[Barbara Samuel] Night of Fire(Book4You) (30 page)

Somehow she would make this right, and pray that her perfidy was never discovered. With a bright smile, she took Analise's hand. "I would enjoy that very much."

The courtyard was bricked and neatly lined with beds of flowers, and Cassandra paused a moment.

"This is quite Italian, isn't it?"

"Yes! I suspect that is why my husband chose this one. I have spent much time telling him about the gardens at the convent, and this is quite like it."

"He is a very kind man."

They settled and Cassandra accepted a glass of wine. They spoke lightly of gardens and Cassandra's travels in Italy, and a little gossip.

Finally, Cassandra said, "I hope you will not think me too bold, Countess, but I have come with a purpose tonight."

"I suspected that you had." She folded her small hands in her lap. "Please—share what you like. I will not think you bold."

Cassandra took a breath. "I would like to speak to you about your husband."

Analise looked a little surprised, but she inclined her head. "Why?"

"I have been thinking about what you told me," she said. "That he has not… required you to attend the marriage bed."

Analise smiled. "But I think has a lover. I… felt her this morning when he returned."

Ah, guilt, guilt, guilt. "Oh, surely not."

"I do not mind," Analise said placidly. "Men have needs, no?"

"I suppose." This was not going the way she had expected. "But why not you? Of all the husbands God could have given you, he is quite rare."

The girl frowned, looking at the flowers before them. "His heart is given to another," she said. "I have known that since the beginning, since the first night, when he cut his finger and put blood on the sheets, then spent the whole night writing poetry." Her face was sober as she raised eyes the color of a pansy. "I sometimes sense that he is despairing when he writes like that."

Cassandra swallowed, her heart aching at this vision of Basilio—despairing and sorrowing, thinking of her. Could it be that they were all locked in some monstrous mistake? Some terrible prank by the gods?

What if her actions here tonight sent it all careening out of control?

And yet what choice was there? Carefully, she asked, "What do you do at such times—when he is despairing?"

"I leave him alone. If I find him asleep, I cover him with a blanket. Sometimes I take him food."

"I think," Cassandra said quietly, "you must go to him, then. In his grief, he will turn to you."

Analise leapt up. "I cannot!" From a pocket in her skirt, she took out a rosary that she worked between her fingers as she paced, back and forth, in front of the little sparkling fountain. "I do not wish—"

"Does it frighten you?" Cassandra asked. "I was once very frightened of it, too. I learned a gentle man can create beauty from it. Basilio strikes me as gentle."

"No. He is too passionate. I would not like that."

It wasn't fear in her at all, Cassandra realized, but a very different sort of resistance. Stubbornness.

Watching the girl pace back and forth, back and forth, she asked suddenly, "Do you mind if I ask why you were so intent to be a nun?"

Analise stopped and turned. "You will not believe me," she said with a faint smile.

"I might."

With an expressive little shrug, Analise said, "When I was a little girl, about four, I saw a vision of Mary.

No one believed me, and I learned to never speak of it. Twice more she came to me, and all three times she said that I should go to the island cloister."

Cassandra carefully kept her expression blank. She did not believe in visions.

"The third time, I was six. It was summer," Analise said. She extended her hands, the rosary beads looped around one wrist. Her palms were white and surprisingly strong. "My hands bled for three days.

My father was furious, but my mother took me to the priest, who said it was a miracle and they should thank the heavens for my calling."

Stigmata
. Cassandra was startled and uneasy. She disbelieved miracles even more than she disbelieved visions. "Weren't you frightened?"

Analise lifted her face, and a radiance came from her. "No. I knew it was a way for the saints to convince my father to let me be a nun. At least it convinced him to let me go to the convent to be schooled."

"But—" Cassandra frowned. "Why you?"

"I don't know," Analise said. "Why is anyone chosen for anything? Why does my husband write such beautiful words? Why does one person sing sweetly and another tend children? We are all called to serve in some way. This is mine."

Cassandra resisted the sense of fate inherent in those words. "But I was not born for anything in particular," she said.

"Of course you were. We all are."

"Men, perhaps," she said. "Not women, Analise. We are at the mercy of men's will."

"But God is greater than men's will." She said it with such assurance that Cassandra was bewildered.

The whole conversation had slipped out of her control. A strange ball of tension and confusion settled in her chest, and she struggled to remember why she had come—to urge Analise to be a proper wife to Basilio. Squaring her shoulders, she said, "If that is so, if God leads you to a marriage He did not prevent, then is it not His will that you should be a wife, not a nun?"

Her eyes grew troubled. "I don't know. I have thought this over many times, and have no answer. If I were meant to be a wife, would not my husband have insisted upon our joining?"

