Windswept (32 page)

She picked up the package, placed it on her lap and unwrapped the food. Jacob sat down beside her and handed her a glass of amber liquid. “It’s brandy,” he said. “Drink it. You’ll feel better, and after a few swallows, I might not seem like such a monster.”

Without looking at him, she nibbled at the fish and sipped the brandy. “I want to go home,” she said after she’d had several bites.

“I know. We’ll leave at first light day after tomorrow. Do you think you can stand it till then?”

“If I must.”

“The day we arrived, I sent a messenger for Dylan’s doctor. He arrives tomorrow from Trinidad. I really must be here to…”

She put a hand up to stop his explanation. “It’s all right. I understand. Of course the day after will be sufficient.”

From the corner of her eye she saw the hint of a smile play around his lips. “I’ve done it again, Nora. Put myself in the position of owing you another apology in my seemingly endless parade of them. I’m sorry I raised my voice in the dining room.”

Fresh tears stung the backs of her eyes. She blinked hard to keep them from spilling over. “Obviously you felt you had reason.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

She looked up at him. “From what?”

“From him.”

“Your father?”

“At that moment, yes. But also from Dylan and Juditha, who seems harsh and unkind to you only because for some reason she loves them both and is devoted to them. She protects them like a mother lion. But to someone who doesn’t understand her, it seems she is hard-hearted.”

”I think Dylan is afraid of her,” Nora said.

Jacob chuckled. “I am more afraid of Juditha than Dylan is. He trusts her. Listens to her.” He settled his gaze on some distant spot at the end of the garden. “I was also trying to protect you from me. Perhaps mostly from me.”

Anguish softened his voice and hinted of his personal torment. Despite her wounded feelings, his words touched her heart. She put her hand on his arm. “It seems to me, Jacob, that there is entirely too much protecting going on around here, and not nearly enough trusting.”

He shifted his gaze to her hand, and she curled her fingers more tightly. Perhaps she was doing some protecting of her own. “Tell me what is going on here, Jacob. What has happened on this island? Who is Dylan?”

He pivoted on the bench until he faced her and his knees touched hers. “Will Turpin always said you would understand, but when I tell you the whole story, I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“I will try, Jacob. You can believe that.”

Her promise was enough. He nodded and covered her hand with his. “Dylan is my brother, two years younger than I.”

A vision of the pale young dancer came to her mind.
That troubled man, so thin and wan, his complexion the color of wilted jasmine is the brother of ruddy, handsome Jacob?
It was difficult to imagine the two men coming from the same parents. “I see,” she said. “What is wrong with him?”

Lines of tension radiated from the corners of Jacob’s eyes. He bit his lips together, and Nora felt the muscles in his lower arm contract. She sensed that what he was about to tell her could only be related at great personal cost.

“The doctors call it ‘Malum Hereditarium,’” he said. “What it means is that my brother suffers from a hereditary dementive mania. According to the doctors, and there have been many over the years, some family trees sprout madness like others produce blue eyes or fair hair. The Proctors are so afflicted.

“Dylan sees things other people don’t. He hears voices. He believes that nearly everyone he encounters is a threat to his well being. He lives with fear and anxiety, and he reacts without reason.” Jacob lifted Nora’s hand and held it between his. “He can be violent, Nora, without provocation or deliberate intent. He simply doesn’t know any better.”

Her mind spun back to the details of her meeting with Dylan earlier that day. He had accused her of stopping the music to which he and his imaginary friend had been dancing. He had told her to go away and then just as suddenly insisted that she stay. He had shouted at her one minute and then dissolved into tears the next. But hurt someone? Could this confused, disturbed man actually inflict pain on another human being? “But when I mentioned your name, he seemed to light from within,” she said. “He was like a child.”

“I know. He trusts me. There are only three people who can communicate with any degree of success with Dylan. Myself, Juditha, and a man named Vincent, a male nurse who is Dylan’s companion. And music helps to calm him. When you saw Dylan today, Vincent had left for just a few minutes, but he’d turned on the music box. He thought the tune would play until he returned.”

“What about the doctor? Can’t he relate to Dylan?”

A scornful rush of air from Jacob’s lips hinted at his answer. “My brother mistrusts doctors more than any people on earth. He has learned that their poking and prodding only result in further limitations of his mobility. If you only knew what has been tried with him, where he has been confined, what horrors…”

^P^P

He trembled and shut his eyes as if blocking out the memories. “In England, South America, even a sanitorium in Mexico City. Each time we’ve had hope, but after a few weeks, when I see the effects of the treatments on Dylan, I’ve brought him back here. It’s where he’s happiest, most content. And I arrange for the doctor to come only when I visit. It helps Dylan get through it.”

“Jacob, if you had told me…if I had been prepared. Don’t you know I would have understood?”

“About Dylan, yes, maybe you would have. But I have become very protective of my brother’s privacy. I guess I thought you might try to seek him out, curious about the oddity of Belle Isle.”

“Jacob, I wouldn’t have…”

“Or tried to fix him, as others have. I don’t know. I’ve come to believe that the fewer people who know about Dylan the better. He can’t be fixed, Nora. He is permanently broken. And there is more I haven’t told you, and I doubt very much you would like to know.”

He dropped her hand and looked away from her again to speak to the shadows. “I don’t think there is that much compassion in any one woman’s heart to understand and accept all of it.”

Nora did not shift her gaze from his granite profile, hoping the power of her eyes would draw him back. She sensed there was more to this story before he admitted it, and she suspected what it was. She also believed that Jacob wanted and needed to tell it. Touching his shoulder, she asked, “Jacob, has Dylan ever hurt anyone? Is that why you were so afraid for me? Is Dylan the one who stabbed your father?”

