“I don’t know, Violet.”
“Can’t you do something? Your father, somebody.”
He laughs drily. “I’m flattered. You must have an extraordinary faith in me.”
“I do. You can do anything. You . . . you’re that sort of person. Nothing’s impossible with you.” The rose is denuded of leaves. Violet wraps her fingers around the stem and stares at the hole in the darkness where Lionel leans against the trellis.
An automobile engine grinds faintly from the road. Violet knows it might be Lise and Albert and the Hahns arriving at last, hot and weary with travel, but she cannot make her heavy limbs move. She cannot free herself from this rose-scented cocoon she shares with Lionel.
“Violet.” Lionel’s body shifts. His hand touches her hair, pulls a few strands from the loose knot at the nape of her neck. He bends his head and kisses them. “I’m falling in love with you.”
“Don’t.” She puts her hand on his arm, intending to detach him, but her fingers in their weakness only rest there on his smooth black sleeve, examining the bony curve of his elbow. Lionel’s sleeve, Lionel’s elbow, Lionel’s peppermint shaving soap and his warm brandy-scented breath.
“Let me kiss you, Violet. Just once.”
“No. He’ll know, Lionel.”
“How can he know?”
“He’ll smell you on me. He’ll see it in my eyes.”
“The devil he will. And what if he does? It’s only a kiss.”
“You don’t know him.”
“He doesn’t deserve you. He doesn’t deserve this, your loyalty.” Lionel holds her hair against his lips. His other hand is somewhere between them, ready to strike, ready to touch her if she lets him. “You think you need him, Violet, but you don’t. You can stand on your own. You’re strong, you’re the strongest woman I know, and you’ve made yourself his handmaiden because he’s convinced you, God knows how, that he created you.”
“And now you want me to be your handmaiden.”
“No, I don’t.” He pulls away. His face lies in dark fragments before her: a line of cheekbone, a glint of forehead, an unstoppable eye fixed on hers. “Listen to me, Violet. I want more than this. I want to lie next to you at night and worship you. I want to watch you by day and see what you’re capable of, you astonishing woman, you bloody beautiful thing. I want to count every scintillation of you.”
“For a month or two, anyway.”
“Why not?” His voice is stone. “Why not, if it amuses us both?”
“I don’t want to be amused.”
He releases her hair and steps back. “Well, neither do I. God help me.”
An insect hums past Violet’s ear. There is the crackle of gravel from the driveway, the voices raised in welcome. “I should go.”
“Go, then.”
“You’re angry.”
“By God, I am. I’m furious. You’ve made me helpless. I’m nothing but a damned bystander. Watching and waiting.” He throws his fist into the trellis with a crash, causing a pair of birds to scuttle upward from the roses.
Violet gasps.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Don’t be. They’re only roses.”
Lionel turns away. “Go, Violet. Go to your guests.”
“I can’t leave you like this.”
“And what else do you propose?”
Jane’s laugh rises up from the front of the house, and Walter’s low chuckle. Violet’s palm hurts. She looks down and sees the rose crushed in her fist, and what must be its tiny thorns piercing her skin. Lionel’s back lies before her, his arm braced against the trellis, his black head tucked under a speck of moonlight.
Well, Violet? What else do you propose?
Violet pulls the petals away from the stem in a clump and does something she has never imagined doing, on a whim she cannot begin to fathom. She scatters the petals one by one over Lionel’s granite shoulders.
“Say good night to me,” she whispers.
“Good night, Violet.”
Violet slips under his arm and stands in front of him. She stretches on her toes and puts her hand on his cheek.
Lionel’s kiss is delicate, as if he’s afraid of her touch, as if he doesn’t trust himself with her. Violet expects something wholly exotic, Lionel’s brand-new taste and smell and the feel of his lips, but in that first instant of contact he reminds her shockingly of Walter, warm-skinned, round-lipped, pungent with tobacco and masculine spirits.
And then she deepens the kiss and it falls apart, this image of Walter, because Lionel’s chin is smooth-shaved, his cheeks are sleek against her fingers, his mouth moves so gently it hurts her chest. He touches her hair, her back. His body is wide and strong across her breast. She stops, holding her lips around his, and her shoulders begin to quiver.
“Shh.” Lionel strokes her neck. “Shh.”
Vivian