Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2)

by Cindy Brandner

  A long mirror held Pamela’s reflection as though she were a painting, burning against the background of the long dimly lit hallway. The pale ivory skin of her shoulders in stark contrast to the blooded crimson she wore at her throat and ears, and in a snug velvet sheathe around her form. She wore her hair up, with long tendrils curling down around her neck. It had been awhile since she’d dressed up, or felt like doing so, but Jamie had been so excited about the party that his mood had become contagious.

  Suddenly though, she felt deflated, as though her flesh had collapsed in on her bones along with her mood. These sudden feelings of despair had come upon her without warning several times since the loss of the baby. It seemed to her that her womb was an ash garden, where no child would ever survive to light and life. She wondered if it wouldn’t simply be better to be barren. At least then she could stop hoping.

  She glanced once more in the mirror, noting the dark hollows that were permanently carved beneath her eyes these days. Compared to Belinda’s rose-gold charms, she looked positively ghostly. The absence of Casey was a constant ache in her chest, and so was the anger that he’d pushed her away. Yet right this moment she would have given up a year of her life just to rest in the secure strength of his arms. To know that he was safe.

  Jamie caught her eye in the mirror, concern written clearly on his features. He raised one golden eyebrow almost imperceptibly, but she understood the implied question and managed a smile for him. She was aware that he was still watching her closely, and so she had endeavored to put a brave face on things. Some days it was exhausting, however.

  Jamie turned away, and she let the smile go along with the pent up air in her chest. He had bent to talk to an elderly lady, and a blaze of light crowned his hair, his lithe form clad in a black dinner suit that managed to be less formal and more elegant than anyone else in the room. More than one woman watched him with a slightly unfocused gaze.

  A large sigh sounded in her ear, a breath that conceived itself slightly lower than the person’s stomach and somewhat higher than his knees. “Oh Lucifer thou son of morning,” a voice murmured. Pamela recognized the voice, and turned to look at its owner.

  “Comparing his Lordship with Satan?” she asked tartly, the wine tasting bitter on her tongue. “Others tend to think he sits much closer to the divine than that.”

  Small Davey of Armagh, so named because of his less than imposing stature, gave her an inquisitive look, one bristly eyebrow raised. “Only in looks,” he replied imperturbably, “one could imagine even God being jealous of such a face and form.”

  She treated him to an owlish look, taking in the stocky body, the green and scarlet kilt, black velvet dress jacket and the wiry hair that poked out of his shirt collar and curled over the tops of his Argyll socks. He was a remarkably hairy creature, she thought uncharitably. Unfortunately for Davey, nary a wisp of it adorned his head, which was as round, shiny and hairless as a cannonball. His abbreviated height put him at an eye level that would have made most men very happy. However it was common knowledge that Small Davey’s appetites did not run to the curves and roundels of the female form.

  His eyes, however, were a warm, sherry brown, and at present filled with empathy.

  “Does it hurt very badly?”

  Her instinct was to prevaricate but some other process, with a greater wisdom, chose honesty. “Like a knife in your soul that never stops twisting,” she said baldly, feeling an odd relief in the admittance.

  “Yes, I would imagine it does,” Small Davey said, voice gentle, brown eyes still intent on her face. “Does he know?”

  “No—I mean—I don’t know,” she stuttered, hot blood flushing along her skin. “I am married you know,” she finished lamely.

  “I had,” Small Davey gave a small smile, “heard that. However, if you’ll permit an observation by one who has never enjoyed the comforts of a legal union, it seems to me that one does not stop having inconvenient emotions once the rings are exchanged.”

  “I must be terribly transparent,” she said, feeling as if the naked yearning that Jamie never failed to stir in her was printed in scarlet letters across her forehead.

  “Perhaps only to one who takes the time to look,” Small Davey said kindly. “Smile dear girl, he’s looking this way.”

