Jennifer Horseman (12 page)

"Juliet? Love, can you still understand me?" She nodded slightly.

"I'm going to put the salve on you now. It's going to sting badly for a bit, then burn through your skin. The burning brings a great relief, though. You won't be able to feel the pain, while its wax will protect the wounds so they'll heal without marks."

She tensed as his fingers smeared the salve over her back in quick, deft strokes. The brief sting it brought subsided to a burning sensation, and just as he said, the burning was a relief so intense as almost to bring tears to her eyes. The burning went only so deep though, not enough, he saw, to offset her uncontrollable shivering.

"Can you feel this?" he asked as the wax hardened and he ran a fingertip over the edge of her cut.

She shook her head. Her back felt numb, as if she had no back at all. She wished to apply the salve to the rest of her person: "I ... I am so ... cold."

The soft sound of her pain cut through his very heart and he cursed as he laid a thick quilt over her form. She thought he would leave her then, but no, his arms came under her and he lifted her into the air and carried her to a chair, positioning her on his lap. She was too weak to protest, far too weak; he could kill her now and she'd not make a sound.

Garrett held her tightly, getting only a brief glimpse of her features before she hid her face in his chest, still shivering despite the great warmth he offered her. He had a hundred questions, maybe more: How often had Stoddard done this to her? What hellish reasons did he give? Was there nothing or no one to stop him? Why didn't she tell this boy she loved? What other fears did she live with in Stoddard's house—and for how long?

He didn't think she could speak, and he would not ask these questions now. Yet as with all things, she surprised him, not just by speaking first but by voicing his very thoughts. "It doesn't matter, you know. I mean, that you thought I was Clarissa .... It doesn't change anything."

"Yes, I know."

The emotion in his voice made her look at him, where she saw it was true. She still trembled and felt disoriented, as if part of herself was sinking away from this world. "I am so scared. ..."

Garrett's hand stopped halfway through her hair and his fingers tightened over her head to hold her closer to him. "I do not wonder why. By all the saints, girl, you know I will not hurt you more?"

She nodded slowly, then with certainty. It was over; it was one of the few thoughts she could hold. Her uncle was dead and she had survived. Garrett would not hurt her now. It was over. . . .

Gayle quietly opened and closed the door. She remained ignorant of his presence until she saw his hand set a glass on the table by Garrett's side, for she had been lost in the unfathomable depth of his gaze.

Garrett picked up the glass and brought it to her lips. She studied the potion with mistrust, then turned her head. "You need this badly," he said. "Don't make me force you."

She took a tentative sip but he kept it pouring into her mouth until it was gone. It tasted hot and strangely delicious—like brandy, molasses, and unidentifiable spices, all ending in a hot, burning fire in her stomach.

He watched her eyes lower, but he didn't expect to see those pools very often this night. A night that had now begun, he saw, seeing nightfall darkening the room. While the quilt hid her naked beauty from him, he felt the maddening tease of her small form held against him, the growing torment of it. Heat gathered every place her soft form nestled against his, hardly the least of it being the place where the curve of her buttocks touched the hard shaft of his desire. He half wished for her own innocence that kept her ignorant of the threat.

The long hair fell in a stream off his arm, too, and he could not stop touching it, this hair that covered her marks. What if he had caught sight of them? A pointless but compelling game, he knew. Until suddenly he remembered her hair in his dream, long like a rope and the color of burnt sable, it was all he ever got to see of her. Had it been Juliet? Dear God, but she had to be ...

The questions still pressed on his thoughts; he knew he had to wait until the morrow, but still he wished to force some things from his mind. One of these questions arose from the image of Juliet courageously placing herself in front of that boy, the same boy who tried to abandon her minutes later.

