The Bride Wore Scarlet (14 page)

In Tuscany, Vittorio had introduced her to such a man; a boy, really, who had been brought by his family from Malta. They had come in desperate search of answers, for the young man had lived with a mind half in the present and half in the future, and seemingly no boundary between. Dreams and visions had constantly possessed him, and upon meeting him, it was as if Anaïs could see the very portal to hell in his eyes.

But there had been little Vittorio could do, save confirm what they already knew. That the boy was not mad. He had been cursed—cursed with the Gift—an inapt name if ever Anaïs had heard one.

On the way home, the boy had taken matters into his own hands. He had tied an anchor round his ankle and leapt into Valetta's harbor, never to be seen again.

Anaïs set a hand to the soft wool of his morning coat. “Geoff?” she said softly. “How long have you been fighting this?”

His hand came up suddenly, causing Anaïs to flinch. But he merely set it to his temple, two fingers positioned just above his eyebrow. “I cannot recall,” he admitted, obviously trying to focus. “Since . . . sometime late last night? I tried to see—to open to the void—and could not. But later, in the early hours, I couldn't sleep. I could feel it—the blackness—creeping in round the edges. And still, nothing came. Then . . . then I met her.”

“Madame Moreau, you mean?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “I met her. Touched her hand.”

And now the portal to hell had cracked open.

It worked that way sometimes, Anaïs knew. She took his arm. “Come, sit by the hearth.”

But Geoff didn't move. His opposite hand had gone rigid at his side, his fist so hard his knuckles had turned bloodless.

“Geoff,” she said uncertainly, “come sit down. Tell me what you're sensing.”

“No—just—
don't
—”

His eyes squeezed shut, and his nostrils flared wide. He still held his hand to his temple, and she could feel his entire body beginning to shudder. The sun passed behind a cloud, dimming the room, and it was as if a maelstrom of evil blew through, though the window was barely cracked.

Anaïs felt the temperature literally drop again, sending that horrid, icy shiver down her spine again, and with it a hint of nausea. The underdrapes lifted eerily on the breeze, floating around them as if borne upon an invisible cloud. Geoff's eyes flew wide, yet his gaze was eerily distant. He grabbed her by both wrists, and dragged her nearer. She began to shake so hard she feared her teeth might chatter.

“Anaïs,” he rasped, “you have to stay away from her. The child. There is evil—I can feel it—all around her.
Around you.
”

Suddenly, Anaïs understood. “Who?” she whispered. “Can you see the source? Is it Lezennes? Good God, it cannot be Madame Moreau?”

He shook his head. “I . . . I
don't know
,” he said, his fingers digging into her flesh. “I cannot see. There is something—something black and potent. Like a shadow over us all. I feel it. I know it—and it knows me. That I am here.”

She resisted the urge to fling herself into his arms. “G-Geoff,” she whispered, “what is going on?”

And then the wind vanished, and the room fell quiet again. The surreal cold receded, and with it her strange, sudden anxiety. It was as if her blood resumed its pulse and flow, and her senses became one with the real world again. The heavy footsteps of a servant passing by her door, the smell of something baking inside the house, the coo of a pigeon upon her windowsill; all these things came back to her, the world as it should be.

With Geoff still holding her wrists, she leaned into him and set her cheek to his lapel. “It is all right,” she soothed. “Let it go. Let it go for now. It will come back when it is clearer.”

“God, I hope not.”

He exhaled hard, almost a sigh of exhaustion—and yet it was not that at all. Anaïs could feel the last vestiges of trembling inside him settle, and the rigidity of his arms and shoulders ease as calm settled slowly around them. And when at last she felt his grip on her wrists relax, Anaïs lifted her cheek from the warm wool, and looked up at him.

“Come, sit down,” she said. “I'm going to pour us both a strong sherry.”

She led him to the dainty sofa before the hearth, then went to the side table where a silver tray with two glasses awaited. Pulling the stopper from the decanter, she filled both and went to join him.

“Here,” she said, setting down the tray.

Geoff looked up and took one of the glasses, his face still stark and bloodless. “Anaïs,” he said quietly, “I'm sorry.”

