Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (84 page)

Pamela lifted her still full wineglass and flung its contents in Belinda’s face. Jamie took her swiftly by the elbow, excusing himself grimly from the assembly.

He stopped by Belinda, who stood dripping wine onto pleated silk. “Are you alright?”

“No,” she said quite calmly, all things considered, “I’m about as far from alright as one can get.”

“Go upstairs,” he said tersely, “I’ll be with you as soon as I deal with Pamela and get rid of the rest of these damn people. Please,” he added in a slightly more contrite tone.

She nodded numbly. She stood, wine still dripping from her face and hair, managing to avoid the shocked faces around the table. She collected her bag and wrap, then catching a glance of Jamie closing the study door on him and Pamela, walked directly out the front door.

“JUST WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ABOUT?” Jamie asked, his breath still coming in quick, angry bursts.

“Why are you asking me? It was your girlfriend that called me a whore,” Pamela replied truculently, eyes studiously on the carpet.

“Please,” his tone was biting, “can we skip the accusations as to who said what first and cut to the part where you explain throwing wine on my dinner guest in front of a dozen witnesses? And, if it’s not too much to ask, look me in the eye as you do it.”

Her head came up reluctantly, her mouth still set in a mutinous line. “I’m sorry, I acted reprehensibly. I’ll go out and apologize publicly to one and all, and then, if you don’t mind, I’m going home.”

“As it happens,” Jamie said coolly, “I do mind. And if you think some lukewarm public display is going to reverse your actions out there, think again.”

She shrugged her shoulders, knowing even as she did it how annoying he would find it.

“I don’t know why I did it. She makes me angry with her lady of the manor airs, as if this house,” she gestured angrily around the room, “and everything in it belongs to her.”

“I see,” Jamie said, one golden gull-winged eyebrow raised in skepticism. “Well the fact of the matter is, though she’s a guest in my home, she does have more intimate claims than most visitors. If she feels at home here, it’s perhaps excusable, all things considered.”

“I suppose you are referring to her claims on your bed and yourself,” she said before she could think to edit the conduit between thought and speech.

“I suppose I am,” Jamie said, giving no quarter. Standing near the windows that caught and held the reflection of the fire, he looked like a medieval angel—straight-nosed, stern-lipped and capable of all manner of unpleasant punishments. “Though why that should cause you to throw a perfectly inoffensive little wine in her face is something that I’m less clear on.”

Green eyes, suddenly without defense, held to green that simmered with anger.

“Well Jamie,” she said, voice exhausted, “I suppose it’s just plain old jealousy isn’t it?”

“Jealousy?” he asked, face suddenly wary.

“Yes,” she said, “I’m jealous of her. I’m jealous that she has claims on you that I don’t. I’m jealous that you’ll take her to your bed but you wouldn’t take me when you had the chance. I’m jealous that she sits at your table as if she belongs there. That she shares all the little inside jokes and thoughts of someone who is half of a couple. I watch her touch your arm and the way she meets your eyes in one of those looks that make it clear you two are lovers and it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to slap her.”

She shook her head and sat down suddenly in the overstuffed wing-back by the fireplace. “I know it’s awful and unjustified, I know it’s horribly selfish and ridiculous of me, but there you have it. And I will apologize to her, Jamie, I did behave like a furious child and I know it. But please,” she said, face naked now without its shield of defiance, “don’t ask me to be around the two of you together anymore. Pathetic or not, I don’t really think I can stand it.”

“Perhaps it bears remembering that you are the one with marriage vows here,” Jamie said, still unmoving and lit by long shards of dying fire.

“I know that,” she said, “and it only makes me all the more ashamed of my feelings. I’m married and I love my husband, and yet I still want to somehow be central to your life. Believe me, I know how that sounds.” She drew a ragged breath, pushing her hair, now tumbling willy-nilly from its pins, behind her ears.

“And there,” Jamie said quietly, voice drained of all emotion, “we come to the crux of the situation, don’t we? You love your husband, while I am very fond of Belinda. I think we’re both wise enough to recognize the insult in that.”

“Perhaps, though, someday you’ll feel more than fondness,” she said softly, “and that’s what I can’t seem to breathe around.”

“No, Pamela,” he said in a flat tone. “I’ve had it both ways and I know the difference. I won’t wake up one morning and suddenly find the woman beside me in the bed has become the love of my life.”

“You don’t even admit to the possibility of that? You weren’t always such a cynic, Jamie.”

“No, I don’t admit to the possibility of that. The woman I love won’t ever lie in my bed,” he said, with only the tiniest trace of bitterness belying his defeat, “her affections are otherwise engaged. And so,” he walked across the room, feet halting and hand coming to rest near the whiskey decanter, “I find ways to ease the pain of that. With work, with other women, with a friend who knows she can never be more and yet loves me enough to make such allowances.”

“Jamie I—”

He shook his head, putting a halt to her words. “Let’s not say things that we’ll devoutly wish unsaid in the morning.”

She rose and went to where he stood, his long fingers now curved around the stopper of the decanter. She laid her own hand, cold and trembling, on top of his.

“I’m sorry, Jamie, truly I am. I wish,” her voice broke slightly, “I wish a great many things but mostly, of late, I wish that someone would give me a key, or the recipe for a draught I could drink down, or would just tell me how to wake up one day and find myself simply not loving you anymore. Can you tell me how to do that, Jamie?”

