Sweet Boundless (39 page)

Quillan felt a terrible reluctance. His heart thundered so, he was sure Makepeace could hear it. In spite of everything in him wanting to run, Quillan stepped forward into the chamber. It was small and circular. And the walls were a mural. Wolf?

“I’ll . . . be out . . .” Makepeace waved toward the main chamber.

Quillan hardly heard him. The moan had started again, but this time it was shrill, the howl of a wolf. His whole being shook. No wonder people thought they heard howling on the mountain at night. Slowly he raised his candle and studied the pictures on the wall. They followed one after the other from the right of the opening to the left.

“If you want to know Wolf, he’s there.”
Quillan pictured Carina standing there in his place, seeing what he saw. He neared the wall, studied the first picture, the horror of the massacre. He saw the child Wolf crouched behind the bush watching the atrocities to his family. Quillan forced himself on to the next image and slowly made his way around the room. Each scene took fresh courage to look, to learn. This was his father!

There was emotion in each scene, though the pictures were simple. Each one spoke its own story, but one thing was constant through them all. Why was Wolf so alone?

The symbolism of the pale wolf was not lost on him. It was as though the man and wolf were bound together, somehow vying like two selves in one. Quillan came to the picture of Rose. There was no clear definition of features, but he saw her willowy form, her dark hair. He wanted more, wanted to see her clearly. To purge the nightmare images Leona Shepard had given him.

Breath thick in his chest, he viewed the last picture. Wolf with a newborn child raised over his head. Quillan’s heart hammered. He’d seen it before. But that was impossible. It was déjà vu. A trick of the imagination. But the longer he looked, the more he knew it. How?

He’d been only a baby when the Shepards took him from Placerville. He knew they’d never gone back, surely had never gone into this cave. No one knew of it except Wolf, and now Carina and Alex Makepeace. It didn’t make sense. But this picture was in Quillan’s memory as surely as the books he’d committed there . . . with very little effort.

He knew his memory was superior to most. He’d been amazed as a boy that everyone couldn’t recall as he could. But this . . . He stared at the wall. Was it possible? Had Wolf brought him into the cave? Had his eyes truly taken in this scene of father-son surrender? And how did he know that was what the picture meant?

Quillan’s chest heaved as he strove to keep his eyes on the picture. He sank to his knees. He felt himself torn, even as his father must have been, knowing the animal was inside him, the pale wolf that howled its protest when the man gave his son to God. That howled every time the baby cried. That couldn’t stop the howling born of torment and torture and fear.

The howling became shrill, a cold wind filling the chamber, and Quillan’s candle flickered out. He knew a moment of sheer terror of the dark.
Jesus
. He spoke it aloud. “Jesus.” He didn’t relight his candle, but the darkness lessened. In the faint glow from somewhere above him, he saw the picture of Wolf and his son.

Wolf had made the choice. In the end they were separate, the wolf outside the man. Quillan knew this. It was the man who had joined with Rose, and the man who had died with her. And the man had surrendered to God. He wasn’t the savage Mrs. Shepard had made him, and Quillan wasn’t damned before he started.

Quillan closed his eyes, breath coming hard and swift.
Lord God,
I give you my soul
. Wholeheartedly now, and not because grief had brought him to his knees, Quillan surrendered himself. Drenched in sweat, Quillan straightened on his knees, his breath easing. Slowly he reached into his pocket, found the matches, and relit the candle. The chamber sprang to life, a monument to his father.

Quillan laughed. He threw back his head and laughed. Stretching his arms wide and upward, he filled the chamber with his laughter. Then he stood, circled the walls once again with his eyes, and walked out of the chamber. He followed the corridor to the main cavern. Alex Makepeace stood just inside. He must have heard the laughter. It must have rung echoing into the cavern.

Quillan met his puzzled gaze. “We’d better go. Before the snow gets serious.” He led the way across the cavern to the rope and handed Alex Makepeace the end. “Go ahead. I’ll follow you.”

Without speaking, Alex Makepeace extinguished his light and climbed. Quillan stood alone in the dim of his single candle swallowed by the space of the cavern, feeling the stillness of the air. As he reached for the rope he heard a sound, a soft wail that had no power to terrify anymore. He stood, letting it wash over him until it faded into silence, then clutched the rope and climbed.

Carina sighed. Èmie had twice come in to ask about a recipe and each time assured her that they were managing just fine, but it chafed to leave the kitchen entirely to her friend. Especially when she could smell the sausage and parmigiano Quillan had brought. It irked her to wonder so intensely what else the pantry held. But the weakness resulting from yesterday’s exertion kept her in bed.

She thought again about Quillan at the Rose Legacy. With the day wearing on and snow fluttering past the window, she couldn’t help but worry. Even more than the outer circumstances, she worried about the impact of what Quillan would see.
Dio, soften his heart. Let
him see past the horror to the soul of his father
.

