Veils of Silk (19 page)

Feeling immensely protective, he bent over and lifted Laura in his arms. "Time to put you to bed. You must be tired."

After a quick inhalation, she relaxed in his grasp. "Not so tired that I couldn't walk, but this is a nice way to travel."

He carried her to the canopied bed and pushed aside the mosquito curtain, then laid her on the cotton-filled mattress. Gently brushing the tawny hair from her cheek, he said, "Shall I join you, or would you prefer for me to make up a separate bed?"

"I would like very much for you to join me." She caught his hand and drew him down beside her. "You said we should have a real marriage in all ways but one, and I'm sure that includes sharing a bed."

"Yes, but insomniacs aren't very restful bed companions." He pulled a light cover over them. "You're allowed to change your mind if I toss and turn so much that I ruin your sleep."

"I'll worry about that if it happens." She rolled onto her side and pressed the soft length of her body against him, one arm going across his chest as naturally as if she had lain with him a thousand times before.

He was touched by her willingness to accept her new situation. He had expected her to be much warier about physical closeness. "Pyotr Andreyovich claimed that in spite of the reputation Russians have for being tempestuous, there's a vast patience, a willingness to accept, at the center of the nation's character. You have that."

"Perhaps." She gave a delicate yawn, covering her mouth with one hand. "Or it could be English patience. Actually, I'm not sure there is any such thing as national character."

"Perhaps not." He smiled a little as she dozed off, trusting as a kitten. Though it was not how he would once have imagined spending his wedding night, it was more than he had dreamed possible just a fortnight before.

But it wasn't enough. Dear God, it wasn't enough. His contentment vanished as he studied his wife's elegant profile. For the first time, he realized just how much of passion was mental. Though he was incapable of physical desire, his mind and emotions ached to possess her, to penetrate her, body and spirit, to make her his own in the most primal of ways. In doing so, he would also be opening himself so that her healing warmth could flow into the darkest corners of his soul.

But he was trapped by the limitations of his body. There was no solace in the knowledge that he and Laura would not be together if he were unimpaired; the bitter rage that rolled over him had nothing to do with reason.

In the wake of fury came black, suffocating despair, a melancholy so profound that he feared it would scald the woman lying in his arms. He disengaged from her embrace with trembling hands, praying that she wouldn't wake.

Then, desperate for fresh air, he made his way to the window again. His entire being was saturated with agony, a pain so different from physical suffering that it defied description. Outside the dark waters beckoned, a drowning pool of peace and surcease. And yet, he thought with a trace of bitter humor, even if he had the strength to will his own destruction, he was too damned good a swimmer to drown in a pint-sized pond. He would fail, just as he had failed at everything that gave life meaning.

Shivering with anguish, he folded his arms around his midriff and leaned against the window frame, too drained to support his own weight. He had wanted Laura to be his salvation. Instead, in his selfishness, he would drag her down into the depths of his own mortal despair.

And that was the most agonizing thought of all.

Laura awoke and reached sleepily across the smooth sheets, wanting to touch her new husband, but Ian was not there. Suddenly alert, she sat up and looked about. By the light of the bedside lamp, she saw that he was at the window. He might only have wanted a breath of fresh air, but she didn't believe that, for his bowed figure radiated unimaginable bleakness.

He had warned her of his dark moods, and she sensed that now he was in a more desolate place than any she could imagine. She stared helplessly at his back, unsure whether it would be better to go to him, or to leave him alone. If he rejected her comfort, it would not only be horribly painful, but it would make it harder for her to reach out to him in the future.

Her indecision was brief. Quite simply, Laura was incapable of watching someone suffer without trying to help.

Silently she slipped from the bed and crossed the cool floor. Ian didn't hear her footsteps. When she drew near, she saw that he was in a trancelike state, his face rigid and his fixed gaze unseeing.

She slipped her arm around his waist and leaned against him. At first his chilled body was stiff as a statue. Then his taut muscles flexed. For a brief, ghastly moment, Laura thought he was going to break away from her.

Instead his arms circled her with rib-bruising force, and he buried his face in her hair. He was shuddering like a man who had been running for his life and had finally reached the end of his endurance.

Acting from instinct, she caressed him, rubbing his back, smoothing his auburn hair. "Ah,
doushenka
, my soul," she murmured, using the tenderest of Russian endearments. "It's always darkest before the dawn, isn't it? The demons of despair don't want to lose you to the light, so they are fighting for your spirit. But they won't win, for I want you more."

