Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (8 page)

It was another hour before it came and she had almost given up hope that he would come home that night. She could hear him banking the fire in the Aga and checking the downstairs as he did each night, making certain the doors and windows were secured against the night and the world beyond.

He came up the stairs quickly, light step belying his emotional state. He hesitated at the bedroom door and she thought her heart might stop right then with the agony of not knowing exactly what had brought him home.

Several very long moments passed before the door opened and he came into the room. She sat forward in the chair, clasping her cold hands tightly in her lap. He didn’t look at her right away for his face was hidden in the muffling folds of a towel. He was soaked to the skin.

“Are you alright?” she asked. Casey’s head emerged from the towel, hair whorled in a clockwise spin of dark curls. He put the towel down and pushed the hair back from his face.

“I feel a wee bit foolish, truth be told,” he said, and indeed he did look slightly shamefaced. “I don’t know what came over me in there. I just wanted for a minute that ye should feel the pain as I do.”

She took a breath, but it wouldn’t force its way past the constriction in her chest. Casey wasn’t one to waste time on small talk nor to pretend that the scene outside the pub had not occurred.

“We can’t go on this way, Casey,” she said softly.

“Aye,” he swallowed, the line of his throat tight with emotion. “I don’t suppose we can.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, keeping a distance between them. She looked at him, noting the weariness in his face—as though he bore a terrible burden that he could not put down. And so if he could not, it was up to her to take it from him, no matter the cost.

A chunk of wood shifted in the fire, sending up a spray of sparks. The movement broke the tight silence that lay between them.

“You once asked me to let you in—to give you all of myself or nothing. You said,” she fought for control of her voice, throat tight with longing and fear, “that half a loaf wasn’t enough to fill a man. And now I’m asking you the same thing, to let me in that I may go with you.”

There was wary surprise on his face. “What?”

“Casey, you’ve been holding back something every time we’ve made love since—since you found out about Love.”

He took a deep, shaky breath and stood, crossing the room to where she sat, the fire’s heat penetrating through the thin weave of her nightgown. Moonlight lay in a broad strip across the floorboards, lighting the bones of his face in stark relief.

He knelt on the floor and put his head in her lap so she could not see his face. His arms lay lightly along her thighs and she could feel how they trembled. His whiskers were like needles against the fine skin of her inner thigh but she wouldn’t have moved for the world right now. She didn’t even dare to speak, though she laid her hand gently on his head, feeling the soft springiness of his curls and the tension that lay along his skin.

“I wish I knew how to reclaim ye,” he said quietly, though his tone was fierce. “I wish I knew how to wipe the vision in my mind of him takin’ ye, of him makin’ love to my wife. It makes me feel as though I’ve a rope chokin’ me round my neck every time I think of it. I wish I’d killed him with my own two hands an’ maybe that would have washed the poison out.” The hands in question were clenched into fists, bunched tight in the cloth of her nightgown.

“Oh God, Pamela, I’m sorry, but I cannot seem to shut it out. Every time ye lie with me—I see his hands on ye—touching ye. I put my hand to yer breast an’ I swear I can see the marks of his fingers there still.”

It was what she had feared, that despite the fact that Love Hagerty was no longer alive, the ghost of what she had done with him would linger about their bed, that the mere knowledge of it would rip Casey apart and never cease tormenting him. He was a strong man, and secure in the fact of her love. But he was also a man who needed to possess his woman, just as she herself needed to know her hold on him was stronger than any other force in the world.

She had racked her brain for months now, trying to think of a way to bring him back to her as they had been before he knew about Love. She could only think of one way.

She unbuttoned her nightgown and shrugged her shoulders, the fragile white cotton puddling around her hips, leaving her bare in the firelight. Casey lifted his head, feeling the faint breeze of the falling cloth.

“What are ye doin’, woman?”

She put a hand to the tight line of his jaw, forcing him to meet her eyes.

