by Cach, Lisa
The box was tied shut with a royal blue ribbon, and written across the front in gold script was the name Patrice, and beneath that, in small, elegant letters, chocolatier. It looked like an expensive box, and one—dare she hope it?—that had not been opened and its contents consumed. She stared at the box a moment longer, as if waiting for it to speak and offer itself in sacrifice, then reached over and picked it up.
It was heavy with promise.
Reality briefly intruded in her mind, shouldering aside the hunger. Surely no one would abandon such a treasure on a train? Eliza half stood, peering over the tops of the seats at the rest of the train car. There was no one moving about, no one who looked as if her heart were breaking for loss of chocolates.
She sat down again, the box heavy in her lap, and considered the royal blue bow with its satin sheen, and the gold paper seal beneath it, unbroken. Her stomach gave a loud, gurgling groan, twisting itself in agony, and suddenly she heard the voice of Sister Agnes of the Immaculate Conception, her supervisor at Sacred Heart Hospital, chiding her in her head.
"Nourishment, Eliza. The body's first need is nourishment. One does not nourish the body with chips, cupcakes, and candy bars."
But I don't have anything healthy to eat, Eliza silently protested. And I missed both breakfast and lunch. It's not good to fast.
"You have an energy bar in your bag," Sister Agnes said. "A dietician should know better than to even consider a box of chocolates as her first meal of the day."
The energy bar tastes like gummy sawdust.
"Eliza! Take your hand off that ribbon!"
Sugars and fats are a part of the food pyramid.
"A very small part, Eliza. Eliza!"
Eliza shut out the chastising voice as she pulled loose the ribbon, broke through the seal, and lifted the flaps. The first, luscious scent of chocolate wafted up to entrance her. "O brave new world," she whispered in awe, "that has such chocolates in't."
Her mouth watered as her shaking hand reached into the box and lifted out a piece of dark chocolate the shape of a marquise-cut diamond, each facet a glossy plane of bittersweet. She spared one last glance at the aisle, and for the approach of an irate owner, but no one appeared.
"Thank you," she said to whatever angelic forces had provided the box, and bit down.
It was like no chocolate she had ever tasted: rich, smooth, the flavor filling her mouth as the chocolate dissolved, melting cleanly away. The inside of the chocolate gem was a softer, truffle-like filling, with a faint taste of some unidentifiable spice to it.
She opened her eyes, surprised that she had closed them, surprised as well that she had already eaten the second half of the gem. Her stomach, having finally been set free of its fast, cried out for more.
A milk-chocolate piece came next, its center flavored with something alcoholic. There was another dark piece, whose flavor reminded her vaguely of tea. Three, four, five more pieces went down, each one making her senses cry out in joy. One was of white chocolate, with a candied violet pressed gently to its top. She almost hated to eat it, it was so pretty.
Down it went.
She picked out another of dark chocolate, and this time when she bit down was surprised by a liquid center. Kirsch dribbled onto her chin and over her hand, and she quickly shoved the rest of the piece into her mouth, filling her cheeks with brandied cherry and chocolate.
This was nothing like Grandma's chocolate-covered cherries. This one had the bite of real alcohol, the fumes filling her throat and nose, making her eyes water. She gave a little huffing cough and tried to chew, holding her sticky hand away from her dress.
“Non!" a deep, angry male voice said.
Eliza jerked her head toward the aisle and the furious man standing there. "Aah!" she cried around her mouthful, and then she felt a piece of cherry lodge in her throat. She slapped her sticky hand over her mouth as she started to cough, bending forward over the box, crunching it in her lap as she faced the floor, hacking, her face beginning to flame, a sweat of horror breaking out over her skin as the man angrily scolded her in French, too quickly for her to understand.
"You Americans," he said at last, switching to English. "You are American? Yes?"
She felt him tug on the box, squished between her torso and her thighs. Oh Lord, oh, good God, this was not happening. She should have listened to Sister Agnes. Her
back shook as she continued to cough, bits of chocolate hitting her palm.