Cassandra's confusion grew. "But if that husband knows you do not wish to indulge him, and he is kind, then how do you know you are not thwarting God's will?" She frowned at the convoluted logic of her words, but could not think how to fix them.

Analise began to pace again. "I want to be dutiful," she said. "But to whom do I owe my highest allegiance?" She halted. "It must be God, but I do not know His will for me in this. So who, then, should I obey? My father? My husband?" She rubbed a thumb over the beads with agitation. "Dare I even choose?"

"You are married, Analise," Cassandra said around the lump in her throat. "God allowed the marriage, and there must be some plan in it. So your allegiance goes to your husband, toward being his wife."

Analise bowed her head. "I had not thought of it that way."

The child made Cassandra feel a million years old, and inutterably jaded. "Think on it," she said. "Speak to a priest."

"I wanted so little," Analise said suddenly, and her voice was fiercer than Cassandra would have expected. "I wanted to spend my days worshipping God. Why could not such a simple thing be granted?"

"I don't know," Cassandra said honestly. She held out a hand. "Come. We'll speak no more of it."

Inspiration struck. "I have another matter I'd like to speak of, and I would like your advice. You seem very wise for one so young."

"I will be glad to listen," Analise said. "What is it?"

So Cassandra told her about her sisters, Ophelia and Cleopatra: one blond and more beautiful than any woman in London; the other as beautiful as midnight but of mixed race, and doomed to disappointment on the London social scene.

From there, they moved to other subjects, until darkness forced Cassandra to take her leave, wishing she had met this wise, strange girl in any other way but this.

By morning, it would all be done. To quell the rising grief she felt, she walked briskly, her cloak billowing out behind her. Her actions were guided by love, a love large enough to be unselfish, and she could take some small comfort in that.

Why then did she feel so dirty?

Basilio had been restless all day, trying to think of some answer to his problem. He had to con-tinue his protection of Analise; he could not live with himself if he did not. Which meant that Cassandra could never be his wife.

But he could not believe such a love had been visited upon them only to be taken away. There was an answer, he only had to convince Cassandra it was the right one.

As he walked toward her house, anticipation made his heart light. His blood sang Cassandra's name, his heart sang her song. He felt foolishly lightheaded, and glad to be alive.

A carriage stood before her door, and he saw her come out, dressed for departure in her violet traveling coat. He rushed forward, heedless of how it might look.

"Cassandra!"

She saw him and stiffened. For a long moment she only stood on the step, her face very white in the darkness. She directed the servant to carry her bag to the carriage, then walked with cool purpose toward Basilio. Anger rose in him—how could she turn her emotions on and off this way? Love him, leave him, so easily?

"Where are you running now, Cassandra?" he asked harshly.

"We cannot betray your wife this way, Basilio. I cannot bear the guilt."

"We are betraying nothing! You know this, you heard it from her own lips. I do not lie with her. She has not been wife in any form. I married to protect her, and I will continue to do that. But you"—he took her arm—"you are my true wife, and you know this."

"So what do you suggest, Basilio?"

"You are a widow. I am tied by family to a woman who will never be a wife in truth to me." He slid his hand to hers, then lifted it to his lips. "Ours is so common a situation as to cause no stir anywhere. Who would fault us?"

"You want me to be your mistress."

"I dislike the word—it sounds soiled. And our meeting is not."

She took her hand away, shaking her head. "You knew before you asked it that I would not engage in such an arrangement." He saw the effort she expended to remain cool. "I will not be your mistress, Basilio. And you already know that in your heart."

He closed his eyes. He
had
known it, had known it always.

"Go, Basilio," she said.

"Do not do this. Stay," he pleaded.

"I am not strong enough to only look at you. It is for my own honor that I leave."

Pierced, he stepped back. "There is an answer, Cassandra. There must be."

"Yes," she agreed, tugging on her glove. "You must return to Italy."

Stubbornly, he lifted his chin. "That I will not do."

Without a word, she turned and hurried to the carriage, allowing her man to help her up. When she rode by, she did not look out the window at him.

He returned to the townhouse, walking to exorcise the twin demons of anger and thwarted passion. By the time he climbed the steps to his own house he was no longer stubbornly angry, only restless, doubting his own sanity again.

From the first, it had been this way with her. A madness in him. A swell of passion and music and beauty that made him heedless, like a youth. He scowled, thinking of his mad run down the hill to kiss her in the orchard that first time.

He thought back even further to the moment he had first seen her on the road below him, her hair glittering in the sunlight, her face so astonishingly beautiful that his heart nearly stopped. In that moment, he had known.

He should have sent her away that first day. Then they would still be writing letters. He would still be smiling when he read them and wrote them. There would have been none of this misery for them if he had been strong enough to send her away that very first day.