“That’s right,” Leif said impassively.
“No! How could you! How dare you! It’s illegal— they’ll stop you. You’re an animal! You’re worse! You’re—”
The tears she’d held back at last came to her and she twisted in the small space to pummel her fists against him, blinded. He caught her wrists with no mercy and no patience. Rob cleared his throat uncomfortably.
Leif didn’t say a word. He held Tracy in an implacable grasp and stared straight ahead.
Tracy didn’t know what she said then; she knew that she kept talking, that she railed, that she pleaded—that she labeled him a monster and more. And none of it made any difference.
They kept driving until they came to the wrought-iron gates and passed through them, driving uphill. Some of the graves were new, some of them were weathered and aged. It was stark here, and cold, and it seemed that even the beautiful blue that had colored the sky faded and paled and turned to a dismal gray that echoed all that was dead and lost.
Tracy remained in a state of shock.
Rob parked the car. Leif reached to help her out—she turned truly hysterical then, trying to refuse his hand, trying to pummel against him again. She tried to enlist the mysterious Rob’s aid, swearing that she would have them both arrested.
Rob glanced at Leif in acute discomfort, but remained silent. Leif didn’t twitch or blink or falter. He set his arm firmly about Tracy’s waist and dragged her along while she balked.
They came to it—to the tiny gravesite in the soft, light snow. To the gravestone. There were other men there. Three of them. Two men in sweaters and jeans with crowbars, and a graying, dignified man who could only be an official.
“Please, please!” Tracy screamed, begging for help. She pleaded in German, and she pleaded in French. She was barely coherent, and she knew it, but she couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe that they were going to dig up the dead and decaying flesh of her infant son.
Rob gave the official a paper. They all looked at Tracy a bit sadly, but ignored her.
She looked at Leif at last, face tearstained, eyes brilliantly blue as she beseeched him. “You can’t do this! Please, I beg you! Why? How can you do this to me?”
Something—perhaps a hint of confusion, remorse, or maybe even tenderness—touched his eyes.
“Please, Leif!”
He shook off her arm then. “I have to!” he grated. The gray-haired official nodded to the workmen.
“No!” She slammed both fists against his chest. He caught her arms, crushing her against him.
“Tracy! Don’t you understand—or are you still fighting the truth? Damn you, Tracy! It’s empty! The grave is empty!”
“What?”
She stared at him in disbelief, and his eyes met hers. What was in them, she wondered desperately against the awful confusion. A question, an accusation? Pity? His own uncertainty?
And again, just a touch of silver tenderness?
The workmen kept digging; the coffin came up. One of the men stepped forward with a crowbar. Tracy pressed her face hard against Leif’s chest. She hated him with all her heart, but his tense, heated body provided her with the only way she knew to hide.
The coffin was opened. She could not look.
“Tracy—it is empty!”
She looked then and saw that it was.
She sagged against Leif’s form. She was unaware that he caught her and lifted her into his arms, unaware that he held her against him with grudging tenderness and a torn heart.
She was unaware of anything. The world had spun far beyond her grasp. All she knew was darkness.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Unfortunately for Tracy, the blackness lifted nearly as quickly as it had come. She didn’t think or rationalize; none of it meant anything to her at that moment.
None of it—except for the fact that everything was terribly, terribly wrong.
She opened her eyes and stared into his. They were as dark as night; charcoal gray, probing, condemning. Ever watchful and ever wary—and if there were the least caring in the granite lines of his facial structure, she didn’t see it. He’d brought her here for a reaction, and she was giving him that!
Nevertheless, she stared at him for what seemed like a long time. Snowflakes were falling—light, light, like the wings of butterflies… beautiful, crystal, so soft. Falling from the gray sky. People were talking; the workmen and the officials and Rob. The words were in English, though they might have been in an entirely alien tongue. Tracy didn’t hear them. She felt the caress of the snowflakes against her cheeks and the steel of Leif’s arms. She shivered, and felt that his eyes were a threatening fire that simmered and darkened and tore into her.
She cried out suddenly, hurt beyond feeling and logic, hating him with all the raw emotion that swept through her. She struck out at him so suddenly and with such ardent force that he released her. Her feet touched the ground and she was gone.
Running, running blindly.
Angels surrounded her, angels and saints. The dark sky, the white snow. The air was cold, her body hot. She heard her own heartbeat and she heard the rush of her breath. She rushed past mausoleums, small and beautifully wrought homages to the honor of great family names. She ran uphill, not knowing where she tried to go, only that instinct told her to run, desperately.
As if she could escape it all. As if she would not think, and understand what it meant.
“Tracy!”
She veered around a tree, then grasped its trunk, inhaling. She stared at the spidery limbs, still naked from winter’s death.
“Tracy!”
Against the new-fallen snow, she heard the crunch of his footsteps, and she started running again. But this time something caught her. Some broken stone, cast into the earth centuries ago. It caught her hard, sent her flying down face first into the snow, slamming into the ground. Feverishly, she gasped to regain her breath and roll and scramble back to her feet.
Too late…
He made a flying leap upon her, tackling her back to the snow. Holding her there even as she sobbed raggedly and pitched and rolled to escape him until exhaustion overcame her again.
