Passion's Joy (51 page)

"Joy, how does anything change with Sean?"

She sat up and turned to him, incredulity on her face. "Sean's normal. He's as everyone

else!"

"Aye, my love," he said in a passionate whisper. "Sean is a bright, healthy and happy lad,

everything a man could want in a son, but still, the risk! The risk of another!

"That first night you came to my rooms and I saw you didn't understand why I kept you from my bed, I was shocked. Shocked that your love for Sean is so complete and unconditional, you assumed he removed my every fear and doubt of my paternity. You assume he, our boy, plays on my heart as he does on yours. It is different for me, Joy, so different. It is because of little Sean, because I know little Sean, I know a love so fierce that it can make me cry..." He stopped in the emotion of his words. "Don't you see," his hands came to her arms, as if needing more of her wide- eyed attention. “I would love any child you gave me as much. It's because of Sean that I could never have another!"

"But you did have another!" Tears formed two lines down her pale cheeks, making her eyes large and luminous. "You did! You gave him to me ... you gave—" Her voice choked with the tears, yet she struggled to explain. "Ram, Ram, it was like taking Sean from me—"

"No! It was not the same!"

"Maybe not to you but to me it was. I felt him, I felt him! I was . .. so ... happy, I—" She collapsed against him then, and instantly, his arms came around her, holding her so tightly he felt certain he hurt her.

"I'm sorry Joy... I'm so sorry ..."

She pulled away to tell him, "How much better if you had left me believing you didn't want me, that you hated and resented me! But now, after giving me your love, planning the whole time to hurt me, to do this—"

"No!" he said adamantly, refusing to think of it like that.

"You did! You took the most beautiful part of my life and made it vile and ugly! You sent me to heaven, knowing it would become a hell! You used me like a man uses a—"

"No!" He stopped her with force, a hand came over her mouth, but she pulled away, falling back into the pillows with tears.

"I'm leaving." She realized as she said it. “I’m going home." "Joy—"

"You can't say no," she whispered the truth. "Not now."

Ram tried desperately to deny it as he stared, seeing only the long river of hair spread over the pillows, wanting desperately to turn her back and confront the emotion in those eyes now hidden from him. It was too late, far too late. Had he imagined a different ending? Had he been hoping beyond reason she'd find forgiveness in her love, that she'd understand his sins were committed only because he loved and wanted her desperately, beyond all reason?

God's curse, she was the living truth for him. Life had blessed him with every conceivable gift: health, wits, strength, and power, a title and a fortune thrown in like icing on a cake. He had everything but the only thing that mattered, the only thing that gave meaning to all other aspects of his life—her love. Her heart was closed; he had lost her love—

No, he realized as he rose, and with hand on the door, he cast one last look back. He never really had her love; it had been only an illusion, a blessed dream, nothing but a fleeting taste to remind him the rest of his days ahead of what he didn't have—the one and only thing that mattered.

The days warmed by degrees as Sean's great three-masted ship sailed ever closer to America. The time of daylight cushioned between sunrise and sunset, grew mercifully shorter with each day's passing, and for this small favor Joy knew gratitude. She stood at the rail of the ship as was her habit at twilight and stared vacantly at the blue water. The wind whipped her unbound hair across her face, but she made no move to tame it, all acts now seeming superficial and pointless.

From the distance, she heard her boy's laughter as Sean's men tossed him in a torn canvas. Yet the happy sound disappeared in the farthest recess of her mind. The music of laughter could play no tune with the depth of her sadness.

Some found solace and peace with the confrontation of the infinity that was the sea, but she, staring at the endless blue horizon, saw only loneliness, a profound and haunting loneliness, one that sealed her heart the day her bedroom door shut and he had left her life in a final exit. She no longer wrote. The desire to express what she felt and saw died when she felt neither happiness nor

hope, when she saw only the dark future. Nothing changed, not with the monotonous passing of minutes to hours, all of it gathering into a meaningless passing of days.

There was one exception. One thing changed. She forgave him, forgave him everything.

