[Barbara Samuel] Night of Fire(Book4You) (35 page)

Understanding cleared his brow. Gently he reached for her hands and smiled, nodding. "Grazie," he said, then turned to go.

"No!" Analise said in a fierce whisper. He only thought he understood. She tugged at his sleeve.

"You," she said and held up one hand, fingers spread. Then held up her right hand. "Lady Cassandra."

She shook her head fiercely keeping her hands far apart. "No."

His mouth tightened, and she saw the suspicion that she was crazy. "Yes," he said, and dipped back into the box before she could halt him.

Frustrated but not yet finished, she returned slowly to her place next to Basilio, and gave the man a dark glare across the room. He did not notice.

Basilio's agitation grew with each passing moment. At last, he leaned dose to Analise and whispered, "Do you mind if we return home, my dear? I do not wish to stay here."

"Of course not."

Inside the carriage, she asked, "Are you well?"

"I am suddenly weary of this place," he said with a faint smile. "Will you think it too rash if we leave for Italy in the morning?"

He had expected her to blaze with happiness over the prospect, but she only looked at him for a long moment. "I had hoped to bid Lady Cassandra farewell before we left."

"Ah." What did he say to that? "Perhaps then, you may send word to her in the morning. We can wait that long. It will give us both a chance to offer our happiness at her engagement."

"Yes."

There was an odd note to the word, and Basilio looked at her closely. "Do I detect dismay?"

Analise frowned, lowered her eyes. "It is only that she once said something to me. That she did not find marriage to her liking."

Guilt. "Ah. I did not know that."

"Perhaps," she said quietly, "he has changed her mind."

"I'm sure that's it."

Analise's mind whirled with possible actions—perhaps she ought to speak with Cassandra herself, convince her that this engagement was not the right action. It felt terribly wrong somehow, and there was doom in it for all of them.

But it seemed Analise was not the only one with that thought, for Basilio managed only to stay at the house long enough to think Analise had retired, before he was out again in the dark streets. On some nudging she did not question, Analise slipped out behind him, staying close to the buildings, glad of the soft kid evening shoes she wore that made no noise.

For many days, she had prayed over the sign she had received. Terror burned in her that she might have it wrong, and she was frozen in indecision. When she had looked up the Scripture that was on the piece of paper that woman gave her, it read "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends."

And Analise had been deeply dismayed. If it were only so simple as to remove herself for all of this to be fixed, she would have done it joyfully. But suicide was a mortal sin, and the one punishment Analise could not bear was to remain apart from God and the Lady for all eternity.

So she had spent many hours in prayer, awaiting a new sign. If the sacrifice were true and honorable and right, then the Lady would intervene with God, and all would be set to rights.

It frightened her very much to make such a large decision. She wished with great regret that she'd had the courage to stand up to her father, and the thought made her scowl. He seemed an easy hurdle, looking back. How much she had grown these past months!

When Basilio neared the townhouse where Cassandra lived, he leaned on the wall beneath a tree that grew in her garden, and looked up at something. The house was dark, and Analise, standing in the shadows herself, could see nothing that might have drawn his attention.

He settled as if to wait, and Analise made herself comfortable, taking the rosary beads from her pocket and running them through her fingers. "Guide me," she whispered. "Show me a sign."

Cassandra returned from the opera with a heavy heart. Robert would tell her nothing of what Analise had said to him, and it left her uneasy.

This was madness—all of it. Everything. It seemed a hundred years since anything in her life had been reliably normal, ordinary. Climbing down from her carriage, she shook off her hood and headed for her stairs. A voice came out of the shadows, as it had once before. "Cassandra."

She braced herself, inhaling a great lungful of air. A servant stepped forward, ready to come to her defense if required, but she saw Basilio, halted in a pool of light thrown by a torch, and she waved her servants away. "I will be all right."

She waited until the carriage moved away, until it was only she and Basilio with the moon shining down on them, lighting his face set in such sober, sorrowful lines.

As if drawn by some force higher and more compelling than themselves, they moved toward each other, halting a foot apart. His eyes were tortured. "Forgive me," he said roughly, "for forcing you to such a dramatic act."

Her hand fluttered up, but she brought it back without putting it into his hair. "I want you to be happy, Basilio. I know it seems mad that this marriage will allow it, but it will. You must trust me."

"You must not make that sacrifice. I leave tomorrow morning. You will be free."

"Leave?"

A somber nod. "We will return to Italy, Cassandra. I will not come back to England, ever. You need not be afraid of our betrayals any longer."

A tightness rose in her throat. "I have already given my word to him."

He took a half step. "If you marry, all that has been gained for you in this will be lost." He took her hand, put it on his face. "You want my happiness," he said. "And I want yours."

