“He’s all hot and sweaty, Mommy.” Bryony looks at her mother with tears in her eyes. “He doesn’t know who I am.”
“He will, as soon as he wakes up. It’s the fever, darling. He doesn’t know what he’s saying or where he is or who anybody else is, either. We must be patient, and stay here quietly until he gets better.”
“Can I stay with him every day?”
“Yes, for a little while every day, after school. You can do your homework here and we’ll keep talking to Uncle Guy, and soon he’ll wake up because he hears your voice. The doctor said that’s the best thing we can do.”
I think the nurse is about to have a fit when she hears this. Belladonna stares at her, eyes ablaze, until she turns her head away in embarrassment.
“That’s a good idea, Mommy. Can Susannah come, too?”
“We’ll have to ask Susannah’s mommy about that,” Belladonna says lightly. “Now give Uncle Guy a kiss so he can get better, and say good-bye, because we don’t want to wear him out.”
Bryony leans over the bed and gives him a kiss, then giggles. “His beard is all prickly,” she says. “He looks like a pirate.”
“You can tell him that when he wakes up.”
“Now you give him a kiss so he can get all better, Mommy,” Bryony states.
Belladonna has no choice. It is the first time her lips have touched a man’s cheek since"
Since Leandro.
As Guy lays dreaming, looking like death, we sit in the room with the nurses recommended by Dr. Greenaway. Our favorite soon becomes the very proper yet slightly less crabby Nurse Sam, who usually has the late-afternoon shift.
“Her name is Nurse Sam, like your doll,” Belladonna tells Bryony.
“Is she a boy under her dress?” Bryony asks.
Belladonna stifles the urge to laugh. “No, darling, her name is really Samantha,” she replies. “And we have to listen to her, and do everything she tells us to.”
Nurse Sam is rather square and stout, but capable and devoted to her feverish charge. I wonder who I can fix her up with. Templeton, the chauffeur, perhaps? Firkin in the stables? I am fixating on my matchmaking skills as a diversion, especially after reading a letter from Jack that Belladonna handed me earlier in the day. Jack’s going to marry Alison in a few months, and he asks for our blessing. How splendid. Bryony can be one of the flower girls and I can get a lovely new suit.
“Are you glad?” I ask Belladonna. “I know I am. But he wasn’t in love with me.”
“He was in love with someone who didn’t exist,” she says wearily. “This is a load off my mind, Tomasino. Truly, it is.”
“I understand,” I murmur, waiting for more.
“He deserves a good woman who loves him. I’m happy for him,” she says. I think she is protesting a bit too much.
“What about Guy? Is he a good man?” I venture to ask.
Her face sets in its familiar blankness. “I don’t know,” she says after a minute. “I hope so, if only for Bryony’s sake.”
“Hugh knows that Guy’s a good man. As does Laura. Surely that means something.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Nothing,” I say, all innocence. She’s clearly in one of her moods. Guy has always had a strange effect on her, and his presence in our house, even though he’s still practically comatose, is a disruptive one.
For the first time in a very long time, you see, Belladonna doesn’t know what to do about someone. Worse, that someone is a man.
She tells me she wants to be left alone, but she is spending more and more time in Guy’s room, sitting with Bryony or reading in a rocking chair she’s brought in from the veranda. She helps the nurses, and watches over Guy as if he were her own child. I can’t describe how surprising and lovely it is, watching her watching him. She is softening because of Guy, the ramparts carefully constructed around her heart crumbling as each day passes, and it scares her almost as much as the thought of His Lordship does. Perhaps it’s because Guy is helpless, burning with fever in the yellow bedroom as he calls out his dead sister’s name in his delirium, and she doesn’t have to fear him or talk to him. Perhaps it’s because Bryony loves him so.
Or perhaps it’s because Belladonna is tired of fighting, of planning and plotting. She doesn’t talk to me about the Pritch’s progress, not the way she used to. She is focusing instead on Guy’s precarious health, especially now that he is, finally, starting to get better. He is still very weak, his muscles and joints aflame with achiness, but every day a bit more of his energy comes back, and we no longer have to burn his sheets and wear masks on our faces.
