Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection)

by Jennifer Blake

  He swore softly. So much for good intentions.

  He rose to his feet so swiftly that a tendon in his knee cracked like the snapping of a whip. He went still, afraid that she would open her eyes and discover him standing there.

  The minutes ticked past. He swayed a little, there on his feet. He was so tired. It had been years, it seemed, since he had last slept soundly. It might be aeons more before he could manage it again.

  He retreated to the bathroom. There, he stepped into the pajama bottoms. He snapped off the light and came out again, walking quietly to his own bed. Sliding under the duvet, he stretched out.

  He lay listening, but he could not hear her breathing. Was she that quiet? Or had she gone? He raised his head, his eyes wide in the dark.

  She was still there. Still sleeping. Still beautiful.

  Still untouched.

  It was in the nature of things that two of the most talkative widows on the bus should see Joletta and Rone leaving his room together on the following morning.

  It wasn’t that it couldn’t have been avoided. By that time Joletta and Rone had been to breakfast and taken an early-morning walk around the block. They had also gone down to Joletta’s room to retrieve her suitcase and the rest of her things, since they would be checking out of the hotel that morning. She could, Joletta thought, have gone on ahead, taking her own luggage. But no, Rone had insisted on carrying her brown plaid bag as well as his own heavy black leather case.

  There were more than a few knowing smiles when they reached the bus. Rone seemed oblivious to the interest they had aroused, but Joletta could not be quite so casual about it. It bothered her to know that people were speculating about her love life, perhaps even picturing her and Rone in bed together. She had few hang-ups about sex, but there were some things that deserved a decent privacy.

  As they settled into their seats Joletta thought one or two of the older women watched Rone with a certain bright appreciation in their faded eyes. He was worth looking at this morning, with the lean planes of his face freshly shaven, his eyes still heavy-lidded from sleep, and the warm charm of his smile on display as he exchanged greetings with first one and then another.

  He took up a bit more than his share of the seat with his wide shoulders and long legs, but he was so apologetic about it that it didn’t matter. Joletta, feeling the press of his shoulder against hers for an instant before he moved away, and affected against her will, perhaps, by the speculation around her, could not prevent a vagrant curiosity about what kind of lover he would be. A gentlemanly one, she thought, courteous, humorous, and just possibly inventive. One corner of her mouth tugged upward a little at the analysis.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said quickly. “Are you too warm? No? I must have put on too many clothes this morning, or else it’s the sun shining on this side of the bus.”

  They were heading for Italy. Lugano, near the Swiss border, was their destination for a late lunch, and they reached it in good time. The bus driver let them out near the lake while their guide pointed out a number of small restaurants and cafeterias along the streets in either direction. Rone and Joletta had a quick meal of eggplant Parmesan and a red wine from Tuscany in honor of their approach to the Italian frontier. Afterward they strolled across the street to explore a nearby park.

  Hidden by a stone wall and a hedge of evergreens, this public park appeared to have once been a private garden surrounding a solid manor house. It curved to follow the lakeshore, a quiet retreat where the sound of bird songs was louder than the traffic noises beyond the wall. Studded with ancient trees in infinite variety, it was lapped by the chill alpine waters and made serene by the view of cloud-cloaked mountains through a soft gray-blue haze.

  The sun was warm in contrast to the coolness that lingered in the shade of the trees. The scent of the massed beds of annuals drifted in the light air. Out on the pellucid blue of the lake, a motorboat sped, dragging a white arrow of foam behind it.

  Joletta, wandering among the towering rhododendrons and azaleas, pausing to take pictures of the curving beds of pansies and wallflowers, wondered if Violet had ever seen this garden, if it had been there a hundred years before. She should know, but she didn’t. She had skimmed over some portions of the journal in her first reading, meaning to study them in more depth later. Somehow, she had not found time, with her headaches and Rone’s company.

  They had a little over a half hour before they were supposed to rejoin the group. They would have to be back at the appointed meeting place promptly on the hour if they didn’t want to be left behind, but for the moment there was no hurry. They sat on one of the many benches placed to take advantage of the lake view, enjoying the feel of the sun and the breeze in their faces. Joletta opened her purse and took out a few pages of the journal, squinting a little in the bright light as she tried to find the right section.

  A scene unfolding between Violet and Allain snagged her attention. It was one of haste and longing changing to desire. Violet’s pen had faltered over descriptions of passionate caresses, silken whispers, and crushed roses; she had splattered ink and left long spaces marked with single words and strings of quick dashes, places where imagination had to be exercised for understanding. It was absorbing, if somewhat frustrating reading.

  It was long minutes before Joletta realized that Rone was reading over her shoulder. She jerked the pages from his line of sight, holding them against her chest.

  “Why did you do that?” he asked as he straightened from where he leaned with his arm along the back of the bench. “I was just getting to the interesting part.”

  It had been purest reflex action, an instinctive protectiveness not unmixed with embarrassment. She got to her feet, putting the journal away as she answered. “I don’t know — habit, I guess.”

  “If I’m going to help, I have to know what’s in there.”

  “Yes, I know. But it will be better when we have more time.”

