A Bed of Thorns and Roses

by Sondra Allan Carr

  “No,” he said a second time, with a quiet determination even more disturbing than his initial outburst.

  She had to remind herself that Jonathan was not her father. When something upset him, his displeasure did not translate into physical violence.

  However much she tried, her fears were too deeply ingrained to be reasoned away. And though she found the courage to hold fast to her intentions, her voice betrayed her, quavering when she spoke. “I could never forgive myself if I didn’t try to stop this travesty.”

  Jonathan’s shoulders sagged. He bowed his head, the picture of defeat.

  “Don’t leave me, Isabelle. I know you won’t return.”

  His voice was husky, no longer resembling the commanding voice from her nightmares. His was not a monster’s voice, but a man’s, begging for mercy.

  Yet this wasn’t a question of mercy. Why couldn’t he understand?

  “I have no choice. I’ve lived my life with but one purpose, to ensure Jenny a brighter future than my own.”

  “You have a future here,” Jonathan murmured. “A good one, I had hoped.”

  “How could I be happy knowing she is doomed to misery?” Isabelle’s voice rose, as if she were speaking to a deaf man. As if by saying the words louder, she could make Jonathan hear their meaning. “How can I abandon her? The most important person in my life?”

  “The most important person?” Jonathan repeated tonelessly.

  “Can’t you understand how I feel?” Isabelle spat out the words, unable to hide her mounting frustration.

  Jonathan stared at her with frightening intensity, his look impossible to read.

  “I am sorry for being slow to understand.” He spoke softly, his voice hollow and devoid of feeling. “Thank you for explaining yourself so clearly.”

  He went to the door and opened it wide, motioning her out with a sweep of his arm. “If you must go, go now.”

  Isabelle was accustomed to her father’s weapons, his belligerence and physical intimidation. Jonathan’s cut, however, was outside her experience, the cold precision with which he wielded his scathing politeness. She didn’t know how to defend herself, especially since she’d given no provocation for her sudden dismissal.

  She turned to him on her way out. “You have no right to be angry with me. I said I would return, and I keep my promises.”

  “Just go,” he said, in a voice like a low growl.

  Isabelle lifted her chin and walked past Jonathan, refusing to look back.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Laudanum. He’d paced the floor for hours fighting the temptation. Craving for the drug coursed through his veins like a caustic poison, corroding his blood. Devouring his reason.

  His greatest fear had come to pass, had thereby proved his greatest hope nothing more than a fool’s dream.

  Jonathan buried his face in his hands. He had removed his mask, ripped it off in a fit of disgust, and now he felt every hideous scar pressing against the still sensitive skin of his palms.

  How could he carry on without Isabelle?

  The answer, of course, was self evident. It was an unavoidable truth which, in the end, gave him the strength to resist his craving. The vial remained in the drawer of his bedside chest, close at hand should he change his mind. But the anticipation of future suffering inspired him to frugality, because how indeed could he carry on without Isabelle? Inevitably, the loneliness would become unbearable. When that happened, he would need the drug—all of it—to find release.

  For now, he meant to wait, though not because he believed Isabelle’s insistence that she would return. No, he was honest enough to admit to being motivated by a stubborn willfulness, by wanting the satisfaction of proving her false.

  Yet how could he blame her? How could anyone blame her for leaving him?

  Beneath his scars, an army of insects crawled incessantly, the itching almost unbearable. Nerves, Richard said, made it worse. And worry.

  Jonathan searched through his desk and found an anodyne, which he swallowed with a shot of whiskey. The medicine didn’t bring the sweet oblivion and vivid dreams that accompanied the laudanum, but it would provide relief from his physical discomfort.

  He prepared for bed, stripping off all his clothes, carelessly letting them fall to the floor. When the itching plagued him as it did tonight, he could scarcely stand for anything to touch his skin. He yanked the bed coverings aside, grudgingly keeping a sheet for warmth should the night turn cool.

  In bed, he stared into the darkness. Sleep would be a long time coming, if it came at all.

