Jennifer Horseman (29 page)

Surprise lifted on her face. "You were unhappy?"

"Not in the beginning. I was only nineteen then and I suppose even wilder than I am now. She was many years older, twenty-seven when we met, but I fell in love the moment my eyes found her, and I think I was forever changed. Our marriage had been arranged by my mother long before I met her—"

"Really?"

"As it is with most young people, as it probably should be. And it did look like a good match on paper. Lucinda had a pedigree going back to the Tudors and crossing the Hanovers, a thing that in those days pleased my mother. Luce had married the duke of Windsor, a man forty years her senior, who soon—predictably—left her a widow. She inherited a wealth of lands but almost no income properties. So she desperately needed my money."

"It sounds so ... so—"

"Calculated? Cold? Aye, and yet I did fall in love with her. Madly in love," he whispered.

Juliet could almost see the memories floating through his mind. "She must have been very beautiful to have captured you so?"

"Ah, that's hard to say, love, beauty being a matter of perception, but"—he stated sadly—"if she weren't the most stunning creature anyone, anywhere had ever seen, she made you forget it the minute you met her. She was vivacious, bursting with energy and a virulent determination to be the center of everyone's attention. And I mean everyone, love. My own star-crossed, lovesick attention was not nearly enough. I'd watch her seduce every living soul within her radius; entire ballrooms of people were not enough, she'd have to capture grooms and scullery maids as well. Lucinda, I was to learn, needed admiration as an addict needs opium or a drunkard needs wine."

"Oh, my ..." This was not the woman she had been imagining. "Did she love you as well?"

"No, I don't think she was capable of loving beyond the self-which hardly mattered in the beginning. Nay, not at first. I tried very hard to please her; my happiness was hers. All too soon I began to see it was never enough. Never, never enough. Only after we were married did I begin to understand it was like a disease with her, that more and more she showed me what lay beneath her appearances: the tantrums and tempers, the terrible will directed only toward getting her way. Still, my feelings were slow to die, and though other women were attracting my eye, I always had this place in my heart that clung to hope. . . ."

She watched his gaze filling with sadness and regret. "I'm afraid to hear the ending."

"Aye, love, your intuition serves you well. I won't share it with you—"

"No," she whispered, "please."

He hesitated for but a moment. "Well, though my feelings spiraled ever down as I came to see what she really was, who she really was, I still wanted children. Not one but ten; a selfish bastard, me. I would have been happy with just one though, a joyful compensation to the knowledge that I would be forever married to a woman whom not only couldn't I love but could hardly even like. Yet she remained barren, month after month, and only after nearly three years did I inadvertently discover she had — " he paused with the pain of it still fresh and raw in his mind after all these years. "Well, she had been ridding her womb of my seed almost monthly. I can not describe my rage upon this discovery; it was as if my children had been born and she had murdered them one by one—" He stopped, seeing Juliet's eyes search his face, the story oh, so obviously distressing her. "I'm sorry, love—"

"Garrett . . . Garrett, how did she do this?"

"Ah, love, you are so young. Women can; there are any number of ways. Aye, it's as upsetting to me as it so obviously is to you. And I was upset enough to force the issue, to force her to give me a son."

She knew before he told her, she knew what had happened, and in a pain-filled whisper she asked: "Garrett, you had a son?"

"I had a son," he nodded. "His name was Edric Ramon Van Ness, and for two years I knew a boy who taught me the meaning and power of the word love."

Silence came between them as she stared into his eyes. She felt his pain as her own for one long moment, her mind seized by the image of a brother and a son, the depth of his love and its loss.

Tears filled her eyes, her compassion was a palpable thing. Garrett could only wonder at the profundity of it, a profundity unexplained by years. The ending was too tragic to tell; he refrained. He still didn't even know exactly what happened, except that as he came of age, matured by the paths of his life, all feeling for his wife finally eroded to simple, painless indifference. Only in retrospect did he come to see what their last argument had been about, a culmination of all past arguments: that she had been fighting not him, but his indifference—indifference she had more than earned, but the one thing, the only thing, she could not bear. He never knew her motives—simple revenge or a desperate attempt to capture his rage again; he supposed it didn't matter now. Knowing full well that even his best grooms could not manage the prized stallion, she took Edric, his two-year-old son, for a fatal ride on that beast; the accident occurred before they had even left the property.