Down the street a church bell began to ring, tolling the hours. Cassandra heard it distantly, and heard a second bell start up behind it, a half beat slower, so it always seemed there was one extra hour ringing out. "This is, then, a true love. You must go and take your wife. I must marry Robert and make a new life. It is not disaster, love. It is a choice for life."

He made a soft, pained sound and closed his eyes. "Ah, I am only insane with jealousy."

Impulsively, she touched his hair. "I know," she whispered. Against her will, her hand pressed against his cheek. "I know," she repeated.

With a sharp exhalation he reached for her, and Cassandra found she had no ability to turn away from this last embrace. She flung her arms around his neck, pressed her face into his neck, and felt his strong arms around her back. Tears welled in her eyes. "I do so love you, Basilio."

He tightened his hold, crushing her to him, his breath soft against her neck, his hand against the back of her head. "Never so much as I love you," he said, and lifted his head, his eyes burning in his sculpted face.

For a long, long moment, they only stared at each other, and Cassandra felt a powerful, enveloping light surround her, bind her to him, and he to her. Unbreakable, powerful, eternal. Long before he bent his head, she knew he would kiss her, and her body swelled with the need of it, the need of his taste, his lips, his tongue. Dizzy, she looked at his lips in longing, and accepted their touch. Only their lips touched, but at the moment of joining, the light around them splintered and turned gilded, bathing her heart, her mind, her soul with it. With reverent sweetness, she kissed him back. Then, shaking, she lifted her head.

He pressed his forehead against hers, his hands clasped around her face. "I love you, Cas-sandra, more than all the world. I will love you always."

The bells rang out the last chime—thirteen, which seemed unlucky somehow—and Cassandra allowed herself to touch his face one last time as she released him. "You must write a thousand poems."

"I will write them all for you." His grip tightened, urgent. "You must write to me of your children."

"I will."

He took a breath, dropped his hands, and stepped back. For another moment they only stood there.

Then he said, "Be well."

"And you," she whispered. Then she turned and hurried away from the temptation of calling him back, of begging him to stay with her just this one last time. In honor they had begun. In honor, they would end.

In the shadows, Analise watched as they said their farewells. Every line of their bodies was etched in deepest grief, and they swayed together, resisted, and then fell into an embrace of such power Analise felt tears on her face.

As she watched them, it seemed she could see a golden aura of beauty around them, the same color that made her think of the Lady. They kissed, sweetly and without carnality, and Analise felt something swell inside of her—a hunger for that unity. The unity she would only know with God.

A soft breath of illumination went through her. Only Analise had the power to make this right: to save Cassandra from a marriage that would destroy her spirit, save Basilio from the resignation growing in his eyes, save herself from making further mistakes.

"No greater love…" she whispered, and hurried toward home, praying earnestly. Silently, she sent up her prayer, the most earnest prayers of her life, to the Lady for her intervention with God. It seemed suddenly so plain, so very clear. Suicide was a mortal sin, but not if undertaken for the sacrifice of others, surely. Surely the Lady would intervene with God after all Analise had done. Or intervene here on earth, if her purpose was skewed.

And then—oh sweet relief!—she would be in heaven and free of these earthly coils, free to be an angel to guide these two for whom she had discovered such love.

Exuberant, she rushed through the darkened streets, her heart very clear.

Nearly blind with sorrow, Basilio walked back to the townhouse. There was a strange joy in him gilding the sorrow, and he wondered how it was possible to feel such relief in something that had caused so much pain.

But he recognized with a smile that Cassandra had always been correct in this. For both of them, honor was valued more highly than indulgence. It was not written that he could not love her— and love her he would. Always.

Weary, he climbed the stairs to his chamber. At the top he halted, instincts quivering in a strange and powerful way. There was a smell he could not quite place. Frowning, he went to the chamber where Analise had been sleeping and knocked softly on the closed door.

The door burst open, and Analise stood there, her face pale and somehow radiant at once. She wore only a chemise, and her extravagant hair fell down her back, well past her hips. And—oh, God!—a strip of cloth bound her left arm, but already great drips of blood were welling out of it.

"Basilio," she cried, pressing her right hand over her left arm. "I am so glad to see you; I have so much to say!"

"What happened to you?" He grabbed her, pressed his own hand over her arm.

"I thought," she said, and there was a wispy sort of breathiness to the words, "that I was meant to take my life."

A bolt of terror shot through him, and he grabbed her, lifting her arm above her head as she fainted. A drop of blood fell on his coat, and he screamed for a servant. A girl scurried out of an alcove, and yelped

when she saw the blood, freezing in her steps.

"Get help! Now!" He turned back. "Analise!"

Her head lolled. In terror, Basilio swept her up in his arms and urgently carried her down the stairs, keeping those gruesome wounds high above her head. She weighed little and he was barely winded when he ran into the garden and plunged her into the ice cold water of the fountain.