No Sweeter Heaven: The Pascal Trilogy - Book 2 (24 page)

She fell silent for a few minutes, and Pascal watched the emotions that chased across her face. There was pride and uncertainty, followed by true confusion, and finally, as if she’d won some sort of inner battle, there was resolution.

“Pascal?” she finally said, her cheeks flushing.

“What?” he asked softly, seeing that her flippancy had vanished. He wasn’t surprised. He’d realized that she had initially needed it for protection, but she now looked as if she was ready to talk.

“What is it, duchess?” He reached out one hand and took her slender fingers, comfortably enfolding them in his larger ones, rubbing the tips with his thumb.

“I’m sorry,” she said, in a voice so low that it was barely audible.

“Sorry? Why? For what?”

“Because I didn’t understand.” Her head was bowed and he couldn’t see her eyes.

“There are many things none of us understands,” he said. “What particular lack of understanding has suddenly cast you into gloom?”

“You,” she said bluntly, pushing her hair out of her face with her free hand and looking at him solemnly. “I really did think that you were a common gardener, and you’re not.”

Here it comes,
Pascal thought.
Best face it head on.
“No?” he asked cautiously. “Then what am I?”

“You’re a botanist,” Lily said, looking at him as if he ought to have known that for himself.

Pascal opened his mouth and then closed it again, desperately trying to recover his equilibrium. This was the last thing he’d been expecting, and yet it was the antithesis of what he had been dreading. “Well—yes,” he finally said. “That’s true. I am.”

“Then what were you doing shut away in that monastery? I mean, of all places that you might have been, why were you there? Were you doing penance or weren’t you?”

“Penance? Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Isn’t that why laypeople usually hide away in monasteries?”

“Rarely. Some go for a period of retreat, others because they’re not sure they have a calling and want to test the waters. Some go to escape. There are a myriad of reasons why people are drawn to monasteries, a myriad of others why they stay.”

“And yours?”

“I’d been asked,” he said simply. “There was a problem with the gardens and they needed an expert. Dom Benetard knew I was accustomed to monastic life, having studied for a time at a monastery in Tibet, so it would be no hardship for me to live away from the world. But what has that to do with—why are you asking me this now?”

“Because I feel bad that I doubted your skill and your education, and I don’t understand why you didn’t enlighten me.

He smiled. “I didn’t think you were interested in enlightenment. I’m not sure you would have heard me even if I had tried to tell you. It’s not the first explanation you’ve closed your ears to.”

“Well, you told me to listen, so I am trying.”

She looked so earnest that it tore at Pascal’s heart. There were a great many things about Lily that were suddenly tearing at his heart. There was always a risk involved when one went delving into another person, but he’d only ever done it before in the pursuit of healing. This had been different, and he’d known it in that moment of decision, the split second when he’d chosen to follow her. Still, it was one thing knowing it at the time and another thing dealing with the consequences.

He’d intended for Lily to look within herself, and he’d intended to help her on that journey. What he hadn’t intended was to lose himself so completely in the process. But he had. He’d gone along with her, opening himself, opening her, urging her on. He’d traveled with her, feeling his way through the labyrinth of tight, dark places she struggled so hard against, the pain, the misery, the scars, experiencing for himself the truth of her life.

His heart had nearly broken for her then, but he had fought to keep her going, deeper and deeper into herself. He’d felt her softening, felt her vulnerability, felt the sweetness of her spirit as it quickened, approaching that place where all things became one. Home. He had never been there with another living being, not like this, not as if they were one soul, one heartbeat, one breath.

The light had been so bright, so clear, so filled with love, and with it had come a comprehension that had shaken him to his very foundation. He was in love with Lily—deeply, achingly, irrevocably in love with her.

He wondered how long he’d been keeping such a simple truth from himself. He wondered if it hadn’t been out of sheer terror at what such a thing would mean to a person like himself. He’d never expected it, never even thought to ask for it, sure that this aspect of life was not intended for him.

