Lessons of Desire

by Madeline Hunter

  “Why are you so curious about Greenwood, Phaedra?”

  She examined the relaxed familiarity they shared and debated her response. “I am very interested in him.”

  “Hell, he is old enough to be your father.”

  She almost laughed at his exasperated tone, but the hot annoyance in his eyes checked her. He was jealous. She found that hopelessly old-fashioned and presumptuous, but adorably so. She wanted to giggle, not scold.

  “You misunderstand, Elliot. He knew my mother, and has been kind enough to try to answer some questions I have about a few things.”

  “What things?”

  “My mother may have had a secret lover her last years.”

  He frowned. “Richard Drury—”

  “Not at the end. There was another.”

  “And Matthias knew who it was? He lived in Cambridge then, and although he visited London sometimes…”

  “He is a perceptive man. He was not surprised when I suggested there may have been another man in my mother’s life. This lover also dealt in antiquities, and Matthias was able to tell me the names of some men in her circle who did. Many of her close friends put me off with denials. I suspect they did not want the world’s image of Artemis Blair to be changed. But he was honest with me and I am grateful to him.”

  He puzzled over what she said, and appeared both curious and skeptical. “Why would you ask for names, Phaedra? Perhaps there was no lover at all if her friends denied it.”

  “I think there was, because of something my father wrote in his memoirs. This man, whoever he was, was a criminal.”

  His expression darkened. “Another reference without a name? Another bit of gossip that will destroy a reputation?” He was on his feet in an instant. He strode away, stared at the wall, then turned to face her. “Better if you burned it, or locked it away forever.”

  “That might spare your family, but it will not spare my mother’s last lover.”

  “Why not?”

  She wrapped the cheese in its damp cloth. “Because even if the memoirs are not published, I will annotate this part to my satisfaction, and I will deal with this man in my own way.”

  His mood did not lighten, his frown did not cease, but cautious curiosity showed in his eyes. “You speak calmly, but with bitter resolve. What did your father write about this man that you feel you must now identify him?”

  She scrambled to stand. She brushed off the black gauze of her skirts. “He wrote that this man seduced her, then betrayed her in a most dishonorable way that led to her death. I need to discover if it is true.”

  “It is ambiguous at best.”

  “Not so ambiguous. There was more. I am not completely mad in thinking I can identify this man. Only half so.”

  She strolled to the center of the chamber and looked around. “If we might be here for days, we should domesticate this place.” She upturned a basket. “It might serve as a stool if you can remove the handle.”

  He fetched the knife sent up with the food. He set the basket on the windowsill’s stones and set to sawing. “You should not put too much stock in what your father wrote about your mother. He was a lover spurned and that can cloud a man’s judgment.”

  She picked up the blanket that covered the straw and checked its cleanliness. She eyed some metal hooks set into the stone vault above. “My father understood what he had and did not have with my mother. He did not write with bitterness, but as a man who had seen the woman he loved misused.”

  Elliot sawed away, but his expression of resolve was not for the basket handle. “Tread carefully as you annotate his words on this, Phaedra. Do not accuse the wrong man or impugn a good one.”

  “If he is a good man, he has nothing to fear from me or from the memoirs. No good man does.”

  The basket handle gave way just then. It broke under the pressure he put on the knife. A harsh crack sounded off the stone vaults, as if Elliot’s temper had snapped at her last sentence.

  They spent the next hours more pleasantly, speaking of friendlier things. Phaedra’s friend Alexia had recently married Elliot’s brother Hayden, and they speculated on that match and what had and had not brought it about. The gossip lightened the mood wrought by their first conversation.

  Elliot continued to mull it over, however. He had not missed her tone or her expression when she spoke of the lover who had betrayed her mother.

  Phaedra was no curious tourist the way she had claimed. She was a woman on a mission. For some reason it had led her to Naples. It was why her humor had improved about his delay in taking her to Pompeii. Her investigation may have even been at the bottom of her friendships with Marsilio and Pietro.

  For all he knew her every act, her every word, since that day he stood in the garden, had been part of her plan to learn about her mother’s last months and the man whom she blamed for her mother’s decline and death.

  She gave instructions about arranging their humble abode while they chatted. At her request he managed to tie the rope to one of the vault’s hooks and secure its end to the stone floor with its metal hooks. She draped the old blanket over it to create a private corner into which she placed the chamber pot that Matthias’s servants had sensibly added to one of the baskets.

  Dusk was settling when all was done. With the new blanket on the straw and the upturned basket for a stool, Phaedra had created a rustic but serviceable home. For one person.

  A low-ceiling space existed below this highest tower chamber. He expected he would be making do there unless he could charm an invitation out of the queen to share her sanctuary.

  “You have a talent for domestic organization, Phaedra. Is that the result of making do without servants?”

  “I think that I learned to do it well because my mother did it so poorly. That proved useful because I needed the skills when I was sent off to fend for myself.”