"Love," he brought a hand to her face with a gentle caress. "His life was short, but not without purpose. Despite my pain, I cannot regret for a moment knowing him."

The food lay untouched between them. The story of his lost love left her with a strange discomfort. She hardly understood, but almost without her realizing it was happening she saw how much she had come to care for Garrett, the very reason why she could no longer feel angry. She had an overwhelming urge to comfort him and banish his pain, if only for a short while.

Confused, she looked away, only to discover Tonali staring at her. Tears still blurred her eyes, lingering there like morning mist on a lake. His gold eyes caught the candlelight, throwing it back at her. The entire room disappeared momentarily in a strange gold light, returning, it seemed, only by the sheerest force of her will.

"Garrett," she whispered as she stared at Tonali, thinking of so many things—Leifs visions and Garrett's meditations, of Tonali and the stories Garrett's men told about their captain—"do you believe there really is such a thing as magic?"

"I must, love. Against my will, it's woven into my life."

Long after dinner, as she lay in the hammock trying unsuccessfully to sleep, it happened again. Garrett was reading. With the night air warm, he wore no shirt or boots, only those loose-fitting breeches. He lay on his side, resting his weight on one bent elbow, with an old leather-bound book set on the bed. A single light shone over the bed. She watched him, wondering about so many things as he rhythmically turned the pages. Tonali lay in the bed with him, and just as her mind made the mythical connection between beast and man again, the light caught in Tonali's eyes and reflected back in hers. For that one moment Tonali disappeared behind the dark gold light that bathed Garrett's form.

Juliet froze, held by a strange force as bright white light suddenly flooded the room, blinding her. She could not see. The white light had the same effect as total darkness, only it was more terrifying. She tried to speak, to call Garrett, but she couldn't. Dear God, what was happening? Her every instinct mobilized her to run, flee, escape—but a strange, awful force kept her still, trapped, and she couldn't scream, let alone move.

It appeared in the corner of her vision, moving toward her. Against the white light, colors gave it shape. Two heads, the rodent's body, growing, becoming larger with each step. Mangled and bloodied bodies fell from its path and she screamed . . . soundlessly she screamed.

Evil . . . evil, Stoddard's head and someone else, someone younger, yet she could not see, for a mindless terror seized her. A fear far worse than death mounted in her, growing, so that, as it had been with her uncle, the fear itself became the threat.

Suddenly Garrett stood at her side. He never looked at her, but his presence drew the creature's attention. He only raised his arm. A golden light haloed his hand, changing first to a dark shape and finally to ink black, the color of raven wings. The monster screamed in a howl of warning. Garrett stood perfectly still as the black shape surrounding his hand took a familiar shape, emerging as ... Tonali!

The great cat leaped into the air and his teeth sank into the flesh of Stoddard's neck. The giant rodent fell to its side. The other head watched impassively, but Juliet could not see anymore as blood covered the light.

"Juliet! It's over, it's over, love . . . ."

Juliet woke to Garrett's gentle whisper. She was held in his arms, lengthwise on the soft cushion of the bed. ife held her head back as he stared with obvious concern at her upturned face. Terror marked her features, features painted a deathly white and lined with small beads of moisture, remnants of her struggle. She tried to catch her breath, but for a moment she could only cling to the comfort and safety of his arms. With a satisfied hiss, Tonali began cleaning his paws. "A nightmare . . ." she managed, shaken to the depths of her soul.

With both hands and a tender touch, Garrett brushed the long, loose hair back from her face. He could hardly listen, shocked by the effect of holding her so close. He felt a startling rejoicing of his senses, a feeling beyond but intimately connected to his desire: the melting of her soft form against his body, the scent of lavender, the barely discernible taste of sweet honeyed breaths, a celebration that changed in the space of a second to hard, hot desire. "Aye, an upsetting one." "You were there."

