Thief of Hearts (36 page)

He felt relieved. "I thought you might think that I'd done it myself somehow, to swindle money out of your father or—"

"I never thought that. Never. Not for a second."

Their eyes met and held, and it was as if a kind of concussion jarred the space of air between them. In the aftermath, there was no sound except their shallow breathing. Anna reached backward again, this time to clutch the cabinet and steady herself. He watched her cheeks pale, in fear and acceptance. The need to touch her was like hunger; it made him weak, even as all the muscles in his body tensed and hardened. He took one hand from his pocket and reached out to the cream-colored rose in the center of her bosom. Her face flinched but she didn't move. He stroked the cloth flower lightly, just before his fingers clenched around it and he crushed it in his fist. Her lips parted on a silent gasp. He remembered everything about her mouth. He drew his breath in through his teeth and said, "Go to bed, Annie," in a raspy whisper. She didn't move, and he dragged himself back from her one step. "Go. Now."

All the color returned to her face in a violent rush. She sent him one tormented look, darted around him, and raced out of the room.

For long minutes Brodie didn't move. He stared into the empty space where she'd been and asked himself what he'd done. Footsteps sounded in the hall. He whirled. Yes, this was the ending, that other was wrong, absurd. Of course,
this
…

It was Jenny. And one look at her face confirmed the truth of a suspicion he'd hoped was unworthy of her. And of Nick.

She stood in the doorway, tense and uncertain, before she spied him in the dimness and hurried over. Her hair was uncombed, her clothes seemed put on at random; he thought she looked as if she'd gone to bed and gotten up again.

Words tumbled out of her mouth, low, fast, and urgent. "We have to talk, I can't go on like this." He took a half step back. She reached for his hand and held it with both of hers. "I know what I promised, but it's too hard. Please, Nick, don't send me away."

"Jenny…"

"I can't do it anymore. Living in this house with you, seeing you every day, oh, God! Sometimes I think I'll explode if I can't touch you." Tears began to streak down her face. Her hands tightened and her voice turned into an anguished whisper. "Don't do this to me! I know you still want me why are you pretending you don't?"

Brodie shook his head, eyes closed, hurting for her. "Jenny, don't. Don't, now, it's—"

"Please, please—"

She had her arms around his neck. She pressed against him with all her grief and passion; when she pulled his head down and kissed him, he stood still and let it happen. A thick, heavy hopelessness settled on his heart. He felt her desire rising, put his hands on her shoulders, turning his face away to speak, and saw Anna in the doorway.

She took a step farther into the room, then another. Her eyes were huge and cloudy with pain.
Run away, Annie
! he thought, but she didn't run. His body had gone ice-cold, and finally Jenny felt it and turned her head and saw her cousin.

She began to cry harder. "I don't care!" she flung at Anna hysterically. "He's mine! I had him before you and he still loves me, he's lying if he says he doesn't!"

Anna put both arms straight out when she saw Brodie move away from Jenny and start toward her. The pity in his eyes took the scalding pain out of her heart long enough for her to whisper, "
Tell her
," just before she spun around and fled.

Jenny's hands were like claws on his forearms, her stubborn body a barrier between him and the door. "No," she begged, dragging at him, "don't go to her, stay with me!" She kept talking while Brodie listened intently to the diminishing sound of footsteps, and at last, the distant slamming of a door. His body sagged.

After a minute he realized Jenny had stopped talking. When he raised his eyes, she was staring at him as if she'd never seen him.
Tell her
. But he couldn't. To do that would put Anna in danger. He had to protect her, even if it meant hurting her cousin.

"Jenny." There was no gentle way to say it. "I'm so sorry for doing this to you. I didn't mean to, and God knows you don't deserve it. Everything's my fault." She just kept shaking her head.
Damn you, Nick
, he thought. "What was between us is over now. It has to be. You're better—"

"No!"

"Listen to me. I'm married now, Anna's my—"

"Liar! You said it wouldn't matter, you said we could still be together!"

Damn you to hell forever
. "I'm sorry. But it's impossible now, we—"

"Why? What's changed? Tell me why!"

"Jenny, honey." Brodie drew a long, hard breath and told her. "I've fallen in love with my wife." Her whole body jerked backward. This was worse than anything. He reached for her. "God, Jenny," but she flinched away and darted to the door. "Please wait," he called after her.

"Go to hell!" she hurled over her shoulder, her face contorted with pain. She lifted her skirts and ran.

He heard her in the foyer and then on the steps, taking them two at a time. Silence flowed back into the house. He stood in the black hallway for a long time, listening to the silence. Then he went upstairs to Anna.

Her door was locked and she wouldn't answer him when he spoke to her. He stopped trying the main door and went into his room and then their shared dressing room. "Annie, please let me in," he said through the dressing room door, also locked. Silence. He decided he could stand there all night, talking through the door, or he could wait until she was ready to see him. It was hard, it went against everything, but finally he stopped talking and knocking and went back to his room.