And yet it had happened. Despite everything, it had happened. He ought to have realized as much when he had spoken to Father Chabot. It had never been in his nature to desire—not like this, not this burning, overwhelming physical need to join himself with a woman. The most he’d experienced was the usual curiosity of an adolescent—and those few brief forays had never given him any satisfaction, leaving only disgust and a sense of alienation. He had decided it wasn’t for him, and ignored any further impulses he had.

But this was different. He had expressed his love for Lily without words, without anything but the touch of his soul on hers. Consummation was an interesting thing, he’d discovered, although he doubted that very many people went about it in quite such a way.

“Why do you look at me so?” Lily asked, her teeth nervously worrying her bottom lip, her eyes now more smoke than moss. She looked as soft and open on the outside as she’d felt on the inside. He was tempted to take her right there and then and do in body what he’d just finished doing in spirit.

“Pascal?” she asked uncertainly.

“I look at you like this because I daren’t do anything else,” he said, his voice hoarse. “If I follow my instincts, I don’t know what you will do.”

“What instincts?” she asked, equally hoarsely.

“This, for one,” he said, unable to help himself. He shifted, lifting himself into a sitting position and wrapped his hand around the soft, fragile nape of her neck, pulling her toward him.

To his amazement her bones were soft and giving under his hands and she didn’t flinch as he lowered his mouth to hers and took it. His heart pounded as hard as if he were a youth making his first attempt at a kiss. Lily’s lips were so soft, so ripe, and they trembled beneath his own. He wanted her so badly that he didn’t know what to do with himself.

Lily, true to form, took care of that, shattering his senses with a fist that socked into his unguarded stomach. He doubled over, gasping with pain.

“Just as I thought,” she said furiously, shaking her hand hard. “You had no intention of anything but using me for your own gain, had you? You manipulative beast! You—you rakehell!”

“Lily—I swear to you, it wasn’t like that. You must know it wasn’t like that.”

“Oh, and what was it, then? Explain yourself, you rutting cad!”

“I—I can’t.” Pascal was torn between fury and a treacherous desire to laugh. Laughter won out in the end, and he shook with it, clutching his bruised belly at the same time. “You have one hell of a fist, duchess,” he said admiringly. “And I thought your mouth was dangerous.”

“Wretch.”

He grabbed her wrists before she could do him any more damage. “What are you so afraid of? All I did was kiss you, and what harm was there in that? You are my wife, after all.”

“In name only.”

He chose not to answer that.
Go slowly,
he told himself.
Go very, very slowly.

“And I’m not afraid,” she added, belligerently adjusting her skirts, but he felt the sudden fear release its grip on her.

“Lily,” he said, releasing her hands and leaning back on his elbows. “I must say, it is an odd name for a spitting cat. I once knew a Lily. She was housemaid at the Close. Actually, she was a good friend. She married happily and went off to have half a dozen children, and I haven’t seen her in years.”

“Oh, are you now comparing me to a housemaid? Why am I not surprised?”

“Stop, duchess,” he said quietly. “It’s not necessary. Not anymore.”

She stuck her chin forward as if to argue, and then she suddenly dropped her gaze, staring at her hands. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t mean to be so difficult. I don’t know how to be any different.”

“But you do,” he said, reaching out a hand and stroking her hair. “You might be too frightened to behave any other way just now, but I’m here, and I’ll continue to be here. I’m
not
going away, as much as you might wish it. Do you wish it?”

She lifted her eyes to his, tears hovering on her lashes. “I—I don’t know anymore,” she said.

“I love it when you’re honest,” he said, brushing his thumb over the tears. “You weren’t being honest with me last night, were you?”

She bowed her head again. “I’m so confused.”

“That I understand,” he said with a smile. “Tell me what you were thinking last night. Really.”

Lily fiddled with her skirt. “I can’t.”

“All right,” he said, picking up one of her hands and rubbing his thumb over the palm. “I’ll tell you what I was thinking. I was thinking that I wanted to kiss you, very badly.”

Lily’s eyes shot to his. “You were?”

“You know I was. Because you were thinking the same thing, weren’t you?” He rubbed his thumb up and down the inside of her arm.