  She carried the wineskin and the cup to the window facing the town. After a few errant splashes she filled the cup from the skin’s arching stream and offered it to him.

  He joined her at the window and drank. Beyond the long shadow of the tower Tarpetta’s men had made a camp at the base of the promontory. From the distant sounds of their laughter they appeared relaxed and in good spirits.

  “Why did you begin fending for yourself?”

  She appeared very lovely in the gathering silvery light of dusk that entered this window. Behind them the opposite opening allowed in the flaming colors of the sun’s final glory. Those rays illuminated the back of her hair, turning her locks into blazes that contrasted with the cool translucence of her white skin as she looked west.

  “My mother believed that women learn dependency from their parents. We are taught to fear independence and then lured into rejecting it even when it is attainable. Therefore, when I received a legacy from her brother, she encouraged me to leave her house and live on my own before I grew complacent in my adult dependency on her.” She paused while she calmly stretched to see the ground closer to the tower. Another little camp stood there, populated by five old women and Carmelita Messina.

  “I was sixteen,” she added, still distracted by the scene below.

  Her attention on the camps ensured that she did not see his reaction. “You were a child.” He tried to keep condemnation out of his tone. Phaedra would not like criticism of her mother, and he had no desire to argue with her now.

  She still watched the promontory. “Yes, I was a child. However, there are many girls sent into marriage at that age. I suspect that is a more startling fate. They are too young for their parents’ plans, and I was too young for mine as well. She did not remove herself from my life, so it was not a rejection of her duties to me. She helped me hire a housekeeper so I did not live alone the first years. I visited her often and we saw each other almost as much as when I lived under her roof.”

  She made it sound almost normal and sensible. He could not accommodate the image of Phaedra at sixteen in her own household, with no protection or supervision excep
t that provided by a paid woman. His cousin Caroline who had come out this season was so childish that one wanted to lock her away for another ten years.

  Of course Phaedra Blair had probably not been so childish at that age, nor so innocent of the world. Artemis had raised her daughter to walk alone and make her own way. Still, it angered him to picture it. The woman should not have used her own child as an experiment to prove that her radical ideas had merit.

  “At the time I did not mind, and it has all worked out as my mother expected. Once a woman tastes such freedom she will never relinquish it. However, when she died—I felt some anger then. I rather wish she had waited so I could have spent those last two years with her. She did not anticipate that her time was so short, of course.”

  “I cannot imagine the independence you describe. Even as a man I do not live such a singular life.”

  “It matters not if you still reside in Easterbrook’s great house. As a man you are by your gender free.”

  “I do not speak of the law or of customs or finances, but of living. I am not alone or unfettered by others. There are my brothers ever-present in my life, and other relatives with claims on me. I am theirs and they are mine. Even if my brothers and I grow to hate each other, the burdens of life are shared.”

  Her expression turned wistful, beautifully so. “I would have liked to have a sister or brother. That would have been nice, especially now.”

  Now that she was all alone was what she meant. She had chosen a path that would leave her forever alone too, unless like her mother she had an illegitimate child. He realized that she understood what she sacrificed. She did not discount its value. She had weighed it all, if not at sixteen then when she matured. He did not think the cost worth the prize, but he had to admire her bravery.

  She appeared a little sad. He felt bad for forcing her to face her loneliness. “I expect your friendships help to replace the family you do not have.”

  Impish lights danced in her eyes. Her humor and spirit surfaced out of the depths of her thoughts. “In a way, but not family as you described yours. Some are like sisters and brothers, a few have even been like the most benign of husbands, but the bonds are not permanent. As I grow older I may wonder if I have been blessed with more independence than any person would want.”

  Which meant she wondered already.

  The oblique reference to her lovers subtly altered the mood between them. He could not stand so close to her in this light and not think about making love to her. Images and inclinations had prodded since he walked up the stairs hours ago. That low stimulation boiled higher with her words. He thought he saw a challenge in the way she regarded him.

  Suddenly the desire bound them as starkly as it ever had. She made no effort to thwart its power. Soon his teeth were on edge. Never in his life had he met a woman who so boldly acknowledged the sensual excitement that can exist before a kiss or touch.

  With any other woman he would act, just as he had with her in the past. He had not forgotten her parting words that last night on the balcony, however. If she were good to her threat right now he might not muster the honor to allow her to deny him.

  She provoked the worst of his blood, a current that flowed from his father. He wanted to reach for her and embrace and caress and devour. The temptation to use pleasure to coerce her to submit to her own hunger, and to him, threatened to overpower what was left of his good sense.

  He walked away from her. He picked up the pistol and one of the blankets and kept going, down the stairs. The alternative was to risk behaving like the worst scoundrel, or else becoming one of those pitiable bees, buzzing and begging for the queen’s favor.

  Phaedra watched the sun dip into the sea. Purple and orange lights continued to color the water in silken streaks while dark slowly closed in. Down in the boat the men waved at her and called up friendly greetings. They appeared to have a few wineskins of their own and had grown more amiable as a result.

