Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection)
Page 9
He had come so close to taking her in his arms the night before. It had been all he could do to force himself to step away from her and take himself out of her room. He had no right to do more.
Even if he had the right, it would have been dumb. Impulses like that, as enticing as they might be, were not likely to help his mental alertness. He needed to keep his mind on the job. One way or another.
At the underground pool known as the spring of Minerva, he saw Joletta take out a coin and, like countless others before her, beginning with the Romans, fling it into the rippling pool.
Moving without haste to stand at Joletta’s shoulder, he said, “Did you make a wish?”
She turned her head with startled inquiry in her eyes. An instant later a smile curved her mouth. “Of course,” she answered.
“To Minerva?”
“It seemed the thing to do. There’s something pagan about the place, don’t you think?” Her gaze was a little challenging.
“I expect to see the shade of some old Roman any minute now,” he said.
“I’m sure,” she said in dry recognition of the humor in his gaze before she went on. “What are you doing here?”
“Watching you.” He had not intended to say that, but since it was perfectly true, he let it stand.
She gave him a quick, questioning look, then apparently decided to treat his comment as mere banter. “Have you no appreciation for history and culture, not to mention mythology?”
“You’re much more interesting,” he answered, on his mettle. “I’m also trying to place the perfume you wear. Tea Rose, isn’t it?”
She shifted to face him, giving him her full attention. “How did you know?”
“I have a good nose,” he said, and was immediately aware of how dangerous those words could be.
“You must have also smelled a great many kinds of perfume. I’m amazed.”
He looked away from her as he said, “Actually, it was a fluke. I — had a great-aunt who liked old-fashioned perfumes. My mother gave her Tea Rose every year for Christmas.”
She lifted a brow. “Are you suggesting my taste in perfume is old-fashioned?”
“Good Lord, no!”
“No?” The look in her eyes was teasing. “You know, men don’t, as a rule, have quite as sensitive a sense of smell as women. When you find one who does, you tend to take notice.”
“I’m glad there’s something about me that interests you,” he returned, then went on before she could say something depressing. “I suppose you’re with a tour group again?”
“In a manner of speaking. I came with a group on the bus, but we’ve been turned loose on our own until after lunch. You came alone?”
“Rental car,” he said in agreement and explanation. “Would you mind if I joined you for lunch? I’ll spring for the meal as an inducement.” He gave her his most boyish smile.
“Now, how,” she said with a lifted brow, “could I possibly refuse an offer like that?”
Rone thought of a bright answer, but decided not to press his luck.
An hour later Joletta lay stretched out on the grass with her face turned up to the sun. Her thoughts drifted back and forth between the past and the present, between the man who lay beside her and her own ancestress who had once passed this way.
It was too bad the weather had been so dreary when Violet had been in Bath; she might have found it more to her liking. Or maybe not. The company a person saw places with made a lot of difference.
Rone was a surprisingly pleasant companion. He was not only ready to see whatever there was to be seen without complaint, but he could make her laugh. He had said that it was impossible to understand the mentality of a people who had allowed Roman innovations such as self-cleaning bathrooms and steam heat to fall into disuse. He had also been amazed at gentry so at loose ends that they let a land speculator and ex-gambler like “Beau” Nash become social arbitrator of Regency Bath, dictating how they entertained themselves while in the town.
It was Rone who had chosen their food, from the Sally Lunn buns with cheese and the hot meat pies to the apricots that he claimed would be perfect with a bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne. He had sworn that he would treat her to a five-course lunch at the pump room if she didn’t like his menu, but there had been no need. The buns were yeasty and light, the meat pies suitably rich, and the flavor of the apricots had melded wonderfully with the champagne. Joletta even had to approve the setting he had found, a stretch of incredibly green grass they shared with a small flock of grazing sheep as fluffy and white as the clouds that drifted slowly overhead.
She didn’t know why she was surprised to find herself enjoying Rone’s presence. He had practically labeled himself a playboy, and men of that stamp made a career of being entertaining. Or so she had always assumed; she had never really met one.
Regardless, the idea of Rone being at loose ends, ready to forget his own obligations, was off somehow. He didn’t seem the type; there was nothing lightweight or frivolous about him. The little he had said about his job made it sound unimportant and that was also hard to believe. Not that she thought him a hard-driving captain of industry; that wasn’t quite right either. Why she should think so, she couldn’t say; she was no expert on men and their occupations.
It was odd, but Violet had also known very little about her Allain. It had not been the thing, back in those days, to come right out and ask a man, “Hey, what do you do?” A gentleman did nothing; that was the whole point. Moreover, a man’s status was supposed to be evident without a person having to ask. Life must have been full of pitfalls then.
Rone was so quiet, as he lay beside her, that she thought he had fallen asleep. She turned her head to look at him, allowing her gaze to follow the strong line of his jaw, the firm molding of his mouth, the wiry thickness of his brows. He was an attractive man, more attractive, even this close, in such clear light, than he had any right to be.