Blood began pounding in Lily’s ears. She could hardly think over the noise. He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed the inside of her wrist where his thumb had just been, and she felt faint and yet vibrantly awake at the same time.

“Weren’t you?” he persisted, his breath warm on her racing pulse.

Lily nodded, her head all heavy and dreamy. “But I shouldn’t have been thinking that at all,” she said thickly, her eyes half closed.

“Why not, sweetheart? Why ever not?” He kissed the tender inside of her elbow, causing a shock to race through her, snapping her out of her drugged stupor.

“Don’t call me sweetheart.” She pulled her hand away abruptly.

Pascal laughed, and Lily glared at him. He looked like the worst sort of rake, his grin flashing strong white teeth, his eyes lazy and dangerous, his powerful body relaxed, but ready to do all sorts of decadent things, she was quite sure.

“Why did you kiss me?” she demanded.

“It seemed the most natural thing to do just then. Why did you punch me?”

Lily couldn’t help herself. She smiled broadly. “For the same reason.”

He pushed his fingers through her hair, gently separating the strands. “Are you going to do me bodily damage every time I touch you? I’d better lay in a good supply of splints and arnica balm then. Breaks and severe bruising seem inevitable.”

“Do you mean to touch me often?” Lily shivered. “You said you wouldn’t—right after we were married. Don’t you remember?”

“I remember very well, and I was an idiot,” he said succinctly. “Although I truly thought I meant it at the time. But things have been changing between us for quite some time.” He took her face between his hands, his eyes filled with a banked fire. “I want you, Lily.”

She stared up at him, her eyes filled with tears of confusion and misery and longing.

“It’s all right to want me too,” he said quietly.

She shook her head furiously inside the cup of his hands. “It’s not all right at all,” she cried. “It’s not! You are my enemy! How can I wish for such a thing—how can I wish for you with any conscience?”

Her voice rang with a clear honesty that cut Pascal to the core. He dropped his hands and looked down, his fingers clenching tightly in the grass. Inasmuch as he had opened Lily’s heart and soul to him, he had opened his own to her, and was now discovering exactly how vulnerable that made him.

He released his fingers with an effort and forced himself to speak calmly. “I learned long ago that it’s a waste of time to speak words that you refuse to hear. So I won’t answer you now, save to say that I am not your enemy. One day you will hear me and know it to be the truth, but until then I won’t touch you again, no matter how much I might want to. As God is my witness, I swear this to you.”

She covered her face with her hands. He knew her heart was breaking and he knew why. Sweet, lovely Lily. Lily, the clean vessel, who drank in everything, and if she found it to be soured, spat it right back out.

She had just drunk of the finest, the headiest of wine served in the clearest of crystal. They had sipped of each other’s souls in a communion that could only have been given by God. He knew it had no comparison to anything she had ever tasted before—everything before this was cheap and false, unripened grapes served in a tin cup. Lily knew it too.

But until she had tasted the false wine one more time, she wouldn’t be able to judge it. Lily’s palate needed a good cleansing before she could truly savor what she’d been given.

He suddenly couldn’t wait for Jean-Jacques to come home.

“Lily,” he said, taking her hands away from her tear-stained face. “Don’t upset yourself like this. It will all come right in time.” He rose to his feet in one swift movement. “I must go to the vineyards.”

Lily nodded without lifting her head.

Pascal walked away, using all of his willpower to keep from looking back.

Lily clutched her hands around her waist and bent over as if she’d been brutally hit in a place far more painful than her stomach. “I can’t feel this way,” she whispered, rocking back and forth. “I can’t!” And yet she did, and knew it to be the ultimate betrayal.

Only half an hour before she had let him walk into her very center as if she had been an open door. She had let him touch her with his fire as if he had been branding himself on her, and she had been helpless to fight. She hadn’t wanted to fight. He had marked her, and when he had finished he had smiled at her, the very sun itself, and her heart had turned inside out.

Now she knew what it was she’d seen that day at the monastery when he had looked up over his shoulder and nearly toppled her. Now she knew why she’d thought him dangerous. She wondered how many women he had done this to before, first made their souls flame and then ignited their bodies.