by Reinke, Sara
“Why isn’t my father included?” Rene asked. “He’s here.” He pointed to his grandmother’s tree, which Tessa unfolded and spread out beside the Tome on the bedspread. “See? Arnaud Morin, born July 12, 1818.”
She didn’t know the answer to that, and the book didn’t provide any other clues.
“I say we hit the hay,” Rene told her. “It’s after two in the morning already, and we’ve got a long drive ahead of us today. Hopefully one that’s less eventful than yesterday’s.”
He said this last with a little wink that made her smile. Things had changed between them since the attack at the rest stop, a subtle but distinctive shift in the dynamic of their relationship. There was a sweetness about Rene that had caught her by surprise. She’d expected him to make some wisecrack about finding her beside him when he’d woken up earlier, but he hadn’t. Instead, it hadn’t seemed to bother him at all.
“So you want to call it, heads or tails, to see who gets the bed tonight?” he asked, making a show of reaching into his pocket and digging for a coin.
She laughed, hefting one heavy half of the Tome and plopping it closed. “That’s okay. You take it. You’re the one with the bullet hole in him.”
“That?” He laughed, glancing at his hand almost dismissively. “That’s nothing, pischouette. I’ve had worse bug bites.”
He definitely seemed to be feeling better. Tessa wondered if it was because he’d taken any of the Percodans he’d given to Brandon. Even though they hadn’t told Lina and Brandon the truth about what had happened to Rene’s hand, when she’d been alone with Tessa, Lina had still expressed concern.
“He wasn’t drinking when it happened, was he?” she’d asked, because they’d said that Rene had hurt himself changing a flat tire. “Sometimes he has a problem with that…and his pills, too. Ever since his leg. He’s not drinking while you guys are out on the road, is he?”
“No,” Tessa had replied, shaking her head and managing a laugh. “No, of course not, Lina. I…why, I haven’t seen him touch a drop since we left for New Orleans.”
She still wasn’t quite sure why she’d lied, why she hadn’t told Lina about the night before, when Rene had gotten drunk and tried to shoot himself, except she’d felt some sudden and fierce need to protect him, even if only from Lina’s disapproval. Because he protected me, she thought. Everything is different now. That guy with the gun changed everything.
“I’m perfectly fine to sleep on the recliner,” she told Rene as she grunted, hoisting the Tome. “You just—”
“You take the bed,” Rene said, reaching out and drawing the cumbersome book out of her arms. “I’ll take the book. I need to sit up tonight anyway, so don’t worry about it.”
“What do you mean?” she asked as he carried the Tome to the bedside desk. He’d said something the night before about being an insomniac. “You can sit up in the bed and watch TV. It’s not going to—”
“It’s all right.” He shook his head, then cut his eyes toward the bathroom, looking suddenly uncomfortable. “I just…there are some things I need to do with my hand…and my leg and all…” His voice faltered clumsily and he cleared his throat. “Anyway, it’s easier if I just do them sitting up.”
“Oh.” She glanced at his right leg. He hadn’t said anything about the prosthetic during their travels together, and she’d never seen him do a lot with it, much less remove it. Is he embarrassed? she wondered. Why? I know he has it. He and Brandon both told me. “I can help you.”
“That’s all right…” he began.
“With your hand, at least,” she insisted, crossing the room to his bag. She poked through it until she found the first-aid kit they’d tucked inside, and a brown paper bag full of medicinal supplies they’d grabbed from a convenience store near the motel. He was already trying to sputter out some kind of protest, but she shook her head. “I can help you,” she said again. “Go stand over there by the sink. We’ll change your bandages.”
He sighed, his shoulders hunching in resignation, but stood still and unflinching as she slowly unrolled the white gauze bandage from around his palm. Although he’d regained a small amount of mobility in the maimed appendage, any healing was from the inside out. Underneath the stark glare of the vanity’s overhead fluorescent lights, the wounds looked as gruesome as ever.