I am feeling very lonely.
Our routine changes in the ensuing weeks. Bryony comes home from school, flings her books down, runs up the stairs and into the yellow bedroom where her mother is already sitting. She tells Uncle Guy everything that’s happened that day. Then she goes back downstairs for a snack, to see Susannah, to play outside. We have dinner on the veranda if the weather is warm. Bryony and Belladonna go back up to Guy’s room, where Bryony does her homework, then switches roles and reads him a bedtime story every night Belladonna pulls her rocking chair close to the bed, to listen. Guy’s sitting up now, and eating more. Something’s changing in him, too. I can no longer picture this gaunt, pale man romping merrily in the hay or holding court in the Club Belladonna. He used to talk easily and sarcastically, with a savage and trenchant wit about life and love. Now he says little. Doesn’t that sound rather awfully familiar?
Sometimes I’d swear that he and Belladonna are courting telepathically.
One night after Bryony has gone to bed and the night nurse is dozing in front of her television set in the next room, Guy stretches out his right hand to Belladonna. She looks at it for a moment as if it were some alien creature, then picks it up and peers carefully at his palm, tracing the lines with her nail. She frowns slightly.
“You have lines of restlessness, and of travel,” she says. He smiles. What a surprise. “But you also have a very deep influence line,” she says. “Deeper than your life line.”
“What does that mean?” he asks. His voice is still rather croaky, which I think makes him sound unbelievably sexy.
“It means that the incoming influence will be a forceful one,” she replies.
“What else? What about my heart?”
She looks up at him, bites her lip, then looks back down. “Your heart line starts high up, which shows an emotional vulnerability that is often masked behind a hard or callous exterior.”
“Like Belladonna’s,” he says.
“What?” she asks. “What do you mean?”
“She always wore masks. Who knew what she was thinking?”
“Who indeed.” Belladonna’s frown deepens. “But why did you mention her just now? Do I still remind you of her?”
“You remind me of no one but yourself.”
“I don’t want to be myself,” she says, without realizing what’s slipped out. Nor does she realize that her fingers are still tracing the lines on his palm. She’s never read anyone’s palm before without her gloves on.
“Why not,” he says softly. He encircles her slim fingers with his hand.
“I can’t tell you.”
They can’t tear their eyes off each other. I don’t know why, but for some crazy reason they remind me of Matteo practicing his silent magic tricks when we lived at Leandro’s.
“Please,” he says. “Try. Tell me. Tell me what’s in your own palm.”
“Treachery,” she says. Her face shifts almost imperceptibly in the soft buttercup light, as if some strange transparent mask had wafted its way in and settled on her features. But it’s not hard and cold like her habitual mask of frozen politeness. I can see through it, Guy says to himself. I can see through the mask to the other side, because I love her.
He won’t let go of her hand, half-expecting her to start panicking, but she doesn’t. She knows he hasn’t got the strength to overpower her.
After a few minutes, he sighs and releases her. “I would never hurt you,” he says. “You saved me. I owe you my life. I’d do anything for you, and not just to repay you for curing my fever.” His cheeks are flushed. “Do you know, Laura once told me that Leandro wrote her, claiming that you said he saved you. And now you saved me.”
“I haven’t thought of it like that.”
“Then why are you so afraid of me?” His voice deepens to an even raspier croak. “Do you know how it feels to be feared by a woman so dear to your heart?”
Belladonna shakes her head.
“Were you afraid of your husband? Did Leandro hurt you?”
She looks shocked. “Leandro hurt me? Of course not. Why would you ask such a thing?”
“Because you can’t bear to be touched,” Guy says. “Just now, it’s the first time you’ve touched me.”
“It’s not because of Leandro,” she says. “Laura will certainly tell you that, too. Leandro did save me.”
Please, my darling Belladonna, please keep talking. Tell him everything, don’t clam up now. He can help you; he can help us. We need him, he’s so good for you, oh, please.
