The Return of the Prodigal (26 page)

The sun barely reached into the paths Rian had studied on the plan in Valentine’s study, but he walked confidently, as Jasper had obligingly placed white pebbles every few feet, to guide Rian through the twists and turns.

“Why am I so nervous?” Lisette asked him as he guided her through yet another turn. “This is ridiculous. We’ve been together for months.”

“If it eases your mind at all, Lisette, I’m nervous, too. What will we talk about, I wonder, now that we can talk about anything at all?”

“Will we still…like each other?” Lisette asked him, a smile beginning to play at the corners of her mouth. “Or will we sit at table, poking at our green peas, both of us bored to flinders, with absolutely nothing to say to each other?”

“It is a problem,” Rian said as they made one last turn and the maze opened up into a large square area, a table set with fine linen and lit candles, silver domes covering what must be the meal Fanny had also ordered in some detail. “Do you, by chance, have a great interest in politics?”

“I don’t think so, not particularly,” Lisette told him as he helped her into her chair. He picked this particular chair because it kept her back to the wide chaise lounge that had also been carried into the maze.

“Ah! Then we do have something in common. I loathe politics. If you ever really want to be bored to flinders, Lisette, ask my brother Chance or his wife to explain the workings of Parliament to you. You’ll be asleep in a heartbeat.”

Someone had already uncorked the wine—probably the clearheaded Jasper, who knew Rian’s limits—and he poured them each a glass, lifted his in a silent toast.

Lisette sipped from her glass and then held it with both hands, her elbows on the table. “History? There was a woman who came to stay at the convent for a while, and she gave me a book on Greek Mythology. Certainly a subject not allowed by the nuns. I was fascinated.”

“The Olympians? Zeus? Apollo, Dionysus, Artemis, Hermes? I’ve got several books, Lisette, if you’d like to read them.”

She smiled at him overtop her wineglass. “And Greek architecture? I hear there are books filled with drawings of the ancient buildings.”

“Better, we’ll go there, see them for ourselves. To walk the same streets, see the same sights, breathe the same air as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle?”

Lisette frowned, shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can recite the lives of many of the saints, tell you how so many martyrs died in terrible ways, but I don’t know those names. But I want to learn. You’ll teach me?”

“It would be my honor. You’ve lived all of your life behind convent walls. I’ve lived all of mine at Becket Hall. The world awaits us, Lisette, if we want it.”

Now, at last, she smiled at him. “And you’ll write marvelous poems and stories about every new wondrous place we see.”

“Agreed! After we travel to Greece, we can go anywhere, do anything. Would you like to see Rome?”

Lisette looked down into her wineglass. “I think…I think I’d like to see New Orleans. In America? I would like to put flowers on the graves of my
maman,
my grandparents.”

Rian was quiet for a few moments. “Thibaud told me something, Lisette. He said your grandparents willed you their lands, their supposedly considerable fortune. It’s all waiting for you there. Do you know that?”

“Yes, I know that. I should like to see the house where my
maman
grew up, where I was born. Perhaps, as it is with Callie’s
maman
, there is a portrait somewhere? My…he said I resemble her. And Loringa? She told me my grandfather sold slaves, sold people. I want to stop that terrible thing, if it’s still happening.”

“Then we’ll go to New Orleans, even before we travel to Greece. We’ll go anywhere you want, do anything you want, I promise. As long as we’re together, Lisette.”

She wiped at a tear threatening to run down her cheek. “Are you ordering me again, Rian Becket?”

“No. Never. I’m saying what I should have said a long time ago.” Rian got up from his chair, forgetting about the food beneath the silver domes, intent on only Lisette. He went to one knee beside her chair, took her hand in his. “We can talk about our dreams all night, Lisette. We can talk forever, for the rest of our lives, living one adventure after another, I promise. But not now, my darling Lisette. For now, all I can think of is the brilliance of yet another ancient Greek, Sophocles. He said, ‘One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life—that word is
love.
’ I love you, Lisette. You bring my life joy I’ve never known. Please, marry me.”

“I will. Oh, I most definitely will.” She got to her feet and Rian rose with her. She kissed the hand that held hers so tightly. “Your Sophocles is a very wise man, Rian Becket. Do you read the Bible? Have you read Corinthians? What you said reminds me of something I should never have forgotten.”

Rian leaned closer to her, kissed the soft skin just beneath her left ear. “Tell me. Please.”