The edges of torn flesh were jagged and ashen, the exposed meat bright red and spongy. It looked painful as hell, and as she dabbed at his palm gently with cotton balls soaked in hydrogen peroxide, she glanced into his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t sting,” he said. “It’s just cold.”
Earlier in the day, there had been enough damage from the bullet that Tessa had been able to see clear through Rene’s hand at a point in the center. That part of the wound, at least, had closed, for which she was grateful, because that had been disturbing. Rene, in fact, had held his hand up to his face, pretending to peek through the hole in a morbid attempt to amuse her.
He’d been doing that all day, as if her concern for him bothered him more than his hand. Which is kind of sweet, she thought, glancing up at him again.
“You know, you surprise me, pischouette,” he said.
“How’s that?”
“This,” he said with a nod at his hand. “Everything that happened today. I really thought you’d fall apart on me. But you did real good.”
She laughed, pressing squares of gauze against either side of his wound. “Thank you, I think.”
He helped her hold the pads in place as she wound a fresh ribbon of bandage around them. “Come on, pischouette. You know what I mean. Your clothes…your makeup…it takes you three goddamn hours in the bathroom every morning.”
Only earlier that day, this might have pissed her off, but now, Tessa just laughed along with Rene.
“You aren’t exactly what I’d call ‘low maintenance,’ chère,” he told her.
Her smile faltered as she reached for a roll of white first-aid tape. “My grandmother taught me to appreciate nice things,” she said, peeling back a strip. “She was very beautiful and very elegant, and I always wanted to be like her.”
She pressed the tape in place against his hand, then tore off another. “She was the only woman in the Brethren who ever got to leave the compound. My Grandfather would take her with him whenever he’d travel. She visited all over the world. He loved her very much.” She looked up at Rene as she finished bandaging his hand. “I know you probably think the Grandfather is a monster, and he is in a lot of ways. But he wasn’t always like that.”
It had always occurred to her that one of the reasons the Grandfather had always been so hard on Brandon, and yet at the same time had allowed her brother to enjoy a private tutor and to forgo his bloodletting for as long as he had—luxuries other Brethren never would have been allowed—was because of Eleanor’s intercession.
“I think after my grandmother died, Brandon reminded him too much of her in too many ways,” she said, her mind turning back to the afternoon in which she’d confronted Augustus about breaking Brandon’s hands. That had been the last straw for the Grandfather, she suspected; Brandon’s determination not only to escape the Brethren, but to go to college, as well. It would have been something that Eleanor might have tried; a moment of Eleanor in Brandon’s otherwise ordinarily quiet and reserved nature that must have just seemed too reminiscent in the Grandfather’s eyes.
“I think a part of him died along with her,” she said softly, her eyes distant, her voice nearly a whisper. She cradled Rene’s swaddled hand gently between hers and felt dim tears well in her eyes. She blinked against them, snapping out of the reverie of her distant, melancholy thoughts, and managed a small laugh. “Anyway, that’s where I get it—all of that with my hair, makeup, clothes and whatnot. My grandmother taught me.”
And for four years, I couldn’t have any of it.
Martin had stripped her of all the fine clothes Eleanor had bought for her. In the Davenant house, Tessa had worn plain cl
othes, often hand-me-downs from other women in the clan. She hadn’t been allowed to put on makeup. On the occasions she was allowed to leave and visit her family, she remembered pinching her cheeks like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind just to lend them some semblance of healthy color.
When she’d left Kentucky, she’d taken several thousand dollars with her, money that Martin kept tucked inside a large manila envelope. He stowed the envelope away with a leather-bound ledger in a hollowed-out book in the library and over the years, Tessa had seen him put cash in and take it out of this secret cache, even though he’d been unaware of her.
She’d taken both the money and the ledger and gone to a department store in Lexington. Here, she’d bought a pair of suitcases and filled them to overflowing capacity with all of the designer clothes and shoes she could afford.
My way of saying a great big fuck you to Martin, she thought.
At that moment, she sensed the warm, fluttering presence of the baby in her mind as it stirred within her womb and pressed her hand to her belly reflexively.
