“Back off!” Green cried.
The pressure of the pistol was removed from her side. She breathed a sigh of relief, going weak. Then silver flashed in the corner of her eye. Green held the pistol at her temple.
“Don’t come any closer. I swear, I don’t want to do any of this, but I must have peace.”
Alex put his hands up. “All right, Richard, I am not coming any closer and I do hear that you have to do what you have to do, but what does she have to do with any of this?”
“You. Told. Her.”
Alex shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, yes, you did. She knows. I can’t live with two people knowing what I did.”
“Why do you think I told her?”
“B-because when she looks at me, she has this tender, sad look—pity. She pities me. She knows what I did. I took the weak, coward’s way!”
“Richard, please, let’s be rational about this.”
“Say it! Say it!”
“Green, you don’t want to hurt her. You know you don’t.” Alex’s voice was all smooth persuasion.
“No, I was a coward.” He tightened his grip on Emily and pressed the pistol more tightly to her temple. Her heart seemed set to jump clear from her chest. “Dalton, I want to hear you say it, damn it!”
“All right, all right. It was the weak, coward’s way.”
“Ha!” Green’s voice was unnaturally loud, high-pitched and shrill. “So you admit it. You despise me for a coward and always have.”
“Green, it was years ago. Neither of us can ever know if different actions would have yielded different results.”
“Stop with your damned lies and platitudes—I am not going to hurt your fucking harlot, I just wanted to hear the truth from your lips one last time.” Green pushed her away with such force that she went flying towards the desk. She put her hands out to brace her fall, then looked over her shoulder.
Green stared at Alex. The look in his eyes was wild and filled with murder. Cold dread gripped her insides. He intended to shoot Alex. She glanced back at the desk and grasped the wine bottle. She turned and held it in her arms. Could she hit Green in the head with it? Would he still fire his pistol if she did, possibly out of reflex? It didn’t matter—it was Alex’s only chance.
Her thinking slowed and became clear. She’d never felt anything this firmly, but she knew she must pick her moment right. She must trust her instincts to lead her.
“Green, I am never going to tell a soul what happened back then. You think I would expose my own shame?”
“Shame? There’s no shame for you. You survived. You escaped. You’re a fucking hero. I am the coward, the villain in the tale.” Green’s head sank towards his chest and he brought the hand that held the pistol up to wipe his forehead.
This seemed like her moment. She lifted the wine bottle and prepared to take a step towards Green. But something made her glance at Alex. A tugging sensation through the centre of her.
He shook his head infinitesimally.
Trust him—he knows what he’s doing.
Her heart whispered the words.
Her head shouted that if she made the wrong decision, he would die and everything that really mattered to her in her life would die with him. But the feeling in her heart was too strong to ignore. She lowered the bottle. She had decided to put all her trust in her heart, and in Alex.
“You’re only going to compound your shame this way, Green. Put the pistol down and we’ll discuss this.”
Green dropped his hand. His green eyes were huge and he’d gone very pale. “You’re exactly right, Dalton. There’s no escape. No escape.” Green’s voice choked off and tears flowed down his cheeks. “It’s over for me. I see that now. Oh God, I didn’t realise.”
Green lifted the pistol.
“Green!” Alex gasped. “Don’t be a fool.”
“It’s the only escape.” He brought the pistol to his temple.
Emily stuffed her fist into her mouth and jerked her head to look at Alex. He was coming to her, swiftly closing the distance between them. Pulling her away from the desk and Green. Pulling her into his arms and pressing her head to his chest.
The shot boomed in the enclosed space. Alex tightened his hand on her head as she cringed from the force of the noise.
Chapter Seventeen
Late that night, Emily found Alex in his study, drinking whisky and staring into the fire with that terrible, blank look in his eyes. She sat beside him on the settee. Without a word, he put his glass down on the side table and moved closer. His scent comforted her as he cupped her face and stared into her eyes until she felt she was drowning in their blue-grey depths.
He kissed her, so deeply, so hungrily, that it seemed as if he was stealing her soul from her body and feeding it back to her. Her whole body melted with love for him—yes, love—and she clung to his strong, broad shoulders. He pushed her back on the settee and untied the belt of his banyan. He was naked beneath it and she ran her hands over his bare chest and abdomen, revelling in the silken texture of the fine, sandy-blond hair.
He lifted her nightdress up to her waist. She could feel the impatience in his touch and in his kisses along her neck. It resonated in his breathing near her ear. She understood his need. She needed him, too—needed the comfort of his closeness. She was wet and ready for him and he slid into her slowly, deliciously, inch-by-inch. Then he lay within her without moving and kissed her mouth with delicate butterfly touches.
This had much less to do with pleasure and far more with a desperate need for connection. She needed to be as close to him as possible and she sensed that he needed the same. A solace after the horrors of the afternoon. But even more than that, she sensed a deep desolation in him that sought to be filled. So be it. If that was what he needed, she would give of herself until he’d had his fill.
He moved with her just enough to keep both of them aroused enough to maintain the carnal embrace. He caressed her body with tender hands. Their passion built slowly until finally he was moving faster and faster. On the edge of coming, she wrapped her arms and legs about his waist, gripping him tightly when he tried to withdraw. He groaned, a sound of almost helpless defeat, then came, the hot surge of his seed within her. Her inner muscles reacted to the hot flood with deep, long-lasting contractions that seemed as if they would never end.
