not."
She chuckled. "That was rather vain, wasn't it? He had beautiful blue eyes, and a wonderful laugh.
Women always loved him because he was good to his children. He was good to women, too, I suppose."
"I wish my mother had found such a man." He tossed a rock into the sea.
"So do I," she said, and he turned back to her, his hair blowing on the wind into his face, his sleeves rippling, his legs in water to his knees. Behind him, the sky cast a backdrop of vivid blue. For a long dangerous moment, it seemed that they might kiss, but the sound of a dog barking interrupted. They turned together to look for it.
It was a brown and white creature, with ragged fur and an exuberant nature. It carried a stick in its mouth and brought it hopefully to them. Gladly distracted, they played and ran with the mutt, splashing in the water, dancing in the surf, laughing and crying out jokes and warnings.
At last, pleasantly spent, Cassandra collapsed in the sand and begged for the cheese and wine he had brought. While he fetched it, the dog came and fell down beside her, panting cheerfully as she stroked his ears. She had not been so relaxed, so at ease with herself and her surroundings, in a very long time.
Maybe even since those long-ago days in Martinique.
"I love the outdoors," she said. "I always forget how it makes me feel."
Basilio collapsed beside her, dropping the saddlebag without ceremony. "So do I." He tipped up his face to the sun, closing his eyes. "The world as God made it."
"Yes." His hair lured her, and that flush on his cheeks. She itched to touch the arch of his foot, and the chest she could glimpse at the opening of his shirt. Touch him. Kiss him. Lie with him, her Basilio, who was so unexpectedly beautiful— and so much more besides.
Man as God had made him.
Torture, Basilio thought. From the moment Cassandra had appeared this morning on her balcony, her hair loose and brilliant, her body clothed in only that whisper of gauze, the day had been torture. When he'd come upon her standing in the courtyard, her arms flung back, her breasts uplifted and delectably natural in their shape, she had stolen his breath. Laughing as they ate breakfast, then playing in the surf with the dog, he had seen a girlish side of her, one he suspected had been set free by his homeland.
Now they devoured hunks of bread torn from a fresh loaf, and chunks of white cheese, all washed down with wine he'd brought in a skin. She showed herself adept at the process once she learned it, though it squirted first across her cheek and down her neck in a red trickle. She wiped it away with a laugh.
The air, salty and heavy, clung to his skin and the flavors burst on his tongue. Sun burned down on his head, and he wanted to shed all of his clothes and all of hers and lie here with her, flesh to flesh. He felt the want at the back of his neck, and in his mouth which he filled with cheese instead of her breasts, felt it in his thumbs and his knees and the primal base of his spine. Everywhere.
And though it was torture, it was very pleasant, too. After all, she was here now, before him. It would not always be so. He sighed and leaned back on one elbow. "Here is a moment I would capture."
She tore into a crispy crust of bread and seemed to care little that crumbs had fallen into her lap. "Are you going to give me a couplet now, Sir Poet?"
"Not today." He lay back and closed his eyes. "When you are back in your cold room, huddled next to the fire, then you shall have a letter from me, and there will be a poem about the sun and the sea and a Siren."
"Oh, I am to be a Siren?"
He opened one eye. "Not you. The dog."
She laughed. "I shall enjoy it."
Taking her shawl from the pile of discarded clothing, she spread it over the sand to protect her hair when she lay down. Her hand found his and he took it as easily, pleased when he felt her relax beside him.
Her fingers were slender and graceful, and he resisted the wish to stroke the length of them. Instead he only let her palm fall across his own, feeling heat and moisture build between their fingers. He drifted drowsily in the warm sun, listening to the cry of gulls and the patterns of the waves moving close and far, now whispering, now breathing, now and then crashing.
Behind his eyelids, he saw the shape of colors he would capture for that distant winter day, for Cassandra—the blue of the hills in the distance, the pale sand, the brightness of her hair. Copper? Too pedestrian. Titian? Too obscure. Idly, he tried a dozen possibilities. None quite captured the sense of that color, not truly. Thinking he had forgotten, he turned to look at it again, and narrowed his eyes so it was all that he saw, only the brightness of Cassandra's hair. There were gold strands glittering among some of a very deep red, and still others of a kind of sienna shade. Some vivid orange, others a soft carrot. The whole together was impossible to name.
He smiled, noticing she had drifted off, and he slipped his hand from her grasp to brace himself on one elbow. The lips in repose were full and not so reserved, and the aloof dignity that marked her eyes disappeared. He skirted her torso and hips and gazed at her feet, akimbo and sandy. Long, very white feet. like her hands. He touched a nail, oval and arched.
Then he did allow himself to look at her throat, and the dip at the base, and lower, to the soft rise of breasts above her bodice, and lower to the plane of her belly. Unbidden came a vision of that skin uncovered, and a vision of his mouth at her throat, making a mark.
