Part 31 (1/2)
Startled, she took it. Folded it gently over her arm, and resisted the urge to hold it to her nose and breathe it in to see if it still smelled just like him.
Then he pushed up his sleeves and hoisted her trunk to his shoulder, carrying it without apparent effort.
She followed.
The path wound gently up, but she was a country-bred girl quite accustomed to walking, and it posed no difficulty at all. He didn't seem inclined to speak, so to occupy her time she watched the fascinating play of muscle in his back and b.u.t.tocks as he climbed.
The path concluded in a wrought-iron gate joining the surrounding low white stone wall.
She pushed the gate open and stepped forward.
Her breath caught.
They were in a little courtyard. Beneath their feet a checkerboard of muted rose-red and darker red tiles stretched out in either direction, wrapping around the house. A white tiered stone fountain was the centerpiece.
One wall of the courtyard was hung entirely with a tapestry of green vines starred everywhere with white jasmine. The wall adjacent was a flamboyant spill of scarlet blooms.
Before she knew she was doing it, she moved over wonderingly to touch one, a reflexive response to beauty.
”Bougainvillea,” he said shortly.
”It's so beautiful,” she breathed. ”I've never seen one outside of a hothouse. But they belong in the sun, don't they? They're like the skirts of Spanish dancers.”
She turned to find him smiling at her.
”All you need is a blue flower growing somewhere and you'll have the British flag,” she added.
He laughed. ”The Spanish would love that. Speaking of things you won't see outside of a hothouse-and no, I'm not referring to you-turn around and take a peek around that corner.”
She did as ordered. A few steps over the red stone, she peered around the corner of the house.
And there it was.
Her jaw dropped. She stared as if she'd just accidentally stumbled upon the queen lounging here in the middle of Spain.
”Go ahead. You always wanted to.”
It seemed whimsical and dreamlike, growing right there out in the open, covered all over in luscious, sunny globes of fruit.
She approached it as if it were an exotic creature, and reached up and gave a tug.
And an orange tumbled into her palm.
She closed her eyes and held it to her nose and breathed in deeply. The singular scent, sharp and sweet and citrus, was heavenly.
The English weather would have killed that orange tree straightaway if it had the temerity to grow out in the open. Which is why all their English trees were so st.u.r.dy, and so many of them ancient.
Like the two oaks in the center of Pennyroyal Green, for instance, said to represent the Redmonds and Everseas. They had grown for centuries, stubbornly thriving, holding each other up, competing for resources.
She gave a wondering laugh, and whirled.
She caught some fascinating expression fleeing his face.
”Pick a few more,” he said evenly. ”We'll eat some, we'll drink some.”
She pulled a few more from the tree with an air of wonder, and filled her arms with them.
He settled her trunk with a little grunt and then slid a hefty key into the heavy arched door, and turned the k.n.o.b.
She gasped.
The entire house was made of light.
And then she blinked and discovered why it seemed that way: a series of three soaring arched windows that allowed in sea-scoured suns.h.i.+ne, which spilled through nearly the entirety of the main room. A heavy table of slabbed wood, weathered to a silvery finish, was pushed in front of the windows, and in the center was a large gla.s.s bowl of the palest shade of aquamarine. It was like a drop of the sea had been captured in Venetian gla.s.s.
The creamy pale walls rose and met the high ceiling in rounded corners, and the floors were tiled in huge, satin rose-red stone, edged with tiny, intricate blue and yellow mosaic.
Arched doorways led into dark, cool hallways, off which, presumably, were bedrooms.
A settee-ivory brocade, French, and possibly Chippendale, and yet somehow right in this room for all of that-was angled before the fireplace, flanked by a pair of sleek ormolu chairs upholstered in more brocade. A low oval marble table, its wooden legs intricately turned, sat between all of them.
It was like stepping into his dream. One of the very first things he'd shared with her.
”The oranges can go there.”
He pointed at the blue bowl, and she spilled them from her arms and stood back to admire them.
Beautiful things, not a lot of things, he'd once said. That's what he would have in his house.
She remembered, because she remembered everything about him.
They were both silent.
She held still, suffused with wonder and a peculiar peace and sense of rightness in this house. It was a strangely familiar sensation.
And then she recalled the first she time he had felt that way: It was when he first approached her in the ballroom. As if the fences surrounding her world had been kicked down.
In retrospect quite ironic, given their a.s.sociation had been confined by the clock and hedgerows and their family's expectations.
”It's so beautiful, Lyon. The house is like stepping into your dream.”
”Perhaps literally. Since it was one of mine.”
On the surface, it was an innocuous enough sentence.
And she could feel the war in him between his desire to take pleasure in her pleasure, and whatever dark, unspoken thing thrummed through both of them at the moment.
She of course had been his dream, as he had been hers.
On a shelf above the table was a row of books.