“You could do anything to me,” she said, pulse hammering in her neck. “Do you know that? I would let you do anything to me if I thought it would heal this between us. I never was this way for him. I need you to know that. I always kept as many clothes on as I could manage. I closed my mind and my heart to him. I could never give him the vulnerability of my naked body. I’ve only ever given those things to you. I would let you beat me if I thought it would take this away from us. I would even step aside and let you go to the bed of another woman. The beating,” she said, and the words came out half-choked, “would have to wait until well after the baby is born, obviously.”

Casey swallowed, his fingers biting into her thighs, eyes so dark with pain that she could barely discern pupil from iris.

“Jaysus, Pamela—
beat ye
? Pregnant or not, I could never raise a hand to ye in violence, an’ I think ye know that well enough. An’ be honest, could ye really countenance me bein’ with another woman?” His gaze was as merciless as the fingers that gripped her flesh.

“I could if it meant you’d come back to me whole afterward.”

“Could ye? Could ye live with the thought of it, of me touching another woman the way I do you? Of me lyin’ naked an’ aroused in her arms?”

It was her turn to swallow. She could not dislodge the acid taste that flooded her mouth at the thought of him with another woman. And suddenly she
could
see it all too clearly—the long line of him, the dark hair of his chest and groin against the pale body of another woman, his mouth on her fine skin. She knew what it was to have that strength brought to her service, while at the same time being completely at its mercy. She gave a small cry of pain at the image, but Casey wasn’t about to let her turn away from the mirrored vision of his own agony.

“What about the thought of me findin’ release, of maybe findin’ her touch an’ taste to my liking? No, Jewel, look at me. Of me inside another woman, making love to her. Maybe
feeling
love for her.”

“Is that what you think? That I enjoyed it? That I felt something for him? I hated every minute of being in his bed. Hated it, do you understand? His touch made me sick to my stomach. I threw up the first time, right after. I took showers so hot my skin was raw and I couldn’t even look at myself in a mirror.”

“An’ how did ye feel about me when ye were there with him?”

“In the bed, I couldn’t think about you. I would have killed him then and there if I had. Or I’d have gone mad. But after—later—” she looked into his eyes, her own dry and burning, “I hated and loved you in equal measure,” she said. “Every time you were home, I wanted to keep you in bed the entire time. I wanted you to exorcise his touch somehow—burn it off me. I wanted you to be rough so I would feel you in me after you were gone. I wanted him to see your marks on my body when I had to go back to him.”

“Aye, I remember,” he said, “I did think somethin’ wasn’t quite right. But I wasn’t likely to look too closely at it, was I?” He smiled but the expression didn’t quite come off.

“I’d had sex with different women before ye came along, Jewel. Ye know that well enough, and I always enjoyed it, and liked to believe the woman in question was left satisfied as well. From the first with you, though, it was different. It was makin’ love, an’ it was sacred, an act of consecration in the dark or light. No one knows me like ye do, Pamela. There were doors I opened for ye that I never thought I could. The trust that lay between us—for me—was absolute. And to know that ye couldn’t trust me when that man came between us…” his grip on her thighs was bruising but she welcomed the pain. “That ye didn’t come to me and tell me what was going on—I—” his voice failed, the tears that stood in his eyes bright in the half-light. “Well, then I realized ye’d never trusted me in the way I thought ye had, and it like to killed me to know it.”

She swallowed convulsively, wanting to break the lock his eyes held her in but knew she owed him this small thing, to feel the pain for a moment even as he did.

“What we have when we lie together, it’s something rare. And I don’t just mean the passion, though that’s rare enough in itself. But that somehow I am both stronger and weaker in yer arms, that you gave me such trust even after ye’d been raped.”

He closed his eyes for a second, breathing in deeply through his nose, in an effort to quell the emotion that had overtaken him. When he opened his eyes again, she saw that rather than mastering his feelings he had laid himself bare to her and for the first time in months, she felt as though she were looking directly through to the core of the man.

