Every Time I Love You (29 page)

Fire was heavy and constant. Black powder and smoke merged with the gray of the sky. In a lull, Percy called to his remaining troops; they would make a run for it.

It was nearly successful. They tore out of the barn on their mounts, and they raced through the powder and the snow. Then Percy screamed, for a musket ball tore into his shoulder. The agony was like raw fire shooting through him. Then another ball caught him in the left rib. The force was so great that he was lifted and thrown from Goliath. He struck the snow-covered ground, hard.

For moments, for long, long moments, he could not remember anything. Then he opened his eyes, and she was there.

Katrina was there. Tears filled her eyes and she held him, and she tried to smooth the dirt and blood from his face. She was so beautiful, with rich fur framing her face. He reached up to touch her.

She did not look at him then. She was staring upward. Dazed and in agony, Percy followed her gaze.

They were surrounded. Surrounded by a band of British regulars.

He wanted to rise; he wanted to protect her. But blackness was all around him as a thick, dark cloud of cannon smoke enveloped him. He was losing consciousness, he knew. Darkness was all around him. He wanted to talk; he wanted to rise; he wanted so desperately to fight...

“My, my, my, what have we here?” a voice demanded. “Why, 'tis my Lady Seymour.”

Percy dimly heard her cry out, saying that she was his wife and no longer a Seymour.

She knew the man, though. Percy was keenly aware that she knew him.

Then he was aware of nothing, for the absolute blackness claimed him.

CHAPTER 20

He heard a rapping, and he awoke, but he did not awake feeling refreshed. He awoke with such a soaring, splitting headache that he could hardly bear it. He swore, pressing his temples fiercely as he slid his legs to the floor.

“Brent!”

There was the most awful tone of fear in Gayle's voice. She ran to his side, kneeling down beside him, reaching for his hands.

“Dammit!” he swore at her, reeling with the pain. “Can't you leave me alone for a minute?”

She jumped back, startled by his attitude. He could see the hurt in her eyes and he was sorry, but he couldn't even say it—his head hurt so badly.

“Do you remember what happened?” Dr. Clark asked him.

He cast her a murderous glare. “Yeah. I fell asleep and now I'm awake and I think I've got a migraine that could kill. Excuse me, will you?”

He started to the door as fast as he could, wanting only to be alone, wanting to down a dozen aspirin and stick his head beneath an ice-cold spray of water.

“Brent!” Gayle called to him.

“What!”

“Don't you remember anything? You came back as him; you came back as Percy, you—”

“For God's sake, will you lay off, Gayle! Can't you see that I'm in pain?”

He slammed out of the room. Helplessly, and near tears, Gayle raised her hands to Dr. Clark. “What good is it? What good is any of it? Neither of us can remember. He'll never believe any of it. He doesn't want to believe it.”

Marsha Clark smoothed her skirts. “Rome wasn't built in a day, Mrs. McCauley,” she murmured unhappily.

“Oh, my God!” Gayle murmured suddenly. She raced from the room and through the passage to the kitchen, and then out through the colonnade to the old kitchen. She sank to the ground by the cupboard and found the rolled sheets of vellum. She ran with them back to the parlor and stretched out the sheets. “Look! Look at these! I bought them because they resembled Brent's work so closely. They
are
his work, aren't they?”

Dr. Clark hesitated for a moment. “I think so,” she murmured. She smiled at Gayle. “Just like I think that his recent works, upstairs, are of Katrina.”

Gayle sat back, gasping. “They're—they're me. I modeled for him. I sat up there—”

“But the woman he painted is different from you, isn't she? Just a little different.”

Gayle sank to the couch in anguish. It had been awful, so awful to watch! She could still recall perfectly the way that he had screamed and jerked and twitched in terrible agony, feeling again the bullets that had torn through him.

“I don't understand,” she wailed. “Did he stop because—because he died then? Because he could not go on? And if so, why does he hate me so much? Or Katrina? She must have loved him very much; she followed him into war. Why?”