  She glanced up, unerringly meeting Jamie’s eyes across the whirl of small talk and social eddying that was moving about the room in a great undulating spiral. He raised a questioning eyebrow, as if he knew they’d been talking about him. Likely the bastard did, he’d the radar of a bat and the ability to listen to several conversations at once, all the while seeming to pay complete attention to whomever was in front of him.

  Just then the dinner bell rang.

  “Shall we?” Davey offered his arm, as much, she suspected, in support as in manners.

  MAGGIE HAD WORKED HER USUAL MAGIC, so that despite the harried crew hustling to and from the kitchen, there was a feeling that the whole thing had been beautifully effortless. The food had been divine; the wine poured with a generous hand. Now the whiskey had replaced it, so that there was a feeling of soporific content that pervaded the entire length of the table. The candles were burning down, and the dining room was bathed in a soft golden haze. The young man Jamie had hired to play piano for the evening was sounding out the first notes of Cole Porter’s You Do Something To Me. Even Pamela felt a slight thaw of the icy core that had sat in her chest for the last six weeks.

  Conversation and laughter mixed agreeably with the tinkle of fine crystal and china. Pamela turned toward Jamie, and he flicked her a brief smile of complicity, as though to say “well it’s not turned out so bad then, has it?”

  From the corner of her eye, Pamela could see that Belinda had caught the exchange and had put a proprietary hand on Jamie’s arm. A flicker of red-hot anger shot through her at the sight of that soft, white hand laying there in unmistakable possession. Though she was ostensibly giving all her attention to the old gent beside her, there was look of a cat with too much cream around its whiskers on her face that Pamela knew was for her benefit alone.

  “Damned fine bit of new horse James has gotten. Will he be letting him race in the spring?” The neighbor was asking, the rough hand that held his whiskey glass testifying to his own years spent in and around stables.

  Belinda smiled, tightening her fingers on Jamie’s forearm to turn his attention away from Geordie Cohen, one of the managers from the linen mill with whom he’d been discussing flax prices for the last ten minutes.

  “I don’t know. James, will we be letting Phouka race?”

  Pamela could feel the simmer in her blood begin a rolling boil. How dare this woman talk as though she made the decisions here, particularly when it came to Phouka.

  “Phouka won’t be racing this year because he’s too young,” Pamela said smoothly, “and because it’s for me to say whether he races or not. He is, after all, mine.”

  “Yours?” Belinda enquired, politeness barely covering her animosity towards the woman opposite her.

  “Yes,” Pamela said, smile still firmly in place, though her eyes burned like wildfire. “Mine, my Christmas present actually.”

  “Phouka,” Belinda narrowly missed choking on a swallow of wine, “Phouka was a Christmas present!”

  “Er—yes,” Jamie said, beginning to look mildly alarmed by the hostility that was very nearly palpable between the two women.

  “Jamie never misses giving me a Christmas present—hasn’t in years,” Pamela said, in a tone that was a direct challenge to the woman who sat so smugly across the table from her.

  “That damn horse is worth a quarter of a million pounds!” Belinda said, as if Phouka, by merely being, had committed a crime.

  “Jamie,” the two women said simultaneously, one in bewilderment and the other in outraged humiliation. Jamie noted that all his other guests had ceased even pretending to eat or attend to their own conversations and had turned raptly fascinated faces to the drama unfolding at
the head of his table.

  “You told me,” Belinda said, no longer bothering to speak in low tones, “that you bought him as an investment.”

  “An investment?” Pamela said, turning her attention to Jamie as well. “An investment in what?”

  “Yes, Jamie, an investment in what exactly?” Belinda asked, blue eyes hard as two points of cobalt. “The long term future, wishful thinking? It seems the sort of present one would give a wife, or perhaps a beloved mistress.”

  “How dare you!” Pamela said, throwing her napkin down and rising from the table. Small Davey laid a restraining hand on her forearm which she abruptly flung off.

  “How dare I?” Belinda queried coolly. “Tell me Pamela, does your husband know about Jamie’s gifts to you?”

