Miracle (35 page)

His head moved slightly, but only his cloak shifted, rose and fell, danced around his legs that were planted firmly apart.

Reaching him at last, breathing hard, Miracle stepped around him, smiling. He still did not acknowledge her. Just stared ahead, his eyes like cold flint; his whole face was as colorless as rock. His aloofness stung her like a slap. He was the same man she had saved those months ago: cold, distant, repellent.

"I . . .
was frightened," she forced herself to say. "When you didn't return to Cavisbrooke after a few hours and Benjamin had not seen you, I feared you might've met with some disaster."

At last, his eyes met hers. A smile touched one corner of his mouth as he searched her face. "No," he said, sounding weary. "No disaster,
Meri
Mine. None so obvious as to be visually noted, that is." Taking a deep breath, he again looked at the sea. "Have you noticed? I'm surrounded by water, before me, beside me, soon to be behind me. It laps at my boots, and yet—"

"You are an island, sir."

"I think of you—"

"Instead of death."

He laughed mirthlessly. "Today they are one and the same."

"I don't understand."

"Of course not. I wouldn't expect you to."

Turning, Salterdon started back to the shore, leaving Miracle to stare after him, her back to the wind, her hair waving around her face. She hurried to follow and caught him as he reached the shoal.

Throwing her arms around his waist, she pressed her face into his back. "Why are you so cold, sir? Why do you avoid me? Tell me what I've done so I might undo it."

"Let me go," he said in a tight voice.

Squeezing closed her eyes, clutching him fiercely, she cried, "I won't! Don't ask me to. What crime have I committed other than loving you?"

Silence. Then, "Do you
love
me,
Meri
Mine?"

With that, she released him, stumbled back while he slowly turned to face her. Her body trembled as it had never trembled to thunder.

"Do you
love
me,
Meri
Mine?"

She flung herself against him, arms around his neck as she pressed her lips to the salty skin of his throat, the curve of his hard, unshaven jaw. He stood stiff and tense, ignoring her lips, her ploys to move him. Even as she ran her hand down over the bulging ridge in his trousers, he did nothing.

Falling to her knees, she grappled at the straining buttons on his breeches.

He grabbed her wrists, and she struggled. He lurched her to her feet. Fingers biting into her arms, he dragged her into the chapel and flung her up against the wall.

"Is this love to you,
Meri?"
he grated through his teeth, dragging up her skirt, sliding his hands beneath her buttocks and between her thighs, spreading her legs as he easily lifted her and slammed her body back against the Virgin fresco. Then he drove his body into hers, while he shut his eyes and turned his face aside—drove and drove, each thrust driving her back into the stone wall that sent splinters of pain through her. Yet, she could only clutch at his shoulders, his hair, try vainly to wrap her legs around his pumping hips.

When it seemed his body would explode, he withdrew from her and climaxed, allowed his seed to pulsate across her lower belly and down her legs. Then he released her, suddenly, and stepped away.

Miracle slid to the ground, lay stunned in the wet sand and streamers of seaweed. She could do nothing but stare up into his flushed features as he adjusted himself in his trousers.

Finally, he said, "Is that love to you,
Meri?
Because if it is, you can get that from any randy sailor at any port in this or any other country." Then he spun on his heel and left the chapel.

Miracle stared after him before clawing her way to her feet. She ran after him. "Bastard!" she screamed. "You're a bloody animal, and I wish I had let you drown!"

He continued to walk, head down, cloak billowing.

"I despise you! Did you hear me? Answer me, damn you!"

He stopped, and slowly turned. The sun setting behind him turned his image into a silhouette, stark and black against the horizon. "No you don't," came his calm voice. "And we both know it. Therefore, you have a decision to make,
Meri
Mine. I'm leaving for London tomorrow, with or without you."

She shook her head and wrung her hands together, approached him cautiously. "We could remain here. We'll live at Cavisbrooke—"

"Do you think I haven't thought of that? For the last twenty-four hours I've imagined myself giving up family, friends, home, wealth —everything—and moving here, to live out my life with you. Only you. But I need people, Miracle. I need to hold on to some thread of sanity in your insane world. Aside from that, I have . . .certain obligations. Certain debts I'm forced to repay. I can't allow this penchant toward emotionalism to get in the way."

"So that's it? I marry you or never see you again?"

He said nothing, just turned again and moved off down the shoal, toward the blazing sun, ignoring the tide sweeping in around his feet.

She found John with Ismail, sitting cross-legged on his
frash
. The smell of strong coffee and incense hovered in the air.

