Spring Fires (26 page)

Her cheeks were aflame. "That's what I like best about you. You are so direct."

One side of his mouth quirked and he opened his eyes again. They were warm with amusement. "Don't tell me. Let me guess. You were struggling to suppress an attack of desire."

Wishing she could crawl under the bed, she managed to retort, "As a matter of fact, I was just about to cover you up so that your mother or sister won't faint with shock if they should happen to pay a surprise visit."

"My mother and sister know what I look like without my clothes." He laughed, but pulled the sheet up to his waist.

"No doubt you spent your childhood running about naked!" Lisette said, nodding. Her heart was pounding.

"It certainly took a long time for you to decide how to cover me. Are you certain you weren't having a look yourself?"

"You are incurably insolent!"

He caught her forearm and drew her over his face. "Why don't we be insolent together?"

Their mouths were inches apart when a distant clatter came up from the floor below and a voice called, "Yoo-hoo! Lisette, it's Katya! I have brought two very eager young ladies all the way from Philadelphia to cheer up my brother."

Nicholai released her arm, his eyes sparkling devilishly. "What are you waiting for?" he asked the disconcerted Lisette. "Show in my guests! I am anxious to be cheered up."

Chapter 23

May 1, 1793

The candle's tiny flame cast a long, flickering shadow up
the parlor wall. Lisette was huddled in one of the red moreen wing chairs, feeling chilly in spite of the quilt that covered her body and the hot tea that warmed her throat. When she paused to think, she knew that the cold came from her heart, yet she felt powerless to remedy it.

A slim volume of Shakespeare lay open in Lisette's lap. Since coming to stay at the villa, she had begun to read and had gradually worked up to the point where she now devoured books from the Hampshire library with ravenous speed. It had been years since she had read so much; there simply wasn't time at the CoffeeHouse for such frivolous pleasures. Now, she compensated for the long drought, and found that other people's stories kept her from constantly thinking about her own tangled life... and the enigmatic man who lay in the four-poster bed upstairs.

Evenings were hardest. After supper, Nicholai slept—without laudanum—for at least three hours, then revived for perhaps two before surrendering for the night. He had asked for a book of his own while awake tonight—something by Moliere—and Lisette had left him. It wasn't often that he withdrew; usually he was glad to chat or play cards with her. He still teased her in a physical way, but had stopped any serious attempts to kiss her. This made Lisette more melancholy than ever.

The worst part was the parade of female visitors who traveled to the villa to visit Nicholai. Lisette seethed whenever she thought of them, simpering and flirting and casting venomous glances in her direction. Heiresses by the handful, from Philadelphia's finest families... each one clearly plotting to ensnare the dashing and mysterious bachelor. However, they did not irritate her half so much as Nicholai's response to their fawning attentions. He loved their visits! Lisette fumed when she thought of the way he encouraged the conniving females... kissing their hands, laughing his most irresistible laugh, and apparently oblivious to the nauseating pretense of their personalities. Occasionally, she wondered if he behaved this way to nettle her—but her humility won out and she grew more despondent. The Lisette Hahn who had exuded confidence and easily put Nicholai Beauvisage in his place seemed a stranger lately. Was the sharp, intermittent pleasure of his company worth this pain and confusion...?

The tall clock in the hall struck eleven, providing the needed impetus to send Lisette on her way to bed. As she prepared to close the book, her eyes fell on a sonnet that began with a familiar word:

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, But Lust's effect is tempest after sun; Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain, Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;

Love surfeits not. Lust like a glutton dies;

Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.

An invisible little knife twisted inside Lisette as she wondered which word described her relationship with Nicholai... and his feelings for her. Was it possible that this spring would never end for the two of them?

* * *

Clad in a billowy lawn bed gown, Lisette had just blown out her candle and was crawling between her quilts when she heard a strange sound from Nicholai's room. When she paused, listening, it came again, and she realized that it was his voice. Frightened to think that he might be in so much pain that he would cry out, she scrambled off the bed and hurried through the dressing room that connected their chambers. Moonlight streamed across the bed, silvering Nicholai's face and body. Lisette could see the dark blot of fresh blood on the dressings—and her patient was sound asleep. Then, he grimaced, eyes still closed, and whispered something. Was it "Gabrielle"? It alarmed her, the idea that another woman could mean so much to him that he would be unable to sleep because of her presence in his dreams.

There was real pain in his expression. Convulsively, he turned to the left and nearly rolled over on his wounded shoulder.

"Nicholai!" Lisette whispered loudly, crouching beside him on the bed, gripping his arms in an effort to keep him from complicating his injury. "Wake up! You are having a nightmare."

Gradually, he awoke. She saw the volume of Moliere caught in the sheet and pushed it aside; the obvious intensity of Nicholai's emotions swept away her own inhibitions. She held him fast, carefully avoiding the bandaged shoulder, and soothed him back to reality with soft words.

After a few minutes, she knew he was awake and free of the nightmare. She was embarrassed to find herself molded to the side of his hard body, his good arm around her back, her face against his hair.

"Are you all right? You frightened me, dreaming that way."

"Thank you for waking me," he replied in a hoarse voice. "It was the Moliere. I shouldn't have read it."

"Won't you tell me what you were dreaming that could upset you so?"