* * * *
Afterwards, he held her in silence for a long time, stroking hair. Then he spoke. “When I got Green’s note, my heart nearly died in my chest.”
Just as hers had nearly died when she’d seen the change in Green’s expression.
“And then, when you picked up that wine bottle, I was sure you were going to do something rash and bring his wrath upon yourself. I am glad you didn’t. He was always so nervous, so unpredictable, it would have been too dangerous to risk.” He paused, tightening his hands upon her. “I have hated him for years and dreamt of his demise. But today, when I saw how deeply he has suffered, I couldn’t help but pity him. I thought I could save him.”
He got up from the settee and went to his desk. When he returned, he handed her one of his large handkerchiefs, then turned away to give her privacy to clean herself.
When she was done and resting on the settee, she opened her mouth to ask him more about Green. But he returned to her with a pamphlet in his hand. Her heart skipped a beat, then began racing.
Her book.
He handed it to her. ”These are creating quite a stir in Congress.”
She took the booklet with a shaking hand, afraid to look inside and see her art distorted beyond recognition. She hardly dared turn the pages.
But she did. What she saw made her weak with relief, followed by the most intense satisfaction.
“Well?” His deep voice reverberated with impatience.
She looked up at him where he leaned against his desk. “They—the portraits look exactly as I had sketched them.”
He nodded with a wisp of a smile on his lips. “I told you, I know much about woodcuts and etchings. I would only allow the most skilled artisans to work on your book.” His tone turned censuring. “You did not trust me.”
“I just wanted to be there—to see the process.” Coldness niggled at elation of holding her printed work in her hands. “Why didn’t you tell me the booklets had been printed?”
He steepled his hands over his chest. “I was afraid you would leave here as soon as you knew. I didn’t want you wandering off on your own yet. Not until I could convince Green that you no longer mattered so much to me.”
His damned protectiveness—she shook her head. “You don’t have the right to protect me against things like this. You should have told me the truth about Green and his threats.”
“I didn’t want you to be afraid. I was sure I could protect you—watch over you—and you wouldn’t need to know.”
“What is the secret between the two of you? What could he possibly fear that much?”
He shook his head. “That secret will be buried with him and I shall never speak of it.”
His tone was flat and final and cold like lead.
She once would have thought that to finally have her work distributed to Congress would have consumed her with joy. But now she couldn’t concentrate on that joy, for Alex would not share his past pain and secrets. She loved him. She’d do anything for him. Yet even after a day like today, he wouldn’t share all of himself. Frustration burnt in her but she knew she couldn’t press or pry. If he didn’t wish to tell, that was his prerogative. Just as no one had the right to take a person’s liberty away, no one had the right to force or coerce another person to reveal themselves. He sat on the other settee, leaving her there alone. Moments passed in silence.
Then he sighed loudly, the sound full of remorse. “I should have found a way to forgive him. I don’t think his actions in the past changed the eventual outcome for me one bit. It would have cost me nothing to pardon him and it might have given him everything. He couldn’t help what he was.”
Seeing that he would still speak around the whole issue, she dared to press a little more. Pressing wasn’t the same as forcing, right? She only wanted to know because his pain was hers. “Why would he kill himself when you told him you wouldn’t tell?”
“He believed I was discrediting him to the business community. That I was maligning him to his political contacts and ruining his chances of running for public office. I would never have done that. This fear was purely a product of his own guilt and insanity. It was his own conscience persecuting him.”
“But you told him—you swore you wouldn’t tell. Why couldn’t that be enough for him?”
“He wanted to die.”
He spoke with firm confidence, as if he were utterly sure of this truth. It put a chill over her and she hugged herself.
“But why? He had a comfortable life, friends and his business.”
“Some people are damaged.” He stared at the whisky in his glass. “When a person is pushed to their personal breaking point and they face their own inner cowardice, their own inner weakness, they can never be whole again. They are, in a way, already dead inside.”
“You’re speaking of yourself now, aren’t you?”
He met her gaze and nodded. “I am damaged inside. I can’t stand my own company and I can’t stay in one place for very long. I don’t know what I can give to you or for how long. That’s not fair to you. But God help me, I don’t want to let you go either.”
She knew in her bones that he could never do an evil thing. He was not corrupt nor damaged. But he believed that he was. The pain of it sliced into her heart.
In that moment, when she’d
known
Green would shoot Alex, she’d also known that Alex was the most important thing in her life. Nothing else mattered as much as a future with him, whatever future they might have. He was wounded inside. He needed her to heal him.
Maybe sometimes, one person out of the whole world was most important of all. Maybe sometimes life required a leap of faith to trust in another person. Maybe she was meant to share Alex’s life just as much as she was meant to use her art to draw attention to the mariners in Algeria.
She’d been so focused on her mission that she hadn’t seen it clearly before. Instead, she’d reacted and rebelled and resisted him out of her own girlish fear of his effect on her emotions.
She wanted to help Alex but he would not open up to her about what had happened in his missing years. She suspected he held back partially out of misguided protectiveness, for protection seemed to drive so many of his actions.