by Reinke, Sara
“Edith…” he’d whispered.
“Tell me who’s won your heart,” she said. “So when I see her out, I might greet her properly. I’d like to at least offer her my friendship, let her know I bear her no ill will—or you.” She’d reached up and touched his face, and despite her words, her brave front, he’d seen tears gleaming in her eyes. “Tell me your lover’s name.”
He hadn’t, of course, and she’d been angry with him—not for his infidelity as much as for his silence. She hadn’t said anything more, had only turned away from him again, leaving him to feel like complete and absolute shit. How could he have made her understand? It wasn’t that he didn’t love her—he did. Besides Julien, Edith had become his most trusted confidante and friend. But even so, he couldn’t bear to admit the truth to her. He felt too afraid.
Like the Morins, the Davenant clan had outgrown the walls of their great house, and a cluster of outbuildings and cottages now framed the stately grounds. Of them all, however, few besides Julien’s had light visible through the windows as the carriage approached. The mansion itself appeared dark and deserted; only the faint wisp of smoke rising from the chimney, luminous in the moonlight, betrayed any occupancy.
“Thank God you’ve arrived,” Agathe said as Michel strode through the front door of the small cabin, Lissette, Mason and Edith almost immediately behind him. Phillip remained in the buckboard, perhaps in the anticipation of a possible hasty getaway, his rifle in hand.
Blankets and quilts had been spread across the floor in front of the fireplace. Julien knelt here, stripped down to his undershirt and breeches, with neither jacket nor boots. Collette lay propped in a semi-seated position, her back against his chest, his arms hooked beneath hers to hold her upright. Her legs were splayed out, bent at the knees. Her chemise was blood-soaked, as were the blankets beneath her, along with Agathe’s and Julien’s clothes.
Holy God, Mason thought, because there was no way the baby could survive, not with that much blood loss. Hell, he couldn’t even fathom how Collette herself was still alive, although she only seemed so just barely. Her eyes were open, but half-lidded and dazed; she seemed completely unaware of anything around her, or her company. Her skin had turned the color of putty, and she dangled limply in Julien’s arms.
Michel fell immediately to his knees beside his sister, facing Collette. “Bring the light closer…let me see,” he murmured as Agathe scooted aside and he reached for the bloody hem of Collette’s gown, lifting it toward her waist.
Mason stood, feeling stricken and helpless, rooted in place, as Julien looked up at him, visibly distraught. He could feel waves of emotion radiating from the younger man—anguish and fear, a state of near panic. And guilt. More than anything, Julien felt seized with guilt. Because I wasn’t here, he thought, crystal-clear and anguished in Mason’s mind. I wasn’t here with her.
“Here…” Lisette brushed past Mason and went to Julien’s side. She touched his shoulder, but it took her nearly shaking him before he blinked up at her, dazed with shock. “Let me take her awhile. Mason—bring him outside. He needs air.”
Mason nodded, stepping forward and offering Julien his hand. Julien clasped it with the fervency of a drowning man clutching at a proffered lifeline, and let Mason draw him to his feet as Lisette knelt behind Collette for support. He didn’t say a word, but stumbled into Mason’s shoulder, as if seeking shelter. With a low gasp, Julien buried his face against the front of Mason’s shirt, clutching at him with grief-stricken despair.
“It’s alright.” In that moment, Mason forgot himself. His heart ached so badly, so deeply for Julien, all he could think of was to comfort him. Closing his eyes, he lowered his face, letting his nose brush against Julien’s brow. He drew his arms around Julien and held him fiercely as he crooned softly, gently in his ear. “I’m here, Julien. It’s alright.”
When he opened his eyes, he found Edith standing in the doorway, staring at him. Michel and Agathe were too busy to have noticed this fleeting, tender exchange between him and Julien, but Edith had seen it plainly, and he could see it in the widening of her eyes, the abrupt, aghast draining of color from her cheeks—she realized. She understood now, both his secret and his reluctance to disclose it.