  Gradually, the whiskey and painkiller took effect. His thoughts no longer circled around on themselves, endlessly chasing the elusive answer to his problems; instead, they swung like a pendulum, falling into the same rhythmic persistence as the soft tick tock of the mantel clock. Two words, repeated endlessly with hypnotic effect, until he sank into a drowsy stupor.

  Two words, striking the walls of his mind, echoing through the cavernous chambers of sleep, marking his doom in increments with the inescapable, heartless progression of time.

  Isabelle. Gone. Isabelle. Gone.

  * * *

  He must have fallen into a light sleep, lulled by the mechanical ticking of the mantel clock. Something woke him, he couldn’t say what, a dream gone awry, a branch scraping against the window glass, a sense of movement inside the room.

  Or a light.

  He didn’t open his eyes, still not fully awake, but aware enough now to know there was an explanation for the soft, steadily increasing glow inside his head. Migraine. He had them occasionally, the first warning signs slight pinpricks of light that soon grew to dramatic fireworks exploding in showers of pain and nausea. He concentrated on his breath and the slow, steady beat of his heart, waiting for the first wave of sickness to overtake him.

  Jonathan. He heard his name, the migraine playing tricks with his hearing. Jonathan. There it was again, an insistent whisper. He must be dreaming after all.

  “Jonathan.”

  His eyes sprang open. For several seconds he stared at her, his mind refusing to accept what his eyes were telling him. She was there, standing beside his bed, holding a lamp with the wick turned down. The wisp of yellow blue flame barely cast enough light for him to see her face.

  “Isabelle!” The reality of her presence jolted him fully awake. “Christ, what are you doing?”

  His heart racing, he grabbed the sheet, pulling it up, trying to cover his face. She had seen him.

  “Jonathan? Don’t . . . ” She reached toward him with one hand.

  He recoiled from her gesture, scrabbling away from her, digging his heels against the mattress and pushing himself up with one arm, holding tight to the sheet with the other, trying above all to cover the scarred half of his face.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.” She let her hand drop but took a step closer.

  “Stay away from me.”

  He was sitting upright now, his back pressed against the carved headboard, his heart pounding so hard he couldn’t hear himself, could not be certain that she had heard his warning.

  “Please, for the love of God, don’t come any nearer.”

  Her eyes dropped and, following her gaze, Jonathan realized that in his desperation to hide his face, he had forgotten to cover his nakedness. Isabelle grasped the edge of the sheet and gave it a gentle tug, discreetly covering his bare haunch.

  She glanced up, her gaze sliding away when their eyes met. Despite the dim light, he saw the color bloom in her cheeks.

  “Forgive me for intruding,” she said, staring to one side, at the floor. “I couldn’t sleep, and I, I couldn’t leave. I mean, I couldn’t bear to leave knowing there were bad feelings between us.”

  What was he supposed to say? Confess his own sleeplessness? Tell her he couldn’t bear for her to leave knowing she meant to desert him forever?

  “Isn’t it enough for you to leave? Why do you want to come here? To torture me?”

  Isa
belle quit staring at the floor and looked at him. Her eyes had filled with tears. “Hurting you is the last thing I want to do.”

  His own eyes stung in sympathetic response, which made him want to lash out at her all the more. “Now that you’ve succeeded, I would hope you may rest content in your accomplishment and leave me be.”

  “You know that wasn’t my meaning.”

  She bowed her head. A tear spilled onto her cheek, catching the light from the lamp like a tiny prism before it fell. Another fell, and then another, wetting the sheet just below his knee.

  He wanted to scream at her, to curse her. Stop it. For God’s sake, stop crying.

  “Isabelle . . . ” His voice cracked from the weight of emotion carried by her name. Humiliating. He didn’t even know what he’d meant to say.

  She looked up at him when he said her name, a heart wrenching glimmer of hope swimming behind her tears. He gripped the sheet with both hands and drew it higher, trying to hide his own tears.