She heard him go, as she'd heard his every word and movement through walls and wood panels for the last five minutes, and turned her face into the pillow. She hadn't cried in a long time, and the first deep, racking sob was physically painful. The sound frightened her, it was so heartbroken; but the more she tried to stop, the harder she wept. She pressed the pillow to her mouth and gave herself up to it.

Always she'd known she was not beautiful, not desirable in the certain way some women are to men. But she had never experienced total personal humiliation. Inklings of Nicholas's treachery had come to her from Aiden, from a look on Brodie's face once, from the evidence of her own insecurities. She hadn't paid any attention. The miracle of what she'd thought was his love had shone so brightly, it had blinded her. But now the light was out and she yearned for extinction too, or at least invisibility. She supposed it was a mark of her sinful pride that even finding out he'd cheated her father's company hadn't hurt this much. It was
this
betrayal, this faithless breach of the trust of Anna Jourdaine that cut to the bone.

Oddly, Jenny's falseness didn't hurt as much. She didn't know what her cousin had shared with Nicholas, and she didn't want to know; but she felt strongly that Jenny was as much a victim of his dishonesty as she was. More, she didn't doubt that at this moment they were sharing the same agony. It was the sudden mental picture of her and Jenny crying in each other's arms that finally stopped her bitter tears and released her, once and for all, from Nicholas's hold.

She got up. Lying in bed and muffling sobs into a pillow suddenly repulsed her. She splashed water on her swollen face, then lit a candle and began to pace up and down between the window and the fireplace. What was it now? If Nicholas was exorcised, what dull, grinding pain had her heart in a vice? Intimations of the answer floated past, but she didn't reach out for them. Not at first. She felt so bruised, and she feared more suffering. But she'd never been more vulnerable, and in a matter of minutes she succumbed to the truth.

Something hurt worse than the idea of Jenny with Nicholas. She pressed the heels of her hands against her temples, her eye sockets, pushing it away, but it wouldn't go. The thing that hurt worse, that burned and blistered her very soul, was the idea of Jenny with John Brodie.

The cabbage rose pattern repeated on alternating diagonals, the colors every other flowerred, green, red, green, red, green. In between were curling bands of streamers or ribbons, red, green, white. Red, green, white. There were twenty-two columns of roses across the width of the room, twenty-eight across the length. Or twenty-three, if you subtracted the two and a half the closet door interrupted and two and a half the hall door…

Brodie leapt out of bed, mumbling obscenities at the wallpaper, and stalked to the door to twist out the gaslight. Feeling his way in the dark, he found the window and wrestled the curtains aside. Warm, fragrant air rushed in on the strong moonlight. He rested his palms on the sill and inhaled, eyes closed, face bathed in silver. He unbuttoned his shirt and dragged the tails out of his trousers. The night air felt soft and fresh on his overheated skin.

After a minute he turned his back on the sill and leaned against it, bare feet crossed at the ankles, arms folded across his chest. He wasn't much of a man for praying, but he thanked God now with all his heart, because Anna had finally stopped crying. He could not have stood it for one more minute. Just before it stopped he'd begun to look around for his shoes, so that he could put them on before he kicked her door in.

But the silence was almost as bad. He imagined her lying on her bed right now, staring at the ceiling, too exhausted to cry another tear. For the dozenth time that night he cursed Nicholas to hell. He cursed fate too, for its blindness and stupidity, because it had given Annie to the wrong brother.

As acutely as his senses were tuned to every sound from her room, he heard nothing until the dressing room door swung slowly open. She stood without moving in a slash of moonlight. He sensed her alarm when at first she couldn't find him. Then she saw him at the window and took one more tentative step forward. "Mr. Brodie," she said.

"Yes, Annie?"

"I've come… I've come to… I want us to make love."

He didn't speak. His arms came unfolded and he put them behind him; he seemed to be hanging onto the sill. Why didn't he say something? Time passed. She swallowed and got more words out somehow. "Did you hear me?"

He made a sound, something like a laugh but maybe a curse. "I heard you. Go back to bed." He saw her flinch, heard her indrawn breath. "Do you think I don't want you?" He threw his head back and cursed the ceiling. "Christ, Annie, I'm burning for you."

She smiled a sweet, aching smile. "Then—"

"But you shouldn't have come in here. I want you to go."

She shook her head steadily. "I don't want to go. And I don't believe you."

He looked at the ceiling again, this time for guidance. She thought she could hear him grinding his teeth.

"Listen to me, love," he said, with great control. "After I've gone you'll still have your name, your reputation. I'm not going to take that away from you, too. Don't you see, Annie? I don't want to hurt you."

She almost laughed. She put one hand on top of her head. "I don't believe this. You compromise me the moment we meet, you come close to raping me in a garden. You cold-bloodedly seduce me in my own bed, you...
you fondle
me in a public hall," somehow that would always seem the 318 worst, "and now,
now
" she was sputtering with frustration, "you won't touch me when I ask you to because you want to protect my
reputation
?"