When Violet showed an interest in his extraction process, he told her about it in detail, and even requested that she go with him to look at the equipment he used. He was so starved for someone to talk to about his interest in the oil essences of perfumes that his tongue became tangled in his eagerness, though he was lyrical in his description of it.
The perfume making turned out to be a fascinating process. It did not seem possible that something so simple as pressing flower petals into cold oil, then later draining off the oil holding their essence and adding it to the aqua vitae distilled from wine, could have such wonderfully fragrant results. Violet insisted on trying it herself, using Giovanni’s equipment and the blossoms of a night-blooming jasmine. The result was amazing, a revelation to her. It was as if in taking the scent from the flowers, one was preserving the souls of the blossoms, allowing them another life, a miraculous second blooming.
One evening after a visit to the shed where Giovanni made his perfume, she was returning with him to the villa through the side gate in the walled garden. She had been laughing at some droll remark he had made when she turned her head to see Allain standing under the grape arbor, leaning on one of its supports as he watched them.
Giovanni flushed a little under Allain’s steady regard. He gave him a quiet greeting, however, then turned to incline his head to Violet. “Good evening then, madonna,” he murmured, and walked away into the house.
Violet moved toward Allain, stepping into the circle of his left arm as he reached out to her. She waited until the young gardener had disappeared inside before she spoke.
“You don’t mind that I spend time with Giovanni, do you? He enjoys showing me his flowers and perfumes, and you know how much I like such things. He is always careful to show me every courtesy, and to keep a proper distance.”
“I should be jealous,” he answered, smiling down at her. “Our Giovanni is, I think, more than half-inclined to be in love with you.”
“Oh, no,” she protested. “I have it on the best authority — his mother — that he flirts shamelessly with the village girls and has a dozen ready to marry him tomorrow.”
“That may be, but I understand the signs all too well to be mistaken. He may flirt with others, but you he worships. Only consider the title he gave you just now — madonna, our lady. It’s an old one of great reverence, used only for ladies of highest birth in times past, but reserved now, in the main, for the holy mother Mary. He can pay you no higher compliment, assign you no greater place in his heart.”
“I can’t believe it; I’ve done nothing to make him feel that way, I promise.”
“It was not required. You have only to be you.”
“But I’m with child!” she protested, shaking her head with a troubled look beneath the laughter in her eyes.
“So you are, and blooming like some lovely flower yourself, growing sweeter and more beautiful every day. Why should Giovanni not adore you? I cannot blame him, since I feel that way myself.”
Allain was meticulous about saying such things. It was not, Violet thought, that he felt she needed to hear them just now, as the contours of her body began to lose their slender shape. And it was not that he was in any way insincere. It was more that he intended that no opportunity should pass that he might take to show her what he felt for her. She loved him for it, yet it gave her a strange sense of impermanence. It almost seemed that he feared there might come a time when he could not be there to say such things to her.
Nevertheless, they were happy. The days passed, and the nights. They laughed, they sang together in the evenings, they touched and held each other. They watched the soft, glowing sunsets over the hills and the even softer sunrises. They ate the wonderful roast meats and fresh vegetables cooked with virgin olive oil and seasoned with herbs, and they washed them down with a different wine each day. And the love they made in the great tester bed took on the feeling of a hallowed communion.
It was Giovanni who brought the news that destroyed their peace.
He had heard it from his cousin, who, when he went to the market in Florence, sometimes visited the lovely young daughter of the cook at the house of the elderly lady who owned the villa and was a sister to Signora da Allori in Venice.
Signora da Allori was dead. She had died of a heart attack after discovering a prowler in her house in the night.
The widow’s sister, Giovanni said, insisted that she had died of fright. There were bruises on her body, and her little finger had been broken.
Was it only a coincidence? Or was the Signora da Allori’s death connected with their stay in her house? Had the prowler been trying to force the energetic old lady to tell him where Violet and Allain were hiding?
“It’s my fault,” Allain said. “I should have foreseen something like this.”
“Who could have guessed they would go so far?” Violet answered him with horror in her voice. “She was only an old woman who rented her house. Why would they think she could tell them anything?”
“They grow desperate. With so much political unrest everywhere, no country is immune to revolution. The fighting will begin at any moment in the Crimea. It makes a fine excuse, for everyone.”
“I don’t know what you could have done to protect the signora.”
He shook his head. “I could have at least given her a stronger warning. I did try to make Savio understand — as well as I could without a full explanation. It was not, apparently, enough.”
The widow and her majordomo had thought they were helping only to hide them from Violet’s irate husband. It had seemed a sufficient excuse, at the time.
Violet said in tentative tones, “Do you think this so-called prowler got the information he wanted?”
“It doesn’t seem so. Savio heard the widow’s cries and arrived in time to frighten the man away. Even then, the poor lady was dying.”
They had both grown fond of the elderly woman during the time they had spent in her house. For all her gruff ways and tirades at her servants, she had been kind of heart, and had given them privacy and company in equal measure. To think that she might have died because of them brought a weight of guilt that turned the days gray and without savor.
