Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection)

by Jennifer Blake

  “You would be surprised at what I can be satisfied with,” he answered, his firm lips curving in a smile as he caught her swift upward glance. The bright look in his eyes dared her to comment.

  She took the dare, though from a different angle. “Is that so? And I suppose you would just love an afternoon tour by double-decker bus, one that ends with a visit to the Tower of London?”

  “Actually,” he said with a judicious air, “a guided tour of the Tower is the practical choice. Advance ticket holders get waved in ahead of the regular tourists; you don’t have to stand in line at the gates.”

  “Yes,” she said heartily. “And I was thinking of a walk around Hyde Park first, for the exercise after sitting so long on the plane.”

  His gaze widened as he pushed back his plate. “All in one day?”

  “I also had in mind getting to the park by the underground, just to see if I can figure out the system. No taxis.”

  “Right.” His voice was hollow.

  “I don’t have much time to get everything in,” she said, suppressing a smile. “Of course, I’ll understand if you decide you’d rather not follow me around after all.”

  “Never crossed my mind,” he said, the words deliberate as he waved a hand at her plate. “Eat up. We have to move fast if we’re going to keep to the schedule.”

  She had been so sure he would back down. Now she was trapped into joining forces with him by her own badly timed levity. But what could it hurt, after all? They would be in public every step of the way, and far too busy for problems.

  The biggest obstacle to completing her program was Rone.

  He did his best to distract her with offers to rent a rowboat and row her about the lake in the park, or buy her a cup of tea and a cucumber sandwich for a picnic under the flowering horse-chestnut trees. He pointed out the unexpected color combinations of the pale, gray-white English office workers lying on the jewel-green grass and slowly turning lobster red in the unexpectedly warm afternoon sun. He lagged behind to listen to the doomsday preachers and anarchists at the Speaker’s Corner, and insisted on taking a half-dozen photos of Joletta as she stood beside a thatched keeper’s cottage where bluebells grew.

  At the Tower, he whispered suggestions for making off with the crown jewels as they snaked past them in the endless queue. Falling behind the others as they looked at the ravens in the courtyard, ravens required by legend to remain in the Tower to keep it from falling, and England with it, he was all pity for the poor birds. They were, he said, modern prisoners suffering cruel and unusual punishment; because ravens mate on the wing, having their flight feathers clipped to keep them from leaving doomed them to celibacy.

  Joletta laughed at him and did her best to ignore him by turns as she juggled her shoulder bag, camera, and notebook in the attempt to record everything she saw. She made careful notations of distances and times and anything else that could be numbered, from streets and roads to turrets in the Tower. It was some time before she realized that Rone, for all his foolishness, was helping her. He took over carrying the camera bag early in the day and often reached to hold the notebook when she was using the camera. Now and again he took her shoulder bag and slung the strap over his own shoulder when it appeared to be getting in her way. She was grateful, until she noticed him glancing over her notes, reading them.

  As she took her shoulder bag from him outside the Tower once more, she gave him a long, direct look. He endured it for a moment, then lifted a brow.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Nothing,” she said after a moment, forcing a smile.

  His helpfulness came from his ingrained courtesy, she thought, and it was no more than human nature that caused him to glance at what she had written as he held her notebook in his hand. That was all there was to it.

  What else could there be?

  They finished off the evening with steak and kidney pie and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon at a small restaurant in the West End. Between them, they managed to involve two waiters, a busboy, and the cook in an argument over whether there was liver in the pie or if the kidneys themselves tasted like liver. There was apparently no answer to the question, and toward the end, Joletta discovered she was too tired to care.

  Rone insisted on coming in with her when they reached the hotel. Joletta felt her stomach knot with tension as they neared her door. It had been a nice day; it would be a shame to have it ruined by a tussle over whether he could or could not stay with her.