Love made it so easy to forgive. Yet the act itself meant nothing, for it changed nothing.

She stared until the empty blue depths changed and became a backdrop for the vision of

him.

She saw her pain reflected in his gaze; she felt him reach to her, a touch that would give

purpose to her next breath. Yet he was so far away, so terribly, terribly faraway. She could not reach him. Longing filled her, a yearning so intense that nothing else existed. The unobtainable desire; the very definition of hell.

Waves of utter hopelessness and despair washed over her...

She didn't realize Sean stood by her side until she felt his fingertips brush the silent tears from her face. "Oh Sean, dear Sean, tell me it will eventually go away. Tell me I'll know hope again, that someday, with time, when I'm home again…" The fragmented sentences underlined her struggle.

Turning to him, she begged for an assurance Sean could not give her. For he knew time changes nothing when nothing changes. He knew, too, she was not going home again. With every passing minute, the ship carried her farther and farther from that place in her heart.

She had told her friend what the old woman had once said to her; she would have a good life, but not one with happiness. Sean saw the wisdom in this. This was all she could hope for; he prayed it was enough.

The sun crested the meridian before starting to sink lazily to the small foothills as Joy and Sean, holding little Sean in the traveling pouch, Rake running at their side, turned their mounts down a road that she thought promised to bring her home after nearly two long years. Just when she always imagined racing ahead, by some unspoken agreement, they kept their mounts at a slow walk. A warm wind rushed through the maple trees lining the road, echoing a lonely song. She couldn't understand why her hands grew suddenly clammy. Emotion welled inside her, constricting her chest. They turned the last bend, and she felt suddenly frightened as the house she had never seen stood before them.

It was far lovelier than letters had described. The house rose two stories high, with a steeple frame roof like a church. White-washed, with pretty green shutters, it shined beneath the summer

sun. A picket fence surrounded the flower garden, which Cory worked long and hard to keep. Chickens decorated the yard. Each one, according to Cory’s letters, an individual with a name and a personality. The two familiar bays grazed in the pasture, separated from a milking cow named Meredith. The cart, with its false bottom and many memories, stood idle alongside the barn. It was lovely and quaint, so perfectly suited to them, but—

It was not her home! This pretty white house would never be her home. Her home lay across three thousand miles of water on the distant shores of England, where he was...

The porch door swung open. Carrying two buckets, Cory emerged in the bright sunlight on her way to the well. With a foot holding the door, she carefully let it swing back, so as to avoid waking the Reverend napping in the shade of the porch. Half way there, she glanced up.

The buckets fell to the porch. Cory’s small dark hands rose to cover her cheeks as she grasped who sat on horse in the distance. She first thought her mind had collapsed; she just wanted to see Joy so desperately, some neat mental trick conjured the vision before her.

Somehow she started running though, running with the fear that the mirage might vanish before she could touch it. “Joy? Joy Claret?”

Joy's heart-wrenching gasp spurred Sean to sudden movement. Carefully, so as not to disturb little Sean, he leaned over. Hands around her small waist, he lowered Joy to her feet. He watched the young lady run into Cory's wide, outstretched arms. Then he waited patiently through an embrace that seemed to never end.

He'd only be staying for the homecoming. Tomorrow he would leave again for England. He did not welcome the thought, for Ram would be no better than Joy and probably a good deal worse. After all Ram did not own a woman's emotional ability to grieve.

Joy sat with her arms around the Reverend's legs, her head resting lightly on his knees. She stared into the flames of a fire to the side of his rocking chair. Sounds of slumber rose from the distant corners of the house, interrupting the night’s quiet. The Reverend's thin hand stroked her loosened hair, held loosely in a long braid, the gesture as loving as their silence.

Things had changed. Sammy had two freed people of color working for him, and though times were hard with the depression, the household managed to prosper. Sammy still worked from dawn to darkness, but he was happier than Joy had ever known him. The land, the house, his labor

belonged to him. The Reverend claimed that Sammy's happiness also owed itself to living in a free state, a place where he no longer confronted the bondage of his race.

