Night of Fire

by Barbara Samuel

  She laughed. "A fair arrangement."

  At the courtyard she paused, looking toward the orchard. Sunlight now leaked quiet softness into the stirring day. "I think, for a little while, I would like to be alone."

  He let her hand go. "Of course."

  She took a step, then looked back. "Thank you, Basilio, so much."

  Her hair trailed in a tangle of curls over her silk-clad arm, and her mouth was pleased but serious, and Basilio felt the hardest, deepest catch in his chest that he'd ever known.

  "It was my honor," he said softly. Before he could act, before he shamed both of them, he whirled and left her.

  Finally, his heart was clear. With wild haste, he broke for his chamber, shedding his hat and cloak as he took the stairs.

  Of course. The answer was so very plain.

  Chapter 6

  Basilio bolted up the steps two at time. Tossing his coat on the bed, he sat at his desk, dipped his quill and wrote:

  Father,

  I cannot marry Analise.

  I know how you will receive this news, and be sure that I mean what I say. I will not marry her. It is a choice of honor that I must make.

  Please inform her father, and know that I will gladly arrange any compensation he feels is required. As she is a young and by all accounts beautiful girl, there should be no difficulty in finding her another husband.

  Basilio

  His breath was hurried and his hand shook as he sealed the letter. He took out a second sheet.

  My dear Analise,

  You must take your vows at the cloister immediately. I cannot marry you, but I know your true wish has always been the life of a nun, and you should have that. Not even your father can break the vows you give to God. Do it immediately, Analise, for your safety and protection. When all is settled and clear, I will visit and we can speak of this at length.

  Your servant, Basilio, Count Montevarchi

  He sealed that, then ran from the room to find a servant. He pressed the notes into a footman's hand.

  "Post these immediately," he said. His father was in Genoa and would not receive the letter for perhaps a week or two, but Basilio could not act until he had absolved the duty. His mother had only wished the girl to be protected—she had not said how.

  Then, his heart pounding, his blood sizzling and burning in his body, he went in search of Cassandra. She was not in her chamber, where he had expected to find her. Nor in the courtyard, though he found his gardener there, walking through. "Have you seen the Lady Cassandra?" Basilio asked.

  The old man grinned and dipped his head toward the orchard. Basilio clapped him on the back and ran, his heart in his throat, ducking branches and leaping over roots and rocks.

  Then he saw her, reaching for a plum in a tree, her hair unruly from dancing and the hands of little girls.

  She saw him and must have sensed his intensity. In concern, she took a step toward him. "Basilio, what is it?"

  He had thought that a poet in love should deliver the most beautiful of first kisses. But there was no grace in him now.

  Without speaking, he moved to her, a sense of something beyond heat, beyond desire, rushing through him. It seemed as if the air crackled, as if she glowed. He reached for her, and putting his hands on her face, bent and kissed her.

  Kissed her full on the mouth, with all the longing he'd hidden. A roar came into his ears, the hugeness of his need for her, for the taste of those lips, and the smell of her and the feeling of her hands flying up around his neck.

  He wanted to be skilled and patient and kind, but it was impossible. The kiss blazed, igniting him and her, and they kissed with hungry, open-mouthed need, inexact and brilliant.

  When dizziness overwhelmed him and he had to breathe, he pulled back and put his forehead against hers. Her hands fell to his wrists and he heard her breathing, felt it on his chin.

  He closed his eyes and opened them and she still stood there, and he was flooded with a sense of deepest gratitude, a sense of relief so vast it nearly buckled his knees. He had very nearly let her go.

  "I am not married yet," he said, thinking of her vehement feelings about husbands. "And we have this little time, yes? None will be harmed if we are lovers." He pressed his mouth to hers again. "I cannot bear to let you go so easily."

  She pressed back, making a soft cry. "Basilio, there are things you should know of me, if we are to take this path."