His features were relaxed, as if he had let the guard he kept on them at most times slip for a few moments. The lines at the corners of his mouth and beside his eyes were shallow, almost gone. He had shaved so closely there was a tiny nick at the indentation of his chin. His hands, well-shaped, with square-cut nails kept short and scrupulously clean, were folded on his chest.
The hair around his ears and just above the collar of his shirt of soft gray pima broadcloth was perfectly trimmed. On his wrist was a flat gold watch by Juvenia with a severely plain face.
There was a neat and classical correctness about his grooming and style of dress that was curiously appealing. It was also, she thought, far from cheap.
As he opened his eyes to stare straight into hers, Joletta felt a small leap of her nerves. He had not, apparently, been as relaxed as she thought.
Wariness made his gaze opaque for an instant before warm appreciation surfaced there. He said, “Was I snoring?”
She shook her head. “Not at all; I was jealous. I’m still trying to recover from jet lag myself.”
“Join me,” he offered. “I’ve got a shoulder you can use for a pillow.”
“Can’t. Too much to see and do.” She softened the refusal with a smile, at the same time aware of a pang of regret. The idea was amazingly enticing. To distract herself, she looked around where she was seated on their paper tablecloth for her guidebook, pushing aside a notebook and pen and a handful of tourist brochures to find it.
“I have to ask,” he said, “what’s with all the notes. You mentioned being a research librarian, I think. Are you doing some kind of paper on the monuments of Britain?”
“I just like details, and you never know when they might come in handy.” She answered easily, since it was a question she had already heard a few times from the people on her tour.
“While I’m at it, it’s also been puzzling me why you’re traveling alone. There must be a man in your life who could have come with you.”
She flipped the pages of the guidebook, giving it her attention as she answered, “No
t really.”
“No?”
“No.”
He was silent a moment, as if analyzing the timbre of her voice. Finally he said, “You have something against men?”
“Why would you think that?” she asked, surprise standing in her eyes as she looked up.
“Most women your age, especially women who look like you do, are married.”
“I was engaged,” she said lightly. “It didn’t work out.”
“The guy was a jerk, right? And you wasted so much time with him, and were so wrong about what he was like, that you don’t trust your judgment anymore.”
She considered it for a moment. “I don’t know about that.”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Annoyance crept into her tone. “He might have died in an accident or turned out to be gay.”
“But he didn’t, did he? What happened?”
“We dated for six years, and were engaged nearly that long. He thought we should save for our future, you understand. Then he decided he would rather have a new convertible.”
“Just like that?” Rone asked, frowning.
“Not quite, but close.”
The description Rone applied to the man who had been her fiancé was short and profane.
“Exactly,” she agreed.
“But just because he was a jerk doesn’t mean all men are like that.”
“I know that, thanks.” The words were dry.
“But it doesn’t help? Care to hear my sad tale?”
She gave a small shrug, her mind busy with trying to decide why she had spoken about Charles. As a rule, she never mentioned him.
Rone sat up and reached for the wine bottle. Dividing what was left in it between their two glasses, he handed Joletta hers and took a sip from his own. “My wife,” he said evenly, “didn’t stay around a full three years, much less six. She fell in love with her scuba instructor on a trip to Bora-Bora, and got involved with whale songs and Greenpeace and the fate of the oceans. She told me I was boring and my life was decadent before she went off to live with her beachboy in a grass shack on stilts.”
“You made that up,” Joletta accused him as she watched his face for the beginnings of a smile.
“I didn’t. Word of honor.” He held up a hand in a Boy Scout’s salute.
“I don’t believe it.”
“She sent me a picture of the shack. There was a monster crab the size of a small dog that lived under the back steps, and they could swim off their front porch or catch aquarium fish from it for breakfast.”
Joletta looked at the wine in her glass. “You don’t sound as if you mind.”
“I was a little hot for a while, but it passed. We both knew it wasn’t working. If two people aren’t right together, it’s better to find it out after three years instead of thirty.”
“I suppose,” she said slowly.
“Tell the truth, do you miss the guy you were going to marry?”
“Not really, not anymore.” She drank the last of her wine.
“Yes, and the sex couldn’t have been that great, either. He sounds too self-centered.”
She gave him a look from the corners of her eyes, but made no answer. He was more right than he knew.
“So forget him. He can only matter as much as you let him.”
“I’ll do my best not to go into a decline,” she answered in dry tones.
They were still while the grass around them blew in the wind and the spring sunshine grew warm on their faces. Joletta let her mind wander, thinking of old relationships, not necessarily her own. And about cravat pins that modern men never wore. It was some time before she spoke again.
“Rone?”
His response was a few seconds in coming, as if he had to rouse himself from his own long thoughts to make it.
She frowned a little before she went on. “Do you know anything about the Foreign Legion?”
“The what?”
“The French Foreign Legion. You know.”
“Beau Geste, holding the desert fort to the last man, all that Hollywood stuff?”
