The Bride Wore Scarlet

by Liz Carlyle

  “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 R
aphaele 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.”

  “Is lust petty?”

  “Most of the time, I think.” He leaned forward, and set his glass down hard. “And for men, lust is just lust. There isn’t anything romantic about it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Have you never been in love, then?” Even to Anaïs, her voice sounded wistful.

  He gave a harsh laugh. “Not even close, thank God.”

  “You have an aversion to marriage?”

  He shrugged. “I haven’t an heir,” he said. “Not even a distant cousin. So yes, I mean to do my duty to the title. But there aren’t too many women who would care to live with a sword hanging over their heads. A man who senses things unnatural. You just saw how it can be—and trust me, that little hint of darkling was nothing.”

  “Heavens, Geoff, you must think all women cowards,” she murmured. Then she sat back down and leaned near. “I haven’t a vast deal of experience, perhaps, like some of the women you are used to. But I am no inexperienced virgin.”

  For an instant, naked curiosity sketched across his face. “Are you . . . some other sort of virgin?”

  “Not any sort at all,” she said, smiling sweetly.

  “I see.” He swallowed hard, the sinuous muscles of his throat working up and down. “And what about Mr. Right?”

  “When I find Mr. Right,” said Anaïs, leaning nearer still, “he won’t give a ha’penny whether I’m a virgin or not.”

  Geoff cleared his throat awkwardly. “And you know that how?”

  “Otherwise, he would not be Mr. Right,” she replied. “Because Mr. Right is perfect for me. Destined for me. And that’s the end of it.”

  “I think it had better be the end of this conversation,” said Geoff, bracing one hand along the back of the sofa to rise. “I think I know when I have pressed my luck a little too far.”

  Anaïs straightened on the sofa. “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind,” he said. “I believe I shall go out for a walk. A very long walk. Shall I see you at dinner?”

  “Oh, very well,” said Anaïs. “But that won’t do much to alleviate my boredom.”

  “Then suggest something,” said Geoff, his hand already on the doorknob. “Something that does not include you and me naked on a bed.”

  “I love how that just rolls off your tongue,” said Anaïs, turning to look at him over the back of the sofa. “And to be perfectly honest, I would love to see you naked.”

  “Anaïs,” he said warningly. “Suggest something.”

  “Very well.” She smiled brightly. “I think I shall go across the street and drop our cards on the Vicomte de Lezennes.”

  “You cannot be serious.”

  “Why not?” said Anaïs. “I mean to ask them to dinner. Tomorrow evening, as a matter of fact. If you cannot be persuaded, I shall hone my feminine wiles on Lezennes.”

  Chapter 10

  He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious.

  Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  In the end, Anaïs did not go across the street. Over dinner, and with very little difficulty, Geoff found himself able to persuade her that it would look unwise to appear overly forward; that it was better to cast one’s line, then reel the bait slowly past Lezennes, rather than simply whack him over the head with the pole.

  Anaïs sulked for a moment over her dessert—or pretended to sulk, Geoff thought, for she came around quickly enough, then suggested a hand of piquet afterward.

  Geoff, however, was almost afraid to be alone with the woman. Oh, he was a gentleman, he supposed—for what little that was worth—but no one had ever accused him of being a saint. And if Anaïs kept pressing the issue—kept pressing her body so hungrily to his and looking up at him with those eyes like dark pools of desire—he was apt to give her precisely what she was asking for.

  Most unwise, when she was waiting for Mr. Right. And that, apparently, was not Geoff.

  So he had excused himself and gone for another walk. Before this godforsaken mission was over, he sourly considered, he was apt to know Brussels right down to the very gutters that carried the sewage into the Senne.

  But what alternative was left to him? Getting roaring drunk was not an option; he was on a mission, and even his growing desire for Anaïs had not blinded him to that fact. Besides, intoxication was probably the surest way to find himself standing at her bedroom door in the middle of the night with one hand on the knob.

  Worse still, she would likely know it.

  Already he had noticed that about Anaïs. Even before they had left England, he’d got the oddest notion she had eyes in the back of her head. She might protest that she had no Gift, that she had learned nothing from Giovanni Vittorio. But she had an unerring sense about his presence in a room.

  Already he had seen her address the servants to give one odd order or another without so much as lifting her head from her desk—address them by name, before he was even aware of their presence. And then there was that night—that night which seemed so long ago, when he’d walked with DuPont up to St. Catherine’s.

  There had been a woman in a pitch-black alley—a lady, by the sound of her voice—with a knife set to the throat of some hapless degenerate who’d snatched a strand of pearls. Cool as spring water she’d been, kicking him in the knackers, then tucking her knife away as casually as another female might straighten the lace of her cuff. Yes, he thought about it now, and he wondered.

  Over the next several days, as they observed the rhythms of the house across the street, Geoff watched her more carefully—watched, that was to say, something besides the intriguing sway of her hips, or the way her eyes brightened when he came into a room.

  At breakfast one morning, she asked Petit about a strange taste in the omelet that had been sent up. The
footman had hastened away, and returned faintly red-faced to admit the cook had inadvertently added sage when she’d meant to add pepper. Those eggs had been served instead at the servants’ table. But the bowl had not been washed.

  Some days later, they were sequestered in the attic room, taking turns at the telescopes. Occupied in thumbing through DuPont’s last pile of papers, Anaïs apparently heard the latch on Lezennes’ front door click open. Geoff, who had been watching a housemaid dusting the windowsills in Giselle’s room, had known nothing of it until Anaïs appeared at his elbow.

  “I wonder where she is going,” Anaïs had mused, watching as the governess came out. “She left at four the last several days.”

  “It’s Thursday,” Geoff murmured, leaning forward to make a notation in the log. “A short day, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps,” Anaïs murmured, watching the tidy gray figure vanish down the street.

  “You have keen hearing,” he remarked, glancing up from his paper.

  “Do I?” Anaïs smiled, and drifted away from the window. “Mamma always complained I had selective hearing. That I could hear a pin drop when I wished, and ignore her calls to supper when I was playing in the garden.”

  Geoff closed the ledger, and tried to stretch the stiffness from his limbs. “I think we’ve learned about as much as we are going to,” he said, rising. “I believe it’s time we made it a little harder for our reticent neighbors to ignore us.”

  “Well, finally,” said Anaïs. “Now may we call upon Lezennes?”

  “No, I think not,” said Geoff. “That would be too obvious. Recall that Madame Moreau already sent her regrets for your little tea—Lezennes’ doing, I’d wager.”

  Anaïs had drifted around the room, and back to the window. “He does not wish either of them to have contact with the outside world, I suspect,” she said, arms stubbornly crossed as she stared across the street.

  “And she is afraid of him,” Geoff mused. “I feel it.”

  “It is not your imagination,” said Anaïs. “That place fairly radiates evil. I am sure that is the source of what you were seeing the other day. Lezennes wants to keep them isolated.”