* * *
Within fifteen minutes of their arrival, Collette was dead, succumbing to the massive blood loss she’d suffered. Edith helped Michel and Agathe lay her supine on the floor, and he’d tried to save the baby by cutting open her abdomen, a crude Caesarian procedure. But it had been too late. Collette’s placental sac had grown improperly, covering the lower part of her womb instead of the top. As her uterus had grown, the placenta had started tearing loose of its moorings until at last, that night, the strain had become too much and it had ruptured free, causing her massive hemorrhaging.
“The baby’s likely been dead for days,” Michel said, lifting the lifeless little body from the ruins of Collette’s womb. “God Almighty, lad, I’m sorry,” he whispered to Julien.
Julien fell to his knees beside Michel, staring in stunned disbelief at the tiny, yet perfectly formed infant Michel cradled in his arms. With trembling hands, he reached out, and Michel gently deposited it in his arms. Tears fell from Julien’s cheeks, spattering against the mottled skin of his baby’s face.
“It…it’s a boy,” he whispered, looking up between Mason and Lisette, breaking Mason’s heart with the utter, absolute pain in his eyes. “My son…!”
* * *
“I want you to stay with Julien.” Michel spoke in a low voice almost directly in Mason’s ear, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’m going to go with Phillip and Lisette over to the great house to speak with Lamar.”
“Yes, sir,” Mason murmured, feeling numb inside, hollowed out and scraped raw. True, he’d envied Collette because she’d been Julien’s wife, but he’d never hated or wished harm upon her, and certainly not upon their child. To see the pain Julien suffered hurt him to the core; to be unable to act upon his own maelstrom of emotions, to offer comfort and affection to his lover in this, Julien’s most desperate hour of need, only made matters even worse.
“Here.” Michel pressed something into Mason’s hand—a small glass bottle with a label that read: Laudanum. “Give him some of this in a swallow of whiskey. It will help him sleep.”
“Yes, sir.” Mason nodded.
“There was nothing to be done,” Michel said softly, pained. “Not for Collette or the child.”
Mason nodded again. “I know.”
“You did good, lad, by comforting him,” Michel said. “God knows he’ll get none from his kin besides Lisette.”
He brushed past Mason and walked out of the cabin. Agathe had stepped out into the darkness sometime earlier, visibly shaken and upset. Before taking her leave, she’d helped Lisette and Edith wrap Collette and the baby in the quilts from the floor, and Michel and Phillip had trundled them outside. Edith knelt by the hearth again with a basin of water and a rag, trying to mop away the bloodstains that had seeped through the blankets and onto the pine floorboards.
Julien sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the smoldering cinders in the fireplace. Mason recognized the look of stony detachment in his face and eyes, that cold and lonely stoicism, and somehow this broke his heart even more so than Julien’s tears had. When Edith left them to get more water, Mason sat beside him, offering him a cup that he’d filled with about two-fingers’ worth of brandy from his flask.
“Here,” he said, and when he leaned over, the laudanum dropper poised over the rim of the cup, Julien glanced at him, puzzled. “It’s opium. It will soothe you.”
Julien watched, his blue eyes distant and glassy, as Mason administered the medicine drop by drop into his drink. When he finished, Julien raised the cup to his lips, then tilted his head back, knocking it back in a single swallow without pretense or protest.
“There’s a lad,” Mason said with a soft smile, stroking his hand against Julien’s hair. He couldn’t help himself; he let his fin
gertips stray, the pad of his thumb caressing Julien’s bottom lip.
Julien looked back at the fire again, seemingly unmoved by the affectionate gesture. “It’s for the best like this,” he murmured. “Collette hated it here. She told me so. This is no place to raise a child, she said.”
“Julien…” Mason said gently.
Julien ignored him, transfixed by the flames. “It’s for the best,” he said again, his voice slurring now from the effects of the laudanum. His eyelids drooped heavily and his head nodded forward. Mason caught him just as, with a soft moan, he tipped forward, nearly falling off the bed, his mind slipping from consciousness.
“Here we go.” Keeping one arm behind Julien, Mason hooked his free hand beneath the younger man’s legs, swinging him around and laying him in the bed. There were no blankets left; these had all been stripped so that Collette could lie on them against the floor. Mason shrugged off his jacket and draped it over Julien for warmth, then brushed his hair back from his brow once more.
