A Curse of the Heart

by Adele Clee

  Rebecca shrugged as she closed the box and secured the catch. “I doubt I will need to use them. Are you staying for dinner?”

  He appeared shocked at her question. “Dinner? Rebecca, after what happened here yesterday, I am staying the night.”

  The words caused a tightening in her stomach that pulsated all the way down her legs to the tips of her toes. She had been waiting to hear him say those words, although she did not intend to make it easy for him.

  “There’s no need. I will be fine now I have Mr. Brown’s wonderful inventions. Besides, I’m sure it must be a terrible inconvenience, having to chaperone me when you could be immersed in your books.”

  His gaze turned dark, brooding. “You don’t want me to stay?”

  Inside she was smiling, but she kept her expression indifferent. “Do you want to stay?”

  “I do not want to leave you here alone.”

  Did she need to strap him to the rack and crank the handle to gain a confession? Even then, the sound of crunching bones would still render him mute.

  “I have been alone for a very long time,” she said. “Another night will not make any difference. If you want to spend time in my company, then by all means, you are welcome to stay. If your reasons stem from a sense of duty or responsibility, then I would prefer you didn’t.”

  He was silent, and she could imagine the battle within — the questions, the fears, the doubts. If he walked away, then that was the end of it. If he stayed, then it was only the beginning.

  “You know the answer, Rebecca.”

  She raised a challenging brow. “Sadly, I do not have the power to read minds. What if I guessed and got it completely wrong?”

  His mouth curved into a mischievous grin, and she breathed a sigh of relief. “Now you’re teasing me. You know I want to stay.”

  Finally! She felt like dropping to her knees and praising the Lord.

  “We have a few hours before dinner. If you want to, you could help me in the storeroom. I have been sorting through the boxes, but I shall tell you more about it over dinner.”

  “Then lead the way,” he said shrugging out of his coat. He draped it over the chair and then gestured to the remaining package. “What’s in the last parcel, a cutlass and a bottle of rum?”

  “I’m glad to see you have not lost your wit,” she said as she ran her hand over the last box. She gave it an admiring caress, causing a rush of anticipation to thrum through her veins. Tonight, she would make another memory. One never to be erased or eradicated, one she would always treasure. “But I’m afraid you will have to wait until after dinner to find out what’s in this box.”

  Chapter 19

  “You’re not still sulking about the pistols?”

  “I’m not sulking.” Gabriel pushed the large crate against the wall and brushed the dust from his hands. “I’m just wondering why we are sorting them into two separate piles.”

  He had spent the last hour rummaging through crates and moving boxes. Now, the room looked neat and orderly while his mind was in complete disarray.

  It wasn’t anger that troubled him, or the frustration of sitting in Rebecca’s office thinking all sorts of unimaginable things, only to find she was out shopping. It wasn’t even the fact that his weak heart had skipped a few beats when presented with the fine pair of pistols. Although he would track down Mr. Cutter and advise him against selling weaponry to a woman. It was his reaction to her gift, to the leather-bound book, that was what he kept replaying over in his head.

  He’d been given gifts before, always books on Egypt, always books to help with his studies. So why was this one any different? Why did all the muscles and bones in his body feel soft and limp?

  In those short hours, while she ran about in a desperate bid to find a way to protect herself, she had stopped and thought about him. The gift was to please him, to make him happy, to show she cared. It had nothing to do with advancing his education and the thought caused his heart to ache with a level of tenderness he had never experienced before.

  “It will all become clear,” she said, and it took him a moment to realise she had answered the question about the separate piles. Removing two clay figures from a small box, she added, “I think you can put these on your list. The ones I have on display are much finer examples.”

  “You’re being very secretive. It makes me think I should be worried.” He dipped the nib into the inkwell that sat on top of one of the crates and scratched a few notes while she repackaged the item.

  “There’s no need to worry. I’ll tell you all about it over dinner when there are no distractions.” She pointed to the wall behind him. “Put this box over there to the right, as they are all the items on your list. It will be easier now they’re all separated.”

  Gabriel nodded, feeling more like the hired help than an expert in Egyptian antiquities. Indeed, his muscles ached, he was hungry, dirty and his erratic emotions made him feel like a bear with a thorn in his paw.

  “Right,” she said with a satisfied smile, thrusting her hands on her hips as she surveyed their work. “We should wash before dinner, and I will quickly change.”

  Gabriel brushed his hand down his dusty breeches. “I’m afraid I don’t have that luxury, so you will just have to accept me as I am.”

  She stepped closer, close enough to rest her hand on his chest. “Oh, I wouldn’t change you for the world,” she said before sweeping out of the room.

  Dinner consisted of roast duck with artichokes, the platter large enough to feed four.

  “Either Mrs. James knows I’m staying for dinner or she is trying to fatten you up in the hope of dissuading me from ravishing you.”

  “I think it is a little late for her to worry about my virtue, don’t you?” she said from the opposite end of the table.

  Gabriel should have felt guilty for robbing her future husband of that pleasure, yet he felt ecstatic. The idea of any other man claiming the right roused murderous thoughts.