  "No. This is all I need to know." He bent to capture her mouth again, softer this time. "That I have been looking for you all of my life, and God brought you to me." Swaying with relief and passion, he kissed her again, slowly, inviting her to meet him. He put his hands in her hair, breathed her breath. It was too deep for words, so he said none, only kissed her, and kissed her, and she kissed him back, there under the pale silver dawn.

  And then, suddenly, he felt her drawing away. "Basilio," she whispered, a protest. She stepped completely out of his embrace and backed away from him. A hand fluttered to her chest. She stared at him, her eyes unreadable, a flush high on her cheekbones. "I… this…" She shook her head. "This is rash.

  We should sleep."

  Basilio swallowed, reining in his sense of urgency. "Of course," he managed. "Forgive me. I lost my head."

  "No forgiveness," she whispered. "I… only… I must sleep just now."

  Before he could speak again, she fled, disappearing into the fog. He watched until the last of her hem swept over the lawn, disappearing beneath a shrub.

  Had he been too rash? It was a failing of his, as his mother had often told him. He wandered through the trees, plucking leaves like a lost boy. Did she not return his feelings? Perhaps wine and passion had made him a fool.

  Head down, he came into the courtyard and looked up to the balcony of her room.

  Where she stood, her hair loose over the arms of her dressing gown, looking down at him. She was as straight and slim and pale as a candle. He stopped, stricken. She gazed at him for a long, long moment, then bent over the balustrade and held out a hand to him, a gesture of invitation.

  He had frightened her! So simple. What grown man rushed like that to kiss a woman, after all?

  He would wait. Let sleep cool his ardor a little. Putting his hand over his heart, he put his other to his lips and sent the kiss flying up to her. She kissed her own hand and sent one back to him. And still he only stood there, drinking in the sight of her until she drifted in, to that gold embroidered bed where he wished to be. * * *

  A bird, whistling from the balcony, woke Cassandra. The sight of it, pretty and small and black, singing on the stone rail, a backdrop of greens behind it, seemed so much an image from a dream that for a long time she only blinked at it, lazy and comfortable on her stomach in the big bed.

  She did not move so much as a toe, letting everything slide slowly back into her head. A head, she noticed with some pleasure, that did not hurt at all, but only danced with vivid images from the festival.

  Basilio.

  A ripple went through her, an echo of the fierce, startled hunger she'd felt, seeing him hurtle down the hill so intent on her, his hair and sleeves flying behind him. And then his strong hands with their calloused palms hard on her face, and his mouth urgent and hot and tasting of woodsmoke from the bonfire. Never in all of her life had a man looked at her that way, as if he would die if he did not kiss her.

  Shifting in the nest of covers that were as rumpled as if she'd had a lover in her restless bed with her, she reveled in the strange stinging sensation the memory brought with it, living it over and over in her imagination.

  After a time, she washed and called for breakfast. A servant brought chocolate in a silver pot and fresh bread, which she carried to the little table by the window.

  It was very warm, despite the breeze coming through the open French doors. Feeling wickedly free, she shed her dressing gown and sat eating, clad in only her nightrail. Through the windows she could see the hills, and a thick, hazy light hanging over them. She though
t of the festival last night, and Basilio kissing her in the orchard, and the plums he carried to her from those trees… and suddenly felt the most glorious sense of happiness that she wanted to laugh out loud. Or dance. It was a pure, uncomplicated happiness, asking only to be embraced, today.

  Humming under her breath, she found her box of writing materials and cut a fresh point on her pen.

  Sipping chocolate, nibbling on the rich, crusty bread, she began to write, intending at first only to capture her impressions, so she might collect the notes later into something more coherent. She couldn't even think what, just now—perhaps a letter or an article, or even a simple journal.

  But as she jotted notes about this thing and that, she lost herself in each one. The sea water swirling over her toes, and how close she'd felt to her father, the delightful food Basilio kept feeding her, and then the festival last night, which had been one of the most beautiful, stimulating things she'd ever seen.

