Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection)

by Jennifer Blake

  Maria moved forward with an anguished moan to kneel beside Giovanni. She gathered her son to her, supporting him, reaching for the stiletto and dragging it free even as he smiled up into her eyes. Others gathered at his feet to lift him and carry him into the villa.

  A kindly older woman came to Violet’s side, timidly touching her arm, tugging her toward the house.

  Violet shook her head.

  She forced her muscles to move, to answer her commands. Slowly she moved to where Allain lay with his blood staining his shirtfront, seeping into the grass. She lowered herself awkwardly beside him. She picked up his hand, lifting the lax, boneless fingers to her cheek. She closed her eyes, rocking a little; still, the warm tears seeped through, wetting the calluses that marked his thumb and forefinger and the inside of his palm.

  His eyelids fluttered, lifted. He stared up at her with such love and concentration in his gray eyes that it seemed he meant to imprint her image on their surface, a final lovely vision.

  He winced a little, allowed his gaze to drift. His voice so soft she had to guess at his meaning, he said, “Gone?”

  She nodded, unable to speak for the aching tightness of her throat.

  “My fault. Followed me. Should have watched closer.”

  His hand was growing cooler. She swallowed hard. “Please,” she said, “please don’t.” But she hardly knew whether she meant to keep him from talking, or to beg him not to leave her again in death.

  His gaze wavered, steadied as if by a supreme effort of will. He tried to smile, though pain arrested the movement. “I — would have brought you — flowers — but for haste.”

  “Never mind,” she whispered.

  “Rosemary,” he said, his voice no more than a fine-spun spider’s silk of sound. “For Remembrance. Pray, love—”

  She cried out as his voice stopped and his eyes fluttered shut. The piercing keen of it hurt her throat, but she could not stop.

  The pain came from deep inside her, a rushing, pouring tidal wave of agony. She was engulfed in it, submerged by it, carried on it to some far shore of her mind where she was left stranded and exposed. Racked by the merciless anguish, every touch was an added ache, every sound an exacerbation of it. She tried to fight the hands that lifted her, tugging at her, removing her from where she wanted to be. She heard voices she could not recognize, felt her own blood hot and wet as it drained from her as from a wound.

  Then came the glad darkness. She reached for it with both hands open and supplicating, for she could bear the pain no longer.

  “Your daughter, how she is beautiful. Bella, molto bella.”

  Violet turned her head as Maria spoke. She smiled as she saw the cherubic picture the small baby made, lying in a soft white knit blanket upon the lap of Maria’s black skirt. The small face was relaxed in sleep, the perfect pink rosebud mouth still moist with milk. The tiny lids that covered the dark blue-brown eyes were finely fringed with curving lashes and made expressive by delicate, arching brows, and the fine hair that curled over her pink scalp was a soft light brown.

  Yes, she was beautiful, and a joy, and a solace.

  “Bella Giovanna,” Maria went on in soft tones. “I am so proud you named her so. She is,” the woman added in doting tones, “a very Italian-looking baby.”

  Violet closed her eyes against the pain. She could control it now, though barely, since she had learned that it would, eventually, ease.

  “Yes,” she answered just as quietly.

  She turned back to her journal, a new one with an ornate cover of embossed burgundy velvet with brassbound edges that Maria’s nephew had found for her in Florence. She had spent the past days writing into it everything that had been in the old one, painstakingly recreating the days, and reliving them. Perhaps even living in them, at least a little. It was one way to escape the intolerable present.

  It gave her something to do, that endless writing and remembering. More than that, she wanted the record of the year just passed. She would not be cheated out of it by spite and the petty fears of some assassin that it might document her days with Allain. She needed it for herself, and for Allain’s daughter.

  Maria cleared her throat, her gaze still on the baby as she spoke again. “I have said nothing to you of the funeral. It was a solemn Mass, most moving; the priest said good things, true things of comfort. There were many mourners and — many flowers.”

  Violet drew a quick breath, holding it against the press of tears. She said quickly, while she still could, “And the burial?”

  “On the hill near the church, among my people. The headstone is beautiful, large, nicely carved with blossoms of roses and sprigs of rosemary, and with a standing angel.”

  Violet could not answer.

  They were silent for a long time. The gentle spring wind blew in at the window, stirring the bed curtains. There was a haze on the hills in the distance, though their colors of ocher and rust and gray green were bright in the sun.

  Maria sniffed a little before she spoke at last. “The doctor has said you may walk a little today.”

  “May I indeed?”

  Violet had sat up in a chair by the window the day before, but that was all. The birth had been difficult, with much loss of blood. They had feared for her life, or so Maria told her; she didn’t remember. They had also feared for the baby, but Giovanna had come into the world screaming with rage at her early ejection from her warm cocoon. She had been a little pale at first, but had soon turned pink. Like a babe of normal time, she had suckled the first time the breast was presented to her, and had stopped only to sleep in the three weeks since.

  “You must try,” Maria said. “He has been waiting all this time, and not patiently. He will see you today, or he will get up himself. This he should not do, not for at least another week.”