Sadly, Cory had suffered a miscarriage last month. The Reverend believed it explained Cory's unusual relationship with little Sean. Just when little Sean began to show adverse effects from his mother’s despondency and his father's long absence, Cory appeared in his life. He loved Cory and she him, and this love filled them both up. Within these last two months of Joy’s stay, their love grew, blossoming more with every days passing. Treated to the happy sound of little Sean's laughter again, Joy felt both grateful and relieved.

She desperately tried to heal the ache in her heart, but the terrible longing would not abate. Time seemed not her ally. She found comfort only in memories, memories of his love, his touch and kiss, of their laughter, a thousand too many memories.

"I don't know what to do," she suddenly whispered out loud.

The Reverend's hand stopped stroking as he saw the familiar tears. One never knew when they would come: in the middle of supper, at church, yesterday as she was milking the cow.

"I just can't stop thinking of him!"

There was absolutely nothing he could say, nothing any of them could say that would change what had happened to her. Sammy said it the other morning, "She's our Joy, and if it takes our whole life long to see our girl smile again, so be it."

"I just want to see him again and so badly," she said softly. "This ache inside ... just to see him, to touch his face—" She hid her face in his knee. "Oh, Reverend, what am I to do?"

The Reverend leaned over and took her pale face in his old weathered hands. "Darlin', oh my dear, sweet darlin'.” Gently, his thumbs wiped her tears. "There's nothin' you can do but wait for the slow march of time to pass you by. It's all you have." Her eyes closed, she nodded and he kissed her. "Come now, we'll talk of somethin' else. I'll try to distract you a bit."

She wiped her eyes and drew a shaky breath, returning her gaze to the fire, while the Reverend traveled back to days long ago, looking for some momentary distraction. "Hey, did your friend Katie ever write to you?"

Wiping her eyes, Joy paused until she could speak. "Yes. I wrote Katie once I arrived in England, and since then I've received three letters. She was quite naturally shocked and thrilled upon learning of my marriage and little Sean's birth, and either she's never been told it was Ram's duplicity that caused her family's ruin or she's simply so ... very... good—"

The Reverend nodded, waiting patiently as Joy struggled with small uneven breaths to stop the slight tremble of her lips.

"They lost Shady Glen, you know," she spoke with a soft whisper of a voice. "She never mentioned how hard that must have been. Apparently Mister Beauchamp finally took employment at the bank. The Beauchamps live in town now, and Katie, she married Tom Henry."

“Tom Henry? Not that shifty fellow who used to steal your kisses at garden parties?" "He ... never stole my ... kisses ..."

The Reverend watched the blue eyes widen, encompassing what she saw in the fire before her fingertips brushed her lips. With a sigh, he saw his poor attempt to tease her had failed.

A small voice finally broke the silence. "Do you still miss Joshua, too?"

He knew without words from where the question came. In her distress, her thoughts turned to a primary source of comfort she had always known—Joshua. Joshua gave her not just the answers but the solace and peace of love. Things he felt, too, and his own sadness replaced the sympathy in his tired gaze. "Not a day goes by that I don't think of him, not a day when I don't remember him. It's queer, too, but I have this dream about him that still comes nearly every night."

“I dream about him, too," she said softly. "Why is that odd to you?"

"Oh, old folks don't dream—a body's just too darn tired at this age, I guess. Besides this dream, I don't figure I've dreamed in some twenty-odd years."

Still staring into the fire, she missed the Reverend's bewildered expression, but when he ventured no more she asked, "What of your dream? Tell me."

The Reverend leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, turning to stare into the fire, too, as he recalled the dream. "Oh, you know how dreams are—bits and pieces of madness." He shook his head. "This one, though, is so clear, even when it makes no sense. I'm in this room, you see, a real fine room such as the likes I've never seen. There's Joshua, standin' right in front of me, and he's real agitated and upset 'cause I can't make sense out of what he's sayin'. Sometimes there's a lady with him, sometimes not. Never laid eyes on her afore. She's a real lady, you can tell, and she's wearin' an old fashioned dress—you know, silk with lace and things from the olden days."