DeButy & the Beast (12 page)

"And so you decided never again to touch a woman?" She had wondered why a man like Julian would subscribe to such ridiculous notions. Now she knew. The horrid woman had hurt him, and chastity was his way of making sure he was never hurt again.

"When I was with her I lost all ability to think clearly," he confessed. "My desires blotted out my brain. I should have known what she was like. If I had been thinking clearly I would have seen the truth of her deception."

"Now I am glad I called her a stinking bow-legged ogre," Anya said angrily.

"That's what you called her?"

"If I ever see her again, I will call her much worse."

He seemed to relax. "If we are fortunate we will never see her again."

Anya snuggled against Julian's side. She liked it there, even if that ogre of a woman had ruined their evening. "Your problem is that you do not know what love is."

"And you do?"

"No. Not really. Sometimes I remember..." Her heart pounded too hard, and she pushed back those teasing memories. "According to Shakespeare, love usually ends badly."

"Not always," Julian argued, not very convincingly. "You enjoyed
The Taming of the Shrew
."

Anya shook her head. "Yes, but it was not a happy story. Petruchio treated Katharina terribly."

"I suppose," Julian said in a low voice.

"He... he tortured her mercilessly, and then insisted that she
kiss
him."

"I wouldn't call it torture," he argued.

Julian had married Anya with every intention of taming his bride, but he would never treat her badly. She knew that with all her heart. Of course, he had also never insisted that she kiss him....

"I would."

"You shouldn't confuse fiction with reality," he said sensibly. "And if we're going to discuss Shakespeare, we should discuss the play we saw tonight."

" ‘Thus with a kiss I die,' " she quoted in a whisper.

Julian sighed, displeased with the turn the conversation had taken. "Next time we will choose a happier play," he said softly. "A comedy."

Anya was undeterred. Her mind kept turning to lips, to kissing. " 'And lips, O you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death!' "

"Love doesn't always end in untimely death," Julian insisted. "Not even in fiction."

"Fiction is easier to understand than reality," Anya said, snuggling closer to her husband. "It's less complicated, and there's a clear beginning and an end. In real life love is a muddle, and that is especially true here. In truth, the ways of love in this place are maddeningly puzzling!"

"Puzzling how?"

"On Puerta Sirena, there are no lies. No hiding. No pretending. Before marriage, it is perfectly acceptable for a man and woman to lie together, if they both desire to do so. Here it is forbidden. On my island, it is acceptable for a young man and a young woman to
fardini
without commitment."

"
Fardini
?"

"To lie together for the pleasure they can give to each another."

"Oh." He squirmed uncomfortably.

"After marriage, a husband and wife are sworn to be faithful to each other. It does not matter who or what came before, it only matters that they choose each other for life."

"So on Puerta Sirena, Margaret would not be condemned for taking more than one lover?"

"No, but she would be beaten for lying."

"Really?"

Now it was Anya's time to squirm. "No, but she
should
be beaten. I would certainly ask that she be punished."

They became silent for a long while. All she could hear was the rumble of the wheels on the road, the steady clomp of the horses' hoofbeats, and Julian's heartbeat. It all worked together in a strange sort of rhythm, and almost lulled her to sleep. But she could not sleep.

"Did you kiss her?" she whispered.

"Anya..."

"Did you?" She unconsciously fingered her gold ring.

The wheels turned, the horses plodded onward, and Julian's heart continued to beat.

"Yes," he finally said.

Anya sighed. "On Puerta Sirena, it is permissible for a man and woman to seek out and satisfy their most passionate desires without restraint.
Fardini
. But a kiss... a kiss is reserved for the expression of love."

Julian squirmed. "A kiss can be very intimate, in the right circumstances."

"The needs of the body and the needs of the heart are not always the same. A kiss is an expression of love from the heart. It is a promise, a most sacred vow."

"I didn't know that."

Anya tipped her head back and looked at Julian's face. He was so handsome, caught in moonlight, with his hair slightly mussed and his face turned to watch the passing fields as they made their way out of the city. "Is it very nice?" she whispered.

"Is what nice?"

"A kiss."

Julian glanced down. When he looked at her like this she knew he desired her. He did not want to desire her, but he did. It was a passion he had been fighting since the day they had met. He had fought well and hard.

Now that Anya had met Margaret, she knew why he fought so hard. A woman had deceived him, and he was afraid of being deceived again. Worse, in his mind Margaret had made a fool of him, and Julian DeButy was not a man to be made a fool of. He would not allow that to happen again.

"A kiss," she repeated. "What is it like?"

"You know perfectly well," he said, his voice deep and rough.

"I do not know." She looked at his mouth, studied the lines and the tempting swell. He had such fine, well-shaped, firm lips. "I have never been kissed."

Chapter 7

A man could only take so much.
I have never been kissed
. For the past four days, every time he looked at Anya he heard those whispered words, lightly accented and touched with wonder.
I have never been kissed
.

He had been tempted to kiss her there and then, as the carriage carried them home, but he had not. He had been tempted to kiss her a hundred times since, but he had not. A man could not live in this condition, surely. He was aroused more often than not, haunted by erotic dreams, and his nerves had been stretched to the very limit. A dropped dish in the kitchen had sent him jumping out of his chair, just last night. Valerie's occasional twittering laughter made him want to shout for her to shut up, and Seymour's very presence made his fingers itch and his hands ball into fists.