Allain grew silent and ceased to paint. The flowers for perfume had faded as the autumn crept nearer, but Violet had no interest in any case. Her morning sickness had passed and her appetite revived, yet nothing seemed to taste right or to be seasoned correctly.
There were nights when Violet woke to see Allain standing at the window, staring out over the hills that were pale blue in the light of the stars. There were mornings when she woke to find him lying beside her, watching her with a look on his face that was both absorbed and tormented. Sometimes he held her so tightly she could not breathe while he buried his face in the smooth turn of her neck or between the pale hills of her breasts. Often, he spread his open hand upon her belly, caressing, holding.
He liked to watch her wash her long tresses and to help her comb the tangles from them. He spread the shimmering mass out across her shoulders and, as it dried, gathered great handfuls and held them to his face while he breathed their fragrance. Later, he would move aside the warm strands to kiss the individual white bumps of her backbone above her shift.
One evening, when dinner was over and Maria and Giovanni had gone, Violet and Allain sat under the grape arbor watching the moon rise over the garden wall. The warm air smelled of fresh-cut hay and ripening grapes with just a taint of wood smoke.
The grapevines overhead rustled dryly in a quiet zephyr of a breeze. The shadows cast by the leaves against the moonlight moved in a rhythm as hypnotic as it was unending. Allain had been holding her hand, caressing the smooth skin over the bones with his thumb. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, reflective.
“There is something I have been meaning to say to you. The time never seemed right, or I — but never mind. Listen to me closely. If ever, for any reason, you find yourself alone, carita, you must go to a lawyer and man of business whos
e name and address I will give you. He will have funds for you—”
Fear made her voice sharp as she interrupted. “You mean money? But I don’t want—”
“I know, believe me I do, Violet, but please hear me out. This is something I have arranged for my own peace of mind. You will permit me to tell you of it, please, and commit what I say to memory, for my sake.”
“Do you think—” she began, then stopped, unable to put her fear into words. Her fingers tightened in his grasp.
“I don’t know. I only know that this is one of the things I must do to protect you and our unborn child. Allow me, please.”
There was such pain and pleading in his voice. How could she refuse?
“Good,” he said in relief when she said no more. “Listen then.”
She did as he asked. When he was certain she understood, he fell silent. The night gathered around them, deepening, while the brilliant moon seemed to hang huge and motionless above them.
Allain rose and moved to kneel at Violet’s feet. He gathered her close then, while he placed his head in her lap. She smoothed her fingers through the crisp waves of his hair, touched the planes of his face with the palms of her hands, and enclosed as much of his shoulders as she could reach in the circle of her arms. They remained like that for long moments, until he whispered, “Come, lie with me.”
He spread the cloth from the table over the ancient tiles, then drew her down beside him upon it. They lay for a long time with moonlight and shadows in their eyes. Gently, then, he turned to her and drew the pins from her hair. He kissed her eyelids and the hollows underneath, her forehead and earlobes and the point of her chin. With slow and gentle care, he eased her from her clothing and also removed his own until they lay with their naked skin patterned with the dark outlines of grape leaves.
His touch was reverent, his mouth warm and moist as he gave unhurried attention to every curve and each pulsating hollow of her body. Like a blind miser counting hoarded gold, recognizing its form and substance by sensitive exploration, he paid her his homage.
She clung to him, dissolving inside in molten joy. Desire ran in her blood, while keeping pace with it was a generosity so intense, so jubilant that it seemed a benediction, a loving sacrament.
He pressed against her, beseeching entry, and she took him inside her with slow care. Gently, gently they moved together, their breathing shallow, uneven, as they sought with rigorous will and steadfast consideration to regulate the force of the tempest building inside them. Trembling, shuddering under its ferocious onslaught, they conquered the impulses that drove them, refusing to jar the child they cradled between them. And they received their reward in the spreading heat of rampant glory that sprang, singing in their veins, rising to overflow their pounding hearts.
Afterward, Allain gathered her close, holding her while he whispered of love. When their skins had cooled, he gathered up their garments, then picked her up and carried her into the house. In their bedchamber, he lay with her close in his arms while she slept, breathing the fragrance of her body with closed eyes while he listened to the hard, regular pulsing of his own life’s blood in his veins. He did not sleep.
Violet was alone in the tester bed when morning came.
She was not especially alarmed. She thought Allain might have gone to bring coffee back to her, as he sometimes did, or else that he had thought of some early-morning vista that he wished to capture on canvas, or perhaps gone for a walk. She expected to find him, surely, in the garden or at the breakfast table. She thought he might have gone to the stable to visit a litter of kittens that had appeared there a few days before. She expected that he had decided to go to Florence on some errand that had taken longer than planned, or else one that was to be a surprise for her. She felt sure that whatever note he might have left her had been misplaced, or perhaps blown from where it had been resting and fallen behind some piece of furniture.