That boy left her alone and defenseless against a group of men without so much as raising a hand in her defense. . . . Where was he as she was being so badly abused, and if she kept him ignorant—if ignorance was an excuse, a concession he'd not willingly make—why didn't she tell him? Why didnt she appeal to someone for help? Which in turn led him to wonder what threats Stoddard had used to terrorize her—

Garrett closed his eyes, a futile attempt to shut out the unpleasant emotions aroused by this stream of thoughts. A powerful sweeping warmth came between them, one he felt but could not begin to explain. She had suffered dearly from the dark power and force woven into his being, he knew, a force that had claimed her long before he could know what he did. Yet the very same force brought Stod-dard's death. Aye, fate wanted a heavy price for their joining. Yet if she was this girl haunting his dreams, then after seeing her slender back and knowing the vicious sadism her uncle was capable of, he could not help but wonder if by Stoddard's death her very life had been saved.

The next thought came out loud without his realizing it at first: "You must have hated him very much."

She brought her eyes to his face. How strange that she knew exactly what he asked, that it seemed natural that he know. "No," she whispered softly, shaking her head. "I didn't .... I think I rather thought of him much like the pious think of the devil: I could not fathom his malevolence; I did not try. It seemed too large to attach simple human sentiments to."

And so Garrett first glimpsed the poetry of her mind, though the exact meaning of those words were not at first clear to him, not until Vespa leapt onto her lap. Juliet started with the surprise of it. Watching as she reached a trembling hand through the quilt to touch the small cat's silky white fur, Garrett had the strangest sense that the cat meant a good deal to her. He saw his own great love of creatures in the touch of her hand, but there was something more, too, something revealed in her voice touched with tears again as she asked: "Is she your cat? Does she belong to you?"

"As much as any creature belongs to another."

Juliet petted Vespa until the cat curled into a purring ball of contentment. A strange heat began to fill her, moving through her limbs, and she voiced her thoughts out loud, only vaguely aware she did so. "I had a great many cats at the bakery when I was a young girl. I have always loved them so. There is such comfort in touching them, their own pleasure returned twice more to us, I think."

Garrett watched her carefully, knowing she didn't realize the potion was taking effect. She stopped shivering and bit by bit relaxed in his arms. Her face flushed with the heat growing between them and her eyes, God those eyes, filled with a sadness touched by terror as she remembered something. "What thoughts are running through your mind now?"

She shook her head slowly. " Tis just that I haven't laid my hand on a cat for ... for so long now. They made Clarissa sneeze and my uncle"—her voice lowered more— "he would shoot them when he saw one." "Oh, love-"

She bit her lip and tears filled her eyes but never fell. Garrett wondered, how tears could fill her eyes but stop there, as if the sadness was too deep to surface.

"I tried not to want one .... I did try ... and I ... I didn't mean to," she slipped into a strange incoherency as she remembered the kitten she found. "I found her one day in the stables. She was so small and orange and sweet, shy, but not to me. She met me on the walks I was allowed each day, and I'd spend my minutes petting her, feeding her small scraps stolen from the supper table. She was for her short life a sad joy to me, reminding me of the happier times of my life and I . . .1 remember I tried not to love her, as if I knew or was afraid of doing so—"

"He found out. Someone must have told him. That very day he called me down from my room. We shall go for a walk, he said to me, and find us this cat I've been told you are feeding. I was so frightened, and I tried to dissuade him, saying I would get rid of her myself, and oh, please, for mercy sake, just don't shoot her. He said he wouldn't shoot her if I called her to us. I was so relieved I thanked him over and over again as I called her to come to us. He picked her up with two fingers and told me to follow him. I thought he would set her outside the area, but no, he headed towards the kennels—the kennels," her voice lowered to a small gasp and her eyes grew wide, staring off into the darkness of the room as she remembered. Garrett braced, afraid himself—a grown man in his twenty-ninth year and he was afraid to hear the awful end of the story of a young girl's kitten. "The kennels where he had a dozen dogs, each mad and miserable and ferocious, trapped as they were in those small cages. He never said what he would do and I watched, not believing until the moment he opened the cage. Then he screamed at me to watch but I couldn't... I couldn't, and I just knelt in the dust, covering my ears until nightfall when Stella finally found me—"

Juliet stopped to see him, that strange, powerful compassion in his eyes. "Oh, Garrett, she was just a cat and, and your brother—"

"No, love, don't think of it now. It's over, it's all over." He drew her safely against his chest, his arms tightening around her until he was afraid he would hurt her, yet still it was not enough. Not enough to chase away a young girl's terror. Outside, Tonali wailed at the dark night, a strange cry of impotent rage that came to Garrett's ears as he held Juliet in his arms; Tonali always echoed his darkest emotions. He moved from a young girl's nightmare to his brother's, his thoughts settling uneasily in the realm of evil.