  Isabelle set the lamp on the bedside chest. The flame flickered, sending a brief shadow dancing across her face. Her perfect, unscarred, beautiful face.

  She turned back toward him, wiping away her tears with the heels of her hands, then offering him a crooked, apologetic smile that made him want to curse and weep at the same time.

  “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

  His heart had finally slowed to its normal rhythm, but now it missed a beat, then resumed at a faster tempo.

  Her partial honesty had been enough to make him want to die. Now this confession? He wanted to flee the room—and would have, if not for his nakedness. But he was trapped, cowering behind the sheet, a prisoner at the mercy of her complete honesty.

  “What do you mean?” He was doomed to know.

  “I have scars, too.”

  He stared at her, frowning, not understanding.

  When Isabelle reached her hand toward him, he thought she meant to smooth the scowl from his brow and pulled back. He didn’t want her pity. He didn’t want her to touch him, even there, on the one unblemished patch of skin he was allowing her to see.

  “Look.”

  He looked, noticing for the first time what she was wearing. A silk kimono, belted at the waist, the wide sleeve sliding toward her shoulder as she held her arm out to him. He noticed, too, what she wasn’t wearing, because it was apparent she was naked beneath her robe. The observation provoked an immediate response in his groin.

  Mercifully, Isabelle seemed unaware of what was happening to his body, though beneath the sheet his growing arousal was evident. She rotated her arm, holding the sleeve back with her other hand, and leaned closer, until her inner arm was mere inches from his face. He wasn’t looking at her arm, though, but was watching her eyes, more concerned with the inevitable disgust he would see there when she discovered the blatant evidence of his lust.

  “Is the light too dim for you to see?” Her voice shook when she asked the question. “Shall I turn up the lamp?”

  He shook his head, still looking at her eyes, alerted now by the tremor in her voice. His anticipation of her disgust had prevented him from recognizing her fear.

  “What is it?” he asked, his voice muffled behind his clenched fists. He glanced down and involuntarily sucked in a loud gasp when his eyes fixed on her arm. His erection wilted.

  Thin white scars were scored along the length of her inner arm, in neat rows too precise to be the result of accident. Across her bicep, more scars ran at a ninety degree angle, forming a crosshatched pattern.

  “Who did this to you?”

  Jonathan extended his hand toward her, then stopped, his finger hovering over the mutilated arm. He looked up, silently asking her permission, which she granted with a barely detectable nod. Resting his finger on her upper arm, he slowly traced the longest scar, pausing at the crook of her elbow before continuing down to her wrist.

  “Who did this?” he asked again.

  She sucked her lower lip between her teeth, biting down until he was afraid she would draw blood. He put his fingers to her mouth to stop her. When he tried to meet her gaze, her eyes darted from side to side, filled with the pure, raw fear of a trapped animal. Jonathan realized with a sinking in his gut that her fear was of him.

  “You can tell me.” He gentled his voice as much as was possible given his smoke damaged vocal cords.

  She drew a deep breath, innocently heaving her bosom until her nipples strained against the thin silk robe. A wave of renewed lust washed through him. His groin stirred, coming to life once again.

  “I did.”

  He caught himself shaking his head and stopped, not wanting her to think he questioned her honesty. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her, but that he couldn’t.

  “Why?” He heard the shock—no, the horror—in his voice and hated his inability to disguise his feelings.

  “I used one of my father’s straight razors,” she said, answering the how but not the why. “Where no one could see.”

  When she started to pull away from him, he grabbed her wrist without thinking. “Tell me why.”

  A strange emotion clouded her eyes, a mixture of extreme vulnerability and defiance, yet she didn’t try to break free of his hold.

  “Because it felt good. Because I controlled the pain. It was what I did to myself, not what someone else did to me.”

  He remembered their first meeting. The broken wine glass, her self inflicted wound, the blood. How in his ignorance he had thought her behavior a trick to get him to reveal himself.

  “You’re thinking of sending me to a mental asylum, aren’t you?”