She looked up at the sound of every footfall through the morning and started at every whisper of wind. She walked from the bedchamber to the garden a dozen times and made the trip down to the stable on at least three occasions. She questioned Maria, hearing her own voice grow sharp before she brought it back under control. She would have asked Giovanni what he knew, but the gardener had gone to take his vegetables to his cousin’s house for the weekly market.
It was late afternoon when Giovanni returned. Violet was in the garden when she saw him approaching. His footsteps were slow and his gaze troubled as he came to a stop before her. In his hand was a bunch of flowers, though the blooms were too few and ill-assorted to be called a bouquet.
“Forgive me, madonna,” he said in low tones. “I was to bring these to you this morning, and would have, but you were sleeping and I did not like to wake you. It’s a poor thing, this bouquet, but I was instructed to present just these flowers and greenery, and no other.”
She took the bouquet in careful hands, turning it this way and that. There were marigolds, bright orange and aromatic. Twining around them was dark green ivy. The soft blue of forget-me-nots was half-hidden among the rough leaves of dandelion greens.
Her voice was hoarse as she forced it through her throat. “It was sent by Signor Massari?”
“Yes, madonna.”
She closed her eyes, unable to bear the sight of the wilting bouquet. “Thank you, Giovanni,” she said quietly. “That will be all.”
“There is one thing more, madonna.”
“Yes?” She looked up with hope springing inside her.
“I am to be your guard.”
“My guard.” The hope died away, completely.
“With my life. This is a privilege I had not expected. It gives me great pleasure, and honor.”
What could she say to him while he stood before her with such unassuming pride, such readiness to serve. It was impossible to tell him she didn’t want or need him, that she preferred the guard she had had before and wanted him back.
She forced her cold lips to curve, at least a little. “Thank you, Giovanni.”
“It is nothing, madonna.”
Nothing, and everything. Violet felt as if her breath, her life had been cut off. As the young gardener turned and began to walk away, a thought occurred to her. “Giovanni!”
He whirled at once, returning with quick steps. “I always come when you call.”
Violet paused at the fervency of his tone. She could spare no thought for it, however. She said, “The signor, he gave you his instructions — when?”
“Last evening it was, before nightfall.”
“I see. Thank you again,” she whispered.
Giovanni went away then, though not without several frowning glances over his shoulder. Violet carried the bouquet with her to a chair beneath the grape arbor. She lowered herself into it, placing the flowers on her lap. She touched them with careful fingers while tears rose slowly to sting her eyes.
The forget-me-nots, for True Love.
The ivy, for Fidelity.
The marigolds, for Grief.
The dandelions, for an Oracle.
It was a message of its own kind, their own kind.
Allain was gone, had decided, perhaps, to leave to keep her safe after all. Or else for some reason that she might understand, but could not accept.
Just as she understood, but could not accept, his message.
He loved her.
He would love her unto death and would never love another.
He grieved at the parting.
Whether he would return, only the gods knew. And they would not tell.
18
JOLETTA PUT DOWN VIOLET’S JOURNAL, which she had been studying, and walked into the hotel bathroom. She leaned close to look at herself in the mirror over the lavatory. Her eyes were indisputably brown, much like Violet’s had been, also like those of her mother and her father both, as far as that went. Mimi’s eyes had been gray. Natalie’s eyes were gray-blue, but perhaps more on the gray side. Timothy’s eyes were hazel.
Gilbert Fossier had had hazel eyes. Allain Massari’s had been gray.
None of which really counted for anything, since Mimi had married a distant Fossier cousin, a man descended from Gilbert’s younger brother, whom Violet had mentioned in the journal. At least everyone had always thought Mimi and her husband, whom they called Pop, were distant cousins.
Mimi must have known it wasn’t so.
Or perhaps not. Violet had not seemed too certain herself which man was the father of her child.
It was difficult for Joletta to think of her ancestors as hiding secrets or living with mistakes. They had for so many years just been names on the family tree, almost legendary figures.
Joletta had always had the idea that Violet and Gilbert’s trip to Europe had been a typical grand tour, a sort of last hurrah before such extravagant gestures were ended by the Civil War. There had never seemed to be anything particularly unusual about it, never been any hint of scandal or suggestion that it might have greatly affected their lives afterward, except for the acquisition by Violet of the famous perfume. All Joletta had ever known, all she had ever heard mentioned, was that Gilbert and Violet had spent two years traveling and returned home with a baby girl.
Rone was already gone. He had showered and left the room early, well over two hours before. He had tried to move quietly, thinking she was asleep. Joletta had lain with her back to him and her eyes closed until she had the room to herself. She had reached for the journal then to be certain it was all there, that it was safe. Leafing through the pages, her attention had been snared by the entries concerning the early days of Violet’s pregnancy.
She wondered what Rone made of it all. She was beginning to have a few ideas based on her knowledge of history, but they were too nebulous to be useful. She would like to see if Rone had come up with anything.
Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection) Page 28