He felt her sigh melt against him. And then, quietly, she recited, “‘If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. Love is patient, love is kind.’ And then this, Rian, ‘It keeps no record of wrongs. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres…’”

“Always, Lisette,” he promised her, tipping up her chin as he lowered his mouth toward hers. “For now, and forever. I promise. We begin today, just the two of us, and we never look back.”

“Because what we want, what we need, is all ahead of us.”

“I love you, Lisette.”

“And I love you, Rian Becket. And I will never be so stupid again as to deny that to anyone.”

“Shhh. No more looking back, remember? You’re mine, and I’m yours. That’s all that matters.”

“Oh, Rian, you’re so romantical, so impractical,” she told him as he led her to the chaise lounge, as they sat down together, their arms around each other, as he eased her back against the soft silk cushions. “Never, please, please, never change….”

“I’
VE NEVER BEFORE
made love to a woman wearing diamonds and kid gloves,” Rian said as Lisette nestled close against his shoulder.

“Oh? But you have made love to a woman in the center of a hedge maze, Rian Becket? Then these last minutes must have been a sad repetition for you. Save for the diamonds and kid gloves, that is.”

“And the moonlight,” Rian teased, kissing her hair. “And the cool night air on our skin. And the fact that I love you so much I think my heart might break as I hold you.”

“Never that, Rian. I must insist that your heart goes on beating for many, many years, for mine will stop when yours does. The French me has to tell you that there can be no life for me, without you.” She pushed herself up onto her hands and moved her body onto his, belly to belly, as she smiled into his face. “Is that romantical enough for you, Rian Becket?”

He ran his hand over her back, down her perfectly sculpted spine, teased at the soft skin just at her waist. “Humbling, Lisette,” he said, suddenly serious. “It’s very humbling. A few months ago, I didn’t care very much whether I lived or died. I thought I’d lost everything, losing my arm. And now? Save for having to endure having someone else tie my neck cloth for me and a few other indignities, I don’t even think about my arm. I’d lose it again, without regret, knowing that the loss would serve to bring you into my life.”

She laid her cheek against his chest. “I don’t know what to say to that, Rian. It’s certainly not that we can thank my father for ordering you captured, causing your injuries. If not for him, you would still have your arm…but you and I would never have met.”

“We can go nowhere until it’s settled with him, Lisette. You know that, don’t you?”

She nodded her head, rubbed her cheek against his chest. “I keep trying to forget, but I can’t. How long, Rian? How long until this is over?”

He levered her onto her side, turned to face her, seeing in the moonlight that she was crying. “Ah, sweetheart, if we knew that, and how he plans to come at us, everything would be so simple, wouldn’t it? Are you afraid?”

“Of him? No, not anymore,” she said, stroking Rian’s cheek. “I’m with you now. How could I possibly be afraid?”

“Ah, you’re definitely in love, Miss Lisette, to say such a thing to a poet.”

“To a poet who is so brilliant as to find a magnificent creature like Jasper, a poet who thinks to blast down a door with a cannon so that he can make the grand entrance and gallantly rescue the damsel in distress,” she reminded him.

Rian groaned in embarrassment. “Now you sound like my brothers.”

“My poet warrior. I never doubted that you’d come for me, you know. Not for a minute. I hoped you wouldn’t, but I knew you would, so it was all right for me to be generous and hope you wouldn’t. The only thing I didn’t expect was the cannon. But it was a nice touch. Everyone thinks so. Don’t mind that they tease you.”

Rian laughed out loud. “And
that’s
all we’re going to say on that subject.”

“Why?”

“Because it has been at least ten minutes since I’ve kissed you, and that’s too long.”

Lizette moved provocatively against him and he rolled her onto her back. “Oh, that long? I hadn’t noticed.”

“No? And have you noticed that it’s getting damn cold out here, even for a man as obliviously in love as I am?”

She lifted her hands to his shoulders, drew him closer and then surprised him by pushing him over onto his back once more. “Poor man. Yet I hear it is quite warm in Hell. Shall we find out, Rian Becket? Yes, I think we will.”

“Lisette, what the devil are you—?”

She kissed his mouth, the pulse at the base of his throat, trailed her kid-gloved fingertips and velvety moist mouth down over his chest, and lower. Lower. She took him to Hell…he took her to Heaven…and beyond, to a place where there was no past, there was no future, there were no fears, no scars, no enemies. Only the now, only the two of them…and their love