She could feel the man looming over her. He had the looks of an old-time James Bond: dark-haired, beautifully dressed, polished in a way American guys could never manage, no matter their money. She heaved again, and the bit of cherry finally came loose.
She felt another tug on the box, and as she sat up the man pulled the crushed ballotin off her lap. She wiped at her mouth with shaking fingertips, and slanted a look up at him.
He stood with the box in his hands, peering into it, his face a mask of disbelief.
"You ate all but three? All but three?" he said in perfect, lightly accented English. "I was not gone more than ten minutes. How did you even have time?" His unbelieving gaze went from the decimated remains to her face.
Definitely James Bond, and with deep, sapphire blue eyes. Her stomach whined, as if it knew it deserved punishment. They had been evil forces that left those chocolates on the seat before her, evil! Angels had had nothing to do with it.
She wanted to crawl under her seat and curl into a ball. She wanted to throw up. She hunched her shoulders and gave a pained, apologetic grimace of a smile. "I was hungry," she said. "I thought someone had forgotten them."
"I should have thought it obvious this seat was occupied. Or did you think someone had forgotten his coat and bag, as well?"
Eliza craned her neck to the side and looked up to where he pointed, and saw on the shelf above the possessions of which he spoke. "Oh. I didn't see them," she said, feeling like an idiot. She looked at the cardboard tray full of food that he held. "There's a cafe car?"
He rolled his eyes. "Now she becomes a detective."
"I didn't know there was food on the train."
He exhaled in annoyance, glared at her, then fished around in a pocket and pulled out a snowy white handkerchief. "Clean yourself up." When she didn't respond he jiggled the hankie in front of her face, looking half away, as if he couldn't bear the sight of her.
She didn't want to take it, but there seemed no choice. "Thank you," she murmured. Her face must be smeared with chocolate, and he was treating her like a messy child. How much worse could this get? Her fingers stuck to the cotton, leaving pink and brown smudges on the pristine surface.
She watched as he moved in front of her and sat down in the seat opposite; then she ducked her head, turning to her backpack and fiddling with zippers and pockets until she found her stash of individually packaged towelettes. She used one to clean the last of the stickiness from her hands, then dared a longer look at the man.
He was carefully retying the bow on his deflated box, but when he saw her watching him his lips tightened. With a fingertip he brushed at an imaginary speck beside his mouth.
Eliza ducked her head again and wiped furiously at her lips.
When she had thoroughly cleaned off any last trace of chocolate, lip gloss, or concealor within two inches of her mouth she gathered her courage and looked him in the eye. She took a deep breath, and said what she had to. "I'm terribly sorry I ate your chocolates. I will gladly reimburse you for them, or buy you a new box, if you would prefer, once we reach Bruges."
Sebastian studied the disarranged, shamefaced little nun trying so hard to be brave, and knew he could not tell her that it had been that box of chocolates in particular that had been important, and that it would take a return trip to Brussels to replace it. "Do not concern yourself," he said instead, trying to suppress his annoyance.
"Isn't there some way I can repay you?"
"Please, think no more of it"
"I'll wash and return you hankie
, if you tell me where to send it."
"Keep the ‘hankie,’" he said brusquely. Hankie, really? He deplored the diminutive applied to otherwise helpless nouns: hankie, veggie, panty. It made adults sound like children. "Please," he added, when he saw that she was sinking further into her seat. "You will repay me best by speaking no more of it. It was, after all, just a box of chocolates." He tried not to wince.
She dropped her eyes and stared at the crumpled handkerchief in her hand for some moments before turning her face to the window. He doubted she was seeing the fields and trees go by. More likely she was mentally flagellating herself for eating his chocolates.
Her turned head did give him a chance to look her over more thoroughly. Her profile was delicate, her features gentle, like those of a Madonna. Perhaps that had been the reason for his nun fantasies of her, even more than the clothes. Her eyes were a pale leaf-green, almost blue, almost gray, limpid with naiveté.