  “He would do it if it killed him.” Violet’s voice trailed away and her smile faded slowly, like a candle burning out.

  Maria reached out to press Violet’s hand, though her own eyes were dark with tears of distress. “Men are fools, yes. But would we have them any other way? No, no. Come, let me put the little one down and I will help you.”

  Maria supported her as far as the bedchamber door. By then Violet had begun to feel less weak in the knees, had begun to get her strength back. It felt strange to be able to move with her usual supple grace, strange to put her hand on her stomach and feel the flatness. For the first time in ages she wondered what she looked like. Maria had brushed her hair for her and left it hanging down her back in a soft, brown-gold curtain, but she had not seen a mirror. She did not know if she was pale and sallow or flushed from her efforts.

  It didn’t matter, of course. But it seemed that the fact she could care might be a good sign. She really was getting better.

  Maria opened the bedchamber door, gave Violet a small, encouraging push, then left her.

  Violet moved inside with the soft folds of her gown and dressing gown of batiste and lace flowing around her feet. The man on the bed had been dozing. His lashes quivered, then opened in sudden alertness. He saw her.

  A slow smile gathered at the corners of his mouth, spreading over his face to shine in his eyes. He reached out to touch the chair that sat nearby, before he held his hand out to her. His voice warm and low, he said, “Come. Sit here, close beside me.”

  Her heart shifted a little inside her. She felt the need to cry, but would not. There had been so many tears, so many.

  She moved to do as he asked. As she placed her hand in his and felt the strong grip of his fingers, her own closed convulsively, holding tight, as if she would never let go.

  “I wish,” he said, his voice vibrant with longing, “that you could lie beside me. So I might comfort you.”

  “Yes,” she whispered from a full throat.

  “If that cannot be, then speak to me. Tell me how you are, and how you feel. Talk to me of Giovanna — I have seen her and she is as lovely as her mother, as small as she is. I want to hear your voice and know you
are here, when I was so sure, for a terrible moment, that I had failed to guard you, that you were lost to me—”

  He stopped because she had leaned to place her fingers on his lips. Under the sensitive fingertips, she felt his smile, felt the movement of his lips as he turned the smile into a kiss.

  “Tell me what will happen now,” he said.

  She swallowed hard. “When we are better, both of us, we will go away. Perhaps to Egypt, if you like.”

  “That should be far enough so that you will be safe.”

  “And you also, perhaps.”

  His smile was indulgent. “My safety doesn’t matter, so long as I am with you.”

  “You will become strong again there, and brown by the sun.”

  “Something to be wished. And then?”

  “God knows. I cannot say.”

  He made no reply, only lay playing with her fingers. Some minutes passed. His grasp on her hand tightened briefly and was released before it could become hurtful. He whispered, “Call me by my name. Say it. I want to hear it, now, on your lips.”

  “I — can’t,” she answered with slow tears rising in her eyes in spite of all she could do.

  “You must, for my sake. Please.”

  How could she refuse? It was impossible. Still, she searched for even a small delay. She said, “Please, madonna?”

  “Ah. As you wish, always. Please, madonna — my madonna.”

  The pain was acute. Her lips trembled a little as she said, “Very well then. Yes, love, yes—”

  “Giovanni,” he said for her, the word soft with pleading.

  “Yes, Giovanni,” she repeated in gentle, musical tones.

  She slid to her knees beside the bed then. Holding his hand with both hers, she rested her forehead on his good shoulder away from his bandaging. As her hair drifted forward to cover her face, she allowed the healing tears to fall.

  APRIL 24, 1855

  I received a visit from Gilbert today. He came to offer his condolences. He had heard, he said, of the death of the artist. He heard it when he arrived in Florence. I asked him how long he had been in the town. He claimed only two days. I wonder.

  I am amazed. He suggests that we return to New Orleans together. He will continue with his buying while I do as I please until the time comes that was set for his return in his original itinerary. A year from now we will sail for home. In the meantime I may do as I please.

  I intend to. My plans have been made.

  Once in New Orleans, Gilbert will accept the child I have borne as his and will never open his lips again to speak otherwise. He will make me a gift of the town house and will visit me there from time to time, in the daylight hours. In return I am to pretend that all is as it was before between us.

  How cynical I have become, and how hard. I agreed. Why not? It makes matters so much easier.

  Gilbert seems chastened.

  Poor man. He thinks it is possible that everything may one day be the same as before.

  I know better, I know far better.

  23

  JOLETTA SAT HOLDING THE JOURNAL pages against her chest. She wiped away a little moisture that had gathered under her eyes. She had read the end of Violet’s odyssey before, but not in Italy where it had happened. That made it more poignant somehow.

  A large part of her sadness was for Violet, but a portion was also for herself. The losses in her life had been so many. The latest of these was someone who might, had things been different, have been a lover like Violet’s Allain.

  No. She wouldn’t think about that.

