Veils of Silk (52 page)

Unable to believe that she'd heard correctly, Laura turned her head and stared at her husband, whose face was only inches away. There was a bleakness in his expression that hurt her heart. Uncertainly she said, "Ian?"

In an instant he masked his emotions so smoothly that it was as if the darkness had never been there. "Just muttering to myself, Larishka." He smiled and kissed her, his expressions so tender that she almost believed that she'd misunderstood. Almost.

Lightly he said, "It's too cool to spend the night on the floor, even with a blanket of rose petals." He raised his head and looked measuringly at the bed. "I wonder if I have enough strength left to get us that far."

Laura could have managed to move, though she was disinclined to try, but no effort was required of her. Ian got to his knees, then scooped her in his arms, stood, and carried her to the bed. His prison gauntness had been replaced by hard, sculpted muscles. Trying to forget her husband's disquieting remark, Laura touched a ragged scar on his bicep. "Did one of your souvenir bullets cause this?"

"Yes. That happened when I was a newly fledged subaltern without the sense to know when to duck." He laid her on the bed, then began brushing petals from her with tantalizing care. "I recall reading that Cleopatra once welcomed Mark Antony in a room knee-deep in rose petals, but the book didn't mention whether they also ended up with petals in such interesting places."

With a soft sigh of pleasure, Laura said, "Having you remove them is part of the fun." She proceeded to brush him off wherever she could reach without having to move from her supine position. "Because you were on top, you don't seem to have acquired as many petals as I did, but your knees are pink."

"A small price to pay." He pulled back the covers and tucked her under, then lay down himself. "I'm almost afraid to ask, but exactly what changed your mind about physical intimacy?"

The rose scent was less obvious now that Laura had become accustomed to it, but it still stirred her nostrils with delicate sweetness. She felt as if they were drifting on a magical sea of blossoms. Turning so that her head was on his shoulder and her arm across his waist, she described her discussion with Kamala.

When she was finished, Ian said pensively, "The maha-rani was right—passion denied can become so overpowering that nothing else matters. I should have realized that myself, but I was too close to be objective. We owe Kamala a considerable debt. Life will be easier for both of us now, as well as far more pleasurable." His arms still around her, he drifted off, his breathing becoming slow and regular.

But for Laura, sleep wouldn't come in spite of her languid satisfaction. Their physical union had been deeply rewarding and promised to get even better in the future. Her fears of being swept away to madness were largely gone, so remote that it was hard to remember how vivid they had been only a few days before. And though she knew her capacity for possessiveness was great, she didn't believe that Ian would give her cause for jealousy. Not for him the casual sex in which her father had so thoughtlessly, and disastrously, indulged.

She would have been blissfully happy, if it hadn't been for Ian's chilling rejection of her declaration of love. Though he had expertly tried to cover that brief, devastating remark, she knew in her bones that it had been profoundly significant.

For a moment, as his words echoed in her mind, she hovered on the verge of tears. Then her face hardened. She must not surrender to the pain of his rejection. This was simply one more problem, one more veil of the past, that must be removed before they could be fully happy. Clearly there was still darkness inside him. It was not the despair he had been suffering from when they first met, nor was it anger. This was more like the stark withdrawal of the week before, when she had revealed the reasons for her fear of passion.

She found it ironic that her fear was gone, but not his bleakness. It was as if he had conjured up a demon to help him and could not now send it away. The thought produced an immediate twinge of guilt, but after examination, Laura dismissed it. Though her actions had certainly contributed to the problem, the roots lay deeper, in Ian himself.

Thinking back, she remembered his occasional oblique references to shame and unworthiness. Perhaps he had always felt that way about himself, but she doubted it. From the way people who had known Ian before his imprisonment spoke of him, he had once had confidence in abundance. What had Srinivasa said about him? That he had a warrior's weakness, which was the inability to accept that his strength had limits. That he tormented himself because of his own perceived failings.