“If,” he said, and turned his face to her own, “I knew the answer to such things, we wouldn’t be having this ridiculous conversation, would we?”

Of its own accord, her free hand came up and touched lightly the side of his face, traveling down until it lay, pulse to heavy pulse, against his neck. He closed his eyes for a moment, a small space where he allowed himself to feel the bitter sweetness of her hand upon his skin.

His lashes, red-gold in the fading light, fanned against his cheek and his face turned to her hand, his own coming up and capturing her fingers, pressing them against his lips. He breathed out against her skin, caught the crushed berry scent beneath his nose, and found himself trapped in a dizzying place where the house of cards he’d so carefully built, tethered together with the fine crystal bones of deception, subterfuge and regret, threatened to tumble down all in an instant.

A touch, a moment—no more, before he put her hand from him, gently but firmly, knowing that all he desired most in the world was open to him this moment. But knowing also where the root of her present weakness lay, found the strength to refuse that which was offered.

No more than inches separated them. He could feel her tremble across the air, now dimmed from red-gold to the ash of spent fire.

“And so,” she said in a brittle voice, “I am still, it would seem, playing moth to your star.”

Jamie stared unseeing at his own fingers, so tight around the crystal now that it cut into his palm. The nerves in his fingers were still painfully unsheathed to the memory of her touch.

“Have you ever looked into the night sky, really looked, Pamela? There is no lonelier place than the firmaments, a beautiful hell and yet,” he laughed, a small, strangled sound, “despite its jewels, hell all the same.”

“I hate her,” she said in a broken whisper. “I resent every look, every word, every touch she’s ever had from you. I hate her as I have never hated anyone and yet I would wish her well enough that she might take care for you.”

“Then perhaps you can understand,” Jamie replied in a tightly controlled voice, “in some small measure, the nature of my feelings for your husband.”

She closed her eyes, sensed the humming of an edge place that threatened to crack the foundation of her life, the air so sharp against her skin that she could feel its slice. To breathe seemed impossible, to step towards the door completely beyond her powers.

“Having said these words,” Jamie spoke in measured and flavorless syllables, “we can now close the door to this room for once and for all, leaving our respective weapons inside.”

“You once said that it seemed all of life was standing on the threshold in darkness, waiting for someone to open the door and bring you into warmth and light.”

“Did I?” his tone was light, the mask taken up once again. “One of these days I must learn to still my tongue, I seem to have a ghastly habit of telling all my most imprudent thoughts to you.”

She ignored the masquerade and replied at her own peril. “Sometimes when I look at you I feel as if I am eleven again, waiting at that door.” She looked out through the glass walls of the study where the first small lights of Jamie’s vaulted hell had begun to glitter.

He turned, eyes not green, but black with restrained emotion. “We neither of us have the ability nor the right to open that door, Pamela.”

“I think,” she said faintly, “perhaps, all things considered, it would be best if I gave Phouka back to you.”

He nodded wordlessly, the scent of crushed berries still blistering his senses.

And so saying, she went, leaving in her wake a man who wondered how many times one could properly be expected to die within a lifetime.

Part Five
An Aran Idyll

THE NIGHT CHOSEN FOR THEIR ESCAPE came up dark and drizzly, the moon in sullen hiding amongst the drenched clouds. At five pm, they gathered, the five of them, jumpy as fleas and starting to feel the pressure of their plan.

“More polish, laddie,” Matty said to Shane, tossing him another flat tin of the stuff. The boot polish would irritate the skin, causing it to heat in protest and the thick coat of butter would seal in the warmth and keep them ‘right as ducks in a gale’ Matty claimed.

Over the last several days they’d acclimatized themselves with a series of brutally cold showers, standing naked under the streaming water until their bodies were blue.

After basting themselves liberally with both polish and butter they re-dressed, ready for the six o’clock head count. The warders were punctual to a fault and the head count never took more than a few minutes. They could be off the ship shortly after six, and easily make the rendezvous point by a quarter of seven, which was the agreed upon time for the land meet. A car would be waiting to whisk the five of them to safe houses in Andersontown, deep in Republican territory. Timing was all.

Disaster struck in the form of the six o’clock head count. One man was missing.

“Ker-ist,” Declan muttered, “it’s that friggin’ Tom Hanigan, never can rouse the bastard when he’s needed.”

“Keep yer calm,” Casey hissed, as rattled as Declan, but determined not to show it. “Fan out an’ see if we can’t find him.”

Twenty minutes of fruitless searching did not turn up the feckless Tom Hanigan, and Casey, who could hear the threats Declan was muttering, thought it might be better for Tom if he was never found.

Another minute even and the plan would have to be scrapped, and then
sin sin,
it would all be over. There’d not be time for another chance before they were moved. He’d not much faith in the possibility of release, not with his name.

Just at the moment that he was considering how to endure the next twenty years in the Kesh, Tom Hanigan, foolish smile in place, wandered out from the bog with a book in hand. Casey strategically placed his broad shoulders between Declan and the oblivious Tom.

The head count went smooth as silk. The plan was back on.

It moved like ballet after that, the skiffle group took up position and started playing their assorted instruments. Men placed tables near the portholes, and then set about playing chess and draughts.