"Dear Lord. Well, knowing I could never be an impartial observer, then I was cast either as the villain or the hero. I am strong, love. You can tell me honestly if I be hero or villain."

The large blue eyes discovered his quiet amusement. Drawing a deep breath, she tried to relax and calm her racing heart. Only one thing felt clear, though; she did not want him to let her go. "You were the hero," she said in a still-shaken voice, and why she was glad to tell him that, she couldn't say. "Kind of." She looked over to see Tonali lying at the end of the bed. "The real hero was Tonali. He saved me, Garrett! He killed my uncle—" She stopped, feeling his huge body stiffen and tense as his gaze came to a sharp focus on her face. "Am I upsetting you? Should I ... not tell you?"

"You don't have to, love. I know this dream; it is mine. You were first blinded by a white light, then found yourself lying on a rock, held immobile. Your uncle's evil manifested itself in the form of a large rodent. Death arid blood fell from its path as it came toward you and it made the worst part your fear, a fear worse than death. When I appeared, Tonali emerged as an extension of my hand, an extension that killed the beast."

Juliet frantically searched his face, the mystery appeared as a question in her eyes. "How . . . how can you know my dream?"

"I have had this dream many times, love. I have it practically every time I am about to fight someone or something." He stared into the wide pools of her eyes. "The last time I had it, there were two people lying on the rock. Someone I loved desperately, yet couldn't see— Edric, I know now—but there was also a young woman. All I could see of her was the long rope made of her hair."

She searched his face. "Is that . . . that me?"

"Aye, it is you. Tonali did not emerge in time to save Edric." A solemnity filled his eyes. "I saw the death before I learned of it. And so it was with my son—"

"Your son ..." she repeated, trying to make sense of it. "Oh, Garrett, was the rodent . . . don't tell me-"

"Aye, it was Lucinda, the source of his death."

Alarm filled her eyes as she imagined the dream without the salvation of Tonali. Her eyes found Tonali, as if she were seeing him for the first time. A black panther, a being of terrible untamed power, power that belonged to Garrett. "Is he magic?"

"Magic is first perceived, and only then experienced."

The cat's eyes narrowed with lazy content. Tonali, she saw, did not care if she thought him magic or no. He simply was. "You've never told me how you found Tonali."

"Ah, a long tale for sure. Maybe some other—"

"Please, I want to know."

She seemed so young to him at that moment, a wide-eyed child eager for a diverting tale of fancy and magic. Such was the story of how he came to know Tonali. He smiled, wondering at her transformation. The woman he held in his arms brought a hot fire to his blood, and presently the fire became an uncomfortable one, while the wide-eyed girl triggered a montage of other emotions in him: all things gentle and kind and paternal. No other woman played those dual strings. He felt the full power of the mix now as he let his fingertips brush her cheek, and with that heat, the color returned there.

"Of course, it began with my quest for the place where science and mysticism met; a journey, it seems, of lessons strung together by time: the first was obviously the transient value of material things and worldly riches—"

"When your mother sent you away?"

"Yes. A hard lesson for a boy, but one learned, even if by force."

"Then the second lesson was learned in the Merrills' house," she said with sudden comprehension. "A lesson in humility and gratitude."

A tender smile changed his face. "Do you know why you understand so easily?"

She shook her head.

"These things you already knew or have always known. . . ."

So his story began, and the nightmare was forgotten as he went on to talk of Captain Gainsport, with his trunks of books and his mind for philosophy and the love of the most powerful way of knowing, that of science. There were other teachers too, beyond Chein Lee, religious fanatics Garrett courted throughout the years of his quest, many of whom he could not speak of. "Words can't describe religious experiences," she once heard him say to Leif. "How can mere words describe a soul's journey when they fail to render a simple shade of reality, a thing like the colors red or blue?"