“Êtes-tu bien?” Rene asked, his brows raised in concern. Are you all right?
“Yes.” She smiled. “It’s just the baby. It moves sometimes. I can sense it. Do you want to feel?”
He blinked, taking a small, hedging step back, as if surprised, and Tessa laughed. “Come on. You grabbed hold of the barrel of a loaded gun today. I think touching my stomach will be a piece of cake.”
She caught him by his uninjured hand and pulled her shirt up, exposing the slightly rounded swell of her belly. “Here.” She pressed his hand against her and was immediately, acutely aware of the warmth of his palm against her skin. In that moment, her mind snapped back to the night before, when he’d pressed her down against the couch, laying atop her, and his hand had slid with electrifying friction along the length of her thigh, caressing the outermost curve of her buttock.
Tessa blinked up at Rene and found him looking back at her, directly in the eyes. He didn’t say anything, but she could feel the hesitation and tension in his arm.
“Is it kicking?” he asked after a moment, giving his head a small shake and averting his gaze to his hand.
“No.” Tessa giggled quietly. “It’s too little to feel anything like that yet. You have to open your mind.”
His brow arched slightly. “Oh. Je suis désolé.” Sorry.
She watched his expression change as for the first time he allowed himself to be aware of the tiny, delicate life growing inside of her. Any hint of uncertainty drained from his face as his eyes widened, his brows lifting with wonder. He stared at his hand, at her belly beneath, the corners of his mouth unfolding in a soft, marveling smile.
“Saint merde,” he said. Holy shit.
“Do you feel it?” she asked, even though she could see the answer plainly in his face.
His smile widened as he nodded. “That’s amazing, pischouette,” he said, his voice small and quiet. “That…that’s damn likely the most amazing thing I’ve ever felt in my life.”
“I can’t sense it all of the time,” Tessa said. “Not yet anyway. It’s still too early. But sometimes I do, like right now. It doesn’t have thoughts yet, not like you or I do. There’s just that—all warm inside, light somehow.”
“Like sunshine,” he said, and when she nodded, he glanced at her, raising his brow. “So if all we can do is sense it in our minds, why are you holding my hand against your belly?”
She could have told him that it was because the baby must have been able to feel it whenever someone pressed against her stomach, that this awareness was enough to stimulate the little growing bundle of neurons that served as its primitive brain stem. She could have told him that this was what they were sensing together, the baby’s reaction to his touch, the pressure of his hand against the shelter of her womb. She could have told him this, but instead, she said something else, something equally as true. “Maybe I like it there.”
She’d never met a man like Rene before, someone who could make her laugh out loud or want to wring his neck all in the course of one conversation; one who could charm her, move her, infuriate, amuse, challenge and fascinate her. All that afternoon, she’d been reminded of how her grandmother Eleanor had been with the Grandfather, how they had behaved together, interacted with each other, how much emotion they had been able to convey without saying a single word. She’d been reminded because she’d seen it happening with her and Rene, and she’d come to realize that it had been growing between them all along.
Grandmother Eleanor would have loved Rene, she thought. And oh, dear God, I think I do, too.
His brow arched a bit more and he stepped toward her, collapsing the space between them to no more than mere inches. He moved his hand from her stomach, trailing the cuff of his knuckles up between her breasts, caressing the side of her neck, making her shiver. “Is that so?” he murmured, his fingers uncurling against her face, his palm cradling her cheek.
He leaned toward her, and Tessa felt her heart—which had started pounding beneath her sternum in a frantic, fluttering rhythm—quicken all the more. Her breath hitched once, twice, then fell still, caught in the back of her throat. The pad of his thumb brushed lightly against her lips, making her hiccup softly, a shudder going through her entire body. He smiled and cocked his head, leaning closer, until the front of his shirt touched her breasts.