Her words shattered his last threads of control and he began shaking with the dark, rasping sobs of a man who had never learned to cry. Perilously near weeping herself, Laura rocked him in her arms, praying that his tears would be healing, like the lancing of an infected wound.

After the storm had passed and he was still again, she whispered, "Come, my dear. You need rest," and led him back to the bed. His movements were brittle, as if a misstep would cause him to break, but he came without protest.

When they were back under the light blanket, she pulled him into her arms so that his head was pillowed on her breast. At first he clung to her like a drowning man clutching a branch, but slowly his terrible tension ebbed and his body softened.

For Laura, it was enough to know that the worst of his misery was past, but to her surprise, in time his breathing took on the slow, steady rhythm of sleep. Perhaps tonight his frayed spirit would finally begin to rest. And tomorrow, God willing, would be a better day.

The next morning, Laura woke as soon as Ian moved. Opening her eyes, she found that the slanting rays of the early sun were filling the room with a honey-golden glow. The two of them lay face to face about a foot apart, her right hand interlaced with his left. To her relief, her husband's expression was composed. The demons had retreated back to the shadows.

"I'm sorry about last night," he said quietly. "I thought I'd come to terms with what I am now, but apparently that is something that must be done more than once."

"I'm afraid so," she said ruefully. "Though I know my stepfather is dead, a dozen times a day I find myself thinking 'I must tell Papa that' before I remember that he's gone. It hurts over and over—but a little less each time." Her ringers tightened on his. "You have also experienced a great loss, so it's hardly surprising that it continues to hurt."

"I sincerely hope that next time it hurts less," he said dryly. "There are better ways to spend a wedding night than holding together the shattered pieces of an old crock."

She gave a slow, teasing smile, glad that he could joke about what had happened. "You're not that old."

"But a crock?" He smiled with real amusement and propped his head up with one hand. "You're a saucy baggage."

There was powerful intimacy in sharing a bed, and it emboldened her. "And you," she said softly, "are a man who asks too much of himself. Uncle Pyotr
said in his journal that you were born to be a hero—'the sort of man who can
inspire other men, who can risk his life in battle with courage and flair.' But
while you would have met death with valor, surviving an endless, pointless
ordeal requires a different kind of strength. Perhaps you can't forgive yourself for not being as good at enduring as you were at risking your life."

Ian's expression became unreadable, but he did not pull away. "Did Pyotr say all that?"

"The gist of it. I'm extrapolating some."

"He was perceptive." Ian raised their joined hands and lightly kissed her knuckles. "If you can understand that and still look me in the face, I'm a very lucky man."

His words sparked an idea, and daringly she reached out to the cord that held his eyepatch in place. "I really would like to look you in the face, Ian."

He became very still but didn't stop her. Laura didn't know quite what to expect, and what she found under the patch was something of an anticlimax: just a closed lid curving over a surface that was sunken a bit more than a normal eye. "I'm rather disappointed," she said lightly. "I'd begun to think of the eyepatch as Bluebeard's closet." She leaned forward and kissed him at the corner of the closed eye.

"Not Bluebeard's closet, but the mark of Cain," he said harshly.

When Laura looked at him with alarm, his expression smoothed over. "I'm just being melodramatic. That's Scottish national character, for those who believe in such things." Before she could question his comment, he sat up and propped some pillows behind his back. As he replaced the eyepatch, he said, "What was your first father like? You've never spoken of him."

Disconcerted, Laura rolled onto her back and frowned at the canopy of the bed. Ian laid his hand on her wrist. "I'm sorry—it looks like this is a subject you would rather avoid."

"No, it's all right," she said softly. Though she had always avoided speaking of her Russian father because the memories were too painful, on this sunny first morning of marriage she found that some of the sting had gone away. "He was the very image of a dashing, romantic cavalry officer—tall and handsome and reckless. He seemed larger than life, though I suppose most fathers seem that way to small children.

"He had also something of his own father's melancholic temperament. When he was in a good mood, he was the fondest, most exciting father in the world. Other times he was moody and a little frightening, so I took care to stay out of his way." She thought a moment. "Strange. When my father died, he was about the age you are now. Much too young a man to die."