  She need not have worried. He opened the door for her and glanced inside. Swinging around, he held out her key. She reached for it, but he closed his fingers around it, retaining it for a long moment while he gazed down at her with somber consideration in his blue gaze. His lips tightened, then he gave a minute shake of his head and dropped the key in her hand. With a promise to call her next day and a quiet good-night, he was gone.

  Joletta stood where she was when the door had closed behind him. He had not even tried to kiss her. For a moment she had thought — but no. It was surprising, after the way they had begun. But then, he was a surprising man.

  Weighing the key in her hand, she attempted to decide if she was relieved or miffed. She didn’t know; she really didn’t.

  4

  MAY 4, 1854

  Today I went shopping for kitchen toweling made of English linen as described to me by my cousin Lilith, who had found it at the emporium of Fortnum and Mason on her last voyage abroad. It was a trivial expedition, yes, but this toweling is all that Gilbert has so far permitted me to purchase. He suggested a subdued gray stripe before he left the hotel for a visit to the cabinetmaker. I ordered twelve dozen pieces in a bright blue plaid, and pray he may dislike them.

  Afterward, I was caught in the rain.

  How simple it is to write those bare words, but how confusing it was and how — I should like to say exciting, but that is not a state at all suitable to a staid married lady of six-and-twenty.

  Violet wandered through the food courts of Fortnum and Mason, pausing now and then to look at the picnic baskets, the vanilla beans, or tins of tea, but refusing all offers of assistance. She would have liked to buy a few things, some cheese and wine perhaps, or a tart or jar of biscuits to take back to the rooms she and Gilbert had hired. She knew, however, that her husband would not approve. Gilbert was punctilious about appearances; he would be mortified if the hotel staff should think that he was pinching pennies by dining in his room instead of going out to a restaurant. They were staying at Brown’s Hotel, a hostelry established some years previously by Lord Byron’s valet, a fact that was supposed to give it an added cachet. To Violet, it was merely stuffy.

  Violet had felt somewhat conspicuous on the streets without her maid. The elderly black woman, Hermine, who always accompanied her when she so much as set foot outside the house in New Orleans, was laid down upon her bed with a chill brought on by the English climate. While it was true that most of the other women Violet saw were either in pairs or escorted by gentlemen, there was a goodly number of respectable-looking females who were alone. Certainly there were enough of them that Violet need not fear she was behaving improperly. There were compensations to being unchaperoned, she had discovered. She could move much faster on her own. And to be able to shop without Hermine looking over her shoulder, muttering disparaging comments and sighing over the weight of the market basket, gave her a lovely sense of freedom.

  Leaving the store, Violet strolled along the street with no particular destination, simply enjoying the outing. She paused at a window display of souvenirs of Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition, which had been held three years before, among which were cunning little boxes made of glass to represent the marvelous Crystal Palace and a brass trotting sulky like the one that had been exhibited by the United States. Entering a bookseller’s shop to browse, she was tempted by an old hand-bound and beautifully illustrated booklet of William Blake’s poems, but she came away without it. She had walked some distance when the sky began to darken and a du
ll rumble of thunder sounded overhead.

  The parasol she carried had been designed to protect against the hot Louisiana sun rather than English rain. Its fringed silk was not only woefully thin, but was inadequate to cover the full spread of her gown over its crinoline. Violet looked around her for a hackney carriage, but there was none to be seen that was not already occupied. The native Londoners had been much quicker to note the change of weather than had she.

  A chill wind blew up the street. It swayed her green silk skirts around her and swirled her sash of Balmoral plaid and also the matching plaid ribbons on her small jade velvet hat tipped forward on her high-dressed curls. She turned this way and that, in search of cover. A short distance away, across the street, was the arched marble gateway to a small park. There were great chestnut trees inside in full bloom with clumps of rhododendron under them that were footed by massed wallflowers. In the center was a cast-iron pavilion framed by the twisted trunks of ginkgo trees.

  As the first spotting drops of rain began to fall, Violet put up her parasol, then lifted her skirts and stepped from the sidewalk into the street. Holding the flimsy sunshade before her to protect her face from the wind, with its freight of coal dust and bits of blowing straw from horse bags, she ran for the far side.