Ismail scrambled to care for Napitov, to carefully bathe his lathered body, to dry him with toweling, to prepare him a great pail of warm mash once he had cooled sufficiently. The stallion nickered softly to Miracle before obliging his groom. Miracle watched the pair walk off into the night, and she blinked back her tears, then turned to leave the courtyard.

"Mira,"
John called.

"I don't wish to talk," she replied.

"But you've always talked to me,
Mira."

"I thought you were my friend then."

"I was and am."

Staying her step, staring at the door, and clenching her fists, she declared, "He's leaving. Tomorrow. He's demanded that I make a choice: Cavisbrooke or him. I leave with him or never see him again."

For an eternal moment, John said nothing. Only the sounds of the distant horses interrupted the silence. Since she had found them on the beach, they had been a big part of her world, filling up her emptiness with the pleasure of their existence and odd but special friendship. She awoke in the morning, eager for her misty dawn rides on Napitov's back. The scent of horseflesh, the companionable nickering they made upon seeing her, had lent a certain magic to her days.

"I . . .
cannot leave," she announced, hating the emotion she heard in the words, despising the awful pain in her chest.

"Why?" he replied solemnly.

She faced him at last. He seemed so small to her now, sitting there on the ground by the fire, his bad leg stretched out before him, his cane (which she had carved for him herself) placed at his side. "This is my home, sir. All that I have ever known. Not once in my twenty years have I left this island. What would I do there? How would I act? Nay, I shan't leave—not for him."

"Do you love him?"

Lowering her eyes, she didn't bother to fight the tears any longer, but allowed them to rise up and flow down her cheeks. "Yes. But there is much here that I love as well."

" '
Tis
no greater choice than any other maid is forced to make when deciding to marry. Do you think it easy for any girl to leave her home? She goes on and builds a new life, a new home, with her husband. And someday she will encourage her own children to fly the nest. '
Tis
the way of nature,
Mira."

"But who would take care of you, John? Who would prepare your meals? Darn your clothes? Dip your candles and make the soap? And the horses—who would love them like I do? What would happen to them after you're gone? And there are the rabbits, and the chickens, and the hogs. I fear they would become stew before I reached London."

"Will you be satisfied to spend the remainder of your life chanting to acorns and the moon in hopes Ceridwen's bible will plop some local sheep farmer into your lap to marry? At last you have this opportunity to find happiness. Take it,
Mira."

She shook her head almost angrily and turned away again.

"Where will you run now?" John barked. "Back to that damn, bloody lighthouse like
yer
mother did? To stand on that perch and stare out to sea,
allowin
'
yer
fantasies to swallow you up?"

"I don't wish to discuss my mother—"

"It's time we did,
Mira,"
he said in so sharp and harsh a voice that Miracle stopped in her tracks.

Behind her, John struggled to stand. She could imagine him, leaning heavily on the cane, stiffly straightening. Then came the scrape of his bad foot on the ground and the thump and tap of his cane on the stones. "I think
yer
reasons for not
wantin
' to leave have got little to do with
yer
devotion to this
bleedin
' mausoleum of a house, or even these animals.
Yer
still
waitin
' on her, on
Lorraina
. After all this time,
ya
think she'll still come home.

"
Yer
just like her,
ya
know.
Wantin
' to believe in the impossible. She waited ten damn years for
yer
good-for-
nothin
' father to come take her away from this place, and he never did. And he never would have, because
ya
know why?"

She covered her ears with her hands, pressed them painfully against her head.

"Because he had a goddamn wife and family already,
Mira."

She stared at the ground.

John moved up behind her. "It took
yer
blessed mother ten years to learn the truth. But learn it she did. After one of Cavendish's infrequent visits, she followed him back to London. Imagine her surprise when she discovered another Lady Cavendish—"

"I don't believe you!"

"
Yer
mother didn't confront him then; she was wise enough to think the situation through; she'd sacrificed ten years of her life, after
all . . .
and there was you to think about."

Miracle started for the door. John grabbed her.

"Eventually, she wrote him—"

"You're lying, John."

"She told him what she knew and demanded an audience with him here at Cavisbrooke. She threatened that if he didn't come, she'd reveal to all of England that he was a bigamist. He came, of course. Do
ya
remember that night,
Mira?"

She shook her head frantically.

"You were there for the most of it. I found
ya
standing in the hallway,
yer
little face white and streaked with tears.
Ya
weren't no bigger than a minute then, scrawny as a little bean pole with eyes so big and sad it broke me heart to see them. It was about that time that
yer
mother and Cavisbrooke come
stormin
' from the room; they didn't see us,
standin
' there, me
holdin
'
ya
in me arms and trying to shield
yer
eyes and ears from the ugliness."