“I was wondering when it was established.”
“The middle of the last century at least, I’d say, going by the movies. What year, I couldn’t begin to guess.”
A slow nod was her only answer as she narrowed her eyes in concentration. Rone set aside his empty wineglass. “Want me to find out for you?” he asked after a moment.
“No, no,” she said with a quick smile, “it isn’t that important. I was just — thinking about something I read — and about a ring I saw once in an antique shop, one with an insignia that I was told was a symbol of the Legion. The design was a phoenix, the bird that rises from its own ashes. But I can’t quite remember if there was anything else around it, a coronet of leaves, for instance.”
“You mean laurel leaves, like the old Roman victors?”
“I suppose,” she agreed.
“I see the phoenix, for the renewed lives of so-called lost men. But I don’t know about the rest.”
“Never mind; it doesn’t matter.”
He sat looking at her with a suspended, almost bemused look in his eyes. She could follow his gaze as it touched her hair, the shape of her mouth, the curves of her body as she relaxed beside him, then returned to rest once more on her lips. Tension crept in upon them, holding them still. Joletta had the feeling that if she breathed too deeply, if she twitched a muscle or inclined her body even a fraction of an inch toward Rone, she would be in his arms.
The trouble was that she could not be sure whether the impulse was his or her own. Or whether she was wary of it or wanted it.
One of the sheep lifted its head and bleated.
A faint shiver ran over Joletta. She felt her heart give a small throb as she looked away. After a moment she glanced at her watch.
Rone drew back as he followed her gesture. “Yes, I know, time to play tourist again.”
“Afraid so,” she said, her voice subdued.
Joletta had thought that Rone might offer to drive her back to London, and she searched her mind for an excuse to refuse. She didn’t need one after all. He returned her to the square where the tour bus was parked moments before the buses began to reload. His manner distracted, he said something about looking for a place to make a phone call, told her he would see her the next day, then turned and walked away.
Joletta was relieved, but she was also irritated. Shaking her head at her own lack of logic, she settled back for the bus ride. She meant to catch up on her notes, but spent most of the time staring out the window, watching as the bright yellow fields of blooming rape and squares of new-plowed ground, the hedgerows and manor houses of England, glided past.
It was later, while she was dressing to go out on a pub-crawling tour, that the phone rang.
“This is your twenty-four-hour information service,” Rone said, his voice deep and shaded with humor as it came over the line. “I thought you might want to know that the French Foreign Legion was founded by King Louis-Philippe in 1831. Recruits, all foreign volunteers, sign up for five years; when they complete their hitch, they become French citizens. Names and pasts are forgotten, kept entirely secret. It was, and still is today, a mercenary force which swears allegiance, not to France, but to the Legion. Anything else you want to know?”
“The ring design?”
“Only a phoenix. No crown. Happy now?”
“Ecstatic.”
“I’ll be around early tomorrow. For my reward.”
He hung up before she could answer.
Joletta overslept the next morning. It wasn’t just because of the late hour she had returned to the hotel or the various kinds of ale she sampled at the different pubs, nor was it the walk around London’s West End in the wake of their cheery, red-nosed Dickensian guide. She had lain awake for a long time after her return, thinking about Rone and the coincidence of his being on the same plane arriving in London, and also his persistence in seeking her out.
She need not have wasted her energy. When she hurried downstairs, breakfastless, he hadn’t arrived. She kept watch for him until the bus for Westminster Abbey was ready to roll out of the hotel parking lot. When there was still no sign of him, she shook her head with a slightly crooked smile and went on as planned.
She missed him, missed having someone to exchange quips and irreverent comments with, someone to exclaim to or to soothe her complaints. In the afternoon, as she explored the terra-cotta splendor of Harrod’s on her own, she discovered that wandering through the various courts with their molded ceilings and marbled splendor was not the same without him. Tea in the Terrace Room on the emporium’s fourth floor was a fine way to satisfy the cravings caused by staring at the candy and cakes and cheese and bread below, but would have been better if Rone had been there to show her how to pour the Betjeman & Barton mango tea without knocking the silver strainer off the top of the small silver pot. And deciphering the mysteries of the London bus system on the way back to the hotel was a chore instead of an adventure.
He was also absent the following day.
Joletta was determined not to think about him; still, she would have liked very much to have someone to share her pleasure in the gardens and to listen while she moaned about how short her time was compared with the weeks Violet had spent wandering in them. She needed another person to help her rhapsodize over the massed plantings of rhododendrons and azaleas and the huge lilac shrubs in full bloom, and to understand why she stood bemused before great beds of vivid, windblown pansies.
She wanted to tell Rone about the journal.
It had been on the tip of her tongue that afternoon in Bath to explain to him about Allain and the phoenix ring, but some remnant of discretion had held her back. The impulse was crazy, she knew, and yet she thought he would understand and maybe even be able to help her search out its secrets. It would, at the very least, have been nice to have his unbiased opinion.