Panting she stared at him. So coldly. All the ice she might have desired lay in her heart.
“Why are you running!” he demanded harshly. “You knew! Dammit, Tracy, you knew!”
“I didn’t know.”
“Audrey said you knew all about it!”
“I will never forgive you, Leif, as long as I live,” she said softly. Renewed energy came to her and she tried once again to dislodge his muscled legs from his grip about her. His lip tightened, but he gave no other sign that he recognized her struggle, and he waited until she lay still again.
“Should I forgive you?” he whispered. “If your grandfather hadn’t felt a slight twinge of guilt and gone through the channels to get him to me, God knows where he would be.”
“What are you talking about?” Tracy screeched. “You’re condemning me but you’re the one who knows everything!”
For the first time, a true flicker of doubt passed through his eyes. Gray clouds masked it quickly, and he sat straighter.
“Tracy, I have firsthand experience. You’re a wonderful liar.”
“Oh, God!” Miserably she closed her eyes and cast her head back, heedless of the snow in her hair or that which fell so lightly against her face.
“You knew that there was no corpse in that grave. I didn’t! For God’s sake, before you hang me, tell me the crime! Why? Where is my—my child?”
He released her hands and balanced his weight still atop her, but not against her. He studied her for what seemed like eons before he spoke at last.
“Tracy, you’ve just spent several days with the ‘child’ who was supposedly buried in that grave.”
“What?”
“I’ll refresh your memory. You had a child. Not just illegitimate in the eyes of Arthur Kingsley—but damningly illegitimate, since he was the son of a musician. Jus
t like Jesse. The man who ruined your mother’s life, in his opinion. There’s an easy solution—get rid of the child. Easier still when you hear that the natural father and his wife are desperate to adopt an infant.”
She stared at him, and she didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe the harsh words that bit out at her in clipped tones. How could she believe it? Believe that they had lied to her. That her own mother had taken her child away. She shook her head at him, slowly, watching him as she would the most dangerous snake in the world.
“You’re a liar, you’re a liar! It can’t be! Get off of me, get away from me—”
He did the opposite. He leaned down to her, sluicing his fingers through hers, knotting them together in the snow. All around them the wind played; it seemed to moan out a death knell that touched the naked branches and the quiet hill and made it a place far apart from the world—far, far apart. As if she and Leif were alone, cast into some mocking play, and she couldn’t get off of the stage.
“Tracy, swear to me that you knew nothing about this!”
“I’ll never swear anything to you! I hate you. My God, I never want to see you again—”
“Or Blake, Tracy? You see, that was what I couldn’t figure out. If you hadn’t wanted the child—or anything to do with him. Or if you had come back into Jamie’s life just to step into mine—because you had decided that you did want him back, after you had given him up.”
“Damn you, I didn’t know!” She shouted those words, then they both fell silent.
And then it struck her full force.
Blake. Blake was the child she had held only once. It was true, her mother and grandfather had told her that her child was dead—and they had given him away. It hurt, it hurt so deeply that the pain was staggering—and then completely numbing.
Blake was her child.
The numbness settled over her. She didn’t know what she felt. She didn’t know if she hated her mother and her grandfather. A sick rage settled within her that they could do such a thing to her, and then even that ebbed.
“Leif, let me alone. I don’t want you near me. Before God, you’ve made your point! Get away from me!”
“Tracy—”
“Damn you, get away! I hate you for this! You might have spoken to me, you might have warned me, you might have trusted in me, you might have given me half a chance! Oh, my God, that child is mine—”
“I have a history of bad luck with trusting you. And no, Tracy. He is mine.”
She let out a strangled cry, her heart suddenly torn apart by all the wasted years. She hadn’t seen his first smile, and she hadn’t seen him take his first steps. He was alive, and she was glad, but suddenly, fiercely, she wanted him, and she couldn’t bear that Leif could have done this to her—and have her baby, too.
“How could you be so cruel? And how can I ask that? You are the coldest human being I’ve ever met!”
“Leif—?” They were interrupted by Rob. If she weren’t so wretched, Tracy might have felt sorry for the man, cast into this.
Somehow Leif managed to crawl from Tracy and help her to her feet with a semblance of dignity.
“They want to know if charges will be pressed.”
Leif looked to Tracy. “I doubt it.”
“The Swiss government might have a few,” Rob said, looking at Tracy apologetically. He felt sorry for her, she could tell. But he still gave Leif his total respect.
Leif shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Arthur Kingsley can buy himself out of anything. I’ll tell them thank you, and we’ll get out of here.”
Tracy went straight to the car. Seconds later, Rob and Leif joined her. She didn’t look at either of them, but stared ahead of herself, blindly, for the drive back to the hotel.
Once there, she let herself out and hurried up to her room, casting herself on the bed. She didn’t cry; there were simply no more tears. Nor did she feel hysterical. Just cold, and numb. And when that numbness started to warm, she fought the feelings. She had to, because the rage and ragged pain would come again, and she would want to scream. How could they have done it to her?