  “That’s none of your business,” Pamela said through clenched teeth.

  “No, I didn’t think he knew. I doubt he’d be very pleased by the news, would he? Where is he now? Which prison, or internment camp as I understand you prefer to call it, is he gracing with his presence currently?”

  “Belinda, please, not here,” Jamie said in a low tone.

  “Not here? Where better, darling? I think, Jamie, your money would have been better spent on bribing all the officials and paying out all the hush money her husband will need to see the light of day again. Or is that where the two of you prefer to have him? Safely behind bars so you can continue to play your little game with each other. White knight and damsel in distress. How touching,” Belinda rose, slightly unsteady on her feet. “You’re a fool Jamie, you could have had her for a fraction of the price. I understand whores in her neighborhood come cheap.”

  Pamela lifted her still full wineglass and flung its contents in Belinda’s face. Jamie took her swiftly by the elbow, excusing himself grimly from the assembly.

  He stopped by Belinda, who stood dripping wine onto pleated silk. “Are you alright?”

  “No,” she said quite calmly, all things considered, “I’m about as far from alright as one can get.”

  “Go upstairs,” he said tersely, “I’ll be with you as soon as I deal with Pamela and get rid of the rest of these damn people. Please,” he added in a slightly more contrite tone.

  She nodded numbly. She stood, wine still dripping from her face and hair, managing to avoid the shocked faces around the table. She collected her bag and wrap, then catching a glance of Jamie closing the study door on him and Pamela, walked directly out the front door.

  “JUST WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ABOUT?” Jamie asked, his breath still coming in quick, angry bursts.

  “Why are you asking me? It was your girlfriend that called me a whore,” Pamela replied truculently, eyes studiously on the carpet.

  “Please,” his tone was biting, “can we skip the accusations as to who said what first and cut to the part where you explain throwing wine on my dinner guest in front of a dozen witnesses? And, if it’s not too much to ask, look me in the eye as you do it.”

  Her head came up reluctantly, her mouth still set in a mutinous line. “I’m sorry, I acted reprehensibly. I’ll go out and apologize publicly to one and all, and then, if you don’t mind, I’m going home.”

  “As it happens,” Jamie said coolly, “I do mind. And if you think some lukewarm public display is going to reverse your actions out there, think again.”

  She shrugged her shoulders, knowing even as she did it how annoying he would find it.

  “I don’t know why I did it. She makes me angry with her lady of the manor airs, as if this house,” she gestured angrily around the room, “and everything in it belongs to her.”

  “I see,” Jamie said, one golden gull-winged eyebrow raised in skepticism. “Well the fact of the matter is, though she’s a guest in my home, she does have more intimate claims than most visitors. If she feels at home here, it’s perhaps excusable, all things considered.”

  “I suppose you are referring to her claims on your bed and yourself,” she said before she could think to edit the conduit between thought and speech.

  “I suppose I am,” Jamie said, giving no quarter. Standing near the windows that caught and held the reflection of the fire, he looked like a medieval angel—straight-nosed, stern-lipped and capable of all manner of unpleasant punishments. “Though why that should cause you to throw a perfectly inoffensive little wine in her face is something that I’m less clear on.”

  Green eyes, suddenly without defense, held to green that simmered with anger.

  “Well Jamie,” she said, voice exhausted, “I suppose it’s just plain old jealousy isn’t it?”

  “Jealousy?” he asked, face suddenly wary.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m jealous of her. I’m jealous that she has claims on you that I don’t. I’m jealous that you’ll take her to your bed but you wouldn’t take me when you had the chance. I’m jealous that she sits at your table as if she belongs there. That she shares all the little inside jokes and thoughts of someone who is half of a couple. I watch her touch your arm and the way she meets your eyes in one of those looks that make it clear you two are lovers and it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to slap her.”