He tried to keep an ear out for Edith. He knew it was only a matter of time until she returned, and until word of what had happened had spread through the Davenant great house like wildfire. Then he knew the little cabin would be swarming with people—most of them more out of morbid curiosity than any real concern. For now, though, the room was silent and still, and Mason kept vigil, protective as Julien slept, the grief and tension draining from his body at least for awhile.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Julien groaned, stirring from sleep, Mason roused with him. He opened his eyes, blinking groggily at the metal headboard of the bed, and when he lifted his head, momentarily disoriented, he winced at the painful crick that tightened through his shoulders and neck.
“What the…?” he murmured, but then he remembered why he’d fallen asleep on his knees on the unforgiving hardwood floor, beside a rickety bed in a musty, mildew-scented room. His eyes widened and he ignored the painful protests from his hips and spine as he sat up fully. “Julien?”
Julien’s eyes were open—beautiful, blue, and alert now, the haze of pain lifted from him as he blinked at Mason. Mason couldn’t tell if he was glad to see him, or getting ready to cuss him out. Though he hoped for the former, Mason knew he couldn’t blame him if he chose the latter.
“Hey, Doc,” Julien said after a moment, his voice hoarse and strained.
The sound of Julien’s voice, still so familiar even after so many years, left Mason wanting to smile, laugh, and weep all at the same time. It had been so long since he’d heard it in anything but his memories and dreams, and he’d long since come to believe he’d never hear it again. He wanted to reach out and touch Julien, embrace him, kiss him, cling to him, beg for his forgiveness, profess his love.
I was wrong, he wanted to cry out. Oh, God, Julien, I was so stupid and wrong, and hurting you—losing you—was the biggest mistake of my entire life, one that’s haunted me, hounded me, every day since.
But all he could manage, his voice little more than a croak, was: “Hey, yourself.”
Julien frowned, groggy and bewildered. “I had this…crazy, fucked up dream,” he murmured. “I…couldn’t breathe and you…were here with me.” With a pointed glance around the room, he returned his gaze to Mason and arched his brow. “Guess I wasn’t dreaming.”
“No.” Mason managed a smile. “You weren’t.”
Julien didn’t return the smile. His expression remained impassive, if not somewhat wary. Mason turned away, focusing his attention on the makeshift drainage system he and Andrei had put together to relieve the pressure in Julien’s chest. Overnight, the bucket had filled to nearly half-capacity with blood. Mason had been periodically ticking off the level by drawing a mark on the outside of the bucket. As the hours had stretched on and dawn had approached, the amount of blood had started to taper. As he glanced down now, he could see there was little if any change in the level since he’d last checked it an hour or so earlier.
He took the stethoscope from around his neck and slid the earpieces into place. Leaning over, he pressed the diaphragm against Julien’s chest, drawing it back and forth slowly. “Breathe for me,” he said. It was easier for him to ignore that guarded look in Julien’s eyes if he kept himself in a clinical mindset. “As deeply as you can manage.”
Julien tried, pulling in a few deep gasps before breaking down and coughing. Still, the effort didn’t seem as painful to him as it had the night before, and his breath sounds were definitely improving, his lung re-expanding to fill the space that the build-up of air and blood had created.
“You sound better,” Mason said as he slipped the stethoscope from his ears. “Much better. Another day, maybe two with this tube in, and we…we can pull it…”
His voice faded as he made the mistake of looking at Julien’s face again, meeting the younger man’s gaze. A maelstrom of emotions raged there: confusion, joy, trepidation, sorrow—the same mix Mason felt in his own heart.
“What are you doing here?” Julien whispered at length. “You have to go.”
“Forget it.” Mason shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere. Not without you.”
“Mason,” Julien said. “Listen to me. This place…it’s not safe. There’s a guy here…he’s dangerous…”
The door behind them suddenly flew open wide, slamming into the cracked and water-stained wall. Andrei had been sleeping in the chair in the corner, his head drooped down toward his chest, but at this sharp report, he startled awake, nearly toppling sideways in surprise.