"Well," Garrett was saying, ."it happened toward the end of my stay with Chein Lee. He began complaining; 'Learning is to your mind as an abacus is to an eagle. Really quite useless, my son.' " Juliet laughed at this and Garrett continued with a smile. "Then he began to complain that my power was getting monstrous and beginning to disrupt his peace, that what I needed was a guide, a harness to help me slay the dragons in my life. He suggested I seek the medicine man, Cysaw, in the place called America. Now, love," he stopped the obvious question, "don't ask me how Chein Lee, living in the Orient, knew of Cysaw, an old Indian medicine man living in the Spanish territories halfway across the world, because I have no idea. Anyway, at the time I went into a fit. I screamed that I'd be only too glad to seek this man, if only I could get off the goddamn island! Chein Lee only scoffed, muttering that he hoped I had at least learned to solve life's petty problems with more sense than that. And the next day Captain Gainsport sailed his newest ship into the bay."

Delight lit her eyes at this and she laughed again, too absorbed in the telling to realize what was happening past wanting to know: "Well then, what did you do?"

"I never doubted Chein Lee again. I set off to find this man Cysaw in America."

"And did you?"

"Aye. At least in a long, roundabout way. Five years later, during the year of my life that I was pirating slavers, I often found myself near the Americas. As it happened, one time when I was in Brazil, I finally took a couple of months out to seek Cysaw, not believing he existed so much as needing to be on land after too long at sea. The journey took nearly six months, but finally in the middle of nowhere, and I mean nowhere, a vast desertlike area, I found word of an old man, said to be a nagual—a religious man—by that name. Traveling only with Leif, I found him at last.

"He was waiting for me, or so he said, when after six months I came to behold him, sitting with his small tribe. He seemed so young, like a boy, really, no one who could be a teacher like Chein Lee. Yet later he changed before my eyes to a man as old as the hills he sat upon. My instruction took four days—though paradoxically it might have been years or only minutes, for my perception of time changed when I sat with this man, becoming rather like the waters of a great wide-flowing river watched from an island. I was fasting, ingesting these magical cacti given to me for the religious ceremonies of his tribe. I witnessed many wonders, but at last I had the vision of Tonali: a great black cat emerging from the extension of my hand. When it was over, Cysaw was not only amused, but somewhat in awe of my vision, my fate—or tonali, as he called it. "A dragon slayer, indeed," he laughed, quite unable to stop, leaving me thinking Chein Lee and Cysaw had more than one similarity, for if nothing else I left both of them laughing.

"Well, during the entire trip back to Brazil I was haunted by my vision; I saw Tonali not just in my dreams but in the shadows of the landscape. I felt an increasing restlessness, one I could neither name nor explain. Until suddenly I got a searing pain in my leg and I felt trapped, as if I were in a cage. I couldn't shake it, even when Leif and I finally reached the small city of Porto Alegre, where we had maybe a two-week wait for my ship. My feelings worsened to the point that I—as well as Leif—began to feel as if I had a strange malady affecting my sanity. I could not meditate or remain seated for any length of time. What little sleep I had was broken by dreams of this cat pacing in a state of intense agony. I began drinking heavily, going through fights and women like—well, it was madness.

"Then one afternoon, as Leif sat with me while I paced like a madman on the terrace of our villa and he tried to talk me into going back to Cysaw to get a cure, we heard a commotion down on the docks. I took one look and ran to the water's edge, where a dozen or so men were attempting to lift a cage onto a ship. I pushed through the crowd until my eyes came upon him. My cat, Tonali, paced in a state of extreme agitation in that cage. For the longest time I stared at him and he at me, knowing I think even then who I was.

"Tonali had been captured in the jungle; wounded and caged, he was on his way to a circus in England. Thankfully, I never told the leader of the expedition, a man who thought he owned Tonali, that I would have paid my entire fortune to open that cage and set the great creature free, that if my fortune was not enough, I could easily violate every principle and value I lived by and shoot any and all men who tried to stop me. Thank God Leif was at my side by that time. Despite the miracle set before him, he managed to bargain with the man, and at last a price was reached. Tonali was mine.