“I know what men see when they look at ye, Jewel. I understand that they lust after ye. But it never mattered because I never felt they knew the half of ye. They didn’t really know what it was to love ye. Only I had the keys to that kingdom. Then Love Hagerty,” he ground the name out between gritted teeth, “he more than lusted for ye, he loved ye. And I felt somehow that he desecrated what we had, as though he’d brought violence into the church we’d built together. And I am afraid,” he bowed his head down to her knees again, “so afraid that if I let myself go entirely with ye again, I’ll find out he desecrated it permanently.”

She took a deep breath, knowing there was only one last thing she could offer him, and knowing it would kill her to do it. Still she could not continue to receive a love that was compromised. Compromised through her own actions, and she knew neither of them could go on much longer in this manner, not when they knew better.

“I would want to die if you left me,” she said quietly. “I wouldn’t know who I was if you didn’t love me anymore, Casey. I wouldn’t want to wake up another day. But I would let you go if it meant you could find happiness elsewhere—if you—you,” her voice shook, but she knew it had to be said, “cannot find fulfillment with me anymore.”

Casey’s head snapped up, his face white with shock. “Oh Lord, woman, ye kill me, do ye know that?” He raised a hand from her thigh, the print of his fingers a shadow against the milky skin. He cradled her jaw, his thumb stroking the line of her cheek. “The way ye look there with the moonlight on ye, offerin’ me everything that ye are.” He shook his head sadly. “I could never love another woman, Pamela. I thought ye understood at least that much about me.”

He stood and took off his shirt. It fell to the floor to join her nightgown. Then he unzipped his pants and stepped out of them.

He stood naked before her and she caught her breath at the sheer beauty of him. He seemed carved from the night, both silver and shadow, both man and animal, against the tamped glow of the fire.

He held out a hand to her. “Come to bed, my wife, my woman. Come with me. And I will go with you.”

Chapter Seven
The Night Walker

It was one of those nights when everything was so still
, it felt as though something momentous was about to happen and Nature was holding her breath in anticipation.

It had become routine, this wandering byways and streets at night, walking and walking until he was so exhausted he couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. He knew the area here well enough to walk through the woods and leave the roads to their quiet slumber. The woods held their own charm at night, the trees keeping counsel with something ancient that hung in the air between their boughs, sighing and murmuring softly under the stars. This night he had come down to stay with Casey and Pamela, a thing he did from time to time when he could not stand to stare at his own four walls anymore, nor tolerate the silence that lingered there in the wake of her voice.

He was relieved to see the intimacy had returned to Pamela and Casey’s marriage. They seemed happy together once more, and had taken up the rhythm of their life again, in tune with each other, speaking volumes across the room without saying a word. It gave bittersweet pause to him, the small intimate touches as one passed the other, the smiles, the little jokes that belonged solely to a couple. The way Casey watched her with pride in his face and a lessening of fear as each month of the pregnancy passed in good health and a growing belly.

He paused in the lee of an oak, putting a hand to a rough-barked branch, and took a deep breath. Sometimes he walked so long and so fast that he forgot to breathe and only stopped when his chest got so tight that he felt he was in danger of choking. In the wake of Sylvie’s death, he had become unaware of his body. It became an enemy in some senses, one that he abused, overworked and forgot to feed until he collapsed from pure exhaustion. It seemed a limited thing, a boundary that he could not cross, a thing keeping him from what he truly wanted. There were solutions, he knew, to such difficulties, but something in him had shied away from such a definite answer.

And yet here he was, star stuff contemplating star stuff, able to look at the heavens once again, even if barely. It took courage to look up into the night sky. For so long he had kept his head down, his thoughts on a narrow track, not allowing the pain to swamp him, knowing if he did he was lost. For so many years, the stars had been his consolation and in another life, in another country, he might have become an astronomer. After Sylvie’s death, he had not looked up for months. He had watched the ground burn beneath his feet as he walked endless miles at night, never once looking up. It had seemed grotesque that the stars were still there, forming constellations, that they didn’t simply fall from the sky for the grief of losing her. He did not want to know if he could still feel beauty, if anything had the power to touch him.