She turned her head and he found himself looking down into her steady, sober eyes. "I felt you looking at me," she said quietly, and lifted one hand to his hair, a gesture of invitation and permission. So natural and simple, that invitation. Basilio found himself leaning close, thinking of her mouth.
Just in time, he remembered he could not and merely put his nose against her cheek. He closed his eyes, narrowing the moment to the smell of her—faint perspiration and soap and sea air. Her hand moved, combing through his hair loosely, then again.
He wanted her in a way he had never wanted another woman. The purity and fierceness of it felt like poetry in his blood, weighted with that same magic, the promise of perfect beauty. The force of it made his breath catch, warred with his duty.
Duty. Always duty.
With graceless and urgent will, he pushed away from her and clambered to his feet. Hurt crossed her face. But better this hurt now, than the hurt that would come if he deceived her. He turned to the sea and bent his head against the brilliance of sunlight glittering on the waves.
When his voice could be calm, he turned back and smiled brightly as if there was nothing at all wrong.
"Come," he said, extending his hand. "We must return to the villa." Impulsively, afraid to lose control if they spent the evening as he had originally planned, he said, "There is a feast in the village tonight, honoring Saint Catherine and her special blessing on the town, and we must rest and restore our strength before we go."
The flood of words did not take the reserve from her stiff chin, and he saw measuring in the very dark eyes. Wind tossed a long curl of hair
around her throat, and he thought of a painting. Her mouth was a red bow that he wanted to taste. Suck. The vividness of his desire made him step back as she stood, brushing sand from her skirts.
But even as he put distance between them, his ghostly self was hurtling forward, tumbling her to the sand, covering her with his body, with his mouth, with his hands. He made a sound, soft and frustrated, and turned to the water once more, imagining the salty waves cooling the heat in him. In he breathed, then out, his hands on his hips, inhaling the air, the salty scent that might make him brave enough to make his confession.
"Basilio, forgive my boldness. I am a widow— I did not think it would offend you."
"Offend?" He turned to her shaking his head. "I am not offended." Honor lay on him like shroud. "But I must tell you something."
She nodded soberly, as if she expected it.
"Do you remember the night I wrote to you of the gypsy on the road, when I was in despair and said there was some matter of duty that caused me some sorrow?"
"Yes. It is my favorite letter."
"My father had come to see me that day." Words stuck in his throat. "To tell me my duty— to tell me…"
He halted, shook his head, then blurted it out. "Cassandra, I am betrothed. I am to be married in a month's time."
Her features might have been made of wax and her eyes of glass, for nothing flickered, nothing shifted.
"Oh," she said. "I see."
"It is entirely political. She is very young, in a convent all her life." He took a breath. "It is only that it would not be right for us, when there is nothing I can offer."
"Sssh. How rare for a man to resist physical pleasure in favor of honor." A faint smile bent her mouth. "I find I like you all the more for it."
Honor. It tasted like the grave.
Chapter 5
On a tiny island off the coast of Italy, a young woman knelt by her cot. Against the graying stillness of evening the song of the nuns at vespers rang out, a sound Analise diCanio found heart wrenchingly sweet.
It was the sound of peace and joy, and she longed to add her own voice to their number, singing praises to God. It was all she had ever wanted.
But it was not to be. In the morning her father would come for her, and spirit her away to their villa in Firenze, where she would begin preparations for her marriage to Count Montevarchi. She did not remember him, but her mother had written a witless letter about the young count's beauty, and the great fortune Analise had found in union with such a charming, good-looking, young, rich man. She'd blathered for so long that Analise had given up and burned the parchment in despair.
She did not wish to be wed. Ever. To anyone. From the time she was a tiny girl, she had only wanted one thing: to be a nun. To serve God as truly and honorably as she was able.
Her father said that her beauty would be wasted in a convent. Her mother said Analise could serve God as a good wife and a good mother, as Mary herself had done. Analise clutched her hands tighter and raised her eyes to the small, plain crucifix that adorned the plain white wall. She knew it was true; that she could serve in marriage, serve by mothering fine children. And if God did not take this cup from her, she would serve where she was placed.
But her heart lived here, on this island, within the cloistering walls where she had discovered the pure, simple joy of morning dew on the herb gardens she helped Sister Maria tend, where the days never varied, where the song of prayers raised in purest harmony pierced her with a joy so deep she sometimes halted, stuck dumb and dizzy by the power of it, her eyes running with tears of perfect happiness.
She did not speak aloud her certainty that she had been born to take her place in this cloister, for that was prideful and a sin, to think she knew more of her heart and her place in the world than her father.
She dared not even speak her passion aloud to the other sisters, though she suspected they knew, suspected they wished they had the power to assist her. A hand to her shoulder when her despair grew so large she could not keep it from her face; the sweet, jaunty whistle that Sister Katarina sometimes chirped for her in the gardens. They knew.
And God knew. He knew her pride and desire and therefore could not be surprised when she whispered, "I belong here. Please allow me to stay." The song of the sisters at vespers floated around her, embraced her like warm arms. "Help me."
