Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [223]
“I can imagine how long you’ve waited,” he said. “I am older than you think.”
I nodded, and I slowly withdrew from him.
I couldn’t bear it anymore.
Immediately I entered the immense ballroom.
The orchestra was playing one of the soft fluid dances so popular in those times, nothing as spirited as music would later become, and the lavish room was full of radiant faces and busy dancing figures, and myriad colors.
I peered through the happy crowd, moving slowly along one wall and then another.
Quite suddenly I saw her. She didn’t know I was there. Her companion had sent her no mental warning.
She was sitting alone, artfully dressed in her fashionable clothes, her satin bodice very tight and graceful, her ornate skirts huge, and her lovely white face framed by her natural brown hair drawn back and up in a fancy style with rubies and diamonds.
I leant against the clavichord, smiling benevolently at the musician who played it with such skill, and then I turned to gaze at her.
How sad was her expression, how remote, how unutterably beautiful. Was she watching the colors of the room as I watched them? Did she feel the same gentle love for mortals which I felt? What would she do when she realized I was watching her?
I didn’t know. I was afraid. I couldn’t know anything until I heard the sound of her voice. I continued to look. I continued to savor this moment of bliss and safety.
Suddenly, she saw me. She picked me out of the hundreds of faces. Her eyes fixed on me, and I saw the blood rush into her beautiful cheeks and her mouth opened to speak the name Marius.
I heard it over the thin sweet music.
I raised my fingers to my lips, just as Bianca had done only a little while ago, and I blew a kiss to her.
How sad and happy at once she seemed, her mouth opened in a half smile as she gazed at me. She seemed as frozen in her place as I was.
But this was intolerable. What were these volumes of silence which divided us!
Quickly I crossed the dance floor and bowed before her. I lifted her cold white hand, and led her out and into the dance, and would take no resistance from her.
“No, you’re mine, you’re mine, do you hear?” I whispered. “Don’t pull away from me.”
“Marius, I fear him and he is strong,” she whispered in my ear. “I must explain to him that we’ve found each other.”
“I don’t fear him. Besides he knows. What does it matter?”
We were dancing as if we said no such things to one another. I held her tight and kissed her cheeks. I didn’t care what the mortals around us might think of this impropriety. How very absurd was the whole notion.
“Pandora, my blessed love, if only you could know how long I’ve waited. What use is it to tell you now that from the very beginning I have missed you in pure agony? Pandora, listen to me, don’t close your eyes, don’t look away. I knew within the year, the very year, that I had made a dreadful error!”
I realized that I was turning her too violently: I was pressing her hand too hard. I had lost the cadence of the dance. The music was a strange shrill noise in my ears. I had lost control of everything.
She pulled back to look into my eyes. “Take me out on the pavilion,” she said. “We can talk in the river breeze. The music makes me dizzy.”
Immediately I led her through a huge pair of doors and we found ourselves on a stone bench overlooking the river.
I shall never forget how clear it was that night, how much the stars seemed in my favor, and how brilliant the light of the moon on the Elbe. All around us were pots of flowers, and other couples or groups of mortals who had come to gain a little air before returning to the ballroom.
But in the main we had the shadows to ourselves and I gave way to kissing her. I felt her perfect cheeks beneath my lips. I kissed her throat. I felt her brown hair with its tight waves, which I had so often painted on my wild nymphs as they ran through my thick gardens. I wanted to pull it loose.
“Don’t leave me again,” I said. “No matter what is said between us tonight. Don’t leave me.