  I feel quite unlike myself, she wrote, and the change is quite exciting. I feel I can do anything, be anyone I chose to be. Or perhaps it is only that I feel fully myself for the first time in many years, as if that brave child I once was, who did not mind her own company, and crept through the forest to watch slaves dancing, has returned, stretching her limbs in readiness for anything, anything, that might occur. She embraces strangeness, the girl in me, embraces beauty and light and even the possibility of love and even sex. Sex as I dreamed it might once be, not as it was revealed.

  She paused and touched her mouth, wondered if she were brave enough to even write about that kiss.

  Tossing back a heavy handful of hair, she dipped her pen.

  And now, Basilio. What will I remember of him when I must leave this enchanted place? His beautiful hair, tumbling free around his face as he played with the dog on the beach. The white arch of his bare foot. The taste of his kiss, like plums, like morning, like all the magic that has ever been in the world. I had not known a kiss could be like that.

  It is Basilio, born of this golden light and the sensual feast that is his country, who has freed me, introduced me to this new side of myself. How did he know she lurked all this time within me, when I did not know myself?

  She smiled, so very, very pleased, and scattered sand over the ink, put down her pen, and stretched luxuriously in the warm room. Suddenly aware that she felt damp and sticky, she called for a bath.

  And even that was a wondrous discovery, a discovery of her own body. She grew aware of it in a way she had not been since earliest adolescence had turned her scrawny scarecrow of a body into something softer and amazingly more interesting. As she bathed, she was aware of the whiteness of her thighs and the weight of breasts bumping her arms; she noticed the crook of her elbows and the joints in her toes. A queer, sinuous something kept moving under her skin, making her feel both exhilarated and uncomfortable.

  As she sat letting Kate put up her hair, she looked at her own mouth in the mirror and saw that it seemed very red. That brought a shocking and heady vision of a naked Basilio to her mind—those strong shoulders and his naked ankles, and everything in between. It made the restlessness under her skin tremble, and she shifted irritably, making Kate pull her hair. "Sorry," she muttered.

  As a widow, Cassandra could have taken a dozen lovers by now and no one would have blinked. She'd certainly had her fair share of aspirants for the position, some of them quite handsome and witty. She had never wanted any of them. Didn't want their hands on her, their wet lips soiling her, their grunts in her ears.

  But when Basilio had kissed her the way she'd longed to kiss him, there had been no reserve in her—

  only a rushing need to join to him, to press herself as close as possible, to inhale him. His tongue had thrust inside and her knees had nearly buckled with desire. His breath and her own had grown harsh and needy, and it had only seemed natural.

  But he'd clasped her closer and closer, and she'd suddenly become aware of the rigidness of his sex jutting into her belly, and a cold, tight terror had closed her throat, choking off her joy. She had run away, bewildering him, she knew.

  But when he'd wandered into the courtyard below the balcony, she'd been awash again with heat, longing for him, especially because of the despondent look on his face.

  Hot and cold. But at least the heat held promise. A promise of healing.

  The maid finished with her hair and Cassandra dismissed her. With a pounding heart, she went to peek over the balcony and see if Basilio awaited her, or if he still slept. When she saw that the courtyard was empty, her disappointment was sharp and deep.

  She backed away from the balustrade, putting a hand to that erratic beat of her heart. Wanting him, not wanting him, delirious one moment, terrified the next. Was she falling in love with him?

  The answer was absurdly obvious: of course she was. She had been in love with him long before they ever met. He'd engaged her heart and soul with a rare beauty of spirit. Long before she had heard his voice, long before she'd ached to touch his hair, she had loved the man she'd grown to know in those letters.

  And even had she not known him before, was it not de rigueur to fall in love in Italy?

  Where would it lead? He was betrothed. She felt a pinch of guilt over that, but only a little one. If he had already been married she would not have considered a dalliance, but if she were gone before his bride arrived, there was no wrong on his part—not in a political alliance. And in truth, the very fact of his looming marriage made it safer.

