Feast of All Saints Read Online Free

the curb, and as she turned toward the long row of sketches for sale on the pickets, Marcel could see her profile for an instant and the flash of the gold loop in her ear.
    Suddenly, a great lumbering hack rattled by, obliterating her, and maddened, he darted across the street behind it, coming to a slapping halt so that she turned around.
    Someone called his name. He didn’t hear it, but then he did, and couldn’t remember it. She was looking at him, and he had lapsed again into the utter passivity of a staring child.
    Only a yard stood between them. It seemed in years he had never been so close to her, her amber face as smooth as a girl’s, deepset black eyes fringed with lashes, the high smooth expanse of her forehead broken by a widow’s peak from which her hair grew back in lustrous waves. She was mildly curious as she looked at him. Then, her thin rouged lips drew back into the curve of her cheek and the supple flesh around her eyes was etched with fine lines as she smiled.
    A tiny heart pounded in Marcel’s temple. Someone brushed his shoulder, yet he didn’t move. Someone said his name.
    But suddenly as if something had distracted her Juliet bowed her head, tilting it strangely to one side and groped with her fingers in her hair. She was searching for the comb as though it had begun to hurt her. And as she jerked it out and looked at it, all of her black hair fell down over her shoulders in a cascade.
    A soft excited sound escaped Marcel’s lips. Someone had a hold on his arm, but he merely flinched, stiffened, and let his eyes grow wide again, ignoring the young man at his side.
    All he could feel was the pounding of his own heart and he hadthe distinct impression that the rush of horses and wheels in the street had become deafening. There was shouting somewhere, and from the riverfront before him came those echoing booms from the unloading ships. But he saw none of this. He was seeing only Juliet, though not right now. Rather it was another time, long long ago, before he was the villain he had become of late, the outcast. But it was a time so palpable that whenever it came back to him, it engulfed him and was memory no longer, but pure sensation. His tongue pressed against his teeth and he felt flushed and stunned. He might even be sick. And just for a moment he didn’t know for certain where he was, which might lead to terror. But groping for a hold, he found the memory which was a spell.
    Running home years ago, he’d stubbed his boot on a fallen lump of coal in the street and been thrown right into her arms. In fact he’d pushed her backwards as he gripped the taffeta of her soft waist and then seeing it was she, Juliet, let go in such panic he would have fallen if she hadn’t clasped his shoulder. Looking up into her eyes like beads of jet, he saw the buttons all undone from her throat, and the mound of her naked breast pushed against the placket of shimmering cloth. There was a darkness there beneath the undercurve where he could see the soft meeting of chest and bosom. And an alien surge had made him shudder. He had felt her thumb against his cheek like sealskin, and then the open palm of her hand rubbing gently back and forth, back and forth against his tight curly hair. Her eyes seemed blind then. Her fine small waist was flesh beneath the cloth only, an astonishing nakedness. And the scent of spice and flowers lingered afterwards on his hands. He almost died.
    He was almost dying now. And then and now, he watched baffled, weak, as she moved away from him like a tall ship, upstream.
    “But this has nothing to do with it!” he whispered, the shame burning in his cheeks, unable to keep his lips from moving (he was a great one for talking right out loud to himself, and was forever relieved when others, coming upon him unawares assumed he had been singing). “It’s Christophe,” he went on. “I have to talk to her about Christophe!”
    But the mere vision of her swaying skirts was stunning him