“Saved you from what?”
Belladonna starts laughing. It is like the laugh I heard the first time I talked to her, when I told her about Mr. Lincoln. A short, barking kind of bitter laugh, verging on the hysterical. It wakes up the dozing night nurse, who comes in, tells them to settle down and be quiet, then goes right back to her television.
“I’ve never met anyone as persistent as you are, Guy,” she says to him when she quiets down. “You’re like Casseopeia and Hector fighting over a bone.”
Like Andromeda, he wants to say, but he doesn’t. His eyes glisten as he bites his lip. “Must be my indisputably inquisitive personality,” he says instead, trying to make a joke.
Oh ho, the clever boy is starting to sound like me!
“I doubt it,” she says, and stands up. “It’s time we both went to bed.”
“I am in bed,” he says in a sad, small voice. “You saved me.”
“I think you’re confusing me with my daughter,” Belladonna says. “She decided that you absolutely had to get well. Do you remember anything she said to you when you were delirious?” Guy shakes his head no. “She’d sit in here and talk to you for hours. She’d bring Sam"the doll, not the nurse"with her and have long discussions with him about all the things you were going to do together as soon as you got better,” Belladonna goes on. “You’re going to teach her how to ride, you know. And then you’re taking her to Ceylon so she can squash all the bad mosquitoes infected with dengue fever with her flyswatter.”
Guy suddenly looks like a little boy, waiting for his mother to kiss him good night. I think Belladonna realizes this, because before she can stop herself she leans down to brush her lips on his forehead. She’s never done that before either, at least not when he was awake.
“Don’t leave me,” he whispers.
“Go to sleep, Guy,” she whispers back. “You don’t know what you’re asking me to do.”
“Yes I do.” He is still whispering. “Promise me you won’t leave me.”
“You can stay here till you’re well"you know that. For as long as it takes.”
It is going to take forever, he wants to say, but he closes his eyes and pretends to sleep.
Weeks turn into months and Guy becomes as much a part of the landscape as the tenants and the animals. As soon as he can start getting up, Belladonna gives him an intricately carved walking stick I’d asked Baines to sculpt. Together, they go walking every day, at first only the length of the veranda, and then farther and farther. When he is stronger still, he starts gingerly riding our tamest nag, the mastiffs following and Bryony trotting beside him on Pablo, the latest addition to our menagerie. Pablo is the shaggy-haired pony Guy bought his little darling, and he drives Basilico mad with jealousy.
I get over my funk, and Guy becomes a sort of Matteo and Jack substitute for me, the man about the house I’d been longing for. We talk for hours, about liars and lovers and the potions Pompadour liked to drink and all the places he’s been. One chilly evening when Belladonna has gone to bed early with a headache, I find Guy, sit him down in the Meditation Room, and ask if I can trust him, really trust him. He regards me with a funny expression on his face, then tells me I have his word of honor, that he is forever indebted to my hospitality and is willing to swear on it.
“You needn’t go quite that far,” Lsay, trying to tease him.
“What’s the matter?” he says.
“I have a story to tell you. An unpleasant story.”
“What happened to you in the war"that story?”
Of course that story. It’s easier telling it this time, though, without Matteo’s stony face and Annabeth’s tearful sympathy to distract me. Botheration. I really am getting much too maudlin in my pseudo-dotage.
“I am very sorry, Tomasino,” he says when I’m through. “I wish I could do something for you.”
I pour myself another drink. “So do I.”
“I’d like very much for you to tell me how you met the Contessa, though. I know it’s all tied together somehow, but I’ve absolutely no idea how.”
“She has to tell you that herself.”
“Ah, so you don’t really trust me after all.”
“But I do,” I reply, “because you haven’t told the Contessa that you’re sure she’s really the infamous Belladonna”
Guy’s eyes widen in astonishment and he laughs heartily for the first time in a very long time. “Why, Tomasino, you sly devil,” he says, pouring me a drink. “I salute your superior skills.”
“What skills could you mean, kind sir?” I ask, beaming.