His lips lightly brushed hers as he used his hand to guide her face, tilting her chin up. Then his mouth settled against her, a gentle, lingering kiss that made her heart hammer, and sent chills trembling all the way through her. The tip of his tongue slipped between her lips, dancing against her own, and he uttered a low, hungry sound, like a cross between a growl and a groan as he pulled her near, kissing her deeply. He pressed her so tightly against him, she could feel the heat from his chest through the fabric of his shirt, and the hardening strain of his growing arousal against her through his jeans.
When he pulled back, just enough to draw his lips away from hers, leaving their foreheads nearly touching, the tips of their noses together, Tessa gasped quietly, trembling.
“Merde,” Rene breathed with a quiet, shaky laugh. Shit. After a moment, he stepped back, leaving an abrupt chill in the air and against her body. “I…I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry, Tessa. I don’t…I don’t know what got into my head.”
“It’s all right,” Tessa whispered. She didn’t seem to be able to summon any more voice than this.
He shook his head. “No, it’s not.” He forked his fingers through his hair and turned, walking away. “You’re married, pischouette. I mean, your husband may have had six wives, but I’m sure he still cares about you and wouldn’t—”
“He doesn’t care,” Tessa said. “Trust me.”
“Sure, he does,” Rene replied. “He must. You’re carrying his baby, for Christ’s sake. He’s probably—”
“He used to hit me,” Tessa said, and Rene’s voice cut off in mid-sentence. He turned, visibly startled, and she looked down at the blue carpet beneath her feet. She wanted to clap her hands over her mouth and take it back somehow. Worse, now that she’d admitted it, she found herself saying even more, the words spilling out of her mouth in a rapid-fire tumble. “Martin was a horrible man. He hated my grandfather and punished me because of it. He’d punch me, slap me, knock me to the ground. He’d take off his belt and whip me with it, leave me black and blue…sometimes so much I couldn’t even walk.”
She glanced up at him, her eyes clouded with tears. “I hate him,” she whispered, her voice tremulous. “I never told anyone about it, not the Grandfather, not my father…not even Brandon…especially not Brandon…because I…I just couldn’t…”
The words faded and her tears spilled. She pressed her hand against her mouth and turned toward the wall. Rene didn’t say anything at first. He simply went to her, draping his hand against her shoulder and turned her around.
“Come here,” he said, drawing her into an embrace.
“He doesn’t even care that I’m gone,” Tessa wept, huddled against his chest. “That bastard, he…all he wants is the baby. He wants the baby back…he wants to take my baby!”
“No one is going to take your baby.” Rene tucked his fingertips under her chin, making her look up at him. “Listen to me. I won’t let anyone hurt you or that baby. Not now. Not ever. I swear to you, pischouette.”
He leaned forward, his lips pressing against hers again, first in promise and then with growing passion. He pushed her back against the nearest wall and pinned her there, holding her face with his uninjured hand, kissing her the entire time.
“Tu es sûr avec moi,” he told her. You are safe with me. He let his lips trail lightly across her cheek, tracing the contours of her ear.
Tessa touched him, feeling the roughness of his face, the unkempt beard stubble, and the contrast of his hair, soft and thick, nearly silken through her fingers. His heart thrummed against her, its rhythm mirroring her own and she sensed the blood racing through his veins, coursing through his body, making her gums ache with sudden, mounting need.
Not to mention other parts of her.
She reached between them, cupping her hand against the hard swell of his arousal, straining against the fly of his jeans. He groaned softly as she moved, gripping him firmly, then caught her wrist to stay her. “Don’t,” he said in a hoarse, ragged voice.
She blinked at him, drawing back, somewhat wounded and confused, but he slipped his fingers through her hair, cupping the back of her head in his palm and kissed her again. He turned, guiding her until the backs of her legs met the mattress. When she sat, he moved with her, laying her back against the bed and stretching out beside her. He began to explore her with his good hand, caressing her breasts, toying with her nipples until they grew firm through the thin fabric of her blouse. The sensation of it left her breath hitching, and she hooked her fingers into the curve of his shoulder, digging her nails into his sleeve.