  He didn’t push it, for which she was grateful. They walked along until they came to a long bed of deep purple pansies, so dark they were nearly black. Joletta stopped for a moment beside them, enjoying the sight of the velvety petals ruffling in the wind.

  With some vague idea of introducing Rone gradually to the journal, she said, “Have you ever heard of the language of the flowers?”

  “You mean as in, "There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance, pray, love, remember"?”

  “Exactly,” she said, smiling in surprise, both for his quick understanding and the Shakespearean quote. “It seems the Victorians were big on such things. The flower language was used in the journal for secret communication, a sort of code, by the man my great-grandmother became involved with. Pansies stood for Thoughts, or Thoughts of Love.”

  “You think this flower code might have something to do with the perfume you’re after?”

  “It crossed my mind, though I can’t really see how it would work.”

  “No, but it does make you wonder about the meaning of roses.” He gave her a quizzical glance that plainly showed he had been reading the journal for some time before she noticed.

  “Love, of course. What else?”

  “Oh, right,” he said in dry disparagement for the evasion.

  She gave him a caustic look. Nevertheless, his lack of serious attention for the contents of the journal was comforting. He was, apparently, content to wait for her to tell him as much or as little about it as she wished.

  They had regained the path beside the lake and were strolling along it. Ahead of them a few hundred yards was a tall shrub with dark, shiny green leaves and bright clusters of blooms colored a brilliant coral.

  “Is that an azalea?” Rone asked, moving toward the shrub.

  “It’s possible.”

  “Let’s see,” he said, picking up his pace.

  Joletta glanced at her watch. There was time. She moved after him.

  It was a rhododendron, and beyond it was a mass of lily of the v
alley, and past that was a rock garden where mats of yellow and magenta blossoms tumbled over mossy stones. Near the rock garden was a small boy, hardly more than a toddler. He stumbled this way and that, talking to himself as he played with a large blue ball. The child’s hair curled in a wild platinum tangle, and there was devilry in his clear blue eyes. He was fast on his feet, and when his laugh rang out, it had the piercing clarity of near-unbearable joy. His parents sat not far away, holding another baby in a carrier between them on a bench while they ate towering cones of ice cream.

  The little boy kicked the ball. It spun toward the water of the lake. Rone ran to intercept it, scooping it up and tossing it back. The little boy laughed and kicked the ball again.

  What followed was a hilarious game of pitch, one Rone played while kneeling and lunging this way and that in the damp, emerald-tinted grass. Joletta, laughing at the sight, did not look at her watch again for some time.

  They missed the bus. The place where it had been parked was empty. Though they had seen one or two of their tour group in the gardens earlier, there was now none of them in sight.

  They had been warned that lack of punctuality was a discourtesy to the whole group, one that must alter multitudes of complicated arrangements and reservations. Anyone who failed to be at the appointed place at the required time would be left behind, to catch up with the group later. There would be some small amount of grace allowed, but no more than ten minutes.

  They were nearly a half hour late.

  “Never mind,” Rone said. “We’ll rent a car and catch up with them in Venice. Or failing that, in Florence.”

  “Our suitcases are on that bus,” Joletta reminded him.

  “We’ll buy what we need.”

  “I’ve already done that once.” His comments were so facile that she looked at him with suspicion rising in her eyes. “You’re not heartbroken over this, are you? It’s what you wanted to do all along, leave the others, rent a car, and go off on our own?”

  “The idea had a certain appeal.” There was wariness in his tone as he faced her.

  “I think,” she said deliberately, “that you did this on purpose.”

  He looked at her a long moment before he answered. “What if I did?”

  “Why? Why would you do such a thing?”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, his gaze speculative, “but I had the feeling you weren’t exactly comfortable on the bus with me there.”

  “Oh, I see. It was all for my sake.”

  “Not entirely.”

  The calmness of his voice did nothing for her irritated nerves. “Anyway, whatever I may have felt, it didn’t mean I wanted to leave the group.”

  “Too late now,” he said.

  The words he spoke were pleasant, without rancor. And why not? she thought irascibly. He had what he wanted, didn’t he?

  12

  JUNE 16, 1854

  I once considered myself virtuous. I have since discovered that within the heart of every woman of virtue lies a courtesan. I am a passionate female. Also a guileful one. How could I have ever thought otherwise?

  What folly it is to suppose that we act of our own accord, that we make decisions from independent thought and with recognition for only our own desires. I thought that if ever I went to Allain, it would be in loving necessity. I did not guess it might also be, in some small degree, in anger.

  Violet saw the two men as Allain was handing her into the carriage that would take her back to the hotel. They were standing in an arched opening of an arcade just down the street from the house of the comtesse. One of them turned to stare in their direction. He nudged his companion and pointed. Immediately the two of them set off at a run toward a low-slung black carriage that waited further along the way. When Violet and Allain’s carriage pulled away from the entrance of the house, the driver of the dark vehicle picked up his whip. He had to jockey for position for a few seconds among the equipages of the other guests that were lining the streets. As the carriage Violet and Allain were riding in reached the corner, the other vehicle pulled out and then fell in some distance behind them.

  “Did you see?” Violet asked, turning to Allain. “Those two men again, following us.”

