For the most part, however, it was Dante who asked the questions, about Josh and his ambitions, about her duties as a political hostess, about how she liked them and why she didn’t. When he had teased her about a half-dozen things, from her refusal to take off her hat and show her flattened hair to her finicky method of eating crawfish, she retaliated by ribbing him about being a TV chef, admitting she had overheard the offer and his reply. She didn’t mention the pretty young things for whom he made breakfast omelets, however; that was getting a bit too personal.
They had finished eating and were sipping the last of their vin ordinaire, when he suddenly set his glass down and reached out to take her left hand. In a smooth motion, he turned it over, exposing her bruised wrist.
“What happened, chère?” he asked.
Anne felt the rush of color to her face. She tried to draw her hand away, but could not. “It’s nothing, really.”
“I suppose,” he said with irony, “that you hit it on the door.”
“Something like that.” She could not meet his eyes as she agreed. She should be annoyed at his prying, she knew, but somehow, without her quite noticing how, they had gone beyond that. Besides, there had not been so much warmth and concern in her life that she could rebuff it easily.
“You don’t like giving speeches, you don’t like being a political hostess, and you live with a man who apparently mistreats you. The obvious question is, why do you stay?”
“Well, there’s always been Josh. A boy needs a father when he’s growing up, and Edison is not really so bad at that.”
“Josh is grown now.”
“Too, it would do so much damage to Edison’s career. I would hate to be responsible for ending his chance to be governor.”
“I can see that as a reason for him to treat you gently, not for you to take abuse.”
“Maybe. Then there’s how Edison would take my leaving to consider. He wouldn’t accept it without a fight, and I’m afraid it could get…ugly. Besides, most of the lawyers I know are his friends and colleagues or else his political connections. It would be hard to find someone I could trust to protect my interests, someone I could be sure that Edison would not get to and influence in some way.”
“I see that you’ve at least thought about ending the marriage.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve thought about it.” She met his gaze then, and her own was pensive. “But I was brought up Catholic, and though I’ve strayed from it, since Edison has always insisted that I go to his Protestant church with him, it’s hard to get away from the lessons on the sacred nature of the marriage vows that I learned as a child. Besides that, marriages are peculiar things. They begin with love of one sort or another, and whether it lasts or it doesn’t, they take on a life of their own. Tearing one apart is a little like killing something. I’ve just never quite been able to bring myself to start the process.”
He brushed his thumb over the bruise with a feather-light touch. “You have to do what you think best, I guess. I’m sorry if I seemed to be prying into what doesn’t concern me.”
“No, no,” she murmured, nearly incoherent. His concern and understanding were like balm to a wound she had not, until that moment, admitted to herself that she had.
“If there’s ever anything I can do, chère, I hope you will let me know.”
Tears pressed with a bitter ache behind her eyes. She might have allowed them to fall from sheer weakness brought on by sympathy if she had not been distracted by the electric warmth of his fingers on her skin. Somewhere inside her she felt a strange giving sensation, as if some portion of her being had shifted. It was a disturbing feeling, one she was not sure she liked.
“You’re a phenomenon in your own right,” she said without looking up from their linked hands, “a truly kind man.”
He released her. “No, I’m not. If you listen to Riva, I have a colossal ego, the kind that makes me think I have to help everybody who comes along.”
“I don’t believe that.”
He gave a slight shrug. “It may be true, I don’t know. I just like people and hate to see them hurting.”
“There must be plenty who take advantage of you.”
“Sometimes, though I’m no sucker. At least, I don’t think I am. I know what some people are like; I also know that some just need a chance. I expect the best, and usually that’s what I get.”
Anne had heard Edison say that last line before, though he had been speaking of things rather than people. They were entirely different, Edison and this man. Edison was so fair and Dante so dark. Edison dominated her with his superior height, while Dante was only three or four inches taller and spoke to her as an equal. Edison talked of himself, whereas Dante’s interest was in his companion. Edison looked for people’s weaknesses; Dante for their strengths.
But Edison was her husband, and the morning had somehow slipped into the afternoon.
“I had better go,” she said.
“Yes, of course,” Dante said, and signaled for the waiter. “I’ll run you over to your hotel.”
“There’s no need,” she protested. “I can walk.”
“You could, yes, but don’t you think that chunk of bronze you bought might get a bit heavy?”
“That isn’t a chunk of bronze, I’ll have you know, but a valuable work of art!” She followed his lead back to their bantering with gratitude for his sensitivity.
“In that case,” he said promptly, “you don’t want to risk it by dragging it about the streets, now, do you, chère? I’ll take you to the hotel doors and consign your statue to the care of a hefty bellman. He’ll only drop it once or twice, I’m sure.”
She was relieved to know that he didn’t intend to go with her into the hotel. Meeting his steady gaze a moment later, however, she realized he knew that, and she was ashamed.
Dante paid their check. As they left the restaurant, he said, “I never did ask you what you mean to do with your little bronze man.”