  “You mean it is a case of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted,” he said using a common analogy.

  Rebecca smiled at him. “Well, this horse has no intention of returning to the stable. She has no intention of looking back as she is far happier running freely through the fields.”

  Her words conjured an image of him lying his fiery-haired beauty down in a lush green meadow, of him riding her until he was free from the past, free from the curse that plagued him. “You make freedom sound so tempting,” he said, his tone conveying a seductive lilt.

  “Then turn your back on it all and run with me, Gabriel,” she said softly, coming round the table to refill his glass.

  My God, how he wanted to. If only it were possible. If only he were a different man.

  “Let me do that,” he said gesturing to the glass, dragging his thoughts from a dream-like state back to the present.

  “You are my guest, and I am here to serve.”

  He watched her glide back to her seat before taking a large mouthful of claret. She shook visibly from the potency of the alcohol, and it occurred to him she was using it for courage.

  “Are you going to tell me why we’ve made two lists? Why the storeroom contains two separate stacks of boxes and crates?” he said, guessing this was the reason she gulped her wine.

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, yes. Well, other than the last parcel, I do have another surprise.”

  Gabriel chuckled. “Will I need a large shot of brandy?”

  She bit down on her lip like a naughty little imp. “That might be a good idea.”

  He muttered a curse. “Rebecca, it was a joke. Please tell me I’m not going to have something else to worry about?”

  “No, not at all,” she said shaking her head. “I rather hope you will be excited. You see, I have decided to sell all of the items on your list. They are surplus to requirements and I need the money.”

  Gabriel sat up in the chair. “Sell them? Rebecca, if you need money, then I am more than happy to help. You do not ne
ed to sell the things most precious to you.”

  “Don’t you see,” she said, her face revealing her excitement. “They are objects, Gabriel, objects I do not need, as there is something far more interesting I can do with the money.”

  Gabriel frowned, fearing he was not going to like this interesting idea. “So you do not need money to cover household expenses?”

  “No,” she said, clutching her hands to her chest. “I need the money because I am going to Egypt.”

  “Egypt?” he cried, shooting out of the chair as the whole world seemed to tilt and sway and he was in danger of falling into a black hole of oblivion. “Egypt!”

  “Yes, I know you’re surprised,” she nodded, “but isn’t it a wonderful idea? I think my father would have approved.”

  “Your father would have taken you over his knee and tanned your backside,” he barked, before flopping back into his chair. He wanted his words to offend, to knock some sense into that carefree head of hers, to make her understand how ridiculous it sounded.

  But the words rebounded off this new, confident suit she wore. “You know you are far too stuffy. Where is your sense of adventure? What is the point of spending years studying relics when there are hundreds of items lying buried beneath the sands?”

  “Egypt?”

  “Think how amazing it will be, Gabriel, to tread in the footsteps of pharaohs, to see Cairo, Luxor, Alexandria.”

  Gabriel swallowed, his stomach forming intricate knots, his mind bombarding him with questions. How could she think of going out there on her own? What would happen to him if she left? Why did the idea sound so wonderful, yet so damn terrifying at the same time?

  “Have you considered the fact it might be dangerous? An unmarried lady living on her own in a foreign land is unheard of,” he said, pleased he had managed to speak calmly as he wanted to scream and shout until the roof billowed.

  “Gabriel, last night I could have been murdered in my bed. Indeed, it has made me see that nowhere is truly safe. I can sit here and mourn a life lost to me, or I can head out into the world and make a new one.”

  Her words made him question the philosophy he used to justify his seclusion: the justification that it was right to mourn the past, as a reminder not to make the same mistakes in the future.

  “And as for being unmarried,” she continued, “I will tell everyone I am a widow. People are inclined to believe what they hear if the story is told with conviction. You know if I were married, no man would permit such a thing.”

  “Well, in that we are agreed.”

  She took another few sips of claret. “If I ever do marry, then I want my sons to be explorers and adventures. I want my daughters to fight for their right to do the same, to be strong with unshakable resolve.”

  “Just like their mother,” he whispered, the image of two daughters with copper curls and two sons with hair as black as his own, dancing before his eyes.

  “I would not want them to sit around living in the past, Gabriel, and I’m sure my parents didn’t want that for me.”

  He picked his glass up from the table and slouched back in the chair. “Remind me to give Higson his notice when I return or at least nail his tongue to the pillory.”

  “Higson’s words have saved me from a life dominated by grief. Now, I have decided to choose the good memories, to remember my parents are with me always.”

  “I understand that, Rebecca,” he said, “but Egypt.” He did not want to understand anything that would take her so far away from him. Then it occurred to him it would take weeks or maybe months to plan for such a trip. He had plenty of time to change her mind. In the meantime, he would go along with her plan. “Then let me buy the items,” he said. “I have seen them and know their worth. Let me give you the money to go to Egypt.”

  “No,” she said abruptly.

  “No? You would rather see them in the hands of a stranger?”

