Soul and Blade

by Tara Brown

  The car stops before I can even really give it much thought. Angie climbs out, even though Dash should climb out first. He stays, pinning me by blocking the door. “We need to talk.”

  I have a thousand things to say, but I don’t want to talk. I want to slap him around first. I turn with an annoyed sigh and climb out the other side—the wrong side, where I have to open my own door.

  The driver looks affronted and Dash looks pissed, but I don’t give a damn.

  I click away in my heels and tight pencil skirt of the dress, thanking the men who get the doors for me as I step inside the restaurant.

  Dash is right behind me when we get to the maître d’. He presses himself against me obscenely. “The Townshend party is expecting us.”

  The man smiles and offers a subtle bow before turning and leading us to our table.

  Dash’s parents are there, beaming and laughing with their friends. It isn’t the intimate dinner I expected. Melody is there, along with several people I have never seen before in my life. For some reason even a family meal during this trip is enough for his mother to create an event. I doubt they ever just sit and read the paper and eat potato chips from the bag.

  The men stand and Dash’s mother offers a smug grin.

  “Mother, Father, Melody, nice to see you again.”

  His father points at the people beside him. “Benjamin, my dear boy. So glad you could make it. These are all old friends of ours from Cheltenham, actually. Lawrence and Clarice Underhill. Surely you recall them. They are across the pond looking at a venue for a wedding in Nantucket.”

  “Of course, lovely to see you again.”

  They both nod as Dash’s mother laughs in a way that makes me want to stuff a dinner roll in her throat. “A wedding in Nantucket? It sounds like a murder mystery weekend.”

  The woman, Clarice, who is clearly Dash’s mother’s age and equally snooty, offers Lady Townshend a look that tells me she doesn’t fancy a stay in Nantucket. “It is positively uncivil to ask one’s relations to travel such a distance and then offer only mediocre accommodations. We have been greatly disappointed by what we have seen.”

  I can’t even stop myself. “Where did you end up deciding on staying for the wedding?”

  She squints her eyes at me, no doubt annoyed, as we have not formally been introduced. “The Wauwinet. It’s not open yet, but they let us have a look.”

  “That’s a five-star hotel, isn’t it?”

  She sniffs at me. “We found it adequate, though I do not understand how it can possibly be a Relais and Châteaux designation. There was a man with a large white beard and a flannel shirt sitting on some sort of scooter on the deck, in the cold.”

  Her husband’s movement to meet my gaze is the only thing that suggests he is even alive and breathing. “He was a beast of a man. No one ought to grow to that size.” His jaw barely moves with his words.

  Angie grabs my hand, squeezing it once. I remind myself I need to see this as a mission and I need to keep my cool.

  “I’m sure the wedding will be lovely, having the ocean on either side of you.” Dash tries to end the conversation.

  “That is some wind they get there,” I add. Silence falls at my comment and we sit, letting the staff push our chairs in for us.

  “And of course this is Silas and Darlene Noble. They’ve come to escape the rain for a few weeks.” Dash’s mother points at the couple at the other end of the table, a younger and more posh-looking couple than the old snooty ones to my right.

  I wave awkwardly as Angie extends a hand. “Very nice to meet ya.”

  “And this is my future daughter-in-law, Jane Spears. And her very dear friend Dr. Angela O’Conner, a colleague of Benjamin’s. We have known Angela for some time.”

  Everyone greets us as warmly as they are able.

  I don’t know what to expect from any of them except Dash’s parents, so I don’t say anything else.

  His father decides dinner for us all. We drink the wine he orders, but only after he spends ages discussing the entire event with the sommelier. It feels like something they could have discussed before we all arrived.

  Dash laughs and jokes, getting more British as the wine is served.

  Angie fits in perfectly, even keeping her fucks and twats and ochs in check.