  Violet’s last cryptic entry troubled her just as much now as it had the first time she saw it. It didn’t seem quite like her at all. More, she could not quite understand Violet’s easy agreement to return home with Gilbert after everything that had gone before. Violet had done just that, she knew, however; everything Joletta had ever heard about her great-great-great-great-grandmother’s life told her it had happened exactly that way.

  Had Violet agreed to the reconciliation in order to return home to New Orleans and her relatives and friends without the necessity of explaining an estrangement? Had it been for the sake of her baby, so that little Giovanna could have an unsullied name and the benefits of a close-knit family? Was it for security, perhaps, for herself and her child, or had it been from the need to leave the sorrow she had found in Europe behind?

  What had happened in Egypt in that lost year? Why had Violet not stayed on in Italy as she herself had hinted she might?

  Another question was why Gilbert had asked her to return with him. Was it for love, or only to save his pride? Had it been to gloat over her, or to test her attachment to Italy, forcing her to choose between it and her old way of life?

  And was the reason Violet agreed, perhaps, because she thought it a just revenge that her husband be forced to give his name to the child of the man he may have had murdered?

  Still, Joletta wanted to know more, such as why Violet had stopped writing in her journal, and how she had felt about taking up life again, however changed, with Gilbert.

  There was also Giovanni. Joletta had a great need to know what had become of him. She suspected, but she did not know.

  There was no way to tell these things at this distance in time, and so there was a sense of things left unsaid, unfinished.

  As irritating as it might be, the real world was like that, she thought, untidy, with loose ends left quietly flapping down the years.

  And yet, there was an idea taking shape in Joletta’s mind about the journal. It was fascinating that the original of the pages she held in her hands was not the book that Violet had begun when she started out on her grand tour. That fact opened up possibilities that had not been there before. Anything could have been done to the revised edition; events and dates could have been changed, things added or omitted or twisted slightly to suit Violet’s purpose.

  There was no real reason to think Violet might have done such a thing. She had been keeping the journal for herself after all; there was no one she needed to impress, nothing she need have concealed. If she had been trying to keep her clandestine affair from posterity, all she need have done was to destroy that record of it.

  Regardless, there were things Joletta wanted to check, both in Italy and back home in New Orleans.

  The sound of a knock at the door interrupted the quiet flow of her thoughts. She knew who it was. She not only recognized the knock, but had been waiting for it, both consciously and unconsciously, ever since she returned to the hotel.

  Rone stood with one hand propped on the door frame as she opened the door. He looked her up and down, an appraisal that seemed to satisfy him, since he gave a slow nod.

  “Think you’re smart, don’t you?” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know very well what I’m talking about.” He shouldered past her and stopped in the middle of the room to look around before he went on. “It’s enough to make a man wonder if you didn’t do it on purpose.”

  She shut the door with a snap. “I didn’t ask you to watch over me like a mother hen. I’m a grown woman and have a perfect right to leave my hotel room without your permission.”

  He kept his back to her, surveying the twin beds with which the room was furnished as he said with deliberation, “You must have known when you did it that all bets would be off.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Exactly what you think it means. I’ll move my things in here before bedtime.”

  She moved around to face him. “Try it, and I’ll have the hotel manager call the police. I really will.”

  “Fine. I’ll tell them it’s a lovers” quarrel. And you can explain to Italian males with amorous dispositions why you’re objecting in Florence to something that was perfectly fine in Venice.”

  “Even Italian women can change their minds!”

  He looked thoughtful. “Maybe I’ll tell them you’re holding out for marriage and won’t let me back in until I agree.”

  �
�You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me.” His blue eyes appeared steel gray with determination.

  She breathed deep and let it out slowly before she said, “Maybe I’ll tell them you’re a con artist who seduces women for what you can get out of them.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Is that what you think?”

  “Why not?” As he stood scowling without even attempting an answer, she went on: “But you don’t have to go through this charade just to get Violet’s journal. You stay in your own room, and you can have it. To finish reading, I mean, not to keep — for what good it will do you.”

  “You mean that?” The challenging tone was abruptly gone from his voice.

  She nodded as she turned away. Her tone flat, she said, “Allain died.”

  “No.” He sounded as if the death had happened at that moment, to a close member of his family.

  She gave a slow nod as she moved to sit on the foot of one of the beds. It struck her as odd that she had known how he would be affected by the news. But she had known; that was why she had thrown it at him.

  “I suppose it had to be,” he said. Glancing toward the other bed, he stepped nearer to lower himself to the foot of it. “There was never any mention of him in Violet’s life in New Orleans. It was always possible that she broke off with him, but I couldn’t see her doing it. And he didn’t seem the type to let her.”

  She sent him a quick look, but he was staring at his hands. A vague idea surfaced in her mind. Before she could stop herself, she said, “Do you remember what you said in England, when I asked you about the language of the flowers?”

  “Not really; probably the first thing that came into my head.”

  “You mentioned rosemary.”

  “Oh, everybody knows that one,” he said with a dismissive gesture. “"Pray, love, remember." Hamlet.”

  “Not everybody knows it.” The words were dry.