“Cherub,” she corrected. “I have a garden room at home. There’s a place for him under a palm tree, one of those Victorian parlor palms. But I wish I had a courtyard for him like some of those tucked away here in the Quarter. They’ve always fascinated me.”
“Have they?”
There was a thoughtful inflection in his voice as he unlocked the car door and held it for her to enter. In reply to it, she said, “They’re so hidden away, like private pleasures.”
“Now that,” he said when he had walked around and settled into the driver’s seat, “is a provocative statement if ever I’ve heard one.”
Heat flooded her face. “I didn’t mean—”
A grin tugged the corner of his mouth as he cut her short. “I know, chère. Have you ever been in one—courtyard, I mean?”
She refused to rise to his baiting. “Only those that are part of restaurants, such as Brennan’s or the Court of Two Sisters.”
“Then you’re in for a treat. My apartment has one.”
He sat waiting with his hand on the key in the ignition. Anne stared at him, meeting the liquid blackness of his gaze with suspicion burgeoning inside her. She wished she knew what was in his mind instead of having to guess, wished that she had not been quite so sheltered during her married life so that she would know how to handle situations like this.
She checked such thoughts with an effort of will. There was nothing in Dante’s face to cause them, nothing at all. If he could accept that she had meant nothing salacious by her remark, then she could extend the same courtesy to him.
She tested a smile. “I would love to see your courtyard.”
It was located behind a house on one of the quiet back streets of the Quarter that Anne had always avoided. Dante called the place to which it was attached his apartment because he lived in the upstairs portion and used the lower floor as an office, but it was actually a house. It had a balcony skirted with black-painted wrought iron, pedimented doorways, thick wooden shutters that actually opened and closed, and a bronze plaque atte
sting to its historical past and, therefore, its present value. To reach the courtyard, it was necessary to go through a tall and solid door set into a brick wall, then down a narrow flagstone passageway edged with ferns and impatiens.
Dante left Anne in the courtyard while he went to ask his housekeeper to make coffee for them. She watched him disappear under the upper gallery that ran around the building and ascend the steps leading up to that railed overlook. After a moment, she heard the voice of the black woman who took care of him raised in cheerful compliance.
She gave a slight shake of her head. Not only was there a housekeeper present, but in the ultimate gesture toward honorable conduct, Anne was not, apparently, to be invited into the house. She had to smile at her suspicions.
It was warm in the court with the sun pouring down into it, heating the moss-edged bricks and slanting across the rosy brick walls. The heat was tempered somewhat, however, by the spreading shade of a pin oak and a golden rain tree and the quiet trickling of a tiered wrought-iron fountain. The green and white leaves of caladiums and the soft gray of dusty miller made cool patches here and there, while color was added by the crisp pink of begonias and more impatiens. Circling the tree trunks were dense stands of dark green aspidistra, while sheltering under the oak was a wooden perch holding a brilliant green parrot with a yellow head and touches of salmon-red and dark blue on its wings.
Anne walked over to the bird. Softly she said, “Hello there.”
The bird sidled closer, cocked its head, and gave a wolf whistle of piercing clarity. “Hello, pretty girl,” it said.
Anne laughed, enchanted. She reached to touch the parrot, but it sidestepped away, pausing just out of reach to eye her with orange-rimmed black pupils that contracted and expanded in some odd parrot rhythm. She talked to the bird for a few minutes more, then turned away.
There was a pair of chairs webbed with narrow white plastic and a marble-topped white metal table near the perch. Anne moved to one of the chairs and sat down, gazing around her. Somewhere nearby could be heard the sound of traffic, but it was only a distant murmur, no more disturbing than the soft breeze that rustled the treetops. A cardinal flitted to the fountain and took a drink. The wafting breeze brought a breath of gardenia fragrance from an eight-foot-high shrub at one end of the house. Anne leaned back in her chair. The parrot made a small clicking noise with its tongue and ruffled its feathers while fussing quietly to itself. With the gentle tinkling of the fountain, it was an oddly slumberous sound. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply.
She must have dozed, for when Dante spoke beside her she started, disoriented, as she opened her eyes.
“It is peaceful here, isn’t it?” he said.
“Very. And lovely. Thank you for inviting me.”
He had brought the coffee tray himself. It held a small-scaled silver coffee service, a napkin-covered cake stand of old gold-rimmed china with a pattern of pink roses, Waterford glasses with iced mineral water, and a Waterford bud vase holding a single pink rose. As he set the tray on the table beside her, he said simply, “My pleasure.”
She sat up straighter in her chair. “I like your parrot. It’s almost as charming as its master.”
“He must have whistled at you. He likes the ladies.”
“Also like his master?”
Dante shook his head with a grin. “Actually, it’s because it happens to be my housekeeper who feeds him and cleans his cage and sees to him when I’m away. Me, he tolerates for the sake of the unsuitable things I feed him, such as these tea cakes.” Dante removed the napkin from the cake plate to reveal the soft cookies. “He’ll be joining us any minute for his share.”