  She found the one big candle sent with the provisions and lit it. She set it in a corner where the night breeze would not blow it out. She heard Elliot moving about down below, perhaps trying to find some comfort on the floor with that sole blanket beneath him.

  Her body had not entirely calmed since he left, nor had her thoughts strayed far from their last minutes together. Hot pulses continued to gently throb, coaxing her attention. Usually she only had to contend with that when Elliot was near, but it appeared her body knew he was close enough and would not give her relief. Her breasts remained tight and full, their tips reacting to every movement she made when the fabric of her dress brushed them.

  Their last conversation had disarmed her. She could not think of him except kindly right now. He had understood more than she did herself. He had not gloated either, but instead expressed true concern for the less perfect side of the life she lived.

  She had lied a little to spare Artemis this man’s censure, but from his reactions that may have been unnecessary. The truth was that Artemis had been correct in her beliefs but not always so in her methods. Being cut loose at sixteen had been devastating and frightening, much more than she admitted to him. It had felt like her mother had thrown her overboard into the ocean and simply expected her to figure out how to swim.

  She had forgiven her mother that miscalculation years ago, but she doubted others would if they knew about that tenuous year so fraught with big mistakes. The truth would be one more proof to the world that Artemis Blair had not been a good mother, or even a normal woman.

  Elliot no longer made sounds down below, but she could swear she heard his breathing. Nor was he asleep so early. She just knew that too. She paced quietly, trying to relieve the way her body tormented her. She tried to reconcile how the desire was not only physical now, but also a yearning to explore the closeness she had felt with him today as they shared danger and confidences.

  She laid her hands on her breasts. The stimulations collected, increased, and flowed down her body. She closed her eyes to try to tame them, and heard her mother’s lessons about desire.

  Carnal pleasure is as much a woman’s need as a man’s. Do not deny your desires, but beware whom you choose as a partner. Most men are conquerors at heart. Seek out the enlightened few who have risen above this primitive curse. If you choose to take your pleasure with a conqueror, make sure you cede only your body and only temporarily. And never, ever succumb to the delusion that you can change such a man.

  Phaedra pictured the man down below. He had left even though this chamber had all but howled with the way they wanted each other. He might be one of the conquerors, but he was not stupid. He would understand that she ceded nothing except what she chose. She would make sure that part was clear.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Elliot settled in for a night with nought but his thoughts for company. With any luck he would soon cease picturing the woman above stairs.

  He forced his mind inward to the world of the histories he wrote. He did not need his papers to journey there. The notes and preliminary drafts existed as records, not as reminders. All the information lived in his head, accessible at any time. He had spent many a party escaping to that world for spells of relief if the conversation bored him.

  His brothers, Christian and Hayden, possessed similar secret chambers in their heads. When they ventured inside theirs they closed the doors behind them and lost hold on reality. Only he had been blessed with the ability to slip in and out at will, as if the door remained forever ajar. His connection to the real world always remained within reach.

  Right now that was less a boon than normal. The world wanting to intrude consisted of physical frustration that refused to quiet itself. Speculations regarding the movements above poked at him. His bad blood calculated the cost to honor and pride of taking first and rectifying later.

  Somehow he managed to keep most of that just outside the door, not completely interfering. He turned his concentration to synthesizing the information on funerary practices gleane
d from the old Roman histories.

  “Elliot.”

  He opened his eyes. Every part of him snapped alert. She might have stood a few feet from him, he heard her so clearly. The stones of walls and stairs had carried her voice down. She had not even had to raise her tone.

  She did not speak again. She just assumed he had heard. Or maybe she knew he would come to her even if she only spoke the summons in her head.

  She might merely need help with the candle. Or perhaps she saw some movement from one of her windows and anticipated trouble from their gaolers. He could just call up and ask, but he wouldn’t, even though walking away again would be nigh impossible.

  Trusting that Phaedra was too smart to play with fire, he climbed the staircase.

  Vague lights and dark shadows danced across the stones of the upper chamber’s walls and vault. The hanging blanket sliced away a corner with its dark drop. The lone, big candle smoked gently, its fat flame adding golden glows amidst the moonlight’s cool ones.

  All the dim illuminations gathered and intensified in one place. A pale statue absorbed them to enhance its sensual display of fiery copper and white porcelain.

  Phaedra knelt on the straw pallet, sitting back on her heels. She faced the stairs and him. He stopped when he saw her, momentarily awed by her beauty and boldness.

  She was naked. Her tresses streamed over bare skin. They looked like strips of silken drapery that parted to display glimpses of creamy shoulders, soft arms, round breasts, and curving hips.

  She let him look a good while, acknowledging with her gaze the way the storm gathered in him, admitting with her eyes that she was with him in the desire.

  She parted her hair and pushed it to her back, exposing her body completely. Her breasts rose high and full, their dark pink tips erect and tight.

  “We can share pleasure tonight, if you want,” she said.

  He shed his coat and walked over to her. “If I want? I have wanted to have you since the first time I saw you.”