Her thick hair, on the other hand, was disheveled, as if she had been running her fingers through it. When he had first come upon her devouring his chocolates, it had been like seeing a lion at the kill, face streaked with bloody gore, ravaging its helpless prey. Most un-Madonna-like.
But those dreadful clothes she wore! They were shapeless, hideous, concealing all but faint hints of what lay beneath. They spoke of a woman either embarrassed by or unconcerned with her own body. Luxuriating in his chocolates had probably been the most sensuous thing she had done in years.
"Are you traveling alone?" he asked suddenly.
She turned her wide eyes on him, suspicion now flitting through the leafy green. "At the moment," she answered.
Her voice was pleasant—soft, despite whatever violent scenarios she was now imagining. She probably thought he intended to follow her off the train and perform unspeakable foreign acts upon her innocent person. "I was a bit surprised, that's all," he explained in an offhand manner. "I see Australian women traveling alone, but not often American. I thought they usually went in pairs, or on tours."
"I was. Part of a pair, that is." Her nose wrinkled.
"Boyfriend?"
"How did you know?" She looked more surprised than she should, and then her face relaxed. "Oh, you mean was I traveling with a boyfriend? No. It was hers that caused the problem." She hesitated, and then went on. "Melanie and I had planned this trip for over a year. We started in London, then went to Paris. We were there for only two days when Melanie called home and found out that Craig, her boyfriend, had wrecked his motorcycle while riding it drunk. He wasn't hurt, but he lost his license, and Melanie flew home to console him and drive him around. So here I am." She shrugged her shoulders, apparently indifferent, but the tone of her voice had said quite clearly what she thought of Craig, and of Melanie's decision to go home to him.
He couldn't resist prodding her to see a bit more of that irritation flare in her too-innocent face. "Well, he is her boyfriend. It's her duty to be by his side in times of trouble," he said. "She should be willing to sacrifice everything for him. This could be the man she spends the rest of her life with, the man who fathers her children."
"Heaven save them if he does!" she cried. "She's known him three months, and already he's moved in with her. He doesn't do any housework, he's filled her garage with a broken big-screen TV and dirt bikes that don't run, and a week before we left he lost his job. What type of father for her children would he make? He hasn't even grown up himself."
Sebastian picked up one of his sandwiches and began to unwrap the plastic. "The love of a good woman can change him."
He heard her indrawn breath, and then when silence followed he looked up from his ham and cheese. She had narrowed her eyes at him.
"You're baiting me, aren't you?" she asked.
He gave her his best charming smile. "Would you like a sandwich? Crisps?” He held up the bottle of Perrier. "Water? You must be thirsty after all those chocolates."
Eliza tilted her head to one side, eyeing him narrowly. She was sorely tempted to lean forward and snatch that bottle from his hand. She resisted the impulse, and said instead in a falsely sweet voice, "I have an energy bar in my pack, if you would like to share it. It's quite nutritious, and contains thirty percent of your recommended daily allowance of fiber. Very good for your bowels."
He shuddered.
Eliza turned her head and looked out the window again, appalled with herself–had she really just mentioned bowels to him?–wanting to change seats but knowing the train was full. And it would be even more embarrassing, somehow, to get up and drag her pack down the aisle, away from him. Maybe she could sit still like an animal, and disappear.
But this was all his fault, really, when she thought about it hard enough. He had left the box unattended, and what man in his right mind left a box of chocolates unattended when there were females nearby? Then he taunted her with the water, and she was thirsty (thanks to his chocolates), so she could hardly help being rude.
Not that that was any excuse.
This man, this obnoxious, handsome man with a French accent like something out of the movies, was reducing her to an ill-mannered, petulant child. Where was the air of grace she tried to cultivate, and the calm, collected persona? What had happened to the ladylike composure she liked to imagine she had assembled from the pages of her mother's old etiquette book?
She had only to look at this man to feel insecure. He was so… so annoyingly sophisticated, sitting there in his crisp, yet elegantly rumpled clothing. She was painfully aware of the little crumbs of chocolate that had melted onto her own dress.