  She shook her head and sat down suddenly in the overstuffed wing-back by the fireplace. “I know it’s awful and unjustified, I know it’s horribly selfish and ridiculous of me, but there you have it. And I will apologize to her, Jamie, I did behave like a furious child and I know it. But please,” she said, face naked now without its shield of defiance, “don’t ask me to be around the two of you together anymore. Pathetic or not, I don’t really think I can stand it.”

  “Perhaps it bears remembering that you are the one with marriage vows here,” Jamie said, still unmoving and lit by long shards of dying fire.

  “I know that,” she said, “and it only makes me all the more ashamed of my feelings. I’m married and I love my husband, and yet I still want to somehow be central to your life. Believe me, I know how that sounds.” She drew a ragged breath, pushing her hair, now tumbling willy-nilly from its pins, behind her ears.

  “And there,” Jamie said quietly, voice drained of all emotion, “we come to the crux of the situation, don’t we? You love your husband, while I am very fond of Belinda. I think we’re both wise enough to recognize the insult in that.”

  “Perhaps, though, someday you’ll feel more than fondness,” she said softly, “and that’s what I can’t seem to breathe around.”

  “No, Pamela,” he said in a flat tone. “I’ve had it both ways and I know the difference. I won’t wake up one morning and suddenly find the woman beside me in the bed has become the love of my life.”

  “You don’t even admit to the possibility of that? You weren’t always such a cynic, Jamie.”

  “No, I don’t admit to the possibility of that. The woman I love won’t ever lie in my bed,” he said, with only the tiniest trace of bitterness belying his defeat, “her affections are otherwise engaged. And so,” he walked across the room, feet halting and hand coming to rest near the whiskey decanter, “I find ways to ease the pain of that. With work, with other women, with a friend who knows she can never be more and yet loves me enough to make such allowances.”

  “Jamie I—”

  He shook his head, putting a halt to her words. “Let’s not say things that we’ll devoutly wish unsaid in the morning.”

  She rose and went to where he stood, his long fingers now curved around the stopper of the decanter. She laid her own hand, cold and trembling, on top of his.

  “I’m sorry, Jamie, truly I am. I wish,” her voice broke slightly, “I wish a great many things but mostly, of late, I wish that someone would give me a key, or the recipe for a draught I could drink down, or would just tell me how to wake up one day and find myself simply not loving you anymore. Can you tell me how to do that, Jamie?”

  “If,” he said, and turned his face to her own, “I knew the answer to such things, we wouldn’t be having this ridiculous conversation, would we?”

  Of its own accor
d, her free hand came up and touched lightly the side of his face, traveling down until it lay, pulse to heavy pulse, against his neck. He closed his eyes for a moment, a small space where he allowed himself to feel the bitter sweetness of her hand upon his skin.

  His lashes, red-gold in the fading light, fanned against his cheek and his face turned to her hand, his own coming up and capturing her fingers, pressing them against his lips. He breathed out against her skin, caught the crushed berry scent beneath his nose, and found himself trapped in a dizzying place where the house of cards he’d so carefully built, tethered together with the fine crystal bones of deception, subterfuge and regret, threatened to tumble down all in an instant.

  A touch, a moment—no more, before he put her hand from him, gently but firmly, knowing that all he desired most in the world was open to him this moment. But knowing also where the root of her present weakness lay, found the strength to refuse that which was offered.

  No more than inches separated them. He could feel her tremble across the air, now dimmed from red-gold to the ash of spent fire.

  “And so,” she said in a brittle voice, “I am still, it would seem, playing moth to your star.”

  Jamie stared unseeing at his own fingers, so tight around the crystal now that it cut into his palm. The nerves in his fingers were still painfully unsheathed to the memory of her touch.

  “Have you ever looked into the night sky, really looked, Pamela? There is no lonelier place than the firmaments, a beautiful hell and yet,” he laughed, a small, strangled sound, “despite its jewels, hell all the same.”

  “I hate her,” she said in a broken whisper. “I resent every look, every word, every touch she’s ever had from you. I hate her as I have never hated anyone and yet I would wish her well enough that she might take care for you.”