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A Mockery of Diamonds
Rafe had made a mockery of diamonds.
Diamond rings, the symbol of strong, enduring love and the promise of a life together. A stone, really. Nothing more than a rock, vomited from the bowels of a volcano. Perfect clarity, forged from a dusty black lump of coal under heat and pressure. What woman alive couldn’t relate to diamonds? She had read, somewhere, that only a diamond was hard enough to cut glass. Only a woman’s fingernails could cut the flesh of a man’s back in passion. Clara traced a finger, wordlessly, down the claw marks while Rafe slept.
Clara examined her own fingernails in the moonlight. Short, round, filed smooth, beginning to wear from rocking against steel strings to produce a poignant vibrato as she played the Csárdás on her father’s violin. A bracelet of delicate, diamond-studded sunflowers circled her wrist, locked by two hands clasped in friendship. An extravagant gift meant to buy Clara’s silence, after she met her father on the steps of a crumbling Italian villa in Rome, where he had been kissing the wild Violetta while her mother languished like a hothouse flower at home.
Clara glanced at her watch. It was nearly 4:00 AM. She laid the violin to rest in its velvet-lined case and considered breakfast. Absentmindedly, she proofed the yeast, mixed in the flower, salt, and sugar, a bit of milk, butter, and egg…