  A grim expression settled over Allain’s features as he shifted position to look back through the small oval window set behind the seat.

  “You don’t think — can it be that Gilbert sent them?” Violet went on hesitantly, then answered herself. “Perhaps not, since there has been so little time. Yet who else would have reason?”

  He made no answer, though he met her gaze for long moments there in the darkness of the carriage. Facing forward once more, he reached for her hand, taking it in his warm clasp, holding it as if he meant never to let go. To Violet, his silence increased the sense of peril that hovered in the moment.

  She could feel the quickening beat of her heart, sense the fine weave of his coat as a roughness against her arm. The heat of his body seemed to penetrate the layers of cloth, the silk of her gown and petticoats, which lay between them. Longing beat upward from somewhere deep inside her, rising with the pulsing of a headache behind her eyes. She felt a little giddy with it, even a little reckless. Thoughts chased themselves in confusion across her mind, narrowing to a single impulse. Slowly she opened the fingers of the hand he held, until her palm pressed against his.

  “You are trembling,” he said, a trace of concern laced with wonder in his voice.

  “Only a little.”

  “Are you cold?”

  “No,” she answered, “I’m not cold at all. Is — is the other carriage still behind us?”

  He turned his head to look, then gave a short nod of assent.

  “What if,” she began, then paused to clear her throat of an unaccountable obstruction. “What if Gilbert has had someone watching us before tonight?”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” he said in low tones, “though I would rather not think it.”

  “Nor would I, and yet some things must be faced,” she replied. “The question is, what must we do about it?”

  “There are many things we could do,” he said, his voice hard-edged with despair. “I could finish the portrait and we could bid each other adieu. You could become a dutiful wife and remain in your assigned place except when escorted by your husband. I could leave Paris. Or you could go.”

  “No,” she said sharply.

  “Then, if these men are in truth hirelings of your husband, we can let them report what they may. There is little enough they can say.”

  “Or,” she said softly, “we can elude them.”

  “For what purpose? They will soon discover you are only returning to your hotel.”

  “Unless I do not return.”

  A stillness came over him. His fingers upon her hand tightened in a painful grip, then relaxed as he realized what he was doing. His gaze as he watched her in the dim light given off by the outside carriage lantern was penetrating. Quietly, he said, “Where else would you go?”

  “That is the question,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper and her lashes flickering downward to conceal her eyes. “Can you think of nowhere that I might be hidden and safe?”

  “Violet—”

  That single word was taut with passion and denial.

  She moistened her lips. “Please. I — I cannot bear that Gilbert shall control what I do, who I see or where I go, a moment longer.”

  It was long seconds before he replied, and then his voice was brusque, almost harsh. “I will no doubt be damned for it,” he said, “but neither can I.”

  Allain leaned forward to give an order to the coachman that sent the carriage rattling at a faster pace along the street. As he leaned back again Violet caught his arm, holding tightly. She took a deep breath, feeling the tight press of the bones of her corset into her ribs. As he reached to hold her she turned her face into his shoulder, closing her eyes.

  Violet had no idea how Allain intended to outdistance their pursuers; th
e winding streets of the older portion of the city allowed little in the way of evasion. However, he directed their passage through the intricate ways, with clear commands. At last they came to a tree-lined thoroughfare near the outskirts of the city. It was wider but still hardly less constricted than the older streets, for it was as crowded with carriages as had been the avenue before the house of the Comtesse de Fourier. There appeared to be a soirée in progress at the imposing mansion set back among the plane trees. As the carriage slowed to thread its way through the vehicles, Allain ordered it to a sudden halt.

  “What is this place?” Violet asked.

  “The home of the Pontalbas. The daughter-in-law of the baron is entertaining tonight also, and was kind enough to send me a card of invitation.”

  Before Violet could speak, he opened the carriage door and stepped down. Reaching inside, he lifted her out bodily. He directed the coachman to drive on and find a place for his rig as if his master and guest had decided to descend and go inside. As the carriage rolled on along the street Allain guided Violet quickly among the other standing equipages.

  She could hear the noise of the black carriage approaching behind them. It was a relief when Allain stopped beside a maroon barouche. He pulled the door open and guided her inside even as he called over his shoulder to a man in livery who had stepped forward from among a cluster of drivers.

  “Tell your master I have need of his barouche, a matter of urgency. He may have the use of mine, provided he returns it in good time tomorrow.”

  “Ah, M’sieur Massari, I should have known it was you!” the man returned in low tones. “My master will be honored to be of service.”

  Allain sketched a brief salute and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. “This carriage belongs to a friend,” he said to Violet in a hurried undertone, “a man of understanding.”

  “He must be, if he won’t mind you borrowing it,” Violet answered.

  “He has taken mine before, with less reason.”

  They both fell silent, drawing back into the darkest corner of the seat as the black carriage drew nearer. It rolled past with the two men inside sitting forward, their attention on the other carriage, which Allain’s coachman was drawing to the side farther along the street. Some distance away, the vehicle carrying the two drew up. No one emerged. The men apparently assumed, as Allain had intended, that their quarry had been put down at the house entrance to attend the second social event of the evening.