  I am the odd man out, as always. I almost wish Henry were here to sneak me red wine so I didn’t have to suffer through the courses of wine I am being served. Of course then he would make weird passes at me but at least it would have filled the time.

  Henry?

  How odd that he called my phone.

  I excuse myself to the washroom after the palate-cleansing lime sorbet following the third course.

  As might be expected, even the restaurant’s bathroom is posh, filled with luxurious items for the use of anyone who might need them. I can’t help but shake my head at them all. The face cream on the counter costs more than the rent at my first apartment.

  I look at myself in the mirror and wonder if I will ever fit in.

  My brain doesn’t even whisper the no; it screams it and begs me to run away as fast as I am able in the huge heels. I suspect every version of me worries this is a mind run and not real. No orphan ends up the way I have.

  But my heart whispers about hope and Dash being someone else when he is away from them. It whispers that if I’d had a family who loved me all, I might have ended up in a life like this one. Maybe it’s destiny.

  Unfortunately the words Dash spoke in the limo haunt me. They are the ones telling me that this is not my life.

  When the door handle rattles, I jump, realizing I must not have locked it. “I’m in here, it’s occupied.” I reach for the door, but Dash pushes his way in, closing it behind him and locking it. “We need to talk.”

  I look beyond him at the door and plot the ways in which I can get past him. Reaching behind me for the fifty-dollar hair spray seems like the least painful way to do it. I don’t want to kill him, and probably not maim him. Maybe just stun or knock him out.

  He steps forward carefully, maybe checking to see how angry I am. “I didn’t mean what I said.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  He winces. “I did, but not in the way you think.”

  “Yes, you did.” My words are a whisper and not nearly as brave as they ought to be.

  “No, Jane, I didn’t.” His green-gray eyes have gone darker, the way they always do when he’s upset about something, and he furrows his brow to shade them. “I honestly just said it like a jerk and didn’t mean it. The moment I said it, I froze. I couldn’t believe I could be so rude to you.”

  “You’re angry with me.” I say it so he doesn’t have to; he might never. He is English, after all.

  “You’re right.” He admits defeat and lays it out there. “I don’t understand why you couldn’t have pretended to go in and act like it was dead in there. Like Rory was shut down and you didn’t find anything. I don’t know why you didn’t even fight to not go in there. You could have helped finish training someone else and sent them in. It’s been months since Rory was put under. He isn’t going to die waiting a couple months longer for the runners who are nearly done being trained.”

  “The president sent me in. What did you want me to do?”

  “Retire.”

  I sigh. “You want me to stop being me so I can play house with you in the mansion?”

  He doesn’t even try to hide it. “We could have a good life. It could be amazing, just you and me and our pets and kids. We could have it all.”

  I don’t even know who he is anymore, so I say it. “Who are you? Why don’t you want to be the people we are now? I like working. You like working—why would we stop? And I said I don’t want to talk about kids. Why are you doing this?”

  He comes forward. “I want a future. Not a shell of a girl who
is half stuck in some pervert’s brain.”

  “You helped create this girl! You were part of the research!” I am beyond exasperation.

  “I know, but this program can never work the way they have forced it to. It was intended for good people. So doctors and specialists could find their way into the minds of those who couldn’t talk—patients with ALS or stroke victims who are still functioning, but unable to speak. We create the world inside the mind; it could be based on what the family says the patient loves. So those who are dying could spend more time with their families. Think of the applications, Jane—if it was used for good and not for evil.”

  “I know, I know!” Dear God, I know. I have heard the stupid rant several times from him and Angie. When they get going on the subject, it’s hours before they surface.

  “I’m so sorry.” He offers me the look, the one that melts my heart every time.

  “But you have to see it my way too, Dash. You made all of this. You let the governments of the world take your work. You forget that people like me are a dime a dozen. We are expendable. Property of the government. So we can’t even fight back and say we don’t want to do it. We are told to do it, so we do. That’s how the military works. That’s how the Navy works. We do our job. In some ways I wish I had never walked through the door to the facility.”