Yes, that fit. It must have been prison that had changed him. She wondered if there had been one specific incident, or whether the cause was simply the cumulative effects of months of degradation, abuse, and helplessness. For someone like Ian, being helpless must be the cruelest torture of all.

But even if her analysis was true, she had no idea what she could do about it. He had walled part of himself off from her, and she guessed that as long as that wall was in place, he would be unable to love her as she loved him.

The thought filled her with aching grief. She loved him with every part of her being, and she wanted, most desperately, for him to love her the same way. Yet what right had she to complain? In his proposal, he had offered friendship and support. She had those things, and now physical delight as well. To demand love was far beyond the limits of their bargain.

For one brief, raging instant, Laura experienced the passion that destroyed her parents' marriage. She wanted to possess her husband's heart as well as his body, and her failure filled her with the same kind of fury that Tatyana had shown when she discovered her husband's betrayal.

The surge of anger left Laura shaken by the power of her own emotions. It was a sharp reminder that her past fears had not been wholly unfounded, for she was indeed her parents' child. Thank heaven she had avoided the worst of their folly. No, thank her stepfather and Ian and Kamala, who had helped her steer through the stony rapids where she might have come to grief.

But still, her surmise that Ian couldn't love her was acutely painful. She had read books where proud ladies renounced the men they loved because the love was not returned. Though Laura had never understood that in the past, now she did in an utterly visceral way. There was anguish in knowing that she and Ian might never be as close as she wanted. She wondered if the imbalance in loving would prove unendurable, if someday frustration would drive her to leave Ian rather than stay and yearn for what she would never have.

As soon as the thought surfaced, she almost laughed aloud at the absurdity. Perhaps a proud English beauty would refuse to stay where she was unloved, but Laura was Russian, with all the stubbornness of her race. The endless sky and harsh climate had tempered her ancestors, giving them vast patience, tenacity, and a refusal to surrender what was theirs.

That fierce determination had been in Pyotr, who had burned Moscow to keep it from enemy hands. It had been in Tatyana, who survived emotional devastation to build a new life for herself and her daughter in a distant land. It had even, in a tragic form, been in her father, who had taken his own life in a savage testimonial to the strength of his love and his regret.

Determination was in Laura's very marrow. Ian was her husband—
hers—
and she would never leave him. To hell with pride. Rather than walk away, she would spend the rest of her life trying to win the depth of love she craved. Perhaps she would fail, but if so, by God, she would fail like a Russian—without surrender.

The next morning, Laura woke when Ian shifted his arm from under her head. She opened her eyes to find him regarding her gravely. She thought she glimpsed darkness there as well, but he veiled it instantly. "Sorry to have woken you," he said, "but my shoulder is numb."

She began massaging the afflicted area, enjoying the feel of his hard muscles. "You do make a lovely pillow, though."

"You're good at that." He smiled lazily. "In fact, you're getting all of my blood stirring."

His expression made it clear what he meant, and for a moment Laura was willing to begin her next lesson in the pursuit of kama. But her reflections of the previous night were still vivid and before she had time to evaluate the wisdom of her question, she asked, "What happened to you in Bokhara that haunts you so, Ian?"

His eye color shifted from its usual warm blue-gray to a cool, steely shade like winter water. Impassively he said, "Between what I've said and Pyotr's journal, you should have a general idea of what the Black Well was like."

"Yes, but the details elude me." Remembering what Srinivasa had said, she continued, "I keep thinking that something happened that you can't forgive yourself for— something that made you feel like such a failure that it's like a river of ice in your soul." Remembering the part of her uncle's journal that had raised the most questions, she said hesitantly, "Perhaps it was during that time when you were taken from the Well for days and beaten so badly?"

Her words struck home, triggering a reaction that he couldn't conceal, though he tried. For a moment Laura thought that he was going get up and walk out. Then his expression solidified into a mask of ironic detachment. "Whatever happened to that demure, well-behaved young female whom I proposed to, whose greatest goal was to be a ladylike nonentity?"

"She married a man who encouraged her to give her Russian nature free rein," Laura said, unrepentant.