Marsha sighed softly. “I don't think that Percy died then. I think that maybe whatever went wrong started then. You and Percy both refuse to go any farther. You were willing and talkative until we came to the point of the marriage. Then you insisted that you were happy, but you would go no further. Brent...he seems to have the same blocks. Whatever came next is so disturbing that, even under hypnosis, neither of you will speak about it.” She rolled up the vellum sheets. “May I take one of these? I'll return it to you soon, I promise.” Dr. Clark took the first of the vellum war sketches; she set the others by her feet.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Gayle said absently. She looked at the doctor. “So what do we do now?” she whispered desperately.

“I'll tell you what we'll do,” Brent said suddenly from the doorway. “We'll just get out of this house.”

“What?” Startled, Gayle glanced at him. He was leaning there with a drink in his hand. He looked ravaged and haggard.

He lifted his glass to her. “Drink? Dr. Clark?”

“No, thank you.” Marsha murmured.

“Brent—”

“Gayle, I've had it. I've had it with all this.”

“Don't you even want to listen?” Gayle demanded.

“No!” He came into the room, and it seemed that he was barely leashing his anger. “No, I want to be done with all this nonsense! Maybe it's the damn house, at this point. Who the hell knows, who the hell cares! Let's get out of here.”

“Brent! You came back, I swear it. We were married and we were happy—”

“So tell me why the hell are we so damned miserable now?”

Marsha Clark smiled and repeated her explanation. “You are blocking me. Both of you. Whatever lies there is very painful—I can't make you go back to it. If I could...”

“If you could?”

She shrugged. “It could help you understand what happened in the past that's still bothering you now, and it could make you both feel a lot better. But it could be dangerous. It's frightening to play with the past. It's possible to become lost within it.”

Brent let out a sound of utter skepticism. Gayle longed to hit him.

Dr. Clark cleared her throat. “Maybe it would be best to stop. Maybe the two of you should get away, take a little vacation.”

“Thanks, doc,” Brent said crudely. “Thanks a lot. Maybe we'll just do that.”

“Brent!” Gayle said with amazement, “Would you please quit being so damned rude!”

Dr. Clark stood up, smiling at Gayle, as serene and unruffled as ever. “It's quite all right; he's not feeling well. Please feel free to call me any time if you should need me.”

“Dr. Clark, please—”

“Call me,” Marsha Clark assured Gayle.

Gayle walked her to the door. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. He's a wonderful man, I've never seen him so rude—”

“Please, don't apologize. I'm sure that the regression experience hurt him terribly.” She tapped the sheets she was carrying. “Take care now and call me. Or I'll call you if I come up with anything.”

Gayle nodded and waved at Marsha as she drove away. She saw David Gareth, one of the gardeners, out in the field, and she waved and smiled. Then she walked wearily back into the house.

Brent was still in the parlor, stretched out with his drink in his hand, his feet on the coffee table. She had never seen him so morose. He closed his eyes, wincing, then rubbed his temples. She bit her lip; he was obviously in so much physical pain beyond the torment of confusion.

“Brent?” she whispered.

His eyes opened. He reached out a hand to her. “Come here.”

“We need to talk.”

“Just sit with me for a few minutes, please.”

She couldn't refuse him. She curled up beside him and she stroked his nape, pushing hard against the muscles. Then she lay against him and they just sat together in silence while time ticked away and the morning wore on. Gayle felt so tired.

Finally she rose and she still didn't speak. She walked over to the window and she stared out at the beauty of the veranda and the colors of the day.

“You promised me,” she said softly at last. “Brent—you were going to try.”

He sighed. “I did try, Gayle.”

“But you didn't hear yourself. You still don't understand, you don't know—”

“I know that I came out of that thing—whatever it was that she did to me—wanting to die. I can't do it again. And I won't let you do it again.”

“Brent—”

His feet fell to the floor and he rose, coming over to her. He took her hands in his. “We can't play around with it anymore. We can't. We're going to have a baby.”

“That's precisely why—”

“Marsha Clark said herself that it was dangerous to play with the past.”

“Brent! We have to keep trying to work out this problem.”

He shook his head, bringing her close to him. “I think that we need to get out of here. I think that we should just go. We should take a trip to the airport and grab the first plane to anywhere that strikes our fancy.”

“Can we really run away, do you think?” she whispered.