  “But then we might not have met.”

  The fight starts to leave me. “Right, but you science types give the government all the tools to do something terrible and then bitch when they do the terrible thing. It’s really annoying for us minor folk.”

  “You count in all of this. You count.” He takes another step. “I’m so sorry I said what I said. I’m sorry I want to sweep you up, broken and battered, from the thing I made you do, and protect you and take care of you. And most of all, I’m so very sorry that you cannot see that my intentions are honorable. That I only have your interests in my heart.” He steps even closer, taking my hands in his. “I love you, Jane. I love that this has made you weaker and more human. You were once a very hard girl with a very hard heart. This has taken away so much of that and I wish you didn’t see it as a flaw.”

  I melt.

  “And I see your need for softness,” he continues. “I don’t love it when we are soft, but I get it. He let you into his mind and he used everything he knew about you against you.”

  I sigh and breathe him in, feeling more myself than I have in ages. “Thank you.” I open my eyes and look at the reflection of us in the mirror of the bathroom. It’s very different here in the real world with him. This reflection is real. It’s me and it’s Dash, and this is the response a person needs when they are sad or broken or haunted. This is the reaction a woman needs from a man.

  He lifts my chin, placing a soft kiss on my cheek. “Now, let’s get back to dinner before my mother comes and bangs the door down.” He takes my hand in his and leads me from the bathroom, earning a look from the lady waiting outside the door.

  “She thinks we had sex,” he whispers, but not subtly.

  “I know.” I nearly roll my eyes at him. I can’t believe I ever imagined he would have been at the brothel. A normal brothel would be a stretch for him, even with all his lies. But that brothel . . . I can’t even make him that evil in my mind.

  7. I’LL MAKE LOVE TO YOU

  The moment we sit back down at the table, a knowing look crosses his mother’s eyes. She smiles at me, and I can’t help but see the evil stepmother in Cinderella every time. “I was just telling everyone how you somehow managed to win over the heart of the designer today.”

  “He was very kind to me.”

  Her gaze alights only long enough to make me uncomfortable, and then her eyes turn to dazzling emeralds as she laughs and leans into the table. “He is a strange little man, from France. A genius with fabric and design, but a complete recluse.”

  “Actually, Mother, he’s a survivor of the Second World War. He was in a concentration camp in the forties. His entire family died there, and he was raised by an uncle when the Allies freed him. So he’s earned the right to be a recluse, and he makes enough money to be eccentric.”

  Dash’s father nods, lifting his glass. “Rightly so.” The table awkwardly drinks to the man they do not know.

  I barely know him either, but I raise my glass and sip, wondering how long this will all go on. Will I be in my fifties and Dash’s mom in her eighties when she finally accepts this marriage? And that I am who I am.

  The crowd sorts themselves back to their original chats. I’m socially awkward enough to know not to speak unless spoken to. It never ends well. And thus I am again the only person not really talking or joining in.

  Dash’s mom glances at me from time to time, checking on me. I realize she doesn’t intimidate me the way I thought she did. She’s mean and rude and snooty, but I am not afraid of her or her opinion of me. In her eyes, I will never be free of the fact that I am somehow guilty of the crimes her son, Henry, committed. That I got him arrested because he went to a brothel where human trafficking and slavery were on the menu.

  As we are leaving the restaurant hours later, I lean into Dash and mutter, “Dinner with them is an Olympic sport. This should be considered torture.” I rub my food belly and moan.

  He laughs. “You don’t have to finish every piece of food on the plate for every course. You can put the fork down.”

  I give him a look. “Where I was raised we finished our food. Don’t put it in front of me if you don’t want me to eat it.”

  He rubs my belly. “Now you look food-pregnant and uncomfortable.”

  The feeling of his hands rubbing the mound of my belly makes me recoil. He pauses, realizing what he doing. “Sorry.” His hand lowers and the joy fades from his face.