And Leif…
She didn’t want to think about any of it; she couldn’t help herself. She got off the bed at last and picked up the phone. She had no conception of the time in Switzerland or in the States. She didn’t care.
Katie answered the phone at Leif’s, asked after her welfare, and then went to find Audrey.
And as soon as Audrey came to the phone, Tracy knew that it was all true.
“Mother, how could—how could you—have done it? I have to know. Or I’ll go mad.”
Tracy pressed her palm to her temple then, because she could hear Audrey crying, all those many, many miles away. She started saying incoherent things, pleading, begging that Tracy understand. That her own life had been a travesty. If it hadn’t been for Tracy, for the link that remained, she might have stayed away from Jesse.
“Grandfather kept the two of you apart,” Tracy said with surprising calm. “And he did it to me. The two of you— But a child, mother—my child! You had no right!”
She started crying again, and Tracy felt terribly weary. Audrey said then that Tracy hated her, and for all of it, Tracy couldn’t add another blow to her mother’s life.
“I don’t hate you, Mother.” She didn’t even really hate her grandfather. She wasn’t terribly sure that she could forgive and forget, and so she determined to hang up the phone.
“I don’t hate you, Mother. I’ll see you soon.”
She bit her lip, because Audrey was still talking through a torrent of tears, telling her that Blake was really so beautiful, and she’d been so afraid to touch him.
“Good night, Mother,” Tracy said, and hung up the phone at last.
She’d wanted to ask to speak to Blake; she’d wanted to hear his voice. But like Audrey, she’d been afraid.
Tracy walked back to the bed, wretched. She started then, when she heard a sound at the connecting door.
She thought she had locked it from her side. Apparently she hadn’t—or else Leif had the key. He stood there in jeans that snugly encased his lean hips and a sweater that emphasized his height and the breadth of his shoulders.
She stared at him, fighting back the rush of emotion. She wanted to strike out at him so badly. She inhaled and prayed for poise.
“Leif, I think you should understand that I do not want to see you.”
“And I think that you should understand that you have to.”
He strode across the room, not touching her, and picked up the phone. To her astonishment, he calmly ordered that a bottle of wine and food be sent up.
She rushed over to the phone, ready to grasp the receiver from his hands. He warded her away with his free one until he was ready to hang up.
“Leif—I do not want to be with you!”
“Sit down, Tracy.”
“I won’t—”
“You will!”
He proved his point by walking her backward to the bed, where the edge caught her knees, forcing her to sit. She was ready to lash out when he moved away from her, facing her at the window seat.
Then, somewhat to her surprise, he inhaled, hesitated, then gave her an apology.
“I’m sorry, Tracy.”
“Sorry?” she repeated softly. “For what, Leif?”
He shrugged. “For—today.”
She started to laugh, and the sound frightened her, so she sobered quickly. “You abducted me, and dragged me into a cemetery and forced me to look into a coffin that I believed held my child. And you’re sorry. That’s just great.”
With an explicit oath he was on his feet, hands locked behind his back, pacing before the window, as if he were afraid to come too near her and—
Touch her.
She was just so exhausted and torn that it didn’t matter.
“Tracy, your mother told me that you knew. You lied to me once—and you kept lying to me. I’d thought at first that Arthur and Audrey might have d
one something without your knowledge. But I gave you every opportunity in the world to tell me about your pregnancy—about our child—and you kept lying.”
“I didn’t lie, damn you! I couldn’t see any reason to tell you that you had a child who had been dead over six years!”
He stopped his pacing and looked at her. “I believe you, Tracy.”
“That’s really big of you, Leif,” she stated flatly, meeting his eyes. She just felt so tired. And so confused. Afraid—and unwilling to face her fear.
She felt shaky when it came to Blake. He was hers. Her son, her flesh and blood. Her baby. And she wanted to get back and pick him up and hug him and inspect him and kiss and cry with the wonder of it all.
And she couldn’t do that, of course. What could she do? Without harming him. Without his father’s consent.
Her hands began to shake and she clenched them tightly in her lap, looking down at them. He couldn’t be so cruel as to prove his point and then deny her! But look at what he had done today.
She lifted her chin. “You might have warned me. You had every opportunity, too, Leif. You could have confronted me with what you knew. Why—why did you have to drag me over here—confront me at the grave?”
“Tracy—” He paused, rubbing his temple. “I asked you. I asked you and asked you and asked you if there wasn’t something that you wanted to tell me. You wouldn’t talk to me. I knew that if I brought you here, you couldn’t deny it anymore. And that you’d be forced to realize that Arthur and Audrey might be capable of anything.”
She leapt to her feet, all her fury exploding.
“Oh! Oh! This is all part of it, I see! They did this—-just an inch away from murder, no doubt.”
He shook his head in disgust. “Tracy—they took your child and gave it away, and by some mercy I have my son. And you still refuse to remove your blinders.”
“I have removed my blinders!”
“I did not intend to be brutal or cruel, Tracy. You had to see the truth!”
She flew across the room at him, slamming her fists in a rain of fury. And the tears that had gone cold started to fall again. He held her, and stood rigid to her attack, not stopping her, but letting her play her energy out. “Leif—leave me alone.”
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