His face turned, nose and mouth pressing into her cheek. She could feel his heart beating against her breasts, the pulse of his blood flowing in the arm that circled her back, the gradual uncoiling of tense muscles in his legs. It almost seemed that their bodies were joined, and that sensation flooded Lisette with pleasure.

"It... isn't relevant to my life anymore. I don't think it would do any good to discuss it further."

"What a cowardly attitude!" She whispered the words affectionately. "I think whatever it is must be very relevant if it is keeping you awake—or trying to—and if you reopen that shoulder wound, we won't be able to lightly dismiss your nightmare, will we?"

"I don't know if I should talk to you about this..." His voice held a weary note, as if he wished to avoid the conflict he felt Gabrielle might bring into his already-snarled relationship with Lisette.

"Because of the woman? Gabrielle?" She spoke these few words as triumphantly as a cardplayer who suddenly lays down four aces. "I realize that you did not live in a monastery during your years in France."

A few minutes passed before Nicholai replied. The silence was thick, yet pleasurable somehow because they were holding one another. "All right," he said at last, "I would like to tell you about Gabrielle and the things that happened to me in France. I suppose it is foolish and unrealistic for me to believe that I can shut the door on the past. Ghosts have a way of slipping through, don't they?"

"Yes," Lisette whispered sadly. "Inevitably."

Word by word, he revealed the events that connected to form his decade in France, inserting the characters who had affected his life. "It began so beautifully. The Loire Valley is a paradise... I'll never forget my first spring at the chateau. I felt, from the first moment, that I had found my true home. I slipped into the French language and culture as easily as a suit of clothes tailored just for me. I loved it, and I loved the vineyards... learning, growing, creating better and better wines."

Her heart ached as she thought of him: young, filled with enthusiasm for his new life, finding his niche... and then losing it all to the insanity of the Revolution. "I'm surprised you didn't marry."

He was silent for a minute, his eyes fixed on the flat ivory canopy. "For a long time, I was too busy and too far from Paris to meet very many eligible women. Not that there weren't some very diverting females close to the chateau, but they were either milkmaids or married to aged noblemen. Also, I wasn't ready for marriage myself until a few years ago, and by then I had become involved with Gabrielle."

"But you didn't marry her?" Lisette queried, and watched Nicholai's face as he smiled grimly in the darkness. "Please," she pressed. "I cannot bear the suspense."

He was sensitive to her tone, and it surprised him. "No, we didn't marry because her brother, a destitute marquis, arranged for her to wed a wealthy
comte.
Gabrielle acquiesced, although by then we were in love, because she felt responsibility to her family. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bad time to be an aristocrat, especially when doubled by marriage." He went on to sketch his first meeting with Gabrielle, five years before at Versailles, but was kind enough to spare Lisette a description of Gabrielle's bewitching beauty.

"Well, I can't imagine being in love with one man and allowing myself to be forced to marry someone else. It sounds like a nightmare." Her tone was disapproving.

"You have made a number of sacrifices in your own life, my sweet—for that CoffeeHouse, which isn't even alive."

"To me, it is," she argued. "Anyway, how could
she
give you up so easily if she loved you?"

"Well, she didn't give me up. In France, such matters are easily arranged and accepted. Gabrielle made frequent trips to my chateau, and we met elsewhere when her husband was occupied in Paris."

Lisette stiffened, noiselessly fighting for breath. Pictures of Nicholai engaging in a torrid, daring affair with
la belle comtesse
seared her brain. "She must have truly loved you, then, to have taken such risks."

"I... don't know about that. Part of the fascination Gabrielle held for me was her inscrutable nature. I never could be sure what she was thinking or feeling; somehow, even when she was in my arms, she seemed to be just out of reach."

Considering the way most women buzzed around Nicholai like anxious bees, she could understand his feelings. Finally, she asked him about the Revolution and Gabrielle's fate, and painstakingly he revealed what those years had held for him... and for his exquisite lover. Lisette heard his voice grow choked with pain as he described the September Massacres, and the last time he had seen Gabrielle—the hot August night when they had been forced into separate prison wagons.

"Then she might still be alive!" she cried, softly reassuring.

"Lisette, I spent almost five months searching for some sign of her survival—even though I knew the odds were one million to one against it. If not for my freak accidental meeting with Robespierre and his recollection of me from the Estates General, I would have been a victim of the September Massacres myself—just like every other person who shared my prison wagon. What chance for escape did Gabrielle have? The sister of a marquis and the wife of a count
?"
Nicholai's voice was bitterly ragged.

"I see now why she haunts your dreams," Lisette whispered.

"Sometimes I dream that she is being tortured—" His voice broke off. "I cannot undo the brutal bloodshed of the Revolution... I will always be a victim of what I saw, heard, felt... but at least I am alive, and I don't intend to spend the rest of my days with tears in my eyes."

In the silvery shadows, Lisette saw Nicholai draw a bare forearm roughly across his face. The thought of him actually crying devastated her; worse, there was nothing she could do to lessen his pain. Jealousy was forgotten as Lisette gently kissed Nicholai's lips and cradled his strong dark head against her own cheek and throat. She caressed his temples, slowly and soothingly, until he slept again.

Chapter 24