  “It’s nothing.” I take his hand again and squeeze as we stroll to the car. Angie catches up, jumping in the car after us and groaning. “Och, I ate too much. It was too good. I couldn’t stop. I dinna want to.”

  I laugh and sit next to her. “Look at my poor dress. It’s about to burst and injure everyone with shrapnel.”

  Angie scoffs, “I am actually making myself sick when I get back to the room. I need a Roman lunch.”

  “Women are disgusting.” Dash grimaces.

  “I can’t go to sleep like this, Dash. I’ll die in the night—explode like the guy on Monty Python.”

  Dash snorts and she giggles and they both lose me.

  “You’ve seen The Meaning of Life, right?” Angie gives me a sideways stare.

  “No.”

  Her eyes dart to Dash. “She hasn’t seen Monty Python.”

  “I will have to rectify this, Jane. I cannot marry a girl who doesn’t understand what it means when I hop about the yard clapping coconuts together.”

  I cock an eyebrow, but Angie explodes in laughter. Dash giggles; it’s weird to see. Strangely pleasant is the way I would describe it. He runs a hand through his dark-blond hair and makes his dimple pop. His eyes are sparkling green-gray and full of humor and relaxed joy. They take off in a tirade of movie quotes, each speaking with a perfect English accent.

  They make me smile, afflicting me with their contagious grins and giggles. I have no clue as to what is going on, but I can’t stop myself from wishing I did know.

  Before we know it the car stops and the door is open. Angie laughs and points. “Ya better watch them.” She gives Dash a grin. “Thank your mother again for a fabulous meal. See ya tomorrow for that bridesmaids’ brunch then, Janey!” She climbs out and waves, nearly tripping. She spins and staggers into the hotel.

  He laughs and offers her retreating back a wave. “Night, Angela!”

  I laugh too. “I didn’t realize she was drunk.”

  Dash gives me a look. “I didn’t realize I was drunk.” He bends his face forward, grazing my lips lazily and whispering, “If I promise to be the most gentle lover
under the sun, can I ravish you when we get back to the hotel?”

  I nod and slide against him as the door is closed.

  But a switch turns in my mind. As Dash nibbles at my ear, I remember just how fragile I am not, regardless of how feeble I have been acting.

  The girl I am is not the one from the mind runs.

  The girl I am survived war and abandonment and too many things to list.

  I am brave and strong and in love with the man tempting with me kisses and caresses.

  And we don’t do gentle.

  My hands become greedy, unable to touch every bit of his skin. I grab his biceps roughly and then smooth my hands over the spot I’ve gripped. My lips leave a trail of kisses along his jawline to his lips.

  Our mouths meet again without restraint.

  It’s a frenzy.

  The sound of my skirt ripping up the side joins our ragged breath and kissing noises. The feel of his fingers prying at my underwear makes my very full stomach tingle. He drags them down my thighs in jerks, to the point where I have to sit up on my knees so he can rip them down past my heels. The taste of scotch still on his breath fills my mouth as our tongues slide against each other, massaging and sucking.

  Those are the only slow-moving parts.

  Buttons from his shirt ping from their various tethers as my head lowers to his flawless skin. I suck his nipple and clamp down on the tender flesh. He sucks his breath as his fingers tug at his belt and trousers. The warmth of his freed cock hits my inner thighs, bringing me down on him. I grip his chest with one hand and grab his rigid erection with my other, slowly lowering myself, bobbing slightly so he can enter me with ease.

  His hands slide up my thighs, gripping my ass and moving me the way he wants to, the way I want him to. The car makes turns and stops, becoming part of our game and rocking sea of movements.

  He kisses my neck, burying himself inside me. He maneuvers my hips, rocking and rolling with the car. I arch my back, leaning a little so I can control the motion slightly. My hands slide along the soft roof, pushing so I can use him the way he uses me.