“Yes.” He pulled her more tightly against him. “Do you remember the night that Uncle Hick died? He was crazy about you, Gayle; he didn't tell me not to bring you to this house because he wanted to hurt you. He was afraid. He knew that we shouldn't be here.”

“You really think that it's the house?”

“God, I don't know what I really think. But I do think that I want to get away for a while.”

She nodded, searching out his eyes. “I'm going to go up and start packing. Are you coming?”

Absently, he nodded. He rubbed the back of his neck and picked up his drink and slumped back to the couch.

“Brent?”

“I just need a minute.” He gave her a smile. “I'm trying to get rid of this headache. Go ahead, I'll be right along. Maybe we'll fly down to Paradise. There's nothing—absolutely nothing—old on that island.”

She smiled with him, then left him in the dim coolness of the room to head up the passage stairs. Her spirits were lifting already with the idea of leaving, forgetting it all, and just spending time together. Maybe it was the house. Maybe they were all insane, she, Marsha, and Brent.

In their bedroom, though, she paused, sinking down weakly to the bed. No. She hadn't understood what had happened when she'd undergone the hypnosis herself, but she had seen and heard Brent. It might be impossible; it might be against all rhyme and reason, but she believed that it was true. She had lived before, in a life long ago, and she had been a young woman from Kent named Katrina who had fallen in love with a Virginian named Percy.

She smiled a little sadly. Maybe there was a little rhyme and reason to it. She had always felt, from the very beginning, that she had known Brent so well. That she had waited and waited a lifetime for him. She had fallen into his arms so quickly, so ready to love him, so intensely, desperately passionate. Maybe she was destined to love him forever, into eternity; it was a love so deep.

With a little sigh she rose and dragged her suitcase from the closet and began to pack.

An hour later as she threw the last few items in her suitcase, the phone started ringing. She wondered for a moment if Brent would get it downstairs; then she thought that the machine would get it; and then she decided to pick up the bedroom extension on the side of the bed herself.

“Hello?” She caught it on the third ring.

“Gayle? This is Marsha. Dr. Clark.”

“Oh! Hello!” Gayle heard the excitement in the woman's voice.

“Gayle, I've got some interesting news for you.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I checked into the sketches, and I checked into your property. The sketch is worth a mint, by the way. I had it authenticated. It's an Ainsworth.”

Gayle frowned. “An Ainsworth?”

“Yes, yes! I'm at the library now! Ainsworth! Percy and Katrina were Ainsworths, Gayle. He built the house. He wasn't just a revolutionary—he was a very popular artist in his time.”

Gayle's fingers tightened around the phone cord. “Then—then, Percy and Katrina were real people, and they did fall in love and get married?”

“Yes! I'm coming back as soon as I can with copies of the documents I've managed to find. I don't have the whole story, but I understand a great deal of it.”

“Did he die in Pennsylvania?”

“No. They died on the same day.” She hesitated just a moment. “In your house.”

Gayle gasped. “Then...why, why did he hate her so much?”

“There were a few things that happened over the years. But in the end, he thought that she betrayed him.”

“Did she?”

“I don't think so. But what matters is what he believed, isn't it?”

“I—I suppose.”

“Listen, I'm on my way over. I hope your husband won't mind. I hope he'll at least hear me out. It's terribly important that he understands.”

“He—he'll listen. I'll make him,” Gayle promised. “Hurry!”

“I will.”

Gayle hung up the phone and sank back to the bed in a daze. It was frightening. It was terrifying. She had lived before and loved before and she had died, right here, in this house.

She jumped up, anxious to tell Brent. She ran down the stairs and hurried to the parlor.

It wasn't until she opened the door that she realized that he should have been upstairs long ago himself.

He was sitting on the floor, looking at the rest of the vellum sketches which she had so carelessly left by the chair. His dark head was bent over them, and his fingers were trembling as he held them.

She should have told him, she thought with a pang of deep regret. She should have told him long ago that they existed.

She cleared her throat, trying to think of something to say now. He heard her and, standing, instantly dropped the pictures.

“Where did you get these?”

“I—found them at a barn sale.”

She didn't want to stay there. Suddenly she was frightened, more frightened than she had ever been of him. She backed out of the room murmuring to him, wondering if he understood her or not. “Marsha is on her way back here. She found out—”