Since he had not been sleeping well, he'd actually fallen asleep that afternoon, a book in his lap and a silk-scarf-clad Anya seated on the other side of the room. Her scarves were not sufficient lately to quiet his nerves. A voluminous tent made of wool dwarfing and disguising her body would not have been sufficient to quiet the passion that danced within him. She was more tempting now than she had been when she so blatantly tried to seduce him.

Waking and finding her gone was an unpleasant surprise. He had opened his eyes expecting to find her where she had been when he'd dozed off. No, not expecting. Anticipating. Julian slipped on his jacket and headed downstairs. He presumed he would find Anya in the south parlor with Valerie, but Valerie perched on the sofa all alone and stitched on her sampler. Julian searched the room quickly without stepping in, and Valerie never knew he was there. If so, she likely would not have uttered a curse word she'd surely learned from Anya as she yanked at her tangled thread.

In the foyer, Julian closed his eyes and listened. Anya was never quiet. Surely he would hear her, the jewels she wore clanking, her throaty laughter calling to him, her soft voice sending chills down his spine. He heard nothing.

A disquiet settled in his stomach. A woman like Anya could get into a lot of trouble, unsupervised.

He found Peter dusting the library, but no Anya poking through the books she loved. Peter was more observant than Valerie; he became aware of Julian's presence immediately.

"Have you seen my wife?" Julian asked sharply.

"No," the butler said, continuing to dust. "Have you checked the south parlor?"

"Yes."

"She's not in your rooms?"

"If she were I would not be searching for her."

Peter raised his eyebrows, just slightly, at Julian's sharp tone.

The man who was butler, and more than butler, didn't seem at all like a servant to Julian. He was surely no more than forty years old. He was fit, though Julian never saw him engage in physical activity. There was a touch of gray at his temples, but the silver only made him appear more dignified. Why was the man here? He could surely engage in more satisfying endeavors.

"I'm... a little worried," Julian confessed, in way of an apology.

Peter allowed himself a soft smile. "Before you arrived, when it was this quiet in the house I knew Miss Anya was on the Captain's Walk."

"The Captain's Walk? I didn't know she liked to go up there."

Peter shrugged. "She said she could see the ocean from the walk. I suspect she misses it," he added in a low voice.

"Do you think so?"

The butler dropped his dusting rag and turned to face Julian. "Anya was always an impulsive child. Not undisciplined, mind you, but she always possessed that stubborn streak. When she wanted something, she wanted it
now
. Back then she didn't throw things," he said with a soft smile. "But she definitely thought about it."

"I didn't know you had been here that long."

"I moved here in '65, right after the war. Anya was five years old, and a handful even then."

"She doesn't remember much about her life here, before the ship was lost."

Peter's smile faded. "I know."

"She should, don't you think?"

The butler nodded.

Over the past two weeks, Anya had told him that she was remembering bits and pieces of her old life here. There were flashes of her mother, her grandmother, her cousins. But she remembered nothing of her father. Even seeing his portrait did nothing to stir her dormant memories. Even more disturbing was the fact that the omission did not bother Anya at all. Apparently she did not want to remember her father.

Julian ran up the stairs to the second floor, hurried down the hallway, and took the narrow stairwell that led to the small observatory on the third floor, two steps at a time. He opened a narrow glass-paned door and stepped onto the slim Captain's Walk that encircled the observatory, one hand quickly finding the wrought-iron rail that separated the walkway from the roof. Anya was not there.

"What are you doing?"

His head snapped around, toward the sound of that familiar voice, and there she was... far from the wrought-iron rail, seated on the roof with her legs tucked beneath her and the scarf that usually bound her breasts clutched in one hand and catching the breeze. It whipped around her, as did her unbound hair.

His heart jumped into his throat. "What are you doing on the roof?"

She lifted her hand, the one with the scarf fluttering in it, and pointed. "I can see the sea best from here. There are so many ships." Her hand dropped slowly. "And I want to go home."

One hand cautiously on the rail at all times, Julian stepped to the corner of the Captain's Walk that encircled the observatory. "You are home, Anya."

She turned her head and looked at him. Wild red hair caught in the wind danced around her face, the sun touched her bare skin. "No, I am not home," she said softly.

"Come here," he said, offering his hand to her.

Anya ignored him, returning her gaze to the faraway sea once again.

Julian slipped off his jacket and tossed it across the wrought-iron rail. He took off his shoes, not trusting the slick soles against the sloped roof. He brushed his hair out of his eyes and loosened his collar. God help him, he was about to choke.

Throwing the first leg over the rail was no problem. Tossing the second over and releasing the rail was a challenge, but he accomplished it with only a muttered and very mild curse. He took careful steps across the roof, his arms held out for balance. Only once did he look down, into the garden. It was a mistake he did not repeat. When the wave of dizziness had passed, he pinned his gaze on Anya and kept it there. If she knew he was coming to her, she gave no sign.

It was with great relief that Julian placed himself beside her, sitting down and feeling, for the first time since he'd climbed over the wrought-iron rail, relatively secure.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Anya tipped up her face. The sun caught her freckles and the copper lights in her wild red hair. It also glinted on the gold of the necklace he had given her, the only jewelry she wore today. She squinted against the sun, and still he could see the brilliant blue-green of her eyes, eyes as deep and brilliant as the sea itself. "There is a party this weekend, Grandmother says, and we must go."

"Parties are lovely," he said in his most soothing voice. "Most women get quite excited at the prospect of a social gathering."

"We must spend the night there, at this woman's house." She pouted, her lower lip trembling, and he couldn't help but think—
I have never been kissed
... "And Grandmother says I should wear a corset."