She closed her eyes and pictured the cave mural. Oh, the images would be hard to forget. But she prayed Quillan would be able to do so if it was too much for him to bear. Would he come to her? Or would he run away again? It was the chance she took when she told him of the cave. But she didn’t regret it.

If he left her now, she would go home. She didn’t care that, being married to Quillan, she could never marry another and carry a child inside her. No, she didn’t care. It hurt too much to lose them. She dozed, willing the pain to subside, the bruising outside and in. God was good, and He would bring good from it all. She clung to that.

She thought she smelled the snow, felt the cold breath of winter on her cheek. Her eyes fluttered open to find Quillan standing over her. She looked into his face, chapped with cold, yet warmer than she’d seen it before. There was no haunting, as she’d feared. Intensity, yes, but no despair. And his eyes were not closed to her with his rascal’s indifference. They were searching, vulnerable, real.

She eased up onto her elbows. “You saw the cave? The paintings?”

“I saw it.”

Oh yes, the images were in his mind even as they were in hers. They had moved him, changed him. “Your papa had a lonely life.”

He nodded.

“You don’t have to.” Now it was her voice that softened to a mere breath.

He worked his thumb across his index finger, and she could see that his hands were red with chap or rope burns. “I haven’t done so well.”

A smile touched her lips. “Yes, you have.”

He stood silent a long moment, then stooped down beside the bed and took her hand from the coverlet. His were cold and rough as they cupped hers between them. “I’m sorry, Carina. For leaving you and . . .” His throat worked painfully. “For the baby.”

She felt the pain wash over her. Tears sprang to her eyes. “It was . . .” She raised one shoulder. “God’s will.” She had to believe that, even though it hurt.

Something fierce filled his eyes, and she thought he would argue, but then he looked down at her fingers nestled inside his. “Can you forgive me?” His voice was soft as dust, yet firm, reaching inside her, demanding response.

Carina’s heart quickened. Did she forgive him? Knowing what she knew of Wolf’s pain, of Rose’s deep sorrow, how could she not forgive their son, for whom each had grieved in their own way? Wolf in his cave; Rose in her journal and her failing mind. Quillan himself had suffered through no fault of his own. She saw it now in the strain around his eyes, the tension in his jaw. Forgive? She had learned to forgive. She answered softly, “Yes. I forgive you.”

It was as though years peeled from his flesh. She couldn’t say how, only that his face changed without changing. His fingers tightened around hers. “I’ll stay here with you. Quit freighting. Whatever it takes.”

She drew an unsteady breath. “I want to go home.” As soon as the words were out she knew he’d mistaken them. He’d offered to release her too many times, and now she saw the hurt and disappointment as he guessed she would leave him after all. Her heart broke for him, thinking once again he was abandoned. “Will you take me home?”

He visibly relaxed. “To Sonoma?”

“I miss Mamma and Papa and—”

“Five brothers, one sister, aunts and uncles and old Guiseppe and all his mules.” His mouth quirked crookedly as she raised surprised brows. “I’ll take you. But there’s one thing I need to do first.”

“What is it?”

“There are DeMornays in Denver. I’d like to know if they’re any relation.”

“Rose’s family?” Carina squeezed the hand that held hers. “Oh yes!”

“I don’t know.”

“But we have to ask! Of course we do!”

“They may not . . .” He raised a hand and dropped it.

“Even if they don’t acknowledge you, you’ll know.” She reached her hand to his beard-roughened cheek.

He tipped it into her palm and rested it there, his eyes holding her captive as always. Wolf’s wonderful stormy eyes.

She smiled. “You need a shave.”

His lips formed the pirate grin. “This is nothing. You’re lucky you didn’t see what I wore into town.”

Carina’s breath stilled. “You had a beard?”

“No mountain man could have done better. Or worse, depending on your tastes.”

Carina caught his face between her hands. “Then it was you.”

“Depends what you’re accusing me of.”

“I knew it. Here.” She pressed one hand over her heart. She could see he didn’t understand, but then, he didn’t have to know everything, eh?

He went down on one knee and caught her hand to his chest. She trembled at his intensity. He had never looked at her with such yearning, such firm decision.

He raised her chin with the side of one finger. “The face of my love is a flower, fair with nectar sweet that harbors there bidding me hover, light and fleet and longing for that honeyed sweet. . . .”

His words jellied her, words she’d never read or heard. “Who are you quoting?”

“My heart.” His gaze deepened.

“They’re your words, Quillan?”

“They’re yours if you want them. And more where they came from. You drive me to poetry, Carina.”

“You? The hard, solitary man of the road?”

“Not anymore.” His grip tightened on her fingers.

Her heart soared with hope.
Oh, Lord, you are good. Your grace
has accomplished my plea!
She searched his charcoal-rimmed eyes and tightened her fingers in his. She could feel his strength and something more, something beyond Quillan, beyond them both. Something else bound their hands together; it was God’s own.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My profound thanks to God for grace in all things. My unfailing thanks to my family and friends. My humble thanks to you, my readers.

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