Helpless to take back the night, he forced his mind from the hatred, rage, and fury, still somewhat shocked by his ability to do so again. He found and held his compassion, what amounted to his greatest gift in life, a compassion that stretched and extended to include all life on earth.

Garrett's voice was one of hope, he said: "There exists a sect of the Hindu religion that believes that when a person dies, rather than meeting God in heaven or Satan in hell, that instead they are given a gift. The gift is God's own compassion, and it is through His eyes that they view their deeds on earth, experiencing all the suffering they have brought to others a millionfold, so that the truly wicked drown in their own sea of tears."

A childlike curiosity lifted in her lovely eyes, mixing with the sadness so plain. "Do you believe that?"

"At times I would like to."

She glanced away, returning her hands to the cat's fur. She, too, would like to believe that myth, and while she tried to spin it round in her mind to see if it made sense or no, she found the effort strangely taxing. The next thought she had was that too much time had passed without a thought.

No thoughts. She had just passed through an emotional and physical holocaust, but when she tried to think of any one part it seemed to dissipate in her mind, melting into the warm pool made of her blood. She tried to think of her uncle again but she couldn't. She felt so curious: heavy of limb and dreamy. "I... find I'm having trouble ... I can't keep thoughts in my mind . . . ."

A strange amusement reached his eyes, as if he knew something she did not. Something for the best. "You've been through much; you will need time to assimilate it."

"I feel ... so heavy. Do I feel heavy to you?"

He shook his head, smiling.

She also felt toasty warm, a warmth she felt emanating from his body. A warmth somehow pairing in waves with the rush of her blood. She wanted to be alarmed by it, she felt certain she should be alarmed, but the warmth was far too compelling.

"Oh, love," he said slowly with the same amusement, "if only you knew what your eyes are saying."

She looked up to him with no alarm but with plenty of curiosity, only to notice how terribly handsome he was: a lamp shone behind him, casting his face partially in shadows but revealing the fine, strong lines of his countenance. She tried to remember when he seemed like a monster to her but she couldn't. All she could think of was the curve of his lips. She reached a finger to his mouth. She did not see the response that filled his eyes, for she was thinking only of how he had kissed her. The thought made her aware of the tempo of her heartbeat and pulse as she withdrew her fingers to touch her own mouth.

Garrett released his breath in a soft curse, one directed at Gayle and the potion. She watched, suddenly fascinated by him, her mind somehow fixed on the memory of how he had kissed her.

"Tomas never ... do other people kiss like that?"

A tender humor appeared in his gaze, "Like what. . . ? Oh God," he said abruptly. "Tell me you were not that innocent?" he asked as he reached to her mouth to remove a single silky hair of Vespa left on her lips.

Juliet tried to think of the proper answer, yet she forgot the question as tiny shivers followed the brush of his finger tips on her mouth. With an uneven release of breath she closed her eyes as those fingertips moved slowly over her hairline, then curled over the lobe of her ear. Quite suddenly her circumstances confused her. She opened her eyes to ask him an important question, if only she could think of it ....

Garrett gently held her face with his free hand and his lips lowered to hers. They hovered there for a long minute as if measuring her response. With a small gasp, she closed her eyes and he tenderly pressed his mouth to where hers trembled, parting her lips to accommodate him. Then he gently laid his lips to hers. She tensed ever so slightly, but as his tongue swept into her mouth with compelling eroticism she went limp, melting into a sea of thick, honeyed sensations.

He broke the kiss but kept his mouth close as he tried to recover from the rage of desire brought by the touch of her lips alone. When he opened his eyes, it was to meet her wide stare as she slowly shook her head.