  There came the clatter of hooves, followed by the shrill neighing of a horse and the agonizing squeal of a handbrake. A man shouted a curse and a whip snapped. Violet jerked her parasol aside to see a hackney looming down on her. The bewhiskered driver hauled on the reins while a powerful gray stallion reared up, almost on top of her.

  Abruptly, an arm like an iron shackle fastened upon her waist. Her head whirled dizzily as she was half lifted, half dragged to the curb. The iron wheels of the hackney carriage passed inches away and she was buffeted by the wind of its passage. The curses of the driver floated back on the wind, mingling with the irate shouts of the gentleman passenger hanging out the window.

  Between the hard grasp of the man’s arm about her and the biting grip of her own corsets, Violet could not breathe. Shivering with reaction, her chest heaving as she tried to draw air into her constricted lungs, she stared with misted eyes at the cravat of the man who held her. The insignia on the gold pin that secured it, and the delicate fern design of his waistcoat into which it was tucked, did a crazed dance before her; still, she felt their patterns would be imprinted on her mind forever. When she was certain she was not going to faint from shortness of breath, she slowly lifted her gaze.

  His eyes, that was what she saw first. They were so clear and kind and warm in spite of their crystalline blue-gray color. Set so the corners were turned down slightly, they were shaded by straight brows and edged by lashes so thick they gave him a secretive air. His cheekbones had a Slavic prominence on either side of a straight Roman nose. His jawline was square, and though his mouth was strongly molded, there was gentleness about its curves and smooth surfaces. He had lost his hat in the brief skirmish, and his close-cropped hair curled in wild, russet-brown disarray with the dampness and wind.

  Violet, searching his face, grew aware of the heavy beat of his heart under her hands, which were trapped between them. The dark lavender-blue outer ring of her brown eyes darkened and her own fringe of jet-black lashes swept downward again.

  She was released abruptly.

  “Forgive me, my lady!” the man said, stepping back, holding his arms stiff at his sides as he inclined his head in a bow.

  She had known he would speak with an accent, however slight, even before she heard him. “No, please,” she said softly, “I must thank you.”

  “I beg you won’t. What I did, it was nothing.” He looked around him, his gaze lighting on his hat lying in the wet road with its crown crushed by a carriage wheel. Beside it lay her parasol with the handle in two pieces and its broken ribs poking through torn and fluttering silk. Around them, the rain began to quicken.

  “Your umbrella is as useless as my hat, I think, or I would retrieve it for you.”

  “Please don’t try,” she murmured.

  “No, but you must have shelter. Come.”

  With his hand on her arm, he pulled her with him toward the cast-iron pavilion. She went willingly enough, catching up her unwieldy skirts for the quick dash. Their footsteps skimmed over the wet grass, then they were pounding up the low steps and ducking under the water streaming down from the steep slate roof. Violet’s skirts whirled around her, then settled as she came to a halt and turned back toward the open doorway.

  It was amazing how dark it had grown there under the shadows of the trees with the closing in of the storm. The noise of the rain was like the rushing of a cataract as it assaulted the new spring leaves and pounded the grass, rattled on the slates overhead, and splattered on the pavilion steps.

  Violet, watching the rain as if mesmerized, gave a small shiver and rubbed her arms with her hands. The chill came, she thought, from inside, for her arms were covered by the sleeves of her green velvet jacket with its peplum waist. There were drops of rain beaded on the velvet, and she stripped off her gloves to brush at them in distress. The fabric would be quite ruined and she had worn it no more than twice. Gilbert would not be pleased.

  The man beside her spoke in low tones. “It is irregular, I know, but since there is no one to present me, perhaps you will permit me to introduce myself?” He inclined his head briefly. “I am Allain Massari, my lady, at your service.”

  “How could I be so ungrateful as to refuse to know you?” she said, giving him her gloved hand. “But you are not English, I think. French perhaps? Or is it Italian?”