"You took my advice with a vengeance," he said dryly.

"So I did, and I find that I'm much better at being emotional than I ever was at being stoic." She propped the pillows behind her and sat up against them. "I'm not asking from idle curiosity,
doushenka
. One by one, I've admitted my dark secrets, and the results have been all to the good. But though I know you far better than I did, I feel as if I am still missing some vital key to what made you what you are. If you can bear to talk about it, perhaps some of the darkness might dissipate."

He pushed up the pillows as she had and leaned against them. Then he lifted his eyepatch from where he had dropped it on the bedside table the night before. Laura suspected it was no accident that he was putting the eyepatch on again; it was like watching a knight don armor.

"What happened was in some ways so trivial that it hardly seems worth mentioning," he said slowly. "And speaking of it isn't likely to help. Some things can't be mended after they're broken, Larishka."

"Perhaps, but how can you be sure if this is one of them?"

He folded his hands behind his head and stared at the opposite wall. Laura began to think that she shouldn't have raised the subject, at least not when they had just reached a new level of understanding.

She had given up expecting an answer when he said, "Bokhara is considered a holy city, and there's a strong vein of religious fanaticism there. Several times I was told that if I would turn Muslim, I would be released and given a position in the amir's army." Ian's sardonic gaze went to Laura. "The offer usually included a plump, rosy wife or two. Don't know how I managed to resist. Pure Scots bloody-mindedness, I suppose.

"The first few times, the subject was dropped after I declined, but on this particular occasion, they decided not to take no for an answer. When I again refused to convert, three guards began beating me under the direction of one of the Bokharan ministers, a weasly little fellow called Rahmin who was the amir's chief hatchet man. I kept saying no, and they kept beating."

He pulled his hands from behind his head and laid them on the counterpane, his fingers moving restlessly. "I was rather flattered that they thought three guards were needed— with my hands tied behind my back I really wasn't much of a challenge. My right eye was destroyed, my left damaged to the point that I could barely see at all, some ribs were cracked. They took special pleasure in kicking me in the genitals. That's why it was easy to believe later that the damage was permanent."

Ian's flat delivery was harrowing. Laura felt tears stinging her eyes, but when he glanced over and said, "Do you really want to hear more?" she nodded for him to proceed.

"I knew that I was going to die. Not thought,
knew
. The pain was so
great that mostly I hoped that they would hurry up and finish the job. I knew
that the end was near when they dragged me outside—I couldn't walk—to a patch of
land between the royal palace and the city jail. Rahmin gave me a shovel and told me to dig my own grave. The sadistic little bastard was having a wonderful time. The guards had to do the digging since by then I wasn't good for much. When there was a decent-sized hole, they asked me once more if I would reconsider and join the brotherhood of the faithful."

Ian still spoke in a voice of unnatural calm, but his nails were digging into the counterpane. "As you can imagine, my enthusiasm for becoming a Bokharan was low at this point, so I said no, adding a couple of juvenile insults involving the probability that their mothers had mated with wild hogs. Rahmin shoved me into the grave and I thought, 'Finally it's over. I haven't disgraced myself, and soon I'll know whose ideas about heaven and hell are the most accurate.' I was ready to die. Damned eager, in fact."

He stopped speaking, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Laura bit her lip so hard that the metallic taste of blood was in her mouth. Then she laid her hand over his. He caught it, squeezing her fingers so tightly that they hurt, though he seemed unaware of the gesture. "One of the guards had a
jezzail
, one of those long-barreled Asiatic rifles. He raised it, held it about six inches from my head, and cocked the hammer. I was glad—it would be quicker and a little neater than being hacked up by swords, which I assumed was the alternative.

"But Rahmin had a better idea. He told the guard not to shoot. Instead, at his order…" Ian stopped again, the pulse in his throat beating like a triphammer. "The guard used the jezzail to club me into the hole. Then they… they began to bury me alive. The soil was loose and sandy, easy to shove in. That's when I broke."