Nikolić stood in the doorway, dressed in desert-camouflage fatigue pants and a black wife-beater T-shirt that was stretched taut across the broad width of his chest. A large knife hung in a leather sheath from his belt; he carried a pair of handguns beneath his arms in a pair of shoulder holsters. His dark eyes locked onto Mason and bored there, his gaze heavy, cold, and imposing, despite the smarmy grin that abruptly stretched the bottom quarter of his face wide.
“Dr. Morin, dobro јootro,” he greeted in Serbian. “Good morning. I was told I might find you here.”
“I…I can explain, šef,” Andrei began.
“Ćutati!” Nikolić snapped at him. Andrei immediately cowed, his shoulders hunched, and Mason didn’t need a translation to understand what Nikolić had said: Shut up!
“Andrei’s only here because of me,” Mason said, rising to his feet. He didn’t want to risk Sofiya or Andrei getting in trouble for having helped him without permission. “He helped me save this man’s life. If we hadn’t put a chest tube in him when we did, he would have died.”
Nikolić cut Andrei a look from beneath furrowed brows. “This is true?”
Andrei nodded. “Da, šef. He was in very bad shape. He wouldn’t have made it through the night.”
Nodding once, a nearly conciliatory gesture, Nikolić smiled again. “Then you have my thanks, Andrei,” he said. “As do you yet again, Dr. Morin.”
“Don’t mention it,” Mason replied drily. He was about to make the most of getting on Nikolić’s good side again by demanding that he uncuff Julien, but Nikolić beat him to it, speaking first.
“And you, mišiću…?” Glancing toward Julien, Nikolić’s smile widened. “Do you have no such words of gratitude to offer your friend?”
Julien’s brows narrowed. Straining against his cuffs, he managed to lift his head from the mattress and, to Mason’s surprise, spit at him. “That son of a bitch…is no friend of mine,” he gasped, glaring at Mason. “The only thing I have to say…you murdering piece of shit is that you’d better hope like hell…that I don’t get loose from these chains while you’re standing there.”
At the vitriol in his voice, the undisguised rage, Mason shied back from the bed. “Julien, I…” he began in helpless confusion.
“You think what you did for me evens our score? You think last night makes up for what you did in the past?” Julien spat again, bloody phlegm spattering onto Mason’s leg. “You chickenshit bastard—you stood by and let my brother d
ie. You watched Victor drown on his own blood. I’ll never forget that. Never!”
Mason stared at him, stricken and shaken. Where the hell was this coming from? He’d expected anger from Julien; hell, he’d been bracing himself inwardly all along for the verbal blasting he knew he was due. But this sudden burst had nothing to do with what had happened between them. This was about even older wounds than that—wounds Mason had thought long-since healed between them.
In the past, all Julien had ever said was what a son of a bitch Victor had been, and how his family had been wrong to hold Mason accountable for his death. But the venom edged in his words, the fury flashing in his eyes seemed unforced and genuine, the grief behind them undeniable.
Mason’s dismay must have been evident on his face because even Nikolić apparently felt sorry for him. Clapping Mason on the shoulder, the big man said, “Andrei, take Dr. Morin downstairs. Have him check on Piotr. I think he’s finished here for now.”
“Doctor Morin?” Julien laughed breathlessly. “Bullshit. He…he’s nothing…but a goddamn fraud. Keep him the fuck away from me.” With a groan, he fell back against the bed, his eyelids drooping closed. “I…I don’t want…that son of a bitch touching me again.”
* * *
Julien kept his eyes closed until Mason and Nikolić’s guard had left the room. He listened as their footsteps faded beyond the threshold, and the scent of Mason’s skin—still familiar to him, even after all of this time—had waned.
I don’t know what you’re doing here, he thought. But if you think you’re helping me, Mason—you’re not.
“I had no idea there was such…animosity between your clans,” Nikolić remarked.
“You mean Phillip never told you?” Julien replied drily, opening his eyes. He still wasn’t convinced Nikolić had been telling the truth about Phillip Morin’s involvement in the development of the synthesized Brethren enzymes. However, if the Morins were somehow involved—if Lamar had kept this knowledge a secret from Julien all of this time in order to manipulate him—it would explain Mason’s presence with Nikolić.