She did not ask him what he meant, but instead toed off her shoes and sat down beside him, tucking one leg beneath her as she did so. “Is it always like this for you?” she asked, turning to face him. “Must you . . . invite the vision? Or does it just come to you?”

He set his wine down on the tea table, and dragged both hands through the shimmering curtain of his bronze hair. “I . . . open myself,” he finally whispered. “I let what is already there come out of the . . . the amorphousness. Don't ask me what I mean, for I can't explain.”

“It's as though it's behind a diaphanous veil, isn't it?” she said. “A sort of curtain in one's mind.”

He looked at her for a long time with his ageless, weary gaze. “It is rather like that,” he finally said. “Why? Have you—”

“No, but I met a young man once,” she interjected. “His family brought him to Tuscany—and Vittorio tried to teach him how to do it. How to draw the curtain closed, I daresay, is the best way to explain it.”

“It's as good an analogy as any,” said Geoff. “And the young man—did he find it? Was he able to draw it shut?”

“No, I—I don't think so,” she said, her voice hitching a little. “I never saw him again.”

Geoff looked at her with a deep and immutable grief in his eyes, doubtless sensing her prevarication. “Ruthveyn is much the same,” he murmured, “though he has learnt a few tricks over the years—not to touch people, not to look directly into their eyes, to keep an emotional distance from most everyone—and he's tried like the devil to subdue the demon with drink and opiates and worse.”

“Does that work?”

Slowly, he nodded. “Oh, aye, it works,” he said. “If you can stand the sort of man it makes you.”

Anaïs flicked an uneasy glance up at him. “Did you try it?”

“For a while,” he admitted. “Particularly when I was in North Africa. But by then I'd . . . I'd found my curtain. I'd learned how to keep up my wall for the most part. To keep my mind shut to the—the
other
—unless I wished otherwise. My mentor in Scotland taught me. All the intoxicants did for me was to—oh, I don't know—give me a few hours' respite, I suppose.”

“It does sound wearying,” Anaïs admitted. “As if you must ever be on guard against the . . . the strength of it, I suppose?”

“The
will
of it,' he said, frowning. “Sometimes, Anaïs, it's as if the thing wants to possess you. I don't know why they call it a gift from God when it feels more like you're wrestling with the devil.”

Anaïs made a sympathetic sound in the back of her throat. “No wonder Ruthveyn turned to opium.”

“Aye, speaking of which—” Geoff flashed a twisted smile, picked up the sherry, and downed it in one long swallow. “I'd take another of those if you're so inclined.”

Anaïs nodded, and tipped the decanter over his glass.

They drank in silence for a time, Anaïs's leg curled up, her knee brushing Geoff's thigh ever so slightly through her skirts. There was still a sense of uncertainty hanging over the room, and the awkward weight of words unspoken. Her lips felt bruised, and her pride a little bruised, too. She was certain Geoff had not meant to kiss her. Not at first.

When her glass was half empty, Anaïs set it away and began to fumble nervously with a corded frog on her dress. She was about to do something inordinately stupid. Something she'd sworn to herself she would not do.

“Geoffrey,” she said quietly, “about that kiss.”

“Anaïs, I . . .” He hesitated, his gaze fixed upon the stem of his wineglass. “I meant what I said about doing what we agree to do,” he went on, “or what I order you to do, if you prefer to take the harder view. But worry and a sleepless night frayed my temper. And I'm sorry. I did not have the right to . . . to behave as I did.”

“Very well, next time you're wrong, I'll be sure to point it out straightaway,” said Anaïs, “rather than just ignore your orders.”

He cast her a sardonic glance. “Vittorio didn't teach you much in the way of diplomacy, did he?”

“Vittorio thought you could beat conflict to death with the flat of your sword,” she said evenly. “But let's get back to that kiss.”

He returned his gaze to the glass, the rich amber color catching the sun as he turned it round and round in his broad palms. “Anaïs, I'm no one's Mr. Right,” he finally said. “I'm . . . not for you. You still understand that, don't you?”

“Oh, Geoff, I know that.” Anaïs rose, and began to roam about the room, absently picking up books and trinkets. “No, you and I wouldn't suit in a million years. Not in
that
way, at least.”