  Amusement sparkled in his eyes. “My mother was Italian and French; my father claimed no particular country as his own, but enjoyed many, especially England. I am many things, then, but prefer to think of myself as simply European.”

  Was that another way of saying that he had no right to his father’s name, so had taken that of his mother? She could not embarrass him by asking. In any case it made no difference, since it was unlikely their acquaintance would be a long one. These thoughts ran quickly through Violet’s head before she realized with a start that they were no longer speaking English. “Ah, you are very fluent in French, m’sieur.”

  “I felt you would be more comfortable. I am right, am I not?”

  She assented, telling him of her Louisiana French background, before she went on. “And are you equally at home in Italian?”

  “I have a lucky facility with languages,” he said dismissively, then frowned a little as his gaze rested on her cheek. He reached to draw a handkerchief from his sleeve. “You will allow me one small privilege further?”

  He touched her chin with the fingers of one hand, tilting her face toward the little light that was available. Using the handkerchief, he blotted the raindrops that stood on the skin of her forehead and the smooth planes of her face, and even those that clung to the ends of her lashes.

  Violet knew she should have stepped back away from him or at least protested; instead she stood quite still. His hands, she saw, were beautifully shaped and well cared for, but carried hard ridges of calluses on the fingers and across the palms. They were the mark of one who practiced often with a sword. It was intriguing, that knowledge. She allowed her gaze to search his face, noting the strength of its bone structure, assessing his absorption in his task.

  He accepted her quiet scrutiny, until, suddenly, he looked straight into her eyes.

  What happened then seemed beyond belief, yet, at the same time, inevitable.

  He let the handkerchief in his hand fall, so it drifted down to catch on her wide skirts, then glided in snowy folds to the floor. A softly whispered phrase that might have been a plea or an imprecation damning himself rose to his lips, though in what language she could not tell for the thunder of her heartbeat in her ears. With infinite care, he lowered his head and touched his lips to hers.

  It was a kiss of such gentle sweetness, such reverence, that it touched her to the heart. She felt the rise of tea
rs, tasted their saltiness, even as her mouth throbbed under his and her blood began to froth in her veins with the effervescence of champagne. She felt glorified, transfigured in some way, so that who and what she was no longer mattered. It was as if she had discovered a part of her that had been missing, as if that piece had just locked in place, so it could never be lost again. The only thing important was the moment, and the feelings that made it her own.

  He raised his head, his gaze on the trembling, coral-pink softness of her lips. Slowly, as if exercising a perilous restraint, he stepped away from her until his back and taut shoulders struck the upright post of the pavilion. He turned from her then, grasping the post with one hand in a grip so tight that the tips of his fingers turned blue white with the pressure and the structure creaked somewhere in the metal beams above them.

  “Forgive me,” he said in ragged tones, “my manners — but I meant no disrespect, I swear it.”

  “Please, don’t.” Her words were so quiet he might not have caught them if he had not been straining to hear. “I — I was also at fault.”

  He shook his head. “You will think that I am a trifler who took advantage. It isn’t so — or rather, it is, but it was not deliberate.”

  “I — realize.” She glanced at his broad back, then back down at her clenched hands.

  “Do you?” He turned to face her then, but kept his distance.

  Her lips trembled into a smile. “I think that had you intended it, you — might have used more address.”

  Relief and laughter sounded in his voice as he said, “I would like to think so.”

  She met his gaze for a long instant. Turning slightly from him to stare out into the park, she said, “I am married.”

  There was a small silence before he answered. “I know. I saw the ring.”

  Violet looked down at her hand where a ruby surrounded by diamonds surmounted the shining gold circle on her finger, the traditional marriage ring of Gilbert’s family. Closing her fingers into a fist, she folded her arms, tucking the ring away out of sight. At the same time a heated feeling moved over her as she wondered if she had assumed too much in telling this man of her marital status, as though it could make a difference to him.