Cassandra, made sleepy by the ocean air, retired to her chamber for a nap when they returned to the villa. Lying on her bed, she gazed through the open doors to a small balcony, admiring soft green hills like breasts against the hand of the sky. The smell of the sea came from her clothes and hair. Her limbs were lax from exercise. Sand clung to her feet, though she'd tried to brush them off before she'd climbed on to the bed. Later she would regret the grit, but now she was held by a thick inertia to her spot, head propped on a great pile of gold-fringed pillows.
There was only Basilio in her mind. Basilio laughing, so full of energy and simple happiness as he ran in the surf with a stray dog. Basilio, looking so gravely and hungrily at her when he thought she was asleep.
Basilio, bending close to put his nose against her face.
And he was betrothed. Betrothed.
It startled her how much she wanted to— what? She thought of her hands in his glossy hair, the black curling around her white fingers; thought of the shape of his head in her hands; of the way his face had looked in that moment, thick black lashes downcast, the bridge of his nose red from the sun.
She shifted, her gown swishing over the satin coverlet as she turned on her side. Until now, she'd had little understanding of desire. Perhaps it was because of her husband. Perhaps because she'd heard too much gossip, too many confessions of petty, changeable, and shallow longings. She'd watched her sister Adriana's fall to scandal in bewilderment, unable to fathom why she would risk so much for a man. Any man.
Lying now in a wash of sensory abandon, it seemed impossible that she had not felt it before, not even a tiny spark of it. She had seen it in men's eyes for her. She'd always enjoyed flirtations, finding them flattering and stimulating, especially with clever men.
But she had escaped lust till now.
Her female friends said it was because her brothers and father had set such an impossibly high standard that no other man would ever measure up. Perhaps that was true.
It was also true that she had been introduced to the physical side of love by a man with unnatural and sometimes even brutal tastes. Those memories had cured her of any leanings she might have had toward passion, any temptation she might have felt to take a lover after his death.
And today, even as she'd lifted her hand to put it in Basilio's hair, she'd known a mingling of fear and longing. How ironic that she should discover her passion with a man who was not free to help her explore it.
With a restless feeling, she got up and walked to the balcony. Leaning on the stone railing, she suddenly wished for her old Basilio back again— the lonely, middle-aged poet who'd sent Tuscan sunlight and ocean winds to her cold townhouse in London, who'd brought such music and pleasure to her unchanging world. If she had not come to Tuscany, she might have put her newly discovered bravery to another challenge: maybe written something that tested her, or taken up a new course of study. And she would still have the old Basilio.
With a hollow feeling, she rested her forehead on the backs of her hands, awash with loss.
How could she miss a man who had never existed?
But he did exist. That was the trouble. She thought of his honest eyes, the look of his teeth when he laughed, the control he exercised with her—he was all she had imagined and more.
With a start she remembered the sense of warning, of dread, she'd felt upon seeing him the first time.
Perhaps this entire journey had been a mistake for both of them. Perhaps some danger lurked in their meeting, a danger that could be avoided if she cut the visit short. Perhaps she ought to go away.
Not home—the idea of her staid little garden and st
aid little life and the same conversations made her shudder. Perhaps she could go on to Venice. She had come so far already—why not?
Urgently, she straightened and went back into the room and began to pull her things out. The trunk could be shipped later—for now she would bring only what she most required. The pile of his letters, bound in ribbon, her comb and brush; she tossed things into a pile, scarcely allowing herself to think, to breathe.
A knock came at the door, and inexplicably, Cassandra felt herself begin to tremble. She folded her hands and stared at the panel of oak that kept danger out, but did not answer. Perhaps whoever it was would think her sleeping and go away.
Another knock. Her fingers twisted tightly.
A letter slid under the door, making a soft swoosh. Unfrozen, Cassandra rushed to pick it up, and her hands trembled so in yearning and fear and despair that she could barely unseal the still-warm wax, marked by his ring.
His familiar elegant hand hurried across the page.
Cassandra,
It is still only you and I, here on the page. Because I know you, and your honor, I know you are thinking now that you must leave my house.
I beg you: do not go. Stay only a day or two, as you see fit, but do not go now, before I have been able to show you the basket of little memories I wanted to give you to take back— I have given only plums and the sea. There is still the moon, and the festival in the village tonight, and the opera, which I saved for last, a rich treat for your imagination. There is more wine to drink, Cassandra, and laughter to share.
Please, my friend, stay a little. We are adults of honor, and our meeting was of the minds, yes? We shall let nothing steal that from us…
B.
She opened the door, her heart pounding, and he stood there, waiting. Even the simple sight of him, his hair tamed now, pulled away from that sculpted face, his dark eyes grave and luminous, had the power to arouse her.
She wanted to kiss him, violently. The baldness of the thought made her ears hot and she spun away toward the bed, bending jerkily to rearrange things. It made her say, "Basilio, I have enjoyed your hospitality very much, but I think it best if I go now."
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