Only To Be Without, Book 1

Chapter 3

It was a little like trying to drag a recalcitrant child along for a moment, trying to persuade feet that had forgotten how to move to again walk forward.

Beneath the streetlamps, the emotions flickered across his face like quiksilver as he tried to put himself beneath a veneer of self-control again, but the scent of oxytocin flooding his bloodstream, the nitric oxide as his skin flushed and his vessels dilated, driving the blood back below his waist again, the dopamine that caused the sudden dilation of his pupil, and the epinephrine causing the quiver in his breathing and the sudden rapid and staccato beat of his heart told a very different story to her senses. She smiled when he cleared his throat and opened his mouth in an attempt to distract himself from the state of heightened arousal that he was in yet again this evening.

If she were a better person, she might feel sorry for the poor suffering boy, but she wasn't even a person, was she?

"You know, I can't, I can't figure it out. I've thought and thought about it, and I keep listening and I keep thinking I'm getting clues but it ain't coming to me. Where-where the hell are you from?"

She laughed.

"The answer to that is multiple choice, I am afraid. Do you mean where was I born? Where did I grow up? Where did I live as a teenager, where have I spent my time as an adult?"

"All of the above," he said with a broad sweep of his free hand. "Rattle my ear off. I've been talking this whole time, dear God, please, save me from myself. Tell me about you." He finished, voice suddenly genial at the end.

She laughed again.

"Alright then. Iniziare dall'inizio, we will begin at the beginning, yes? The story would begin with my grandfather... he left Cosenza when he was young. He was the youngest of his brothers, nothing particularly important was there for him in Italy, so he left to find his own place in life. He settled in a place called Freisburg."

"I know that, that's uh... what do they call it," he snapped his fingers, "the Black Forest, right? Germany? That's supposed to be good wine country up there."

"Just so," she answered, nodding. "That is what attracted my Grandfather to the area. He married a German woman, she was stern and strict, very bossy and he was very loud and always moving and it was said that she provided the stability and he provided the life in their marriage. She was very good with money and numbers, and he knew the earth, the sun, the water, and their vineyards flourished.

"By the time my Father was born, my Nonno had done very well for himself, well enough that he could send his son south when he came of age, to send him on a tour of France, and in Nice, my father met my Mother. She was the only child of a man who owned acres and acres of lavender fields that he sold to the perfumers in Provence, and they fell madly in love and I was born exactly forty weeks after their wedding day, and exactly eighty weeks after the day they first met and being very much in love and very Catholic, a new child followed almost every year, all of us daughters.

"My mother sometimes struggled with the pregnancies, she was a delicate woman, small, and of a weak constitution, and my Grandpere was of the opinion the climate in the south of France was the better for her health, so I spent nearly equal amounts of time in Provence as I did in Freisburg, and I learned German and French both as my first languages. When I was three, my Mother thought it time I begin some sort of... societal training, if you will. For a family with so many daughters, debuts had to be thought of early. It was already becoming clear that I would not grow into any great beauty, unlike my mother or my younger sisters, but I was not a girl without talents that might be encouraged, charms that might be developed in the interest of attracting suitors. I began voice lessons and dance lessons, and while I have studied many different types of dance, my musical interests coalesced fairly quickly to opera."