His head snapped around revealing wide, dark eyes. “No. That’s not how it was. Remember what I told you about my family and the madness?”

She nodded.

“It was our mother. The genetic properties came from her. She attacked our father and then tried to turn the dagger on herself.”

If Nora could have taken some of the pain reflected in his eyes she would have. “My God…your mother.” No wonder his childhood was lost. No wonder no one spoke of Jacob’s mother. She hated to ask the next question, fearing the answer, but he had told her this much, and she imagined the rest.

“Jacob, what stopped her from killing herself?”

“I did. I wrested the knife from her hand.”

Nora’s heart clenched painfully. He had only been twelve years old.

“But I only forestalled the inevitable. In a very bizarre way, she committed suicide a few days later.”

“Bizarre?”

“It was the beginning of Dylan’s symptoms. He was close to our mother, had always been her favorite really. I never minded. Dylan seemed to need much more than I did.” He looked toward the cliffs that bordered the sea where Proctor land ended. “A week after my father’s…accident, my mother managed to escape the watchful eyes of our servants. She took Dylan to the top of that cliff you can see beyond the grove of trees to the west.”

Jacob paused and Nora moved her hand to the taut back muscles below his shoulder. A sudden spasm rippled against her palm.

“Juditha followed them and observed what happened though she was too late to prevent it.”

Nora’s words struggled past constricted vocal chords. “What did happen, Jacob?”

“Sophie, our mother, convinced Dylan that she should be punished for hurting his father, and she told him he must do it.”

“How could a ten-year-old child punish her?”

“She had a way with Dylan. He would have gone to the ends of the earth for Sophie. He loved her without condition. He loved her so much that he couldn’t refuse her anything, even when she demanded more than any person should give.”

Jacob pulled his gaze from the cliff and stared at the garden stones beneath his feet. “She demanded that he push her over the edge.”

Revulsion gripped Nora’s stomach and she fought the urge to be sick. She closed her eyes against the horrible vision that had taken shape on the shadowed mountaintop. She closed her mind to block the cries of Sophie Proctor plunging to her death. “How could she…?”

“Because she was ill? Because she didn’t know what she was doing? That’s what they told me through the years. I suppose she was ill. I have to believe it, otherwise I think I would go…”

He stopped and took a deep, ragged breath. “All I know for sure is that my mother’s last act of treachery against this family was to take my brother’s soul over that cliff with her.”

But hopefully not yours, Jacob. Not yours
. “When I look at you tonight, Jacob,” Nora said softly, “I think that perhaps her last act of treachery is still going on and has been all these years. You can see what Sophie has done to everyone else. But I wonder if you fully understand what she did to you.”

He turned a troubled gaze to her face and took her shoulders in his hands. “Willy was right about you, Nora,” he said. “You are truly a good woman…too good to be here on Belle Isle, too good for… I shouldn’t have brought you.”

How could she tell him that since he had taken her into his confidence there was no place on earth she would rather be? How could she convince him that she understood? How could she make him know that
his
life, not hers, was the true measure of goodness because his virtues had been tested.

And how could she tell him that she had started falling in love with him the day he pulled her from the water at Key West harbor, and she’d been tumbling ever since. And this night she literally spiraled to the depths of her emotions here in his garden.
I love you, Jacob. I love the adolescent boy who lost his innocence and the strong man he has become. I love you.

The words would not come to her mouth, and perhaps that was best. She feared he would think they were only shallow sentiments cloaked in pity. She did pity him, of course. Her heart ached for what he’d endured. But she was not such an inexperienced girl that she could not recognize the difference between pity and love. She knew. Oh, God, she knew.

“Jacob, I’m not sorry I came,” she said at last. “I know I said I wanted to go home, but it was only fear and confusion that made me say that. I’m glad I’m here with you.”

One hand slid from her shoulder to her face. He stroked her cheek with his fingers. “In my heart, which is the most damnably honest part of me, I’m glad you are here, too.”

“How have you managed?” she asked. “You were just a boy.”

He thought a moment, remembering. “We left England just after my twelfth birthday. The scandals about my mother had grown to the point where my father could no longer make excuses for her behavior. In the beginning we had some money. Enough to maintain this house, my father’s indulgences, and seek treatments for Sophie. Later, after she died, the money ran out. We sold Braxton Manor and gave up our title.”

“But…”

“I know, Father still uses his. A harmless enough fantasy, I suppose. When we needed money again, I began trading until I heard about the possibilities in Key West.” His mouth lifted in a crooked smile. “The rest I’m sure your father has told you. The ‘infamous Jacob Proctor,’ the scourge of the Caribbean whose coffers are full of illgotten loot and whose profits were pulled from the hulls of dying ships.”

She smiled at his exaggeration which really wasn’t so far from the truth, and was gratified to see amusement in his eyes. “He hasn’t used such colorful language as that,” she said. “And if he had I wouldn’t have paid him any mind anyway. I just believe you are the best at what you do.”

“Good enough thankfully. My father is able to pursue his love of horses and fine brandy. Dylan is cared for and Proctor House is still standing. And here on Belle Isle life goes on. The outside world knows little of this island, and the natives don’t speak, to me at least, of the misfortunes of Proctor House.” His voice brimmed with refreshing teasing when he added, “And visitors, you noticed, are indeed a rarity, and not at all well received.”

She leaned in close and grinned up at him. “Pooh. My only concern is that I am well received by one member of this family particularly.”

One eyebrow climbed his forehead in surprise, and a teasing glint sparked silver underneath it. “Miss Seabrook, you shouldn’t worry about that. You are indeed well received by one member of this family.”

Her heart raced faster than it had through all the trials she’d faced on Belle Isle. “Thank you, Captain, but I’m afraid I’m not quite convinced.”