  When she looked at him, her eyes brimmed with compassion. “Gabriel, I would rather throw them in a furnace than have you spend another day locked away in your cellar, studying old relics and whatever else you do there.”

  His cellar?

  Why had she said that? He had not mentioned it before.

  Gabriel felt the blood drain from his face. What the hell had Higson told her? He would nail more than the man’s tongue to the pillory, he thought, his heart beating so loudly it pounded in his ears.

  You have to tell her now.

  The words were barely audible beneath the din but grew louder demanding to be heard. All he had to do was open his mouth; all he had to do was trust her with his most precious work.

  “I do not study relics in my cellar,” he said, his tongue thick as he formed the words.

  “I know,” she said, and his heart shot up into his mouth. “It’s just a figure of speech. I imagine your study has the best light.”

  Gabriel shook his head. Now that he had found the courage to start, he had to finish. “I do not study relics,” he repeated, “because I conduct … experiments in my cellar.”

  Her hand dropped from her mouth forcing her to place her glass back on the table. “Experiments? You mean with substances, like an apothecary?”

  “No, not like an apothecary.”

  “Experiments on what then?”

  “On organs,” he said, feeling beads of perspiration form on his brow.

  “Organs!” She jerked her head back from the shock, her eyes wide with alarm and he had no choice now but to try to make her understand. “Please tell me you don’t mean human organs.”

  “No. Not human, but the closest thing — pigs organs.”

  The truth seemed to startle her, and she stared at him, her nose scrunched and wrinkled. “For what purpose?”

  Fear choked him as it wrapped its spindly vines around his neck. What if she didn’t understand? When he told her, would she look at him differently? Would she struggle to find him desirable; would she see a man who had lost his grip on reality?

  Half of him felt relieved, glad she knew the depth of his obsession, even though he had so much more to tell. Half of him wanted to smack his head on the table until he was incapable of thinking anymore.

  “Whatever it is, you can tell me,” she said, as though she understood the torment raging inside him. “You can trust me, Gabriel.”

  “You will think me a fool,” he said downing what was left of his wine. “But you must understand, I was still a boy when my mother died.” His thoughts drifted back to a time of pain and sadness. “Everything changed after that. I felt alone, isolated and I clung to her memory because it was all I had. My mother used to tell me stories of Egypt, of the Arabian Nights and the Tale of Nur Al-din Al. I remember the sultan crossing from Cairo to Jizah on his way to the Pyramids and wished I was riding with him.”

  Now he had started the words flowed freely. Rebecca did not try to interrupt or question him, but sat quietly and listened.

  “From then I read everything I could about the wonders of ancient Egypt. Years later, I met your father. His lectures were inspiring. He was a man I admired, the sort of man I wanted to become. He made me question the need for preserving the dead, helped me examine ways of preserving the organs without removing them. The mummification process was a way of leaving something solid, something tangible that did not crumble away to dust.” He shook his head and laughed, as it sounded ridiculous, even to him. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this … but I thought of my mother. If only I had a body preserved in a tomb, then perhaps the hole in my chest would become smaller somehow.” He stopped and thrust his hand through his hair. “It is the logic of a madman, I know.”

  “It is the logic of a man whose heart is filled with sorrow,” she whispered.

  His head shot up, that one sweet sentence making him feel normal, making him believe his obsession was a natural conclusion drawn from years of suffering. “The strange thing is, I can’t stop searching for the answer, even though I still do not really understand the que
stion.”

  Rebecca smiled. “You do not have to search anymore, Gabriel,” she said, “because I understand the question. I know the answer you seek.”

  Chapter 20

  It took every ounce of strength Rebecca had to stop the tears from falling. Gabriel looked so tortured, so heartbroken; her heart was bleeding, too.

  She understood grief, and now she understood love because she would give everything she had to ease his torment, to lessen the burden he had carried around all these years.

  The room fell silent, except for the sound of his ragged breathing and she pushed herself out of the chair and walked around to kneel at his side.

  “Now I know why God saw fit to bring us together,” she said stroking his arm. “Why I seem to understand what you’ve been searching for.”

  He dragged his hand down his face, the strain of suppressed emotion evident. “How can you know the question? How can you know what drives me when I don’t even know myself?”

  “Because I know what grief is, Gabriel. I know what it is to want to turn back the clock and make everything right again. I know how it spins us into its web until there is no life beyond, so we are stuck, clinging to the silken thread hoping we can survive a bit longer. I know all we can do is search for the answer to the question — what can I do to live a day without the pain of grief?”

  He looked up at her, his weary eyes growing bright with wonder, as though he had crossed oceans and continents on a fool’s crusade and had finally stumbled upon a wise mystic with the power to banish ghosts.

  “If that is the question,” he whispered, “then what is the answer?”

  Rebecca put her hand on his cheek. “I shall tell you the answer, Gabriel, but not now. You must be patient. There is something I need to do. Will you wait here while I go and get the parcel?”

  “The parcel?” he said, a little confused. “I’d forgotten all about it.”

  She had distracted his mind, his gaze returning to the present, dragging him back from the dreamy place, exactly as she’d intended.