  The depth of her anger frightened him. “No, of course not. I’m just trying to understand.”

  He let go of her arm.

  “Here, then,” she said, pulling herself onto the bed, not realizing—or not caring—that her robe gaped open, exposing her breasts.

  Jonathan fought his reaction, but his damned cock had a mind of its own. Isabelle didn’t help matters when she scooted toward the center of the bed to sit facing him, her leg pressed against his.

  “You might as well see what else I’ve done.”

  She raised her knee, then let her leg fall across his lap, right against his crotch. Had it been any other woman, under any other circumstance, her move would have been blatantly sexual.

  But, Jonathan realized, here was yet another shocking truth about Isabelle, one he couldn’t believe had not occurred to him before. Because, for all the abuse she had suffered, she was still innocent, and not simply innocent, but completely ignorant of the way a woman can affect a man. He almost groaned aloud, tormented by two opposing and equally reprehensible emotions—gratitude for her ignorance, and his desire to relieve her of it.

  Isabelle took the hem of her robe and pulled it open, baring her thigh to just beneath the juncture of her legs. The same scarring that patterned her arm decorated her inner thigh, only here the cuts had been deeper. Angrier. Jonathan flinched when he saw how close she had come to the femoral artery. Had she known how easily she could have killed herself? Or was she like him, longing for death, but afraid to carry through with the deed?

  “I know.” She must have seen him flinch, because she asked, “It’s disgusting, isn’t it?”

  “What disgusts me is the fact that someone hurt you enough to make you want to do this to yourself.”

  This time, he didn’t ask permission to touch her. He covered her knee with his hand and caressed her thigh, studying the pattern of scars as he went, moving up her leg, feeling the welts beneath his palm, pushing her robe aside, going higher and higher until the side of his hand felt the light, teasing tickle of the hair between her legs.

  Isabelle’s gasp brought him back to himself. At least somewhat. In truth, he could scarcely think for the insistent throb of his erection. He wanted to kiss her mound, to part her nether lips and probe the mystery of her with his tongue. He wanted—Christ help him. He wanted her. All of her. Now.


  He jerked his hand away, afraid of himself, of what he was thinking. Of what he might be capable of doing.

  “Why did you come here tonight, Isabelle?” He glanced up, met her gaze, then looked away, turning his head aside, trying to keep his face in the shadows. He must look a fool, hiding behind the sheet like a shy Arabian maiden from 1001 Nights hiding behind her veil.

  The longer she delayed her answer, the more determined he became to have it. “Tell me, what was your real purpose in coming here?”

  From the time Isabelle appeared in his room that night, his emotions had careened from one extreme to another, as recklessly as a runaway carriage. Fear. Anger. Shock. Desire. Pity. Raw lust. And now, when she continued to remain silent, a wild need to punish her for throwing him into this turmoil of conflicting passions.

  “Surely you didn’t think to impress me with your paltry scars. Me, of all people. I believe my first theory stands. You meant to torture me.”

  He was breathing hard, as if he’d just run up a flight of stairs. Damn her, why wouldn’t she answer him?

  “Jonathan.”

  Her voice floated toward him, as fragile as a wisp of smoke. But he knew the damage smoke could do, and he would be damned if he’d turn in her direction. Because, for a certainty, he would be damned if he so much as looked at her, sitting there on his bed, half naked, her hair tumbling down around her shoulders. A single tug on the flimsy length of silk that belted her robe, and he could have her completely naked.

  “Go on.” His voice was raw with frustration.

  “You frighten me when you’re angry.”

  Was she trying to make him feel guilty? It wouldn’t work.

  “I’ve been afraid of you since the moment I set eyes on you, Isabelle.”

  “Is that why you won’t look at me now? Or is it because you find me repulsive?”

  He had to laugh. “You have quite a talent for twisting the truth back on itself.”

  “You told me once that you prefer the keen edge of truth to the dull comfort of a lie. But I’m beginning to think you’re incapable of recognizing the truth even when it’s right before you.”