“No?” He pinned her with his ice-blue gaze. “So in what way were you thinking?”

Anaïs picked up a porcelain figurine of a little shepherdess. She had the oddest sense that something important—more important, perhaps, than she understood—hung in the balance now.

“Well, it's like this,” she finally said, putting the shepherdess down with an awkward
thunk
. “When you kiss me, my toes curl, and something in the pit of my belly just sort of—oh, I don't know. It's your eyes, I daresay—blue as the Adriatic—and that voice, so low and so smooth, as if you could make a woman—ah, but that's not the point.”

“What is the point?” His voice had gone a little husky.

“Well, all of it . . . it just makes me begin to wonder if you mightn't be . . .”

“Be what?”

“Well, not Mr.
Right
,” she answered, casting a glance over her shoulder. “But perhaps Mr.
Right
-
for-Now
, if you catch my meaning?”

He jerked his head back almost as if she'd struck him again. “Catch it? I feel rather as if I've been bludgeoned with it.” He flashed one of his odd, sideways smiles. “Once again, my dear, you put a fellow rather neatly in his place.”

“Heavens, never say your feelings are hurt.” She returned to the table for her glass. “Geoff, I cannot possibly be your type, either.”

“Down to a type now, are we?” He let his gaze run over her, and she wondered if it warmed just a degree. “What might your type be, then?”

Anaïs drifted to the window, and wondered how much to say. “Well, he's Tuscan,” she finally answered after sipping at her sherry. “And . . . regal. He has dark hair—not as dark as mine—and his eyes are kind. His nose is strong, like his personality, but his nature is calm and peaceful.”

Geoff paused for a moment. “I see,” he finally murmured. “Already met him, have you?”

She did not turn around. “I thought I had,” she said after a time. “Once, long ago.”

“And was he handsome?” Geoff's words seemed to float on the air, lightly teasing. “Were you madly in love with him?”

Anaïs stared blindly down into the street. “Yes, and yes, desperately so,” she said. “But it did not work out.”

“So you left him behind in Tuscany long, long ago,” Geoff murmured, “and you've not seen him since?”

She wished to God she had not.

Her nails dug into the wood of the windowsill as she gripped it, the memory of her last conversation with Raphaele running through her mind. Raphaele whose life had changed so drastically and so unexpectedly, while hers had not changed at all. Certainly her mind had not. No, by God, not one iota.

“Actually, I saw him a few weeks ago.” Her voice had gone cold. “In San Gimignano. He came for Vittorio's funeral Mass.”

He must have caught the warning in her tone. “Ah,” was all he said on that point. “Very well then, what's my type?”

At last she cut a glance in his direction and gave an undignified snort. “Beautiful,” she said. “Your type is
beautiful
. Like you.”

His mouth twisted wryly, and without invitation, Geoff filled his glass again. “And you are not . . . beautiful?”

She shook her head. “You know that I am not,” she replied, pacing along the brass fender that guarded the hearth. “I am . . . not ugly. I realize that. But my nose is too strong, my eyes are too large, and my hair is a pitch-black, tumbling-down tangle most of the time.”

He laughed. “That last one I'll give you,” he said. “And are those all your faults?”

She lifted one shoulder nonchalantly. “More candor?” she murmured. “Very well. I know I'm too olive-skinned to be English, and too tall to be thought delicate. But I have grace, and a certain Continental elegance. I am at peace with that. I do not feel sorry for myself.”

“No, you don't strike me as the type given to self-pity,” he agreed.

She turned to fully face him. “And so we have agreed I am not your type, and you are not Mr. Right, have we?”

His expression shifted, became unreadable. “And if I concede that much—?”

She set both hands on the rolled arm of the sofa, and leaned almost over him. “Then are you Mr. Right-for-Now?”

He looked up at her over the top of his wineglass. “Well played, my dear,” he murmured. “But no, I think that is not the role for me.”

“Suit yourself, then,” she replied.

His smile twisted. “Oh, I am not suiting myself, Anaïs.” His voice was low and quiet now. “I am suiting your family. Your future. Your father. I needed you for this assignment, yes, and I pray that in the end it doesn't ruin you. But I won't ruin you on a whim, or out of petty lust.”