"We first took him to the outskirts of town. I knew he would not hurt me, though Leif was so certain I was mad, he later told me, he sat perched in a tree with a pistol aimed at my cat. I only knew I had found the subject of my dreams, that he was as much a part of me as my heart. I opened the cage unarmed and stepped inside. And so our friendship began."

Tonali sat in magical languor. The gold eyes appeared as two slits while his tail rhythmically lifted with his contentment. He appeared to know he was the subject of Garrett's quiet whispers, Juliet's receptivity and wide-eyed awe. She glanced at the cat, his message remained unchanged; Tonali had a profound indifference to her belief in him.

Beauty was indeed a matter of perception, and Garrett's perception was complete as he stared with his own quiet marvel at the picture she presented. Like sunlight caught in a dark pool, her eyes filled with wonder, the question sat unspoken on her lips: Is this true? The long hair cascaded in a stream of dark silk behind her. He could not stop touching it. Clad only in the white silk nightdress, she lay on her side, and the beckoning curves of her slender figure appeared as a shadow beneath the white silk. He was going to kiss her, to lay her backside to the bed and fill her.

Juliet abruptly became conscious of the warmth between them, a charged warmth, as if fueled by the light in his eyes. "You are laughing at me! Have you been teasing me? Is this what one calls a tall tale? A very tall tale?"

"Does it matter, love?"

She hesitated, confused. She wanted him to deny it, to swear his story as true as his next breath, but like his cat, he seemed indifferent to whether she believed him or no. "You did know my dream, though—" Apprehension rose on her features. "Mine was a bit different—"

"How was it different?"

"The beast in my dream had two parts . . . two heads.

One was my uncle's but the other—" "Yes? Who was it?"

"I couldn't tell ... I was just so scared, but it was like he was just watching—" "Passive? Unmoved by your terror?" "Yes! But how can you know?" Quite suddenly everything changed. "A wild guess," he said with something akin to contempt in his voice. Inexplicable anger replaced the warmth and amusement on his features, his hand tightened hard around her upper arm. "Actually, love, the answer, like all of life's answers, is remarkably, wholly, perfectly simple. All I want to know is, did Tonali kill that person, too?"

She stared aghast, frightened by the abrupt change of his emotions, not understanding at all what caused it. "Garrett, you're scaring me—" "Answer the question. Did Tonali kill this person?" "I don't know . . . I'm not sure—" The emotion simmered as he contemplated her answer. He looked back into the terrified pools of her eyes, a terror that now could only grow. "Leave me now, Juliet, lest you discover a new meaning of this fear of yours." Juliet did as she was told. Quickly, quietly, she rose and slipped into the dark shadows of the room, a place where his gaze could not follow. As she lay back upon the hammock, Garrett extinguished the lamp. A low, cruel hiss sounded from the foot of the bed and she looked over to see two gold eyes watching her from the darkness.

The sun shone bright and sharp beneath billowing white clouds. A strong warm wind blew across the deck from the west, pushing the great ship over huge swells the size of small hills. Juliet woke to the tenth bell and an empty room. She swung her legs over the side of the hammock and stood up. The room swayed menacingly, as if she were drunk, and for a confused moment she could make no sense of her disorientation. Then the room swung back. This was what Gayle meant when he said she had encountered only the best of weather so far. Voices rose against the wind outside. Listening, she heard the sound of a great commotion, running back and forth, a rolling of heavy barrels across the deck, sails flapping madly in the wind.

The memories of last night came back to her with a gasp. Her hand reached to her mouth, her eyes widened. Why had he gotten so angry with her? What did he mean by it? She felt as if she had missed a scene in her own play, left to wonder about the ending. Either she had missed a scene or Garret was mad, yet somehow the latter didn't fit the picture she had of Garrett. He was many things, he was everything: good and kind, stronger and sharper than any man should be, noble, a larger-than-life hero, truly a man of myth and legend. Yet with the apparent capriciousness of the weather, he could also be her persecutor, mean and fierce, at times more frightening than the very beast in her dreams! He was everything but the only thing, the one thing, that might be an excuse for his behavior: mad. He was not now and never had been mad ...