Free [Barbara Samuel] Night of Fire(Book4You) by Unknown

everything in its path, eating up the buildings and the surrounding trees. The people who were well enough fled to the fields and could do nothing to stop it—they stood and watched it burn for two full days. It ate the bodies of the plague dead, and it ate the hay and grass, and even the sick they had left behind."
    "How terrible!"
    He lifted a finger with a smile. "No, no. It was a miracle. Because the fields were not touched, so there was food for harvest. And plague never came again to our little village—St. Catherine saved it by letting it burn."
    Cassandra looked back to the square, where the fire was lit with a great cry, and the music started up again. Red ribbons fluttered against dark hair, and the flames shot up into the sky, and she thought of the villagers watching the whole town burn to the ground.
    It moved her deeply. "Thank you, Basilio."
    He smiled gently. "I knew it would please you. Come—there is not only fire, but piles of food baked in honor of that harvest that was spared, and it is our duty to eat it."
    All through the evening, Basilio ached with pride and desire. Cassandra dove into the festival with gusto
    —sampling every tidbit offered to her, and praising it wildly. She danced with the women, and listened to the long, rambling story of a very, very old man who was captured by the fire of her hair. They all loved that hair, and the little girls coaxed her into letting it down. "For St. Catherine!" they cried. It burned his eyes, that glittering fire.
    He drank very little, fearing he could not control his hunger if wine seeped into his blood. Even so, he was drunk on her. Drunk when she rushed up to him and took his hand and dragged him into the peasant dance, drunk when a tendril of bright hair trailed over his coat sleeve, drunk when she threw back her head and laughed and her throat, white and smooth in the night, was exposed to his gaze. He loved that long neck.
    She was swept away by the dance, into the embrace of the peasants. Stung by the loss, Basilio retreated to a bench in a dark corner, watching her. How could he return to his old life, take up the press of honor and the weight of his duties, and leave her here, dancing in his memory forever? He drank the sight of her, freed by night and the festival and the delight of the villagers. She seemed the embodiment of all the poetry he'd ever heard, every sonnet he longed to write, every beautiful word and syllable ever uttered.
    She laughed, and the sound seemed to ring out above the tumult, though he knew it was only his imagination that he could hear it. He wanted to reach out and capture it, hold it in his hand, in his heart, forever, and it burned in him that he could not.
    Why not?
    The traitorous thought rose through his brain, clear and pure. Why not? She was nobly born, a suitable wife. She was beautiful and cultured, and even spoke Italian. Why couldn't he simply chose her over the wife his father had chosen for him?
    Madness lay in that direction—he knew very well why not. However much he loathed his duty, he would do it. This marriage would align the two families and create a powerful, prosperous union for them all.
    Already rich, they would become richer. Already powerful, they would near equal the princes.
    But more than that, Basilio could not dishonor the wishes of his mother. She had loved Analise, had championed her, and upon her death bed had reminded Basilio's father to protect her.
    Had either of Basilio's brothers lived, one of them would be making this marriage. Because he had been spared, Basilio had to fulfill the promise that had been cut short. A sacrifice, he thought with pain, looking at Cassandra, but not the same as death. For Giovanni, for Teo, for his mother, Basilio had to resist her.
    A gray-haired woman with a red skirt plopped down beside him, breathing hard. "I am not so young as I was," she said, laughing, a hand to her chest. "But you, my handsome lord, you are young! What are you doing, sitting