  Freedom! A widowed young woman on holiday, a sophisticated and learned woman, might take a lover and merely count it as one of the great pleasures of travel.

  If, indeed, she could follow through on her wish to take a lover.

  Thoughtfully, she pulled the shawl into points at her belly, realizing for the first time how many scars her husband had left on her, left in dark places where they would never show. What if they were permanent scars? What if he had ruined her forever?

  All she had with Basilio was this small, golden space of weeks, here in this magic and beautiful world.

  The thought gave her a soft swell of melancholy. It was hard to imagine, even now, what it would be like to return to her old life. She felt much changed in the space of a few days. How much more change would be wrought in weeks? And how much more by a lover's hands?

  Moments, Basilio said. She would take them with her, safely tucked into the folds of her mind, where no one could ever touch them.

  Moments. She would enjoy what this moment, this very night, would bring. She would not allow memories of her husband to steal her joy in Basilio's touch. She would not let fear of her own shifting perspective sully the beauty of this place. For now, she would think only as a poet, alive to her senses and the beauty of moments.

  When she arrived downstairs, she smelled freshly baked bread and roasted meat, and it made her mouth water. Peeking outside to the courtyard, she saw with disappointment that it was still empty. From a room to the left came the sound of servants and glassware tinkling. She drifted in that direction, trailing her shawl, peeking into rooms as she went.

  A woman came from the room at the end of the hall. "Good evening!" she said to Cassandra. "I am to bring you to the library, he said."

  Basilio came out then, calling an order over his shoulder. He wore a dark coat and waistcoat, breeches and tall boots. His hair was caught back from his face, brushed into submission. He looked every inch the Count, powerful, controlled, serious—all but the betraying smears of ink on his fingers. She grinned.

  When he spied her his expression changed, going swiftly between joy and consternation. "Ah good! You are awake."

  Some current pulled her to him, but another held her where she stood. The servant, perhaps sensing the tension, scurried away, shaking her head. Cassandra looked up at him, wondering what to say. "Good evening."

  He put his hand on his chest. "I—this—" He shook his head, and she would have vowed there was a flush on his face, making his
lashes seem even thicker, darker. "I hope you will forgive me, Cassandra, for my heedlessness last night. This morning."

  "Forgive you? No, I cannot do that."

  His head came up abruptly. "No?"

  "That would mean confessing how wicked I was, and you made me promise I would not."

  A smile broke his soberness, a smile of relief and pleasure. "Then we are again in good accord. I worried all night that you would run away."

  She could only look at his mouth, at the movement of his finely cut lips against the whiteness of teeth, at the glimpse of his tongue, forming the words. "No," she said softly.

  "I thought we might eat in the house tonight." An soft incline of his head. "Not alone."

  "The servants as chaperones?"

  He clasped his hands behind his back. "It seemed wiser."

  His eyes held earnestness mixed with sensuality, a combination that made Cassandra feel oddly weak.

  "What a good man you are, my Basilio," she said quietly. "I felt it in your letters, but I have not known a man with so much kindness."

  "It is not kindness," he said, and there was a hint of darkness in those words. "I do not wish to frighten you, not ever." He bowed with exaggerated manners over her hand. "Come! You must be very hungry indeed."

  "Oh, yes! And it smells magnificent."

  "No pain in the head?"

  She slapped his arm lightly with her fan. "You were not to mention my indiscretion, sir."

  "But where is that bold woman who said we should be drunk sometimes? I liked her. Send her back to me, immediately."

  Cassandra chuckled as they entered the grand room, heavily ornate with dark woods and heavy hangings and an enormous chandelier dripping with crystal. "Oh, my! You could entertain all of Tuscany in this room."

  "Yes," he said with a weary sigh. "I have never liked it. We came here sometimes when I was a child, and it always seemed strange to me that a feast and ball should begin in a dark room with no view of the mountains or the sea."