“I’d have been a rotten spy,” he says. “I reveal myself too quickly. You, on the other hand, have a natural talent for… hmmm, what exactly? For concealment. Kindly do forgive me for saying so, but the Contessa has trumped you there.”
“Couldn’t agree with you more.”
“Trumped about what?” she asks. As usual, she has appeared without a sound. Honestly, she really can be so vexing sometimes.
“Trumped about secrecy,” I say brightly. “About all the dastardly secrets of Casa la Fenice.”
“Ah yes,” she says sarcastically. “We are a world-famous hotbed of intrigue.”
“My bed is cold,” Guy says. I’m glad to see he’s back to his old self.
“That’s not funny,” Belladonna snaps.
Oh ho, what a state she’s in. Time for me to make a swift exit.
“Is your headache worse?” I ask gently as I get up to leave.
“I’m fine, thank you,” she says, her voice barely softening. “I’m just tired.”
Tired of waiting. Tired of wanting. Tired of not knowing what to do about the man sitting before you with a heart as near to breaking as your own.
“Would you like a drink?” Guy asks as she sits down and nods. She still can’t admit how much she wants to be with him. That he doesn’t scare her anymore, even though it is nighttime and dark and they are together in the same room in her house.
He is careful not to touch her fingers when he gives her the glass. He never touches her, she realizes, as he sits down in the chair opposite her own. He won’t touch her unless she asks him to. He loves her so much, he won’t"
“Leandro is not Bryony’s father,” Belladonna blurts out suddenly.
Guy smiles at her with the utmost tenderness, knowing what this admission has cost her. “I know,” he says very gently, to her amazement. “I know because Laura told me how she met you, at Merano, and you already had Bryony then. But thank you for telling me. You must"”
“What else do you know?” she cries, her mood instantly shifting. “Has Tomasino or anyone else said anything? Have they"”
“No,” he says quickly, interrupting her this time. “Not a word, I promise you. He’s a gem, Tomasino is, and on the rare occasion when I’ve asked him anything, he’s always told
me to direct all inquiries to you. Which I didn’t dare, obviously. Did I?”
She doesn’t reply.
“Did I?” he presses.
“No,” she concedes. “But what else do you know?”
Guy remains silent for a moment; then he can’t stand it any longer. “I know that you’re Belladonna,” he says.
“You’ve tried this already,” she says, her voice resigned.
“I don’t recall exactly when I was sure, only that I am,” he goes on, ignoring her. “It’s much more than your green eyes, of course, although I think they are the most extraordinary eyes in the world. Nor is it that you lived in New York and possess the wherewithal to have set the whole operation in motion. Or that Bryony talked about her Irish wolfhound, Dromedee, which sounds suspiciously like a child’s version of Andromeda. It’s the way you move and the way you hold your head and the way you listen. You must have listened to all those women who came to you for help in much the same manner.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she mutters.
“Perhaps not,” Guy says, “but the dead giveaway was a few weeks ago, when it was unexpectedly hot. I had just gotten up from a nap and I came downstairs and you were on the veranda, fanning yourself. It was the way you snapped your fan shut that did it. Only one woman in the world could snap a fan in such a manner.”
“Undone by a fan, am I?” she asks sarcastically.
“I know you won’t lie to me,” he says sadly.
“I don’t want to lie to you, Guy,” she says. “I never did.”
“Can you look me in the eye and tell me you’re not Belladonna?”
She looks at him and sees nothing but his melting tenderness mingled with a terrible fear that she is going to run away and never look back. She opens her mouth to try to speak, but she can’t.
She was like that, speechless, once before, in Belgium. When we first met, when she couldn’t"
Guy gets up and walks over closer, then kneels before her. “Upon my honor, I will never tell a soul,” he says.
“Get up,” she says, “I can’t bear to see you on your knees.”
But he doesn’t move, and she no longer can control her hands, the very same hands that had snapped the fan shut in despair. She reaches out to trace the line of Guy’s jaw with her fingers, and at the surprising touch of her skin his eyes fill with tears.
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