Perhaps she should take the other half of his sandwich. That would show him.
"Mayonnaise and cheese, both?" Sister Agnes chided in her head. "Eat the apple, if you're going to eat anything more of his."
Eat the apple? Too many associations there. Sin, temptation—I've had enough of that for one day.
"Do you really think they had apple trees in Eden? I suspect it was a fig."
Which made her think of fig leaves as the clothing of choice, and what Mr. Sartorial Statement there would look like with just a bit of green over his groin, and she couldn't look him in the eye, much less speak to him, for the rest of the trip.
Chapter Two
Eliza plopped her backpack onto the cobbles with a sense of desperation. She was not lost. Not exactly. She knew she was in the central market square of Bruges: the only problem was, each time she tried to leave it, she ended up back in it.
The tourist information office at the Bruges train station had been closed, and unfortunately that was where her guidebook had suggested she pick up a map to the town. The map in the book was hand-drawn, useful for major attractions, but useless for finding the address of her bed-and-breakfast, and she didn’t have a smart phone with her.
She sighed and looked around her, trying to appreciate the medieval facades of the buildings, the bell tower at one end of the square, the restaurants with their tables out front. It was a lovely town, truly it was, as charming and well-preserved as her guidebook said it would be, all canals and cobbled streets, but at the moment she wanted
to sit down and cry. She had been wandering the side streets for over an hour, and she was tired.
And getting hungry again.
She stared out over the square, mind going blank on what to do next, and then she saw him, strolling along perfectly at his ease.
She hefted the straps of her pack up over her shoulders and marched down the nearest side street off the square. She'd be damned if she'd give up and ask him for directions. The B&B was supposed to be only a few blocks from the square, anyway. She'd find the right street by the process of elimination, or die a starved bag of bones in the process.
Fortune smiled on her this time, and fifty feet from the square she saw a sign attached to the side of a whitewashed building, naming the street where her B&B was located. Five minutes later she was being ushered into the living area of the house by Maijet Vermeulen, her English-speaking Belgian l
andlady.
"Did you have trouble finding us?" Maijet asked. She was a middle-aged woman, tall and healthy looking, with sandy blond chin-length hair.
"Not really," Eliza said, unwilling to admit she had been lost for an hour. Maijet would wonder why she hadn't simply called, or asked someone for directions. Most Bruggians could speak English in addition to their native French or Flemish, or so her guidebook said. Eliza herself couldn't explain her own timidity on the matter.
Maijet gave her a set of keys, and outlined the time for breakfast and the rules of the house. She took Eliza's bag in one strong hand and led her out into the entryway, and then up the steep stairs.
"The cellars of the house date from the fourteenth century," Maijet explained as they climbed. "The house gets more modern the farther up you go."
They rounded the top of the stairs and started up a second, yet steeper flight of stairs. Maijet pointed out the bathroom on the next floor. "No showers after ten-thirty at night, please."
The final flight of stairs could barely even claim the name; “ladder” would have been more appropriate. The steps were planks of glossy blond wood, strung together by steel bolts. Maijet climbed them easily despite her skirt, but Eliza found herself grasping both the wobbly rope rail and her dress hem and crawling her way to the top.
"Do many people have accidents on stairs like these?" Eliza asked as she crawled onto the landing at the top and got to her feet. She peered back over the stairs, and guessed they had accomplished a ten-foot rise in about three feet of run.
"Not so many. You get used to them. These are not so steep as some. The house I lived in when I was a little girl, now that house had steep stairs." She opened a door and led Eliza into a bright, cheery room with a pair of windows in the low dormer. The bed was covered with an East Indian print, and like every other bed Eliza had seen in Europe, visibly sagged in the middle. There was a small table with a wooden chair, and a wrought-iron bookcase that held travel books and brochures.
"There is another bed in here," Maijet said, opening a cupboard door halfway up the wall, revealing a dark space, "but if you sleep in there be careful you don't hit your head."