It was true. Using beak and claw, the shining green bird was climbing down from his perch. He arrived at Dante’s chair in time to clamber up his pants leg and perch on his knee. As Dante handed the parrot a piece of tea cake, the bird stood on one leg and held the cake in the other claw while he nibbled at its edges in a shower of crumbs.
“Can he fly?” Anne asked.
“Oh, yes, usually. His wings are clipped for the summer, so he can stay outside now and then without venturing too far.”
“What’s his name?” As she spoke, Anne gestured toward the coffeepot to ask if she should pour.
“Please,” Dante answered, then went on. “He’s called Cracker Jack, after his favorite food. He has a sweet tooth that won’t wait.”
She filled the coffee cups with care and added milk. The byplay with the bird had eased any awkwardness there might have been between them. Also, there was a soothing normality in what she was doing, as if she had done it a hundred times before. She had, of course, but not for this man.
“I really do love your courtyard,” she said, “and I especially like your house.”
“I thought you might appreciate it. I’m attached to the place myself, been here for years. I used to rent a room in it, ages ago. When the widow who was my landlady died, I bought the place from her heirs. Riva helped me restore it.”
“I might have guessed.”
His dark brows drew together slightly. “Guessed what?”
“That it was Mrs. Staulet who helped instead of a girlfriend or a wife. Have you never been married?”
He gave a small shake of his head. “No time, I suppose, and too little opportunity.”
“That can’t be right,” she said in disbelief.
“What do you think then, that I’m gay?”
She looked up at him, her eyes widening. “It never occurred to me. Are you?”
“No,” he said, his face lighting as he laughed at her reaction, “though I’m sure there are those who think it’s possible.”
“Yes, well, there are some who apparently know otherwise.”
He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head with an injured air. “If you are referring to what Miles from the TV station said, I deny it categorically. He makes me sound like a damned playboy! What I meant was that I’ve been so involved with the restaurant.”
“Except for when you are taking Riva Staulet around.”
“Yes.” The word was flat. He looked away.
There it was again, the refusal to be drawn about that woman. Anne wondered what Riva Staulet had done to be worthy of such protective loyalty. In an odd way, she envied her for it.
“Forget I mentioned it,” she said in subdued tones.
He lifted a brow as he turned back to her. “What? When you’re showing such a flattering interest in my love life? To tell you the truth, I spent so much time working in the early days that women were an afterthought. Lately they all seem either too young and thoughtless or else so jaded by the ripe old age of twenty-five that they make me feel like a schoolboy.”
“An altar boy, rather,” she murmured.
“What!”
She gave him a delighted smile, one as near to an outright grin as it was possible for her to come. “I thought you would appreciate that.”
He looked across the table at her for a long moment, then gave a pensive nod of his head. “I do, you know, in a way.”
The understanding between them seemed, for that brief instant, deep and immutable. Then he shifted his attention to the pink rosebud that sat on the tray. He reached for it, dried the stem on a linen napkin, and began to remove the thorns one by one. When it was safe for her to hold, he presented it to her.
“For you.”
Anne took the flower and lifted it to her face to inhale its sweet scent. It came to her as she breathed deep that everything Dante Romoli had done that day had been directed toward giving her pleasure. The shopping, the humor, the food, the hidden courtyard, his pet, the coffee and cakes, and now the rose, each was a small gift, a generous sharing of himself.
Slowly, almost against her will, the thought drifted into her mind that he would be no different in bed. He would tend to his lover’s needs and wishes with perfect care and infinite concern. Never would he willingly cause pain or take his satisfaction at another’s expense. The plea
sure of his love would be his pleasure.
Shock at the trend of her reasoning rippled along her nerves. She set down the coffee cup she was holding so quickly that it rattled in the saucer. “Now it’s really time for me to go,” she said.
Dante did not argue with her but put the parrot back on its perch, then escorted Anne to his car and drove her to the Royal Orleans. Their good-byes were said on the sidewalk. They were somewhat strained since Anne kept looking over her shoulder, afraid that Edison would be returning at any moment. She did not forget to thank Dante for the lovely day, however, or to give him her hand a final time.
She had wished him quickly gone, but the moment his red car pulled away from the curb, she thought of a dozen more things she could have said, wished she could say. At the same time, she was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to lie down.
Edison was nowhere in sight. The hotel lobby was quiet, nearly deserted at this hour of the evening, since it was past the hour for most check-ins, not quite time for the cocktail crowd. Anne followed the bellman bearing her statue around to the elevators, Together they stepped inside. The doors closed, and she gave a sigh of relief.
The bellman looked at her, saying, “It’s been a hot one today.”
She agreed, though privately she wondered if she looked as overheated as she felt.
“Tomorrow’ll be the same.”
She nodded. Yes, it would, and all the tomorrows after that. But there would never be another day like the one just past. Never.
It followed, then, that there was no reason to tell Edison about it. Still, she had never kept anything from him before. One reason had been that she was always so afraid he would find out, anyway, and the consequences would be twice as bad. Another was that she had little she wanted to keep secret.
She wanted this day. She wanted it as it had been, clean and free and filled with laughter, instead of having it besmirched, turned into something that she must think back on with shame.
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